Month: March 2011

Stop Killing Messengers

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There is really little chance that we will, anytime soon, stop “killing the messenger” in the natural resources arena. But we might do it first in another important arena: banking and finance. Later, perhaps the many sad tales of public lands whistleblowers losing all trying to stand up for truth and justice will finally come to an end. Or maybe I was just dreaming today, at Economic Dreams-Nightmares in Stop Killing Messengers: Banking and Finance Edition.

Killing the messenger has been around for a very long time. In our day, we mostly don’t shoot them (at least not in so-called “civilized countries”), but “it is still worth a man’s neck to disturb an emperor’s image. Nowadays the axe falls more subtly and the execution may be postponed, but sooner or later it comes.” (citation in Wiki link above.)

Why not reward whistleblowers instead? If we were to reward whistleblowers, rather than killing them—figuratively, if not literally—we would have to reward them handsomely. Why? Because in most cases whistle blowing is a career-ending if not a job-ending move. Over at Macroeconomic Resilience Ashwin Parameswaran champions whistleblowing:,

Compared to other whistleblowers, employees have the best access to the information required to uncover fraud. They also possess the knowledge to analyse and parse the information for any signs of fraud. This is especially important in a field such as banking where outsiders rarely possess the knowledge to uncover fraud even when they possess the raw information….

[M]onetary incentives have an even stronger role to play in uncovering fraud in banking. The extremely high lifetime pay expected in the course of a banking career combined with the almost certainly career-ending implications of becoming a whistleblower means that any employee will think twice before pulling the trigger. Moreover, the extremely specialised nature of the industry means that many senior bankers have very few alternative industries to move to. …

The focus must be not to keep whistleblowers from losing their jobs but to compensate them sufficiently so that they never have to work again. As it happens, the scale of fraud in financial institutions means that this may even be achieved without spending taxpayer money. The whistleblower may be allowed to claim a small percentage of the monetary value of the fraud prevented from the institution itself, which should be more than sufficient for the purpose.

There is little doubt that if Brooksley Born had been listened to by Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Larry Summers during the Clinton era, the 2007-8 US financial meltdown might have happened sooner, but would arguably have been milder.

Rewarding whistleblowers can serve as a compliment to an idea The Epicurean Dealmaker, put on the table to attract some highly-talented people into government service. To TED:

Staff the SEC, or whatever “Super Regulator” the government decides to deputize to oversee this mess, with a bunch of highly-paid, tough-as-nails, sonofabitch investment bankers. You will have to pay them millions, just like regular bankers. (You can tie their incentive pay to improvements in the value of securities held under TARP and TALF, if you like.) Pay them well, and investment bankers won’t be able to treat them like second-class citizens at the negotiating table. Pay them like bankers, and your regulators won’t hesitate to read Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein the riot act, because they won’t give a shit about getting a job from them later.

Trust me, these are the kind of people you will need on your team: highly educated, financially sophisticated, psychotically hard-working, experienced professionals who know or can figure out CDOs, SIVs, balance sheet leverage, and credit default derivatives just as easily as the idiots who created and trade this shit. …

If these two measures were used to compliment other reform measures, we would go a long ways toward preventing future financial catastrophes.

[Personal Disclosure: I serve on the board for a little organization (FSEEE) set up to protect whistleblowers as a part of a three-part mission. What I’ve learned over 20 years is that there is little protection for whistleblowers. Despite high-sounding rhetoric in several Acts of Congress, whistleblowers usually lose most everything: jobs, families, property, etc. FSEEE, PEER, and GAP (three organizations I know that attempt to protect whistleblowers) all advise prospective whistleblowers not to blow the whistle, at least not publicly. Even though all three organizations know well the value of whistleblowers, they advise against the practice because the personal price to be paid is too high. Only crazy people blow the whistle, but FSEEE, PEER, and GAP (among others) stand ready to help by getting the message out (either anonymously or with what meager protection that can be offered by “going public in a big way”).]

NY Times Editors Need New Nemesis

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Here’s the link and here’s what is says about the planning rule:

The other piece of news is more complicated. Last month, the Agriculture Department proposed long-awaited forest-planning rules. The rules, mandated by 1976 National Forest Management Act, are supposed to guide forest managers as they decide which parts can be logged and which should be fully protected.

The act’s bedrock principle is that the health of the forests and their wildlife is to be valued at least as much as the interests of the timber companies. The Clinton administration’s rules firmly embraced that principle; the industry-friendly Bush rules did not.

