These CBC articles are worth a look. Jasper’s wildfire preparedness work put to the test as out-of-control fires threaten townsite Parks Canada has been conducting prescribed burns since 2003 Excerpt: For years, Parks Canada and the Municipality of Jasper have removed trees and branches, logged a firebreak, ignited controlled burns and asked residents to clear ... Read more ..read more

FYI, a USFS press release this morning…. Federal Advisory Committee completes detailed set of recommendations for amending Northwest Forest Plan PORTLAND, Ore., July 24, 2024 — A Federal Advisory Committee has completed a comprehensive set of recommendations for amending the Northwest Forest Plan aimed at modernizing forest management practices across the Northwest Forest Plan area. After ... Read more ..read more

Nick Smith had a link to this podcast from the American Forest Resource Council in his news email recently ..read more

The OG EIS is mercifully short, thanks to all you folks who worked on it! Only 162 pages and there are lots of references.  Also many interesting charts and tables, which I’ve posted below. This is the most important table, other than the list of plan components. I wonder why OG plan components wouldn’t apply forest-wide to OG? Figure 11 surprised me as to the percentage of OG in WUI.  57% in R9! What are reserved lands? “For purposes of the FIA inventory data, the term “reserved lands,” is defined to include the following types of designated areas: Wilderness, National Wild and S ..read more

Swimmers look to cool off in the summer heat, but hot weather often breeds water-related health hazards. Above, at Blackwell Island in Idaho in 2016. Photo: Bureau of Land Management/Chad Chase via Flickr Creative Commons (CC by 2.0). Most of us enjoy our time outdoors.  If we have followed the Zeitgeist long enough, we were afraid there aren’t enough people out there (Nature Deficit), then there were too many people out there (Covid).. but today the Society for Environmental Journalists came up with these for story ideas; maybe these stories will help reduce overcrowding.. or cause gener ..read more

From the Flathead Beacon, thanks to Nick Smith! Land managers with the Flathead National Forest have approved three forest thinning projects totaling 1,784 acres in the Ashley Lake, Good Creek and Lion Hill areas of the Flathead Valley, describing the “fuel breaks” as proactive measures to brace against the threat of catastrophic wildfires, curb their intensity and protect communities stretching from Marion to Martin City. The fuel break projects are designed to reduce the accumulation of hazardous fuels in strategic locations, according to U.S. Forest Service officials, including n ..read more

Back in 2022 there was a thread about the apparent removal of an online USFS employee directory, formerly at https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/contact-us. Has anyone found such a directory? I’m trying to contact an employee about a specific project…. Without such a directory, it’s difficult to find contact info, especially if the employee has moved to another office ..read more

OK, I’m procrastinating.  Who wouldn’t want to read an EIS?  But several interesting things have come across my desk. Jim Petersen on Managed Fire It’s always interesting to hear ideas for improving/increasing public support for the use of managed fire. Today by Jim Petersen of Evergreen Magazine. There needs to be an internal review process that establishes unambiguous and clearly stated guidelines for determining when, where, why and how a wildland fire can be safely managed for resource benefit. There is only one person in the U.S. Forest Service who should make the decisi ..read more

It seems that many people will be talking about differences in the views of political parties for the next few months.  I’d like to make a list of problems that seem invariant to what political party is in power; and also ideas that different parties agree on. The Hotshot Wakeup  recently reported on some new fire hires at Bly Ranger District  on the Fremont-Winema not getting paid, and not being able to get that fixed.  It just reminds me of when Dan Dallas transferred to become Supervisor on the Rio Grande (15-20 year ago?) and wasn’t getting paid.  There was so much ..read more

  I’m diving into the OG National Amendment this week.   At this point, it seems to me like another pointless paperworky exercise, full of obtuse verbiage, that will load down the feds so they can do less of the work that Congress gave them megabucks to do. Plus possibly waste much local time with unclear processes that may amount to reinventing the wheel, at best.  As I used to call the Wolf Creek project “Reasonable Access for Unreasonable People”, I might call this one “Consistent Frameworks for (ecologically and culturally) Inconsistent Forests”. Not that I’m critiquin ..read more