Ground Truth

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...

No national monument designations will be rescinded but the Trump administration should shrink the size of a “handful” of monuments, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said today in comments to the Associated Press.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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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”...

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....

Federal land managers will try once again to remove hundreds of nonnative mountain goats from the Olympic Mountains in Washington, hoping to reduce damage to rare plant communities and prevent conflicts between goats and humans. The National Park Service released a...

A land swap that could clear the way for a massive copper and nickel mine near Lake Superior in northern Minnesota will be up for debate during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing tomorrow. Minnesota Democrat Richard Nolan is the author of a bill that would...

As many as 1,000 jobs at the Bureau of Land Management may disappear next year, according to an email sent to agency employees last week by BLM Acting Director Mike Nedd, as the Trump administration works to sharply pare back the Interior Department’s budget. The 2018...

Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman has reintroduced a bill that would roll back environmental regulations governing logging on national forests. The Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017 would allow the Forest Service to sidestep laws including the National Environmental...

Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wants President Trump to narrow the boundaries of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, marking a significant advance in the administration’s pledge to roll back national monument designations. In a memo sent to Trump on...

Question: How many laws can the federal government violate by giving the green light to a copper and silver mine in a wild corner of Montana? Answer: At least five. Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy took the Forest Service to task for approving the...