Ground Truth Blog
FSEEE: Retardant Doesn’t Put Out Wildfires
For the past several days, smoke has engulfed much of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, prompting residents to don facemasks and look longingly at forecasts for signs of cooler weather and cleansing winds. An active fire season in the state, and across much of the West, has...
Conservationists Challenge Pipeline Plan
A coalition of conservation groups is challenging a draft Forest Service decision to allow a Virginia energy company to build a $5 billion, 600-mile-long natural gas pipeline that would cross two national forests. The Forest Service issued its draft decision in July....
FSEEE Calls Out Lawmaker for Backing Bad Bill
There’s certainly no shortage of bad bills being considered in Congress right now. This is a dangerous time for the environment, with anti-conservation forces ascendant in both chambers of Congress and in the White House. We’re focusing right now on one particularly...
Study: Bees Like Forest Fires
Here’s some new buzz about how bees benefit from wildfires. Preliminary findings by a team of researchers at Oregon State University indicate that bees thrive in the openings created by high-severity wildfires. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that...
Zinke: Trump Should Trim “A Handful” of National Monuments
No national monument designations will be rescinded but the Trump administration should shrink the size of a “handful” of monuments, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said today in comments to the Associated Press. Today is the deadline for Zinke to send a report to Trump...
Trump Administration Names New Forest Service Chief
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has named a fellow Southerner as the next chief of the Forest Service. Tony Tooke, who is regional forester for the agency’s southern region, will succeed Tom Tidwell, whose last day on the job will be September 1. Tooke, who grew...
Tidwell Out as Forest Service Chief
The Trump administration announced today that U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell is retiring from the agency. His last day in office will be September 1. “From the start, we have relied on Chief Tidwell’s experience and counsel, drawing on his years of experience...
Forest Service Tweaks Wyoming Logging Plan
A logging project high in the Wyoming Rockies will be modified after FSEEE raised concerns about impacts to the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. Officials with the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest want to thin 6,670 acres of forest that they say have been...
Counterclaim Filed in 4FRI Lawsuit
This spring, two former executives of Good Earth Power AZ, which holds the largest forest restoration contract ever issued by the Forest Service, sued the company, alleging they were owed more than $4 million in unpaid salaries. This week, lawyers for Good Earth Power...
Senate Bill Would Loosen Environmental Laws
South Dakota Senator John Thune last week introduced legislation that would sharply curtail environmental reviews of logging projects on national forests. The bill, dubbed the Forest Management Improvement Act of 2017, would allow the Forest Service to undertake...
Forest Service to Allow Olympic National Forest War Games
Forest Service officials have given the green light to a controversial plan to stage electronic warfare games on the Olympic National Forest in Washington state. The decision allows personnel from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station to park three “mobile transmitter”...
Trump Administration and Senator Target District Ranger
When a sitting U.S. senator and a member of the president’s cabinet go after a Forest Service district ranger, guess who wins? Alex Sienkiewicz, who was “reassigned” last month from his post on Montana’s Custer Gallatin National Forest, is finding out the hard way....