In our latest video we highlight a forest project that’s reducing the risk of wildfire and enhancing recreational opportunities, while delivering wood to a local mill to support rural jobs. The revenue generated from the logging goes back into the forest to keep it healthy and accessible.
Here are some photos from a recent forest tour hosted by Miller Timber Services and Starker Forests demonstrating cut-to-length logging using high-tech equipment from the Finnish company Ponsse. Cut-to-length logging is a process where the harvested trees are cut to specific lengths in the forest before being transported to the mill. Mechanized harvesting with cut-to-length…
The U.S. Forest Service often blames the lack of employees and money for its inability to implement more (and larger) forest projects that mitigate catastrophic wildfire, insect infestations and disease. Much of this is due to the growing, unsustainable costs of fighting today’s mega-fires. Yet it’s also estimated personnel spend more than 40 percent of their…
On June 8 the Subcommittee on Federal Lands held a hearing to examine how litigation and increasingly excessive environmental analysis facing the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has exacerbated the ongoing forest health crisis. Fifty-eight million acres of national forests are at high or very high risk of severe wildfire. Despite deteriorating forest health and the…
The federal Secure Rural Schools and Self-Determination program has expired after years of declining and uncertain payments to counties and schools. A bipartisan group of senators is seeking to reauthorize the program that is intended to compensate rural counties for lost revenues from the decline in timber harvests on federal land. To be sure, the…
CBS Television’s 60 Minutes recently aired an important report on catastrophic wildfire and what can be done by homeowners in the Wildland Urban Interface to save lives and properties. 60 Minutes’ Steve Inskeep interviewed Robert Bonnie, a key Obama Administration official who oversaw the U.S. Forest Service. Bonnie emphasized the need to invest in…
The 2016 Pioneer Fire was a devastating event for the Boise National Forest. The fire burned nearly 190,000 acres in three directions from its start southwest of Idaho City. It was the largest wildfire on national forest land last year, and the ninth most expensive wildfire in the history of the western United States. Even…
In April President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review the designation of millions of acres of federal land as national monuments under the Antiquities Act. Beginning May 12, the Interior Dept. initiated a “first-ever” public comment period for the two dozen monuments that have been selected for the…
A study led by ecologists at UC Berkeley has found significant flaws in the research used to challenge the U.S. Forest Service plan to restore Sierra Nevada forests to less dense, and less fire-prone, environments. Until recently, the consensus among forest ecologists was that before European settlers arrived in the Sierra, the forests were mostly…
This graph, using data from the U.S. Forest Service, shows timber harvests on national forests never exceeded net growth, even during the “peak’ harvesting years of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet it’s the latter years that tell an alarming story. Forest mortality levels now far exceed removals, and is getting closer to net forest growth.