Ground Truth Blog
Piñon-Juniper Forests
Piñon-juniper woodlands may not inspire the kind of awe that people experience among the redwoods of California or the old-growth Douglas-fir trees of the Pacific Northwest, but piñon-juniper forests are one of the most extensive ecosystems in western North America...
Monongahela National Forest
Located in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, Monongahela National Forest encompasses 921,000 acres, with elevations ranging from just under 1,000 to 4,863 feet above sea level. The Forest includes much of the Potomac Highlands Region and major landform...
Intact Old-Growth Forests Show Climate Resilience
A recently published paper reveals old-growth resilience to climate shifts in the Amazon Basin. “Our results can be understood as a sign of the resilience of Amazonian forests, showing that any impacts of climate change on larger trees have been more than alleviated...
Morale Tanks as Firefighters Clean Toilets, Mow Lawns
Mass layoffs, deferred resignation offers, and other policies from a hostile administration eliminated record numbers of Forest Service employees earlier this year. Firefighters were supposedly exempt from these job cuts, but Forest Service firefighters, already...
Caddo Lake — Wetland of International Importance
Forests cover much of the American South, but the region does not have an abundance of national forests. However, Caddo Lake in northeastern Texas boasts impressive bald cypress forests in its shallow, mysterious waters and is recognized as a wetland of international...
Agencies Miss Deadline for Firefighting Consolidation
The Forest Service and other federal agencies have missed the deadline of Sept. 10, to implement President Donald J. Trump's Executive Order (EO) 14308 mandating consolidation of federal firefighting into a single agency in the Department of Interior. Citing “the...
Rescinding the Roadless Area Conservation Rule
During a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in New Mexico, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the Department of Agriculture is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. “This outdated administrative rule contradicts the will of Congress and...
Cheatgrass and Cattle
Regarded as “one of the most significant ecological crises facing land managers in the arid West,” invasive cheatgrass has increased fire frequency in the Great Basin from once every 30-70 years to every 3-10 years. As Aldo Leopold observes in A Sand County Almanac,...
The push is on to strip big trees from our national forests
by Mitch Friedman, Writers on the Range It didn’t get much notice, but President Trump has turbocharged logging on public lands in ways that are likely to increase dangerous wildfire. Inside the “Big Beautiful Bill” that became law this summer, a provision directs the...
Revenue-Driven Wildlife Management
As reported by The Colorado Sun, wild turkeys are thriving in the eastern half of Colorado to the point of becoming a nuisance in towns and cities. Merriam’s turkeys are native to the foothills and mountains of Colorado, but the population explosion is occurring among...
Vegetation Near Homes — Not Always a Fire Risk
Researchers Max Moritz and Luca Carmignani have penned an article raising concerns about a California plan to ban plants within 5 feet of homes for wildfire safety. “As scientists who study how vegetation ignites and burns, we recognize that well-maintained plants and...
Braving the Road
The Out-sized Impacts of Roadways on Plants and Animals and What We Can Do to Reconnect Nature by Ben Goldfarb The Kicking Horse Valley, a canyon tucked into Canada’s Yoho National Park, is a challenging place to be an elk. A herd of around two dozen migratory elk...