Colorado State University researchers examine a stand of dead and dying aspen trees in southwestern Colorado in 2006.
Note from Sharon.. I wasn’t around to post this earlier today. To restate what I’ve said before,
it’s not what used to happen that matters (vegetation fire histories). It can’t matter if climate change is really “unprecedented” as per climate scientists. Assuming that they are correct, we can’t go back- we need to move forward carefully and respectfully of the people and the land.
That’s why I think fire ecologists can debate what used to happen till the cows come home (or their permits have been bought out by conservation organizations;)) but we should be more concerned about managing for the future. Vegetation ecologists think that past vegetation ecology should drive the future (after careful study of past vegetation ecology). Other people might frame the question differently.
Should we, in the interior west, manage tree vegetation outside the WUI for defensible space?
Framed that way, many more disciplines might have something to say. Plus of course “should” is a normative (value), and not a science (empirical) question.
Academic tiff over wildfires rekindled
CYNDY COLE Sun Staff Reporter | Posted: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 6:00 am | (0) Comments
An academic tiff over whether catastrophic wildfires can be prevented has broken out anew just as a broad-based northern Arizona coalition is getting set to try to do just that.
Two researchers at the University of Wyoming contend that stand-replacing crown fires on the order of 2002’s Rodeo-Chediski fire and last year’s Wallow fire were once the norm on the Mogollon Rim.
“It’s probably not going to be the case that you can prevent these high-severity fires,” said Bill Baker, a researcher in ecology and geography there.
Local researchers wasted no time in terming the paper “fringe” research far outside the mainstream.
“The overwhelming evidence from decades of research by scores of scientists is that ponderosa pine forests over evolutionary time have been shaped by frequent, low-intensity fires, not stand-replacing fires,” wrote Wally Covington, director of Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, in an e-mail. “Further, fires on the scale of the Rodeo-Chediski and the Wallow Fire are an unprecedented threat not only to plant and animal communities, but also to watershed stability and to the human communities that depend on frequent fire forests for natural resource values and jobs.”
BIG PUSH TO THIN
Covington and other local researchers contend that wildfires are bigger than normal now, and it’s due to unhealthy forests that have grown abnormally dense because of factors like fire suppression, logging and grazing.
The University of Wyoming researchers find otherwise, saying that thick forests and big fires are a norm here.
This is significant because the Coconino, Kaibab, Apache-Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests are now on the brink of a major push — the largest in the country — to get commercial outfits to thin about 30,000 acres per year of smaller-diameter trees as a proposal to make the forest healthier.
A decade-long contract will likely be granted in a few months with support of loggers and conservationists to begin some of this work near Flagstaff and Williams.
EVIDENCE FOR THINNING INCOMPLETE
Baker and a second researcher used data from early surveyors working in the 1880s to determine that the forest here, along the Mogollon Rim, was once a mix of wide-open parks and about two-thirds dense stands of trees.
“They actually have a little booklet that they carried with them. And they wrote as they walked along the lines … they described how dense the forests were, and they recorded information at the corners about the trees that were there,” Baker said.
The researchers appear to oppose some of the planned forest thinning.
“These efforts are expensive and have some negative ecological impacts, and evidence to support them is spatially and temporally incomplete,” Baker and researcher Mark Williams wrote in their research. “…Common management practices today include extensive, rather uniform reduction in tree density, removal of understory shrubs and small trees, and other fuel modifications to lower fire severity. Our reconstructions show that these common practices, if widespread, will move most dry forests outside their historical range of variability, rather than restore them, probably with negative consequences for biological diversity.”
APPLES VS. ORANGES
But Pete Fule, a professor and expert in fire ecology at Northern Arizona University, said the research out of Wyoming could be problematic because it groups together forests that have different fire regimes and is “not consistent with the findings of literally hundreds of other researchers.”
What used to be considered a “severe” fire is measured much differently today, he said, so to compare the two is to weigh apples against oranges.
“It is almost certainly not a straight comparison,” Fule said.
Added Covington:
“The weight of the scientific evidence coupled with the current outlook for increasingly severe fire seasons are a call to action. These facts coupled with the historic increases in size and severity of crown-fires throughout the West, but especially in Arizona and New Mexico, point to the need for redoubling our efforts to restore landscapes on the scale of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative. We have already wasted too much time with bickering over fringe ideas,” he wrote.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned a lower court’s ruling, declaring that the Forest Service’s Adventure Pass violated the Recreation Enhancement Act (pdf). What I wonder is how the Forest Service thought that the Adventure Pass could pass a ‘red face test’ both in public and in the courts? Moreover, how did their USDA Office of General Counsel legal advisers feel that they could pass that red face test?
Is this yet another example of the Forest Service pushing forward with an initiative without much regard for the law, with both ‘professional arrogance’ and ‘budget protection/maximization’ motivations as backdrop? Finally, where does the Forest Service go from here?
In my book, given the austerity that the American people now face, and will face more squarely in the future, I think it time to talk seriously about what ought the Forest Service to manage for and at what cost, both in terms of direct cost to the US taxpayer and in terms of environmental costs. For me there are plenty of programs to prune, both within what the agency calls recreation and elsewhere. I believe it past time to take a careful look at Forest Service cash flows, sources and uses. Let’s then try to figure out what more and what less to do, and what to do differently.
