Matthew Koehler

Here’s today’s press release from WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project and the Western Environmental Law Center.

MISSOULA, Mont. — Two conservation groups, WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s revised Forest Plan for Montana’s Flathead National Forest. The groups also put the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on notice of their intent to challenge the agency’s finding that the Flathead’s revised plan is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of grizzly bears, Canada lynx, and bull trout—all listed species under the Endangered Species Act—and adversely affect designated critical habitat of Canada lynx and bull trout.

“The Flathead is one of the last places in the Lower 48 where one can see grizzly bears, wolverines, lynx, and wolves intermingling on the same landscape,” said Kelly Nokes, wildlife attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, which is representing the two conservation groups in the lawsuit. “We must hold the Forest Service accountable to ensure that the increasingly rare habitat security afforded by the Flathead’s intact ecosystems is not swallowed whole by a management plan unwilling to truly conserve.”

The Flathead’s revised Forest Plan is woefully inadequate and will have lasting negative impacts on key wildlife—including, grizzly bears, gray wolves, Canada lynx, wolverine and bull trout—and the critical habitats upon which they depend. The Flathead National Forest, which borders Glacier National Park, contains some of the most intact wildlands and free flowing rivers on the entire continent, and is a refuge for a variety of imperiled species.

“The revised Forest Plan will guide all future forest activities—including logging, road building, and grazing—for at least the next 15 years and likely much longer. It is crucial the Forest Service gets this plan right,” said Marla Fox, Staff Attorney for WildEarth Guardians. “The best available science supports the notion that the Forest Service can do more to protect imperiled wildlife. The continued struggle of grizzly bear and bull trout to survive on the Flathead signal the agency should do more.”

“The Crown of the Continent is one of North America’s most valuable, intact ecosystems and is a centerpiece for grizzly bear conservation in the Northern Rockies,” said Josh Osher, Montana Director for Western Watersheds Project. “The Flathead National Forest is the western anchor of this ecosystem, and a key linkage for grizzly connectivity to other suitable habitats. But instead of prioritizing wildlife habitats, the Flathead Forest Plan prioritizes the activities that destroy and fragment habitats and disturb sensitive wildlife.”

Notably, the Flathead’s plan is one of the first Forest Plan revisions finalized under new forest planning rules issued in 2012 by the U.S. Forest Service. Thus, it will serve as a model for all future planning processes on other National Forests.

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Today’s opinion page of the New York Times includes this piece by Timothy Egan. Highlights from Egan’s column are printed below. Here’s some background on Egan, an award winning writer and author who has won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize:

Timothy Egan worked for 18 years as a writer for The New York Times, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, then as a national enterprise reporter.

In 2006, Mr. Egan won the National Book Award for his history of people who lived through the Dust Bowl, “The Worst Hard Time.” The book also became a New York Times best seller.

In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of reporters who wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America.” He has done special projects on the West and the decline of rural America, and he has followed the entire length of the Lewis and Clark Trail.

Mr. Egan is the author of five books, including “The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest,” and “Lasso the Wind, Away to the New West.” He lives in Seattle. Mr. Egan’s column appears every Friday.

Almost 25 percent of American earth-warming emissions originate from industrial action involving public land or offshore leases.

The United States is the biggest carbon polluter in history, and now ranks behind only China in greenhouse gas emissions. As well, we’re now the largest crude oil producer in the world. And we’ve become a leading exporter of that oil, just to show how bad of a global citizen we can be.

If you force the Trump administration to stop bingeing on public land, you can make an immediate impact on the amount of earth-warming carbon the United States spits into the atmosphere….

Another big step is to prevent David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist, from becoming interior secretary. A stooge for his former clients, this Trump nominee was the deputy secretary, while the top job was held by a strange man, Ryan Zinke, who paraded around on a horse named Tonto.

It was Bernhardt who tried to block release of a federal analysis showing that two widely used pesticides were so toxic that they ‘jeopardize the continued existence‘ of more than 1,200 species of birds, fish and other life-forms without lobbyists, as my colleague Eric Lipton reported this week.

You can see who Bernhardt is working for: It’s not all the living things under the domain of the emperor of the outdoors. Nor is he looking out for the interests of children, who will have to live with the consequences of action taken by adults in service to carbon pollution.

About those kids: Senator Mike Lee of Utah recently took to the floor of his chamber to say that the best response to the mounting chaos of epic floods, searing wildfires and other symptoms of a sick earth is to get married and have children.

