Ground Truth Blog
Now Streaming: ‘Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire’
Elemental is a new documentary about wildfire in the drought-prone West. Directed by Trip Jennings, the film brings together respected experts from across the board — firefighters, wildfire survivors, research ecologists, indigenous elders, fire scientists, wildlife...
Mountains in Wilderness Don’t Need Hardware
by Dana Johnson, Writers on the Range We humans want the most out of life, so why shouldn’t we push to get more of what we want? That’s what some rock climbers must be thinking. They want to enter designated Wilderness in order to drill permanent anchors into...
Understanding Forest Succession
by Andy Kerr As public lands conservationists continue their fight to save the last of the mature and old-growth forests for the benefit of this and future generations, we must not forget the preforests. In 1988, fires in Yellowstone National Park caused the media to...
Judge Agrees with FSEEE: Forest Service Retardant Use Violates Clean Water Act
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ruled in our favor in our lawsuit challenging Forest Service use of aerial fire retardant, affirming that dumping the toxic slurry into water violates the Clean Water Act and that the Forest Service must acquire a Clean Water Act...
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
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...
Fire Retardant: Does Forest Service Pride Impair a Rational Retardant Decision?
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....
Is Biochar a Forest Health Solution?
Biochar has become a hot topic in discussions ranging from forest health to carbon sequestration, but is it really a panacea for forest management and climate challenges? The Forest Service answers “Yes” in Biochar Basics, published by the agency in 2022. “By turning...
Andy Stahl Interviewed About Retardant Lawsuit
Peter O'Dowd recently interviewed FSEEE Executive Director Andy Stahl about our aerial fire retardant lawsuit on Here & Now, a live news broadcast produced by National Public Radio and Boston radio station WBUR. The Forest Service admits that its use of fire...
Tonto National Forest
In the Arizona Upland region of the Sonoran Desert, the Tonto National Forest enshrines a ruggedly beautiful landscape in central Arizona, where winter precipitation produced a “superbloom” of wildflowers this spring. Totaling almost 3 million acres, the Tonto...
Land Exchanges Serve the Wealthy
by Erica Rosenberg, Writers On The Range In 2017, the public lost 1,470 acres of wilderness-quality land at the base of Mount Sopris near Aspen, Colorado. For decades, people had hiked and hunted on the Sopris land, yet the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) handed it...
LA Times Reports on FSEEE Fire Retardant Lawsuit
Alex Wigglesworth, environment reporter with the Los Angeles Times, wrote a good news story about our fire retardant lawsuit. "As the use of aerially delivered retardant has soared in recent years," she writes, "some forest advocates say the substance does more harm...