Erin Whorton, a hydrologist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, measures snow on South Cascade Glacier in Washington. (Credit: Erin Whorton / NRCS) Listen (Runtime :58) Read The snowpack in […]Read More
Gary Chastagner, a Washington State University professor called “Dr. Christmas Tree” shows an example of a less-desirable tree due to fewer top branches, grown in a small plantation of Turkish […]Read More
Cuando use su teléfono por la mañana o consulte el tiempo en Internet, es posible que últimamente vea una alerta: "Aviso de Bandera Roja (Temporada de Incendios)".Read More
In this Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019, photo released by the U.S. Forest Service flames from the Nethker Fire engulf trees at Payette National Forest near McCall, Idaho. The Northwest has […]Read More
Bighorn sheep are highly susceptible to a pathogen they can catch from domestic sheep. (Credit: Kim Keating, USGS.) Listen (Runtime 1:00) Read Bighorn sheep and domestic sheep love to hang […]Read More
The U.S. Forest Service is looking at something different — very different — to improve situational awareness at big wildfires: high altitude balloons.Read More
Each year the Forest Service needs people to help campers and visitors make the most of their visit, check in to their camping spot, and maintain campground facilities. These are the duties of a ‘campground host.’Read More
Time is running out for a spur-of-the-moment trip to Multnomah Falls. Starting July 20, timed tickets will be required for one-hour visits to the popular sight-seeing destination east of Portland.Read More
Here’s a quick game: When you hear, “spotted owl,” what do you think of? If you were in the Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s, you may think of logging and a fight over endangered species versus jobs and lumber towns surviving. But there’s much more background in that fight than you may remember. Read More
Bighorn sheep in central Washington could be in danger if domestic sheep continue to graze nearby. That’s the concern from two groups suing the U.S. Forest Service. Domestic sheep or goats can pass a deadly bacteria to bighorns. Read More
New research suggests that a U.S. Forest Service proposal to allow the cutting of larger trees on public lands east of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington will have an outsized impact on forest carbon storage in the Pacific Northwest.Read More
Experts warn that Western states and the federal government need to radically increase the number and size of controlled burns to help reduce the ongoing risks of more catastrophic wildfire seasons. Read More
This latest rollback proposal, issued Tuesday, comes from the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region. It would end a 25-year-old provision that prevents logging of trees that exceed 21 inches in diameter in six national forests across Eastern Oregon and Washington.Read More
The land management plans, known as the “Eastside Screens,” came about in 1995 to protect old growth trees east of the Cascades. The rules were meant to be temporary. The Forest Service wants to amend a section of the policy called the “21-inch rule,” which prohibits harvesting trees that are greater than 21-inches in diameter.Read More
There were once big plans for many public events to mark the 40th anniversary of the catastrophic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The coronavirus pandemic blew up those plans, but many are resurfacing online this week and next.Read More
Researchers began their detective work, trying to figure out what happened to these treated areas during the first few extreme days of the Carlton Complex fire. They gathered geospatial maps and satellite images.Read More
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Stop B2H Coalition and Greater Hells Canyon Council, claims the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service failed to adequately evaluate the environmental impacts of Idaho Power’s proposed transmission line.Read More
Insecticides and other chemicals found at the sites threaten long-term damage to ecosystems. California law enforcement, ecologists and others are cracking down.Read More
The number of people using goats to pack gear, game and food into the backcountry is rising rapidly, and national forests in at least 10 western states have proposed partial pack goat bans to prevent the spread of pathogens that could prove deadly to the west's iconic populations of bighorn sheep.Read More
At the end of the Obama administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came up with a plan that was supposed to shorten a backlog of species that might need a place on the endangered species list or need more critical habitat protected. But the Center for Biological Diversity says that plan has gone by the wayside under the Trump administration. Read More
The proposal, announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, comes in response to a request from the state, which wants to be fully exempted from a Clinton-era rule that limits road construction and timber harvesting in tens of millions of acres of national forest.Read More
Labor Day weekend marked the second anniversary of the start of the Eagle Creek Fire, which burned almost 50,000 acres of forest land in the Columbia River Gorge.Read More
The U.S. Forest Service is proposing to reduce the public’s role in shaping the way it applies federal environmental laws to projects on public lands. The agency says the changes would help land managers “make timelier decisions based on high quality, science-based analysis.”Read More
Prescribed fires are credited with making forests healthier and stopping or slowing the advance of some blazes. Despite those successes, there are plenty of reasons they are not set as often as officials would like, ranging from poor conditions to safely burn to bureaucratic snags and public opposition.Read More
The longest-running public service campaign is tied to a reduction in wildfires, but in some ways Smokey's message may have worked too well. Here's how he's changed. Read More
No figures on wildland firefighter suicides are available because federal agencies often track only fatalities that occur during work hours, and families don’t always release a cause of death. But lang management agencies are concerned about an increasing number of suicides, and seeking to address ways to help.Read More
