Forest Web

05/31/2026

05/31/2026

When will our wildlife agencies treat and steward all wildlife as necessary cogs of functioning ecosystems? When will we manage our land and all its life forces on an ecosystem basis?

05/31/2026

“They are like our children now,” says one of the villagers helping to save critically endangered Asian giant tortoises.

05/30/2026

One of our follower recommendations.

A tender, fearless debut by a forester writing in the tradition of Suzanne Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Robert Macfarlane. Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper. In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth. How do we respond to the harmful legacies of the past? How do we use our species' incredible power to heal rather than to harm? Tapper walks us through the fragile and resilient community that is a forest. He introduces us to wolf trees and spring ephemerals, and to the mysterious creatures of the rhizosphere and the necrosphere. He helps us reimagine what forests are and what it means to care for them. This world, Tapper writes, is degraded by people who do too much and by those who do nothing. As the ecosystems that sustain all life struggle, we straddle two a status quo that treats them as commodities and opposing claims that the only true expression of love for the natural world is to leave it alone. Proffering a more complex vision, Tapper argues that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. With striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts--like loving deer and hunting them, loving trees and felling them--can be expressions of compassion. Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world, reminding us that what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.

05/30/2026

Part one in an ongoing series titled, "Are Funhogs Loving America's Wild Country to Death?" Instead of defending the last best finite habitat for wildlife that remains, why are some conservationists instead pushing to have it become playgrounds?

05/30/2026

Help Hermetically Seal the Shoreline of the Allegheny Reservoir Against Development With Wilderness Preservation!

Here is a good opportunity to advocate for wilderness preservation all around the Allegheny Reservoir within the Allegheny National Forest!

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District is currently seeking input on their Kinzua Dam and Allegheny Reservoir Master Plan and environmental assessment. The comment period closes this Friday, May 15th.

Feedback can be submitted online by emailing to: [email protected]

Please take the opportunity to advocate that the following Allegheny National Forest areas be permanently protected from all forms of development—including from all forms of developed recreation—as wilderness areas under the Wilderness Act of 1964!

• Proposed Cornplanter Wilderness, 3,022 acres: http://pawild.org/images/maps/cornplanter.jpg

• Proposed Scandia Wilderness, 4,752 acres: http://pawild.org/images/maps/scandia_nra.jpg

• Proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness, 9,705 acres: http://pawild.org/images/maps/tracy_ridge.jpg

• Proposed Chestnut Ridge wilderness, 5,191 acres: http://pawild.org/images/maps/chestnut_ridge.jpg

• Proposed Morrison Run Wilderness, 6,887 acres: http://pawild.org/images/maps/morrison_run.jpg

Permanently protecting all of these areas as wilderness will guarantee high-quality wildlife habitat for everything from black bears (Ursus americanus) to little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus), and provide absolute gold-standard watershed protection in the lands surrounding the Allegheny Reservoir for all time to come!

Lands immediately surrounding the Allegheny Reservoir influence runoff, sedimentation, nutrients, and pollutants entering the water. Stronger protections such as wilderness designations under the Wilderness Act can reduce development, logging impacts, road density, and fragmentation—leading to long-term benefits for reservoir water quality, harmful algal bloom (HAB) mitigation, and overall ecological health.

While the U.S.A.C.O.E. cannot directly designate wilderness on U.S. Forest Service land such as the Allegheny National Forest—that requires Congressional action under the Wilderness Act—public input through this comment period can highlight the issue, encourage better coordination, and build the record for future Allegheny National Forest forest plan revisions or legislative efforts.

The public can view the draft master plan document at:

https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p16021coll7/id/28858

And the draft environmental assessment at:

https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p16021coll7/id/28903

Physical copies of the master plan and environmental assessment drafts are available at:

• Warren Public Library at 205 Market Street, Warren, PA 16365

• Warren County Visitor's Bureau at 22045 US-6, Warren, PA 16365

• Salamanca Library at 155 Wildwood Avenue, Salamanca, NY 14779

Comment cards and submission boxes are available at all three locations for the public to submit feedback.

Feedback can be also submitted online by emailing to: [email protected]

The comment period closes this Friday, May 15th.

Thank you!

Photo: A group of hikers from the Keystone Trails Association on a ridgeline within the proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area, high above the Allegheny Reservoir.