by Joe Stone | Dec 10, 2024 | Fire Truth, In Depth
Protecting water resources is a common justification for conducting wildfire mitigation projects on our national forests. The concern is valid, as forestland provides “the cleanest and most stable water supply compared to other lands,” according to a 2022 Forest...
by Joe Stone | Aug 15, 2024 | In Depth
In the Forest Service old-growth analysis released in June, the Biden administration recommends restricting — but not eliminating — old-growth logging on our national forests. This draft environmental impact statement (EIS) proposes amending all national forest...
by Joe Stone | May 13, 2024 | Fire Truth, In Depth
‘One of the most significant ecological crises facing land managers in the arid West’ A report published in January, Cheatgrass Invasions: History, Causes, Consequences, and Solutions, by Western Watershed Projects is the source of the above quote....
by Joe Stone | Feb 12, 2024 | In Depth
Can the Forest Service Kick its 100-year Addiction to Logging? President Biden was widely praised for Executive Order 14072, which ordered the first-ever national inventory of old-growth and mature forests on federal lands. Issued April 22, 2022 (Earth Day), the order...
by Joe Stone | Nov 15, 2023 | Fire Truth, In Depth
While there’s no historical evidence that Nero “fiddled while Rome burned,” there’s been plenty of fiddling in our forests while homes and communities burn in the American West. Jack Cohen has not been fiddling. His decades-long research at the Forest Service Missoula...
by Joe Stone | Aug 14, 2023 | In Depth
The first national inventory of old-growth and mature forests on federal lands was completed this spring in response to Executive Order 14072, issued by President Joseph Biden on Earth Day 2022. The forest inventory report estimates that public lands managed by the...
by Joe Stone | May 25, 2023 | Fire Truth, In Depth
How a Community Planning Project Spawned a Forest Health Collaborative Christopher Ketcham’s guest column in the Fall 2022 edition of Forest News struck a chord with me. Ketcham’s column, excerpted from his book, This Land, reveals how forest health collaboratives...
by Joe Stone | Feb 26, 2023 | Fire Truth, In Depth
Giant sequoias are the most massive trees on Earth. They are also among the oldest, with the age of some trees exceeding 3,000 years. The trees grow in about 70-80 groves that cover less than 30,000 acres on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada. In this...
by Joe Stone | Dec 12, 2022 | Fire Truth, In Depth
On the night of October 8, 1871, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, “all hell rode into town on the back of a wind.” In two hours, the Peshtigo Fire decimated a swath of forest 10 miles wide by 40 miles long and obliterated the towns of Peshtigo and Brussels in northeastern...
by Joe Stone | Sep 19, 2022 | Fire Truth, In Depth
The wildfire crisis in the West represents one of the most significant issues that the Forest Service must address. Climate change frequently gets a large share of the blame, as does the Forest Service 100-year policy of suppressing all fires “by 10 a.m.,” thereby...
