Ground Truth Blog
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...
Looking to Solve a Problem? Ride a Mountain Bike in a Wilderness!
Could allowing mountain bikes in federally designated wilderness areas lead to world peace? That particular argument was not made during a House subcommittee hearing yesterday to consider H.R. 1349, a bill that would amend the 1964 Wilderness Act to allow mountain...
Trump Guts Utah Monuments
Donald Trump signed a pair of proclamations today that would shrink two national monuments in Utah in what would be the largest rollback of federally protected land in American history. Speaking in Salt Lake City, the president announced that his administration would...
Lawsuit Challenges Arizona Copper Mine
A quartet of conservation groups filed a lawsuit earlier this week challenging the Forest Service’s approval of a massive open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona. The lawsuit alleges the Forest Service violated at least 10 environmental...
Victories of 2017
Dear FSEEE Supporter, This has been a trying year. Those who care passionately about our public lands have endured a bevy of broadsides threatening the values we hold so dear. Attacks on national monuments, giveaways to private interests, efforts to undo bedrock...
Saving Birds, One Screen At a Time
Each year, thousands of birds are trapped after flying down ventilation pipes, chimneys, dryer vents and other types of pipes. A Wyoming-based bird advocacy group is working to change that by partnering with public land management agencies, including the Forest...
Agency Approves Atlantic Coast Pipeline
The Forest Service has approved a controversial natural gas pipeline that would cut across two national forests in the Appalachian Mountains. Conservationists vowed to challenge the agency’s approval of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would span more than 600...
Air Force Training Proposal Draws Criticism
A U.S. Air Force proposal to expand training flights over New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, including over designated wilderness areas, has drawn a strong negative reaction from local residents who fear the flights would disrupt the region’s tranquility and drive...
Global Supertanker Services Wins Protest Against Forest Service
The owners of a 747 passenger jet retrofitted to drop retardant and water on wildfires have won an appeal claiming the Forest Service has no basis for limiting the size of firefighting aircraft. In a decision issued last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office...
States Control Wildlife on Federal Land, Right? Think Again.
An exhaustive law review article that was commissioned by the Forest Service refutes the widely held belief that states control wildlife within their borders and federal land managers control only the habitat. The article, titled Fish and Wildlife Management On...
House Approves Legislation Exempting Logging Projects from Environmental Laws
The House of Representatives yesterday approved a bill that would remove the requirement that the Forest Service and other federal agencies undertake thorough environmental reviews before sanctioning logging projects as large as 30,000 acres. HR 2936, the Resilient...