But the industry says it needs more timber.
Forests
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Timberland herbicide spraying sickens a community
Companies deposit thousands of pounds of herbicides each year on Oregon forests.
Posted inArticles
How the hot and dry West is killing Rocky Mountain forests
A new report summarizes how climate change is accelerating tree death from fires, bark beetles and drought
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Lost in the woods
How the Forest Service is botching its biggest restoration project.
Posted inGoat
Joshua trees may be migrating north in response to climate change
Last spring, Joshua trees put on a magnificent show in the Mojave Desert. Nearly all at once nearly all of them bloomed, sprouting dense bouquets of waxy, creamy-green flowers from their Seussian tufts of spiky leaves. The bloom was so sweeping and abundant — and such a contrast to the typical pattern, where only a […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
The Tree Coroners
To save the West’s forests, scientists must first learn how trees die.
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Lawmakers scramble to fix the funding problem in Oregon’s timber counties
State and federal lawmakers are scrambling for solutions to the funding crisis in the southwest Oregon timber counties that have been hard hit by cuts in federal aid. A few of the proposals: The O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs ActThis controversial proposal would move 1.5 million acres of federal forestland into a timber trust to […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like
Mark Williams and Bill Baker stand amid ponderosa pines in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colo., holding a copy of a 19th century land survey. They’re looking for a small pile of rocks with three notches on the east side, indicating that a General Land Office surveyor stopped here to describe the forest. Surveyors […]
Posted inWotr
Face it: All forests are “sluts”
If you think the word “slut” insults women, how about the use of the word “virgin” to describe a forest that’s never been logged? It’s a commonly used term. Dictionary.com, for instance, defines “virgin forest” this way: “a forest in its natural state, before it has been explored or exploited by man.” Still, I was […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Living with trees
Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to TreesNalini M. Nadkarni336 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California, 2008. Between Earth and Sky sets out to describe the many ways in which trees sustain us. When author Nalini Nadkarni was a girl in suburban Maryland, after school she would climb one of the eight maples in her […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Stirring the pot
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: The North Coast Journal, published weekly in Arcata, Calif., for almost 18 years, features in-depth journalism with a strong arts and entertainment section. The local media scene: Two dailies, one printed in Humboldt County for many […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Film: Lens of compassion
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. Philomath, Ore., nestled on the Coast Range’s eastern flanks, looks like an average logging town. On a Saturday afternoon, kids pushing BMX bikes scamper across the main street. American flags hang limp in the late summer […]
Posted inWotr
Fire and the warming West
An Associated Press story that ran recently above the page one fold in Billings and Butte, Mont., didn’t qualify even as a brief in Baltimore, Md. No surprise, there. More people live in public housing in Baltimore than populate the states of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, combined. But it was big news on the […]
Posted inWotr
Montana Sen. Conrad Burns spotlights a bad burn policy
Conrad Burns, the third-term Republican senator from Montana, may have done Westerners a backhanded favor when he cornered firefighters in the Billings airport and berated them for the job they did on an eastern Montana wildfire. Burns reportedly confronted members of the Augusta Hotshots last month as they were waiting for their flight back home […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Where there’s fire, there’s global warming
“I think there was a tendency to think that the overwhelming factor (driving forest fires) was short-term weather. There’s this idea that drought matters, and it does. But it’s taking time and a lot of research to show that climate plays a big role as well.” — Anthony Westerling Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Tribes look to cash in with ‘tree-market’ environmentalism
Carbon banking could help restore forests and fight global warming
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Hobby miners flock to public streams
Growing pastime raises concerns about an outdated law
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Spotted owl or red herring?
Pretty much everyone agrees that logging on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has declined by 80 percent since its heyday in the mid-1980s. Job losses in the region’s timber sector over the past two decades number in the tens of thousands. But don’t blame the critical habitat rule, or even the Endangered Species Act. […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
What’s the NRA’s beef with roadless areas?
I am a hunter who cares deeply about our hunting heritage and our ability to pass it on. Like most hunters, I consider organizations that work on behalf of hunting my friends, and those that work against hunting my adversaries. So I don’t like it when the lines become blurred. And today the lines are […]