Wildlife and Wildfire Mitigation in Colorado

Wildlife and Wildfire Mitigation in Colorado

One of the justifications for cutting trees is that it improves wildlife habitat, a stance promoted by the National Wild Turkey Federation, which is now funding tree-thinning projects in Chaffee County, Colorado. When asked if tree-thinning is beneficial to wildlife,...
A New Kind of Collaborative in Colorado

A New Kind of Collaborative in Colorado

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...
Sequoia Deaths Prompt Emergency Response

Sequoia Deaths Prompt Emergency Response

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...
The Peshtigo Firestorm

The Peshtigo Firestorm

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...
Prescribed Fire

Prescribed Fire

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...