The Obama administration’s proposed rules improve on the Bush rules and are full of high-minded promises about maintaining “viable” animal populations. But they are disappointingly vague on the question of how — and how often — the biological diversity of any particular forest is to be measured and what actions are to be taken to ensure its survival.

The net result is to give too much discretion to individual forest managers and not nearly enough say to scientists. This is dangerous because, over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.

As secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack has been more attentive to the needs of the forest, so far, than any agriculture secretary since the Clinton days. He should make sure these rules are strengthened.

When we had the law students visit earlier this week, they also talked about “industry,” and I asked them who do they mean? The ski industry, the oil and gas industry, the ranching “industry” (not sure anyone uses that expression, but..). Is there anything they are all united on? Do they actually work together to “open up” NFs to all uses? No.

Earth to NY Times editors- timber wars are over! They need to find new evil empire or federation of empires. Timber industry folks just aren’t very scary- see this press release about the Montrose mill.

Of course, my favorite part of this editorial was this quote

“The net result is to give too much discretion to individual forest managers and not nearly enough say to scientists. This is dangerous because, over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.”

Now, if we were on this side of the Hudson looking in that direction, we might suggest that the NY State Legislature, or perhaps the Mayor of New York could also be replaced by scientists. Because, after all, their “local” elected officials can be too easily influenced by industries of various kinds, instead of listening to those who know better, perhaps the editors at the Denver Post ;)?

Forest Wars: From Multiple Use to Sustained Conflict

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When we sometimes tire of our “word wars” here, we need to remember that they are just one manifestation of broader holy wars being waged in and around our public lands.

Long Road to War

Utilitarian ideology has been a mainstay in forest policy development since the early 1900s when Gifford Pinchot and Bernhard Fernow introduced forestry into American government. Samuel Hays’ Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, alongside David Clary’s Timber and the Forest Service both build on self-righteousness to the point of religious fervor among many who chose to work on the land, notably foresters and engineers, and their evangelists (pundits, professors, etc). Similar books could be written — likely have been — talking about the religious-like fervor of the environmental community. [See, e.g. Environmentalism as Religion, Wall Street Journal, 4/22/2010.]

For many years, what later emerged as forest wars were never more than disagreements between mainstream forestry practitioners and malcontents like John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall. Such “disagreements” were deep-seated ideological splits, but contrarians of that era didn’t have the political/legal muscle to make for war. Later, however, the very same disagreements intensified into ideological war with the dawn of the environmental movement.

Environmentalists gained traction in forest debates, appeals, litigation, etc. after people began to wake up to environmental concerns in the late 1960s. The first of a series of Wilderness Acts became law in 1964. The Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 predated and set a stage for the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Earth Day began in 1970. In 1969 the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became law. In 1976 The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the Federal Lands Policy Management Act added to the mix. The environmental battles gained legal footing. But it is not clear that the legal footing was ever recognized, or at least accepted by the US Forest Service. At least if actions speak louder than words, we must question whether the Forest Service and its USDA overlords ever accepted these legislative mandates.

Disdain for legislative mandates runs deep, but there is an alternative path — a road not taken. Sally Fairfax set a stage for continued disgust for NEPA among forest practitioners with her 1978 Science article titled A Disaster in the Environmental Movement. Countrast Fairfax’s view with that from Jim Kennedy’s NEPA note: Legislative Confrontation of Groupthink.

Environmental Wars

Beginning in the 1970s, environmentalists waged war on timbering, grazing, road building, mining and oil & gas development, developed recreation, and more. Warriors on the “enviro” side typically vilify corporations, else government “lackeys” for the corporations. Warriors on the practitioner side vilify the enviros. In war there is little room for thoughtful discussion or dialogue. The rift between the two camps will likely remain very deep for a long time.

It is not clear that the Forest Service ever gave much heed to the “legislative confrontation of groupthink” ideas in NEPA. It seems that the Forest Service has been evading/avoiding NEPA responsibilities from the get-go. They continued “go-go timbering” up to the point of shutdown following the Monongahela and Bitterroot controversies. After things were sort-of opened up again via NFMA, the Forest Service wanted “once and for all NEPA”, i.e. the forest plan would be a catch-all NEPA container, allowing all projects to flow without any further NEPA review. When that didn’t work, the Forest Service played various shell-games pointing either upward (e.g. forest plans, regional plans) for NEPA compliance, else downward toward projects depending on what was being challenged. Finally, during the Bush/Cheney period, they sought to “categorically exclude” as much as possible from NEPA review.

