Over the Weekend – Blue Mtn. blues, Flathead secrets and monumental benefits

I guess this is a bookend to Sharon’s “Friday News Roundup.”

 

BLUE MOUNTAINS

I recently provided an update on the status of the Blue Mountains forest plan revisions here.   And here’s a little more detail on that, especially on the question of “access.”  (This term gets used for a couple of different things, and this one is about closing roads on national forests rather than creating access across private property to reach public lands.)

One group says its leading the charge to fight for what they call “original rights” is Forest Access for All.  “We defend the rights that we’ve had since Oregon was a territory, free reign where we go and utilize the forests which are public lands,” says Bill Harvey, a group member and former Baker County Commissioner. “A couple decades ago the Forest Service began closing off sections of the forest and that’s when Forest Access for All was formed.” Harvey says his group’s particular ire is at the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (WWNF), which he claims “have closed thousands of miles of roads in the forest the last twenty years.”

The group also has other “conflicts” with the Forest Service include the need for  more vegetation management, economic benefits of (motorized) recreation, and better public engagement.

“By law right now, we have an open forest. They will admit it, everybody admits it, and it’s in the books, I’ve seen it a million times. It is an open access forest,” says Harvey. “Why in God’s name would we want to give that up? Nothing benefits us to give up our rights that we have currently. We’re not asking for more rights, we’re asking for the existing rights to stay in place.

I’m going to disagree with him on this one, and I hope the Forest Service does, too (although it looks like they could have done a better job of setting the locals straight on this before now).  In 2005, Subpart B of the Travel Management Rule changed the culture of motor vehicle use on roads, trails, and areas from “Open unless closed” to a system of designated routes.  As for why?  The goal was to reduce resource damage from unmanaged motor vehicle use off that road system.

 

FLATHEAD

Newly revealed emails show that the Flathead National Forest under then supervisor Kurt Steele looked to keep a proposal of a tram up Columbia Mountain from public view for more than year prior to it being first proposed.

Does this sound familiar?  It sounds to me like the “Holland Lake Model” that got the forest supervisor a “promotion” to forest planning.  In this case the Forest properly rejected the proposal as inconsistent with its forest plan (thank you forest plan!).  But it does suggest a pattern of incentives and behavior that may be broader than the Flathead National Forest.

“The process where the public comes into play is when it becomes the NEPA process,” Flathead Forest spokesperson Kira Powell said about the emails.

“Bringing you into the conversation about this potential project on the Flathead NF because it’s coming from investors who apparently have the financial resources to build a tramway, meaning they likely have political savvy also … wrote Keith Lannom, who was deputy regional forester for Region 1 at the time …”

This account offers a window into the role of “political savvy” in Forest Service decision-making.

 

ORGAN MOUNTAINS – DESERT PEAKS NATIONAL MONUMENT

Since President Barack Obama created the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in 2014, visitation has tripled and the national monument has spurred economic growth in the Las Cruces area as well as other communities near the national monument, according to a new report.

According to this overview, the report looks at the various factors that made this particular monument so successful, including its location relative to population centers and the uses it caters to.  Also local community support.

“We have always recognized that the establishment of the monument was due in large part to the grassroots effort at the local community organizations and individuals,” Melanie Barnes, the state BLM director, said. “And due to this engaged and proud community, the monument has seen an increase in visitation.”

She said the BLM is working on a resource management plan that will address land use and resource protection. The public scoping period for that plan recently ended.

 

Monitoring and Adaptive Management in the Southern Blues- Webinar

Modelled changes in fuels following thinning on the Malheur. Dr. James Johnston of OSU. speaking.

Thanks to Sustainable Northwest for hosting this webinar as part of the PNW Collaboratives Workshop.    I particularly like the way the partners have generated and answered science questions; what the science and technology studies folks call “co-design and co-production of knowledge.”    We’ve had several posts about the effort before about this effort from news stories, and Susan Jane Brown is one of the partners.  This webinar  goes into more detail about the monitoring, funding and so on (they are part of a CFLRP project so have more funding for monitoring, hiring scientists and so on).

