Thanks to Matthew Koehler for sending this..
Collaboration Can’t Fix What Ails Public Forest Management
By Steve Kelly, Friends of the Wild Swan
For decades, forest activists have performed vital oversight, monitoring and enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. Caused by the rapid rise of neoliberalism, beginning in earnest during the Reagan administration, Congress and administrative agencies largely avoided policy responsibilities associated with our environmental laws. Politicians and agency bureaucrats have been screaming bloody murder about grassroots environmentalists and “gridlock” ever since. The simple fact remains, the primary cause of “gridlock” is the government’s systematic refusal to follow environmental laws and regulations.
The steady rise of neoliberalism in the Clinton years led to the now commonplace sharp political rhetoric, which directs its attacks toward the legitimacy of local grassroots forest activism. Add to this a proliferation of market-based, professional “problem solvers” touting “win-win” solutions and jobs, and one can see the game is rigged in favor of those with a vested financial interest in subsidized commodity extraction. This approach is typically dismissive of science and the law and grassroots activism.
Stakeholder partnerships prefer to engage in consensus and collaboration processes which favor a narrow, economics-based view of forest ecosystems. When challenged, collaborative stakeholders say one thing, and do the opposite, which usually leads to more old growth logging, and bulldozing new roads to access the remaining pockets of big, old trees.
One recent example of collaboration gone wild is the Southwestern Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, which was authorized in 2009 under the Omnibus Land Management Act. The stated purpose of this collaborative program is to encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes.
In practice, normal environmental assessment procedures, required by the National Environmental Procedures Act (NEPA), are being undermined by making decisions that may affect thousands of acres of public forest before conducting proper analysis of forseeable environmental impacts, especially cumulative impacts. Full funding has already been allocated by Congress and the Obama administration to a program that lacks a programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). NEPA just becomes a speed bump at the end.
Once a project has been selected a work plan and business plan must be developed within 180 days. These plans describe how projects will be implemented, treatment costs, infrastructure needed, projected supply of woody biomass and timber and the local economic benefits.
The work plan is then submitted to the Regional Forester for approval. Project
implementation may begin once the requesting unit has been notified that the work plan
has been approved.All of this indicates that any NEPA will be front-loaded.
Here is a copy of the Friends of the Wild Swan Newsletter
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I read this piece, but I don’t understand it. I know some things about NEPA but perhaps not as much as I should about CFLRP, so perhaps readers could enlighten me.
What does Mr. Kelly want a programmatic EIS on? A specific project?
NEPA doesn’t say that agencies can’t work with the public in developing proposals to be analyzed, in fact one of the ideas in NEPA is fostering public involvement. Doesn’t it make sense to develop a proposal before you analyze it? How else could it work? Would it be better for agencies to develop proposals without the public? Maybe I’m missing something here…
And I wonder about this quote:
Stakeholder partnerships prefer to engage in consensus and collaboration processes which favor a narrow, economics-based view of forest ecosystems. When challenged, collaborative stakeholders say one thing, and do the opposite, which usually leads to more old growth logging, and bulldozing new roads to access the remaining pockets of big, old trees.
It is a pretty broad brush statement about “stakeholder partnerships.” I think that some of the collaborators around the country might question whether their view is “narrow, and economics-based”. They might see themselves as seeing the big picture of sustaining the land and people, and working respectfully with each other to understand different views and find the best solutions. They might see others as “lawsuit-happy ideologues.” 😉
Sharon