Also on today’s menu:
Texas Tornado Kills Three, Injures 75
Homeland Security Downplays Cyber-Extortion Risk
Rockslide Stops Just Short Of Swiss Village
Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Advocacy Clinic has filed an objection on behalf Standing Trees, an organization seeking to protect and restore New England’s forests, which challenges the multiple-use principle governing the White Mountain National Forest. Specifically, it objects to a project in the Peabody West Habitat Management Unit — about 15,500 acres between Gorham and Randolph — that would harvest high-quality timber, improve outdoor accessibility, and encourage a more diverse wildlife habitat by removing some trees to make room for younger ones. The tree harvesting would take place within 2,220 acres of land.
The Forest Service also wants to reconstruct or build about 13 miles of road in the area, build four miles of mountain bike trails, designate 300 acres as a backcountry ski zone — developing as much as 15 percent of it as skiing terrain — and improving a short trail to a swimming site.
Standing Trees argues that the Forest Service has not fully considered the potential threat from logging, which it maintains threatens forest health, climate resilience, water quality, habitat for imperiled species, and the area’s scenic beauty and recreational opportunities. The filing contends that the project sidestepped federal requirements to demonstrate compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, and other laws. It also says the project violates an executive order from the Biden administration designed to restore and conserve forests.
The White Mountain National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan calls for “use [of] an ecological approach to provide both healthy ecosystems and a sustainable yield of high quality forest products” with “sustainable ecosystem management
practices to provide a diversity of habitats across the WMNF, including various habitat types, age classes, and non-forested habitats.” Standing Trees contends that view is '“not informed by the latest scientific understanding of the ecology of New England forests, the benefits of protecting mature forests, and the negative environmental impacts of logging.”
Its objection states, “Today, old forests — the forests that once dominated the region — are functionally absent from northern New England. The absence of old forests in New England has led to the elimination or decline of elk, caribou, wolverine, wolves, cougars, pine marten, and salmon.”
Texas Tornado Kills Three, Injures 75
A tornado that touched down in Perryton, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, on June 15 killed three people in a “direct hit” on at least 30 mobile homes, injuring another 75 in the town of about 8,000 people. The tornado appears to be at the centre of an intense storm system passing through the South which is expected to diminish in the coming days.
Emergency crews from surrounding areas came to the aid of the town. A spokesman for Ochiltree General Hospital, which took in the injured, told ABC News that it is operating on generators amid widespread power outages.
A total of seven tornadoes have left roughly 247,000 customers without electricity in Texas and Oklahoma as of this morning, according to the Poweroutage.us website. Some 140,000 more were in the dark in Louisiana and 15,000 in Florida.
Homeland Security Downplays Cyber-Extortion Risk
Homeland Security officials said the Cl0p ransomware syndicate’s global hack of MOVIEit, a file-transfer program popular with corporations and governments, should not have a big impact. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters that, unlike the SolarWinds hacking campaign attributed to state-backed Russian intelligence agents, this campaign was short, relatively superficial, and caught quickly.
The Department of Energy and several other federal agencies were compromised, along with Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles, Oregon’s Department of Transportation, the Nova Scotia provincial government, British Airways, the British Broadcasting Company, and the U.K. drugstore chain Boots. Louisiana officials said people with a driver’s license or vehicle registration in the state likely had their their name, address, Social Security number, and birthdate exposed. The Oregon Department of Transportation also said the attackers had accessed personal information of about 3.5 million people to whom the state issued identity cards or driver’s licenses.
A senior CISA official said neither the U.S. military nor intelligence community was affected.
The Cl0p ransomware syndicate behind the hack announced last week on its dark web site that its victims had until Wednesday to get in touch to negotiate a ransom or risk having sensitive stolen data dumped online.
Rockslide Stops Just Short Of Swiss Village
Brienz, a village in the southeastern Graubuenden region of Switzerland, was evacuated on May 12 after geology experts warned that the Alpine rock looming over the village could break loose. On June 15, a large mass of that rock slid down the mountainside, stopping just short of the settlement.
The local council said there was no evidence of damage to the village, but the rockslide left a “meters-high deposit” in front of the school building. Some local roads and a railway line were shut down and two houses in the neighboring village of Surava were evacuated.
The rockslide came a bit over a week after residents of Brienz had been allowed to make their first visits back to the village since the evacuation to retrieve essential items from their houses. Only two people per household were allowed in for 90-minute visits.
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