SOS Forests

Unappealing Authority, Or Whom Can You Trust?

In our modern day and age we face a plethora of social and political issues that revolve around science. Whether the weather or questions of global warming, forest management, wildlife management, economic crunches, morbid obesity, dog training, ear wax, or what have you, the arguments frequently rely on the expertise of authorities.

An “authority” is an expert with uncommon knowledge about a particular subject. In our modern day and age, authorities often bear Ph.D. degrees and publish in peer reviewed journals, both of which are de facto qualifications for their lofty perch.

Of course, certain recognized authorities may be completely wrong in their scientific assessments, or stray beyond their field of expertise, or may be utter charlatans. Or they may be unappreciated geniuses whose bullseye pronouncements are largely ignored.

In our modern day and age, sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.

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One Year of W.I.S.E.

The first year of W.I.S.E. has flown by. A year ago we decided that something more than a single blog (SOS Forests, Version 1) was desirable, and the concept of a multi-site Web institute was born.

Our intention was to build the premier online library for forest, fire, and the environmental sciences, with emphasis on the New Paradigm. The knowledge uncovered, displayed, and explained was to be presented to the World At Large for the Instruction of Mankind and for the benefit of all creatures and landscapes of this Our Shared Planet.

We have achieved that goal, partially. We made some headway, at any rate.

The Western Institute for Study of the Environment now provides a free, on-line set of post-graduate courses in environmental studies, currently fifty Topics in eight Colloquia, each containing book and article reviews, original papers, and essays. In addition, we present two Commentary sub-sites, a news clipping sub-site, and a fire tracking site. Reviews and original articles are archived in our Library.

Last summer the Western Institute for Study of the Environment was officially granted 501(c)(3) non-profit, educational status by the IRS.

SOS Forests — the new version has been our most active sub-site, with 328 posts and 1,159 comments. SOS Forests — the old version, is still displayed [here] and is used as an archive and reference site. The other W.I.S.E. Commentary sub-site, Wildlife and People [here], has also been active, with 109 posts and 129 comments. Many interesting topics have been explored at both the Commentary sub-sites, with numerous authors and a healthy give-and-take of ideas.

A great deal of effort was made to track the largest fires this year at W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking. Over 250 fires were followed on a daily basis from Date of Origin to 100 Percent Containment. Each fire has its own post, creating one-stop records of the day-to-day changes in fire size, personnel, and fire suppression costs for further study and reference.

Throughout all that palaver we somehow managed to review 91 books and articles containing most cutting-edge advancements in the environmental sciences, (see the W.I.S.E. Library [here]). Ample as that may seem, our stack of additions runneth over. For the rest of this month we will be concentrating on adding a few dozen more excellent works to the Colloquia and Library.

And if that were not enough, in October we underwent a major facelift when we updated and remodeled the sub-sites.

None of this could have happened without the generous support of some serious forest aficionados with heartfelt concerns and strong convictions about stewardship. We are extremely grateful to all those who have chipped in to keep the tank from empty and the motor running. And we are also grateful to all those who have provided content, including the authors of the 91 books and papers reviewed in the Colloquia and the numerous guest authors of posts in the Commentary sub-sites.

Most enviro organizations take your dues and then provide the members with an exclusive magazine. Joining the club is akin to buying a subscription to the mag.

W.I.S.E. is the opposite. The members create the “magazine” (the online Colloquia and Commentary) for free distribution to the entire world.

Thank all of you for all your help. In many ways, we are just getting started on this great adventure. The World At Large has not been fully Instructed yet. There is much more to do. Please consider making a donation to this worthy effort; visit the Donation Page [here] for guidance.

And please keep the posts and photos coming in. Your contributions are vitally important and much appreciated. Thank you. If we change the world, it will be due to your efforts.

New Look

Sorry for the recent hiccups. Had to get a face lift.

New look. A little cleaner. Will have a key word cloud soon, too. More functionality. More security. Better for the admin.

Hope you like it too. If you find any bugs, let me know.

Revisiting the Payette After the Fires

Note: Last year nearly half a million acres of the Payette National Forest went up in flames. We discussed that tragedy as it happened on SOS Forests (the old version) and have posted about it since [here, here, here, here, and here]. The following letter from Ned Pence, retired District Ranger on the Krassel District of the Payette NF was sent to us this week by Jim Rathbun, retired Forest Supervisor of the Kootenai NF. In it Mr. Pence recounts his impressions of the devastation left by the Payette fires of 2007. Needless to say, it’s personal. That’s how foresters look at the forests they are privileged to manage — personally.