Here’s the description of the webinar:

The southern Blue Mountains are one of 23 high-priority CFLRP areas that receive augmented funding from Congress to accelerate the pace and scale of forest restoration. Between 2012 and 2020, over $17 million has been invested to mechanically thin 230,000 acres across the 550,000-acre CFLRP area. An integral part of this exemplary landscape-scale restoration effort is a collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service and the Harney County Restoration Collaborative (HCRC) and the Blue Mountains Forest Partners (BMFP). Both groups prepare detailed Zones of Agreement documents that help guide Forest Service restoration work. Zones of Agreement documents are informed by large multi-party monitoring currently in its 7th year. This panel will describe the results of multi-monitoring and the continued evolution of adaptive management in the southern Blue Mountains.

Definitely worth a watch. In the questions, I remember one of the partners saying how important sitting down together and seeing each other as human beings over a beer helped in developing relationships and ultimately agreement. I watched the movie “Oslo” last night and was reminded of what she said, except in the film it appeared to be wine and whiskey. It’s suggestive, though I don’t know how accurate the film is.

Collaborating on national forest exploitation – an oxymoron?

“Attendees engaged in fruitful conversations during the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests hosted Environmental Analysis and Decision Making collaboration summit. USDA Forest Service photo.”

“Before retiring, James Burchfield worked as a field forester for the Forest Service and served as dean of the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana.”  Where our careers overlapped, he was known for his support of and expertise in collaboration in national forest management.  We have argued on this blog about the proper role of collaboration (it flared up again in the Rim Fire recent example), but in this Missoulian column he points out what I think most would agree is an improper role (on his way to making another point about adequately funding the Forest Service).

In 2002, former Chief Dale Bosworth, who now resides in Missoula, reminded the agency of the concept of stewardship, where the focus is not what we take from the land but what we leave on the land. I fear we may be forgetting these vital lessons.

The June 12 visit to Missoula by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to announce his Secretarial Memorandum on new agency priorities reminds us how easily we may be lured in the wrong direction. His mandate to “increase America’s energy dominance” and “reduce regulatory burdens” comes on the heels of a June 4 Presidential Executive Order that orders federal agencies to set aside environmental impact requirements because of the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Certainly, the nation must take assertive measures to restore the economy, but a command to exploit complex ecological systems without appropriate environmental reviews, guaranteed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), abandons the sound principle of “look before you leap.” Further, forcing the Forest Service to meet production targets on a narrow range of resource benefits — those that can be commodified in the marketplace — discounts other critical resource values such as clean water, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities that are well-recognized as central to Montana’s economic vitality.

Moreover, the Forest Service has learned its best outcomes emerge only after ongoing deliberations among partners and local residents to apply their nuanced knowledge and experience. This process actually happens in Montana via the decades of efforts by the 20-plus voluntary groups known as forest collaboratives that regularly engage with agency staff to improve project design, build understanding, and help get work done. These collaborative groups do not enter their deliberations with presupposed notions of resource exploitation. They want the best for the land.  

(My emphasis.)  I was always skeptical that including those with strictly monetary interests in collaborative efforts comported with this principle.  I assumed that there would have to be collaborative agreement with the desired outcome as step 1.  (This is also where forest plans should make an important contribution by defining the desired condition of the land.)  After Perdue’s announcement, it’s hard to see how any truly collaborative effort today could get past that step.

 

 

Midwest timber wars revisited

For the first time in nearly three decades, the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois has proposed a commercial timber harvest of mostly native oaks and hickories. And environmental activists whose high-profile fight against logging in the 1990s led to a 17-year moratorium are once again raising alarms.