What he didn’t say was that we hold our public land in trust for the Americans of tomorrow. The least we can do is stop using it to imperil their world.

Here’s the press release from the Southern Environmental Law Center. A copy of the study is available here.

ATLANTA – A study, conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, found strong support for the preservation and expansion of wilderness areas among public land visitors living within a half-day drive of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The new report reveals 89 percent of respondents across the Southeast support the preservation of wilderness areas and 88 percent of those who had visited a wilderness area thought more wildlands should be protected.

“It’s clear from these findings that there’s nothing more valuable in a crowded world than wild, untamed places,” said Sam Evans, Leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s National Forests and Parks Program. “While these places belong to all of us as Americans, when you’re in wilderness, the experience is yours alone.”

The Appalachians are an iconic American mountain range with more than half of the U.S. population living within an 8-hour drive of its southern region. The wildlands located here offer one of the East’s greatest opportunities for escape, exploration, adventure and have been instrumental in shaping the region’s rich history for centuries. Despite this, researchers studying human to outdoor interactions have known little about how Southerners perceive, use, or view these protected areas.

“This research was conducted as an effort to better understand the use and demand for Southern Appalachian wilderness,” said Kyle Woosnam, UGA Associate Professor of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management. “While wilderness areas are important for their ecological, social and economic contributions, little is known about how residents use and perceive these public lands. The intent of this study was to do just that.”

This Southern Appalachian region is also home to nearly 50 wilderness areas that span almost half a million acres, stretching from Alabama to Virginia. Researchers surveyed 1,250 residents in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee who had visited a protected natural area (ex: wilderness, state park, national scenic area, etc.) in the last five years, with questions focusing most closely on residents’ perceptions of and experiences in the Southern Appalachians. The research was funded by a grant from the Southern Environmental Law Center and The Wilderness Society.

Highlights from the study include:

• People most often visit wilderness areas for day hiking, photography, swimming and camping

• Positive perceptions of wilderness spanned across the political spectrum

• Word of mouth was the #1 way people found out about wilderness areas

• Participants expressed a high level of emotional attachment to wilderness areas visited

• The protection of water quality and wildlife habitat were the most important wilderness benefits identified

• The natural qualities of wilderness were considered the most valuable characteristics of these areas

The results of the study come just after Congress’s December 2018 approval of a wilderness designation for 20,000 acres of the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. That designation expanded the existing Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock, Big Frog, Little Frog Mountain, Big Laurel Branch and Sampson Mountain Wilderness areas and created the Upper Bald River Wilderness Area, a new 9,000-acre addition to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Unlike most federally managed forests, which allow for extractive uses like timber production or built facilities for human comfort and convenience, wilderness areas have only a single guiding purpose—to remain in a natural state. Under the Wilderness Act of 1964, areas that receive wilderness designation by Congress are forever protected as wild places, preserving these areas for future generations, protecting wildlife, rare species habitat, and water quality, acting as a buffer against the damaging effects of climate change, providing economic benefits to rural communities and unparalleled recreation opportunities for all that visit.

“These unique public lands allow us to experience and create memories in some of the country’s wildest places,” said Jill Gottesman, The Wilderness Society’s Southern Appalachian Conservation Specialist. “These areas are some of the most valuable, intact lands in the continental U.S. due to their connectivity, biodiversity and sheer remoteness. This study shows that Southerners are ready to work together to protect our Southern Appalachian wildlands for future generations.”

Pasted below is a press release from PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility). At this link to the release, you can find more detailed information. Since so much of the current discussion on this blog has focused on Wilderness, I should point out that approximately 10 million acres of Wilderness is open to private grazing by cows and sheep.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Cliven Bundy’s cows are STILL illegally grazing on federal public lands and Bundy STILL hasn’t paid his federal grazing fees, owing the American people over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. How in the world can he get away with this?

Bundy was also in the news yesterday, sort of, as news broke that a self-described White Nationalist (and would-be terrorist) named Christopher Paul Hasson was planning to kill (assassinate is really the correct term) a number of progressive political leaders and journalists.

According to the New York Times Christopher Paul Hasson, who was also a Coast Guard lieutenant, “mused about taking advantage of some already tense issue, like the standoff in Oregon in 2016 between [heavily armed Bundy Militia] protesters and the Bureau of Land Management.”

