The amount of forest with problems is only a small fraction of the overall 22 million acres state officials looked at, but it is slightly above the 10-year average.
The U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture recently announced it would try to roll back the “roadless rule,” a decades-old policy that prevents road construction and logging on nearly 4 million acres of national forest in Utah.
The organization formed by rural California counties said it wants to pursue a reduced-scale project that would turn excess biomass into wood chips for domestic use.
A Republican proposal in the U.S. Senate that could have put millions of acres of public land in Washington up for sale has hit a roadblock, but the lead lawmaker behind the idea is planning to press ahead with a scaled-back version.
The bill failed to pass the Oregon Senate by a single vote and has been referred to the rules committee for a third work session with less than a week remaining until the chamber adjourns.
U.S. Sen. Mike Lee says he will revamp his controversial proposal to require the sales of vast acres of federal lands in the West so it can be included in Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax and spending cut package.