Lisa Helmig, acting forest supervisor with the Shawnee National Forest, said the plan is rooted in the best available science about how to maintain the keystone oak ecosystem that is native to the Shawnee foothills.  “The oak ecosystem has been in place here in the central hardwood region for 5,000 years,” she said. But Helmig said the ecosystem is at risk due to a lack of natural or man-made disturbances, such as fire, storms and, yes, even logging. Without these disturbances, non-native, shade-tolerant sugar maple and beech trees sprout up and fill in the forest’s midstory, she said.

The activists have filed an objection, based largely on their past experience with timber harvest on the Forest.

The trees that have grown up to replace the harvested oaks and hickories are mostly 28-year-old stands of “undesirable” beeches and maples.  “When you think about how many oaks were here, it’s heart-wrenching,” Wallace said “Had they not cut the oaks, we’d have oaks here,” Stearns added. In addition to the Farview site, in their letter they write that we also returned to the North End Ecological Restoration project logged in Pope County in the late 1990s. “Little to no oak and hickory have been visibly restored.” They cited other examples, as well.

This is the root of their concern: What the Shawnee National Forest’s leadership claims is happening isn’t.

Asked about their concerns, Helmig said that her “gut reaction” is that the Forest Service likely didn’t follow through with what should be a multiphase treatment. Helmig said she’s confident that the Forest Service is committed to seeing (this) project through… “We have a wonderful silviculturist on staff now,” Helmig said. “He’s been here five years and is absolutely fantastic.”

Hopefully we can assume that there has been a science-based determination that ecological integrity requires regenerating some young oaks and hickories.  But implementation unfortunately still boils down to “trust us,” and “we’re different now.”   (But then the Forest evicted the media from the objection meeting, wrongly according to the Washington Office.)

Reducing the “Bad Blood” Factor in Conflict Management: from Peter Williams

I thought I’d repost this because Peter has much experience in this area. It originally came up in the context of “what is privatization” and “why do all the big Monument designations happen in Utah? What are the dynamics of some folks picking Utah as a target, and then attacking them for reacting? What’s behind it? Brian mentioned bad blood of longstanding duration between different political figures.  But what to do when there is bad blood, lack of trust,  or past negative interactions?  If you’re in partisan politics, or the media sources that echo them,  you seek to inflame them to make yourself look better, to get more clicks or to advance your narrative. But is there an alternative path of joint story- telling, compassion and peace-making (hmm. is this touchy-feely?)

But Peter Williams has experience in trying to work through conflicts and here’s what he thinks:

What to do about “bad blood” is an interesting question in this discussion, as well as a crucial challenge in any collaborative effort. Brian Hawthorne, Sharon, and Jon all touch on it. In my experience, which I assume others can attest as well, not only can there be bad blood, there can be different stories about why it happened. And Sharon reminds us of another related problem, which is that folks may not ever talk with you about those past issues. Some call those “the undiscussables,” a pretty apt name.

This thread has strong examples of the challenges of bad blood. Taking just one, we can look at how Utah residents and others have been affected by the Utah Wilderness battles, the subsequent declarations of National Monument status, and, twenty years from when it flared up, the boundary changes and subsequent business reactions of some in the outdoor recreation industry. And that doesn’t even get into the background history going to the 19th century at least.

Maybe a question is how to find a way forward when history is hot, alive, and emotional. From a collaboration perspective, combined with ideas from conflict management, I find it helpful to recognize as early as possible what I call “competing histories” because finding a competing history tells me I need to look for the frames or lenses through which people receive their story, their version. Those frames are the source of the bad blood and, with the right approach, folks will tell you enough, even if most of the story is still largely undiscussable. If successful, I also know I reached the stage of “sufficiently trusted outsider”, not always easy, sometimes not even possible, always worth trying.