Washington―The U.S. Interior Department has reduced fees for grazing cattle and sheep on federal public lands to the minimum allowed under federal law, $1.35 an animal-month. Yesterday’s announcement applies to grazing in national forests and on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

The 41-year old formula has been a boon for livestock operators whose animals graze on federal public lands, but a large proportion of BLM grazing land fails to meet the BLM’s own rangeland health standards. The new $1.35 monthly fee, down from $1.41 a month, is for each cow with a calf, or five sheep or goats. A large proportion of BLM grazing allotments are failing to meet Rangeland Health standards.

“BLM’s own records reveal that much of the sagebrush West is in severely degraded condition due to excessive commercial livestock grazing,” said PEER’s Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade. “Lowering already ultra-low grazing fees only encourages more abuse of public rangelands.”

Costs to administer the grazing fee program exceed the money collected, resulting in taxpayer subsidies of about $100 million per year. Grazing fees were initially based on a “fair-market value” set at $1.23 per AUM in 1966. If the federal government adjusted the fee annually to keep pace with inflation, the current rate would be $9.47. In addition, cattle sizes have increased markedly over the years: In 1974 an Animal Unit Month provided forage for a cow weighing 1,000 pounds; today the average slaughterweight for an adult cow is 1,400 pounds. A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service shows the average monthly grazing fee for livestock leases on private lands in 16 western states was $22.60 per animal unit.

“These rock-bottom prices don’t even cover the cost of administering the permits, so the American taxpayers are footing the bill for a massive welfare program that degrades our public lands,” said Erik Molvar of Western Watersheds Project. “Even with the low fees, our western mountains and basins are typically so arid or fragile that federal land managers have to sacrifice the health of the land to authorize grazing levels that are profitable for commercial livestock operations.”

Half of the federal grazing fees pay for “range improvements” on public lands. These include fences, corrals and cattle troughs that benefit and subsidize livestock operations while causing further environmental degradation. Barbed-wire fences are a major cause of death for sage-grouse and scientists have termed the denuded areas around livestock troughs “piospheres,” which become hotspots for the spread of invasive weeds.

“Federal grazing policy caters to a tiny fraction of the livestock industry and the fees don’t begin to cover the costs,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Indirect costs include the killing of important native predators, such as wolves and bears, and trampled landscapes and rivers. It’s a bad deal for wildlife, public lands and American taxpayers. The federal grazing program is long overdue for an overhaul.”

The fee structure charged to livestock operators on America’s public lands has remained unchanged since Congress passed the 1978 Public Rangelands Improvement Act (PRIA). A three-tier formula dictates federal grazing fees based on market indicators but is not indexed to inflation. A 2015 study by the Center for Biological Diversity, Costs and Consequences, the Real Price of Livestock Grazing on America’s Public Lands, found that federal grazing fees were just 7 percent of what it would cost to graze livestock on similar state and private lands.

“Federal agencies should be charging fair-market value for commercial livestock grazing on western public lands, and only allowing livestock at levels and in places where major environmental impacts can be prevented,” said Chris Krupp of WildEarth Guardians. “With the fee formula set by statute, Congress must step in to reform public lands grazing. It must revise the PRIA’s fee formula as the first step in ending a subsidy that damages more public lands than any other federal program.”

The following piece, which ran today in the Montana Standard, seems like a timely post based on recent debates and discussions on this blog. The authors of the following piece are listed at the bottom. – mk

The Gallatin Forest Partnership represents a failure of its members to recognize the crucial importance of the Gallatin Range for the future of Montana’s precious wildlife populations, and a willingness to gamble away this resource by promoting development in prime wildlife habitat.

The starting point for any discussion of the Gallatin Range should be this: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is universally recognized as the best intact ecosystem in the lower 48, and is considered to be the best functioning temperate ecosystem in the world – with the full complement of wildlife that was here in pre-Columbian times. There is no other place in the lower 48 that has such an intact, wildlife-rich ecosystem, and we shouldn’t gamble with its future! Gallatin Forest Partnership is proposing mechanized recreation (mountain bikes, motorcycles, ATVs) in the best wildlife habitat in the lower 48!

The Gallatin Range provides a migration corridor that connects the abundant wildlife of Yellowstone National Park with the Bangtail/Bridger ranges, northward to the Big Belts, and finally to the wildlife-rich Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, allowing crucial genetic mixing among wildlife populations.

