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Mount Rainier inn to reopen after challenging renovation
Tacoma News Tribune
05/12/2008
Paradise Inn reopens Friday after a 31-month renovation – much of which won't be noticeable to visitors.
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Millions for Timber Payments Added to Iraq Bill
Portland Oregonian
05/09/2008
The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee has agreed to add $400 million for county payments to the must-pass Iraq war funding bill, giving rural communities in Oregon and beyond unexpected hope that federal aid could be delivered this year.
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Murrelet Populations Trend Down
Eureka Times-Standard
05/09/2008
Studies started in 2000 appear to show a decline in the population of federally protect marbled murrelets on the West Coast -- but not at the high end of earlier estimates, said a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist.
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Wild Sky Wilderness Backers Celebrate
Everett Herald
05/09/2008
In July 2001, environmentalists, east Snohomish County residents and federal lawmakers marched along a path among old-growth trees near Troublesome Creek north of U.S. 2. It was a part of a tour to show off a wild area that some thought should be preserved forever.
On Thursday, most of those areas were added to Washington's protected areas.
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Bush signs bill for Wild Sky Wilderness
Seattle Times
05/09/2008
Nearly six years after it was first introduced, a bill to create a Wild Sky Wilderness northeast of Seattle has become law.
President Bush signed a bill Thursday making Wild Sky the first new wilderness area in Washington state in nearly a quarter-century.
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Bush signs Wild Sky Wilderness into law
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
05/09/2008
For the first time in more than two decades, Washington state is getting a new wilderness area because President Bush signed legislation Thursday to protect more than 106,000 acres of forests and streams in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
Environmental advocates and lawmakers who had pushed for the Wild Sky Wilderness Area applauded Bush's signature and said they looked forward to other wilderness projects in the state.
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'Conservation on a staggering scale' at Tejon
San Francisco Chronicle
05/09/2008
A vast mountainous region glimpsed by generations of Californians mainly through bug-pocked windshields on Interstate 5 was preserved Thursday in what conservationists say is the largest, most ecologically crucial acquisition of public land in state history.
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David Suzuki: How Pine Beetles Ate B.C.'s Forests
Georgia Straight
05/07/2008
A tiny insect about the size of a grain of rice, the mountain pine beetle, has devastated British Columbia’s interior pine forests, threatening enormous social, economic, and ecological upheaval. The infestation, which is expected to kill close to 80 per cent of B.C.’s mature pine forests, was caused in large part by global warming and is now seen as a contributor to the problem that caused its outbreak in the first place.
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Washington Buys Snohomish County Tree Farm
Seattle Times
05/08/2008
Almost 1,000 acres of forest land east of Arlington will be preserved from development under a purchase agreement approved Tuesday by the state Board of Natural Resources.
The $4.15 million acquisition of a working tree farm is the largest in a program created by the 2007 Legislature to buy up to $70 million of forest land facing conversion to housing or other nonforest uses
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A plea bargain douses the scandal of the Thirtymile Fire
Crosscut
05/08/2008
The darkest moment in U.S. Forest Service history won't be told — not to a jury, anyway.
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800 More B.C. Mill Workers Out of Work
CBC BC
05/06/2008
Industry officials estimate 10,000 B.C. forestry workers have lost their jobs through mill shutdowns, down-time and lay-offs brought on by the downturn in the U.S. housing market over the past year.
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Small Town Raises Money to Save a Mountain in Index
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
05/07/2008
It's tough to raise a million dollars to save a mountain from being clearcut one fundraising hoedown and raffle ticket at a time.
For more than a year, residents of tiny Index -- including a cabinet maker, historic preservationist, retired stewardess, arborist, naturopath, midwife and maintenance man -- have been doing just that.
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Tracking Visitors in Tongass
Alaska Public Radio Network
05/07/2008
The U.S. Forest Service is midway through a multi-year study to determine how many people visit the nation’s forests and what they do once they get there. In the Tongass — the nation’s largest forest — this seemingly straightforward work is complicated by the fact that there is not a single turnstile or ticket booth on any of its 17 million acres.
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No Timber Dollars in Oregon Could Mean No Jobs
Salem Statesman Journal
05/07/2008
Lane County started notifying more than 120 workers that they could be laid off or forced into lower-paying jobs by the end of May because of the potential loss of a federal payment program.