In 1999 I wrote up a little thing titled Use of the National Forests. I noted four distinct periods of Forest Service history: Conservation and “Wise Use” — 1900-1950, Multiple Use — 1950-1970, Sustained Conflict — 1970-2000, and Collaborative Stewardship — 2000+. Although we might quibble over the dates as well as the categories, I now realize that I was over-optimistic as to the dawn of the Collaborative Stewardship era. At minimum there was a dramatic backlash — not necessarly against collabortion but clearly against environmetalism — commencing with Bush/Cheney Administration and their ABC (“anything but Clinton”) campaigns. The Bush/Cheney war on the environment was a reenactment of an earlier war waged by the Ronald Reagan Administration.

Bob Keiter (Univ. of Utah Law School) chronicled the emergence of both ecological awareness and collaborative stewardship in Keeping Faith with Nature. Keiter later chronicled the Bush/Cheney reactionary footnote in a 2007 article, Breaking Faith with Nature. Taken together, the two trace certain aspects of emergent gospels that were part of the ideological wars. The former traces what I’ll call the “ecosystem awareness” movement in the Clinton era of government, and the second the Healthy Forests Initiative and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act reactions during the Bush/Cheney era.

An era of “collaborative stewardship” may yet be emerging, albeit slowly and as already seen, with pushbacks. Enviros are still quite leery of “collaborations” and high-sounding agency rhetoric. They are warriors, after all. So the wars are not yet over, and may not be for a very long time. Timbering continues, albeit a a much lower volume than in the go-go days, and reframed as “ecological restoration” or “forest restoration”. New forest evangelists appear on the stage. Now we have both Wally Covington and Jerry Franklin preaching the gospel of forest restoration. I’ll leave it for further discussion as to how the two brands compare, and as to who buys into one, the other, both, or neither.

Other Wars

Even if wars between environmentalists and industrial and government practitioners were to ever end, these are just the tip of an iceberg of forest wars. We must add in the budget and staffing wars (hereafter budget wars) that have been ongoing in the Forest Service for a long time. Timber and Engineering reigned supreme in budget wars for many years, particularly after World War Two and the housing boom that fed rapid increases in timbering and associated road-building after WWII. Recreation, Wildlife, Soil and Water, even Fire, Personnel (later, “Human Resources”), Planning, Budget, Fiscal, State and Private Forestry, etc. were always struggling for funds. After go-go timbering days were a thing of the past — i.e. Environmentalists effectively shut down “go-go timbering”, Recreation and Fire gained an upper hand in budget wars. Somehow Engineering always seemed to keep its share of the money. [Note: Someday, maybe I’ll get these budget categories approximately right. For now, they are “good enough for government work”]

Finally — not trivially — Public Lands Wars have raged more of less continuously for many years. Remember the “Sagebrush Rebellion” and the so-called “County Supremacy Movement”? Now those have transformed into more of a “States’ Rights” movement. In all cases, part of the action has been an assault on federal lands.

I’ve probably missed some of the “wars” here. But if I’ve captured any of this even partially correctly, the landscapes, biophysical and political, have been transformed in the process. Some argue, as did Fairfax way back when, that the legal-administrative gridlock that has been a reality in federal lands management during the last 30-40 years, has done significant harm to the environment, and only resulted in wasted paper (EISs and dollars/time spent on forest planning, project planning, related NEPA work, appeals and litigation). Others like me argue that sometimes it is necessary to grapple with vexing social issues, even wicked problems in a very public way. Such “civic discovery” is a necessary part of a working democracy. Would that we could move from “war talk” to “fierce conversations“.

Related:
NEPA is Not the Problem, Forest Policy – Forest Practice, Oct 2007
The Blame Game

Squillace’s Thoughts on Proposed Rule –Post National Forum

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Professor Squillace, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at University of Colorado Law School, Professor Joe Feller, and Michael Saul from NWF and various law students came to visit us yesterday to discuss the proposed planning rule. Both he and John Rupe had been at the national forum.. so far I haven’t heard much from folks who had been there. He posted his thoughts here on the Red Lodge Clearinghouse blog. IMHO, his thoughts are worth reading and very comprehensive.

As he says

This current iteration of ideas was developed at the conclusion of the National Planning Rule Forum held in Washington, D.C. on March 10, 2011. To the extent possible, it reflects some of the comments and questions addressed at that forum.