A Flashback Fee Demo and Adventure pass discussions are not new to the Forest Service. The Forest Service had a chance to respond to critics of both way back in 1999-2000 on Eco-Watch [Note this link provides a flat file readout of a forum that was largely devoted to fee demo discussion/criticism]. The Forest Service chose to be silent, just as they did with the recent forest planning rulemaking process. See, e.g my Earth to Forest Planning: Get a Blog. In 1999 I could understand their silence, their reluctance to engage in social media discussion. Social Media was brand new and the Forest Service was toying with it.I no longer have patience with their reluctance to engage.
My question is broader than to allege that the Forest Service routinely ignores the Congress and the Courts. My question is, When will the Forest Service engage in public discourse, in public deliberation? And I’m not taking about the many, mostly facilitated, highly spun so-called dialogue efforts that the Forest Service too often employs. [Note: I am a champion of dialogue, when used for deep inquiry. But I’m afraid that the Forest Service is now in the process of turning “dialogue” into another “inform and involve” spin mechanism.]
Footnote on Framing, Blaming I threw this post together in response to Sharon’s earlier post on this subject. Both posts are examples of what I call The Frame Game and The Blame Game. Sharon’s post frames this as “a problem if the FS can’t charge fees and doesn’t get funding from Congress.” The Forest Service is framed as the victim and the Congress or those who block general fees/contributions are framed as villains. This remains true (or not) whether or not the frame was imposed innocently. My post frames the issue as one where the taxpayer and/or the public interest are victims and the Forest Service is villain. Neither frame does justice to the problem at hand. But, hey, this is a blog and things are “thrown together” quickly.
In both cases—in every case—we ought not to forget that these twin forces, framing and blaming, are almost always at work. And we must never forget that there are plenty of victims (real and imagined) and plenty of us who can rightfully be viewed as villains from time to time. What remains a challenge and an opportunity is to be able to work together toward betterment of the public interest as best we can when we mostly see only our own shadows playing in reflection off the walls of caves that keep our thoughts narrowly confined.
[Note: 2/24/8:23 AM — I updated this post slightly, in response to a comment]
(Below is the press release from the Center for Biological Diversity. Click here to download a copy of the appeal. Photos of the Jacob Ryan project area, including old-growth trees aged by the Center and previously marked for logging by the Forest Service, can be seen and downloaded here. – mk)
Photo: Center for Biological Diversity ecologist Jay Lininger displays the core of 180-year-old ponderosa pine marked for logging at the Jacob Ryan timber sale. Center photo.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— For the third time in a decade, the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club today administratively appealed a 25,000-acre timber sale that is slated to log old-growth trees and forests on the Kaibab National Forest near Grand Canyon’s north rim.
Approved in January, this is the Forest Service’s fifth iteration of the Jacob Ryan timber sale since 2003, each plan seeking to log old-growth trees and forests. The Center and Sierra Club blocked two earlier iterations of the sale; the Forest Service voluntarily withdrew two others.
“This forest needs a limited amount of small-tree thinning to safely reintroduce natural fires, but for a decade the Forest Service has rejected common sense and opted instead to cut down old trees,” said Jay Lininger, an ecologist with the Center. “The Jacob Ryan timber sale makes a mockery of forest restoration and exposes the need for leadership and reform within the Forest Service.
” Today’s appeal challenges logging of old-growth trees and argues that logging will not retain sufficient forest canopy to support the rare northern goshawk — a woodland raptor. A source population of goshawks lives on the Kaibab Plateau, where Jacob Ryan is located. According to a Forest Service report, goshawks are “vulnerable to extirpation or extinction in Arizona.”
“It is just outrageous that the Forest Service is proposing for the fifth time to log these old growth and large trees, when we have so little remaining,” said Sandy Bahr, chapter director for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter. “The old growth and large trees make up less than 3 percent of our forests and are a critical component of healthy forests and essential for wildlife species such as the northern goshawk. In a real restoration project, they would be the centerpiece, not slated for logging.”
In its last failed attempt to implement the timber sale, the Forest Service in 2009 admitted violating its own management plan in response to a Center appeal. Center staff documented old-growth trees marked for cutting, despite bogus claimsby the Forest Service that it would protect old growth.
(Below is a press release from the researchers. A copy of the study is available here. – mk)
New research shows that western dry forests were not uniform, open forests, as commonly thought, before widespread logging and grazing, but included both dense and open forests, as well as large high-intensity fires previously considered rare in these forests. The study used detailed analysis of records from land surveys, conducted in the late-1800s, to reconstruct forest structure over very large dry-forest landscapes, often dominated by ponderosa pine forests. The area analyzed included about 4.1 million acres on the Mogollon Plateau and Black Mesa in northern Arizona, in the Blue Mountains in northeastern Oregon, and in the Colorado Front Range.
The reconstructions, which are based on about 13,000 first-hand descriptions of forests from early land surveyors along section-lines, supplemented by data for about 28,000 trees, do not support the common idea that dry forests historically consisted of uniform park-like stands of large, old trees. Previous studies that found this were hampered by the limitations inherent in tree-ring reconstructions from small, isolated field plots that may be unrepresentative of larger landscapes.
“The land surveys provide us with an unprecedented spatially extensive and detailed view of these dry-forest landscapes before widespread alteration” said Dr. William Baker, a co-author of the study and a professor in the Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming. “And, what we see from this is that these forests were highly variable, with dense areas, open areas, recently burned areas, young forests, and areas of old-growth forests, often in a complex mosaic.”
The study also does not support the idea that frequent low-intensity fires historically prevented high-intensity fires in dry forests.
