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Tag: forests

  • 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…

  • More Logging and Biomass Burning Won’t Solve Job Woes

    -  by Rob Handy, July 6, 2014, Reg­is­ter Guard Dur­ing my tenure as a Lane Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, I watched Lane County’s tim­ber har­vest rise from 337 mil­lion board feet in 2009 to 590 mil­lion board feet in 2012, report­ed con­cise­ly by the state Depart­ment of Forestry. In spite of this huge surge, a 75 per­cent increase, I…

  • Group Calls for Probe of Nova Scotia Biomass Logging

    [The for­est foot­print for a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor is mas­sive. Will be inter­est­ing to see if any probe is done in regards to this facil­i­ty. ‑Ed.] -  by Erin Pot­tie, June 27, 2014, Cape Bre­ton Bureau A Cape Bre­ton envi­ron­men­tal group is call­ing for an emer­gency review of har­vest­ing prac­tices at Nova Sco­tia Power’s bio­mass plant in…

  • Massachusetts Grants Millions to Biomass Industry

    [Mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars go to pol­lut­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tion under the guise of “clean” ener­gy. ‑Ed.] -  by Anna Simet, June 5, 2014, Bio­mass Magazine Mass­a­chu­setts has ded­i­cat­ed $3.5 mil­lion to nine renew­able ther­mal projects in the state through a new grant pro­gram, the Mass­a­chu­setts Renew­able Ther­mal Busi­ness Invest­ment Financ­ing Program. Funds for the pro­gram are…

  • Cutting the Trees We Need to Save the Forest

    -  by Bob Berwyn, July 7, 2014, The Col­orado Independent Even here, in a cool for­est hol­low near Ten­mile Creek, you can feel the tom-toms. It’s a dis­tant beat, born in the mar­bled halls of Con­gress, where polit­i­cal forces blow an ill wind across Colorado’s forests. Near­ly every West­ern elect­ed offi­cial with a clump of shrub­by…

  • Activists Shut Down Seneca Biomass Incinerator in Eugene, Oregon

    - by Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­ers, July 7, 2014, For­est Defense Now Scores of activists with Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­ers and Earth First! con­verged on the Seneca Jones bio­mass plant this morn­ing to protest the company’s pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic lands in the Elliott State For­est and ongo­ing pol­lu­tion in West Eugene. Cur­rent­ly sev­er­al peo­ple have locked them­selves to…

  • Cowardly Climate Report Urges Business as Usual

    - by Shan­non Wil­son, Eco Advo­cates Northwest bellona.org The Nation­al Cli­mate Assess­ment Report released by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion in May revealed some harsh truths about the cli­mate chaos our species is fac­ing. How­ev­er, a stu­dious read­ing of the report will show that it mere­ly pro­vides cov­er for busi­ness as usu­al, green­wash­es the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, and pro­motes destruc­tive solu­tions such as…

  • On Biomass, EPA Should Follow the Science

    Oth­er than the author’s sup­port for so-called “sus­tain­able” bio­mass, over­all a decent piece. — Josh - by William H. Schlesinger, June 18, 2014, The Hill In America’s South­east­ern states, there’s a boom­ing ener­gy trend that’s as big a step back­ward as imaginable. In fact, it stretch­es back to the time of cave­men. Pow­er com­pa­nies are burn­ing trees…

  • Half the Wood for New Hampshire Biomass Incinerator from Out of State

    - by Chris Jensen, May 23, 2014, New Hamp­shire Pub­lic Radio About 51 per­cent of the wood pur­chased for the new Burgess BioPow­er bio­mass plant in Berlin dur­ing its first two months of oper­a­tion came from New Hamp­shire, accord­ing to a new “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” report filed with the state’s Site Eval­u­a­tion Committee. Thir­ty-five per­cent came from Maine. Five per­cent from Vermont.…

  • 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…