Last month Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild launched well-publicized attacks against the Bureau of Land Management’s “Pedal Power” timber sale, near Springfield and Willamalane Park and Recreation District’s Thurston Hills Natural Area. You may be curious about what this manufactured controversy is all about. Here are three things you should know: Pedal Power was carefully…
Steve Kariainen is Great Lakes Director for Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities Change is nothing new to the forests of the Great Lakes region of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The forests are relatively young, having developed in the wake of the most recent glacial period that ended around 10,000 years ago. A host of ongoing changes…
Forest roads on National Forest System (NFS) lands are an essential part of America’s infrastructure, providing forest products, open space, wildlife habitat, clean water and air, and more. They provide motorized access into our federally-owned forests, enabling millions of Americans to enjoy our public lands. Forest roads facilitate search and rescue operations, and enable firefighters…
by Molly Pitts, HFHC Rocky Mountains Director As a Colorado resident, I truly enjoy a wide variety of activities on all types of lands including secluded, designated wilderness areas. As a forester, I am deeply concerned with the idea of designating more land as wilderness under the guise of “protecting” or “conserving” it. Take for…
By Tom Morton, Choose Outdoors Chairman of the Board and Bruce Ward, Choose Outdoors President The recent announcement of the “Platte Fifteen” Cross Laminated Timber building in Denver is great news, for many reasons. Platte and 15th Streets, formerly the home of Natural Grocers and Confluence Kayaks, will soon become the site for Platte Fifteen…
Rachel Lee Hall contributed the following to Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities. Check out her Forests Under Stress web site here. Forest Under Stress (FUS) contains research and observation gathered over forty years while living in Southern Oregon. All photos were taken in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest between 2017 and 2018. Why, each year, are…
Darr Moon contributed the following column to Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities. My uncle was an engineer for the Forest Service, he helped design and build the Yankee Fork road we used to access our summer gold camp. He was a proud employee of an organization that was regaled as America’s keeper of the Forests. Throughout…
By Nick Smith The following column originally appeared in the Medford Mail Tribune Everyone has an opinion on how best to respond to the trend of catastrophic wildfires and smoke. In his Mail Tribune guest column, Derek Volkart floats the unusual idea of having American taxpayers purchase local private timberlands so federal agencies can manage…
The devastation from last year’s wildfires is still unfolding at a scale that has not even begun to be understood. The socioeconomic impacts (loss of life, property, natural resources, massive impact on health and healthcare, economic impacts on business and real property, etc.) from last year’s wildfires are continuing to mount as other new impacts…
Professional Forester Paul Kangas offers the following to encourage dialog on our crisis of wildfire and smoke. SUMMARY OF REPORT It’s not “business as usual” in managing forests, wildlands and wildfires after two years of being surrounded by wildfires and choked by smoke. The public, businesses and our life demands unprecedented changes that match the…