Then I do at least two things with those competing histories. First, I find ways to acknowledge those in my discussions with folks, to speak to the undiscussables myself so they don’t have to, because, as a sufficiently trusted outsider, I can do it with less emotion, less baggage. This is all part of what I call “re-humanizing” the discussion, getting beyond caricatures and stereotypes enough to have a conversation about a joint future. Folks who do collaboration work, like me, sometimes need to take on a “third-party” role of sharing what we’ve heard–with permission–because that relieves the actual participants from doing it themselves with all the emotion that can conjure.

Second, I find ways to document the history, like in presentations or documents, which acknowledges it has been heard and, where possible and needed, gets at facts instead of stories. This is a way to use validation to accomplish some needed de-escalation.

Let me leave you with this idea: Finding ways to distinguish “bad blood between people” from the history of events that produced that bad blood may give the people a better chance of finding a way forward. With hot issues, like debates about privatizing public lands, this could be helpful because you can create space between undiscussables and whatever really needs discussion.

Shared Vision, Shattered Trust and the Building Thereof: OCFR and Somes Bar Projects

Klamath Justice Coalition activists gather to create a road blockade in efforts to protect the spiritual trails that were at risk during the implementation of the OCFR Project. Credit: Craig Tucker

Thanks to Susan Jane Brown for sharing the link to the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. It is a joint effort by TNC and the Watershed Center.  There are many interesting posts there, (and it’s great that there’s a whole section of Fantastic Failures), and I thought I’d highlight this one that tells a story about building trust between the Karuk Tribe and the Forest Service, by Bill Tripp.  Trust is something that people in communities can develop- perhaps it’s harder for national groups or for national elected officials.  Perhaps the exercise of trust-building is not honored as it should be. I’m thinking of a national FS award nominated by externals, with a chunk of change for projects associated with it. This story depicts how a negative interaction, plus continued willingness to work together for mutual interests, are leading to a better future.  Kudos to the collaborators for not giving up, and the Forest Service for fixing what went wrong.

“Can we have a meeting with the contractor?” I asked.

“They tell me I can’t even go to the project site without permission from the contracting officer in Redding” replied the new forest ranger.

We worked diligently to find solutions, but the contracting regulations created barriers at every turn. We couldn’t find resolution and landed in court, the last place any of us wanted to be.

Our stories were told, and it was determined that there was a violation of the National Historic Preservation Act in failing to follow through with the identified protection measures. The judge asked me, “Do you want this project to go away?”

I sighed. “We agreed in the beginning that something needs to get done … we just need to do it right,” I said.

With that, we settled on a remedial plan that was partially negotiated, and partially prescribed by the judge.

The project resumed, but now with Tribal and local Forest Service staff on-site during much of the implementation. Many of the timber units were logged, some of the hand treatment work was done, yet follow-up burning still hasn’t happened. To this day, there are cut trees on the ground and units left untreated. The contractor stopped coming back, presumably due to low timber values, long-haul costs and a bitter taste in his mouth over the delays.

….

A failure? For the most part, I would say yes. However, and oddly enough, relationships among those initially collaborating improved, understanding was gained, and a foundation for building trust was established. Collaboration didn’t stop, it grew stronger. 

The Nature Conservancy’s Fire Learning Network offered facilitated dialogue. We began to access the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network’s communication channels and peer network. We participated in the formulation of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. We strengthened our relationships with the state of California. We increased our capacity through hosting Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) and participating in the TREX coaches network. We helped spawn the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network. This local, state and national work renewed our vigor in community-based action and allowed us to connect again with local partners in the co-design of the Somes Bar Integrated Wildland Fire Management Project (“Somes Bar”).

Although Somes Bar is about twice the size of the OCFR project, we have learned from our past mistakes and feel ready for the challenge. We started differently where things went wrong before. We have seen consistency within the USDA Forest Service despite staff turnover. We have created a more inclusive process and established a shared identity through the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership (WKRP). We settled on a planning area of 1.2 million acres. We are using stewardship agreement authorities that enable our collaborative group to stay engaged during all of the phases — planning, implementation, monitoring and adaptive management. And we have begun to look back at the OCFR project to see how we can bring it back to life under its original intent.

