Forest Service will close 57 of 77 research facilities. Critics warn closures threaten wildfire research.

Many of the research facilities slated for closure conducted
wildfire research. (Photo via Rocky Mountain Research Station)

As part of its ongoing restructuring plan, the U.S. Forest Service announced it's "closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states," reports Eric Niiler of The New York Times. Critics say the shake-up threatens wildfire and climate research on forests, just as wildfires are becoming more common and more severe in several parts of the United States.

USFS leadership said the consolidation will streamline research facilities into a main hub in Fort Collins, Colorado, and relocate staff to nearby states. Niiler writes, "But employees said they feared the move would lead many scientists to leave instead." The USDA already announced plans in late March to relocate USFS headquarters and 260 agency employees from Washington to Salt Lake City.

The closures include "six research and development facilities in California, five in Mississippi, four in Michigan and three in Utah," Niiler reports. The agency will also shutter all nine of its regional offices, which "currently manage 154 national forests," Niiler explains. "Some states will have their own offices, and others will be consolidated."

USFS oversees a massive amount of land -- some 193 million acres -- that includes several laboratories and "experimental forests where scientists can monitor the effects of environmental changes over long periods of time," Niiler writes. They also investigate wildfire risks, prevention and how forests recover after a severe wildfire.

Thomas M. Schultz, Jr., the Forest Service chief, told the Times, "Forest Service R&D has produced world-class science for over a century, and that will continue. The consolidation is about organizing the research enterprise more efficiently, not diminishing it."

U.S. Forest Service chief says it is ready for fire season; some staff disagree

USFS Chief Tom Schultz talk with Region 4 employees in Utah.
 (USFS photo via Route Fifty)

Despite shedding 5,000 employees in early 2025, the United States Forest Service leadership feels sufficiently staffed for this year's wildfire season, which started near the beginning of June, peaks in mid-summer and trickles down in late October. "USFS says it’s ready for fire season after asking separated employees to come back," reports Eric Katz for Route Fifty. "But employees say the losses have been 'crippling.'"

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz admitted that staffing cuts and retirements had left shortages "though he said efforts to bring some of those employees back to work and shift others around to fill 'critical positions' will ensure its readiness," Katz explains. At a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting, Schultz reassured lawmakers that USFS is prepared.

While 2025 USFS staffing levels for firefighters and some deployment teams are comparable to those from 2024, they are just two parts of the operation. An entire team of fire experts, or "red card" holders, support firefighters behind the scenes, and both firefighters and red card holders "depend on support personnel who have left the agency in large numbers," Katz reports. USFS employees who actively fight fires rely on support staff for paychecks, supply purchases and contract management.

Schultz told Senate members that 1,400 [red card] employees will return for the upcoming fire season. He added that the USFS had "reassigned between 600 and 700 employees to move laterally to serve in critical areas," Katz writes. Schultz didn't comment on which areas would supply staff for the lateral move.

Even with the return of experienced key personnel, some active USFS firefighters don't think it will be enough. One firefighter told Katz, "We are not ready. The institutional knowledge of older people who left and the numbers of skilled people who left from all disciplines is crippling.”

Steve Guitierrez, a long-time federal firefighter who represents his colleagues through the National Federation of Federal Employees, told Katz, "I find it difficult to make that without all those employees that we will be fully staffed for this fire season. We were already low on numbers to begin with.” 

Funding system for rural schools that overlap with national forests is 'brutal.' Advocates seek a new solution.

Trinity Alps office building in Weaverville, California, pop. 3,667.
(Trinity Alps Unified School District photo via The Daily Yonder)

A lack of support for the 20-year-old Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act program has rural schools in 41 states preparing for a possible loss of vital funding. Leaders of those rural schools are advocating for a renewal of funding and a better plan for more secure funding in the future. 

"The law was up for re-authorization in 2024 but died last December without a vote from the House of Representatives," report Claire Carlson and Lane Wendell Fischer of The Daily Yonder. "The Senate had already voted unanimously to approve it."

The federal program provides money to counties that include National Forest land. "Because public land cannot be used or taxed for local interests, the SRS program offsets this loss of local revenue by allocating federal funds to support essential community infrastructure like roads and schools," Carlson and Fischer explain. "SRS requires regular re-authorization, typically every three years, and is often accompanied by reductions in funding."

In 2016, SRS funding wasn't approved in time, and schools missed a year of needed funding. The same thing may happen in 2025. Jamie Green, superintendent of Trinity Alps Unified School District in rural Trinity County, California, told the Yonder, “This every three-year thing, it’s brutal. Absolutely brutal.”

In 2023, Trinity Alps was allotted $600,000 from SRS. "These funds accounted for 5% of the district’s budget and were essential in paying for teachers, programming, and maintenance work," the Yonder reports. "With no clear path toward re-authorization, Green’s current goal is to do what he can to cushion Trinity Alps for the looming shortfall."

