We Can Have It All: Wildlife, Timber, and Healthy Forests
Fresh Tracks Weekly
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28m
Housekeeping Links
• Crew’s Belt, Montana NRL Rifle Match
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C81fcst0T_k
• Randy’s New Rifle Setup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCYyvcHa-yA&feature=youtu.be
• Hal Herring’s Carrying the Fire Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/7lWLbTPrE5hDybQgZZwIPv?si=06968b4bed1945c7
For this week’s deeper dive, Randy and Marcus leave the studio and take us into the field. Building on their recent conversations about roadless areas, and travel management, the pair hike into a section of national forest just outside of Bozeman. This specific area underwent a thinning treatment in 2022 to protect the city's water supply from catastrophic wildfire.
This place offers a firsthand look at how logging and thinning can reduce wildfire risk while simultaneously creating better forage for elk and other wildlife in areas without roads. Ultimately, Randy wants to drive home the point that we can have public lands that can benefit both wildlife and people.
This week's news
• On July 13th, President Trump signed an executive order that removes protections for just over 3 million acres of public land in the Beehive State.
• Links
• https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/trump-cuts-2-popular-utah-national-monuments-by-90-percent/
• https://fieldandstream.com/stories/white-house-shrinks-national-monuments-in-utah
• https://wessiler.substack.com/p/heres-a-map-of-the-new-boundaries
• In Minnesota, the US Forest Service has temporarily closed the Boundary Waters due to increasingly dangerous wildfires.
• Links
• https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/forest-service-closes-boundary-waters/
• Researchers at Montana State University have discovered a TRex tooth embedded in an Edmontosaurus' skull, providing some additional context to how these creatures might have lived.
• Links
• https://peerj.com/articles/20796/
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