I’d be interested in what others think- he’d also like to hear from you directly.

Planning for Fire: Beyond Appropriate Management Response

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In 2009, I had the opportunity to be involved in an effort known as the Quadrennial Fire Review.  Here is an excerpt from the final report explaining what the effort is about.

The Quadrennial Fire Review (QFR) is a strategic assessment process that is conducted every four years to evaluate current mission strategies and capabilities against best estimates of the fu­ture environment for fire management. This integrated review is a joint effort of the five federal natural resource management agencies and their state, local, and tribal partners that constitute the wildland fire community. The objective is to create an integrated strategic vision document for fire management.

The document provides a solid foundation for policy discussions within the federal agencies and, importantly, among the federal agencies and state, local, tribal, and other partners. While the QFR is not a formal policy or decision document, it sets the stage for a “strategic conversation” about future direction and change in fire management.

Several assumptions underlie the document’s analysis and conclusions:

The effects of climate change will continue to result in greater probability of longer and bigger fire seasons, in more regions in the nation.

Cumulative drought effects will further stress fuels accumulations.

There will be continued wildfire risk in the Wildland Urban Interface despite greater public awareness and broader involvement of communities.

Emergency response demands will escalate.

A lot of discussion in the document is devoted to “appropriate management response” sometimes miscategorized by the public as “let burn.”

The first QFR core strategy outlines a course forward that moves beyond appropriate management response to strategic management response that creates a framework for a multi-phased approach for incident management. Elements within strategic management response will include ensuring proactive wildland fire decisions with greater transparency and accountability, recalibrating fire planning, and establishing more robust fire outcome metrics.

Appropriate management response is often referred to as common sense fire management, but what may seem like common sense to one set of decision makers can easily run afoul of other stakeholders and decision makers with different missions, competing objectives, and conflicting perspectives on situation information. Moving to strategic management response is designed to ensure a higher level of transparency, accountability, and support for specific fire decisions and to better display the costs and benefits of suppression strategies. This approach would weigh factors such as suppression costs and value of resources lost against the value of ecosystems restored and improved and infrastructure protected.

Some questions:

Is there evidence that   the Forest Service has embraced the concept of strategic management response?

What kind of public involvement/collaboration will be needed to implement such an approach?

Can those who have opposed appropriate management response find something to like in strategic management response?

Does the the new planning rule provide appropriate guidance regarding the relationship of forest plans to fire suppression strategies?

Post- Beetle Species Change in Colorado

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These may be spruce and not fir, but couldn't easily find photo

I know there are those of you out there who can never have enough beetle info (especially Colorado beetle info) so here you are. Here’s a link to the report itself.

Colorado: Beetle-kill a catalyst for dramatic forest changes
Posted on March 15, 2011 by Bob Berwyn

Subalpine fir will replace lodgepole pines as the dominant species in many areas affected by mountain pine beetles. Lodgepoles dominating regrowth in harvested beetle-kill stands; subalpine fir replacing lodgepole in untreated areas

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — One of the first solid studies on forest regeneration in beetle-stricken areas shows that there will be a dramatic change in the forest landscape. Subalpine fir will come to dominate huge areas previously covered by lodgepole pines, with as-yet uncertain consequences for the forest ecosystems.

Pine and aspen recruits are three times more abundant in harvested stands, while subalpine fir dominated in uncut stands. Based on their field measurements, Forest Service researchers said lodgepoles will once again become the dominant species in treated areas, with a more diverse mix of trees where there has been no logging.

Forest structure, including tree density, is projected to return to pre-outbreak levels in 80 to 120 years in both treated and untreated areas, with aspen becoming a significant part of the overstory for the next 50 years, before conifers once again dominate the canopy.

“It’s a system re-set,” said Forest Service researcher Chuck Rhoades, who worked in the field at the epicenter of the pine beetle epidemic around Gore Pass and in the forests near Walden and Granby to try and understand how the forests will heal. “There’s a lot of stuff going on underneath,” he said, explaining that additional studies will help pinpoint how different types of treatments may affect what comes next.
The four-page paper, “Signs of Recovery for Colorado Forests in the Wake of the Mountain Pine Beetle,” was published by Colorado State University’s Forest Restoration Institute, which partnered with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station to do the research.

