Forests

The Latest On: Forests

February 3, 2009 | Article

"Long Live Mineral King..."

After writing a blog item about the storied Mineral King valley, I crafted an essay about it for the High Country News. The news is that it is about to be declared America's newest wilderness. Here's how I started the HCN article:

"A half-million abandoned mines litter the American West, many dribbling poisons into rivers and streams. But after more than a century of healing, one such place is poised to become one of America's newest wilderness areas. It's a testament to the resilience of nature and the vision of the people who fought to preserve it."

Read the full HCN story.

January 22, 2009 | Article

Now We Can All Retire ... Right?

Jan. 20 marked the dawn of a new day in Washington. We hope it means a clear break from the past eight years of drilling, logging, and ignoring science. So now all us enviro lawyers can retire or get real jobs because President Obama - enjoy those two words together - is going to take care of everything ... right?

Well ... probably not. The next four years will likely be as busy as the last four for conservationists. Here's a sampling of reasons.

January 14, 2009 | Article

Mineral King to Become a Wilderness. Again.

Full circle time, in a sense. The establishment of this organization was sparked, in part, by a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club in 1969, challenging a ski resort proposed for a valley in the Sierra Nevada called Mineral King. The club had no objection to skiing per se, but this was to be a humongous affair that would have completely overwhelmed the valley and its wildlife and largely wrecked it for hiking, camping, and backpacking.

December 3, 2008 | Article

Roadless Setback

As faithful readers will recall, we’ve been reporting on the saga of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule for a very long time. Put in place at the end of the Clinton administration and immediately hamstrung by Bush operatives, the rule, which bans most roadbuilding and logging on roadless areas of the national forests, has bounced around a dozen courthouses, with Earthjustice lawyers defending the measure from attacks by states and the timber industry as the new government talked out of four sides of its mouth.

October 23, 2008 | Article

Ecuador Gives Rights to Nature

Most environmentalists believe that nature has a right to exist for its own sake, but that's not how the law works in our country.

In the United States, nature is defensible only if a human will miss the forest, species, or clean water when it is gone. To use the law, a human must first prove harm to their person.

If that proverbial tree falls in the woods and no human cares, no laws were broken. But if a tree falls and the hiker who depended on its shade is harmed, the U.S. legal system may provide some relief.

October 14, 2008 | Article

Interior Goes Nuke-u-lar on Grand Canyon

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne didn't like the law that required him to promptly protect public lands around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. So he's getting rid of it. Citizens have only a few days to express their opposition.

With less than 100 days left in its life, the current administration has its hands full. The economy is on its scariest roller-coaster ride in generations. And we're still fighting two wars. You'd think the administration would be too busy to do anything else.

October 10, 2008 | Article

Costs of Forest Loss “Dwarfs Bank Crisis”

Attention has been focused on the financial crisis recently. Yet a study headed by a Deutsche Bank economist concludes that the annual costs of forest destruction is between $2 trillion and $5 trillion. So while Wall Street has lost between $1-$1.5 trillion, we are losing "natural capital" at a rate of $2 to $5 trillion every year

September 15, 2008 | Article

Trees and Global Warming

Forests are helping reduce global warming, but global warming is killing forests.

Global warming sometimes can seem like a faraway thing in the American West.

Glaciers? We really don't have many. Except in that national park in Montana. But those will all be gone in 20-30 years or so.

Polar bears? Not in our neighborhood.

September 9, 2008 | Case

Monitoring the Health of the Sierra Nevada

Earthjustice challenged regulations issued by the Bush administration and Forest Service that sought to severally weaken environmental regulations in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, which are necessary to assess the general health of forest wildlife and habitat.

September 5, 2008 | Article

Tears, Ghosts and Golden Trout

Just a few weeks ago, I stood with my two young sons in the Southern Sierra, gazing at the fortress walls of the Great Western Divide and marveling at how peaceful it seemed compared to 30 years before.

Those decades ago, I had come to this same spot as a newspaper reporter to write about the early struggles of the environmental movement - struggles that saved Mineral King from development, halted clearcutting on the national forest, created the Golden Trout Wilderness, and gave birth to Earthjustice.

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