Forest Service U S

An irate San Francisco federal judge upheld a contempt citation against the government for failure to comply with a consent decree in an employment sex-discrimination case against the Forest Service. U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, confirming a December contempt finding by U.S. Magistrate Claudia Wilken against Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng, said it "bothered" him that the government failed within a five-year period to implement an affirmative action program in the Forest Service.

Three weeks before the deadly Station fire erupted, the U.S. Forest Service issued a cost-cutting order to reduce its use of state and local firefighters, documents and interviews show. Reinforcements from Los Angeles County were scaled back early in the battle against the fire in the Angeles National Forest, and federal officials now say they are investigating the actions that allowed the blaze to rage out of control. An internal memorandum obtained by The Times instructed forest supervisors in the Pacific Southwest region to, "as appropriate," replace non-federal crews with the service's own personnel and equipment "as quickly as possible."

The U.S. Forest Service is exploring a plan to ban commercial broadcasting from transmitters on Santiago Peak in the Cleveland National Forest, a move that could force San Clemente-based KWAVE to tear down its newly installed radio antenna. Forestry officials say that the powerful commercial broadcasts could interfere with the peak's weaker two-way radio transmitters, which are used by most of the county's police, fire and emergency departments.

The U.S. Forest Service has launched an internal inquiry into the agency's attack on the deadly Station fire, an operation that was scaled back the night before the blaze began to burn out of control. "With the significant loss of life, and impacts to the local community, we must determine the effectiveness of our efforts," Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell said in a written statement Wednesday. Tidwell said he would ask other agencies to participate in the review. But the Forest Service has declined to release detailed information about its response to the suspected arson fire, citing in part an ongoing homicide investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department into the deaths of two firefighters whose truck fell off a mountain road.

Along the mountain peaks of Los Padres National Forest in northern Ventura County, airplane wreckage remains pounded into the earth. The rugged terrain contains the remains of 60 known wrecks, including bits and pieces of two dozen World War II planes that crashed more than 40 years ago. Until recently, no one has sought to remove these eerie reminders of journeys that ended fatally against a mountainside.

Nathan Leatherman has fire in his blood. In the third grade, Leatherman first heard his grandfather tell of his adventures as a firefighter -- riding a screaming fire engine, battling a wall of flames consuming the forest, and saving lives. So a year out of high school, in 2002, Leatherman signed up for a fire technology course at Victor Valley Community College in Victorville and quickly became an on-call U.S.

Three weeks before the deadly Station fire erupted, the U.S. Forest Service issued a cost-cutting order to reduce its use of state and local firefighters, documents and interviews show. Reinforcements from Los Angeles County were scaled back early in the battle against the fire in the Angeles National Forest, and federal officials now say they are investigating the actions that allowed the blaze to rage out of control. An internal memorandum obtained by The Times instructed forest supervisors in the Pacific Southwest region to, "as appropriate," replace non-federal crews with the service's own personnel and equipment "as quickly as possible."

The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers. --Aldo Leopold, author and forester * Taz Stoner fired the blast heard around the world of wilderness travel and whitewater rafting. He blew the lower lip off remote Quartzite Falls on the majestic Salt River 100 miles northeast of here.

On a radiant Sunday afternoon in an amphitheater often used as a command post for fighting fires in the San Bernardino mountains, a fire alarm bell sounded for the last time for five men who died fighting the Esperanza fire.

For nearly three centuries, the inhabitants of isolated mountain villages in northern New Mexico have heated their homes and cooked their meals with firewood collected from the surrounding forests. Wood was abundant and, until this year, free for the taking. But now a lawsuit to protect the Mexican spotted owl, a bird that residents say they've never seen, has prompted the U.S. Forest Service to put much of the woods off limits.

U.S. Forest Service officials underestimated the threat posed by the deadly Station fire and scaled back their attack on the blaze the night before it began to rage out of control, records and interviews show. In response to Times inquiries, officials for the Forest Service and Los Angeles County Fire Department said they probably will change their procedures so that the two agencies immediately stage a joint assault on any fire in the lower Angeles National Forest. Angeles Forest Fire Chief David Conklin said his staff was confident that the Station fire had been "fairly well contained" on the first day, so it decided that evening to order just three water-dropping helicopters to hit the blaze shortly after dawn on its second day -- down from five on Day One -- and prepared to go into mop-up mode with fewer firefighters on the ground.

The Environmental Protection Agency is focusing on the effect of hazardous waste recycling plants on minorities and low-income communities. The move hearkens back to a Clinton-era executive order that required federal agencies to consider the effect of their policies on disadvantaged communities. Although the Bush administration largely ignored the mandate, Obama-appointed EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson has promised to analyze those effects.

California sued the U.S. Forest Service on Thursday over plans that would open more than 500,000 acres to roads and oil drilling in the state's largest national forests. The four Southern California forests -- Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland -- comprise more than 3.5 million acres that stretch from Big Sur to the Mexican border. They provide habitat for 31 threatened or endangered animal species, including the California condor, and 29 such plant species.

More than 3 million acres of pristine wilderness in Alaska's Tongass National Forest would be open to logging and road building under a new management plan released Friday by the U.S. Forest Service. At 17 million acres, roughly the size of West Virginia, the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska is the country's largest national forest and the world's largest intact coastal temperate rain forest.

Hundreds of Lake Arrowhead-area homes could never have been protected by Road Queens, a nickname for the big, iconic, ladder-hauling fire engines that are designed to save structures. Up in the mountains, in neighborhoods built along streets as narrow and bendy as creek beds, keeping fire out of yards and living rooms is a job for the boxy but nimble trucks -- the brush engines -- of the U.S. Forest Service's strike teams.

At 6:30 in the morning Tuesday, Debora Lutz of the U.S. Forest Service got the first sign she was in for a hellacious day in the air war against the Witch. The Witch fire in northern San Diego County had already devoured more than 150,000 acres, and was eating its way down the San Dieguito River Valley, heading straight for the blue-chip seaside real estate of Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe.

Richard Grillat wasn't looking for a fight--just a peaceful day of fishing when he dropped his line in Bouquet Creek in the Angeles National Forest. But cabin owner Janet Peters told Grillat he was trespassing, and allegedly heaved a rock at him when he refused to leave. Then her husband pumped two bullets into Grillat's van, according to a sheriff's report. Their reactions seemed all the more extreme because Grillat was fishing on public land, as he had every right to do.

U.S. Forest Service workers who claim the agency is not living up to the terms of a settlement in a sexual harassment case failed Friday to win a contempt order. Although a federal judge in Oakland turned down the contempt motion filed by plaintiffs against the U.S. secretary of Agriculture, the government was ordered to return to court in December to report on its progress in meeting the settlement provisions.

The retiring chief of the U.S. Forest Service's Intermountain Region says the days of unrestricted cross-country travel on public lands are quickly coming to an end. Jack Troyer, who steps down next month, has managed 32 million acres of national forests and grasslands in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California and Colorado for the last five years. Troyer said half of his budget was being consumed by controlling wildfires, up from 13% in 1991.

The Bush administration has launched a campaign to eradicate thousands of acres of illegal marijuana plants from California's national forests, the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday. Officials said crime rings have planted about 6,000 acres of marijuana plants in federal forests and often send armed squatters to set up camp and tend the lucrative crop. In one recent three-week period, officials pulled up more than 280,000 marijuana plants, worth about $1.