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Wildfire isn’t the only threat facing Idaho’s forests. According to the National Insect and Disease Risk Map, Idaho leads the country in the number of treed acres at risk of high rates of mortality from insect and disease by 2027. For every 1 cubic foot of wood harvested, 3 cubic feet die in our forests. High mortality rates lead to reduced carbon sequestration, increased wildfire risk and pose a threat to Idaho’s forest products industry and the jobs it supports in our rural communities. With 6.1 million acres at risk in Idaho, there’s a lot of work to do. In July, Governor Little announced two priority areas, encompassing over 4 million acres. Idaho Forest Group operates within these areas and is committed to supporting individual projects by sharing technology and data, adjusting capacity to meet demand, and lending expertise wherever needed. In December 2018, Idaho signed the nation’s first Shared Stewardship agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, pledging to double the number of acres treated to reduce wildfire risk and improve the health of our ailing forests. The concept of the Shared Stewardship policy is to allow states to define priorities and manage projects across land ownerships, utilizing collaborative decision-making that involves land managers and land users throughout the process. This agreement shaped a collaboration between Idaho Department of Lands and USFS Regions 1 and 4 to reduce fuels and wildfire threats around communities; create and sustain jobs; and improve the health and resiliency of the forest. The Idaho-USFS Shared Stewardship Agreement promises to double the annual acres…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS) announced today a new strategy. for managing catastrophic wildfires and the impacts of invasive species, drought, and insect and disease epidemics.

(Athol, Idaho, April 10, 2018) – Idaho Forest Group (IFG), a lumber producer in the Inland Northwest, has acquired the Merritt Brothers Finger Joint mill located in Athol, Idaho. Erol Deren, IFG VP of Sales and Marketing, commented “This acquisition gives us the opportunity to learn the value-added finger-joint manufacturing process. It will enable further utilization of the fiber resource and compliments our other facilities making the most of the logs that we procure for our mills.  We will carefully evaluate the capital needs of this site and invest accordingly.” Buck and Wayne Merritt started Merritt Brothers Lumber Company in 1968 when they purchased an old sawmill in Priest River, Idaho.  In 1990 they bought the Athol site and eventually sold off their Priest River location. Herb Janhsen, VP of Merritt Brothers, congratulated IFG stating “We wish IFG a prosperous future. We are happy to see the mill continue to move forward and offer employment opportunities to our valued team members.  We are thankful for the hard work our employees have put in over the years.”  

As published in the Idaho Statesman – read full article BY DAVID HIGH March 01, 2018 11:45 AM Updated March 04, 2018 05:15 PM Here’s the bad news for Idaho voters: If you miss voting in the primary election, you pretty much miss the election train. That’s because nearly all statewide officeholders in Idaho are selected in the primary election. Put another way, the primary election is when votes really matter. More specifically, recent history tells us that Republican primary results generally presage general election results for statewide offices. For the past 12 years, 100 percent of Idaho statewide political officeholders were decided in the Republican primary. If you go back 20 years, two Democrats were elected to statewide office: Marilyn Howard, superintendent of public instruction, and J.D. Williams, state controller. Four years later, only one Democrat — Howard — was elected. Since then, it’s been all Republicans. Unless you think Idaho has become less Republican over the last two decades — and with apologies to Democrats – it’s probable that all or nearly all of our statewide officeholders will be selected at the May 15 primary. Yet voter primary participation is inexplicably low. Statewide officeholders are elected every four years, the last time in 2014. The Secretary of State’s Office reports that 37.59 percent of Idaho’s voting-age population voted in the 2014 general election, but only 16.63 percent voted in the 2014 primary. As usual, all statewide office candidates selected in the Republican primary went on to win in the November general election. Think…

Though the president’s critics questioned the administration’s fealty to more inclusion in managing the West’s natural bounty, one place that the president and his aides could look for a model of a “truly representative process” is how former foes have cooperated to manage millions of acres of national forest land in Idaho.

Secretaries Zinke and Perdue Host Inter-Agency Forestry & Wildfire Listening Session with Federal, Congressional and State Stakeholders

Each year, the US Forest Service is allotted a fire budget based off the average cost of fighting blazes over the last ten years.  This cost is going up most years leaving the ten-year average short, and to make up the difference the USFS must “borrow” from its general operating budget without any capability of refunding those dollars.