Ground Truth
Interim Forest Service Chief Named
A Forest Service manager with a background in wildfire management was tapped yesterday to lead the agency after the resignation of Chief Tony Tooke earlier this week. Vicki Christiansen has worked with the Forest Service since 2010, most recently as Deputy Chief for...
With Tooke Gone, Who Will Be the Next Chief?
With the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service all without permanent directors, it's anyone's guess when the Forest Service can expect a new chief to replace the retired Tony Tooke. Here are FSEEE's office pool candidates: 1)...
Feral Cattle and Dogs Menace California Monument
A recently established national monument in Southern California is being overrun—not by people, necessarily, but by feral cattle and pit bulls. President Obama created the Sand to Snow National Monument outside of Palm Springs in February 2016. Since then, visitors...
Agency Proposes Moving Montana Trail Off Private Land
A Forest Service proposal released today calls for rerouting a trail in Montana that crosses private land. That trail and others in the Crazy Mountains have been the focus of long-simmering disputes between the agency and local landowners. The plan calls for building...
Oregon Headwaters Protected from Mining
Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced last week that a wild stretch of mountains in southwestern Oregon will remain protected from strip mining, handing conservationists a rare public-lands victory under the Trump administration. Panama-based Red...
Agency Releases Plan to Protect Fragile Rocky Mountain Lake
Forest Service officials in Colorado this week released a plan to implement visitation restrictions for Hanging Lake, a turquoise-tinted pond in the Rocky Mountains and one of the most popular hiking destinations in the state. As many as 1,000 people visit the lake...
Salmon, Berries and Bears — Oh My!
Does a bear poop in the woods? You bet—and that has a profound impact on the surrounding forest. A study by researchers at Oregon State University shows that brown and black bears in Southeast Alaska are the primary seed dispersers of devil’s club, a dominant shrub in...
Agency Approves Drilling Next to Mount St. Helens
Forest Service officials will allow exploratory drilling for copper and gold next to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, including in an inventoried roadless area. The decision, announced last week, drew swift rebuke from conservationists who say...
Firefighters and Cops Win in FY 2019 Budget
You know the authoritarians are in charge when firefighters and cops get more money and everyone else gets less. That's the bottom line in Trump's FY 2019 Forest Service budget, which was released earlier today. Many dismiss the administration's annual budget exercise...
FSEEE: The Fires Are Out, Let the People In
FSEEE yesterday filed a petition calling for the supervisor of the Willamette National Forest in Oregon to immediately end closure notices stemming from wildfires that burned last summer. In a three-page letter to Willamette National Forest Supervisor Tracy Beck,...
Preparing for “Emergencies”
Fighting fires has emerged as the Forest Service’s top task, consuming more than half of the agency’s budget. And yet Forest Service administrators contend they do not have to conduct any environmental review of tactics used in managing wildfires, because each fire is...
A Tongass Travesty
At 17 million acres, the Tongass is America’s largest national forest. Its 19 wilderness areas and two national monuments draw a million cruise-ship visitors annually, employing more than 7,400 recreation industry workers, and provide habitat that supports another...
Forest Service Scales Back Environmental Review of Mining Near Boundary Waters
The Forest Service is scaling back an environmental review of proposed mining in northern Minnesota in a move that critics say could threaten the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness. Instead of conducting a full environmental impact statement, the Forest Service...
Trump Administration to Remove Protections for Lynx
The Trump administration is taking steps to remove Canada lynx from the threatened and endangered species list, despite a 2016 analysis by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that found the cats will disappear from much of their range in the contiguous U.S. by the end...
Hope for Bats
An exotic fungus that is laying waste to bat populations in North America may share a fatal flaw with Dracula—it can’t stand light. Researchers with the Forest Service and the University of New Hampshire found that ultraviolet light kills the pathogen that causes...
A Bundy Bungling
Cliven Bundy is a free man. His cattle are free to roam the public estate. More than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees remains unpaid. The self-styled militia crowd is emboldened. Public land managers are demoralized. Somebody, please, put a tent over this circus. A...
Perdue Releases New All-Employee Message
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue delivered another message to his employees yesterday, emphasizing that his “OneUSDA” initiative will entail changes that “may be drastically different than the old ways of doing things.” Three days ago, the Office of the Secretary...
Perdue: Let’s Stop Calling the Forest Service “the Forest Service”
Goodbye “Forest Service,” hello “OneUSDA?” That seems to be the directive issued yesterday by Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in a holiday greeting to employees in his department. In his three-minute message, Perdue says that the individual offices and agencies...
California Officials: Nestlé Lacks Authority to Take Water from National Forest
California water regulators say Nestlé Waters North America is extracting millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest to sell in bottles without legal authority to do so. In a report released on December 20, the California State Water...
Judge Declares Mistrial in Bundy Case
They’re off the hook again, at least for now. Yesterday, a federal judge declared a mistrial in the government’s case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and Ryan Payne, a militia leader from Montana. The government claimed the four...
Why Are the Forests Closed?
Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers had better be ready for a lot of detours in Oregon this summer. In November and December, after fire season-ending rain and snowstorms, the Forest Service issued orders closing three of Oregon’s most popular trail segments...