Ground Truth Blog
A Tongass Travesty
At 17 million acres, the Tongass is America’s largest national forest. Its 19 wilderness areas and two national monuments draw a million cruise-ship visitors annually, employing more than 7,400 recreation industry workers, and provide habitat that supports another...
Forest Service Scales Back Environmental Review of Mining Near Boundary Waters
The Forest Service is scaling back an environmental review of proposed mining in northern Minnesota in a move that critics say could threaten the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness. Instead of conducting a full environmental impact statement, the Forest Service...
Trump Administration to Remove Protections for Lynx
The Trump administration is taking steps to remove Canada lynx from the threatened and endangered species list, despite a 2016 analysis by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that found the cats will disappear from much of their range in the contiguous U.S. by the end...
Hope for Bats
An exotic fungus that is laying waste to bat populations in North America may share a fatal flaw with Dracula—it can’t stand light. Researchers with the Forest Service and the University of New Hampshire found that ultraviolet light kills the pathogen that causes...
A Bundy Bungling
Cliven Bundy is a free man. His cattle are free to roam the public estate. More than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees remains unpaid. The self-styled militia crowd is emboldened. Public land managers are demoralized. Somebody, please, put a tent over this circus. A...
Perdue Releases New All-Employee Message
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...
Perdue: Let’s Stop Calling the Forest Service “the Forest Service”
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...
California Officials: Nestlé Lacks Authority to Take Water from National Forest
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...
Judge Declares Mistrial in Bundy Case
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...
Why Are the Forests Closed?
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...
What If We Didn’t Fight Wildfires?
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...
Perdue Outlines Objectives for Forest Service
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...