Ground Truth

The Northwest Forest Plan Amendment

The Northwest Forest Plan Amendment

The Northwest Forest Plan — the world’s largest ecosystem management plan — was adopted in 1994 after President Bill Clinton essentially imposed the Plan on the Forest Service and other reluctant federal agencies. Of the Washington, Oregon, and California lands...

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Old-Growth Forests

Old-Growth Forests

Can the Forest Service Kick its 100-year Addiction to Logging? President Biden was widely praised for Executive Order 14072, which ordered the first-ever national inventory of old-growth and mature forests on federal lands. Issued April 22, 2022 (Earth Day), the order...

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Researchers Sequence Whitebark Pine Genome

Researchers Sequence Whitebark Pine Genome

Among efforts to stave off the rapid decline of whitebark pine trees, researchers have recently sequenced the genome of this keystone species and are publishing their findings. Conifer genomes can be challenging to sequence as they are 3-10 times larger than the human...

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2023 Brings Quietest U.S. Fire Season in Decades

2023 Brings Quietest U.S. Fire Season in Decades

The most current data show 2023 was a relatively quiet fire year. The National Interagency Fire Center reports 54,273 wildfires burned 2,627,112 acres through Dec. 18. While the number of fires was in line with the 10-year average, the number of acres burned was the...

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Mount Hood National Forest

Mount Hood National Forest

The Mount Hood National Forest encompasses 1.1 million acres, with about a third of those acres designated as wilderness within eight wilderness areas. The Forest has a rich history and offers year-round recreation opportunities. Its watersheds provide drinking water...

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How Homes Can Survive Wildfire

How Homes Can Survive Wildfire

While there’s no historical evidence that Nero “fiddled while Rome burned,” there’s been plenty of fiddling in our forests while homes and communities burn in the American West. Jack Cohen has not been fiddling. His decades-long research at the Forest Service Missoula...

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The Camel’s Nose is Under the Tent

The Camel’s Nose is Under the Tent

The Forest Service has the kind of problem that most of us wish we suffered from. It has more money than it can spend. Thanks to exceedingly generous appropriations by Congress to fix the Wildfire Crisis (sic), the agency is awash in cash. So what could be the problem...

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Restoring the American Elm

Restoring the American Elm

Like the American chestnut, the American elm is threatened by an invasive species, but the future for the elms looks a bit brighter than the fate of the chestnuts. For elms the threat comes from Dutch Elm Disease, introduced in the 1930s, and researchers are making...

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Federal Wildfire Commission Issues Report

Federal Wildfire Commission Issues Report

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act established the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission and tasked the Commission with creating policy recommendations to address “the wildfire crisis.” In September, the Commission released a report with 148...

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Forest Service Approves Logging Near Yellowstone

Forest Service Approves Logging Near Yellowstone

The Custer-Gallatin National Forest recently issued a Finding of No Significant Impact approving the South Plateau Landscape Area Treatment Project. The 16,462-acre logging project (to “improve forest resilience”) includes 5,531 acres of clear-cutting, 6,593...

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FSEEE Featured in Fire Retardant Story

FSEEE Featured in Fire Retardant Story

Susannah Frame with KING 5 News, Seattle's NBC affiliate, interviewed FSEEE Executive Director Andy Stahl for an in-depth feature on aerial fire retardant. Frame also spoke with Vertis Campbell of the Colville Tribe and Brandon Miller, CEO of GreenFire, which produces...

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Tell Your Senators to Oppose S. 796

Tell Your Senators to Oppose S. 796

We need your help to stop the Forest Service from polluting invaluable water resources with aerial fire retardant. While our lawsuit has forced the Forest Service to apply for a permit as required by the Clean Water Act, members of Congress have introduced legislation...

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Mature and Old-Growth Forest Inventory

Mature and Old-Growth Forest Inventory

The first national inventory of old-growth and mature forests on federal lands was completed this spring in response to Executive Order 14072, issued by President Joseph Biden on Earth Day 2022. The forest inventory report estimates that public lands managed by the...

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Paying the Piper

Paying the Piper

In the 20th century, the Forest Service promised to build post-war America with logs cut from national forests. Logging would be sustainable, it promised, with no more timber removed in any decade than could be cut forever thereafter. Logging doubled in the 1940s,...

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