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Wildfire smoke is usually discussed as an airborne pollutant and a threat to human health. But when smoke and rain coincide, nutrients released by burned landscapes rain back down. A new study finds that smoke-rain events can deliver large bursts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—three nutrients essential to life—across ecosystems in the United States. As wildfires become more frequent, these nutrient pulses could become an increasingly important, and largely overlooked, ecological consequence of fire. “It’s important to remember that what goes up must come down,” said lead author Alexandra Ponette-González, urban ecologist at the University of Utah. “…We’re interested in everything that falls out of the atmosphere and lands on ecosystems, and what that means for our environment.” …the study is the first large-scale analysis to examine how particles in wildfire smoke are delivered to ecosystems through rainfall across hundreds of U.S. sites over multiple years.

Last week, the Trump administration announced it was moving forward with efforts to rescind the national Roadless Rule, which has governed roadless areas of U.S. Forest Service land for a quarter-century. But Idaho won’t be affected. That’s because of an effort, launched two decades ago during the brief governorship of now-Sen. Jim Risch, to secure a specific statewide roadless rule. Colorado is the only other state with its own rule. Idaho’s rule will remain in place, even if the Trump administration succeeds in reversing the national rule — a tragic outcome that places at risk some of the best remaining patches of wild habitat for fish and game, and risks increasing the number of wildfires, which are mostly caused by humans, mostly near roads. Idaho’s rule could provide a viable model for future protection of roadless areas in an era when federal land management decisions are likely to whipsaw with every presidential election for the foreseeable future.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Northern spotted owl populations are approaching or have already crossed functional extinction across large areas of the Pacific Northwest, a new study found. Researchers used artificial intelligence and advanced monitoring methods to assess long-term trends at an unprecedented scale. While northern spotted owl populations have declined for decades, this study identifies where populations are at or near functional extinction, meaning numbers are so low that they no longer play a meaningful ecological role or cannot reproduce enough to persist. It also provides detailed population data on barred owls, which outcompete northern spotted owls for prey and habitat. “These findings demonstrate that passive acoustic monitoring and machine learning can be used for large-scale ecological monitoring,” said Damon Lesmeister, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station and a courtesy faculty member at Oregon State University. 

Laura Deehan

In 1905, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt made a speech at the Grand Canyon and warned Americans not to “treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery.” …Those words seem especially relevant now, following the news that the Trump administration is proposing to roll back the “roadless rule” protections against logging, road-building and other industry in nearly 45 million acres of pristine U.S. national forest land.  …Fewer than 1% of wildfires in the lower 48 states since 2010 have started in roadless areas of national forests. …If the new rule is approved, more than 4 million acres of California’s pristine, wild forests … would be open to industrial logging, mining and road building. …We are urging Californians to submit comments opposing the rollback within the 30-day public comment period.  [A subscription to the SF Chronicle is required for full access]

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The federal law that prohibits paving and logging National Forest land is officially on the chopping block, and conservationists warn that the cleaver could strike lands on the Central Coast. The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects 59 million acres of National Forest land from logging and roadbuilding — including 635,000 remote acres in Los Padres National Forest. It protects the backcountry, where old-growth forests provide shelter for wildlife and opportunities for outdoor recreation, while keeping the air and watersheds clean. But on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) filed a proposed rule to rescind the Roadless Rule in its entirety. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins’s intent to revoke the Roadless Rule has been on conservationists’ radars for more than a year. But now, the threat is materializing. …More than 99 percent of public comments submitted during the initial process opposed the administration’s efforts to rescind the Roadless Rule

Land managers with the Flathead National Forest plan to approve a fuels-reduction project in the Swan Valley near Holland Lake using an emergency determination on the grounds that it lies in a “high-risk fireshed,” according to an Aug. 18 decision notice. Foresters say the project is eligible for an Emergency Action Determination (EAD) because it proposes to reduce wildfire risk while preserving the area’s old-growth forests. Initially released for public scoping in 2023, the Rumbling Owl Fuels Reduction Project spans 6,200 acres on the Swan Lake Ranger District of the Flathead National Forest southeast of Condon and east of Highway 83. According to an environmental assessment prepared by Jeff Durkin, the district silviculturist for the Swan and the project leader on Rumbling Owl, the project meets the newly established criteria for EAD authorization, which the agency has increasingly used to expedite approval of logging projects featuring a fuels-reduction component.

Steve Wilent

Would you shoot one large, beautiful owl to save a few large, beautiful owls of a different species? Would you shoot a few hundred thousand owls? Back in 2021, the findings of long-term research by a group of scientists showed that northern spotted owls benefitted when the numbers of competing barred owls was reduced. This was not surprising. Barred owls, cousins to the spotted owl, are larger, more aggressive, and more willing and able to use habitats other than old-growth forests, which spotted owls prefer. In 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl—there are California and Mexican subspecies, too—as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of declines in the owl’s old-forest habitats. The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994, dramatically reduced the rate of logging of old-growth forests on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest.

PORTLAND, Oregon — Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest are getting worse every year.  The World Forestry Center in Washington Park recently unveiled a new immersive, five-screen theater experience that puts viewers in the middle of some of the world’s most destructive wildfires. The film examines the connections between wildfires, climate change and forest management, while encouraging viewers to become part of the conversation about how communities respond to increasingly intense fires. “The wildfires in California in 2020 are estimated to have erased 16 years of all the carbon offsets in that state, twice over, in one wildfire season,” said Joseph Furia, executive director and president of the World Forestry Center. Furia said wildfire mitigation is changing, particularly as fires grow larger and smoke spreads farther into populated areas. …The immersive experience is designed to leave visitors with a better understanding of how forests may need to change as wildfire conditions evolve.

The United States Forest Service is proposing to amend the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) to allow cutting older trees across the western portion of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. As a fifth generation native of the west coast, I have spent a lifetime in these forests as a private citizen and a 40 plus year career as a U.S. Forest Service employee specializing in forestry and forest engineering. The primary proposed change in the 19.4 million acres of forestlands is to allow cutting trees up to 120 years old compared to 80 years in the current plan. Conservatively speaking, 90 or more percent of the old growth forests in the NWFP area were clearcut in the logging and road building boom from 1950 to the mid 1990’s. …The U.S. Forest Service likely lacks the experienced staff needed to carry out the proposed increase in timber harvest. Years of NWFP implementation, combined with recent federal workforce reductions, have significantly weakened the agency’s institutional knowledge. 

Wildfires in Oregon have cost the state nearly $240 million this year, state officials said this week, a figure that is expected to climb as fires continue burning across the region. Some of that will eventually be reimbursed by the federal government, but that process can take years, officials say. In the long term, this wildfire season will cost Oregon’s fire marshal and forestry agencies more than $160 million, according to a Monday email to state lawmakers from Kate Denison, interim deputy legislative director for Gov. Tina Kotek. When totaling expenses for all governments for large wildfires, the true cost is approaching $800 million and may ultimately be significantly higher, according to one agency. Officials note that wildfire cost estimates change day-to-day as more expenses are reported and numerous governments coordinate coverage and spending. Total costs may not be known for months.