“Moderate- and high-severity fires were much more common in ponderosa pine and other dry forests than previously believed ” said Mark Williams, senior author of the study and recent PhD graduate of the University of Wyoming’s Program in Ecology.
“While higher-severity fires have been documented in at least parts of the Front Range of Colorado, they were not believed to play a major role in the historical dynamics of southwestern dry forests .”
Some large modern wildfires, such as Arizona’s Rodeo-Chediski fire of 2002 and the Wallow fire of 2011 that have been commonly perceived as unnatural or catastrophic fires actually were similar to fires that occurred historically in these dry forests.
The findings suggest that national programs that seek to uniformly reduce the density of these forests and lower the intensity of fires will not restore these forests, but instead alter them further, with negative consequences for wildlife. Special-concern species whose habitat includes dense forest patches, such as spotted owls, or whose habitat includes recently burned forests, such as black-backed woodpeckers, are likely to be adversely affected by current fuel-reduction programs.
The findings of the study suggest that if the goal is to perpetuate native fish and wildlife in western dry forests, it is appropriate to restore and manage for variability in forest density and fire intensity, including areas of dense forests and high-intensity fire.
Key findings:
• Only 23-40% of the study areas fit the common idea that dry forests were open, park-like and composed of large trees.
• Frequent low-intensity fires did not prevent high-intensity fires, as 38-97% of the study landscapes had evidence of intense fires that killed trees over large areas of dry forests.
• The rate of higher-severity fires in dry forests over the past few decades is lower than that which occurred historically, regardless of fire suppression impacts.
The study was published online last week in the international scientific journal, Global Ecology and Biogeography. The published article can be accessed online here. The title is: Spatially extensive reconstructions show variable-severity fire and heterogeneous structure in historical western United States dry forests.
The authors are Dr. Mark A. Williams and Dr. William L. Baker, who are scientists in the Program in Ecology and Department of Geography at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Mark A. Williams is a 2010 PhD graduate, and Dr. William L. Baker is a professor, both in the Program in Ecology and Department of Geography. In Dr. Williams’s PhD, he developed and applied new scientific methods for reconstructing historical structure and fire across large land areas in dry western forests. Dr. Baker teaches and researches fire ecology and landscape ecology at the University of Wyoming and is author of a 2009 book on “Fire Ecology in Rocky Mountain Landscapes.”
Contact Information:
Dr. Mark A. Williams, Program in Ecology and Department of Geography, Dept. 3371, 1000 E. University Ave., University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. Email: [email protected].
Dr. William L. Baker, Program in Ecology and Department of Geography, Dept. 3371, 1000 E. University Ave., University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. Phone: 307-766- 2925, Email: [email protected].
Hwy. 2 sunset facing south in the Angeles National Forest.
What I like about this post is that it acknowledges that there’s a problem if the FS can’t charge fees and doesn’t get funding from Congress.
Our ire at the Forest Service has nothing to do with whether or not the government agency is properly funded. For decades now, in fact, it has been severely underfunded. We don’t object to creative ways to get it more money to protect our wildlands. In fact, we would wager that many if not most avid hikers, backpackers, car campers, fishers, hunters and other forest users would be more than glad to pitch in with their charitable donations to keep their mountain, desert and other wild lands clean and safe – perhaps to a nonprofit organization specifically set up for that purpose.
Put a donation booth at every trail head with a smiling volunteer and watch the money roll in – voluntarily.
I think the FS already has many donation booths at trailheads.. does anyone know of studies or data ata on how much money people donate?
The idea of a not for profit is interesting.. what are people thinking the not-for-profit would do that the FS couldn’t do..keep the funds for local improvements? General mistrust of the FS? I’m hoping people can point NCFP readers to what is known about this topic. Everyplace I know recreation is important and faces shortfalls; don’t we communally need to work on some solutions?
Or could the partners like the REI or the OIA (discussed under “roadless” in a previous post) to donate 5% of all of certain kinds of outdoor equipment to go to a recreation not-for-profit to benefit FS recreation? it seems like we have a) creative and brilliant minds around who recreate on the national forests and 2) lots of people using the forests, including 3) corporate entities and their associations; somehow that seems like it ought to translate into enough money to take care of our recreation sites.
Does anyone know of ideas that have been successful or that might be worth trying?
Here’s the whole piece:
Our View: Good riddance, Adventure Pass
Posted: 02/18/2012 06:15:20 AM PST
http://www.sgvtribune.com/opinions/ci_19994719
WE’VE known it all along, and have been saying so since 1998. But sometimes it takes literally making a federal case out of an injustice in order to make common sense into law.
Speaking for a unanimous panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a ruling this month in favor of four hikers who objected to paying a fee to visit an Arizona forest, Judge Robert Gettleman wrote: “Everyone is entitled to enter national forests without paying a cent.”
Of course we are. These federal lands are paid for by our tax dollars. (For that matter, we welcome into them foreign hiking and sightseeing buffs who don’t pay American taxes at all. Good PR for America’s great outdoors.) The absurdly concocted Adventure Passes all but a few protesting conscientious objectors have been forced to pay these past 14 years are nothing more than a case of double taxation that never should have been cooked up in the first place.
Technically, if you even pulled your vehicle over to the side of the road on Highway 2 through our Angeles National Forest and took a stroll to a lookout point, you had to fork over $5 for the privilege – or $30 for an annual “pass.”
