The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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Once again, I’m grateful for reporting by Sammy Roth of the LA Times. Interesting that for this particular piece, he’s a columnist not a reporter. I hope you can read the whole thing. It’s interesting that Sammy says “the western solar plan sounds scary. But it’s better than climate change.” In my view, there are … Read more
A while back, many of us participated in the Climate Smart Ag and Forestry comment period. Based on the responses, the USDA is funding some pilot programs. I started with the western forest ones then moved to eastern, there might also be a western ranching one in there. Here’s the link if you want to … Read more
There’s a recent story in E&E news about MOG (Mature and Old Growth), that was framed as being about timber interests versus environmentalists (no one here will be surprised by the mention of Dominick Della Salla and the John Muir Project.. on the other side, we have…”timber interests”, as in Bill Imbergamo with the … Read more
It’s summertime.. Time to watch out for rattlesnakes in reservoirs! Thanks to the Cowboy State Daily. (I forgot to put the link previously so here it is.) “They actually cross Boysen all the time. I’ve seen it probably 20 times at least on Boysen, I’ve seen it on the Seminoe Reservoir down by Sinclair, the … Read more
It’s always interesting to think about how much the Forest Service and nearby communities have changed in the last 50 years. Here’s a story from the Colorado Sun by Jason Blevins on the Rainbow Family Gathering, how it’s managed, and what people think about it. The Rainbow Gathering has not said where in Colorado they … Read more
As September comes to a close, and in the absence of Forest Service “weekly” litigation summaries since September 3 (with the most recent entry being August 7), here’s some other things that happened in court related to public land management during the month of August. FOREST SERVICE Private land access (Court decision in Grill v. … Read more
THE FOUR DAMS THAT COULD BE REMOVED These four dams on the Lower Snake River could be removed under a proposal being championed by U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho. Click or touch the icons to see more info on each dam and t. Map: NATHANIEL LEVINE | Sources: U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, U.S. Army Corps of … Read more
Ten years or more ago, when I was Planning Director, our Regional Forester decided to have a meeting with some professors/scientists from CU Boulder. One of the professors at the meeting said “doing fuel treatments in the backcountry doesn’t work to protect communities”. I tried to ask the question “what specific projects are you talking … Read more
We’ve talked before about the history of the Roadless Rule in Alaska (should the Tongass have been included in the first place, litigation and so on). In my view (as a card-carrying State Roadless Rule veteran), the purpose of a State Rule is to take the nationwide 2001 Rule, which was a mark on a … Read more
You’ve gotta love this business. In 1980 at the Fifth North American Forest Biology Workshop, I remember a fellow geneticist talking about how climate change was going to cause trees to die out because they couldn’t move north due to uninhabitable spaces for them compared to post-glaciation (say fields instead of forests in the Midwest). … Read more