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Tag: wildfire

  • Public Weighs in on Plumas County, CA Biomass Proposal

    - by Debra Moore, April 5, 2015, Plumas Coun­ty News The Sier­ra Insti­tute is poised to receive $2.6 mil­lion from the Cal­i­for­nia Ener­gy Com­mis­sion, but first the pub­lic will have a chance to com­ment on the bio­mass boil­er that would be built near the county’s health and human ser­vices build­ing in Quincy. The com­mis­sion announced March 10…

  • Media Helps Biomass Industry Spread Wildfire Hysteria

    -  by Melis­sa San­tos, Jan­u­ary 4, 2015, The News Tribune Ann Stan­ton cred­its a state pro­gram with sav­ing her home from the worst wild­fire in Washington’s history. Despite her prop­er­ty being in the path of the Carl­ton Com­plex fire, which scorched about 256,000 acres in Okanogan and Chelan coun­ties last sum­mer, Stanton’s home and the trees…

  • Rim Fire Forests Fuel Biomass Energy

    - Decem­ber 29, 2014, The Recorder Near­ly 40,000 tons of for­est residue from the Rim Fire area in Tuolumne Coun­ty has been removed for use to gen­er­ate bio­mass ener­gy, accord­ing to the U.S. Agri­cul­ture Department. Mean­while, the USDA said it has made funds avail­able to help Cal­i­for­nia landown­ers con­serve nat­ur­al resources dam­aged or threat­ened as a…

  • 2014 Farm Bill Logs National Forests for Bioenergy

    - Decem­ber 17, 2014, U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack today announced that more than 200,000 tons of bio­mass were removed from fed­er­al lands through the Bio­mass Crop Assis­tance Pro­gram (BCAP). BCAP, reau­tho­rized by the 2014 Farm Bill, pro­vid­ed incen­tives for the removal of dead or dis­eased trees from Nation­al Forests and Bureau of…

  • The Forest Service and Collaboratives Garden Our Forests

    - by George Wuerth­n­er, Sep­tem­ber, 25, 2014, The Wildlife News If the pub­lic real­ly under­stood the illog­ic behind For­est Ser­vice man­age­ment, includ­ing those endorsed by for­est col­lab­o­ra­tives, I am cer­tain there would be more oppo­si­tion to cur­rent For­est Ser­vice policies. First, most FS tim­ber sales lose mon­ey. They are a net loss to tax­pay­ers. After the…

  • Forest Service and Collaboratives Garden Our Forests

    - by George Wuerth­n­er, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2014, The Wildlife News If the pub­lic real­ly under­stood the illog­ic behind For­est Ser­vice polices, includ­ing those endorsed by for­est col­lab­o­ra­tives, I am cer­tain there would be more oppo­si­tion to cur­rent For­est Ser­vice policies. First, most FS tim­ber sales lose mon­ey. They are a net loss to tax­pay­ers. After the…

  • US Forest Service Moves to Start Clearcutting in Rim Fire Area

    - by Chad Han­son, August 28, 2014, Earth Island Jour­nal  [How much of the forests that expe­ri­enced the Rim Fire will be feed­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tors? ‑Ed.] The US For­est Ser­vice issued a draft deci­sion yes­ter­day for a mas­sive post-fire log­ging project in the Stanis­laus Nation­al For­est por­tion of the 2013 Cal­i­for­nia Rim Fire, which cov­ered 257,171 acres…

  • USDA Splurges Millions on Biomass Power Incinerators

    [More tax­pay­er mon­ey fund­ing pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions to log Nation­al Forests under the unsci­en­tif­ic guise of “wild­fire pre­ven­tion.” ‑Ed.] -  US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, July 23, 2014, Office of Communications Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack today announced that the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) has select­ed 36 ener­gy facil­i­ties in 14 states to accept bio­mass deliv­er­ies sup­port­ed by…

  • Forest Thinning Will Increase Wildfire Risk

    - by Charles Thomas, The Ore­gon­ian As fires again rage across the West, sen­a­tors from John McCain, R‑Ariz., to Ron Wyden, D‑Ore., echo the refrain “thin the forests” to pre­vent wild­fires. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the advo­cat­ed thin­ning will actu­al­ly stoke the wild­fires of the future rather than lessen their occur­rence and impacts. Thin­ning pre­scrip­tions pro­posed in…

  • Farm Bill Based on Flawed Assumptions about Forest Health and Wildfire

    - by George Wuerthner There are wide­ly held assump­tions that log­ging will reduce or pre­clude large wild­fires and bee­tle out­breaks. The recent Farm Bill pro­vi­sion that would allow cat­e­gor­i­cal exclu­sion to log up to 3000 acres with­out NEPA review is based on flawed assump­tions about for­est health and wildfire.  1. LARGE WILDFIRE CLIMATE DRIVEN Large…