Work can go forward on a trail crossing private land that connects the popular tourist destinations of Redfish Lake and Stanley, a judge has ruled. U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale late last week rejected a request by the owners of Sawtooth Mountain Ranch to halt construction of the 4.4-mile trail for pedestrians, cyclists, horseback riders and snowmobilers.Read More
Federal land managers have proposed sweeping rule changes to a landmark environmental law that would allow them to fast-track certain forest management projects, including logging and prescribed burning.Read More
The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is warning that a billion acres of land across America are at risk of catastrophic wildfires like last fall's deadly Camp Fire that destroyed most of Paradise, Calif.Read More
The Trump administration announced Friday it will close two U.S. Forest Service job training centers in Oregon and Washington. The Timber Lake Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center (CCC) in Estacada, Oregon, and the Fort Simcoe CCC near Yakima, Washington, are two of nine facilities nationwide that will close.Read More
State and federal officials signed an agreement Wednesday to protect Washington’s forests and wildlife. The plan would combine resources to fight destructive wildfires, threats to forest health and challenges faced by salmon and orcas.Read More
Springtime means it’s morel mushroom harvesting season. Depending on where fires burned last summer, mushroom collecting could take you to different spots across the Northwest.Read More
Across the western U.S., towns surrounded by public lands are facing an increasing bind: They're seeing a huge surge in visitors coming to play in the forests and mountains surrounding them, which is leading to an economic boom. But, at the same time, federal funding to manage these lands has been drying up.Read More
Some remote cabins are for solo retreats – not this one. Staying at Tilly Jane A-Frame is a shared experience. And sharing it has saved it.Read More
In 2002, Grant County, Oregon banned the United Nations by citizen initiative. The referendum wasn't close: 58 percent of voters said to keep the United Nations out of Eastern Oregon. The sponsors asserted the United Nations sought to impose "world taxation," take away guns and private property and bring about "one world controlled education."Read More
From aviation contracts to deals with vendors and even seasonal hiring, the partial federal government shutdown is cutting into planning and preparation for the 2019 wildfire season in the Northwest. Read More
Firefighters and forest managers are losing valuable time to prepare for the upcoming wildland fire season as the partial government shutdown continues.Read More
Some Oregon State Parks workers are now tending to federal recreation lands as the partial U.S. government shutdown continues with no end in sight. People are still visiting trailheads, day-use parking lots and boat ramps on federal lands, but U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rangers aren't on duty. Read More
Climate change is expected to increase drought and wildfire vulnerability in forests across the West. But new research out of Oregon State University shows that some places will fare better than others. Read More
After wildfire season ends each year, land managers start planning what comes next for the areas that burned. Often, the strategy used to ensure the forests return is to salvage log and then replant. But a recent study suggests that in some areas, it might be just as effective to leave the forest alone.Read More
Nothing is simple when it comes to federal lands management. But in order to thin fire-prone forests — and to break legal and ideological gridlock — national forests in the Pacific Northwest are supporting collaborations with formerly adversarial interests.Read More
In late September, the Martinez brothers moved about half of those 800 sheep from the mountainous terrain around Lake Wenatchee to the irrigated, emerald pastures of Connell, in Central Washington. They did it with the help of some highly skilled men: Peruvian “pastores” or sheepherders. All the way from South America, most of them have been with the Martinez family for decades.Read More
On Thursday, a U.S. District Court Judge in Spokane gave the green light to a controversial forest restoration project on Washington’s Colville National Forest.Read More
Federal and state agencies have come to realize fires should not be fought at all costs and, in fact, many should not be fought at all. Excluding natural fire led to forests burning in bigger, more destructive ways. Each year, hazardous fuels accumulate faster than we can reduce them through selective logging and burning.Read More
Like democracy and cute animals before it, The Enchantments mountain range is suffering from the misguided side-effects of social media — in particular, Instagram.Read More
The Trump Administration has called for more logging of western forests to reduce wildfire risks. But people on the ground in the west say the solution is thinning and forest restoration, not logging.Read More
In 2013, the U.S. Forest Service was looking for someone to reduce wildfire risk and rehabilitate a stand of overgrown trees on the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington. Colville-based Vaagen Brothers Lumber submitted the one and only proposal to take on the ‘A to Z’ project. Its future awaits a federal court decision.Read More
A variety of forest experts say that one of the best ways to reduce the threat of these mega-blazes is to use fire itself. They say we need to increase the pace of prescribed fire and let some wildfires continue to burn when it’s safe to do so. Of course, there’s not nearly as much political support for letting fires burn as there is for putting fires out.Read More
The West is in the midst of another intense fire season. Fires in California and Oregon have claimed lives and homes and burned up farmland. As part of EarthFix’s ongoing series on wildfire, reporter Tony Schick spoke with interim Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen about what her agency is doing to reform fire management and reverse the fire problem.Read More
The West is way behind on reducing the buildup of hazardous fuels we created. And much of the work we do to reduce those fuels is missing the key ingredient: fire.Read More