With the ongoing potential for funding gaps or reductions within the program, advocates want a longer-term solution. Mark Haggerty, a senior fellow at the independent nonprofit research institute Center for American Progress, favors establishing a trust. He told the Yonder, "A trust makes sure that communities have the resources they need. . . . It’s not asking the taxpayers for permanent appropriations, and it’s not adding to the debt. But it gives counties and schools predictable payments that they can rely on."

To read about obstacles a trust faces, click here. 

EPA cuts may leave rural towns with even fewer resources to combat extreme weather

Hills Creek Valley in Oakridge, Ore. EPA funds were
earmarked for wildfire smoke management. (Adobe Stock photo)

The Environmental Protection Agency cut $1.5 billion in DEI and Environmental Justice grants intended to help rural western communities combat ongoing extreme weather such as flooding, smog, drought and melting permafrost. Joshua Partlow and Amudalat Ajasa of The Washington Post report, "Residents and local organizations in these communities say the funding cuts undermine what little defense there is against growing climate threats."

The EPA initiated the cuts after President Trump "issued an executive order calling for federal grants to be terminated if they provide funding for programs that 'promote or take part in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives' or 'environmental justice initiatives,'" Partlow and Ajasa explain. "The recipients include nonprofit organizations, Native American tribes, cities, counties and universities across the country."

Each community planned to use the funds to address a unique set of environmental challenges. Some Alaskan villages sought funding to deal with ongoing coastal flooding brought on by melting permafrost, while Native American tribes needed dollars to address pollution, and mountain towns in the Pacific Northwest looked to use the money to assist with wildfire smoke problems. The lost support means all of these regions will have fewer resources to plan for and work through climate events.

Sarah Altemus-Pope, executive director of South Willamette Solutions, a nonprofit that helps communities with forest management, told the Post, "These were dollars that were going to really make a difference to people who are financially without the means to do this work to protect their health."

South Willamette Solutions held part of a $1 million EPA grant that would have helped seal homes against wildfire smoke in tiny Oakridge, Oregon, but the grant money was terminated. The Post reports, "The money, stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, was intended for work on about 30 homes. The work included installing grates on attic vents to keep embers out and sealing doors and windows to keep out smoke."

Natural wonders: Mt. Rainer's glaciers; wacky animals decline; the little bat that could; repurposing waste wool

Mt. Rainer is an active volcano. (Photo by Tiffany Von Arnim
via the National Park Service, CC image)

At 14,410 feet, Mount Rainier is the highest volcanic peak in the contiguous United States. It boasts the largest alpine glacial system outside of Alaska and contains the world's largest volcanic glacier cave system. It is the Mount's unearthly "frozen labyrinth tucked within the majestic volcano's east crater" that scientists are now daring to explore, reports Rebecca Dzombak of National Geographic. "The glaciers atop Mount Rainer, which towers to the southeast of Seattle, Washington, contains clues about the volcano, the inner workings of glaciers, and even icy worlds far from Earth."

In 2002, America's wacky animals -- think the great American llama, ostriches and emus -- flourished in the lower 48 states, Alaska and even Hawaii. Today that is no longer the case. All our "looney" animal populations have collapsed while other farm animals continue to thrive, reports Andrew Van Dam of The Washington Post. "From 2002 to 2022, we lost 83 percent of our ostriches, 79 percent of our llamas, 74 percent of our emus and 63 percent of our elk. Over that period, cattle were down just 8 percent, poultry was up 16 percent, and hogs were up 22 percent." The farms in Alaska and Hawaii no longer exist.

Little brown bat weigh less than 10 grams.
(Photo by Michael Code, Ambrook Research)

Cute as a button and confounding to scientists, Alaska's little brown bats have escaped white-nose syndrome. Can their "niche" in nature save them? "Meet Myotis lucifugus, commonly referred to as the little brown bat," reports Trina Moyles for Hakai magazine. Or, as chiropterologist (bat researcher) Jesika Reimer fondly calls it, 'the flying brown bear.'. . . Scientists know little about where [these bats] live at this far northern margin of the species' range."

Across North America, stands of trees of all different species are struggling to survive climate change. In response, scientists from the Cutfoot Experimental Forest are introducing some southern tree species to more northern regions, reports John H. Tibbetts of Knowable Magazine for Inverse. The survival of a grove of bitternut hickory trees, common to Illinois but transplanted to north-central Minnesota, is an example. "Normally, if a southern-adapted seedling is planted in an unsuitably cold climate like this one, it can risk frost damage, and its survival is threatened. . . . Today [scientists]can see the success of almost all the southern trees they planted."

Not all wool is usable for textiles, but it can make
'sweaters for the soil.' (Photo by Sam Carter, Unsplash)

Sheep farmers have developed a new way to repurpose coarser wool or "waste wool" that would have been thrown away by using a wool pelleting machine, reports Elise Konig for Ambrook Research. "A pelleting machine transforms the fleece’s long strands into cylinders that can more easily be handled. The pellets are then sold as soil amendments, providing water retention, nutrient recycling, and soil aeration."

