Region Archives: US West

OREGON — Activists from the group Pacific Northwest Forest Defense ascended into the uppermost branches of an approximately 150-foot-tall ponderosa pine in southern Oregon. Nearby, they said, road construction for the Poor Windy Forest Management Project, operated by wood product manufacturer Boise Cascade and approved by the Bureau of Land Management, had already begun. While the pine was not part of the project’s timber sale, it stood in the path of a planned road, in danger of becoming a collateral cost. For three weeks, a handful of activists took turns in the tree, sitting on a wooden platform 120 feet in the air. By April 23, the BLM had amended its contract with Boise Cascade. High Country News recently spoke with two Wolf Creek tree-sitters, both of whom chose to use pseudonyms to protect themselves from future legal consequences. 

PAYSON, Arizona — Smoke billowed from Diamond Rim on the Tonto National Forest on Monday afternoon as a helicopter bobbed along overhead, dropping tiny fireballs to stoke flames on the ground. The federally contracted chopper is based for this spring and summer at a new, $4.9 million U.S. Forest Service helicopter base in Star Valley that will aid in both fighting wildfires and igniting prescribed burns like the one on the ridge. The Payson Ranger District’s helitack team, which fights fires via helicopter, at times rappelling to the forest floor, has moved there from trailers that it formerly worked out of at the Payson airport. The Forest Service started work last week on burning some 5,500 acres of brush and dense woodlands north of Payson… to reduce fuels available for what could be an active fire season as drought creeps back across Arizona after a relatively wet 2023.

There was a time when communities all across the Northwest would host logging shows and competitions to celebrate the forest product industries. Local loggers would pit their skills against some of the best in the world in events like pole climbing, axe throwing, and the crowd-favorite “hot saw” competitions. And the best of those shows, and smaller competitions, featured the pros and the amateurs, giving “loggers” of various skill levels from British Columbia to Forks to Flagstaff a chance to compete. Today, there’s only one Pro/Am event, and it’s coming this weekend in Missoula. “Forestry Day” at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula was a relatively recent addition to the timber competition circuit, starting a little less than 30 years ago. Originally conceived as a way to both celebrate and preserve the legacy and importance of the timber products industry, it’s ended up doing just that.

A critical tree species found in some of America’s most revered national parks is in decline, leading researchers to embark on a race to prevent more from dying off. Whitebark pine, or Pinus albicaulis, is a keystone tree species found in the greater Yellowstone area, play a critical role in the ecosystem in the greater Yellowstone area, Laura Jones, branch chief of vegetation ecology at Grand Teton National Park, said. But the already few whitebark pine trees that exist on the rooftops of the Teton mountain range are dwindling quickly, and the impacts — while still unknown — could be a major disruption to the ecosystem, experts said. …One of the key steps to conserving the species is identifying the trees that are resistant to the pine rust and promoting those trees on the landscape, Jones said.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees much of Utah’s land for grazing, oil and gas, mining and logging. On April 18, the agency published the new Public Lands Rule that puts conservation on par with those commercial uses in an endeavor to build resilience to climate change. The BLM says that the rule restores balance on public lands by establishing “restoration and mitigation leases” and clarifying protections for Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. …Conservation groups laud the rule, arguing that it fills gaps in the current implementation of the agency’s mandate… But industry representatives and Utah politicians say that the change poses a threat to their lifestyles and livelihoods. …Sen. Mike Lee said, “This misguided rule will hamper critical projects such as mineral extraction and strike a harsh blow to small family-run businesses dependent on BLM land access.” Rep. John Curtis agreed, adding it will allow private companies to capitalize on public land.