The gaping flaw in GFP’s proposal is its willingness to sacrifice the Porcupine/Buffalo Horn area, immediately north of the Yellowstone boundary. This is an area of low relief, low elevation wildlands that is the best wildlife habitat north of the park. It’s the go-to place for wildlife migrating out of northern Yellowstone during harsh winters. It is home to grizzlies, wolverines (only 300 remaining in the lower 48), and an elk-calving area in the spring. We advocate that Porcupine/Buffalo Horn be designated as Wilderness — the gold standard of protection — because of its importance to wildlife. Recognizing the its quality habitat, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks manages ten sections of land there, with strong habitat-protecting restrictions.

Six of the thirteen members of the GFP are mountain biking advocacy groups, but no wildlife advocacy groups were invited as participants. Many of us ride mountain bikes, but we don’t agree that the best wildlife habitat in the Gallatin Range should be promoted as a mountain biking playground at the expense of wildlife. Studies show that mountain bikes significantly disturb and stress wildlife, almost as much as motorized vehicles. It’s especially disturbing that The Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association, and Greater Yellowstone Coalition are throwing their full weight behind the GFP when we would expect these conservation groups to, first and foremost, protect wildlife habitat. With climate change and explosive growth, Montana’s wildlife will encounter challenges whose magnitude is difficult to anticipate, therefore – to ensure future security for wildlife- we must manage our remaining wild places prudently and conservatively, with permanent protection through Wilderness designation.

Included among the GFP’s mountain biking members are groups that are affiliated with the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), an industry-sponsored trade group whose funders profit from the sale of mountain bikes. Disturbingly, IMBA promotes redrawing wilderness boundaries to allow mountain biking, it opposes any new wilderness designation that disallows bikes, and it supports widespread use of electric-powered mountain bikes (e-bikes). The exploding popularity of e-bikes has the potential to massively disturb wildlife, resulting in more bikers, traveling at faster speeds, and penetrating deeper into remote wildlife habitats.

A perfect example of the shortcomings of the GFP plan can be found in the quality wildlife habitat of the northern Elkhorn Mountains, south of Helena. This area is a Forest Service designated Wildlife Management Area, identical to the designation that GFP proposes for the PBH. Over the last several years, rogue mountain bikers have created a vast network of unauthorized, illegal trails, in many cases using existing game trails, alarming local wildlife advocates and hunters who recognize that designation as a “wildlife management area” has proven ineffective for protecting wildlife. The Forest Service does not have a budget for enforcement. There is no basis for believing that management would be any better in the Gallatin National Forest, to the detriment of wildlife.

It’s increasingly clear that the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Montana Wilderness Association, and Wilderness Society are not making the decisions we would expect them to make to protect Montana’s treasured wildlife.

As the Forest Service releases its new Management Plan, we urge support for Alternative D, which provides maximum wilderness protection for 230,000 acres in our world-class wildlife habitat in the Gallatin Range.

Nancy Schultz and Joe Gutkoski are Gallatin Wildlife Association members. Glenn Monahan and George Wuerthner are Western Watersheds Project members. Nancy Ostlie is volunteer leader of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. Howie Wolkie and Phil Knight are with Montanans for Gallatin Wilderness.

The following press release is from Swan View Coalition, Friends of the Wild Swan and Earthjustice. A copy of the Notice of Intent is here. – mk

Conservationists Challenge Abandonment of Grizzly Bear and Bull Trout Protections In Flathead National Forest

New Plan for Flathead National Forest Could Fragment Wild Habitat for Grizzlies and Discards Longstanding Wildlife Habitat Standards

Kalispell, MT – Two Montana conservation groups have notified the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that a newly revised management plan violates the Endangered Species Act by abandoning longstanding protections for key grizzly bear and bull trout habitat in the Flathead National Forest.

The 2018 Flathead Forest Plan purports to maintain habitat conditions that existed in 2011. However, the plan actually abandons key measures that have protected grizzly bear and bull trout habitat on the Forest for more than two decades, allowing new roadbuilding and wildlife disturbances in formerly secure habitat. Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan have notified both agencies that they will file a lawsuit challenging the 2018 Plan’s abandonment of wildlife protections if the agencies do not correct their legal violations within 60 days.

“By abandoning the cap on new roads and eliminating the provisions to remove roads, this new plan harms bull trout and native aquatic life,” said Arlene Montgomery of Friends of the Wild Swan. “When road culverts inevitably fail they dump sediment into streams that will clog spawning beds. The Flathead doesn’t have the budget to maintain its existing road system, so they should be reducing the miles of road on the Forest instead of degrading habitat for wildlife and fish.”

