Ground Truth Blog
The Big Blowup and its Lasting Legacy
Following a fire season that started in April and grew worse during a summer of drought conditions, hurricane-force winds battered Idaho, Montana, and Washington on Aug. 20, 1910. The winds breathed new life into small and smoldering fires across the Northern Rockies....
Not for Sale
This year, the American people made their values unmistakably clear: our public lands are not for sale. In an era when billionaires treat mountaintops like private playgrounds and corporations eye our forests for profit, one might wonder whether the notion of land...
Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest
At 3.36 million acres, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge is Montana’s largest national forest. The Forest provides habitat for 355 species of birds, including bald eagles, sandhill cranes, golden eagles, and trumpeter swans, the largest waterfowl in North America. President...
Trump Orders Consolidation of Fire Agencies
Citing “the devastation of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires,” President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14308 on June 12, 2025, mandating the consolidation of federal firefighting under a single agency. Trump’s EO echoes his "Big, Beautiful Budget"...
Tell Your Senators to Oppose S.B.1672
Senate Bill 1672 targets our hard-won legal victories. If signed into law, the bill would exempt aerial fire retardant from the Clean Water Act. Just last year, USC scientists proved that retardant is toxic waste containing cadmium, vanadium, chromium, and other heavy...
Daily Montanan: ‘Lawsuit Filed in Missoula Over Toxic Metals Found in Aerial Fire Retardant’
Jordan Hansen, writing for The Daily Montanan, was the first to report on FSEEE's latest aerial fire retardant lawsuit. Hansen acknowledges the USC study that provides the scientific basis for he lawsuit. "A study by the University of Southern California estimates...
FSEEE Files Lawsuit Over Heavy Metals in Fire Retardant
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics filed another federal lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service over the agency's use of aerial fire retardant on May 7. In this latest complaint, FSEEE alleges that the Forest Service's use of fire retardant containing...
Respecting the Role of Dead Trees in the Forest
Dead trees have become a frequent target of the Forest Service in the years since the agency was forced to stop allowing clear-cut logging of old-growth trees. Either labeled as “hazard trees” or subject to “salvage logging,” dead trees have been identified by the...
Do Muskrats Herald Twilight?
During his first term, President Trump signed into law the 30,000-acre Devil’s Staircase Wilderness, an Oregon coastal rainforest. President Biden, on the other hand, added zero national forest acres to the wilderness system. During Trump’s first term, the Forest...
Tree Diversity Reduces Impacts of Temperature Extremes
Various studies have shown that forests act as a buffer to climate extremes, creating micro-climates that support forest resilience and biodiversity. The authors of a new study, “Tree Diversity Increases Forest Temperature Buffering via Enhancing Canopy Density and...
Compass Minerals Shuts Down Fire Retardant Business
In a statement to investors, Compass Minerals announced that it “has decided to wind down its fire retardant business, Fortress North America,” as “part of a larger strategic refocus to improve the profitability of the company’s core Salt and Plant Nutrition...
Allegheny National Forest
Located in northwestern Pennsylvania, the Allegheny is the state’s only national forest, established in 1923. The 514,029-acre Forest sits on the Allegheny Plateau and features: Two wilderness areas, Hickory Creek and Allegheny Islands. Two national scenic areas,...