What happens to local budgets when Congress stops these federal payments.
Forests
Posted inArticles
Forest Service sticks up for coal mining on roadless lands
The agency will calculate climate impacts of mine expansions in western Colorado.
Posted inArticles
Will the Northwest Forest Plan come undone?
The Forest Service and BLM embark on revising the iconic plan and may allow more logging.
Posted inArticles
Don’t blame bark beetles for fire risk
A new study suggests hot dry weather, not beetles, make forests go up in smoke.
Posted inMarch 2, 2015: Unite and Conquer
Latest: New pesticide regulations for Oregon timber companies
Companies must now give officials at least a week’s notice before spraying.
Posted inArticles
New hope for beetle-killed landscapes
Can native forest fungi combat the West’s bark beetle epidemic?
Posted inArticles
Rural counties dealing with loss of fed dollars
Faced with federal subsidy cuts, counties are chopping services and clamoring for logging money
Posted inArticles
The Forest Service bets on second-growth logging in Alaska
But can timber still keep island communities in the Tongass afloat?
Posted inArticles
Montana mycologist fights fungus with fungus
To save whitebark pines, apply slippery jack.
Posted inArticles
Landscape-scale conservation gains ground
The Nature Conservancy just announced its largest Washington land purchase to date.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Dear Forest Service: Today’s John Muir shoots video
Let people take all the images they want in wilderness areas.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Rocky Mountain sawmills rebound
But the industry says it needs more timber.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Timberland herbicide spraying sickens a community
Companies deposit thousands of pounds of herbicides each year on Oregon forests.
Posted inArticles
How the hot and dry West is killing Rocky Mountain forests
A new report summarizes how climate change is accelerating tree death from fires, bark beetles and drought
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Lost in the woods
How the Forest Service is botching its biggest restoration project.
Posted inGoat
Joshua trees may be migrating north in response to climate change
Last spring, Joshua trees put on a magnificent show in the Mojave Desert. Nearly all at once nearly all of them bloomed, sprouting dense bouquets of waxy, creamy-green flowers from their Seussian tufts of spiky leaves. The bloom was so sweeping and abundant — and such a contrast to the typical pattern, where only a […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
The Tree Coroners
To save the West’s forests, scientists must first learn how trees die.
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Lawmakers scramble to fix the funding problem in Oregon’s timber counties
State and federal lawmakers are scrambling for solutions to the funding crisis in the southwest Oregon timber counties that have been hard hit by cuts in federal aid. A few of the proposals: The O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs ActThis controversial proposal would move 1.5 million acres of federal forestland into a timber trust to […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like
Mark Williams and Bill Baker stand amid ponderosa pines in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colo., holding a copy of a 19th century land survey. They’re looking for a small pile of rocks with three notches on the east side, indicating that a General Land Office surveyor stopped here to describe the forest. Surveyors […]