We already have that right. It’s not something you can extort money from us to do. This ruling clearly marks the end of the Adventure Pass once and for all.
Even so, the curmudgeonly local Forest Service isn’t ready to, as it were, buy in.
“I don’t have anything officially on that at this time,” said Sherry Rollman, spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service in Arcadia.
“It happened in another state and we haven’t assessed it yet.”
What planet is the USFS living on? This isn’t a state matter. It’s not the California Forest Service. Its workers are federal employees, and this ruling was made by a federal judge. We’re one big country, and a happier one for the ruling that we have a right to walk on our own land without being nickled and dimed in order to do so.
Our ire at the Forest Service has nothing to do with whether or not the government agency is properly funded. For decades now, in fact, it has been severely underfunded. We don’t object to creative ways to get it more money to protect our wildlands. In fact, we would wager that many if not most avid hikers, backpackers, car campers, fishers, hunters and other forest users would be more than glad to pitch in with their charitable donations to keep their mountain, desert and other wild lands clean and safe – perhaps to a nonprofit organization specifically set up for that purpose.
Put a donation booth at every trail head with a smiling volunteer and watch the money roll in – voluntarily.
The 9th Circuit ruling hedges a bit. Those who go to a place in the forest with “a majority of the nine amenities” offered in developed areas such as picnic tables, permanent toilets, garbage cans and running water, may be charged, the court said.
We’re not sure about that logic, and not sure how such uses can be quantified. But we’ll take the present ruling and run with it – and perambulate, cycle, swim and more through the lands that are owned by us all together.
Some people consider a 24″ diameter tree to be “big”. This one transcends “big”. I didn’t measure the diameter or height of this tree but, my estimates are 70″ dbh and 230 feet tall. The Mendocino National Forest has excellent growing conditions, and can grow huge trees faster than most National Forests. This picture, stitched together from three vertical shots, is available free for limited uses. Enjoy!
With the recent 10th Circuit decision to reject Wyoming’s rehearing request, Roadless has once again reared convoluted and drama-filled head. Also, as the current legal framework becomes clearer (at least until someone initiates another lawsuit claiming that the NEPA is now out of date, does not consider climate change mitigation and adaptation, and is not reflective of the more site-specific analysis requirements found by for a programmatic EIS,) the Colorado Roadless Rule is again in the news.
What I like about it, compared to the planning rule, is that planning rule discussions are about what the FS “might could” do; whereas the Colorado roadless rule is pretty straightforward in what is OK and what is not. Consequently, assertions about it are fairly easy to check. So it makes a good topic for checking on different news coverage. As I’ve said before, both on this and the HCN blog here and here, the topic of Colorado Roadless may be just too complicated for news stories in general. Even so, anyone could simply read the proposed regulation or the summaries on the web; here are the chief points about the rule and here about the further restrictions on “upper tier” acres. I can never forget that after working on this project, one of my colleagues said “I’ll never believe anything I read in the paper again.”
As usual, my comments are in italics.
Here’s a New York Times piece from a couple of weeks ago.
State Goes Its Own Way to Regulate Forest Roads
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: February 5, 2012
My comments are in italics.
DENVER — A road into the piney woods can be fraught with consequences. That was the premise, more than a decade ago, behind a Clinton administration rule that restricted road building on millions of acres of national forests in the West.
Not just in the west, as some of our readers might point out. In the interests of those who would like to see more stuff about the Eastern U.S., I found this from 2004 by Jim Furnish for Heritage Forests. I don’t think is a good way to start, though. Easily checked.
The so-called roadless rule, fought over in court from the start, was validated last year by a federal appeals panel, setting off a wave of euphoria among supporters and consternation among critics.
But there is a big wrinkle here in Colorado, which was one of only two states — Idaho was the other — that at the urging of the Bush administration developed their own rules about roads in the wild.
I don’t know if they were “urged by the Bush Administration”, or “allowed to”. perhaps semantics; but the original State Task Force thought the 2001 could be updated and improved. I think the folks in Idaho consciously wanted to improve the 2001 Rule. The way this statement is phrased tends to “partisanize” the issue (which I would frame as rather one of “particular” izing).
The state restrictions are supposed to be at least as stiff as the national rule, and a decision on Colorado’s draft plan, now under review in Washington by the United States Forest Service, is expected within weeks. But conservationists say the plan is much less protective of forestland and creates the likelihood that a state many Americans identify with the very aeries and woods the national rule was designed to protect could become a kind of orphan.
Here we go again.. “conservationists say” “much less protective”. Heritage has a unique and important role in roadless see Ray Ring’s piece in High Country News here. Asking Pew/Heritage Forests about a state roadless rule is like asking .. (make up your own analogy) the Hatfields about the McCoys, the Broncos about the Raiders, the Shiites about the Sunnis, and so on.
Also, Idaho seems to be doing just fine with its state rule.. I wonder if they feel like “orphans”.. or people whose diversity within this diverse country is recognized and appreciated.
“It would give Colorado, at the end of day, fewer protections than any other state,” said Jane Danowitz, director of the public lands program at the Pew Environment Group, a nonprofit organization in Washington. “It’s a runaway train.”
You can’t just assert that it has “fewer protections”; there are many things more protective and some things “less protective”, which we can debate here. For example, linear construction zones are restricted which the 2001 Rule does not do. And how one state can become a “runaway train” is not really clear. There are not a bunch of states lined up to do this, even when there was a state-specific rulemaking allowed, most states deferred to the 2001 Rule. That’s how we ended up with Idaho and Colorado.
