Biden bans logging & road-building on 9M acres of Tongass NF

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it has banned logging and road-building on about nine million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, aiming to settle a two-decade battle over the fate of North America’s largest temperate rainforest.

The new rule reinstates protections in the pristine Alaskan back country that were first imposed in 2001 but stripped away by President Donald J. Trump in 2020.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/climate/alaska-tongass-national-forest.html

Backlog of USNPS feasibility studies frustrates boosters of new NP proposals

Seth Clark predicts that his home state of Georgia will finally make history in 2023, winning approval of its very first national park.

“I do believe that the 64th national park will be created within a year in middle Georgia,” said Clark, the mayor pro-tem of Macon-Bibb County and the executive director of the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/frustrations-mount-as-national-park-service-studies-pile-up/

Endangered fox subspecies seen in Sequoia-Kings Canyon NPs for first time since 1930s

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — The Sierra Nevada red fox, which historically inhabited the upper elevations of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades in California and Oregon, has been detected near Taboose Pass, on the eastern boundary of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park — a first for that region since the 1930s.

The state and federally endangered Sierra Nevada red fox was thought to no longer exist in the Sierra Nevada range until a small population was discovered at Sonora Pass in 2010, west of the town of Bridgeport. California Department of Fish and Wildlife staff recently detected Sierra Nevada Red Fox on four occasions at three survey cameras east of the John Muir Trail between 11,400 and 12,000 feet. The four detections happened between April 20, 2022 and June 4, 2022 and extend the known range of SNRF more than 100 miles south of the Sonora Pass population.

https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/endangered-sierra-nevada-red-fox-discovered-in-national-park/