From the people that brought you the Roadless Initiative, folks. It’s been a long eight years for conservationists, no doubt. Let’s hope we can win this one and avoid “more of the same”.

Clinton had the political line of the year with this one:

It makes perfect sense that Bush and McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities because these days they are awfully hard to tell apart.

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The Flathead National Forest released an Environmental Assessment (EA) last Friday for the proposed “Hemlock Elk Fuels Reduction and Forest Health Project.” The project aims to reduce “hazardous fuels” on federal land in a part of the valley that is heavily checkerboarded with Plum Creek land, while providing wood for the area’s timber cutters and mills. But some critics are skeptical of the proposal.

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The Allegheny National Forest is coordinating with several other federal, state, and local agencies, including the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the regulatory agency in charge of cleanup, to investigate a major oil spill in McKean County that impacted an area on the Forest.

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The roadless rule has been reinstated twice — once at the appellate level by the Ninth Circuit, and later by a federal magistrate judge in San Francisco, Elizabeth LaPorte. Judge LaPorte also slapped down a sneaky effort by the Bush administration to take advantage of all the confusion by replacing the Clinton rule with a much weaker alternative of its own.

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Just south of Mammoth Hot Springs, Tom Olliff stands in a field of sagebrush and lupine on the border of a stand of juvenile lodgepole pine.

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Forest Service officials decided to watch rather than fight the fire because it is burning well inside the wilderness and poses little threat to private property.

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Ron Steffens, the fire use monitor for Grand Teton National Park near the Idaho border, says, “The very high fire danger rating reflects a seasonal drying of vegetation in the low- and mid-elevation areas.