State environmental managers strongly disagree, saying that Colorado’s plan would be as protective over all as the national template, if not more so, but that it would just get there a different way.
They say that bipartisan support through six years of discussion under three governors, two Democrats and one Republican, created a package suited to the special needs of the state, and that tough economic times have only accentuated the need for a system that takes jobs and core industries into account. The political backdrop touches a debate raging in many other state capitals as well: local versus federal authority and the limits of the 10th Amendment’s declaration of state autonomy.
Some economic interests, both sides agree, stand to benefit from the state plan. Coal mines and ski resorts, for example, would get access to backcountry areas the national plan could bar.
What is an “environmental manager”? Doesn’t anything we do have an environmental component? Is State Highways not an environmental manager, or the State Department of Agriculture? I’ll have to do another post on “whatever happened to natural resources?” later.
The ski area thing is a bit odd as those areas are adjacent to existing ski areas and already allocated to skiing. How can that be really “backcountry?” Underground coal mines access via roads would be restricted access and restored after 3 years of so. Notice that actual acreages are not mentioned here..I don’t know them off the top of my head but I think it’s about 1700 for ski areas and 15K acres for temporary coal roads (the estimate used below may not take into account allowances grandfathered in under 2001 and its current reinstitution) and methane drainage wells out of 4.2 million acres total.
More logging, for fire prevention and possibly commercial sale, could be allowed as well. And natural gas drilling could expand into areas that the national rule would hold off limits.
It’s not fire prevention, it’s protection of communities, and you either sell the products or take them offsite and burn them, or burn them in place.
Most people would think a use that sequestered carbon and saved the USG some bucks would be a good thing. This is carefully phrased (or not) to imply that fire prevention and commercial sale are two different things, not the question of “one we remove trees for fire prevention, should we sell them or just burn them?” As previous posts on this blog, from Colorado and Arizona at least, have shown, most folks would like to do something other than burn the piles, especially if it provided reduced carbon emissions and jobs.
If I were writing this piece, I would say “tree-thinning and removal of dead trees would be allowed for reasons of community defensible space, in addition to that allowed by the 2001 rule for ecosystem maintenance and restoration and for improving wildlife habitat and TES species.”
The natural gas drilling part is not true, as we have discussed here before and also on the High Country News blog. There are a variety of leases issued when the 2001 rule was not in effect whose legal status depends on the situations when they were issued, not related to what rule is in effect now. The Colorado Rule does not allow roads, same as 2001.
But while environmental groups argue that special interests are trumping the public good, and that the state is underestimating the long-term economic value of undisturbed land, some state and federal officials say a special case for Colorado makes sense.
Two things about this statement. What environmental groups? There is only once cited so far. I’m not saying that there aren’t more who think this way, but it would be good to know who and how many.
First, the two major “disturbances” compared to 2001 are 1. thinning trees within 1/2 mile of communities (undisturbed land?) and 3 -5 year roads for methane drainage wells above underground coal mines (if it’s the “long-term” value, then they will still have the value after 3-5 years and maybe 5 more for grass to grow back).
Are people trying to protect their communities “special interests”? And aren’t lives and property saved the “public good?” Note that it’s “some” state and federal officials here, but not “some” conservationists above. Just sayin’
“It’s not one prescription fits all,” said Mike King, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “We are moving forward with the Colorado rule because we believe it’s better for Colorado — that we are able to address our unique environmental circumstances, and our unique economic circumstances, in a way that the 2001 rule simply couldn’t and didn’t.”
Environmental protection is still in there, Mr. King said, but so is economic protection, with exemptions — temporary roads that would be restored or allowed to return to nature after years of use — for industries that the state considers vital. Operators of three underground coal mines in western Colorado that have said they could face a shutdown or constriction as early as this summer without access to nearby land could get the use of 20,000 adjoining acres to build gas vents. The ski industry, which mostly operates on or next to Forest Service land in Colorado, would have access to 8,000 acres.
Again, this implies 8000 more than the 2001 Rule, but it’s actually 1700 or so more, 8000 total ..
The idea of cordoning off some forestland as roadless — about 30 percent of the 193-million-acre national forest system was designated, with sharper lines of defense against developers, all-terrain vehicles and loggers — was a political firecracker from the moment it was proposed in late 1999.
What kind of “developers”? the 2001 rule was about roads and tree-cutting and allows ATV’s, it should also be pointed out that ski towers and other kinds of structures, have been built in roadless areas without roads, and that is OK with the 2001 Rule. It’s a “roadless” rule not a “structureless” rule.
Critics denounced it as an end run around Congress, creating wilderness protection by presidential fiat. President George W. Bush, taking office just as the rule was supposed to take effect, invited states to blaze their own way.
I think it was Mark Rey’s idea, as articulated in an interview with Martin Nie, in a link posted somewhere on this blog. See for yourself here.
Wyoming fought for years in federal court, a challenge that was overcome only last fall when the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver said the Forest Service had discretion over the land it administered. Idaho also broke from the pack with a state-specific roadless plan, but unlike Colorado’s it has drawn mostly praise from conservation and recreation groups.
Aside: I think this is probably true for a variety of reasons, including the existence of the RACNAC and not so much the technical specs of each rule. It will be very interesting for future students to compare the two processes.
The push-pull of politics has caught some groups that advocate for the public lands, or depend on them economically, squarely in the middle.
