Eco-Integrity Alliance

Green Root Podcast #102: THE WORST WE’VE EVER SEEN ON PUBLIC LANDS

On episode 102 of the Green Root Podcast (the official podcast of Eco-Integrity Alliance), we strategize with Rocky Smith, forest management consultant with over forty years’ experience, about the worst threat we’ve ever seen on public lands in the West—including the now biggest logging project in Colorado history announced last week—and one quick action you can take to start turning things around before it’s too late.

Host Josh Schlossberg talks with Rocky about:

-The brand new biggest logging project in history in Colorado announced last week, bringing the total under the “Big Four”—Pike’s Peak, Lower North South, St. Vrain, Black Diamond—to a half-million acres across seventeen Roadless Areas, all under a media blackout.

-The dirty details of the “Pike’s Peak Vegetation Management,” almost 200,000 acres of industrial logging—including 13,500 acres within four protected Roadless Areas—in endangered species habitat and high-elevation bristlecone pine stands, along with a quarter-million acres of toxic herbicide spraying.

-How the U.S. Forest Service is allowing the public only two weeks to comment on the project over the holiday season (again, with zero media coverage).

-The fake “emergency” behind it all declared by the Trump Administration and U.S. Forest Service to rush 112 million acres—59 percent of National Forests—onto the chopping block.

-Rocky’s take on the root of the ecological crisis.

Brand New “Biggest Logging Project in Colorado History” Brings Total to Half-Million Acres and Seventeen Roadless Areas

This week, the U.S. Forest Service proposed what is now the largest public land logging scheme of the century (and possibly history) in Colorado, “Pike’s Peak Vegetation Management,”194,567 acres of industrial logging—13,500 acres within four protected Roadless Areas—and 244,210 acres of toxic herbicide spraying in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests in El Paso, Teller, and Douglas Counties.

The federal land management agency appears to have been emboldened by a multi-year media blackout across all of Colorado on what, up to this point, were successively the three largest logging projects in state history, to propose a fourth, even larger and more destructive one with the public kept almost completely in the dark.

“The Forest Service is proposing a huge project that will likely have detrimental impacts on important resources, including four Roadless Areas and three wildlife species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act,” says Denver-based forest management consultant Rocky Smith, building on his more than forty years’ experience. “They provide only general information on which to respond to the proposal and give us only fourteen days to do so. This is not the way to manage the public’s forests.”

One of the Most Liberal Counties in America Won’t Stop Clearcutting Public Lands

Boulder County, Colorado—where 79% of the electorate voted for Kamala Harris in 2024—continues to almost completely ignore the overwhelming body of science and warnings from the conservation community as to the lack of efficacy, the ecological harm, and the increased danger of spreading fire to communities from its rampant and indiscriminate “fuel reduction” logging across Open Space Parks.

(Yes, pretty much all so-called “fuel reduction” meets the dictionary definition of logging, i.e. “to cut trees into logs”; contractors hired to do the jobs are “logging contractors”; even U.S. Forest Service project maps clearly label this as “logging.”)

Green Root Podcast #101: ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA: INEPT OR CORRUPT?

On episode 101 of the Green Root Podcast—the official podcast of Eco-Integrity Alliance—host and former investigative journalist Josh Schlossberg tries to make sense of whether most media outlets are unable or unwilling to accurately and honestly cover environmental topics.

Josh talks about:

-The ideological and partisan bias he uncovered while working as an award-winning environmental journalist

-His experience as an ecosystem advocate interfacing with media only for them to cover up, misreport, or spread disinformation about ecological topics

-Whether bad environmental reporting is the result of an inability or refusal of journalists to do their jobs

-If it’s possible to hold media accountable to a basic standard of journalistic ethics

-How it’s past time to create new media that accurately reports on environmental issues while exposing the propaganda of legacy and “alternative” outlets

Green Root Podcast #100: A BEAUTIFULLY BURNED FOREST (with Richard Hutto, Wildlife Biologist)

On episode 100 of the Green Root Podcast—the official podcast of Eco-Integrity Alliance—we explore the ecological wonderland and wildlife haven that is a severely-burned forest, with Richard Hutto, emeritus professor in wildlife biology and author of the new book, A BEAUTIFULLY BURNED FOREST: LEARNING TO CELEBRATE SEVERE FOREST FIRE.

Host Josh Schlossberg talks with Richard about:

-The science informing his book, A BEAUTIFULLY BURNED FOREST

-The wildlife species that need severely-burned forests to survive

-How industry, government, and media have demonized wildfire

-How advocates might inform the public as to the crucial role of wildfire in western forests and harm from “fuel reduction” logging

-Richard’s take on the root of the ecological crisis

Wildfire Pretense Logging: The Trojan Horse Destroying Public Lands

What do these recent actions on public lands have in common?

The Orwellian “Fix Our Forests” Act. Trump’s executive order to expand American timber production. The rescinding of the Roadless Rule. “Emergency” designation across 112 million acres—59% of National Forests.

All of them—unprecedented in scale and scope—push industrial logging under the pretense of “protecting” communities and forests from wildfire. (And, yes, despite bad faith denials, so-called “fuel reduction” meets the dictionary definition of logging, i.e. “to cut trees into logs”; the contractors hired to do the jobs are “logging contractors”; even project maps clearly label this as “logging.”)

READ FULL POST at Eco-IntegrityAlliance’s Substack

Green Root Podcast #99: 100 NEW NATIONAL PARKS (with Michael Kellett, RESTORE: The North Woods

On episode 99 of the Green Root Podcast—the official podcast of Eco-Integrity Alliance—we talk about a positive alternative vision for public lands that would establish 100 new National Parks in the U.S.—at least one in every state—with Michael Kellett, executive director of RESTORE: The North Woods.

Host Josh Schlossberg talks with Michael about:

-How the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture treats National Forests as industrial croplands

-How the anti-science exploitation of wildfire to log western forests is now being pushed in the eastern U.S.

-The October conference “Forest Fires in Massachusetts: Myths and Realities”

-RESTORE: The North Woods’ upcoming campaign to designate 100 new National Parks, at least one in every state

Trump’s Forest Service Pressuring Media to Cover Up Public Lands Logging?

-by Josh Schlossberg, Colorado Advocate, Eco-Integrity Alliance

[This opinion piece was sent to multiple media outlets in Colorado, yet each refused to publish it, in effect, media covering up its own cover up.]

Trump’s Fake “Emergency” Logging and Burning of Old-Growth Forests on Utah’s Public Lands

The U.S. Forest Service’s “Pine Valley Wildfire Risk Reduction” in the Dixie National Forest in southern Utah, seeks to log, burn, or take other destructive management actions across 127,667 acres—including in old-growth forests—harming ecosystems, biodiversity, watersheds, climate, air quality, and public health.

A Team of All Goalies Never Wins (Why the Public Lands Movement Can’t Stop Losing)

Those who like hockey know that the most important member of any team is its goalie, whose difficult and often dangerous job is to put their body on the line to keep the other side from scoring.

Any club without a good goalie will lose every single game no matter how skilled the rest of the players might be. But what happens when a team is made up of ONLY goalies?