Dear Jim,

We got back an hour ago. We had a good trip. I was surprised to see how much of the old Krassel District and the old Bear Valley District burned in 2007 and 2006. I knew a lot burned from the convection columns but it was a lot more than I could have thought.

The SFSR [South Fork Salmon River] visually has more sediment than it did in 1971 when everyone was all upset over sediment from logging. Of course I have to go from memory of what it was almost 40 years ago. We talked to a couple of ologists who were measuring sediment in a drainage that blew out on the East Fork of the SFSR. They said they were working for the USGS [US Geological Survey] doing the sediment measurements for the FS. They had never heard of Bill Platz and the permanent transects he had established in the SFSR to monitor the changes in sediment, and knew very little of the history of the SFSR. I gave them my card in hopes they will pass what I told them on to their boss.

We could not get through to Warm Lake because they had the road closed, so had to go up the East Fork through Yellow Pine and Johnson Creek to Bear Valley. The damage from the fire on the East Fork was amazing. There were nine major slides, four of which formed temporary dams across the river. That area was never logged due to very steep topography and sensitive soils. It was never considered sedimented before and Johnson Creek was a major salmon spawning area. The fire went through kind of hit and miss but was obviously very intense in places.

We did get to Buckhorn Bar above Krassel where the road was closed. The bitter brush on Buckhorn Bar was all burned but most of it is sprouting again. It looked like the fire was very intense in Fitsum Creek and also on Tea Pot Mountain. We talked to a man who was busy parking a big dump truck so no one could get by the road closure. He said that the East Fork was bad but it was worse from Four Mile Creek to Warm Lake especially around Goat Creek. I will have to make another trip to see that, because if it is worse it will be worth seeing.

The old ranger station, now a “work center,” has not been maintained since the last time we saw it. The fence around the old ranger’s house is all rotted out and laying where it fell, and there was a big tree that had fallen across the old equipment shed, breaking the roof. Someone had thrown a canvas over it, but it obviously was not keeping the rain out. There were a couple of people who said they were recreation persons. I asked why they did not fix the fence and roof, and they said no one had told them to do it and the buildings were historical sites so the forest archaeologist had to approve anything they did.

I am afraid I probably lost it when talking to them. There is a whole heli-attack crew who apparently don’t realize they could do some work while waiting for a fire. I asked if they had seen the DFR [District Forest Ranger] and they said they thought he had been out a couple of times from McCall. They said that there are no longer horses and mules at Krassel so the barn that Hickenen built the year before I was DFR has been turned into a storage shed, and the plank fence I built around the pasture has been torn down. They said they thought that there were horses and mules at the Big Creek work center. They said the forest thought the barn was also historical, and I told them it had been built in 1970 but had a lot of history since it resulted in Ed Hickenen being moved to BIFC [Boise Interagency Fire Center] and me becoming DFR.

We then spent a couple of days in Bear Valley. That fire burned all the way from Red Mountain down Wyoming Creek to Bruce Meadows then jumped Bear Valley Creek and burned the whole face south of the old Ranger Station clear to where I sold a timber sale in Cub Creek. The fire actually stopped at the Casner Creek Sale on the south side and the Cub Creek Sale on the west side where it seemed to run out of ground fuel. It was pretty impressive. I will probably get over being upset in a few weeks. We did get a lot of good pictures.

We could hear wolves howling at night. Arleen woke up the first night in Bear Valley and loaded the 20 gauge shotgun while I slept through it, but I could hear them howling farther away when I woke up later. There was a real big wolf track in the road by our camp in Cache Creek.

We saw several people I knew at the old timers reunion. I didn’t recognize some who seemed to think I was Dan. They had a memorial to old timers who passed away the last two years and I knew several. I suppose that in ten years most of us will be gone.

Ned and Arleen Pence

Gunbarrel Goes Gunnybag

The Gunbarrel Whoofoo Fire has blown up. The northern Wyoming “Wildland Fire Used For Resource Benefit” is no longer benefiting resources apparently, and the Shoshone NF has bagged the Let It Burn Plan.

