History

Forest planning for “sustainable” recreation

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A former Forest Service backcountry specialist talks about ecological integrity and increasing human recreation activities, and tries to answer the question of “what is sustainable recreation?”  The 2012 Planning Rule requires plan components “to provide for: (i) Sustainable recreation; including recreation settings, opportunities, and access; and scenic character.”

What is “Sustainable Recreation”? The Forest Service defines it as “the set of recreation settings and opportunities in the National Forest System that is ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable for present and future generations.”

Here’s how it’s done:

The Recreation Opportunity Spectrum can be used in forest planning to define a desired condition for management within each zone. Indicators and standards are meant to define the tipping point beyond which management action must be taken.
 If the standard for a backcountry area (called “semi-primitive non-motorized” in ROS jargon) is that no more than six other parties are encountered on a typical day, when the encounter rate exceeds that number some action is supposed to take place to return to the desired condition.
It’s a neat framework, but doesn’t always play out as intended on the ground. ROS doesn’t differentiate between a semi-primitive area in the back yard of a town like Jackson or Bozeman and one that’s two hours away.
That seems like a major shortcoming, especially if all areas with a SPNM designation must have the same desired level of semi-primitive non-motorized use.  However, the Planning Handbook encourages “new approaches,” including creating “desired recreation opportunity spectrum subclasses” §(23.23a).
The usual sequence of remedial actions begins with non-intrusive measures like visitor education. If the problem isn’t solved, additional actions are considered.
The Bridger-Teton forest plan is typical in its prescribed sequence of actions, this excerpt taken from its direction on wilderness. The following recreational strategies should be used, listed in descending order of preference:
First Action – Efforts are directed towards information and education programs and correction of visible resource damage.
Second Action – If the first action is unsuccessful, restrict activities by regulation (for example, set a minimum distance between a lakeshore and where people can camp).
Third Action – If the first and second actions fail, restrict numbers of visitors.
Fourth Action – If first, second, and third actions are not successful, a zone can be closed to all recreation use until the area is rehabilitated and restored to natural conditions.
In my experience, outside of designated wilderness and other special areas where specific laws apply, the Forest Service keeps circling around the first action, which isn’t a bad strategy given the continuing need for it in communities where resident turnover is high.  It’s an ongoing need regardless of the often unmet requirement to step up restrictions. But restrictions trigger blowback, as when the Shasta-Trinity National Forest tried to set encounter limits for the wilderness that includes Mt. Shasta.
People basically said they don’t care if it’s crowded—they just want to reach the summit, and a judge agreed with them. On the other hand, those who float the Selway River are happy to wait until they get a launch day shared by no one else. Since everyone is going the same direction at about the same speed, everyone can experience a bit of peace and quiet. So the application of sustainable recreation standards depends on who is using the forest and what they will accept.
And those are the questions that forest planning should be designed to answer.  (Note:  the Bridger-Teton plan has not been revised, so may not be the current state-of-the-art.  Also, I couldn’t find the court case referred to.)  And this must be done against the backdrop of a requirement for ecological integrity.
User-built trails and roads are often the opposite of sustainable. They develop incrementally and aren’t designed with soil type, grades and curve radii in mind, or the needs of resident wildlife. The trail system after adoption by the Forest Service usually gets reworked so it doesn’t turn into deep ruts or wash into the creek, but where is the analysis that determines that the trail location is right in the first place?  The trail itself becomes more sustainable, but where do the grouse and elk and owls go?
The adoption of forest plan of components for desired recreational use has effects that must be evaluated during the NEPA process, but rarely does the Forest Service devote much attention to this.
The author describes a common fallacious argument that the Forest Service likes to make about sustainability to avoid controversy:
While the planning rule makes clear that ecological integrity underlies compatible uses in a national forest, the ecological, economical, and social sustainability have since been referred to as a three-legged stool, with all three legs of equal importance.
But if you parse the actual language of the Planning Rule, it is apparent that the ecological leg needs to support more weight (driven by the substantive diversity requirement of NFMA) (my emphasis).
“Plans will guide management of NFS lands so that they ARE ecologically sustainable and CONTRIBUTE TO social and economic sustainability; CONSIST OF ecosystems and watersheds with ecological integrity and diverse plant and animal communities; and HAVE THE CAPACITY TO PROVIDE people and communities with ecosystem services and multiple uses that provide a range of social, economic, and ecological benefits for the present and into the future.

