Ground Truth Blog
Plan Would Limit Target Shooting in Colorado
A draft decision released yesterday would prohibit recreational target shooting on 225,574 acres on the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests in Colorado. The report follows a five-year process in which Forest Service officials worked with representatives from...
Judge: Forest Service Must Reconsider Elk-Feeding Program
Forest Service officials in Wyoming must reexamine their decision to let state wildlife officials feed elk on the Bridger-Teton National Forest in the wintertime, according to a federal judge’s ruling. U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled on Friday that...
Trump Administration Continues Efforts to Expand Drilling and Mining on Public Lands
Bureau of Land Management officials this week auctioned off 134,000 acres in Utah for potential oil and gas drilling, including tracts near Canyonlands National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, as the Trump administration continued its efforts to expand...
Operation Goat Lift Begins
An operation to remove non-native mountain goats from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state gets under way today. More than 700 goats live in the Olympic Mountains, descended from a handful released there by hunters nearly a century ago. Their numbers are...
Feds Clear Way for Mineral Exploration Near Boundary Waters
The Trump administration today rejected a proposed 20-year ban on mining in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, clearing the way for mineral exploration on the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota. The decision allows mining companies...
Forest Service Approves First Phase of Montana Mine
A plan to dig a copper and silver mine beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwest Montana took a step forward this week when Forest Service officials granted permission for the first phase of the project. On Monday, Kootenai National Forest Supervisor Chris...
FSEEE Featured on Public Radio Program
FSEEE Executive Director Andy Stahl was interviewed this morning on a public radio news program focusing on the use of fire retardant to fight wildfires. It’s a subject FSEEE knows quite a bit about. Several years ago, we won a pair of lawsuits that placed limits on...
Devil’s Staircase: A Place Like No Other
FSEEE has long championed protecting the spectacular Devil’s Staircase in Oregon’s Coast Range as a designated wilderness area. For a first-person account of a trip to the rugged region—and its signature feature, a naturally terraced waterfall surrounded by old-growth...
Major Expansion Planned for Nevada Ski Area
A major expansion of a ski area on national forest land just 50 miles outside of Las Vegas is now out for public review. The owners of the Lee Canyon ski area, on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, want to build a bevy of year-round recreational attractions,...
OR-7 a Dad—Again
A trailblazing wolf that has made the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon his own is a father once again. Yesterday, federal wildlife biologists released a video showing a trio of pups cavorting on a remote forest road. OR-7 was the seventh wolf to be fitted with a...
Judges Revoke Atlantic Coast Pipeline Permits
Another week, another victory for opponents of pipelines in the Appalachian Mountains. On Monday, a three-judge panel invalidated two key permits for the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline on grounds that they would violate the Endangered Species Act and run afoul of...
FSEEE Featured in Public Radio Report on Wildfires
Former FSEEE board member Rich Fairbanks is quoted extensively in an in-depth Oregon Public Broadcasting report that examines the disconnect between politics and the best science regarding wildfires. Fairbanks, a retired Forest Service employee and firefighter, took...