Forest Plan Participation 101


Adam Romanowitz, Photographer

Some tips from a participant in the Manti-LaSal forest plan revision process, which includes developing a “conservation alternative” that “will emphasize the long term health of the forest.”

I’m afraid I’m pretty cynical about the payoff from this approach, but I’d be interested in stories from anyone who feels they had some success.  Part of the problem comes from the fact that the Forest Service creates its own structure for the alternatives it develops (such as the choice of management areas, what the different kinds of plan components should look like, how the plan document will be organized), and an outside alternative that doesn’t line up with this would be difficult for the planning team to document and evaluate.  Then of course there is the, “I am the professional” bias that resists outside ideas, the “don’t take away my power” bias that resists any actual obligations (standards) in the plan, and the “no-change” inertia bias that defines “reasonable alternatives” as those that aren’t much different from the current plan.  At best, it seems like there might be a few surprises that the Forest Service actually likes and tries to use.  Tell me I’m wrong.

It looks like Mary is already encountering some bias:

For instance, the Moab Sun News’ article on the public meeting reported that forest service grazing manager Tina Marian said people won’t see a lot of grazing changes in the new plan that aren’t already being implemented on the ground. She shouldn’t predetermine that outcome. The conservation alternative will recommend changes to how grazing is implemented in the forest (which is a part of Moab’s watershed), like reducing the rate of cattle grazing.

It’s not possible to tell where exactly the Manti-LaSal is in the revision process from their website, but there was a comment period on the “Draft Assessment Report” in June of 2017.  I think the best time to influence alternatives is probably when the Forest must “Review relevant information from the assessment and monitoring to identify a preliminary need to change the existing plan and to inform the development  of plan components and other plan content” (36 CFR §219.7(c)(2)(i)).  Any reasonable alternative would have to be traced back to that information, and if there are disagreements at that point it’s not likely that later suggestions would be well received.

In the example above, what did the assessment say about the effects of cattle grazing? The Forest seems to take the position that “historic” grazing was a problem, but “… (C)urrent grazing practices are not having as large an effect on stream stability, as evidenced by the many greenline transects rated as stable in 2016.”  But then there’s this proof of bias in the Assessment (I’m not familiar with these “directives,” and unfortunately, “Shamo” isn’t in the “Literature Cited”):

Livestock grazing has occurred on the Forest for over 150 years and will continue as part of the Forest’s directives to provide a sustained yield and support local communities (Shamo 2014, USFS 2014).

They’ve got some other interesting issues on the Manti-LaSal:

The alternative will ensure that pinyon and juniper communities are not removed on thousands of acres for the purposes of growing grass for cattle and artificial populations of elk.

It will require the forest to remove the non-native mountain goats that are tearing up the rare alpine area above 11,000 feet in the Manti-La Sal Mountains. It will not allow honeybee apiaries, which would devastate native bees.

And that’s where part of the Bears Ears National Monument is/was.  There was a lawsuit on the goats, and there are several on Bears Ears. 

 

 

Interior Dept. to limit freedom of information

To add to the lawsuits that result when the government misses its deadline to provide information subject to the Freedom of Information Act, we may soon see a lawsuit against USDI’s effort to not have to provide the information in the first place.  Comments on their proposed new FOIA regulations were due Monday.

(The purpose is to) “streamline the FOIA submission process in order to help the Department inform requesters and/or focus on meeting its statutory obligations.”

The department proposes limiting the number of requests that individuals or groups could file each month, and to “not honor a request that requires an unreasonably burdensome search or requires the bureau to locate, review, redact, or arrange for inspection of a vast quantity of material.”

A department spokeswoman said making the process more efficient would “ensure more equitable and regular access to federal records for all requesters, not just litigious special interest groups.”

