USDA Forest Service Announces New Strategy for Improving Forest Conditions
(Washington, D.C., August 16, 2018) — 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.
Specifically, a new report titled Toward Shared Stewardship across Landscapes: An Outcome-based investment Strategy (PDF, 3.7 MB) outlines the USFS’s plans to work more closely with states to identify landscape-scale priorities for targeted treatments in areas with the highest payoffs.
“On my trip to California this week, I saw the devastation that these unprecedented wildfires are having on our neighbors, friends and families,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. “We commit to work more closely with the states to reduce the frequency and severity of wildfires. We commit to strengthening the stewardship of public and private lands. This report outlines our strategy and intent to help one another prevent wildfire from reaching this level.”
Both federal and private managers of forest land face a range of urgent challenges, among them catastrophic wildfires, invasive species, degraded watersheds, and epidemics of forest insects and disease. The conditions fueling these circumstances are not improving. Of particular concern are longer fire seasons, the rising size and severity of wildfires, and the expanding risk to communities, natural resources, and firefighters.
“The challenges before us require a new approach,” said Interim USFS Chief Vicki Christiansen. “This year Congress has given us new opportunities to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with state leaders mitigate to identify land management priorities that include mitigating wildfire risks. We will use all the tools available to us to reduce hazardous fuels, including mechanical treatments, prescribed fire, and unplanned fire in the right place at the right time, to mitigate them.”
A key component of the new strategy is to prioritize investment decisions on forest treatments in direct coordination with states using the most advanced science tools. This allows the USFS to increase the scope and scale of critical forest treatments that protect communities and create resilient forests.
The USFS will also build upon the authorities created by the 2018 Omnibus Bill, including new categorical exclusions for land treatments to improve forest conditions, new road maintenance authorities, and longer stewardship contracting in strategic areas. The agency will continue streamlining its internal processes to make environmental analysis more efficient and timber sale contracts more flexible.
The Omnibus Bill also includes a long-term “fire funding fix,” starting in FY 2020, that will stop the rise of the 10-year average cost of fighting wildland fire and reduce the likelihood of the disruptive practice of transferring funds from Forest Service non-fire programs to cover firefighting costs. The product of more than a decade of hard work, this bipartisan solution will ultimately stabilize the agency’s operating environment.
Finally, because rising rates of firefighter fatalities in recent decades have shifted the USFS’s approach to fire response, the report emphasizes the agency’s commitment to a risk-based response to wildfire.
The complete strategy is available at www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/toward-shared-stewardship.pdf. Photographs of the event are available at: https://flic.kr/s/aHskGkVYkN
The mission of the USFS, an agency of the USDA, is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.
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Late bill payments can not only negatively affect your credit score, but can remain on your credit report for up to seven years! This can have a costly impact on a consumer's ability to secure competitive financing rates. LendingTree has just released a new research study where we ranked the 100 largest metro areas in the United States to determine where consumers are the best and worst at paying off their bills on-time.
https://www.lendingtree.com/finance/where-people-pay-their-bills-on-time/
Our researchers pulled anonymized TransUnion-based credit reports of a sample of the more than 9 million LendingTree users from the first quarter of 2018 and ranked the largest 100 Americans metros by the percentage of residents with at least one account overdue on their credit report.
Key Findings:
- About 95% of borrowers in the 100 metros we reviewed are paying their bills on time.
- On average, people have six past late payments on their credit report.
- Provo, Utah tops our ranking with fewer than 6% of its residents having a delinquent account.
- People who live west of the Rockies are the most likely to repay their credit card debt on time, taking up nine of the top 10 spots, and 16 of the top 25 spots.
- Winston-Salem, N.C. has the highest rate of people with a delinquent account. (About 9.53% of Winston-Salem residents have at least one delinquent account on their credit reports)
See where your city ranked in our study: https://www.lendingtree.com/finance/where-people-pay-their-bills-on-time/
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Salt Lake City Youth Athletic Grant Application Opens on August 20th
Applications for the Salt Lake City Youth Athletic Grant are open from August 20th to September 21st. This grant provides scholarship funds for competitive, nonprofit sports organizations to support their athletes that reside within Salt Lake City Council Districts. Awards range up to $15,000 -- you don't want to miss this opportunity! For more information visit our website or contact
scholarships@utahcf.org.