“We’re not full-on opposing it,” said I Ling Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Outdoor Industry Association, a national trade group for recreation companies, which has its headquarters in Colorado. “We’ve been supportive of development of the Colorado rule, but we do feel that right now there are some things under the current draft that are not strong enough.”
Interestingly, in November, there was an advertisement in the Denver paper by mostly local environmental groups as we discussed here. Just the other day there was a similar ad see press release here by OIA (an industry group) and TRCP (a non-local environmental group) paid for by TRCP. I just think it’s interesting who chosen to be interviewed in this NY Times article. Also, previously OIA and OA teamed up to give comments, many of which were addressed as described here. So if we tracked it, it would be interesting to see how their positions shifted through the different versions. It would also be interesting to know which concerns are important to them today, though not described in this article.
Several independent forestry experts said that on paper, at least, Colorado’s plan was clearly less stringent than what the Clinton administration proposed.
This fellow is not “several”; he doesn’t seem to be associated with forests in the West, and it sounds like he hasn’t read the rule. I don’t know what it means to be “independent”; that’s what we try to achieve on this blog by hearing both sides.
“No question that in some respects it’s less protective,” said William S. Keeton, a professor of forestry and forest ecology at the University of Vermont. But whether the net effects would truly leave forests in Colorado less protected is not as clear, he said.
The plan, for example, would allow more latitude for temporary roads needed for power-line construction, which could be harmful to delicate areas, Dr. Keeton said.
I think it’s interesting that they picked this person to interview, who seems to be operating from knowledge of a previous proposal. Actually, the current proposal restricts construction zones for power lines more than the 2001 Rule, because the 2001 doesn’t have any restrictions on linear construction zones, based on the 10th Circuit in the Bull Mountain case, see previous discussion.
But it also would allow more fire-restoration work like the thinning of trees and prescribed burning, which he said could have ecological benefits if planned carefully. “The devil is in the details,” he said.
It sounds like he doesn’t really know, and hasn’t read the current proposal, so why interview him? Prescribed burning and thinning of trees are also allowed under the 2001 Rule, but thinning is restricted unless it’s for ecological reasons.
A forest supervisor for the Forest Service in Colorado, Glenn P. Casamassa, said the directive from Secretary Tom Vilsack of the federal Agriculture Department, the Forest Service’s parent agency, is that any exception to the national plan must be as strong as or stronger than the national rule. Colorado’s meets that standard, Mr. Casamassa said.
But he said the West, and maybe Colorado in particular, has also changed significantly in the intervening years. More people are living near national forests. An outbreak of pine-killing bark beetles that has its epicenter in Colorado and several major fires over those years that roared out to touch the edge of urban life have also changed thinking about intervention in the wild, Mr. Casamassa said.
“Not only has the landscape changed, but also the view of what is appropriate to do in these areas,” he said.
Ms. Danowitz at the Pew group said part of her concern about Colorado was that other states might follow its example. A patchwork system of rules and special interests that can speak loudly in state capitals was part of what the national rule was intended to fix, she said.
One person’s “patchwork of rules and special interests” is another person’s “one size does not fit all.”
But Mr. King at the state natural resources agency said he thought the critics overstated Colorado’s differences, partly out of that broader concern about what other states might do. Economic life in the woods, he said, can be balanced with protection.
“It’s one less hoop to jump through, but not a jailbreak,” he said.
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I think it’s worth hearing the reason for the state petitions rule in Mark Rey’s own words from the Nie interview (link above).
So when we came in, we looked at that history and we concluded that the crux of the problem with this issue is that it’s—on the one hand—an intensely political debate because it’s a basic resource allocation question over resources that people feel very strongly about. On the other hand, it’s a very technical debate because you’re trying to decide the fate of individual areas, putting boundaries around them that are based upon site specific data and so therefore you have to be able to amass and work with a substantial database to make good decisions.
In the case of trying to do a nationwide rule, you know you can get all the political closure you want to finally end the debate. You can have the president of the United States stand on the side of a ridge in southern Virginia and announce the outcome, but as the courts have told us, it’s hard to do justice to all the technical detail that is required to make the decision sound from the standpoint of a reviewing judge.
On the other hand, if you deal with this on a forest-by-forest basis, you can—by virtue of the fact that you have a lot less data to deal with—deal with it more intelligently.
The problem is that you can’t really get political closure to the decision because the decision is going to be made by a GS-14 or a GS-15 career civil servant and everybody knows that you can take the debate on up the food chain to see if you can get a better result. So you don’t get any real closure to the issue, both because of where it’s made and also because you don’t engage national interests to the same degree that you do in a national debate.
So we thought if we tried to find a middle road or a third path by working on a state-by-state basis, we could, on the one hand, reduce the size of the decision down to a manageable level, and on the other hand engage for the purposes of bringing better political closure to this, the one person who’s arguably elected to represent all the citizens of the state and that’s the governor, and that in a partnership with the governor we could get the right balance.
Brian Brademeyer is charged with painting over markings to trick Forest Service crews into cutting down trees.
Kevin Woster/Journal staff
A Black Hills environmentalist who for years has fought U.S. Forest Service timber-cutting projects is facing federal charges for changing marks on trees in a timber sale near his home so that more trees would be cut.
Brian Brademeyer, who lives on a small private acreage inside the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve southeast of Hill City, faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for the misdemeanor citation served on Jan. 31. He is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Veronica Duffy on March 15 in Rapid City.