AUSTRALIA — Some reports have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by First Nations people. Advocates for widespread thinning and burning of these forests have argued that fire is needed to return these forests to their “pre-invasion” state. A key question then is: what does the evidence say about what tall, wet forests actually looked like 250 years ago? …In a new paper, we looked carefully at the body of evidence. Our analysis shows most areas of mainland mountain ash forests were likely to have been dense and wet at the time of British invasion. The large overstorey eucalypt trees were relatively widely spaced, but there was a dense understorey. …The evidence we compiled all indicates mountain ash forests were dense, wet environments, not open and park-like. …Based on this evidence, we should not be deliberately burning or thinning these forests.

MINNESOTA — The U.S. Forest Service is gearing up to launch a spruce budworm response project in Cook County this summer as the prevalence of the spruce budworm expands across northeastern Minnesota. Spruce budworm, a native insect that feeds on the needles of spruce and balsam fir, fluctuates in 30-40-year cycles. The last influx of spruce budworm occurred in the 1980s in Cook County. As a preventative mitigation effort, this summer, the Forest Service intends to implement a Blue Cascade Spruce Budworm Response and Restoration Project stretching from the Caribou Trail to County Road 14, east of Grand Marais. The entire project will encompass over 2000 acres and focus on vegetation management, reducing hazardous fuels, and minimizing the density of spruce plantations to allow for more ecologically appropriate mixed-forest types.

“Urban forestry matters because that’s where people live. So, if we want to help people, we have to go where they are,” said Francisco Escobedo, a research social scientist with the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station. …Communities can plant trees and glean many benefits from urban forests, said Escobedo. These benefits include reducing summer peak temperatures, improving air quality, reducing stormwater run-off, increasing property values, providing wildlife habitat, and strengthening neighborhood social connections. …Los Angeles averages about 267 days of sun a year. Its rays beat down on rooftops, roads, parking lots, cars and the tops of heads. About a fifth of the city’s trees and the shade they provide grow where only 1% of its residents live. This scarcity is not lost on Los Angeles and county city planners, who have recently been coming together to grow urban forests in the nation’s second-largest city.

HELENA, Montana — Two conservation groups and the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have reached a settlement on a lawsuit over a a 20-year logging and burning project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, the plaintiffs said. Native Ecosystems Council and Alliance for the Wild Rockies said the Middleman Project that they stopped over 110 miles of road construction and reconstruction in the forest and halted over 5,000 acres of commercial logging in lynx and grizzly habitat. …The project, approved in 2021, was meant to reduce wildfire fuels and improve forest health and rangeland habitat conditions, forest officials said. It was also designed to maintain and improve water quality and aquatic habitat through a variety of methods including logging. The conservation groups sued in September, saying the project violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

A logging company has canceled a proposed road within a Bureau of Land Management project in Josephine County. Activists had claimed that construction of the route threatened old-growth trees. Protesters (including a tree-sitter on a platform) had been staying at the location of a proposed road within the BLM’s Salmon Run timber sale, which they claim threatened old-growth trees, for the last three weeks. The timber sale area is part of the BLM’s Poor Windy Forest Management Project which includes around 11,000 acres slated for commercial timber harvest as well as forest thinning to prevent large wildfires. On Monday the BLM and Boise Cascade Wood Products changed their plan for the Salmon Run area to remove the proposed 440-foot access road at the center of protesters’ concerns. The update also specified that construction of another road will not disturb large-diameter trees.

Hilary Franz

As part of a growing list of international partners, Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz met with a delegation of Ukrainian officials last week to discuss wildfire mitigation and sustainable forestry management. On Thursday, Franz met with a delegation led by State Specialized Forest Enterprise Director General Yurii Bolokhovets, who requested the meeting to strengthen bilateral cooperation in forestry. The cooperation is the latest partnership for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which includes meetings with officials from British Columbia, Iceland and Finland. …In a news release, DNR noted the risk that Ukraine’s forests face, particularly as the war with Russia continues. According to the Ukrainian State Forest Resources Agency, over the past three years, an estimated 30% of the country’s forests have suffered damage.

Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz today met with a delegation from Ukraine (led by State Specialized Forest Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” Director General Yurii Bolokhovets) to discuss best practices for sustainable forestry as well wildfire response and mitigation strategies. Ukrainian officials requested a meeting with Commissioner Franz and DNR staff to develop and strengthen bilateral cooperation in sustainable forestry. Washington’s high standards in forest management make the agency a global leader in sustainable harvest, conservation, and preservation. …Ukraine’s forests are in danger. The State Forest Resources Agency estimated that nearly 30% of Ukraine’s forests have suffered some kind of damage in the last three years. Russia reportedly has been actively destroying and harvesting Ukrainian forests, depleting the country’s natural resources, inflicting over $2 trillion in environmental costs, and causing long-term ecological damage – lowering groundwater level, reducing biodiversity, polluting the air, and increasing wildfires.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) is seeking feedback on a public lands project that would furnish permanent protections on nearly 33,000 acres of private timberland in northwest Montana while precluding development on a patchwork of forestland surrounding the Thompson Chain of Lakes between Kalispell and Libby. …FWP is working with The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and Green Diamond Resource Company to identify funding sources for the potential easement. …Under the terms of the easement, which provide for public recreation access and the preservation of wildlife habitat, Green Diamond would retain ownership of the land under an easement owned by FWP. The easement would allow Green Diamond to sustainably harvest wood products from its timberlands. It is the first of a potential two-phased project totaling 85,792 acres of private timberland. …“Green Diamond has essentially offered to donate 35% of the value of this easement,” Dillon Tabish said.

Two aerial firefighting jets, including one based in Missoula, have been grounded because of corrosion apparently caused by a new fire retardant the U.S. Forest Service approved for use beginning last year. Two large air tankers — passenger jets converted to carry 3,000 gallons of retardant each — used a magnesium chloride fire retardant product while fighting wildfires last year. Both are grounded pending a joint investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Forest Service. The magnesium chloride retardant was in limited use last fire season, loaded into the two large air tankers and some smaller, single-engine aircraft also in Montana. After the discovery this winter of corrosion in areas of tankers where the retardant accumulated, the Forest Service decided not to use it this year. Instead, the agency will continue its widespread use of ammonium phosphate fire retardant that has been the go-to retardant nationwide for years. 

In a monumental move within the timber industry, Rayonier Inc. has set the stage for a most significant timberland transactions in recent history. The Clallam Tree Farm, a property in the heart of the Pacific Northwest’s Olympic Peninsula, is now up for sale. The Clallam Tree Farm spans 115,250 acres of forestland. The property is located within the Douglas-fir region of the upper-west Olympic Peninsula. With nine miles of the North Fork of the Calawah River meandering through its expanse and neighboring the Olympic National Forest, this property stands as a testament to managed forestry. Rayonier’s decision to put the Clallam Tree Farm on the market marks the first time this property has been available for acquisition since the 1940s. With nearly eight decades of stewardship, the property is a legacy of sustainable forest management. …Their website invites prospective buyers to participate in a single-stage, sealed-bid process, with bids due on June 6, 2024. 

Josh Becker

Insurers in California have sounded the alarm: A warming climate has dramatically raised the risk of devastating wildfires, and with it the cost of providing coverage. But those insurance companies should credit the state and homeowners for the work done to reduce our vulnerability to wildfires, says State Sen. Josh Becker (D), who has introduced a bill that would require insurers require insurers to consider the state’s efforts to thin flammable brush and trees as well as property owners’ steps to make their homes more fire resistant, such as covering vents and clearing vegetation. Those efforts would need to be incorporated into their risk modeling to determine coverage decisions and costs. …The American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said the bill “has several complicating factors to consider.” …Becker said the proposed law wouldn’t mandate any particular discount or result, only for insurers to account for wildfire risk reduction efforts. 

