The Biden administration has issued a ten-year plan to manage the national forests to prevent future wildfires. It will include “the use of prescribed fire and thinning to reduce hazardous fuels,” says PERC’s Shawn Regan, writing in City Journal. “It’s a step in the right direction,” says Regan. However, the billions of dollars proposed by the…
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Yosemite and the ‘Balance of Nature’ Myth
The following photographic essay illustrates the changing landscape at California’s Yosemite Valley and undermines the myth of a static “balance of nature.” The author, Shawn Regan, is vice president of research at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). The photograph above shows Yosemite Valley in 1899 (left) and today (right). If it seems like…
‘Negligible’ Fishermen Sue to Stop New England Wind Project
The long-planned Vineyard Wind 1 Project, to be located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands off the shore of Massachusetts, has hit turbulence again. In December, an arm of the Texas Public Policy Foundation sued the federal government on grounds that it was wrong to approve the project. The foundation is representing six fishing…
Is the Interior Department Leasing More Land for Oil and Gas than Trump Did?
An investigative report by Adam Federman in the Washington Post says that the Biden administration is issuing oil and gas permits at a rate faster than Trump did. “Between Jan. 20 and Oct. 31, the Bureau of Land Management [part of the Interior Department] approved 3,091 new onshore drilling permits—permits it could have deferred or…
Should Yellowstone Grizzlies Get Off the Endangered List?
Five Republican senators are asking Democratic committee heads to hold hearings on a bill that has been tied up in committees since April. The bill would remove one group of grizzly bears from listing under the Endangered Species Act. That group is the population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the area that includes and surrounds…
Environmentalists Deny the True Causes of Wildfires
Better forest management, including prescribed burns and strategic logging, are essential to preventing western wildfires, says Ryan Zinke, former Interior Department secretary and former Montana congressman. “Radical environmentalists would have you believe forest management means clear cutting forests and national parks. But their rhetoric could not be further from the truth. They make outdated and…