The Gunbarrel Fire was ignited by lightning east of Yellowstone Park on July 26. Shoshone NF Supervisor Becky Aus, pictured [here], decided to Let It Burn in a grand but totally illegal whoofoo. As of midnight Saturday the Gunbarrel Whoofoo had consumed 50,000 acres and $6.5 million of the taxpayers’ dough, but what’s more interesting is the fire is now bearing down on 420 residences, 11 commercial buildings, 149 outbuildings.

Airtankers and helitankers are attempting to slow the growth in the eastern portions of the fire. High winds may ground the air attack Monday, however. A Red Flag Warning has been issued for high winds and low humidities.

Just last week fire managers and USFS officials were gushing all over themselves for their new fire philosophy. From the Cody Enterprise [here]:

The Shoshone Forest is poised to implement a new firefighting philosophy that says there’s more than one way to manage a single blaze. …

During a meeting with the public last week, Gunbarrel Fire Incident Commander Don Angell told North Fork cabin owners and year-round residents they have the “largest wildland use fire in the history of the Rocky Mountain area.”

Mapped at more than 41,000 acres, the Gunbarrel Fire drew the interest of six officials from the forest’s regional office in Denver.

Shoshone District Ranger Terry Root said the half-dozen top officials, which included Deputy Regional Forester Tony Dixon, came to Cody Tuesday to observe the fire and the way Angell’s team was handling it.

That’s because his team is on the cusp of a philosophical transition in firefighting the Forest Service plans to make by next summer, Root said.

Instead of being merely “suppression teams” of various levels, whose only purpose is to stamp out all forest fires in the true Smokey Bear tradition, every firefighting group in the future will be more oriented to multi-tasking, Root said. …

Stepping back and allowing forest fires to clean out dead and dying trees is known as “fire use” or “beneficial use,” Root said. …

Shoshone Forest Supervisor Becky Aus agreed that “fire management is changing,” adding, “In my view, that’s a good thing.”

Change will be nationwide, but the Shoshone is on the cusp partly through luck and partly through management, she said. …

Aus said the Shoshone paved the way for this thinking in June by amending its Forest Plan to allow wild fires outside wilderness areas to burn once all conditions had been evaluated.

“We’re ahead of the curve” in that, Aus added.

She said the Gunbarrel “has been an exciting fire to deal with” because of the learning curve that has gone into its management.

And partly through gross malfeasance and criminal avoidance of the National Environmental Policy Act. The Shoshone NF did not prepare any Environmental Impact Statement or engage the public prior to making the decision to apply their “new philosophy.” They simply declared that Burn Baby Burn was “beneficial” and sat back on their fat cans while the Gunbarrel Whoofoo fire ripped through public forest unimpeded.

The fire could have been contained, controlled, and extinguished for pennies in July. Now the forest is destroyed, unknown $millions will be spent, and hundreds of homes could be incinerated.

No word yet on evacuations.

The crackpots at the USFS are engaging in illegal holocausts to the detriment of forests, communities, and the US Treasury. The USFS Fire Budget is already hundreds of $millions in arrears and active management has been shut down nationwide. That happened before Becky, Don, and Terry declared their whoofoo. No matter, burn baby burn is the new philosophy.

It’s sure bet that Becky, Don, and Terry won’t be reimbursing the US Treasury for their criminal SNAFU, nor will they be reimbursing the homeowners and private landowners who get burned out. The Federal Government holds itself harmless for major disasters our public servants instigate.

The original intent of the Gunbarrel Whoofoo was to burn 416,112 acres! That’s 650 square miles of land, both public and private. But now they have called it quits at a mere 50,000 acres. And just a day or two after breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for their criminal idiocy.

What, you may ask, has the USFS been drinking? The answer is that the Wildland Fire Leadership Council has been on the take from The Wilderness Society and The Nature Conservancy. TWS and TNC bought seats at the WFLC and paid off the heads of the USFS, BLM, NPS, BIA, and USFWS. Then the WFLC ordered every National Forest and BLM District in the country to alter their Fire Plans, illegally, and incorporate Whoofoo as the Prime Directive.

The very same BINGO’s that routinely sue to enjoin the USFS for every pro-active fuel reduction project have taken over the outfit in Washington DC and are busy incinerating our federal lands with impunity and in direct contempt for the very laws they routinely sue under.

