Tom Partin is has spent nearly 60 year in the forestry profession, working for the Forest Service, Private Industry, and for a Trade Association. He has a passion for active forest management that supports our rural communities and counties. Tom was also the mayor of John Day, Oregon for one term. This summer, wildfire burned…
Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 12 offered a timely reminder that Indigenous peoples actively managed forests across the American West for thousands of years. They cut trees, harvested wood and deliberately set fires to provide homes, canoes, food and wildlife habitat. Many landscapes encountered by European settlers reflected generations of human stewardship. That history presents…
For decades, powerful environmental groups have pursued a vision of our national forests that steadily removes people from the landscape. They have advocated for less road access and less active management, while supporting policies that place millions of additional acres beyond meaningful human use. Now, as the Forest Service proposes rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule,…
Darrell Kerby is a former Idaho State Senator and former mayor of Bonners Ferry, ID There’s a quiet truth in America that almost no one in our national environmental conversation wants to acknowledge: there are two kinds of environmentalists, and only one of them actually protects the environment. The first kind lives with the land.…
The Forest Service is considering an important change in how millions of acres of our national forests are managed, and your voice can help support it. The agency has proposed rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, which restricts access and forest management across millions of acres regardless of the conditions on the ground. Twenty-five years later,…
Another difficult wildfire season is unfolding across the West, providing another reminder of the urgent need to improve conditions on America’s federal lands. More than 5.1 million acres have burned so far this year across the Northwest, California, Northern Rockies, Great Basin, Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, with about 61 percent of those acres reported…
When a wildfire starts in our national forests, it is common sense to put out the fire while it is small. That is also what the American public expects from the agencies responsible for protecting our forests and nearby communities. Yet a recent Associated Press story described the federal government’s emphasis on quickly suppressing wildfires…
Congressman Tom Tiffany (WI-07) and Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (WY-At Large) introduced the Fixing Egregiously Expensive Suits Act, or FEES Act for short. The Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) was enacted in 1980 to help ordinary Americans challenge federal overreach. It was intended to protect veterans, Social Security recipients, small businesses, and other individuals from prohibitive legal…
By Nick Smith Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities For years, foresters, firefighters, and rural communities have argued that active forest management can reduce wildfire impacts. New research is putting numbers behind that experience. Researchers examining hundreds of wildfires across the West found that fuel treatments reduced fire spread, lowered suppression costs, and prevented billions of dollars…
Karl Brauneis is a retired U.S. Forest Service forester, former smokejumper, and longtime student of federal forest policy and history. Over a decades long career in the woods, Karl witnessed firsthand how active forest management, rapid fire response, and sustained yield forestry once shaped healthier and more resilient forests across the West. In the following…