My Page: Matthew Koehler

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A recent study at Oregon State University indicates that some past approaches to calculating the impacts of forest fires have grossly overestimated the number of live trees that burn up and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result. [more]

Jack Ward Thomas, chief emeritus of the U.S. Forest Service and Bitterroot Valley resident, had a guest column in today's Missoulian about Senator Tester's logging bill. [more]

This pdf document contains a sampling of the types of comments submitted to the US Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests regarding S1470, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, by members of the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign. These comments were officially entered into the record for the Subcommittee’s Dec 17, 2009 hearing. [more]

Senator Tester's "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act," which seeks to both boost timber harvests and add hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness in Montana, had its first hearing before a congressional committee late last week. It was not surprising that Montana timber interests testified in favor of the bill.

What was interesting was that wilderness advocates from Montana and national environmental organizations were strongly divided over the merits of Tester's bill. Tester is attempting to "split the baby" and end the multi-decade paralysis that has both blocked any new wilderness protection for Montana's six million acres of unprotected wildlands and shrunk timber harvests on federal lands in Montana down to a small fraction of what they were two decades ago.

The Obama Administration, through the Undersecretary in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, weighed in on the side of the critics of Tester's bill, strongly recommending that key elements of the bill be modified. [more]

This document was produced by the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, a coalition of conservation organizations and citizens dedicated to wildlands protection, Wilderness preservation, and the sound long-term management of our federal public lands legacy. Our coalition includes small-business owners, scientists, educators and teachers, health care practitioners, hikers and backpackers, hunters and anglers, wildlife viewers, outfitters and guides, veterans, retired Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials, ranchers and farmers, craftspersons, and community leaders – all stakeholders committed to America's public wildlands legacy. [more]

Today, a coalition of conservation organizations and citizens dedicated to wildlands protection, Wilderness preservation, and the sound long-term management of our federal public lands legacy, launched a new website dedicated to a detailed examination of Senator Jon Tester's S. 1470, the "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act." [more]

The controversy over Senator Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Bill is likely to get some national attention in a week or so as the bill receives its first hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests in the our nation's capitol. [more]

What I want to do here is simply outline the conventional wisdom from which Senator Tester appears to be operating. That will sound familiar, and, to many, convincing, but those assumptions are, in fact, highly debatable. In commentaries over the next two months, I will then seek to critically explore each of those assumptions ....As common and familiar as all of these underlying assumptions are, they are far from being factual assumptions. They are a mix of folk wisdom, economic nostalgia, wishful thinking, and barely disguised commercial and bureaucratic government special interests. Before jumping onboard with Tester's proposal, each has to be critically analyzed. [more]

We can take much inspiration from Ken Burns' film "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" and readily extend its premise to the remainder of America's public lands. Key take-home messages in Burns' film are that threats to America's wildlands never cease and that their protection is brought about through national concern and legislation, often over the objections of local politicians. [more]

[more]

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