By July 1, the county plans to cut the equivalent of 196 full-time jobs — 12 percent of the work force. It’s the largest cut to county government since 1983, a year that saw the collapse of the timber industry, budget manager David Garnick said.
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Alberta to Spend $55 Million Fighting Pine Beetle
CBC BC
05/05/2008
Worried about B.C. pine beetles spreading, the Alberta government is pumping another $50 million in emergency funding. This will bring its total campaign for the year to $55 million.
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B.C. Pulp Mills Begin Shutdown
Vancouver Sun
05/06/2008
Two B.C. pulp mills began winding down their operations Monday afternoon after insolvent forest company Pope & Talbot failed to close a $225-million purchase agreement with Asian paper giant Pindo Deli.
More than 700 workers at Harmac, near Nanaimo and Mackenzie, north of Prince George, were told Monday they are facing layoffs while Pope & Talbot tries to salvage the deal, find alternative buyers, or begin a process of liquidating is assets.
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Wild, Wild NW
High Country News
05/03/2008
Western states could see big chunks of new wilderness -- roughly three-quarters of a million acres -- thanks to a flurry of wilderness legislation.
Many Northwesterners are enthusiastic: Idaho may get its first new wilderness in nearly 30 years, and this would be Washington state's first new wilderness area in two decades. Oregon's effort, while small in acreage, has broad support.
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Logging reports back opposing views on climate change
Stockton Record
05/04/2008
Spotted owls, silted streams, raging wildfires - there has been no shortage of fuel for the timber wars over the decades.
Add climate change to the mix.
Loggers will return to the forested lower Sierra Nevada this spring armed with a peer-reviewed study that says "intensive" forestry practices - including clear-cuts - may ultimately assist in the battle against rising worldwide temperatures.
No way, environmentalists say. Their own report, released one week after the industry's, says precisely the opposite: Larger, older trees will remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
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Palco Bankruptcy Update
Eureka Times-Standard
05/02/2008
The Pacific Lumber Co. and its parent company, Maxxam Inc., have struck a deal with the Mendocino Redwood Co. and a key creditor, and raised the ante with an all-cash offer for the Scotia company's timberlands.
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Wyden Pushes Salvage Logging
Portland Oregonian
05/01/2008
Sen. Ron Wyden is asking the U.S. Forest Service to speed approval of logging in areas of eastern Oregon burned by two recent wildfires.
The two salvage logging sales are the subject of a proposed agreement between the timber companies and environmentalists that would log about 38 million board feet of timber in Grant and Harney counties.
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Views: Replant Beetle Damaged Forests
Vancouver Sun
05/01/2008
We can make a difference in the impact of the beetle kill, as part of the actions we take that make sense for their own sake. Reforestation is clearly a key part. Young seedlings don't immediately replace the benefit of mature trees, but over time they will grow more useful.
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Layoffs for B.C. Pulp Mill
Vancouver Sun
05/01/2008
Catalyst Paper said Tuesday that it can no longer get enough wood chips to keep all its coastal pulp and paper mills running, singling out fibre shortages as a key factor in 235 new layoffs at its two largest mills.
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Views: Saving Seattle's Urban Forests
Seattle Times
05/01/2008
Every great city reaches a tipping point where strong leadership is required, and where mere initiatives and agendas are turned into visible policy actions.
Seattle is at this tipping point in terms of its commitment to retain and expand its urban forests.
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Views: Urbanites Shrug Off B.C.'s Forestry Woes
Victoria Times Colonist
05/01/2008
The government's shrug-shouldered "what can we do" attitude merely reflects that of urban dwellers in general, who tend to treat the forest industry as somebody else's problem, an unsightly anachronism stumbling toward an inevitable demise brought on by events beyond our borders. Even the companies themselves act like they have lost faith in the future, selling property to real estate developers.
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Montana Fire Panel Discusses Solutions
Missoula Missoulian
04/30/2008
Montana's Fire Suppression Interim Committee kicked off its statewide road tour Monday at ground zero in the West's growing dilemma on how to reduce large-scale wildfires at a time when more people are building homes in fire-prone forests.
The Bitterroot National Forest, which the U.S. Forest Service considers America's most threatened national forest because of the population explosion in the Bitterroot Valley's “wildland-urban interface,” served as a backdrop for the state legislative committee's first public forum.
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