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Source: Healthy Forest Healthy Communities This past summer, wildfires scorched nearly eight million acres across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Most of the fires, which cost taxpayers $2 billion to fight, were on national forest land. Increased fuel loads...

Source: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation INFLUENCE OF BEETLE KILL ON ELK AND HUNTER RESOURCES SELECTION​ AND INTERACTIONS The epidemic of mountain beetle kill within the forests of the West is well documented with more than 1.5 million acres of forest affected in...

Source: Healthy Forest Healthy Communities The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Resilient Federal Forests Act on Nov. 1. In the run up the vote, there were many misleading statements about what the bill does, and doesn’t do. Thanks to the House Natural...

Source: Missoulian When the chainsaw roared Tuesday and the chips began to fly off the base of the 79-foot Engelmann spruce destined to light up the U.S. Capitol’s lawn this Christmas, a lot of pride radiated from the direction of Pete Tallmadge’s family. “We’re not...

Source: KPAX.com BY DENNIS BRAGG - KPAX · IMAGE BY VICTOR ZASTOLSKIY / DREAMSTIME.COM MISSOULA - Firefighting is entering a new era, as fire crews face blazes with greater intensity and fewer resources. But the experts who are wrestling with the fire problem say...

Source: Market Watch By LINDAÅKESON MCGURK What if there were a better way to do early childhood education? It’s a common complaint among teachers as well as parents in the U.S. these days: kindergarten has become the new first grade and the unintended casualty of...

Source: The Forest Blog by Russ Vaagen I’ve been thinking about forest management as a social science for many years.  As a teen, I remember wondering why people were fighting about the activities in our forests. Of course, I understood the concern over heavy-handed...

Source: Spokesman The U.S. Forest Service would get new rules to help fight wildfires in some of its most at-risk areas under a bipartisan plan introduced Thursday by Northwest senators. The proposal would try to reduce the catastrophic wildfires that have plagued...

Source: gohunt.com Article republished with permission from the Boone and Crockett Club. “Love It to Death” is the third album by the Alice Cooper band, which was released in 1971. Loving it to death is how we, as a nation, seem to be treating much of our public...

Source: The Forest Blog by Russ Vaagen I read and hear people talking about how the environmentalists are to blame for all our forest health woes.  I also hear about the same on the other side of the coin saying that over-harvesting and past logging is the reason our...

Source: Missoulian A discovery by scientists at Montana State University Billings may help forest managers battle the next epidemic of bark beetles. Research at the university found that a specific molecule, as well as a few variants, slow the growth of fungi related...

Source: The Forest Blog by Russ Vaagen What is “Carbon Friendly Forestry?” It’s two things actually.  First, it was a conference put on by the Washington Environmental Council, a Seattle-based environmental organization.  Second, it’s an idea that forestry can be...

Source: The Daily Sentinel By Greg Walcher If you have fond memories of roasting marshmallows around the campfire, and making s’mores with the kids, you may be surprised to learn that you’ve been doing it wrong all this time. Fortunately, the U.S. Forest Service has...