Right? All the suits are NEPA suits (and APA suits, the Administrative Procedures Act) but they encourage, collude, bribe, and extort our federal land management agencies into gross, arbitrary, and capricious violations of those exact laws, with supremely malicious intent.

I have written at length about eco-Nazis and their arsonistic ways. Every day reality confirms my words. The latest catastrophe disaster on the Shoshone NF is just the most recent manifestation. Last week it was the Bridge Creek Whoofoo in Oregon. In June it was the Clover Fire in California. Last year it was central Idaho and Montana. The year before that it was the Kaibab NF in Arizona. And there are dozens more I could name.

Illegal, arbitrary, and capricious megafires that are being perpetrated on our forests, homes, and communities by a federal government run amok, totally corrupted, and at war with the citizens of this country. GW Bush is not the anti-terrorist President; he is the chief terrorist waging war on America today. Mark Rey, Gail Kimbell, Becky Aus, the US Congress, and all the rest are insane generals and lieutenants in a terrorist war being waged against us, the citizenry.

The wholesale destruction of our public and private assets and resources done in an illegal fashion by our own public employees is a horrendous thing. I suggest that as patriotic Americans we must speak out against these travesties.

To remain silent any longer is unacceptable. I am tired of putting my name and reputation on the line alone. I call upon the Society of American Foresters and every other professional environmental organization to step up and be heard. Now.

This is your country, those are your forests, that is your government, too.

Enough is enough.

Please Donate to the Cause

W.I.S.E. is non-profit. Heck, we’re damn near non-income. But we are endeavoring against all odds to save forests and spread good information and knowledge about stewardship of our forests and landscapes.

We’re trying to save forests. We’re trying to stop or reduce the megafires that are ravaging our forests. We’re trying to make this planet a more habitable place for all life forms.

To that end we have created and are managing 12 websites. Our most recent site, W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking, is building records of the major fires burning this year, so that we can evaluate those fires after the season is over and seek ways to lessen the destruction.

We have not shirked from controversy. We have pushed the envelope. We have berated the Powers That Be for their incompetence and misguided policies that destroy forests, both public and private, and incinerate homes, farms, and ranches, and pollute the air and water, and cripple economies, and drain the Treasury.

We have endeavored to post the best, most cutting edge science, so that visitors can learn the facts for a change instead being pepper sprayed with rude and a-scientific propaganda all the time. We are a beacon, a light in the smoky darkness of a thousand forest fires burning at once.

W.I.S.E. is free. Our sites are open to all, free of charge, without a fee, buy in, ticket charge, or gate receipt.

But it is not free to do all this work. It is time consuming. Moreover, the expertise displayed here is the result of hundreds of years of combined professional effort. All of the experts published at W.I.S.E. have contributed their knowledge for free, and we are deeply grateful, but we also recognize that their expertise is hard won and represents lifetimes of dedication.

Your financial contributions are also deeply appreciated. We share this wonderful letter we received today, with gratitude:

Dear Mike,

Enclosed please find a check in the amount of $200. I hope it will help to keep your great sites going and allow you to continue to share wisdom and expertise.

As I promised myself, “a dollar a day” contribution will hopefully assist this endeavor to spread the word about forest health in particular and the rational study of the environment in general.

Randy

We send Randy a big Thank You. He would never admit it, but he is a victim of excruciatingly bad forest policies. His home and landscape are under tremendous threat. His area has been visited by fire storms emanating from mis-managed federal forests and hundreds of his neighbors’ homes have been incinerated by those fire storms. There is little he can do to change those terrible policies on his own.

But W.I.S.E. is attempting to do just that. We want to save rural homes from predicted, preventable fires. We desire to save the taxpayers $billions in emergency fire costs by encouraging the application of restoration forestry to millions of acres, thereby rendering forest safe and resilient to fire and far less prone to catastrophic destruction by holocaust. We wish to protect, maintain, and perpetuate forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, airsheds, recreation opportunities, and all the other amenities and values that forests provide us. We are deeply cognizant of the heritage of our landscapes, and promote the respect and restoration that our heritage deserves.

That is our quest. Little by little we are having an effect. Top policy makers are reading our sites. The pendulum is being swung, the elephant is slowly moving.

