Ground Truth Blog
Camping Restrictions Considered for Colorado Wilderness
Forest Service officials in Colorado are laying plans to limit camping in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area, which holds some of the most iconic mountain scenery in the nation. The number of visits to the most popular destinations in the wilderness area nearly...
2017 Wildfire Season Off to Fast Start—But Not on National Forests
Wildfire season in the West has barely begun, but across the nation it’s already been a busy year in terms of acres burned. Virtually all of those acres, however, are on state or private land. Nearly 2.2 million acres burned through the first three months of 2017,...
The Roundup for April 7, 2017
Objections to Olympic National Forest War Games Rejected - FSEEE Olympic National Forest officials have largely dismissed objections filed by more than 100 people opposed to a Navy plan to conduct electronic warfare drills on the forest. Interior Department repeals...
Objections to Olympic National Forest War Games Rejected
Olympic National Forest officials have largely dismissed objections filed by more than 100 people opposed to a Navy plan to conduct electronic warfare drills on the forest. In a letter dated March 29, forest supervisor Reta Laford wrote that the Forest Service’s draft...
The Roundup for March 31, 2017
The standoff between Trump and green groups just boiled into war - The Washington Post The first shots have been fired in what’s likely to be a long, bitter war over the environment between conservationists and President Trump. It started Wednesday when a broad...
Trump Rescinds Obama Environmental Protection Measures
Donald Trump’s assault on Obama administration environmental protection measures continued this week as the president signed an executive order to remove regulations governing coal, oil and gas production, including on public lands. One of the measures in the...
The Roundup for March 24, 2017
Forest Service Asks Public's Help with Train Maintenance - FSEEE Last year, Congress passed the National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act, which calls for doubling the amount of trail work undertaken by volunteers by 2021. Forest Service officials are asking the...
Forest Service Asks Public’s Help with Trail Maintenance
How do you maintain 158,000 miles of trails on a shoestring budget? Ask for volunteers. The U.S. Forest Service manages more miles of trails than any other government agency. But with firefighting consuming an ever-growing share of the budget, agency officials are...
The Roundup for March 17, 2017
Trump Budget Would Slash Environmental Programs, Research — FSEEE Scientific research and environmental protection programs would suffer major cuts under a proposed budget outline released this week by the Trump administration. Trump to repeal Obama fracking...
Trump Budget Would Slash Environmental Programs, Research
Scientific research and environmental protection programs would suffer major cuts under a proposed budget outline released this morning by the Trump administration. By percentage, Trump’s budget calls for double-digit reductions in funding for the Environmental...
The Roundup for March 10, 2017
Federal Land Good for Local Economies—FSEEE The question of whether states should be given management responsibilities for federal lands raises impassioned arguments over the best use of wide swaths of the American West. Often lost in that debate is little-noticed...
Reading the Tea Leaves
With Trump agriculture secretary nominee Sonny Perdue still awaiting a confirmation hearing, which has not been scheduled because the dog appears to have eaten Perdue’s financial disclosure homework, the Forest Service has been trying to figure out what message will...