The Bush administration's plan to allow loggers into national forests and "thin" the growth was from the get-go an obvious use of a real problem (forest fires) in order to give away the nation's resources to industry interests. Now here's some evidence that an unaddressed environmental problem -- global warming -- may be to blame instead of overgrowth: The raging Western wildfires of recent years have often been blamed on management practices that promoted dense, overpacked forests. But a new study indicates global warming may be the main culprit.

The Bush administration's pattern of failure to use regulatory policy in the public interest has been spelled out in a timeline, by the good folks over at In These Times magazine. Check it out!

The N.Y. Times is reporting that the National Parks Service has suppressed and failed to act upon a report insisting that NPS needs to "do much more to preserve biological diversity and ecological integrity in the national parks," according to a member of the panel that produced the report. That member, Dr. Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer who is explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society, said she and her colleagues had expected that the National Park Service would distribute the report and take action on its findings. Instead, she said, "it has just languished."

TRAC continues to release valuable information about environmental enforcement during the Bush administration. Unlike the recent bad news about declining prosecution, the latest report -- about prosecution of wildlife law violations -- reflects only geographical unevenness: The extent federal criminal charges are brought against individuals and businesses for violations of the nation's wildlife laws vary remarkedly from one part of the country to another . . . .