

Wildfires and the Roadless Rule
One of the excuses the Trump administration offered for moving to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule that protects over 60 million acres of US Forest Service lands -- our lands -- was to provide more road access to fight wildfires. But a new study published in the journal Fire Ecology , and summarized in Inside Climate News , reviewed the history of wildfire ignitions from 1992 to 2024 and found that wildfires were four times more likely to ignite within 50 meters of a road tha

Bruce Smith
Apr 21 min read


Congress nullifies resource plans
Congress has begun nullifying resource management plans that were developed and implemented to guide long-term stewardship of federal lands. Plans cooperatively developed by the federal Bureau of Land Management in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska -- in consultation with scientists, conservation groups, indigenous peoples, industry, and other users of these tracts of federal lands -- are the first on the chopping block. These Resource Management Plans (RMPs) provide stabil

Bruce Smith
Nov 3, 20252 min read


Conservation threatened by Trump administration
The Trump administration seeks to weaken conservation by rescinding a rule that governs public land use. The Conservation and Landscape...

Bruce Smith
Sep 29, 20252 min read


A Wilderness Icon
For those of you in the Bozeman, Montana area, this Thursday, May 18th, I'll be giving a presentation about Montana's mountain goats,...

Bruce Smith
May 15, 20231 min read