Are you ready to clean, prune, test your soil, pick the plants and snuggle them in some soil? March is get-ready to garden month, and there's lots to do. "If you’ve been itching to get out and get gardening, we’re on the cusp of the season. This is the time to get organized and get ready because by the time we talk again in April, we will be in it, writes Amanda Blum for Lifehacker. From tidying the garden to splitting bulbs to fertilizing shrubs, Blum has a list of all the jobs to do before planting begins.

Big trees are a big deal. Preservation of old-growth trees is becoming a contentious battle nationwide.

The largest trees often grow together in a 'stand.'
(Photo by Steve Ringman, The Seattle Times)

Trees don't seem controversial, but they are. "The fight over the future of the last old and mature forests in America intensified Tuesday when the Biden administration called for preservation of old-growth trees," reports  Lynda V. Mapes of The Seattle Times. "The administration, after creating an inventory of the nation's old growth, wants to amend 128 forest land-management plans to conserve and steward 25 million acres of old-growth forests and 68 million acres of mature forest across the national forest system."

"For the Pacific Northwest — home to much of the nation's remaining old forests — an effort is already underway to overhaul and update key old-growth protections in the Northwest Forest Plan of 1994, one of the world's most ambitious conservation plans," Mapes writes. "But the nationwide attention from the federal government is adding to the debate over old forests' cultural and ecological significance and their ability to suck up carbon from the atmosphere that is warming the planet."

Not everyone agrees the new initiative is needed. The American Forest Resource Council, a trade group, "panned the old-growth initiative as unnecessary and burdensome," Mapes explains. Council President Travis Joseph issued a statement, saying, "Existing federal environmental laws and forest plans provide direction on managing and protecting old growth. Yet the agency is now being directed to embark on a new, massive bureaucratic process — during a wildfire and forest health crisis — that will likely make forest management more complex, costly, and contentious."

Big trees are a big deal. "They are the most important helpers in absorbing carbon because while they are slower growing than young trees, their greater mass locks away more carbon," Mapes reports. "Recent research shows large trees dominate carbon storage in the Pacific Northwest. Old and mature natural forests also provide a haven for biodiversity and human well-being."

As part of the Northwest Forest Plan overhaul, a 21-member committee "began work last September on updates to reflect changed conditions and new science." The U.S. Forest Service has announced its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement, expected in June, on the Northwest Forest Plan amendment, with a 90-day public comment period to begin at that time. 

Forest Service creates tools to give rural towns a better chance at wildfire resiliency grants; Oct. 31 next deadline

Smoke plume from Cal-Wood fire near Boulder, Colo.
(Photo by Malachi Brooks, Unsplash)

Rural communities looking to shore up financing wildfire prevention projects may have an improved chance of gaining grant dollars during the second application window of a federal grant program. The application period is open until Oct. 31, reports Claire Carlson of The Daily Yonder. Smaller communities often lack the capacity, such as additional staffing or grant expertise, to apply for and win grants despite their need for assistance.

Applying for a grant means communities must gather and supply data, which takes time smaller staff may not have. To combat this obstacle, the Forest Service has piloted the Community Wildfire Defense Grants Tool, which calculates the wildfire risk of every U.S. county. "The tool shows whether the county is considered low-income and has had any previous disasters, and if it’s ‘underserved’ as defined by the federally managed Climate & Economic Justice Screening Tool,” Carlson writes. Using the grant tool helps communities focus on getting and organizing data with few frustrations and fewer labor hours.

A second strategy deploys "'community navigators,' which are organizations that work directly with underserved communities to identify funding opportunities and help them through the grant application process," Carlson explains. "The navigators will also train community leaders to do this work on their own in the future." 

Grants requiring matching dollars from local coffers have kept poorer, more rural areas from accessing federal money, but waivers are an option. "Match waivers will be made available for communities that are underserved as defined by the Climate & Economic Justice Screening Tool or are nationally recognized tribes or Pacific Islands communities," Carlson adds. "The grant program is giving up to $250,000 to each community to develop wildfire protection plans and up to $10 million to each community to implement wildfire resiliency projects."

The CWDG calls for "community wildfire protection plans to focus on community-wide efforts to decrease wildfire risk, like improving emergency communications or identifying water sources," Carlson reports. "A comprehensive toolkit on how to create a community wildfire protection plan can be found here. For more information and access to the application, visit the Forest Service’s website."

A town of 400 in the Southern Cascades buys surrounding forest for wildfire protection, tourism, and to set an example

100-year-old Douglas firs in the Butte Falls Community Forest
(Photo by Amanda Loman via Columbia Insight)

The small town of Butte Falls, Oregon, decided to purchase its surrounding timber -- not to sell it, but to create an older, more wildfire-protected forest that also serves as recreational tourist destination, reports Grant Stringer for Columbia Insight, a Pacific Northwest environmental news source. "With a population of just 400 people, Butte Falls is a speck in an ocean of remote timberland, much of it burned. . . . Conventional wisdom in the region would have Butte Falls try to reclaim its former glory as a logging hub. . . . But community leaders plan to protect their future by looking to the forest itself. . . . Locals want to grow an older and biodiverse forest that they say will better protect the town from wildfires while attracting outdoor tourism."

