by Andy Stahl | Aug 23, 2024 | Sound Off
For the sailor, a “safe harbor” provides refuge from the storm. In the law, a “safe harbor” gives legal immunity from a broad prohibition to accommodate certain narrow, desirable conduct. For example, when a landowner voluntarily agrees to protect habitat for an...
by Andy Stahl | Jul 30, 2024 | Sound Off
In 1989, Forest Service timber sale planner Jeff DeBonis took the words of the Continental Congress to heart when he penned and distributed an open letter to Forest Service Chief F. Dale Robertson. Jeff called for an end to over-cutting our national forests. “We have...
by Andy Stahl | May 1, 2024 | Sound Off
March 13, the National Wild Turkey Federation crowed about its “new Participating Agreement with the USDA Forest Service, marking a significant step in bolstering efforts to continue the great work that is being accomplished.” The press release gushed about the...
by Andy Stahl | Nov 8, 2023 | Sound Off
The Forest Service has the kind of problem that most of us wish we suffered from. It has more money than it can spend. Thanks to exceedingly generous appropriations by Congress to fix the Wildfire Crisis (sic), the agency is awash in cash. So what could be the problem...
by Andy Stahl | Aug 14, 2023 | Fire Truth, Sound Off
In the 20th century, the Forest Service promised to build post-war America with logs cut from national forests. Logging would be sustainable, it promised, with no more timber removed in any decade than could be cut forever thereafter. Logging doubled in the 1940s,...
by Andy Stahl | May 20, 2023 | Fire Truth, Sound Off
With “water, water, everywhere,” the Forest Service still cannot rid itself of the fire retardant albatross around its neck. Ten years ago, in a study commissioned by the Forest Service, the Rand Corporation published Air Attack Against Wildfires: Understanding U.S....
by Andy Stahl | Feb 18, 2023 | Fire Truth, Sound Off
Half a century of logging high-value timber on public lands created an industry of federally dependent sawmills throughout the Western states. Concurrently, the Forest Service did its darnedest to stamp out forest fires. That was pretty easy during the mid-20th...
by Andy Stahl | Dec 23, 2022 | Sound Off
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” — Elizabeth Warren It is no coincidence that the rise of collaborative groups described in Christopher Ketcham’s guest essay followed the demise of the Forest Service’s logging-at-all-costs era....
by Andy Stahl | Jun 6, 2022 | Sound Off
The Forest Service is supplementing its aerial fire retardant environmental impact statement that FSEEE’s lawsuits forced to be written in 2011. Those cases imposed no-drop zones around water and rare plant critical habitat. Fire retardant is the red slurry dumped...
