The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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Here’s the link to an Arizona Daily Sun story. On paper, they are all starting on the same page. Now comes the hard part: finding the money and implementing one of the most ambitious forest restoration plans in the country. More than 20 organizations — some of them past legal adversaries — signed a memorandum … Read more
There is much to talk about in the Wildfire Commission Report. Kelly Martin has offered to talk to us about it (she is a member of the Commission) via Zoom, so please let me know if you are interested. Today, though, I had heard that Commission members were making Hill visits to highlight … Read more
Note from Sharon.. Based on the earlier discussion Jon started here of DxP, I asked Eli Jensen of Ironwood Forestry to add his two cents and also talk about some of his cool technologies. I wanted the technologies highlighted, so am putting this up as a guest post. On DxP Great discussion so far. I … Read more
The title of this post is the title of an article by an Arizona public radio station, KNAU. The link to the bond is a “Sustainability-Linked Bond Framework” that details what the bond entails. I didn’t see information about what would happen if treatment targets are not met. The company tasked with thinning hundreds of … Read more
It’s interesting to see how workers and companies who provide forest products are considered to be bad in some places, but considered environmentally helpful where people are doing fuel treatments. Is it memory of the timber wars, or current practices, or ?? There’s also the local production/use angle, as I’ve written before.. if it’s good … Read more
I mentioned that I was working on a project to find areas of agreement between environmental groups of various kinds (ENGOs) and others on a variety of topics related to restoration, fuels management and wildfires. I looked at the Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry public comment letters that USDA requested earlier this year. Previously we’ve … Read more
Our discussion about the Bootleg Fire reminded me of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in the 80’s and the desire to use some of that material. The idea then was a waferboard plant in Chiloquin, Oregon. But the FS couldn’t guarantee supply and it was a large investment and no one stepped up. Forty years … Read more
We’ve been having an interesting discussion about a specific organization, PERC, with my contention being that one should examine ideas on their own merits regardless of source, and Anonymous arguing something different, as usual, quite articulately, in their own words (I don’t know how Anonymous identifies gender-wise) here . As usual, I thought that diving … Read more
This is probably obtuse and abstruse but here goes- I think it’s an interesting window into the minds of some people who have power in federal lands policy. Again, here are links to the summary and the bill itself. If you’ll remember, the Daines-Feinstein bill (and all others that tweak current NEPA procedures) tends to … Read more
More fuel for our continuing discussion of forest restoration (and active management in general), CO2, and wildfires. Mentions the USFS’s Four Foerst Restoration Initiative. Note that “simulations show that despite early decreases in the ecosystem’s stored carbon, a rapid restoration plan increases total carbon storage by 11-20%.” News Release 5-Aug-2019 Restoring forests means less fuel … Read more