Your contributions make it possible for W.I.S.E. to pursue this quest. Our budget is threadbare. We can barely pay our monthly Internet fees. But with your help we will persevere.

Your contributions are tax deductible. The Western Institute for Study of the Environment is a 501(c)(3) non-profit collaboration of environmental scientists, practitioners, and the interested public.

W.I.S.E. provides a free, on-line set of post-graduate courses in environmental studies, currently fifty Topics in eight Colloquia, each containing book and article reviews, original papers, and essays. In addition, we present two Commentary sub-sites, a news clipping sub-site, and the W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking site.

Our mission is to further advancements in knowledge and environmental stewardship across a spectrum of related environmental disciplines and professions. We teach and advocate good stewardship and caring for the land.

Please help us out. Please visit our donations page [here].

Thank you.

Temporary Malfunction

I wrote a short essay about a hero of mine, and posted here. And I sent him the link. But then my hero declaimed that I had exaggerated and was inaccurate in a few places or possibly more, causing him some embarrassment. Furthermore, he is soon off on an important vacation, and does not have time to correct my flailing essay, until he returns.

So I have removed it, temporarily, until such time as the target of my praise can cool my ardor with some plain facts. If he can.

So that’s the short story. Don’t worry, though. I am only temporarily deterred.

W.I.S.E Initiates Fire Tracking Site

The Western Institute for Study of the Environment is pleased to announce the creation of the W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking website [here].

We will endeavor to keep site visitors up-to-date on large wildfires while they are occurring. This is a difficult job requiring attention to a variety of news outlets on a round-the-clock basis. We will very much appreciate your input throughout the fire season to keep the W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking site as current as possible.

This service depends on your assistance. We appreciate your donations of information and funding. For the latter, please see our donation page [here].

S. 2593 - The Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008

Linked below are suggested amendments to S. 2593, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008 and an explanatory letter. These documents were crafted by members of the Western Institute for Study of the Environment.

Suggested Amendments [here]

Explanatory letter [here]

Your comments and suggestions for submitting this testimony are most welcome. No hearing has been scheduled yet, to my knowledge, but I am far out of the loop. Your help is sincerely requested.

Are Lightning Fires Unnatural?

I have just posted the BEST environmental research paper of 2007 in the History of Western Landscapes colloquium.

Are Lightning Fires Unnatural? A Comparison of Aboriginal and Lightning Ignition Rates in the United States by Charles E. Kay, Utah State University, is a paradigm-shattering report.

The Western U.S. (and the eastern half, too) is covered to a large extent by pyrophytic (fire-adapted) vegetation. The standard (old paradigm) thinking is that the fire-type plant assemblages are completely natural in origin and distribution across our landscapes. Dr. Charles E. Kay challenges that assumption in Are Lightning Fires Unnatural?

Using simple math and abundant archaeological and lightning-fire records, Dr Kay demonstrates that the number of human-set fires (per million acres) must have vastly exceeded the number of lightning ignitions, perhaps by as much as 35,000 to 1. One of his conclusions:

This would suggest that lightning-caused fires have been largely irrelevant in structuring plant communities throughout many areas in North America. It also turns out that it does not require very many native people to completely alter fire regimes because lightning ignition rates were so low and aboriginal ignition rates so high.

That’s a bold statement. It changes everything we thought we knew about the history of our ecosystems. If Dr. Kay’s hypothesis is to be accepted, and I for one do, human beings played a key role, THE key role, in the presence and distribution of vegetation in North America over the last 12,000+ years.

Dr. Kay’s logic, math, and source data are unassailable. His hypothesis is very strong. Are Lightning Fires Unnatural? is one of the most important research papers of this century, so far.

I am personally proud as a peacock and pleased as punch to be able to post this work at W.I.S.E. I feel like we have finally arrived; and that we are so cutting-edge it hurts.

Please read Are Lightning Fires Unnatural? and submit your thoughts below (in the comment window). I am anxious to know if others view this paper like I do, and/or what your take is on it.

Please Help Us Out

You are cordially invited to join the Western Institute for Study of the Environment.

– Help support our efforts to present the best in environmental science to the public

– Participate in our Members Forum, a place for in-depth discussions, posting notices, and networking with like-minded individuals

– Participate in building this site by contributing news, commentary, reviews etc.