Butte Falls' town leadership is onto something. "Conservationists and the state's top politicos say the small project playing out in a remote corner of Pacific Northwest forest can teach other communities how to adapt to climate disasters and hard times," Stringer writes. "It's a strategy some environmentalists want to implement across U.S. forests to sequester carbon, promote biodiversity and blunt severe wildfires. . . . In the new Butte Falls Community Forest, local foresters could build a trail network and recreation amenities near a roaring waterfall to bring outdoor tourism to the town, providing incomes without relying on dwindling timber jobs."

Map by Mackenzie Miller, Columbia Insight

The idea for a community forest came to Linda Spencer following the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, Calif., 250 milkes south. The blaze was "a wake-up call for Spencer, who was the mayor of Butte Falls at the time. . . . When the Seattle-based timber giant Weyerhaeuser informed the Butte Falls City Hall of plans to clear-cut and sell the cleared parcels surrounding the town, likely to another timber company, Spencer jumped at the opportunity to create a community-owned forest instead. . . [she saw] the project as a way for the community to assert control of a resource that is critical to the town's future and the quality of its environment." Spencer told Stringer: "We didn't want someone else managing the forest around us. We wanted to manage it ourselves."

Stringer reports, "Climate science is unpopular in Butte Falls, which is staunchly conservative, says Mike Smeltz, a local forester. . . . But when a group of locals visited the new community forest on a recent Saturday, there was broad agreement that the climate is less hospitable for certain conifers than it once was. . . . . If Butte Falls can weather this fire season, Smeltz will lead efforts to thin the forest by cutting down young trees and dead limbs. . . . That will help the largest trees, including mighty ponderosa pines towering above the thicket, to continue flourishing. According to Smeltz, the town already secured $450,000 from the Oregon Department of Forestry and another $450,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for this work."

It's a first: Genetically modified trees have been planted in Georgia Pine Belt, with hopes for large-scale climate help

Living Carbon researchers used a crude technique known as the
gene gun method. (Photo by Audra Melton, The New York Times)

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree.

Poet and journalist Joyce Kilmer penned that in 1913. What would he have thought if he had looked out his window to see "a low-lying tract of southern Georgia’s Pine Belt where half-dozen workers were planting row upon row of twig-like poplar trees," some "genetically engineered to grow wood at turbocharged rates while slurping up carbon dioxide from the air," as Gabriel Popkin of The New York Times reports?

Made by God, but reingineered by humans: "The poplars may be the first genetically modified trees planted in the United States outside of a research trial or a commercial fruit orchard," Popkin writes "Just as the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994 introduced a new industry of genetically modified food crops, the tree planters on Monday hope to transform forestry. Living Carbon, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company that produced the poplars, intends for its trees to be a large-scale solution to climate change."

“We’ve had people tell us it’s impossible,” Maddie Hall, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, told Popkin, who reports, "But she and her colleagues have also found believers — enough to invest $36 million . . . The company has also attracted critics. The Global Justice Ecology Project, an environmental group, has called the company’s trees 'growing threats' to forests and expressed alarm that the federal government allowed them to evade regulation. . . . Living Carbon has yet to publish peer-reviewed papers; its only publicly reported results come from a greenhouse trial that lasted just a few months."

Donald Ort, a University of Illinois geneticist whose plant experiments helped inspire Living Carbon’s technology, told Popkin, “They have some encouraging results," but he added that translation from greenhouse to the field is "not a slam dunk.”

Popkin explains: that the Georgia plantings used "the gene gun method, which essentially blasts foreign genes into the trees’ chromosomes. . . . In a field accustomed to glacial progress and heavy regulation, Living Carbon has moved fast and freely. The gene-gun-modified poplars avoided a set of federal regulations of genetically modified organisms that can stall biotech projects for years. (Those regulations have since been revised.) . . . On the land of Vince Stanley, a seventh-generation farmer who manages more than 25,000 forested acres in Georgia’s pine belt, mattock-swinging workers carrying backpacks of seedlings planted nearly 5,000 modified poplars."

Both the trees and Living Carbon will have survival challenges. "While outright destruction of genetically engineered trees has dwindled, the trees still prompt unease in the forestry and environmental worlds," Popkin reports. "Major organizations that certify sustainable forests ban engineered trees from forests that get their approval; some also prohibit member companies from planting engineered trees anywhere. To date, the only country where large numbers of genetically engineered trees are known to have been planted is China."

Ort "dismissed such environmental concerns. But he said investors were taking a big chance on a tree that might not meet its creators’ expectations," Popkin reports. Ort told him, “It’s not unexciting. I just think it’s uber-high risk."

