CLIMATE CHANGE

This is an article that Jim Petersen recently wrote for RANGE Magazine

There is nothing new, normal, natural, or inevitable about what we are witnessing... What we are witnessing is not “the new normal.” Nor is it a direct result of “climate change.” It is the downstream result of congressional/federal failure to control three decades of uninterrupted tree growth in national forests that hold too many trees for the natural carrying capacity of the land.

The western United States is on the leading edge of the worst wildfire season in a century. By any measure, a pandemic.

Vicki Christiansen’s decision to retire has me thinking about the qualities the Biden Administration should look for in a new Chief of the Forest Service.

The Agriculture Secretary oversees a $146 billion annual budget. Most of it – 65 percent - is allocated to food and nutrition programs that target the needy. Five percent goes to “forestry,” mainly the U.S. Forest Service and mostly – about 55 percent – to battle forest fires.

Global warming is real and urgent, and is primarily caused by the burning of carbon-based fuels

Now that Tom Vilsack is back in the driver's seat at the Department of Agriculture, it’s time for him to stroll over to the White House and have a heart-to-heart chat with President Biden about the West’s wildfire pandemic. Here’s how it might go:

The second half

We bring you this letter by rancher Dave Daley that tells of his harrowing experience last summer when the Bear Fire struck his property and destroyed his land and cattle. We ask you read this and remember just what is at stake each day our forests go unmanaged. This letter has been split into two parts

The Biden Administration lost no time implementing the big pieces of its promised climate change initiative. It's much too early to know what impact these policies will have on the West’s wildfire pandemic but the early news suggests that the anti-forestry crowd has the ear of policy makers who believe that logging is to blame for our pandemic.

More than half the nation's federal forest estate – some 100 million acres – is either dying, dead or has already burned. About 73 million acres have burned over the last 10 years – most of it in western national forests. 9.6 million acres this year.

This is Part 2 of our series "It's Time to Declare War on Wildfire." This section begins with Rob Freres describing the impacts of wildfire on private lands due to the incompetence of the Forest Service managing public lands.

The 2020 wildfire season was the worst since 1910. How much more can we tolerate? Its time to declare war on wildfire.

The immediate need is to rebuild the forestry side of the Forest Service. This means that Republicans and Democrats in the next Congress need to find an extra $5 billion in Fiscal 2021. Funds must be specifically allocated for forestry staffing and forest management – not wildfire.

Part 11 of this series is a lecture that Evergreen Founder James D. Petersen presented to a graduate-level forestry class at the University of Idaho in January 2020.

Mr. Rains wrote the President a five-page letter on June 19. We posted it on our site then and it can be read again here. After President Trump's Latest visit to the site of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, Mr. Rains writes to the President once more

Some fire ecologists tell us what we are experiencing is “the new normal.” Bullshit. There's nothing normal about our western wildfire nightmare.

RAINS: “...It is an honor to work for the Department of Agriculture and I work for the greatest organization in the world.” So, I am in no way being critical of the fire responders; never.

Most all of us have rolled the dice in Monopoly a time or two. Buying up properties on the Boardwalk can be tons of fun until you land in Jail. That's when its lovely to have a “Get-out-of-jail-free” card in your hand. It sure beats having to sell properties to bail yourself out of the clink.

The 2018 western wildfire season is already underway, and the news is not good in the Southwest or Utah. Dire predictions have also been issued for Colorado, where mortality in National Forests exceeds annual growth by a wide margin.

In our interview Christiansen addresses some tough questions on harassment, fire borrowing, staffing, fire management, wildfire and safety, forest management, collaboration, the budget, sawmill infrastructure, pace and scale, performance standards and reviews, and more

Dennis Becker is the Director of the Policy Analysis Group [PAG} within the College of Natural Resources [CNR] at the University of Idaho.

Ms. Christiansen, who was appointed March 9, following the March 7 resignation of Tony Tooke, said all the things you would expect an incoming Chief to say in her first public outing, but she made no mention of the sexual misconduct difficulties that led to Mr. Tooke's resignation.

The U.S. House of Representatives has belatedly fixed the fire borrowing mess that has for several years forced the Forest Service to borrow taxpayer money from its forest restoration budgets to pay its ever- increasing fire-fighting bills.

“We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth, our hearts were touched with fire.”

Federal Court has ordered the United States Congress, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fishers Service to make this statement about the health effects of secondhand wildfire smoke...

