In The News
What Does the Supreme Court’s Chevron Decision Mean For a Potential Second Trump Term?
“The truth is the Chevron decision has been a mixed bag for the environment because deference to agency interpretations of environmental laws is only helpful if the agencies are trying to protect the environment,” said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist with the Earth Island Institute’s John Muir Project.
Read MoreAs Wildfires Rage in Oregon, Tree-Sitters Continue Protests to Protect Old Growth Trees
“These unchecked logging practices would lead to increased wildfire risk while also weakening environmental safeguards … that are crucial to maintaining these ecosystems and ensuring that these activities don’t harm endangered species or degrade the environment,” said Jennifer Mamola, the advocacy and policy director, for the John Muir Project.
Read MoreCalifornia Wildfires Have Already Burned 90,000 Acres, and Summer is Just Beginning
By Grace Toohey
Los Angeles Times
California’s summer is off to a fiery start after an explosion of wildfire activity across the state this week, with blazes stretching firefighting resources thin, forcing evacuations and scorching several homes, businesses and bone-dry hillsides.
Read MoreSuppressing Wildfires is Harming California’s Giant Sequoia Trees
By Adam Popescu
NewScientist: Life
Recent years have seen some of the largest wildfires in California’s history, and one of the best approaches to limiting their damage is controlled burns that reduce natural fuel for the fires. But now, it seems these burns are destroying the state’s iconic sequoia trees.
Read MoreForest Service Sued for Approving Plumas Forest Logging Project
By Samantha Hawkins
Bloomberg Law
The US Forest Service approved a logging project in the Plumas National Forest without adequately assessing its environmental effects, environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed Friday in California federal court. The $650 million Central/West Slope Project plans to log and burn 217,721 acres of mature and old-growth habitat in Plumas National Forest, located in the northern Sierra Nevadas, John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and other groups said in the lawsuit.
Read MoreTeam of Researchers Find Wildfire is Future to Saving California’s Giant Sequoias
By Hunter Sowards
CBS13 News
Wildfires were once seen as the downfall of the treasured giant sequoia trees in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, but a team of researchers with the John Muir Project released a recent study outlining how they could be our best shot at saving them.
Read MoreConservation Groups Seek to Block Logging Projects in Giant Sequoia National Monument
By Carmen Kohlruss
The Magazine of the Sierra Club
The sequoia groves and endangered animals found in California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument are imperiled by a pair of logging projects, conservation groups argue in a new lawsuit that asks a federal judge to put a stop to the proposed tree cutting.
Read MoreNPS Wants to Plant Sequoias; Environmentalists Sue, Say There’s No Need to Butt In
By Andrew J. Campa
Los Angeles Times
High-intensity fires in 2020 and 2021 devastated the adult sequoia tree population globally, particularly at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in Southern California. That is one of the few things that National Park Service staffers and the environmentalists who are suing the agency can agree on.
Read MoreWhy Environmentalists are Suing the National Park Service to Prevent It From Planting Trees
By Jonathan Park & Janna Van Vranken
CNN
The National Park Service wants to replant sequoia groves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, where wildfires in 2020 and 2021 inflicted lasting damage on the iconic sequoia forests. Environmentalists in California say its a huge mistake.
Read MoreThe Logjam in Biden’s $50 Billion Dollar Wildfire Plan
By Paul Koberstein & Jessica Applegate
Undark Op-Ed
On Maui, a solitary beachfront home, unscorched by the wildfire that devastated the town of Lahaina in August, stands amid the ashes of dozens of incinerated homes. And in Northern California, a large, mostly unscathed forest mysteriously surrounds the devastated town of Paradise, lost five years ago to another wildfire.
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