Rhoades said regrowth is strongest in areas where there were already some young trees sprouting beneath the lodgepole canopy. Some of the areas where subalpine fir are set supplant lodgepoles as the primary species will be quite different from the monoculture that has dominated the forest landscape for decades.

The firs are not susceptible to mountain pine beetles, but they can be killed easily by other insects and diseases. Rhoades said he would expect to see “more clumpiness,” with patches of different-aged trees rather than the common dog-hair stands of lodgepole.

From the report:

“The species (subalpine fir) is relatively short-lived and is susceptible to a number of insects and diseases, so it unlikely to form dense, evenpage stands, in spite of the high density of fir seedlings and saplings we measured. It is, however, reasonable to expect a shift from the uniform age and size conditions common in lodgepole pine-dominated forests to stands with more fir and greater size, age and overstory species diversity.”

But areas where the lodgepole was so thick that it prevented other species from taking hold — which includes big parts of the forests in Summit County — are more worrisome, he said. So far, there’s been little sign of new growth in those stands, whether they’ve been treated or not. Lodgepole may re-establish itself as the dominant species in those areas, but it may take a little longer.

The biggest change will be in the huge swaths of unharvested dead lodgepole stands, covering about 85 percent of the area affected by mountain pine beetles. Based on the field research subalpine fir will replace lodgepole pines as the dominant species in those areas, Rhoades said.

That holds true especially for the upper-elevation areas of the subalpine zone, where spruce and fir already had a foothold, said the Wilderness Society’s Grep Aplet.

“The real challenge is the lower elevation areas of Summit and Grand counties,” Aplet said. “Where mortality was less severe, the forests will recover quickly. In areas where it was most severe, the future is a little more uncertain,” he said.

There was no difference in seedling density colonizing clear cuts in live or in beetle-infested stands. But in harvested areas, lodgepole pines will once again become the dominant overstory species and grow back into stands similar to those that were attacked by pine beetles.

From the report:
“The implications of greater abundance of subalpine fir on High Country forests and communities remains uncertain. These findings represent the first stage in development of new forests following the beetle outbreak during a period of dramatic change that will have consequences for Colorado ecosystems and economies for many decades to come.”

A Special Thought for This Week

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All those on this blog share a deep and abiding love for this Earth and its creatures.
Today, let us hold those folks working at the power plant in Japan in our thoughts and/or prayers.

That they may have courage and strength,
That they may be creative,
That they may be inspired,
That they may find what they need,
That their work may be successful in protecting them, all people and other beings.

Changing Climate, Changing Paradigms: I. Invasive Species

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While lounging around reading New Scientist, one of my favorite publications, I ran across this article (note that Dr. Lugo is a Forest Service employee.) I think it’s important to think about the fact that deciding what is good and what is bad for people and the environment has got to be 1) specific to a situation and 2) specific to a locality. It has always been true, but climate change has brought to the fore that we gotta “pick a lane” – invest in going back in time, or talk about what works for us- people, plants and animals- and jointly decide what is worth spending money on, here and now, and for the unknowable future.

Welcome weeds: How alien invasion could save the Earth

Far from ravaging threatened ecosystems, non-native species could be powerful allies in the fight to save them

WHEN Ariel Lugo takes visitors to the rainforests of Puerto Rico, he likes to play a little trick. First the veteran forest ecologist shows off the beautiful surroundings: the diversity of plant life on the forest floor; the densely packed trees merging into a canopy high overhead; the birds whose calls fill the lush habitat with sound. Only when his audience is suitably impressed does he reveal that they are actually in the midst of what many conservationists would dismiss as weeds – a ragtag collection of non-native species growing uncontrolled on land once used for agriculture.

His guests are almost always taken aback, and who wouldn’t be? For years we have been told that invasive alien species are driving native ones to extinction and eroding the integrity of ancient ecosystems. The post-invasion world is supposed to be a bleak, biologically impoverished wasteland, not something you could mistake for untouched wilderness.

Lugo is one of a small but growing number of researchers who think much of what we have been told about non-native species is wrong. Aliens, they argue, are rarely as monstrous a threat as they have been painted. In fact, in a world that has been dramatically altered by human activity, many could be important allies in rebuilding healthy ecosystems. Given the chance, alien species may just save us from the worst consequences of our own destructive actions.

Many conservationists cringe at such talk. They view non-native species as ecological tumours, spreading uncontrollably at the expense of natives. To them the high rate of accidental introductions – hundreds of alien species are now well established in ecosystems from the Mediterranean Sea to Hawaii – is one of the biggest threats facing life on Earth. Mass extinction of native species is one fear. Another is the loss of what many regard as the keys to environmental health: the networks of relationships that exist between native species thanks to thousands or even millions of years of co-evolution.