“The Flathead is abandoning road removal, the true habitat restoration it says is helping recover grizzly bears and bull trout,” said Swan View Coalition Chair Keith Hammer. “It is replacing that with road building and logging and trying to call that restoration. We don’t buy it and the science doesn’t support it.”

NEW ROADBUILDING THREATENS HARM TO GRIZZLY BEARS AND BULL TROUT

The Flathead National Forest encompasses 2.4 million acres of public land in northwest Montana, including large areas of public land adjacent to Glacier National Park. The Flathead therefore provides key habitat for the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem population of grizzly bears, whose range extends from the Park southward down the spine of the Northern Rockies, as well as a significant stronghold for the region’s threatened bull trout.

Seminal grizzly bear research in the 1990s demonstrated that the presence of roads in grizzly bear habitat, and the motorized and non-motorized intrusion those roads allow, harm bears’ survival. Researchers found that even roads closed to the public can displace bears from otherwise secure habitat because bears learn to avoid such roads and the roads also facilitate motorized trespass and other human access. Roads also threaten harm to bull trout, because roads and the culverts that come with them can send sediment into the streams where bull trout live.

Recognizing these threats, the Flathead National Forest in 1995 adopted a Forest Plan provision called Amendment 19, which limited the number of roads the Forest Service could maintain in the Flathead. To meet this standard, the Forest Service was required to decommission some existing roads, as well as any new roads it built, through revegetation, culvert removal, and other measures intended to ensure the roads no longer function as either a road or a trail.

NEW PLAN PAVES THE WAY FOR MORE ROAD CONSTRUCTION IN THE BACKCOUNTRY

The new 2018 Forest Plan abandons this approach in favor of a requirement that the Forest Service claims will maintain the habitat security that existed in 2011. This new management direction is less protective of grizzly bears and trout, because in many parts of the Flathead, the Forest Service never achieved the standards and goals set by the 1995 plan and the new plan excuses that failure. The change further ignores broad public support for Amendment 19: fully 98% of public comments the Forest Service received during its planning effort supported retaining Amendment 19’s road decommissioning program.

Also, the new plan does not actually commit to maintaining 2011 conditions. That is because it allows new road construction beyond 2011 levels so long as the Forest Service administratively closes the new roads by placing an inadequate barrier—even just a fallen tree—across the entrance. Such new roads would not be counted against total road limits in the Forest, even though such minimal barriers enable continued ATV and dirt bike use in grizzly habitat.

“This new plan is a stealth attempt to allow harmful new roads in key grizzly bear habitat, just as the Fish and Wildlife Service is talking about removing the Northern Continental Divide’s grizzly bears from the endangered species list,” said Josh Purtle, an attorney in Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies office.
Under the lax new plan, the Forest Service has already planned extensive new roadbuilding in the Flathead Forest. A new project proposed in the Swan Valley would build 60 miles of new roads and retain them on the road system indefinitely. By contrast, the Forest Service built only 3.2 miles of new roads in grizzly bear habitat over 14 years under the former, stronger plan.

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The photo above was taken by a volunteer for the volunteer-run Friends of the Bitterroot, a grassroots organization based in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana with a mission “to preserve the wildlands and wildlife and to protect the forests and watersheds of our region as we work for a sustainable relationship with the environment.”

According to FOB, the photo was taken within the Three Saddle Vegetation Management project on the Bitterroot National Forest.

Back in 2013, the Bitterroot National Forest’s planning staff officer, Jerry Krueger, described the project as “It’s sort of a soup to nuts sort of project.”

Well, “nuts” is right.

According to FOB, as part of the timber sale, first this area logged.

Then strong winds blew down many of the remaining trees.

Then the area was salvage logged.

Then the area was burned.

Then herbicides were sprayed on the area.

Presto! The U.S. Forest Service created a “Healthy Forest!”

In my opinion, this is some really intelligent media coverage on the topic of wildfires, climate change and climate and fire adaptation.

Listen here as Eric Whitney, news director of Montana Public Radio, interviews journalist Andrew Revkin. Below is the teaser from Montana Public Radio’s website.

There’s been a change in the response to global climate change. Journalist Andrew Revkin, who’s been writing about the issue since the 1980s for outlets including the New York Times highlights the new response in a recent story for National Geographic.