Born to chop and saw, he dissed it; now he aims to be king of lumberjacks in 'original extreme sport' sort of like golf

Jason Lentz (Photo by Natalie Ivis, The New York Times)

How can a man can fall into a life he never wanted? Jason Lentz didn't want the life of a competitive lumberjack when his family tried to thrust upon him: "He certainly fought against it," reports Reid Forgrave of The New York Times. "His father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather, who had worked the Great Depression-era logging camps in Oregon, were all elite lumberjacks. And Jason didn’t want to do it. In fact, he hated it."

Growing up in Webster County, West Virginia, Lentz saw how lumberjacking hurt his family: "Jason hated that lumberjacking took his dad [Mel] away for as many as 11 months a year, barnstorming the country and world in search of competitions and their measly winner’s checks. He could make $500 or $1,000 at a show, but the winnings didn’t amount to much when set beside the cost of equipment and travel," Forgrave writes. "For a time, Mel worked a lumberjack show at Sea World Ohio, while Jason, his mother and his little sister scraped by in West Virginia. Jason blamed the sport for his growing up poor — poor even by the standards of one of the poorest counties in one of America’s poorest states." Jason told the Times, "I didn't want to be anything like him."

Right out of high school Jason dissed lumberjacking and focused on basketball, Forgrave reports, but when his post-college overseas basketball opportunity vanished, Jason was poor and lost. "Then his father put him in touch with a friend who had a job for Jason doing lumberjack exhibitions at Chimelong Paradise, an amusement park in Guangzhou, China," Forgrave notes. "Reluctant to follow in his dad’s steps but out of options, he flew to the other side of the world. There, out from under Mel’s shadow, Jason Lentz was free to find his own path. It led him right back to his father."

In China and then around the world, Lentz found his place as powerhouse lumberjack, "That brute strength is the advantage that Lentz, who is roughly the size of an NFL tight end, holds over virtually all his opponents in the Stihl Timbersports Series, which are the biggest-money events in the sport," Forgave reports. Stihl series calls lumberjacking "the original extreme sport." And for those who may think it's all about brute strength, Forgrave explains: "Lentz and other lumberjacks often compare their sport to golf: Power comes from hip torque instead of arm strength; precision comes from producing a repeatable swing. As in golf, the difference between really good and a champion often depends on mental strength: being able to forget one bad swing and move on to the next."

Mel and Jason Lentz (Natalie Ivis, NYT)

Forgrave recounts Jason's progress and regress: "Lentz did not do well at the 2022 Stihl Timbersports U.S. Championships in Little Rock, Ark. In 2021, he established himself as the best lumberjack in the world, winning pretty much every big event, including his first Stihl world title (which his dad won six times). He has a plan for 2023. He plans to head to Australia in January, where he will spend a few months training. . . . . The Australia portion of his 2023 season will end in April at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, known as the 'Wimbledon of Woodchop.' He thinks he has a chance to win the single-buck title in Australia. Only one American has ever won that title in Sydney: Mel Lentz."

Jason Lentz, 37, told Forgrave, “It’s the maturity thing. It’s like golf. My next 10 years, 13 years — those are going to be my prime.”

Democrats' reconcilation bill has money that can be used for a 'climate-focused Farm Bill' next year, Stabenow says

The budget-reconciliation bill announced Thursday by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has $20 billion for "voluntary conservation practices on the farm, such as cover crops, to sequester greenhouse gases in soils, plants, and trees," Chuck Abbott reports for Successful Farming.

Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, said the money would allow the next Farm Bill, up for reauthorization next year, to be focused on climate. “We are equipping farmers, foresters, and rural communities with the necessary tools and resources to be a part of the solution and grow their local economies at the same time,” she said.

The bill has another $14 billion in rural spending and $5 billion for forests. It also "would extend or expand tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel, carbon capture, biodiesel, and renewable diesel," Abbott reports. "With the $20 billion earmarked for agricultural conservation, the Senate and House Agriculture committees could ramp up climate mitigation efforts that would otherwise go wanting." The bill "would prioritize practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase climate resiliency."

A one-page summary of the bill is available here. A summary of the bill’s climate and energy provisions is available here. The text of the bill is available here.

USDA using $1 billion from Commodity Credit Corp. for pilot conservation projects related to climate change

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is announcing today $1 billion in funding for a conservation pilot program called the Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities. The money will come from the Depression-era Commodity Credit Corporation, Ximena Bustillo reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture. President Biden is following former President Trump's lead in using the CCC for policy purposes; Trump used it to compensate farmers for losses during the trade war with China. The CCC gets its money from Congress.

USDA is encouraging greener practices in agriculture since that sector accounts for about 10 percent of the nation's overall carbon-dioxide emissions. "The goal is to implement climate-friendly conservation practices on working farms and forests (such as no-till, cover crops, rotational grazing or reforestation) and then actually measure and verify the climate benefits of those practices," Bustillo reports. "Those could include sinking carbon into soils, capturing methane or releasing less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

The funding will be released in two rounds; it's "designed to fit a wide range and variety of production and ideally will not favor one commodity, region or operation size over another," Bustillo reports. "Vilsack said USDA will seek periodic updates from the pilot projects to help inform department policy, as well as programs that could be more permanently established or changed through the 2023 Farm Bill."