Brademeyer admitted that he painted over marks on more than 20 pine trees on Forest Service land across the fence from his home in the summer of 2010. A Forest Service crew had marked the trees with orange paint so they would not be cut by a planned timber project. Brademeyer painted over the orange with black paint, hoping they would be cut as part of the Palmer Gulch timber sale. Despite that, he continues to oppose the Palmer Gulch sale, which is part of a larger forest management project in the Norbeck.
Cutting the additional trees near his home would have benefitted a meadow that has been encroached by pine trees over the past 50 years, he said.
“I had hoped there would never be a timber sale,” Brademeyer said. “But I wanted the meadow restored.”
He also admitted that fewer trees would have aesthetic value for him.
“Yeah, it would have enhanced my view. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.
Forest Service officials declined to discuss the case. And U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson said he couldn’t comment.
But former Forest Service spokesman Frank Carroll of Custer, who retired from the agency in January, said Brademeyer was serving “purely selfish reasons” when he used paint to alter the marks on the trees in a federal timber sale.
After arguing time and again against timber sales and their potential to benefit the forest and wildlife, Brademeyer obviously embraced the idea of judicious tree removal when it came to forest land near his home, Carroll said.
“We have to look at this action of Brian’s part in terms of a lifetime of opposition to forest management projects and cutting trees in the Black Hills,” Carroll said. “And for him to step in there and mark those trees for his own benefit is disingenuous and self-serving. It’s also really sad.”
Altering marks in a timber sale is a big deal, said Tom Troxel of Rapid City, director of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, which represents the timber industry.
“There are lots of timber sales that our purchasers and loggers find problems on, things that we don’t like,” Troxel said. “But no way do we ever try to change the markings. That’s just something you don’t do. It’s illegal, and it would hang our purchasers and loggers out to dry if we did.”
Brademeyer said he had worked with the Forest Service about ways to regenerate the meadow and was left with the impression that officials were willing to cut more trees there. But he also admitted that it was a bad idea for him to change paint marks.
“It was probably stupid, but I didn’t think it was a large deal,” Brademeyer said. “It was stupid but not criminal.”
Yet the criminal charge is pending. It came more than 18 months after Brademeyer was asked in an email from Lynn Kolund, Hells Canyon District ranger in Custer, if he was responsible for the unauthorized re-marking that had been discovered by a Forest Service marking crew.
In the email, a copy of which was provided to the Journal by Brademeyer, Kolund discussed some larger trees near Brademeyer’s place that were marked to be saved for wildlife benefits.
“The wildlife biologist made decisions to leave some of the marked trees for use by bird species. These were some larger trees with more limbs,” Kolund said in the email to Brademeyer. “The crew ran out of paint to finish the job, and when they returned it looked like someone had used some black paint to mark more trees.
“I was curious; did you help us out and mark these trees?” Kolund asked.
In a return email, Brademeyer said he admitted the marking. Yet he wasn’t ticketed for the violation until just weeks ago. Kolund said he couldn’t talk about the case, but noted that Hell Canyon Ranger District crews were busy at that time on many projects, including the coming sales in the Norbeck.
When private timber crews entered the area recently, they found the suspicious-looking marks and reported it to the Forest Service. The citation followed.
In September of 2010, Friends of the Norbeck and the Native Ecosystems Council, two groups led by Brademeyer, challenged the planned Norbeck Wildlife Project in federal court. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Viken denied the groups’ request for a preliminary injunction in December of that year and allowed the first project in Norbeck to proceed.
In late January of 2011, Viken dismissed the suit. The environmental coalition appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed Viken’s ruling last fall.
Just last week the environmental groups decided to ask for a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on the case. And Brademeyer admitted the citation against him played a role in that decision.
So I ‘ve been reading books on trust recently including right now Stephen M. Covey’s “Smart Trust.” He has a bunch of interviews he did for the book, you can google it, here’s a link to one.
It makes me think that we should maybe be careful about calling this person an “environmentalist.” One environmental organization can have QA/QC to some extent but the whole bunch of them can’t because there are no trust enforcement mechanisms. I think the Forest Service could potentially work on trust, but perhaps not “all federal employees”, if you see what I’m saying. That’s why I retitled the titled here as “human being” not “environmentalist.”
This will be the first of many postings to share my photography associated with our National Forests. I have worked on 23 National Forests across the country, in 11 states. The photos I took while working for the Feds will be available for free limited usage, if someone thinks it might help their cause. Others can be available matted and/or framed *smirks*
(Edit: Sharon wanted bigger!)
Several of these peaks in the Lost River Range of Idaho are over 12,000 feet. I met this other detailer, who was doing wildlife surveys, and was shocked to learn that he was climbing part of the way up these mountains, looking for rare species. Yes, he was over 50 years old! I was doing aspen surveys, mapping, photographing and analysis, in support of a new grazing plan. It was in my power to recommend protective measures for the impacted aspen stands. Of course, everything that eats grass, eats aspen. I felt it was meaningful work.
Could be that we need to work on some things before we achieve the desired restoration economy.
Purpose of ARRA (from Wikipedia):
To respond to the late-2000s recession, the primary objective for ARRA was to save and create jobs almost immediately. Secondary objectives were to provide temporary relief programs for those most impacted by the recession and invest in infrastructure, education, health, and ‘green’ energy.