Colorado can expect a normal wildfire season this year, very similar to last, as the state flexes enhanced firefighting practices in the wake of devastating fires. The Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC) outlined the state wildfire preparedness plan to Gov. Jared Polis during a press conference on Wednesday. …Behind the speakers stood the newest addition to Colorado’s air tanker fleet, a brand-new S-70 Firehawk. Based on the military Blackhawk helicopter, the Firehawk is classified as a type I helicopter air tanker, meaning it is the largest and fastest type of firefighting helicopter. The Firehawk can carry 1,000 gallons of water or fire retardant. …The state of Colorado paid $2.3 million last year for pilots and mechanics for the helicopter, even as it sat in a hanger unused. After purchasing the $24 million whirlybird in 2021, it generated so much excitement in the legislature, they earmarked an additional $26 million for a second

Nich Smith

The Western timber industry is in crisis. The region has lost over a half-dozen wood processing facilities so far in 2024, and more will likely close. This is not just another economic blow to our rural communities; it signals a broader failure of the federal government to align the management of public lands with the health of our forests and wood products sector. Despite billions of dollars in new government spending, and strong bipartisan support in Congress for forest management, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are paralyzed by anti-forestry litigation, obstruction and bureaucratic red tape… which not only prevent efforts to reduce wildfire risks, they depress regional timber supplies that industry depends. …The administration and Congress should ensure that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management work in partnership with industry to help meet these pressing economic and environmental challenges.

Kendall Cotton

Just in time for Earth Day on April 22, Gov. Greg Gianforte recently announced the state has placed over 36,000 acres of Montana forest land under active forest management in 2023, nearly triple the total acres actively managed in 2020. More active forest management is great news for those who love Montana’s “clean and healthful” environment and want to improve the global climate. It’s unfortunate when the average person thinks about the front lines of environmental conservation and addressing climate change, they are probably far more likely to picture an activist like Greta Thunberg tweeting out pictures of protests from her iPhone than a Montana logger hard at work out in the woods….Wildfires send billions of tons of emissions into the atmosphere when they burn every year. …Healthy, actively managed forests are robust carbon sinks that sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Diana Tomback

Dorena Genetic Resource Center near Cottage Grove, Ore., scientists are collecting whitebark pine cones, growing seedlings, examining them for resilience to disease and then gathering cones from the strongest survivors. Those select seeds are then used to grow hundreds of thousands of baby trees in nurseries and plant them across the West. …Whitebark pine trees …stretches across 80 million acres in seven western states and two Canadian provinces. Now, one of the West’s few tree species able to survive on cold, windy ridgetops and steep slopes at alpine and subalpine elevations is in serious trouble. A blister rust, a nonnative fungus has become an existential threat to the pines, says Diana Tomback, one of the foremost researchers of the unique relationship between whitebark pines and Clark’s nutcracker. …Tomback says work on the National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan started in 2016 — six years before the tree was listed as threatened.

In this era of accelerating climate crisis, accounting for all aspects of Earth’s carbon cycle is a crucial task. The magnitude of atmospheric carbon burden means trees and forests are limited but important instruments among a suite of mitigation options. …Understanding the role of forests requires accurate quantification of biomass, approximately half of which is carbon. Technological advances and the urgency of the problem have motivated international efforts toward biomass mapping. Airborne and spaceborne laser scanning hold great promise, and remote sensing is tempting to rely upon given its efficiency in covering large areas. However, these endeavors are of questionable value until their estimates are validated by direct measurements. A new article published in Forest Ecology and Management embraces this challenge for the world’s tallest forests. …While technological advances continue to enhance the scope of forestry research, boots-on-the-ground measurements remain essential and will provide meaningful work for generations to come.

Forest Service crews and contractors are scrambling to set as much forest on fire as possible. The increasingly narrow window of the season for prescribed fire is upon us. The time between when the forest is dry enough to burn but wet enough to contain those burns has grown increasingly compressed. The Tonto, Coconino and Apache Sitgreaves forests all sent out notices warning communities to expect smoke from nearby controlled burns to smudge the sky and maybe even send smoke drifting through town. ……None of those communities were built with Wildlands-Urban Interface codes. …So thinning projects followed by prescribed burns remain the best tool for protecting those communities, which rank among the most fire-menaced in the country. …However, figuring out how to cover the cost of thinning some 4 million acres of Ponderosa pine forest in Northern Arizona is just the start of the policies needed to restore the forest.