I had a chance to talk with him about his story, in which he mentions a program supported by Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics, in partnership with the US Forest Service. It’s called “Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire.”

Andrew Revkin is the Strategic Adviser for Environmental and Science Journalism at the National Geographic Society and has written on global warming for 30 years. He is the author of three books about climate, most recently Weather: An Illustrated History, from Cloud Atlases to Climate Change. He covered the environment for years at the New York Times.

Last week on this blog, a post focused on comments members of the public left on the Sierra Club’s Facebook page regarding the issue of logging and management of the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The basic ‘gist’ of the post was that the Sierra Club wasn’t being truthful in their advertising. If you look at the comments to the post (which listed 30+ comments that were on the Sierra Club’s FB page) from Jon Haber, I do believe that Jon provided some pretty good evidence and legal history documenting past threats and also explaining how future threats are certainly not out of the question.

So, let’s take a look at the official Twitter account of the U.S. Forest Service. Today, they posted this collage of photos above with the text “Active management is key to helping reduce wildfire severity and forest resilience. In 2018, the USDA Forest Service improved conditions on 3.5 million acres of forestland.”

Does anyone spot any evidence what-so-ever in any of the four photos of anything that comes even remotely close to indicating that any of these areas saw any “active management” in 2018, or even within the past decade?

When I look at the four photos, what I see are some fairly pristine areas, which appear to look much more like a Wilderness area, or a roadless area, or an unlogged native forest than anything that comes close to resembling “active management” to “reduce wildfire severity.”

In fact, the forest-type presented in each of the four photographs all appear to be more like a mid- to upper-elevation mixed conifer or spruce-fir forest type. Ironically, if a wildfire would start burning in the forest-types and ecosystems presented in each of these four photos, the wildfire would naturally and normally very likely burn at mid- to high-severity – the very type of fire that some politicians catastrophic.

It goes without saying that I think it’s pretty darn dishonest for the U.S. Forest Service to be officially using these four photos to promote “active management” (which often times means logging and “thinning”). The other thing I found sort of interesting is the claim that in just 2018 the U.S. Forest Service accomplished 3.5 million acres of some type activity that supposedly will “reduce fire severity and increase resilience.” That accomplishment in just one year on nearly 5,500 square miles of U.S. Forest Service land is a far-cry from the rhetoric we hear from many right-leaning politicians, who claim the USFS can’t do anything because of “environmental terrorist groups” and “environmental extremists.”

P.S. Here are a couple of photographs showing actually U.S. Forest Service projects, which had a stated goal of reducing fire severity and increasing resilience. Guess these photos just would not have been as pretty to use in the Forest Service’s PR efforts.

According to this piece by Billings, Montana-based Associated Press writer Matthew Brown:

As the Trump administration rolls back environmental and safety rules for the energy sector, government projections show billions of dollars in savings reaped by companies will come at a steep cost: more premature deaths and illnesses from air pollution, a jump in climate-warming emissions and more severe derailments of trains carrying explosive fuels.

The Associated Press analyzed 11 major rules targeted for repeal or relaxation under Trump, using the administration’s own estimates to tally how its actions would boost businesses and harm society.

Just check out this list of regulation for the oil, gas and coal industry. Many of these regulations impact resource extraction on America’s federal public lands, one way or another.

According to the Associated Press: Under President Donald Trump, federal agencies have moved to roll back regulations for companies that extract, transport and burn oil, gas and coal. Government analyses show companies will save billions of dollars in compliance costs, but the trade-off often will be adverse impacts to public health and the environment.

See the full list here.

The AP identified up to $11.6 billion in potential future savings for companies that extract, burn and transport fossil fuels. Industry windfalls of billions of dollars more could come from a freeze in vehicle efficiency standards that will yield an estimated 79 billion-gallon (300 million-liter) increase in fuel consumption.

On the opposite side of the government’s ledger, buried in thousands of pages of analyses, are the “social costs” of rolling back the regulations. Among them:

— Up to 1,400 additional premature deaths annually due to the pending repeal of a rule to cut coal plant pollution.

— An increase in greenhouse gas emissions by about 1 billion tons (907 million metric tons) from vehicles produced over the next decade — a figure equivalent to annual emissions of almost 200 million vehicles.

— Increased risk of water contamination from a drilling technique known as “fracking.”

— Fewer safety checks to prevent offshore oil spills.

But, hey, “Make America Great Again,” right?