by FSEEE | Jan 5, 2018 | Dispatch
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue delivered another message to his employees yesterday, emphasizing that his “OneUSDA” initiative will entail changes that “may be drastically different than the old ways of doing things.” Three days ago, the Office of the Secretary...
by FSEEE | Jan 3, 2018 | Dispatch
Goodbye “Forest Service,” hello “OneUSDA?” That seems to be the directive issued yesterday by Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in a holiday greeting to employees in his department. In his three-minute message, Perdue says that the individual offices and agencies...
by FSEEE | Dec 28, 2017 | Dispatch
California water regulators say Nestlé Waters North America is extracting millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest to sell in bottles without legal authority to do so. In a report released on December 20, the California State Water...
by FSEEE | Dec 21, 2017 | Dispatch
They’re off the hook again, at least for now. Yesterday, a federal judge declared a mistrial in the government’s case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and Ryan Payne, a militia leader from Montana. The government claimed the four...
by FSEEE | Dec 18, 2017 | Sound Off
Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers had better be ready for a lot of detours in Oregon this summer. In November and December, after fire season-ending rain and snowstorms, the Forest Service issued orders closing three of Oregon’s most popular trail segments...
by FSEEE | Dec 14, 2017 | Fire Truth
What happens if forest fire ignitions are not suppressed? It’s a tough experiment to perform, but some old Forest Service data may help provide an answer. In 1923, the Forest Service published an analysis of fires in 12 California national forests (excepting southern...
by FSEEE | Dec 12, 2017 | Dispatch
Whither the Forest Service under the Trump administration? Employees within the agency and those who care about national forests have asked that question since Trump’s election more than a year ago. But the agency—tasked with managing an active wildfire season and...
by FSEEE | Dec 8, 2017 | Sound Off
Could allowing mountain bikes in federally designated wilderness areas lead to world peace? That particular argument was not made during a House subcommittee hearing yesterday to consider H.R. 1349, a bill that would amend the 1964 Wilderness Act to allow mountain...
by FSEEE | Dec 4, 2017 | Dispatch
Donald Trump signed a pair of proclamations today that would shrink two national monuments in Utah in what would be the largest rollback of federally protected land in American history. Speaking in Salt Lake City, the president announced that his administration would...
by FSEEE | Dec 1, 2017 | Dispatch
A quartet of conservation groups filed a lawsuit earlier this week challenging the Forest Service’s approval of a massive open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona. The lawsuit alleges the Forest Service violated at least 10 environmental...