Apologies to the Forest Service, the WO Press Office provided this excellent summary of  “What is Condition-Based Management: FAQs” in February,  and it got lost in my e-pile.  My idea was that people of all persuasions often mean different things by CBM and that our discussion would be clearer if we started with “What the Forest Service Thinks it is” since they are the ones using it. There are six pages attached here and I only excerpted the first questions below. Conceivably, we could also look at cases in which the use of CBM wins in court and when it loses, and see if that r ..read more

We kind of knew that Yellowstone and wolves were more complicated than the “all is well with wolves” idea.  Perhaps people went a bit overboard with their “carnivolatry,” but most of us took with several grains of salt..as has been discussed previously at TSW.  It’s interesting when folks like the Times discover that there is more than meets the eye to some stories that have been accepted as gospel for some time. The wolves’ return and predatory dominance was believed to have had a widespread effect known as a trophic cascade, by decreasing grazing and restoring and expanding fores ..read more

Today, Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY), Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting a review of the U.S. Forest Service’s practices concerning forest management, land management plans and firefighting equipment. Below is the letter, with my comments. America’s wildfire crisis continues to worsen. As your office recently reported, wildfires destroyed more than 12,000 homes, businesses, and other structures each year, on average, between 2017 and 2021 ..read more

The E&E News article on the hearing did not mention Mr. Desautel’s testimony, and I didn’t see it covered elsewhere other than Tribal news sources, so I thought I’d focus a post on it. Thanks to Nick Smith for the link to this video of Cody Desautel on Indianz.com.  Below is an excerpt from the Indianz.com story. Cody Desautel, president of the Intertribal Timber Council and executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, testifies about federal forest management at a hearing on April 17, 2024. Desautel, a Colville citizen, spoke of the ..read more

I earlier posted a piece on the Forest Service’s Keystone Agreements with a variety of  NGOs.  These agreements are meant to accomplish a wide variety of tasks that would normally be done either by the Forest Service itself or through normal contracting procedures.  I said that we had submitted several questions to the Forest Service and we were awaiting their response.  Last week, we received that response from the Forest Service’s Office of Communications. The following shows our numbered questions along with their responses in bold: (1) We have obtained copies of the Mas ..read more

New Tahoe Forest Products Sawmill (courtesy of Bloomberg) There were many interesting things to explore with the hearing on the Westerman Bill yesterday. As we saw in previous posts, it’s a compendium of many different ideas we can explore in greater depth. What I thought was one theme in Chris French’s testimony was what we might call another Wood Wide Web (broader than the mycological one discussed here a few weeks ago), this one of people, workers and organizations making useful products of wood. Certainly mycorrhizal fungi help trees. But also people help trees, at least around here, by th ..read more

Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Strategy to Guide Balanced Management, Conservation of Public Lands Public Lands Rule will help conserve wildlife habitat, restore places impacted by wildfire and drought, expand outdoor recreation, and guide thoughtful development  A skeptic might wonder how the Forest Service could possibly “conserve wildlife habitat, restore places impacted by wildfire and drought, expand outdoor recreation, and guide thoughtful development” without such a rule? Here’s a link to the Rule. There are also fact sheets and other information here. So let ..read more

Chris French, the Forest Service’s deputy chief, on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Natural Resources Committee/YouTube via E&E News The Westerman bill is a compendium of policy ideas from various sources, some of which have been floating around for a long time. I think this E&E News story did a pretty good job of focusing on some of the main themes of the hearing. I don’t think the 10am idea is going anywhere. I fully respect individuals who disagree, and I hope they move on to more detailed ideas for “being more careful.” If this Xprize or other technological innovations are successful, p ..read more

I think if you click on the blue arrow below you will get the trailer for this series of podcasts. The first episode of Forestcast Season 4 is now available! Join Forest Service researchers as they delve into the multifaceted world of fire. Available online or wherever you get your podcasts.https://t.co/rKRufIBLNd pic.twitter.com/8fNmau1CUx — Northern Research (@usfs_nrs) April 10, 2024 ..read more

The Westerman Draft bill wants to support biochar research. It seems that many folks are already studying biochar. An idea would be to round these up, and look for gaps and overlaps before we send any more funding. I tried the search terms forest and biochar for a variety of federal research organizations. Apparently, search terms select a broader group than I intended. I looked at NSF (National Science Foundation) and searched on biochar and forests and got this.. but many of them don’t seem to have biochar or forests, so maybe my searching is at fault. I looked at Department of Energy and f ..read more