Bush administration proposes sweeping cuts to community fire programs
Wildlife
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Pure bison make a comeback
Prairie conservationists build a herd free of cattle genes
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Mass wolf kill rests on shaky science
Idaho’s Fish and Game Department wants to boost the Lolo management zone’s dwindling elk herd by killing up to three-quarters of the area’s estimated 58 wolves and maintaining low wolf numbers for the next five years. But some biologists and conservation groups question the science behind the plan — the department’s first attempt to manage […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
A law born from the ashes
California’s devastating fires of 2003 gave rise to the Healthy Forests Restoration Act — the business end of the Bush administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative, itself introduced in Oregon after the 2002 fire season. George W. Bush’s Healthy Forests, by Jacqueline Vaughn and Hanna J. Cortner, is the story of a legislative moment in time — […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
On the wing again
As California condors disappeared, a new world emerged. From observation posts in Southern California’s Transverse Ranges in the 1960s, hazy vistas of L.A. subdivisions, office buildings and jet airplanes gradually replaced sightings of the largest bird in North America. “This is not a species that’s grown old and feeble,” NPR science reporter John Nielsen writes […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet theLand
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet the Land ed. Robert G. Lee and Donald R. Field 320 pages, softcover: $29.95. Oregon State University Press, 2005. This collection of essays suggests that traditional forest management is shifting, from being solely science-based to accounting for societal and cultural values. Lee and Field present four major types of […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
The War on Wildfire
To wage war on wildfire, President Bush convinced Congress to help him change the rules of forest management. Are we better off now?
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Dam removal considered for Klamath
As salmon suffer, truce settles on river
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Slim margins
Loggers say forest restoration work doesn’t put much food on the table
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
National Fire Plan vs. the Healthy Forests rule changes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The War on Wildfire.” THE NATIONAL FIRE PLAN What is it? A 10-year strategy, launched in 2000 by Western governors, to attack overgrown forests and to increase fire protection for communities Key players Former Govs. John Kitzhaber, D-Ore., and Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho Rule changes […]
Posted inWotr
Ocean fishing ban will be a drastic step
Sometime during the first week of April, regulators will decide whether to close a 700-mile stretch of the California and Oregon coasts to commercial salmon fishing, and much of the West Coast will learn whether locally caught king salmon will show up at fish markets this summer. At first blush, it seems like a case […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
ESA talks end in stalemate
While major disagreements remain, Pombo claims consensus
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Reality Check
Misinformation, spin abound in endangered species debate
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Spotted owl or red herring?
Pretty much everyone agrees that logging on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has declined by 80 percent since its heyday in the mid-1980s. Job losses in the region’s timber sector over the past two decades number in the tens of thousands. But don’t blame the critical habitat rule, or even the Endangered Species Act. […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
The trouble with the Endangered Species Act is us
With House approval of his “Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act” last September, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., got a step closer to his career goal of eradicating the Endangered Species Act. Pombo, a developer posing as a rancher posing as an advocate of the public good, proclaims that the 32-year-old law is “broken” and a […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles
Salvation for the Northwest’s endangered salmon will come through further cuts in fishing, according to a senior White House official. James Connaughton, head of the Council on Environmental Quality, announced at Portland’s Salmon 2100 conference in January that salmon recovery will have to come through curbing fishing, along with upgrades to outdated hatcheries, which may […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Energy company stakes out wildlife refuge
Iridescent dragonflies, shimmering wetlands, and the many imperiled species that call a southeastern New Mexico wildlife refuge home may soon have a new neighbor: gas wells. Yates Petroleum Co., based in Artesia, N.M., told U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials last month it plans to drill two wells in Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge — […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Wilderness: The new anti-nuclear weapon
On Jan. 6, President Bush signed into law the first new Utah wilderness area since 1984 — and made it a little harder for nuclear power plant operators to ship radioactive waste to a nearby Indian reservation. The new Cedar Mountain Wilderness protects some 100,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land about 45 miles […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Public acres for sale
President Bush revives proposal to sell desert and forest land
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Snowy middle ground
Wilderness advocates and snowmobilers come to terms in Montana