The International Concatonated Order of Hoo-Hoo celebrates 130 years with their annual convention, hosted this year in Sacramento, California. The Sacramento Club, #109 has an exciting slate of activities planned for their guests. The Embassy Suites Hotel in historic Old Sacramento will be headquarters for the Gold Rush themed event. Plans are underway to make this one of the best conventions in Hoo-Hoo memory! We’re going to highlight the incredible history, scenery and hospitality that Sacramento and Northern California have to offer. Our plan is to show off Sacramento’s new up and coming urban downtown. To bring to light the area as a leader in farm-to-fork dining with a train ride reception and dinner at the California State Railroad Museum and to highlight the rich history and to have some fun with a lumber themed mystery theatre dinner on board the Delta King, an old time paddlewheel ship moored in Old Sacramento. 

Aerial LIDAR scans make it easy to see the difference between a fire-resistant forest and one where fire has been suppressed. …A set of remarkable LIDAR scans of Yosemite National Park in California, published by forest ecologists at the University of Washington and the remote imaging company NV5 Geospatial in EOS this month, offers a glimpse into the subtle distinctions in forests—and the huge consequences for wildfire–across an area of 100 square miles. …Using scans of Yosemite taken between 2010 and 2019, forest ecologists at the University of Washington were able to map how fires change the fabric of a landscape. …And ecologists now know that forests that burn  look very different from those that don’t. In the mixed pine and fir ecosystem that covers most of Yosemite, repeated fires once thinned out small trees, creating a patchwork of clumps of mature forest and open meadow.

California’s battle against catastrophic wildfires is pulling money from one of its key programs to fight climate change, with the total expected to soon hit $1.9 billion. California spent nearly $1.46 billion in cap-and-trade revenues to fill holes in fire agency budgets. Dollars funded controlled burns, the removal of dead vegetation, education efforts, improved evacuation routes, fire crew costs and more. Another $482 million is proposed for the coming years. Experts largely agree that the prevention work is needed. But there’s disagreement over whether the funding should come from cap-and-trade revenues. The revenues “should be prioritized for emissions reductions that are direct and that are guaranteed, such as replacing an internal combustion engine with a zero-emissions vehicle,” Brandon Dawson, director at Sierra Club California. Putting the money toward fire prevention is less of a sure thing, as “it’s impossible to tell … where the next wildfire is going to occur,” he said.

Arizona’s early start to the wildfire season is just the latest example of suffering the consequences of the 20th century strategy that suppressed blazes and let forests grow abnormally dense. Add historic drought, extreme heat and the results are predictable.  Yet it’s not too late to make northern Arizona’s forests more resilient and resistant to fire. Doing so also brings the added benefit of increasing water supplies and battling climate change.  Efforts are under way. A public-private partnership launched the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, or 4FRI, with a goal of restoring 2.4 million acres of national forest land. The program, for a variety of reasons, has never come close to reaching its annual goals.   Work by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with industry and the U.S. Forest Service has identified a suite of business practices and innovative efficiencies that may allow the initiative to achieve its potential and make efficient use of new federal funding.

Ben Wudtke, Executive Director of Intermountain Forest Association knows a thing or two about how forest management affects fire. In the Black Hills National Forest, removal of trees has helped not only with parasites, but it has also made fires easier to control, he said. But now the U.S. Forest Service wants to reduce the number of trees that can be harvested, which Wudtke says puts the BHNF at risk of fires like the one in New Mexico and those that in California, Oregon, Idaho and other western states where logging is severely limited.  recent years. “There was a really concerted collaborative effort put forth to fight that war against the beetle. We didn’t win every battle but ultimately we won the war against the mountain pine beetle. That was all to target infestation. Ecologically, when you reduce insect infestation, typically, you reduce the risk of high severity of wildfire as well,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the parent agency of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), has reduced the number of trees that are available for sale to commercial operations from the Black Hills National Forest, leading to questions about the future of the area’s forest products industry.  “Basically, our commercial timber harvest program is really based on the need to really achieve the desired condition of the landscape,” said Scott Jacobson, public information officer with the Black Hills National Forest. …The USFS’s Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) released a report on the sustainability of timber harvesting in the Black Hills National Forest last year. One of the main findings was that previous harvest levels aren’t sustainable and should be reduced. It also states that historically, allowing for the forest to recover provides opportunities to adjust future harvest levels.

A group of activists known as Redwood Forest Defense has been occupying treetops in northern California as a form of non-violent protest to block the logging of redwood forests. Their struggle pits them against the Green Resource Diamond Company, which has been logging in the region since 2020. Portland-based filmmakers Lawrence Lerew and Derek Knowles directed the short film, “Sentinels,” which is now streaming on the L.A. Times website. They join us to talk about the making of their new film.