FOIA represents a strong statement from Congress about the importance of open government.  Responses to FOIA requests often reveal illegal activity and become the basis for lawsuits. Still, every administration seems to stamp its own bias on its FOIA procedures, and this is Trump and Zinke.

As a practical matter, it can take a lot of agency resources to comply with FOIA requirements.  But as a legal matter, the law is pretty clear about what has to be provided and how fast.  Regulations can’t change that.  There is nothing in the law that excuses agencies from honoring a request if they happen to take actions that generate “vast” quantities of material, or if some aspect of providing required material is “burdensome.”

(Could the USDA Forest Service be brewing something similar?)

 

You say “logging,” we say “thinning,” “mechanical treatment” or “stand improvement”

And Trump says “tree clear.”  This article got my attention for a number of reasons.  It’s a follow-up to the story about the Trump tweet regarding forest fires.  It is another case of “upping the cut” under the Trump administration (doubling in this case on the Los Padres).  And it looks like the Forest is trying to disguise what it is actually doing with this project.  And using a questionable categorical exclusion to boot.

Critics contend the proposed logging in the Los Padres is a signal that the balance of power in national forests is shifting under the Trump administration. Such projects could open the door to commercial logging in other public forests currently managed as watersheds rather than timberlands, such as the Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue raised annual timber production targets for the Los Padres National Forest from 200,000 cubic feet of wood in 2017 to 400,000 cubic feet this year.

“We are witnessing a historical change unfolding in the national forests in our own backyard,” said Richard Halsey, founder of the nonprofit Chaparral Institute in Escondido, Calif. “Timber was never part of the equation, until now.”

Here’s the way the article introduced the project:

The federal government is moving to allow commercial logging of healthy green pine trees for the first time in decades in the Los Padres National Forest north of Los Angeles, a tactic the U.S. Forest Services says will reduce fire risk.

The scoping letter described the project as a “shaded fuelbreak.”

Treatments would include a combination of mechanical thinning, mastication of brush/smaller trees, and hand treatments such as hand thinning, brush cutting, pruning and piling of material.

That sounds fairly benign, but the proposed action sheds a little more light on it:

Mixed conifer and pinyon juniper stands would be thinned to a range of 40 to 60 square feet basal area per acre…  Trees would be removed throughout all diameter classes and would include the removal of commercial trees. Residual trees would be selected for vigor; however, larger Jeffrey pine would be retained per Forest Plan direction unless they pose a hazard or are infected with dwarf mistletoe. All black oak would be left unless they pose a hazard.

But the scoping letter states an intent to use this categorical exclusion:

(6) Timber stand and/or wildlife habitat improvement activities that do not include the use of herbicides or do not require more than 1 mile of low standard road construction. Examples include, but are not limited to:

(i) Girdling trees to create snags;

(ii) Thinning or brush control to improve growth or to reduce fire hazard including the opening of an existing road to a dense timber stand;

(iii) Prescribed burning to control understory hardwoods in stands of southern pine; and

(iv) Prescribed burning to reduce natural fuel build-up and improve plant vigor.

And then there’s this:

Ashley McConnell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said her agency plans to work with the Forest Service to help protect active California condor nest sites or roosting areas. Logging, she said, could “benefit California condor habitat because the larger and older trees where condors typically roost are preserved.”

That’s what “thinning” means, right?

So has it been so long since the Los Padres has had a timber sale that they don’t know what to call it?  Or is this an attempt at sneaking by the NEPA requirements that go along with it?  Maybe you can technically call it “thinning” if you leave any residual trees, but that is clearly not what this CE was intended to cover.  There is another CE for hazardous fuel reduction, but it’s limited to 1000 acres of “mechanical treatments.”  And another for “harvest of live trees” (limited to 70 acres).  Is this the kind of misleading corner cutting the Forest Service is going to go back to when it is under pressure to “get the cut out?”