After working for the Forest Service for 30 years, I finally had to write a book about it — especially about some of the painful lessons I learned. Here are just a few of them. It will come as no surprise that it wasn’t easy being a woman in what was, and remains, a man’s […]
U.S. Forest Service
Posted inArticles
Landscape-scale conservation gains ground
The Nature Conservancy just announced its largest Washington land purchase to date.
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 inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
A young mule stringer helps keep a dying profession alive
Mules are still needed to carry supplies in wild, roadless mountains.
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 inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Mapping threats on public land
Intimidation of federal officials is widespread across the West.
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Defuse the West
Public-land employees are easy targets for a violent, government-hating fringe.
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Roots of rebellion: A forum
Four experts discuss threats to federal public-lands employees and where we go from here.
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Related High Country News coverage
Nevada’s ugly tug-of-war (1995) County commissioner courts bloodshed (1995) Utah counties bulldoze the BLM, Park Service (1996) Nevadans drive out forest supervisor (1999) Shoveling vs. sniveling (2000) Showdown on the Nevada range (2001) Change comes slowly to Escalante country (2003) Road warriors back on the offensive (2003) Rebels with a lost cause (2007 Sagebrush Rebel […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Reports from the front lines
Excerpts from official accounts of threats against U.S. Forest Service and BLM employees.
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Western states eye federal lands—again
The ultra-right ‘remedy’ for public lands.
Posted inArticles
Female firefighters threaten to sue the Forest Service — again
Four decades after the first allegations of discrimination, some say little has changed.
Posted inArticles
KDNK speaks with HCN reporter Claudine LoMonaco
On troubling corporate and Forest Service conduct in Arizona.
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 inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Smoke and mirrors
Congress can’t seem to solve a big problem: how to pay for battling wildfires.
Posted inArticles
Forest Service’s mission goes up in flames
New report shows long-term firefighting costs eroding most other work.
Posted inGoat
Closure of federal sheep facility would be a victory for grizzlies
On the last day of August, 2012, a collared grizzly bear dubbed 726 by federal wildlife biologists vanished into the rugged Centennial Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border. A few weeks later, they recovered his collar near an established campsite. It appeared to have been cut, stoking suspicions that hunters may have shot the bear, a […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Climate canary
Greenhouse gases are changing the way we talk about coal.