Bucking a long-standing presidential tradition of placing western lawmakers at the helm of the Department of Interior (DOI), President Obama last week nominated outdoor retail executive Sally Jewell to manage the nation’s vast portfolio of public lands.

As Lisa Jackson takes her final bows as the nation’s top environmental overseer following her announcement last month that she will be resigning from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Republican lawmakers are scrambling to get to the bottom...

In an attempt to answer these tough questions, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) released in December a report that examines the current status of renewable resources across the country, and determines how trends in demand for those resources could shape the future.

In a clear warning to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and the Northwest timber industry, several environmental groups have sent a letter stating that attempts to negotiate an increased timber harvest on public lands in western Oregon could result in more regulation—and less logging—on privately-owned forests.

Since gray wolves were reintroduced into northern Idaho in 1994, the rapidly expanding wolf population has mainly been a worry for intermountain and northwestern ranchers.

Ranchers aren’t the only ones who obsess over water rights. Many industries, municipalities and individuals jealously guard their rights to develop, divert, and otherwise use water—often located on public lands—as a lifeline to business and prosperity.

Their hopes fading that the current lame duck session of Congress will approve protective designations on hundreds of thousands of acres in New Mexico, Democrat lawmakers from the Land of Enchantment are urging President Obama to use the Antiquities Act to create two national monuments, bypassing congressional approval.

The emails are from a government account under the name “Richard Windsor,” which internal EPA sources tipped off CEI as being one of several accounts Jackson uses that is not traceable to her personally.

Although the new rule represents a significant increase over the 2008 designation, it was 4.2 million acres fewer than the 13.9 million acres originally proposed by FWS in February, when a draft of the rule was published. All private land and much of the state land originally.

The authors of the study, led by Dr. Robert Beschta—professor emeritus at the Oregon State University (OSU) College of Forest ry—urged decision-makers at the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service to “seek and make use of” opportunities to significantly scale back or eliminate grazing for the benefit of rangeland health.