What's in the Build Back Better bill for rural America

Today the House passed a $2 trillion social spending and climate bill 220-213, with all Republicans and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, opposed. It goes to the Senate, where changes are likely to satisfy Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. 

"The package retains most of its original major elements, including funding for clean energy, universal prekindergarten, subsidized child care, and billions more for health care, affordable housing and elder care," The Wall Street Journal reports. "Many of these programs are set to expire within several years, a deliberate effort to lower the package’s top-line price. Making the programs temporary as opposed to permanent also represents a bet by Democrats that future voters will vote for candidates who promise to renew them. The package would be financed by changes to the corporate tax code, including a new corporate minimum tax, while raising taxes on high-income individuals."

Here's some of what's in it that affects rural America:

• $555 billion for climate, including "$320 billion in 10-year expanded tax credits for residential and utility-scale renewable energy, transmission, electric vehicles and clean-energy manufacturing; $105 billion to boost resilience to the effects of climate change, such as wildfires and droughts; $110 billion to grow U.S. supply chains for renewable energy technology; and $20 billion to motivate the government to purchase cutting-edge energy technologies," the WSJ reports.
• $200 billion to extend the expanded child-tax credit through 2022.
• About $200 billion for four weeks of paid parental, sick or caregiving leave, starting in 2024.
• $150 billion for providing at-home medical care for seniors and disabled Americans.
• $18 billion for "job-promoting investments to ensure those living in rural America, on tribal lands, and our insular areas have access to clean water and reliable and efficient renewable energy, says the Agriculture Department. "This funding will also support investment in renewable biofuels infrastructure important to farmers and our fight against climate change, and flexible funding for rural community growth." That includes $9.6 billion in debt relief for farmers and $1 billion for farmer loan modifications. It also includes more than $1.3 billion in assistance and support for underserved farmers, ranchers and foresters.
• $2 billion for agricultural research and infrastructure. Click here for a detailed breakdown.
• $5 million through Sept. 30, 2031, for audits and other oversight to make sure USDA spends all that money on what it's supposed to. USDA has been widely criticized for sparse oversight.
• About $27 billion for programs to help prevent and fight forest fires, restore forests and promote tourism in under-served areas. That includes the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps, modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression.
• $28 billion for conservation, including support for farmers.
• $10 billion for child nutrition programs, which would make 9 million more children eligible for free school meals.
• $200 million for additional pandemic relief payments to frontline grocery workers.
• A pathway to legal residence, but not citizenship, for undocumented immigrants. About 7 million of the 11 million undocumented in the U.S. could apply for work permits, permission to travel abroad, and state driver's licenses. "To qualify, immigrants must have arrived before Jan. 1, 2011, and lived here ever since. Work permits would be valid for five years, and could be renewed one time, extending protections through September 2031," The Washington Post reports.
• Restoration of more than 400,000 green cards that went unused because of bureaucratic or pandemic-related delays.
• A fee on methane emissions and funding to help facilities lower such emissions.
• Enhanced subsidies for health insurance through Affordable Care Act exchanges would be extended through 2027. They are now set to expire after 2022. "The changes would mean more people would continue to remain eligible for subsidies and lower-income people would also continue to see more generous subsidies," the WSJ reports.
• Subsidies in 2022-25 for the 4 million uninsured Americans in the 12 states that haven't expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
• Many Medicare recipients would pay less out of pocket for health care, and the program would cover hearing care for the first time.
• Consumers with private insurance would never have to pay more than $35 for insulin before a deductible is applied.
• A $2,000 a year cap on out-of-pocket costs for the voluntary prescription drug benefit, starting in 2024.
• More than $18 billion for the first three years for universal pre-kindergarten. "After that, the program would be funded with a 90% federal, 10% state split in the fourth year, then 75%-25% in the fifth year and 60%-40% in the sixth year. The program would end after six years," WSJ reports. A coalition of conservative religious groups opposes the measure, saying a non-discrimination clause could disqualify them.
• About $100 billion over three years to address child-care shortages and raise workers' wages by building new facilities, training teachers, and subsidizing low- and middle-income families' child-care expenses. "After the first three years, the entitlement expands to nearly all families. It guarantees that no family making less than 250% of their state’s median income would pay more than 7% of their income on child care," the WSJ reports. "Families making less than 75% of their state’s median income would pay nothing. The program ends after six years."
• For the first time, the federal government would be able to negotiate the prices of some medications covered by Medicare. The measure would begin with 10 drugs starting in 2025 and will increase.
• $150 billion for affordable housing, including $65 billion to repair public housing, $35 billion for rental assistance and $15 billion for affordable housing grants through the Housing Trust Fund. The plan will also provide down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers whose parents are also not homeowners.

The bill is notable for how much funding will go to rural and agricultural interests. The American Farm Bureau Federation opposes it; President Zippy Duvall said in a statement the bill would hurt rural America because it "raises taxes and spends more taxpayer money at a time our country can afford to do neither."