Love Utah Give Tuesday 2018 is Here!
Registration is now open for Love Utah Give Tuesday! The first 250 nonprofits to register by September 1st will have the chance to win a $1,000 grant. Register today and keep an eye out for the Love Utah Give Tuesday Toolkit.
Women of Wisdom: A Catalyst Magazine Series
Catalyst Magazine's Women of Wisdom, a series funded by the Utah Women's Giving Circle, has arrived! This series, written by female millennial writers, features interviews with women in Utah who aim to empower other women.
The first installment features Salt Lake County Sheriff, Rosie Rivera, Utah's first female sheriff and the only Latina sheriff in the United States. Each piece will be followed by a "Women of Wisdom" Salon. Read the article and join Catalyst on August 23rd from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. for a conversation with Rosie and Cataylst writer Sophie Silverstone.
Two-Year Housing and Homelessness Grant Is Already Saving Lives
The Fourth Street Clinic's Nurse Care Management Program, an initiative funded by the Community Foundation of Utah's Housing and Homelessness Pillar, has already shown great signs of success! In the first quarter of 2018, 57 unique patients were treated for conditions ranging from diabetes management to domestic violence treatment. Click here to learn about the incredible, life-changing work that is being done through this grant.
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3 Tips For Making Better
Ethical Decisions Every Day
International Ethics Expert Provides Guidance To Help You Avoid
A Double Standard In How You Treat Others
News reports bring us plenty of examples of poor professional ethics being practiced in business, entertainment, and government. But in terms of personal ethics as applied to everyday choices that we don’t read about, what percentage of people lie, cheat, steal, cut corners, or take advantage of others?
Some studies show over 50 percent would cheat on their marital partner if they knew they wouldn’t get caught, and well over 1 million cheat on their taxes annually. Ethical transgressions some would consider small by comparison, such as accidentally denting a car door in a parking lot and then not leaving your contact information, or cutting someone off on the freeway, are just as important in living an ethical life, says international ethics expert Dr. Christopher Gilbert. That’s because if we fail to make the correct ethical decisions and harm others in the little things, we can often rationalize that harm with the big things.
“No corporate president walks into their board and asks for a show of hands about scamming the consumer,” says Gilbert, author of There’s No Right Way To Do the Wrong Thing and senior consultant/speaker at NobleEdge Consulting (www.nobleedgeconsulting.com). “They make immoral decisions and then, like us with the little stuff, rationalize so the choice seems fine - even good.
“We can often look for information or knowledge that helps us rationalize making a wrong choice,” adds Gilbert. “But if we follow the Golden Rule consistently and treat others the way we want to be treated, the ethical decision is clear.”
Gilbert provides some thoughts about understanding and practicing good personal ethics:
“Ethical decisions increase our trustworthiness, unethical choices erode that trust,” Gilbert says. “Since trust is the foundation of all human virtues xamining your ethical standards,” Gilbert says, “our ethics aren’t philosophical, or about codes or laws. They are at the heart of all our relationships.”
About Christopher Gilbert, Ph.D.
Dr. Christopher Gilbert, the author of There’s No Right Way To Do the Wrong Thing, is an international ethics consultant and senior consultant/speaker at NobleEdge Consulting (www.nobleedgeconsulting.com). Having spent much of his career focused on the study of human moral development, Dr. Gilbert has over 30 years of experience in organizational development as a strategic facilitator and leadership and operations consultant. He has served an international clientele, including Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies in the U.S., Canada, Asia and Africa. Dr. Gilbert completed work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a sustainable food-security program across four nations of sub-Saharan Africa, and he has been a professor of business ethics who taught at universities on four continents. He earned his doctorate in Organization, Management and Leadership Ethics at Capella University.
