Latest news with #TheWildernessSociety
Miami Herald
02-06-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
Famed furry creature explores icy river after snow blankets Tasmania. Watch
Winter has hit the southern hemisphere, and with it, the highlands of Tasmania have turned into a wintery wonderland. Tasmania, the island state of Australia, sits about 150 miles south of the mainland and was hit with a 'cold snap' that 'brought some decent snowfall' to its higher regions at the end of May, photographer Michael Eastwell said in May 20 and May 22 Instagram posts. One critter was enjoying the fresh-fallen snow as Eastwell passed by on a walk, he said. Eastwell noticed the creature bopping along the snowy banks of a river, and snuffling through the icy water, he said. 'Ever seen a platypus in the snow?' Eastwell asked the post. The video shows the platypus starting in a shallow creek, moving its head from side to side in the water. The critter then comes up on shore and uses its webbed feet to scoot along the surface of the snow. The photographer also posted photos on Instagram, which were then shared by The Wilderness Society on Facebook. 'Anyone else feeling the cold? You might be, but this little one probably isn't!' the organization said in a May 30 post. 'Platypus habitat is all along the south-east of Australia.' The Wilderness Society said the dense fur covering the little critters helps to make the animal 'waterproof,' allowing them to 'swim in very cold water for hours.' 'It's even said to provide better insulation than fur of polar bears and beavers,' the organization said. Platypus are part of a mammal order known as monotremes, which includes echidnas, and means they lay eggs, according to the Australian Museum. Their paddle-like tail acts as a fat reserve, and they have strong claws that are used for burrowing on land, the museum says. Platypuses are primarily nocturnal or active around twilight and at night, staying in their riverbank burrows during the day. They forage for a variety of aquatic invertebrates for about 10 to 12 hours a day, the museum says. Aside from their bills acting as a disguise, they also serve as the animal's primary sensory organ, the museum says. The bill has sensors that are sensitive to pressure as well as electroreceptors, but the exact way the bill detects a platypus's prey is still unknown. Platypuses are found throughout eastern and southeastern Australia, and on the island of Tasmania.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What Trump's executive order on timber could mean for Tennessee forests
Increased timber production may be coming to the Volunteer State, impacting the Appalachian forests in East Tennessee. A new emergency order from the U.S. Department of Agriculture allocated 59% of national forests across the country for timber production. The declaration was prompted by President Donald Trump's March 1 executive order to increase the nation's timber production. The executive order intends to increase the United States' self-reliance on lumber, create jobs, and mitigate future wildfire risks. The order also looks to expand timber production by 25%. "Our inability to fully exploit our domestic timber supply has impeded the creation of jobs and prosperity, contributed to wildfire disasters, degraded fish and wildlife habitats, increased the cost of construction and energy, and threatened our economic security," the March executive order reads. However, the economics benefits of logging come at a steep price, according to The Wilderness Society. 'Don't be fooled: the Trump Administration and its allies in Congress aren't trying to solve the wildfire crisis or protect communities threatened by it. Instead, they are aiming to deepen the pockets of private industry to log across our shared, public forests, while sidestepping public review,' said Josh Hicks, Conservation Campaigns Director at The Wilderness Society. The Secretarial Memo issued by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on April 3 established an "Emergency Situation Determination" and will allow the Forest Service to bypass many existing environmental rules. The environmental rules are being rolled back to create more safeguards against wildfires and boost the U.S. timber industry, according to the memo. Secretary Rollins' memo requires the U.S. Forest Service to take steps to significantly expand the amount of public forest lands that can be logged, by increasing timber outputs, simplifying permitting, streamlining environmental assessment hurdles to logging and more. A majority of the impacted U.S. Forest Service areas are in the western half of the United States. However, the USDA declaration also impacts Appalachia and East Tennessee. The affected areas total more than 112 million acres of U.S Forest Service land. Logging is the process of harvesting trees to create all kinds of wood products, including paper, plywood, wood chips and much, much more. There are a few steps to harvest trees, including surveying the area, cutting down the trees, then reseeding Oregon produces the most timber in the U.S., according to World Population Review. USA TODAY reporter Elizabeth Weise contributed to this report. This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: More logging in Tennessee? What Trump executive order could mean
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The BLM Public Lands Rule Has Been ‘Marked for Death'
Sources working closely with the Bureau of Land Management say a Biden-era rule that made conservation a legitimate use of BLM lands — putting it on par with grazing, mineral extraction, recreation, and other uses — has been put on the chopping block by the Trump administration. They say that by quietly filling an online rescission notice of the rule Tuesday the administration has signaled its intentions to kill the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, also known as the Public Lands Rule, that was enacted in August under the Biden administration. A BLM source who was only authorized to speak on background says the rescission of the Public Lands Rule was not yet official Wednesday. They say the timing of that official decision is unknown. The same rescission notice mentions another Biden-era rule that established stronger protections against drilling in the Western Arctic. Neither of these moves is unexpected, but they are a blow to the conservation community. It is also unclear at this point whether the rule could be rescinded via executive order, or by the agency itself, even though the BLM is currently without a director or a deputy director and is still reeling from ongoing staff cuts. But conservation groups who've been closely following the administration's moves around public lands say — as one source at The Wilderness Society puts it — that the rule has effectively been 'marked for death' after Tuesday's notice. 'They are actively moving forward now with steps to revoke the rule,' says Michael Carroll, BLM campaign director at The Wilderness Society. 