However, a diverse group of conservation, agricultural, and sporting groups voiced their support for the bill. Conservation funding in the bill "underscores the central role that farmers, ranchers and private forest owners play in addressing the climate crisis," Aviva Glaser, the National Wildlife Federation's senior director of agriculture policy, said in a statement. "This transformative investment into popular and effective USDA conservation programs and practices will create jobs, support rural communities, reduce emissions, and create benefits for soil, water, and wildlife.

Study finds agricultural workers 34% more likely to die by suicide than general working-age population

A recently published study found that agricultural workers are an estimated 34% more likely to die from suicide than the total working-age population. The researchers sought to better discern suicide risk among rural residents in general and those in the farming, fishing, forestry and logging industries in particular. Though previous studies have shown these populations are at a higher risk of suicide, the authors of this study believe poor sampling and the relative rarity of suicide may have skewed the numbers. 

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the University of Kentucky analyzed 29 years worth of data from the National Center for Health Statistics' Mortality-Linked National Health Interview Survey. Here are some of the key takeaways they found:

• The age-adjusted suicide mortality rate per 100,000 people was 22.3 for farmers and farm managers; 28.7 for those in the farming, forestry and fishing industries overall; 15.3 across all other occupations; and 16.1 among rural residents in general.
• The overall age-adjusted rate for farmworkers was 21.6. It was 28.3 among rural farmworkers and 17.1 for city-dwelling farmworkers.
• Age-adjusted results show that forestry and fishing workers have a higher suicide risk than all other occupations. 

The researchers note that the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries employ about 2.3 million Americans, and that they are among the nation's lowest-paid workers, with a median annual salary of about $27,000. Low socioeconomic status is linked with increased suicide rates, possibly contributing to the elevated risk among such workers, they wrote. 

Notably, the study includes data from 1986 through 2017. But over the past few years, poor agricultural conditions and the pandemic have worsened mental health and suicide rates among farmers and rural residents.

Trump administration to protect whitebark pine trees due to climate change, beetles and lethal fungus infection

A dead whitebark pine tree near Jackson Hole, Wyo. (Associated Press photo by Mead Gruver)

"Climate change, voracious beetles and [a lethal fungal] disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Tuesday," Matthew Brown reports for The Associated Press. The Fish and Wildlife Service will publish a proposal in the Federal Register today to protect the whitebark pine tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

The whitebark pine's habitat spans more than 80 million acres across seven Western states and Canada, the largest geographic area of any other tree listed as an endangered species. But more than half of all standing whitebark pines are already dead, according to a 2018 Forest Service Study, Dino Grandoni reports for The Washington Post. 

"The decision to declare the tree endangered due to climate change is an unusual one for an administration that often dismisses that threat," Grandoni reports. And, the listing may have "implications for loggers who would have to work around the protected pine on U.S. Forest Service land. About 88 percent of the tree’s range in the United States is on land managed by the federal government."

Fish and Wildlife isn't protecting specific habitats as necessary to the tree's survival because the agency argues the fungus is the threat, not habitat decline.

Researchers ask for help in finding ash trees that beat borer

Science magazine map; differing county density among states may misrepresent density of emerald ash borers

Green Ash
(Photo by Chris Evans, University of Illinois)

The emerald ash borer is "the most devastating insect ever to strike a North American tree," Science magazine said in August, but a few trees somehow resist it, and researchers are asking for the public's help to find them in hopes of rebuilding the species as genetically resistant.

"Finding them in the forest is like looking for a needle in the haystack," writes Carol Lea Spence of the University of Kentucky, where the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources is coordinating the project. But several have been found, and the Kentucky Division of Forestry is raising trees from their seeds. It will take years, as the trees grow, to make sure they inherit the resistance to the borer.

UK forestry professor Ellen Crocker and forest health technician Megan Buland want people to report any surviving trees in the woods through the TreeSnap app. "Researchers are looking for large, mature trees left among those that were killed by the invasive insect," Spence reports. "Seedlings that are springing up in the gaps left by dead ash are not eligible for the study, because once large enough, they too will most likely be susceptible to the borer." Crocker and Buland developed a virtual hunt for "lingering ash" and a video that can help you identify ash trees. North America has 16 species of ash; the mode widespread, the green ash, is the most threatened by the borer. Other species such as white ash are highly susceptible.

Trump administration rejects emergency aid for California fires, including state's first million-acre blaze

Update: The Trump administration quickly reversed its decision to deny California wildfire aid after widespread outcry, The New York Times reports.

"Fueled by extreme heat and tinder-dry conditions, wildfires exploded across California in September, blazing through almost 1.9 million acres, destroying nearly 1,000 homes and killing at least three people. One wildfire, the Creek Fire, became the largest single blaze in California history and grew so fierce it spun up fire tornadoes with 125-mph winds," Tim Elfrink reports for The Washington Post. "But the Trump administration this week refused to grant an emergency declaration that would open up hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for areas devastated in those fires, California state officials confirmed to The Washington Post early Friday."