Merkley to Forest Service: This Time, Hire Americans
Repeat of 2009 Foreign Hiring Would Be ‘Unacceptable Outrage’
From KTVZ.COM News Sources here.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., sent a letter Friday to Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, urging him to take steps to ensure Americans will be hired for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program projects announced Feb. 2 — and not repeat the 2009 “debacle” of foreign hiring for those jobs.
Merkley expressed dismay that unemployed Oregonians were passed over for forest thinning work in favor of foreign workers on H-2B visas.
“It will be an unacceptable outrage if American citizens are not hired under these contracts,” Merkley wrote. “It is your responsibility, in partnership with the Department of Labor, to do everything possible—before contracts are issued—to ensure this outcome.”
Last year, a report from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General revealed that millions of dollars in stimulus funds were used by contractors employing foreign workers to perform forest thinning work. On December 1, 2011 Merkley sent a letter to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and then Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew proposing changes to the H-2B foreign worker visa program that would help prevent similar incidents in the future.
Last Friday, the Department of Labor released a final rule that will make some improvements to how the H-2B program is managed, including changes that should make it easier for U.S. workers to apply for job openings that otherwise would go to foreign workers.
However, Merkley said, the changes will not go far enough. Merkley has proposed that the Director of the State workforce agency certifies that every employer seeking to use H-2B foreign labor has complied with all recruitment requirements and that there are no American citizens qualified or available to complete the work.
Friday’s letter asks that the USFS take additional steps in its contracting process to ensure that the work funded by the new grants is performed by Americans.
The text of the letter is below.
February 17, 2012
Mr. Tom Tidwell
Chief, U.S. Forest Service
1400 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20250-0003
Dear Chief Tidwell:
I write to you regarding the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) February 2, 2012 announcement of funding for the Fiscal Year 2012 Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (the Program) projects. In particular, I want to ensure that local labor is hired to perform the work funded by these grants and we do not have a repeat of the debacle in 2009 when unemployed Oregonians were passed over for forest thinning work in favor of foreign nationals on H-2B visas.
As you know, I strongly support the Program which funds priority forest restoration initiatives that reduce wildfire costs, improve forest health, and create jobs. These long-term and large-scale investments are critical for the future of our nation’s forests and I am pleased the USFS is moving quickly to fund this year’s initiatives.
As the USFS has long recognized, improving the health of our national forests is critical to improving the economic health of the surrounding communities. The forestry work funded through the Program will occur in areas that have very high unemployment rates, a deep history of work in the timber economy, and a labor force highly qualified for this type of work. Beyond the broader economic benefits, such as supporting recreational opportunities in the woods and protecting sources of clean drinking water for rural communities, these projects are expected to create or maintain 1,500 jobs.
When the national unemployment rate is above eight percent, and the unemployment rate in Oregon’s timber counties is much higher, it is simply unconscionable that those jobs in our forests might be outsourced. I continue to be outraged that past forest thinning and wildfire prevention work has been awarded by the USFS to contractors using foreign nationals employed through the H-2B Temporary non-Agricultural Work program. As documented in the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General report from October 17, 2011 (Number 17-12-001-03-321), millions of dollars in recent Recovery Act funding spent in Oregon was used to pay contractors to complete similar projects who did not hire any American citizens.
The current requirements designed to ensure American citizens have priority are obviously not working. The Inspector General’s report from October describes some the flaws with the Recovery Act projects:
1. The use of illegal job requirements when communicating with U.S. citizens interested in the work. For example, unemployed Oregonians were asked how old they were and whether they could speak another language;
2. The posting of job orders by contractors only in the state where the work crews were initially located. Large contractors who had multiple jobs with the USFS and started their crews in Washington or California made no effort to recruit workers in Oregon;
3. A complete lack of guidance on the part of the Department of Labor to state workforce agencies to ensure that they were communicating job openings to the affected communities;
4. Little to no validation on the part of the Department of Labor that the information provided by employers seeking to be certified to use H-2B labor was accurate. In fact, the Department of Labor certified two contractors without ever verifying they were real businesses or verifying that the paperwork they were submitting contained all the required information.
The result of these abuses was that $7,140,782 taxpayer dollars were spent for forestry work in Oregon and not one Oregonian was hired.
I want to know what changes in the process you are going to take, along with the Department of Labor, to make sure this does not happen again.
The USFS should carefully consider the hiring practices and community involvement of contractors bidding for these projects so the desired economic impact is fully realized. Moreover, the Program’s projects in Oregon are ideally suited for the awarding of stewardship contracts that provide greater flexibility to the regional USFS offices to use “best value” criteria in choosing businesses to complete this work. The best value criteria can, and should, include preferential treatment for businesses that hire locally and sell the recovered wood into local markets. This approach would align one of the Program’s primary objectives, maximizing the economic impact for affected communities, with the contracting process that is most likely to achieve that goal.
I’d also like to be helpful in ensuring these funds support the local communities. I am including an enclosure to this letter that has contact information for the local WorkSource Oregon offices, and I would encourage your staff from the USFS’s Pacific Northwest Region 6 office to communicate directly with these offices once the funds have been awarded.
I commend the USFS for its commitment to protecting and restoring our national forests. The Program continues to provide a unique opportunity for states, communities, tribes and other organizations to partner together to improve these treasured resources and our rural communities.
In closing, let me emphasize that it will be an unacceptable outrage if American citizens are not hired under these contracts. It is your responsibility, in partnership with the Department of Labor, to do everything possible—before contracts are issued—to ensure this outcome.
I and my team are available at any time to meet and discuss this very important issue. I look forward to your prompt response.
