California leaders are bracing for a clash with Donald Trump on most environmental issues when he returns to the White House, but they’re surprisingly aligned with him on forest management. Since his first term as president, Trump has blamed the state for its devastating wildfires, telling leaders to thin out its forest and clear out the forest floors to lower risk. Research shows he wasn’t entirely off base. Decades of fire suppression have California left forests overgrown, making them more vulnerable to severe wildfires intensified by climate change. In 2020, the state ramped up efforts to thin forests, setting a goal of treating one million acres of forest land a year. Now it may even support a controversial timber-based energy industry. …Wood pellet biomass is often marketed as renewable. But environmentalists criticize it for releasing significant carbon emissions like fossil fuels and say it incentivizes removal of mature trees from forests.

A federal hiring freeze on seasonal U.S. Forest Service workers could mean fewer people putting out abandoned campfires, constructing trails and preventing wildfires across Colorado next year. The freeze is projected to impact 156 temporary seasonal positions across Colorado. Those employees cover a wide range of critical tasks: wildfire prevention and education, campsite management and biological fieldwork as well as trail construction and maintenance. Local government leaders said the staffing reductions would be felt hard in Colorado’s central mountains, where highly trafficked Forest Service land dominates much of the area and is the center of recreation tourism that fuel economies. Several counties pay to fund seasonal positions, but the hiring freeze means those paid-for positions could remain vacant, putting years-old agreements in jeopardy. …The hiring freeze, announced in September, is the result of a potential $500 million budget cut to the agency in the coming fiscal year.

U.S. officials would allow increased logging on federal lands across the Pacific Northwest in the name of fighting wildfires and boosting rural economies under proposed changes to a sweeping forest management plan that’s been in place for three decades. The U.S. Forest Service proposal, released Friday, would overhaul the Northwest Forest Plan that governs about 38,000 square miles in Oregon, Washington and California. The plan was adopted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton amid pressure to curb logging that destroyed habitat used by spotted owls. …But federal officials now say worsening wildfires due to climate change mean forests must be more actively managed to increase their resiliency. Increased logging also would provide a more predictable supply of trees for timber companies, helping rural economies that have suffered after lumber mills shut down. The proposal could increase annual timber harvests by at least 33%, according to a draft environmental study.

The gophers were grumpy, but they understood the assignment. Brought by helicopter to a barren landscape with pumice stones the size of marbles and golf balls, the animals did what they’ve always done: They started digging. Just two years earlier, a cataclysm erased life in the landscape. The explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 blew out the mountain’s northern flank and destroyed some 135 square miles of forest. …When scientists returned to the fenced plots six years later, they were stunned to find some 40,000 plants there, while nearby patches of land remained desolate. In the decades since, the effects have kept compounding. …So, why did it happen? Part of the credit goes to the gopher’s diligent digging, which cycled fertile materials back toward the surface. But they also left things behind — from their droppings to spores and fungi.