Flagstaff, Ariz., is shaping up to be the testing grounds for the Bush administration's Healthy Forests initiative, a highly controversial effort to ease environmental reviews of logging projects on many Western public lands and ban reviews entirely in areas where forest fires could threaten human developments. Some 2,000 suburban Flagstaff homes are located just seven miles upwind of one of the state's most dangerous fire regions, Oak Creek Canyon; many of those homes are $500,000-plus mansions, and a fire in the region could do as much as $1 billion damage in the subdivision of Forest Highlands alone. This week, the …

Petitions have been arriving in a flurry in my email inbox lately. I have some doubts about the efficacy of all this petitioning and tend to be quick with the delete button, but one recent petition drew me in. The message itself -- which stated that the United Nations was collecting signatures of people opposed to a U.S. invasion of Iraq -- wasn't that different from the others that arrived that day. But I was intrigued by the long list of signatures, each with the signer's hometown noted. Signature by signature, I traced the petition's journey from friend to friend, …

The U.S. Congress is readying to pass its catch-all domestic spending bill this week -- and with it, a provision that would give the timber industry responsibility for managing millions of acres of national forests throughout the West. Under the provision, which was added at the last minute by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management would be allowed to award an unlimited quantity of "stewardship contracts" to logging companies. Translation: Timber companies would be paid taxpayer dollars and earn the right to cut down larger, marketable trees in exchange for maintaining trails …

Here's another provision to watch out for in the national spending bill: $3.1 billion in disaster assistance for farmers in the wake of this summer's (and, in many places, this winter's) drought. Sounds good -- but if the spending bill is approved, the money will come at the expense of a national conservation program. The brainchild of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the Conservation Security Program was approved last year as one of the very few environmentally redeeming components of the national Farm Bill; it set aside $7 billion to provide payments of up to $45,000 per year to farmers who …

In what the Bush administration hailed as proof that voluntary environmental initiatives can work, representatives from 13 different industries gathered in the Energy Department cafeteria yesterday to pledge their commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The industries, ranging from energy companies to paper manufacturers, have agreed to commit to reductions targets to help the administration reach its goal of cutting "greenhouse gas intensity" (the ratio of emissions to economic output) 18 percent by 2012. Environmentalists scoff at that goal, saying that total emissions will still increase under the Bush plan, by as much as 19 percent. A pledge by the …

Moderate Republicans, as well as Democrats and environmentalists, are up in arms over eleventh-hour language added by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to a huge $395 billion spending bill that would boost logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The provision would exempt nearly 2 million acres in the Tongass from a rule approved by former President Clinton that bans road-building on 58.5 million acres of remote national forestland across the country. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.) and seven other GOPers in the House have protested the plan (which contains additional anti-enviro elements), arguing in a letter to their colleagues that it was …

Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly (D) yesterday threw his weight behind opponents of a plan to build a wind farm off the state's coast. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in federal court, Reilly argued that the seabed of Nantucket Sound belongs to the federal government and therefore cannot be casually granted to a private company. The proposal by Cape Wind Associates, a private developer, to erect 130 wind turbines in the sound has divided the environmental community. Fans say the wind farm, which would be the first of its kind in the U.S., would produce no greenhouse gases and provide …

It's not easy to knock AAA. The venerable organization has 45 million members who count on it for trip insurance, travel advice, and, most of all, emergency services. It's no wonder that many members have sworn lifetime loyalty to Triple A: Rescuing drivers marooned on dark, lonely highways can do wonders for membership renewal rates. Triple eh? But is there a seedier side to this respected organization? Environmental and smart-growth activists say AAA's small team of lobbyists uses the group's outsized membership and down-home image to promote an agenda that is ecologically irresponsible. In recent years, AAA spokespeople have criticized …

It would seem that preemptive measures are all the rage among anti-environmentalists these days. In Alaska, Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) is awaiting the Interior Department's response to a request he made last year (while still a senator) to prohibit the establishment of new wilderness areas in the state. "Congress set aside all this wilderness, all these national parks and preserves, and we think that we ought to just stop there," said Murkowski spokesperson John Manly. (Fifteen percent of Alaska is designated wilderness.) Meanwhile, in West Virginia, the coal industry has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would prevent …