Ground Truth
Biden Administration Restores Tongass Protections
The Department of Agriculture finalized protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. The final rule, announced Jan. 25, repeals the Trump Administration's 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule, restoring protections to...
Forest Service Admits Fire Retardant Use Violates Clean Water Act
Declines to reduce usage of the chemical pollutant The preliminary response to FSEEE’s fire retardant lawsuit acknowledges that the Forest Service is acting illegally but then “denies each and every allegation of the [FSEEE] Complaint.” The FSEEE lawsuit alleges...
Collaboratives are a Failed Experiment
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” — Elizabeth Warren It is no coincidence that the rise of collaborative groups described in Christopher Ketcham’s guest essay followed the demise of the Forest Service’s logging-at-all-costs era....
Excerpted from ‘This Land’
When Congress passed the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, one of Barack Obama’s major public lands initiatives, it included a provision for a new program of management of national forests that promised “collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration” of...
The Peshtigo Firestorm
On the night of October 8, 1871, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, “all hell rode into town on the back of a wind.” In two hours, the Peshtigo Fire decimated a swath of forest 10 miles wide by 40 miles long and obliterated the towns of Peshtigo and Brussels in northeastern...
Mining Proposal Threatens Okefenokee
If approved, a proposal to mine titanium and zirconium in southern Georgia will threaten the integrity of the Okefenokee Swamp, designated a Wetland of International Importance through the Ramsar Convention. Ninety percent of the massive wetland lies within the...
Oregon High Court Rejects Timber Lawsuit
The Oregon Supreme Court rejected an appeal in a $1 billion lawsuit that sought to define the “greatest permanent value” of forests as timber revenue. The 13 counties that brought the lawsuit gave forestland to the state in the 1930s and ’40s. Oregon manages the land...
Urge Your U.S. Senators to Support HR 803 and Protect Wilderness
Please call both of your U.S. Senators today and urge them to support the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, HR 803, which the House of Representatives has passed. We have an important window of opportunity to protect new national forest wilderness...
Forest Service Completes Prescribed Fire Review
After the Forest Service ignited a prescribed fire that became the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, Chief Randy Moore ordered a national review of the agency’s prescribed fire program. Published this fall, the review identifies 52 recommendations. Seven...
Phos-Chek in Sespe Creek Draws Attention to FSEEE Lawsuit
Alex Wilson, reporting for VC Reporter, recently covered our lawsuit against the Forest Service challenging its use of aerial fire retardant. He writes, "When environmental activist Andy Stahl heard that last month’s battle to extinguish the Howard Fire in the rugged...
Jet Fuel From Wood
Writing for Greenwire, Marc Heller reports that Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet producer, has inked a deal to turn forest products into aviation fuel. The deal will send up to 750,000 metric tons of “forest thinnings” to a new production facility to be built...
FSEEE Bighorn Protest ‘Gets Ink’
Angus Thuermer with Wyofile and Alex Hargrave with the Buffalo Bulletin reported on our protest that helped convince Bighorn National Forest officials to drop their plan to spray toxic herbicides to kill native sagebrush and larkspur. As noted by Hargrave, the Forest...
FSEEE Protest Prompts Forest Service to Retract Herbicide Plan
When officials at Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming proposed aerial spraying to kill native larkspur and sagebrush under the guise of controlling invasive weeds, FSEEE called foul. Larkspur can sometimes be toxic to cattle, and cattle won’t eat sagebrush. Given the...
Andy Stahl Discusses Retardant Lawsuit on Public Radio
Our fire retardant lawsuit against the Forest Service continues to attract media attention. Today, Oct. 25, Dave Miller interviewed FSEEE Executive Director Andy Stahl for Think Out Loud, a live radio program produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Our lawsuit is...
FSEEE Fire Retardant Lawsuit Fuels Media Coverage
FSEEE's recently filed lawsuit — which seeks to stop the Forest Service from polluting waterways with aerial fire retardant and force the agency to adhere to the Clean Water Act — has received a flurry of media attention. E&E News characterizes our lawsuit as "the...
FSEEE Sues Forest Service Over Fire Retardant
Sixty days have passed since FSEEE delivered a notice of intent to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for its use of fire retardant in violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA). The Forest Service has not responded, so we have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District...
Prescribed Fire
The wildfire crisis in the West represents one of the most significant issues that the Forest Service must address. Climate change frequently gets a large share of the blame, as does the Forest Service 100-year policy of suppressing all fires “by 10 a.m.,” thereby...
Beavers Can Spearhead Climate Action
A recent report by Emily Fairfax and Chris Jordan finds that “biological components,” beaver in particular, are critical to restoring “the full process-based functionality of connected floodplain systems.” The authors note that rivers and streams, “are naturally...
FSEEE Objects to Aerial Herbicide Spraying in Medicine Bow NF
FSEEE has filed an objection to the Draft Record of Decision (ROD) for Invasive and Other Select Plant Management for the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming. Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson issued the draft ROD, which would allow the Forest Service to spray toxic...
Victory: Post-fire Forests Reopening in Oregon
During the 2020 and 2021 fires in Oregon national forests, the Forest Service issued closure orders in the affected areas. But once the fires were extinguished, closure orders were extended, ostensibly to protect the public from the risks posed by so-called “danger...
Fuel Treatments Provided Minimal Benefit in Oregon Fires
A recent report on the 2020 Oregon wildfires finds “little evidence to support the use of fuel treatments to mitigate fire severity under extreme fire-weather conditions.” Published in Ecosphere by researchers with the Forest Service and Oregon State University, the...