Innocent as charged

Such concerns have fuelled an all-out war. Vast sums are being spent on campaigns to eradicate or control the spread of highly invasive exotics. Conservation groups enlist teams of volunteers to uproot garlic mustard from local parks. Government agencies fill waterways with poisonous chemicals to halt the advance of Asian carp. Most governments have no choice but to join the fight: under the terms of the Convention on Biological Diversity, signatory nations are required to do everything they can to eradicate or control the spread of threatening alien invaders.

Advocates for non-native species do not deny that they can sometimes create major problems, particularly in cases where disease-causing microbes are introduced into a new host population. But they argue that often the threat is overblown. For one thing, many species are not nearly as problematic as they are made out to be.

Take purple loosestrife, a Eurasian marshland plant frequently listed among the world’s worst weeds and the target of multimillion-dollar eradication campaigns. It stands accused of destroying wetlands across North America, where it arrived more than 150 years ago, but there is as yet no documented evidence of any serious damage it has caused. Similarly, the notorious cane toad, introduced into Australia in the 1930s to control pests of the sugar-cane crop, is considered a major threat to the continent’s unique fauna. Its highly toxic skin has long been seen as a death sentence for unsuspecting native predators, while its rapid spread is thought to have occurred at the expense of other amphibians. Yet the first serious impact study on cane toads recently concluded that they may in fact be innocent of all charges (New Scientist, 11 September 2010, p 18).

Even more surprising is the mounting evidence that many invaders are, in fact, good citizens in their new environments. Salt cedar – a group of Old World shrubs and trees belonging to the same family as the tamarisk – has been shown to provide valuable nesting habitats for birds in the arid American southwest. One of the beneficiaries is the south-western willow flycatcher, an endangered species at the centre of a 30-year, $127 million recovery project. Yet a costly programme to eradicate salt cedar is under way on the basis that it is using up valuable groundwater, though there is no proof that eliminating it will replenish water supplies.

In California, Australian eucalyptus trees provide a vital winter habitat for monarch butterflies, a species that has been in dramatic decline for decades due to deforestation in traditional overwintering grounds in places such as central Mexico. The widely loathed purple loosestrife, meanwhile, is favoured by bees, butterflies and waterfowl.

These are not isolated examples. In 2006, Laura Rodriguez at the University of California, Davis, published a study of the impact of non-native species. She found that they help natives in many environments and in a variety of ways: by providing new habitats and sources of food, by acting as hosts for organisms to live on and in, and by providing services such as pollination (Restoration Ecology, vol 17, p 177). Art Shapiro, also at UC Davis, has found that 40 per cent of native butterflies in Davis depend exclusively on non-native plants for their survival (BioScience, vol 54, p 182). In the marshlands of southern Spain, red swamp crayfish from the US have become a major food source for birds, otters, turtles and fish, including threatened species that breed and overwinter in the region (Conservation Biology, vol 25, p 1230).

There are other less conspicuous benefits. Only once conservationists had eliminated feral cats from Macquarie Island in the south-west Pacific did they realise that these non-native predators had become a vital link in the local food web. Since the last cat was killed in 2000, exploding rabbit populations have eaten much of the island’s unique flora bare.

Anthony Ricciardi, a biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, is not convinced by these examples. “The current rate of invasion has absolutely no analogue in the geological past. It’s a massive experiment that’s under way,” he says. He argues that it is impossible to tell which invaders will be beneficial and which will be the next Nile perch, which is blamed for wiping out some 200 cichlid fish species in Lake Victoria in east Africa. “We still don’t know what the full negative impact of invasive species is because most invasions aren’t studied.”
No mercy

For this reason, he and others conclude that all non-natives should be presumed guilty until proved innocent, with no expense spared to limit their spread. Even those who think such a view is too extreme admit that non-native species can cause major headaches. “There’s no doubt there are massive problems associated with some invaders,” says Andrew MacDougall, a plant ecologist at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Employing the precautionary principle may sound sensible, but if Lugo and other revisionists are correct, the indiscriminate eradication of aliens is not only unwarranted but could even have detrimental effects. In our fast-changing world, non-native species may be vital in maintaining ecosystem health. “A lot of the reason we’ve been afraid of exotics is because they are so well adapted for a lot of human-modified conditions and because they have been able to spread so rapidly,” says Dov Sax at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “But these are the same reasons why these species might provide benefits to humans in the future.”

