Free Republic

Forest supervisors for the Bridger-Teton, Shoshone and Caribou-Targhee national forests signed a letter to loggers noting that forest health is being threatened by insects and large wildfires. The letter and an accompanying questionnaire asks loggers and wood industry officials for information about their operations in order to gauge their ability to remove dead and dying trees.

An unstoppable wave could devastate 3 million acres of lodgepole pines. Mountain pine beetles are obliterating a forest that stretches from British Columbia to Mexico, and in the process are creating a hazard for fire, public safety and water supply. “What we’re looking at is an entire lodgepole pine forest dying right before our eyes,”... Severson described the problem to the Colorado Water Congress at its convention last week.... More than 22 million acres eventually will be destroyed in the American West. Meanwhile, the beetles are making their way across Canada toward the Atlantic Ocean as well. The lack of...

The U.S. Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first, an independent government audit has found. And while the majority of catastrophic wildfires occur in the West, nearly 58 percent of the total acres treated in fiscal year 2004 were in the southeastern states, the report said. "The Forest Service cannot clearly identify the level of risk to communities from wildfire," it said. "It cannot demonstrate to stakeholders its accomplishments in reducing those risks with the funds provided."...

Logging trucks are again rumbling through town after a nearly 15-year hiatus. The Forest Service has reopened - or has plans to reopen - numerous drainages south of Eagle Ranch to logging... There are currently two active sales south of Eagle, with another in the works, said Cary Green, the White River National Forest's timber management assistant for the Eagle area. The 60-acre Beecher Gulch salvage timber sale, on Hardscrabble Mountain, sold in 2005, and about 500,000 board feet of timber is currently being harvested... A typical 2,000-square foot, single-family home requires about 27,000 board feet of framing lumber, paneling...

Millions of mountain pine beetles are swarming the Rocky Mountains...looking for new trees to destroy. The Colorado State Forest Service wants residents to help stop the spread of the devastating pest before the Pike and San Isabel national forests take on a brown cast like those in Summit and Grand counties. "It's currently at an epidemic level," ... Dead trees are a sign the forest is unhealthy; they also pose a fire risk. The U.S. Forest Service... Trees are succumbing by the millions. "If the beetle is successful in getting underneath the bark of the tree, mama mates and burrows...

Prospects are fading for a rewrite of the nation's endangered species protection law this year as key senators hesitate to move anything that would have to be meshed with legislation written last fall by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. Some senators have expressed concern that any bill they pass, even if it gains bipartisan consensus, would still have to be blended with Pombo's aggressive rewrite. And Pombo's bill goes way too far in easing environmental protection, according to many critics. For example, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., the chairman of a key subcommittee, has said he fears any Senate bill might be...

Logging - A judge deems public comment essential before dozens of Northwest projects can proceed The U.S. Forest Service this week suspended more than 170 public land projects in Oregon and Washington, including 13 logging sales, after a judge revoked a Bush administration rule that eliminated public input on the work. Administration officials issued the rule in 2003 to speed thinning of fire-prone trees under the Healthy Forest Initiative the president launched in the wake of Oregon's 2002 Biscuit fire. They promoted it as a tool to alleviate bureaucratic delays for smaller logging projects. Environmental activists countered that it would...

“Kerry/Edwards Forest Plan is Simply Political Pandering to the West” Washington, DC – U.S. Rep Scott McInnis, author of the bipartisan Healthy Forests Restoration Act, issued the following statement regarding the Kerry/Edwards forest plan announced today: “The announcement of a new forest plan by the Kerry/Edwards campaign for the west’s ailing forests is embarrassingly late and offers little if any new and constructive ideas to address the growing wildfire crisis. “This sudden introduction of a forest management plan, said McInnis, should not be interpreted as a commitment to the health of our forests but rather seen for what it is:...

Open Letter from Congressman Scott McInnis (R-CO) to Senator John Kerry Regarding His Flip-Flop on the Healthy Forest Initiative(title edited for length) Senator Kerry-During your recent campaign stops throughout the west, you have waffled in your position on the President's Healthy Forests Initiative.  At the time of passage in 2003, you made unfounded claims concerning the Administration's forest health policies.  As you said, "Bush signed the so-called 'Healthy Forests' initiative that takes a chainsaw to public forests in the name of protecting them."  Now it appears you've changed your position, emphasizing your support for many of the forest management reforms President...

Conservation no longer a top spending priority, conference attendees told The lynx are nearly gone, mud snails are heading upstream, frogs are growing extra legs and wildlife management budgets are being cut. The job of a wildlife biologist has always been a bit like being a firefighter in a bone-dry forest during a lightning storm. There's never enough help and always too much heat. But times seem to be getting even more desperate, according to some of the attendees at the nation's top wildlife management conference being held this week in Spokane. "The agencies are pretty much bare bones. We're...

<p>His face has been splashed on the covers of Time and Newsweek this month.</p> <p>And his cyberstumping - the use of the Internet to raise big bucks and organize supporters - has turned Howard Dean into a political phenomenon. The former Vermont governor whose iconoclastic ways remind some of Arizona Sen. John McCain stops by Tucson on Monday.</p>

Today President Bush made his first trip outside of Texas since beginning his ’working vacation’ at the beginning of the month. He traveled to Arizona with Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, to observe the fire damage from the Aspen wildfires, touring Inspiration Rock in Coronado National Forest near Summerhaven, and promoting the need for healthy forests, and the prevention of fire devastation through controlled thinning of forests and underbrush. Later he travelled to Denver, Colorado to participate in a fundraiser, calling the departure of Liberian President, Charles Taylor, a ’positive step,’ and introducing his nominee for EPA director, Utah Governor,...