Jaiden Stansberry

The day before Jaiden Stansberry submitted her Truman Scholarship application — an involved process that includes 14 essays, a policy proposal and multiple interviews — she spent hours alongside her classmates razing a makeshift logging town constructed in the University of Montana’s Schreiber Gym for the 105th Foresters’ Ball. …“After deconstruction, the next day I was at the library fixing all my Truman Scholarship essays,” Stansberry said with a laugh, noting with pride that her team tore down the timber in record time. …Truman Scholars demonstrate outstanding leadership potential, commitment to a career in government or the nonprofit sector, and academic excellence. After a rigorous application, those selected receive $30,000 in funding for graduate studies, leadership training, career counseling and special internship opportunities within the federal government. …Stansberry’s application focused on the topic at the nexus of her education, professional work and heart: wildland fire.

OREGON — Three dozen environmental groups are calling on the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to cancel a timber sale on federal land near Medford where activists say centuries old trees are slated to be cut. Organizers from Pacific Northwest Forest Defense have been sitting in old-growth trees for a week and set up a camp blocking Boise Cascade from cutting up to 516 acres of trees within an area owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. …Activists are concerned that the bureau is allowing Boise Cascade and the other companies to cut old-growth and mature trees at the site… that are more than 180 years old and up to 400 years old. Lisa Tschampl, for Boise Cascade, said there are no 400-year old trees at the site and that the trees at least 150 years old have been marked not to be cut. She said the company is “thinning” the area selectively, not clearcutting it.

MISSOULA, Montana is in a forest health crisis. …And this is because of prior years of mismanagement and fire mitigation that has allowed large amounts of overgrowth, which in turn acts as fuel for wildfires. And with a complex system to manage the forest, the decline of the lumber industry has further complicated the situation. “We are dealing with a forest health and wildfire crisis. …Overtime our forests have become overgrown, more diseased, more fire prone, and we’re all familiar with the smoke we’re all breathing all summer from these catastrophic wildfires,” said Shawn Thomas, for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. …The timber sales that he oversees in large part come from mills including Pyramid Mountain and Roseburg Forest… whose upcoming closures are creating economic concerns. But besides the economic concerns, there is also the worry about how this will affect the forests health. 

A recent letter to the editor responding to a commentary objecting to timber sales in Snohomish County, promulgated outdated ideas about forest ecology that have been categorically disproven by scientists. The author states that there is no shortage of old growth forest. I suppose that is a matter of opinion, but according to the 1993 Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team report, historically 65 percent of westside Pacific Northwest forests were mature and old growth. In 2004, 70 percent of those westside forests were less than 80 years old. Furthermore, these calculations don’t account for the carbon emissions generated by the activities of road construction, logging, transporting the trees to mills, and milling of lumber. …Mature forests are next in line to become old growth, and are invaluable for this reason, but also provide essential ecosystem services in their present state.

In dense forests off I-5 in Josephine County, Oregon, up a few miles of winding dirt roads, a handful of tents, a hammock and an acoustic guitar mark the camp of those describing themselves as “forest defenders.” … The square of thick forest where activists have been camping for a week is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, part of the agency’s 11,000-acre Poor Windy project that includes areas slated for commercial timber harvest as well as forest thinning to prevent wildfires from getting out of control. At the top of one of these trees, a massive Ponderosa pine with a thin band of orange paint around its trunk, a big banner reads: “No Old Growth Logging in a Climate Crisis.” …A spokesperson with the BLM’s Medford office, meanwhile, said that old-growth logging isn’t the goal for these projects.