What happened in Puerto Rico offers a glimpse of how enemies may turn into allies. Once almost completely deforested, this Caribbean island has been the site of a large-scale, unplanned ecological experiment which began in the middle of the last century, when people began abandoning rural landholdings and moved to the cities. At first the results resembled a classic invasion storyline: much of the island was overrun by non-native weeds. However, the dominance of the invaders didn’t last. As the decades passed, more and more species began taking root in the understorey. Some were aliens, but many – to the astonishment of observers, Lugo included – were scarce native species.

That’s not all. When non-native plants were excluded from abandoned pastures, seeds of native pioneers – those that would normally be the first to colonise clearings – did not germinate. The problem was the harsh conditions of the altered habitat, including compacted soil, increased soil temperatures and reduced humidity in ground exposed to the sun, and the presence of ants with an appetite for seeds. Alien species such as the African tulip tree may have ameliorated the situation, improving soil quality as they grew. The non-natives would also have attracted birds and bats whose droppings would have contained viable seeds, including those of native plants. Similarly, the success of nitrogen-fixing exotic trees like white leadtree and white siris may have helped in places where nutrients had been depleted by human activity. “What’s happened,” says Lugo, “is the introduced species have somehow restored soil and canopy conditions.”

Today, most of Puerto Rico’s new forests support more tree species than its traditional forests, some by as much as 30 per cent. A long list of non-natives – including former plantation crops such as mango, grapefruit, banana, coffee and avocado – have become established in the wild, increasing the island’s total tree species count from 547 to 770. What’s more, the new forests seem as ecologically sound as the old ones. “We’re starting to study nutrient cycling, water-use efficiencies, nutrient-use efficiencies and carbon sequestration, and we don’t find much difference,” says Lugo. The new forests “function beautifully”, he adds.

GAO Report on Forest Service: Further Work Needed to Address Persistent Management Challenges

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here’s the link, and below, the highlights.

In 2009, GAO highlighted management challenges that the Forest Service faced in three key areas—wildland fire management, data on program activities and costs, and financial and performance accountability. The Forest Service has made some improvements, but challenges persist in each of these three areas. In addition, recent GAO reports have identified additional challenges related to program oversight and strategic planning.

Strategies are still needed to ensure effective use of wildland fire management funds. In numerous previous reports, GAO has highlighted the challenges the Forest Service faces in protecting the nation against the threat of wildland fire. The agency continues to take steps to improve its approach, but it has yet to take several key steps—including developing a cohesive wildland fire strategy that identifies potential long-term options for reducing hazardous fuels and responding to fires—that, if completed, would substantially strengthen wildland fire management.

Incomplete data on program activities remain a concern. In 2009, GAO concluded that long-standing data problems plagued the Forest Service, hampering its ability to manage its programs and account for its costs. While GAO has not comprehensively reviewed the quality of all Forest Service data, shortcomings identified during several recent reviews reinforce these concerns. For example, GAO recently identified data gaps in the agency’s system for tracking appeals and litigation of Forest Service projects and in the number of abandoned hardrock mines on its lands.

Even with improvements, financial and performance accountability shortcomings persist. Although its financial accountability has improved, the Forest Service continues to struggle to implement adequate internal controls over its funds and to demonstrate how its expenditures relate to the goals in the agency’s strategic plan. For example, in 2010 Agriculture reported that the agency needed to improve controls over its expenditures for wildland fire management and identified the wildland fire suppression program as susceptible to significant improper payments.

Additional challenges related to program oversight and strategic planning have been identified. Several recent GAO reviews have identified additional challenges facing the Forest Service, which the agency must address if it is to effectively and efficiently fulfill its mission. Specifically, the agency has yet to develop a national land tenure strategy that would protect the public’s interest in land exchanges and return fair value to taxpayers from such exchanges. In addition, it has yet to take recommended steps to align its workforce planning with its strategic plan, which may compromise its ability to carry out its mission; for example, it has not adequately planned for the likely retirement of firefighters, which may reduce the agency’s ability to protect the safety of both people and property. Finally, the Forest Service needs a more systematic, risk-based approach to allocate its law-enforcement resources. Without such an approach it cannot be assured that it is deploying its resources effectively against illegal activities on the lands it manages.