Political Appointees, The Good and the Bad: Guest Post by Jim Furnish. II. Jim Lyons, the Committee of Scientists, FS R&D and the 2001 Planning Rule

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This is perhaps the first chance (in history) to synthesize a group history from the ways different people remember it. As such, this is an invitation for all of us to give our perspectives from that time period, and see how or if they fit together. And if it only covers a piece of our own humble Forest Service history rather than say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, well then so be it. Now, back to Jim Furnish and his experience with Undersecretary Jim Lyons. For those of you who don’t remember that period, there was a Committee of Scientists which included a lawyer (I think they really meant a “committee of scholars”). Note as different groups of scientists and scholars are brought in to give advice, disagree (at least the COS) internally, and are used to support essentially the answer to a non-science question (which thread of sustainability should be dominant in forest planning). Is that a question that should be resolved by “eminent scholars”? For newbies to all this it’s not hard to draw a line between the “sustainability is #1” esoteric discussion, as Jim terms it, and the concept of “ecological integrity” in the 2012 Rule.

“The Good: Along with the Roadless Conservation Rule, the FS was revising NFMA planning regulations (remember?). To be blunt, Dombeck loved the Roadless issue; Planning, not so much. But Jim Lyons was another matter. He was totally into the planning regulation, and behaved very hands-on throughout the process. Regrettably, almost anything Lyon said when the national leadership team met to process sections of the new regulation (even if credible) was met with skepticism, owing to a lack of trust. Sally Collins, later to become Assoc Chief, had joined my staff from Deschutes NF in OR as my Assoc Dep Chief. We both had abundant planning experience, and had each served on a planning advisory group appointed by Lyons to prep for the new regulation. Sally and I concluded that Lyons needed to allow the regulation to proceed without his direct intervention; his efforts were counterproductive as he was not the right messenger.
We approached Lyons with our assessment, and asked that he trust us to shepherd the regulation through to its publication as a draft rule in the Fed Register. We promised to keep him abreast of progress, and would see to it that his concerns were addressed along the way. Bear in mind that the planning regulation was “his baby”, but he weighed the matter seriously and begrudgingly agreed. This was a difficult regulation, as it forwarded concepts and ideology at odds with past practice, but we got it done after smoothing out the process. I give credit to Lyons for harnessing his ego to serve a cause he cared deeply about.

A brief sidebar: the concept of sustainability fostered heated debate while preparing the planning regulation, the crux of the matter being whether economic, social, and ecological sustainability were indivisible, or could be viewed as unique but related features. This topic devolved into a largely esoteric argument between research station directors and Lyons, while regional foresters seemed dull to the topic. Researchers argued for indivisible, tilting at the notion that ecological sustainability become the “guiding star” for the Forest Service, as was articulated by the Scientific Committee headed by Norm Johnson (OSU). Lyons and Dombeck decided the sustainability issue emphatically at a national leadership meeting for one “3-stranded rope” made up of unique and separable economic, social, and ecological parts. End of story! Remarkably, FS science leaders then created a 21-page “encyclical” making their case yet again. Lyons had had enough. He asked Oregon St Univ to empanel a group of eminent scholars to tackle the question. They sided with Lyons. End of story, again.

I use the planning regulation, which was achieved toward the end of Lyons’ 8-year tenure, to make the argument that Lyons learned some valuable lessons along the way about how to work effectively with the agency. He behaved arrogantly and could be condescending early on, and few could forget his handling of the firing of Robertson and Leonard, and appointment of JW Thomas. I found him to be dedicated, thoughtful, and supportive, all things which Tenney was not.

And here’s my main point about the intersection of politics and resource policy: the days of the FS being relatively immune from political tampering are long past (if they ever existed). Each administration will make personnel changes (i.e. fire Chiefs and others) to suit their aims, in hopes that “their people” will be compliant. The illusion that a “career Chief forester” is an essential ingredient to an independent agency is sort of laughable today. That said, because the FS has a trust relationship with the public and their lands, they have an obligation to engage in “principled dissent” when necessary to blunt ill-advised political machinations. Any Chief might lose a tough argument, but every Chief should fight for what’s right by the land. And fight hard!”

Out with the new and in with the old

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Here’s some well-known quotes from former Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth in 2003. He was trying to sell the idea that the agency was no longer timber-first. This was the “new” Forest Service; “caring for the land” comes first.

Twenty years ago, we focused primarily on outputs, measured in terms of board feet; today, we focus primarily on outcomes, measured in terms of healthy ecosystems.