Membership fees are $50 per year. Please visit the JOIN WISE page [here]

Thank you for your patronage and other contributions to W.I.S.E.

The HFRA Text

For comparative purposes (with DeFazio’s PNW Forest Legacy Act linked to in the previous post), as well as a general lesson in the gobbledy gook of environmental law, we present the text of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 [here].

The PNW Forest Legacy Act: Discussion Draft

SOS Forests has obtained a copy of the Pacific Northwest Forest Legacy Act: Discussion Draft.

Download the full text [here] (pdf format, 794 KB)

Note: you will need to reorient the pages in Adobe Reader with the tool bar menu command View>Rotate View>Counterclockwise.

I discussed the incipient PNW Forest Legacy Act [here], and that Congressman Peter DeFazio (D, OR) was preparing it. The discussion draft is slated to appear on a new website DeFazio has established [here]. The draft is not there yet, but SOS Forests has it and we link to it above.

My first impression is that there are many poorly worded sections, a few good ones, and a great deal missing. Overall, I am disappointed.

However, it is very early in the process. Peter DeFazio and the rest of Congress could use some assistance in modifying the PNWFLA so that it accomplishes the right goals while minimizing unintended consequences. Some clauses need to be dropped, some altered, and entirely new ones added. That’s the purpose of a discussion draft.

This is an opportunity to discuss and debate the mission of the US Forest Service and how the right mission might best be achieved, in the Pacific Northwest at any rate.

In future posts I will parse the discussion draft and offer constructive criticism, in the hopes that suggested modifications are adopted. I invite your participation in that effort. (Much of that group-thinking may occur in the Members Forum rather than here at SOS Forests. The Forum is the best place for multiple folks to jigger with legal language.)

As it stands right now, I would not support the legislation, but if it were modified in the right ways, I possibly could. More importantly, the debate/discussion could be the most productive aspect of the whole process, whether or not the bill gets passed.

We have been and shall be engaging in the debate/discussion. The PNW Forest Legacy Act is the next venue, and we are looking forward to the show.

Appearing Soon: the Pacific Northwest Forest Legacy Act

Congressman Peter DeFazio (D, OR) is preparing legislation he calls the Pacific Northwest Forest Legacy Act. A “draft discussion document” is slated to appear on a new website DeFazio has established [here].

Already on Defazio’s site there are “Frequently Asked Questions,” an outline of the Bill, and “volume estimates,” but the actual proposed draft Bill is not up yet.

The descriptive verbiage indicates that the Pacific Northwest Forest Legacy Act is, in part, an outgrowth of the Dec. 13, 2007 testimonies to the US Senate Energy & Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests [here]. SOS Forests has also posted previously on the political run-up to this legislation [here, and here].

Without the actual language, it is impossible to judge the current merits and demerits of the Pacific Northwest Legacy Act. Some of the descriptive verbiage that has been posted is encouraging; other is not. In some parts the verbiage appears to be self-contradictory. But in any case, it is the actual legal language of the legislation that must be debated, adjusted, refined, and finalized.

There is no substantial reason to be in favor or opposed to the Pacific Northwest Forest Legacy Act at this time. Even if the draft doc was available, no doubt there’s a lot more sausage-making yet to go. But it does seem to have some potential value, if only to bring forest issues to the forefront.

SOS Forests will be tracking the PNWFLA very closely. We have even created a special category. Expect updates and analyses right here as this process unfurls.

Check out the other W.I.S.E. subsites

There’s a lot of good stuff building up here at SOS Forests, the New Version. But there’s a bunch of good stuff on the other W.I.S.E. subsites, too.

Forest, Fire, and Wildlife News contains a number of items that boggle the sensibilities. They amuse, surprise, shock, and delight the cynically-inclined! Many suggestions for news articles to post have been received, and all are very much appreciated.

Wildlife and People also has some enlightening posts, and much more to come.

The Colloquia are gradually expanding, too. Bit by bit the best new paradigm science is inching onto the site. Not as fast as I’d like, because it’s time-consuming to read (or re-read) cutting-edge science books and reports and then write decent reviews. But we’re getting there.

Lots to read at W.I.S.E. already, though. And fun to read, whether you agree with the item/author or not. Not to mention educational.

Feel free to comment elsewhere at W.I.S.E. I think Forest, Fire, and Wildlife News especially has some doozies worth a shot or two.