A criminal charge was dismissed Wednesday against a U.S. Forest Service employee arrested in 2022 by a rural Oregon sheriff after a prescribed burn on federal land unexpectedly spread to private property. In February, a grand jury indicted Ricky Snodgrass, on a reckless burning charge, a misdemeanor. The case later moved to federal court, and last month Snodgrass’ lawyers had asked a judge to dismiss it. Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter did not oppose that motion, and the judge approved it this week. “Mr. Snodgrass was charged because the State — or more precisely, the local sheriff — took issue with the Forest Service’s decision to conduct the prescribed fire,” defense attorneys for Snodgrass said. “But the State cannot charge Mr. Snodgrass with a crime simply because it disagrees with the Forest Service’s decision. The (U.S. Constitution’s) Supremacy Clause controls, and Mr. Snodgrass is immune from prosecution. This case must be dismissed.”

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Governing Board has approved a new 2024–2029 Strategic Plan. It will guide the development of programs, policies, and actions it takes to fulfill its mission of improving the environmental, economic, and social well-being of California’s Sierra-Cascade Region. “Climate change, megafires, and Covid have created profound changes in the Sierra-Cascade region since our last Strategic Plan was created 2019, and this plan reflects the ways that we are adapting, and staying the course, to serve this vital and dynamic region,” said Angela Avery, Executive office of the SNC. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Governing Board awarded a little more than $6 million to four different projects to help with the planning and implementation of forest-health efforts. All four projects will promote recovery and resilience to disturbances, such as wildfire, in the Sierra-Cascade.

Protesters have moved into another Bureau of Land Management project area in southern Oregon after claiming their tree-sitting prevented construction of a logging road in April. A protester is currently camping out around 100 feet above the ground in an old-growth Douglas fir they say is at risk of being cut down to make way for a logging road. The tree is in the BLM’s Rogue Gold Forest Management Project area near Rogue River. …The BLM’s Rogue Gold project includes commercial logging as well as fuels reduction to lessen wildfire risk. Activists claim the plan threatens old-growth trees that have habitat for threatened species like the northern spotted owl. …Tree-sitters declared victory after another proposed road they protested was abandoned in April. It was within the BLM’s nearby Poor Windy Forest Management Project. The BLM did not respond to a request for comment about protests at the Rogue Gold project.

Thanks to recent funding, the Missoula Office of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation has upped its capacity to provide native pine seedlings to a wide variety of federal, state, tribal and private reforestation projects around the region. On Wednesday morning, in lieu of cutting a ribbon, DNRC Nursery Program Manager Michael Butts carefully peeled a strip of tape off the door of his new greenhouse to reveal its name: “Anaconda.” Those in attendance – other DNRC employees and representatives of the U.S. Forest Service and American Forests, a nonprofit – cheered and then walked through the 4,320-square-foot greenhouse, which was finished last fall and already shelters more than 100,000 Ponderosa pine seedlings. “With the new greenhouse, we’re going to increase our capacity by about 20%, roughly growing 250,000 seedlings annually. That translates to an additional 1,500 acres of reforestation across the state each year,” Butts said.