Although it will seem counter-intuitive, our advocacy for science-based forestry has led us to the conclusion that a publicly-granted license to practice forestry is the best defense against criticism that a forest landowner – public or private – can ever hope to attain...

The salvage operation was not without controversy. The smoke had not yet cleared when environmentalists announced that “not one black stick would be harvested because salvaging burnt timber was like mugging a burn victim.”

Does anyone know how many outdoor tourism activities were cancelled in August and September in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana? I don't, but it surely runs into the hundreds. This year will be worse.

Rodney Smoldon is the Forest Supervisor on the 1.1 million-acre Colville National Forest in northeast Washington. From his office in Colville, he commands a staff of approximately 135 permanent employees and an additional 100 summer employees. His annual budget is about $12 million.

The Forest Service's abysmal won-loss record at Silver, Biscuit and now Chetco Bar [0-3] is a detriment to every living creature struggling to right itself within our fire-scarred landscape. Is this the best you can do?

The bottom line here is that the War on the West will continue in the halls of Congress for as long as we allow it - and for as long as we allow it to fester, the West's publicly treasured National Forests will continue to die and burn to the ground.

Kurt Pregitzer is an affable and unpretentious man, not what you'd expect from a PhD forest ecologist who ranks in the top one-half of one percent of the world’s most frequently cited authors.

Horrible air quality, deadly health risks, cancelled cultural and sporting events, highway blockades, and millions of dollars lost in every industry. What else can we afford to lose from wildfire?

Evergreen Magazine's Editor-in-Chief shares his thoughts on the work Tony Tooke has ahead of him this coming year repairing the fire ravaged western states.

We are the stewards of our public lands and we have a responsibility to look at the entire picture; the science. It is time for proactive stewardship.

Editor Jim Petersen discusses the Idaho court's decision to allow the responsibility of teaching climate change to fall back to the state's teachers.

A report on the current state of our forests in Idaho.

A report on the current state of our forests in Montana.

If we choose wisely, relying on the mechanical thinning, prescribed fire and managed fire, we can still protect most of our remaining forest assets, including the soil and water. But over much of the Intermountain West, the forests in our future are not going to look much like the forests we've been enjoying for the last 60 or 70 years.

Change. In this exclusive and quite timely Evergreen interview, Governor Otter offers his thoughts on the significance of President-elect Trump's improbable victory and the millions of acres of federal forest and rangeland that is in environmental crisis. Somewhere between 80 and 90 million acres of federal forest land in the West are on the brink of ecological collapse. These lands are vital to our entire nation’s social, economic and environmental health. We have a lot of work to do and not much time left in which to get it done.

CLT is an engineered wood product. By that, I mean that it is a product assembled from pieces of lumber, usually two-by-sixes, eight feet wide, 40' feet long, layered at right angles to one another, like the layering of thinly sliced veneer used to make sheets of plywood. Picture a laminated wood beam, with the layers all running one direction. Now remind yourself that, in CLT, the layers run at right angles to one another, like plywood. The product is incredibly strong for its weight, which is about one-third that of steel. Some refer to CLT “plywood on steroids.” It’s a very apt description.

It is a myth to say Categorical Exclusions will over-ride federal environmental laws and exempt logging from any analysis or disclosure of adverse environmental impacts and eliminate public involvement

Commissioner Goldmark discusses his growing concerns for the rapidly deteriorating condition of national forests east of the Cascades, related economic and environmental impacts, and what might be done to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in Washington's forests.

The world's consumers aren’t using less wood, nor should they. Wood is the most environmentally friendly structural building material on earth, and good forestry is key to reducing civilization’s carbon foot print. That’s my story and I intend to keep telling it. Erin Bradetich

We are at a crossroads with forest health, our mills and the future condition of our forests. The aftermath of a years-long mountain pine beetle epidemic, stalled projects on thousands of acres of national forests, and continued threats from wildfires provide a strong basis for increased focus on how we manage forests and how we ensure we have a vibrant wood products industry providing good-paying jobs for Montanans.

f we use insect and disease attacks as indicators of genetic simplicity, and resilience to these pests as indicators of genetic robustness, we can use harvesting to assist natural selection to build a more resilient forest ecosystem with a greater ability to survive climate fluctuations and associated perturbations. This may mean changing certain silvicultural paradigms and not selecting for the fastest growing or tallest trees - but intermediate sized trees that use their energy reserves for defense and water conservation as well as growth.

Elk habitat is changing due to poor forest management, disease, wolf predation, wildfire and climate change.

In this interview, Jim Doran discusses the potential of forest collaboration in combating climate change.