Guest author Randal O’Toole has a degree in forestry from Oregon State University and has spent several decades studying forest policy. He is the author of six books, including Reforming the Forest Service, and author of The Perfect Firestorm: Bringing Forest Service Wildfire Costs under Control, a Cato Institute Policy Analysis. Every summer, smoke from…
Tag: Federal Management
Don’t Cut Trees in the Tongass. Go Fishing.
The Biden administration is proposing a broad ban on most commercial logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, a 16.7-million acre forest that has been a political football for decades. “Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the proposal would provide $25 million for community development and would allow Alaska Natives and small-scale operators to continue to harvest…
‘Wild Horse Annie’ Rides Again
Once again, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is faced with opposition to its way of dealing with wild horses on public rangeland. For many decades, wild horses and burros have proliferated on public lands—descendants of escaped horses going back as far as the years of Spanish exploration, plus horses lost or abandoned by settlers…
Biden’s Land Management Appointee Gets a Grilling from Republican Senators
In a hearing June 8, Republicans challenged Tracy Stone-Manning’s nomination as head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Interior Department bureau is in charge of cattle grazing, energy development, and logging on about 245 million acres of publicly owned, mostly western land. Manning-Stone is a long-time environmentalist who is a senior advisor on…
Can a Rancher Kill a Grizzly Bear in Self-Defense?
The growing numbers of grizzly bears in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, are rankling ranchers. So the Montana legislature has passed two bills that aim at giving ranchers more rights to kill grizzlies. But will these laws fly? The will undoubtedly run into conflict with federal regulations for the grizzly, which is still listed as an…
Yellowstone Shores Up Employee Housing—A Good Thing, Says PERC
Yellowstone National Park is giving high priority to upgrading employee housing. That is proving a good strategy, writes Shawn Regan of PERC in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. It is essential for keeping quality employees who are often alone or nearly alone in isolated parts of the 2.2 million-acre park. When he became Yellowstone’s superintendent in…