The Trump administration has granted similar declarations for other wildfires earlier this year, so it's unclear why California's request was denied. "President Trump has previously threatened to withhold emergency fire aid to California over disputed claims that the state isn’t doing enough to prevent wildfires," Elfrink reports. He has repeatedly criticized California for poor forest management, but state and local governments only control 3 percent of the state's forests; the federal government owns and manages 57%. 

The fires have gotten so big because of climate change, which spurred a record-dry February, and because the stretched-thin firefighting forces prioritized more densely populated areas over rural fires where fewer people were in immediate danger.

Wildfires weaken watersheds and set the stage for flooding; presidential candidates weigh in

The wildfires that are ravaging the American West "are weakening watersheds and setting the stage for deadly mudslides and flooding and, in some places, threatening to poison critical water supplies," Hannah Northey reports for Energy & Environment News.

Such has been the damage that the fires have become a campaign issue for President Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden. "With more than two dozen major fires in California alone last week during an unprecedented wildfire season, they're no longer an afterthought for campaigns that – seven weeks from Election Day – would typically be hyper-focused on engaging voters in swing states such as Florida, Michigan and Ohio rather than addressing disasters in California, Oregon and Washington, three states solidly in the Democratic column,"  Dino Grandoni reports for The Washington Post.

Both candidates held competing press conferences about the wildfires on Monday, Grandoni reports. Biden called Trump a "climate arsonist," criticized his record on the environment, and warned of worsening environmental disasters should Trump be re-elected. "Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes,” Biden said from Wilmington, Del. "But if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating and more deadly."

Trump, who spoke from Sacramento, blamed the fires entirely on poor forest management and did not comment on climate change though several public officials encouraged him to during the press conference, Grandoni reports. Last year, Trump frequently blamed California wildfires on state-level forest management; he alluded to that view in Monday's press conference, but Gov. Gavin Newsom noted that 57 percent of the state's forests are managed at the federal level and only 3% at the state level. Newsom also asserted that climate change, not just forest management, is to blame for the fires.

"Fire researchers say a century of rising temperatures and decades of fire suppression policies, which have allowed flammable material to build up in forests, are both contributing to the blazes," Grandoni reports.

Pandemic complicates disaster-response tactics

After a rash of tornadoes killed dozens in the South this week, "officials from Texas to South Carolina were left to grapple with an urgent question: How do we respond to natural disasters during a pandemic without exposing even more people to a deadly virus?" Tara Law reports for Time.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves acknowledged the conundrum: "The fact that the coronavirus exists is complicating the recovery from the tornado, while the tornadoes are complicating our efforts to make sure that we do everything in our power to stop the spread of the virus."

Many emergency management services were already under-supplied before the pandemic; finding enough supplies now to respond to natural disasters could be difficult, said Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management and disaster science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Another problem, she told Law, is that disaster-response efforts often require people to violate social-distancing protocols, actions that can further spread the virus.

The virus is affecting other disaster responses. Federal and state officials are trying to figure out how to fight wildfires. "With the 2020 fire season poised to be severe, numerous questions remain unanswered about how large crews of firefighters will move around the country when some states require quarantines, and how firefighters will be housed when fighting large blazes," Bobby Magill reports for Bloomberg Law.

Firefighters are often housed in camps of more than 1,000 when fighting big fires, but officials aren't sure how to test or quarantine those units if a firefighter falls ill with covid-19. However, it's clear that traditional firefighting strategies will need adjustment. "Plans for how federal and state agencies will fight fires amid the pandemic are scheduled to be finalized by the end of April, according to an April 9 National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group memo," Magill reports. "The group coordinates wildfire fighting strategy among Interior Department agencies, the U.S. Forest Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and members of the National Association of State Foresters."

GAO says employees of BLM and other federal agencies routinely face threats, assault; calls for safety measures

A new report from the Government Accountability Office of Congress finds that the Agriculture and Interior departments have failed to complete security assessments of federal facilities on public land, and calls for making federal land-management facilities safer in the wake of threats and assaults against government employees, Jennifer Yachnin reports for Energy & Environment News.

According to data compiled from the four federal land-management agencies -- the USDA's Forest Service and Interior's Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service -- employees faced issues ranging from threatening telephone calls to attempted murder in fiscal years 2013 through 2017. "However, the number of actual threats and assaults is unclear and may be higher than what is captured in available data for various reasons," the report acknowledges. "For example, employees may not always report threats because they consider them a part of the job."

The report found that Forest Service employees reported the most threats and assaults, with 177 incidents in the time period studied. BLM employees reported 88 incidents, FWS employees reported 66, and NPS reported 29. The NPS tally doesn't include the U.S. Park Police.

The GAO conducted the review after a 2017 request by House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., who wanted to know how land managers were responding to "anti-government extremism," Yachnin reports. Grijalva referred to incidents such as the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by anti-government activists.