Tag Archives: U.S. Forest Service

Watchdog Finds Trump Border Wall Harmed Environment, Indigenous Sites, and Wildlife

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“This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers’ dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm,” said Congressman Raúl Grijalva.

By Jessica Corbett Published 9-7-2023 by Common Dreams

Donald Trump stands before a section of border fencing. Photo: rump White House Archived/flickr/CC

A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday released a report exposing how former President Donald Trump’s wall construction along the nation’s border with Mexico negatively affected cultural and natural resources, as critics have long argued.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD) installed about 458 miles of border barrier panels across the southwest border from January 2017 through January 2021,” according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. “Most (81%) of the miles of panels replaced existing barriers.”

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Trump’s Last-Minute Attack on Old-Growth Trees Was Illegal, Judge Rules

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The federal judge said that the “highly uncertain effects of this project, when considered in light of its massive scope and setting, raise substantial questions about whether this project will have a significant effect on the environment.”

By Olivia Rosane. Published 9-1-2023 by Common Dreams

Large trees are proposed for logging in one of Oregon’s wildest landscapes as part of the Morgan Nesbitt “Restoration” project. (Photo: Oregon Wild)

Two days before he left office, a political appointee for President Donald Trump removed protections from old-growth trees in Oregon and Washington. On Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Hallman ruled that decision was illegal.

Hallman vacated the U.S. Forest Service’s finding that the change would have no impact, and ordered the agency to carry out a full environmental impact statement of the proposal, as The Associated Press reported.

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Groups ‘Extremely Disappointed’ by Ruling But Vow to Keep Fighting Mountain Valley Pipeline

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“It is clear to us that the top levers of power in this country do not serve the good of the people of Appalachia, who they have continued to sacrifice for the whims of a corrupt, reckless fossil fuel corporation,” said one activist.

By Jessica Corbett Published 8-11=2023 by Common Dreams

The Mountain Valley Pipeline. Photo: NRDC

Local and national climate campaigns on Friday expressed disappointment over an appellate court’s dismissal of challenges to a partially built fracked gas pipeline in West Virginia and Virginia but pledged to continue their efforts to kill the project.

Citing a section of the debt ceiling law that President Joe Biden negotiated with congressional Republicans this spring, a three-judge panel from the mountain-valley-pipeline-dismissal dismissed cases in which green groups challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Endangered Species Act approvals for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) as well as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management’s authorizations for the Jefferson National Forest.

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Biden Accused of Lighting Fuse for ‘One of the Nation’s Biggest Carbon Bombs’

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“This is pouring another 5 billion gallons of oil on the fire every year and bulldozing a national forest in the process,” said one critic. “It’s a horrifying step in the wrong direction.”

By Kenny Stancil  Published 7-7-2022 by Common Dreams

An oil trai outside Essex, Montana. Photo: Roy Luck/flickr/CC

The Biden administration came under fire this week after paving the way for an oil railway that its own projections suggest would increase planet-heating pollution in the United States by almost 1%.

President Joe Biden “should be doing everything in his power to respond to the climate emergency, but he’s about to light one of the nation’s biggest carbon bombs,” Deeda Seed, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday in a statement. Continue reading →

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‘This Is What Bipartisanship Looks Like’: Vicious Fire Tornado Caught on Film in California

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“Climate policy isn’t about imagining a spectrum from left to right and finding the sweet spot in the middle. It’s a zero-sum battle with physics.”

By Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 7-8-2021

The National Weather Service shared video footage captured by the U.S. Forest Service showing a firenado that formed over the Tennant Fire in California’s Siskiyou County on June 29, 2021. Photo: U.S. Forest Service

Responding to dramatic footage that went viral Thursday of a so-called “fire tornado” unleashed recently in North California, a longtime aid of Sen. Bernie Sanders said the event—viewed through a political prism—could be seen symbolically as the destructive result of corporate-friendly policies in Washington, D.C. masquerading as bipartisanship while the world burns amid an intensifying climate emergency.

“This is what bipartisanship looks like,” tweeted Warren Gunnels, currently the staff director for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, which is chaired by Sanders. Continue reading →

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