'The question now is whether they will go through a public process to make sure the American people can comment on it … Or do they just go around the process and get rid of it.' Read Next: Why Is the New BLM Rule So Controversial? That public process was followed precisely according to regulations when the Public Lands Rule was made public and being discussed, Carroll points out. He says of the roughly 200,000 comments received by the BLM during the public comment period, roughly 92 percent of them were in support of the rule. And although it faced an uphill battle in Congress, with many Republican lawmakers calling it another example of government overreach under Biden, the Public Lands Rule was celebrated by conservationists when it was implemented in August. By elevating conservation priorities alongside other traditional uses of BLM land, such as mining and grazing, and giving the BLM tools to better balance those uses, the rule represented a big step toward the agency's long-held goal of actually managing its lands for multiple uses. 'The challenge with all of this is that since the establishment of the BLM, they have not had the regulations, or the conservation framework, in place to effectively do what we would refer to as real multiple use management. So you've seen an agency that has had basically its entire management history focused on prioritizing extraction over other uses,' Carroll tells Outdoor Life. 'Having the Public Lands Rule in place gives all of those people who want to use these lands for hiking, fishing, hunting, camping, all of those things — it allows them to say, 'Hey, there are regulations that actually can govern this land that put those values on equal footing with extraction.'' Judging from recent executive orders, however, Carroll doubts that there will be much of an opportunity for public comment, if any, around the impending rescission of the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. Read Next: New Executive Order Aims to Make Mining the Primary Use of Public Lands at 'As Many Sites As Possible' One such order, issued exactly a week ago on April 9, calls for the repeal of unlawful regulations, including the 'onerous regulations that impede' the administration's top priorities of economic growth and American innovation. The executive order directs agency heads to 'finalize rules without notice and comment' when necessary, and it allows federal agencies to 'dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.' This would be a major shift from the precedents set over the past few decades, including the public process that has long guided how public lands are managed.
The Independent
04-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump administration rolls back forest protections in bid to ramp up logging
President Donald Trump 's administration acted to roll back environmental protections around future logging projects on more than half of U.S. national forests under an emergency designation Friday that cites the dangers of wildfires. Whether the move will boost production remains to be seen. Former President Joe Biden 's administration also sought to ramp up logging on public lands to combat fires that are worsening as the world gets hotter, yet U.S. Forest Service timber sales dipped under the Democrat's tenure. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins did not mention climate change in Friday's directive, which called on her staff to streamline environmental reviews. It exempts affected forests from an objection process that allows outside groups, tribes and state or local governments to challenge logging proposals at the administrative level before they are finalized. It also narrows the number of alternatives federal officials can consider when weighing logging projects. Logging projects are routinely contested by conservation groups, both at the administrative level and in court, which can drag out the approval process for years. The emergency designation covers 176,000 square miles (455,000 square kilometers), primarily in the West but also forests in the South, around the Great Lakes and in New England. Combined, it's an area larger than California. Most of those forests are considered to have high wildfire risk, and many are in decline because of insects and disease. "National Forests are in crisis due to uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species and other stressors," Rollins said in her directive, echoing concerns raised by her predecessor under Biden, former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. She said those threats — combined with overgrown forests, more homes in wild areas and decades of aggressive fire suppression — add up to a 'forest health crisis" that could be helped with more logging. Friday's move follows Trump's executive order last month that sought to increase timber and lumber supplies, and possibly lower housing and construction costs. Concerns about lost safeguards In response to the emergency designations, environmentalists rejected the claim that wildfire protection was driving the changes to forest policy. 'Don't be fooled: The Trump administration and its allies in Congress aren't trying to solve the wildfire crisis or protect communities threatened by it," Josh Hicks with The Wilderness Society said in a statement. "Instead, they are aiming to deepen the pockets of private industry to log across our shared, public forests, while sidestepping public review." The Forest Service has sold about 3 billion board feet of timber annually for the past decade. Timber sales peaked several decades ago at about 12 billion board feet amid widespread clearcutting of forests. Volumes dropped sharply in the 1990s as environmental protections were tightened and more areas were put off limits to logging. Most timber is harvested from private lands. Under Biden, the Forest Service sought to more intensively manage national forests in the West, by speeding up wildfire protection work including logging in so-called 'priority landscapes' covering about 70,000 square miles (180,000 square kilometers). Much of that work involved smaller trees and younger forests that add fuel to wildfires but are less profitable for loggers. Biden also proposed more protections for old-growth forests, drawing backlash from the timber industry, but that plan was abandoned in the administration's final days. Rollins' directive did not address old-growth forests. Timber industry wants more trees available Industry representatives said they hope the Trump administration's actions will result in the sales of more full-grown stands of trees that are desired by sawmills. Federal law allows for the harvest of about 6 billion board feet annually — about twice the level that's now logged, said Travis Joseph, president of the Oregon-based American Forest Resource Council, an industry group. 'This industry needs a raw supply to remain competitive and keep the doors open,' he said. 'We're not even reaching half of what forest plans currently call for. Let's implement our forest plans across the country, and if we did that, that should increase the volume that's available to American mills and create American jobs and create revenue.' Trump last month ordered federal officials to investigate the possible harms of lumber imports to national security. The administration said Canada and other countries engage in lumber subsidies that disadvantage the United States. Canadian timber was left out of the president's latest round of tariffs. ___ Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed from Washington.