So our mission focus has shifted away from past levels of timber production.

This concept was embedded in the 2012 Planning Rule, with desired landscape conditions being the basis for vegetation management projects. From the Preamble:

“However, land management planning today focuses on managing toward desired conditions, or outcomes, rather than focusing simply on outputs.”

Today it looks like we have the new “new” Forest Service.  At least on the Olympic National Forest:

Members of the collaborative and non-voting members from the Olympic National Forest, Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) and several other entities said Tuesday that the common goal is to increase timber harvest and aid the local economy while also protecting the forests.

Reta Laford, Olympic National Forest supervisor said her agency’s current emphasis within the restoration framework will treat more acres and increase volume using congressional appropriations as well as timber sales that retain the funds created to use for North Olympic Peninsula projects.

Paul Bialkowsky, timber manager for Olympic Peninsula Operations for Interfor and a collaborative member, said the group is working for a shared goal among industry, government, and environmentalists to increase timber harvest while maintaining forest and watershed quality.

The only person to say anything about ecosystems was the meeting facilitator. And there was no mention of desired conditions. It looks like the agency may be returning to its roots (or stumps).  Also that potential collaborators who don’t share this new/old goal may have a reason to be not be much interested in collaborating.

America’s First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Asheville Experiment

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This comment by Retired Smokey Bear reminded me that at the recent Forest Service Retirees’ meeting in Asheville, we were fortunate to have a screening of this film.

If you haven’t experienced this part of the country and its history, I highly recommend it.

It might be hard to schedule with our PBS outlets in the West, but I thought it was definitely worth watching.  Note that it was an official selection of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, so at least some westerners found it worthwhile.

Here’s a link to the trailer.

 

Oregon logging history map

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Oregon Wild has compiled an  interactive map of logged and thinned areas on public and private lands across the state of Oregon.  If nothing else, it’s hard to look at this and accuse anyone wanting to keep logging out of new parts of their public lands of being an “extremist.”

Oregon Wild intends to use this mapping tool to help advocate for forest conservation and demonstrate that while there have been temporal pulses of increased logging intensity over the years, logging is always very active on both public and private forests in Oregon. In fact, if anything, the analysis on this site underrepresents the true extent of logging taking place.

The tool is also a great visualization of the few Wilderness and roadless wild lands remaining in the state – while it does not highlight these areas, they are clearly visible by their noticeable lack of logging units. These last bastions of wild landscapes are far too rare in Oregon, a reason Oregon Wild is working to protect what is left.

We can also use the tool to push back on misinformation spouted by timber interests.

  • Many say that logging on public land was “shut-down” by the spotted owl and Northwest Forest Plan, first implemented in 1994, but the data shows that logging continued apace throughout the Northwest Forest Plan region after the plan was adopted.
  • Logging advocates also say we need the increase the “pace and scale” of logging to reduce fire hazard in the dry forests of eastern and southwest Oregon, but the data show that thinning has already occurred across vast portions of these forests.

Supreme Court may reinterpret tribal treaty rights on national forests

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Here’s a pending Supreme Court case, Herrera v. Wyoming, that hasn’t shown up in the Forest Service litigation summaries.  The federal government is defending the right of a Native American to hunt on the Bighorn National Forest without complying with state hunting laws.  If they lose, tribal treaty rights, as currently understood, could be severely diminished.  The hearing is scheduled for January 8.

When the native tribes ceded their lands to the federal government, the language in the treaties typically preserved their rights to various uses and activities on indigenous lands that were not included within the new reservation, for which the treaties used the terms “open and unclaimed” or “unoccupied” lands.  Much of that land is now part of national forests.  Here is how the Forest Service interprets the language referring to those lands:

The term applied to public domain lands held by the United States that had not been fenced or claimed through a land settlement act. Today, “open and unclaimed lands” applies to lands remaining in the public domain (for the purposes of hunting, gathering foods, and grazing livestock or trapping). The courts have ruled that National Forest System lands reserved from the public domain are open, unclaimed, or unoccupied land, and as such the term applies to
reserved treaty rights on National Forest System land.

In the case currently pending before the Supreme Court the State of Wyoming has argued that this is not true (they also argue that the lands became “occupied” when Wyoming became a state):

The parties further dispute whether the Bighorn National Forest should be considered “unoccupied lands” for treaty purposes. Herrera and the federal government emphasize that the proclamation of a national forest meant the land could no longer be settled, which they argue was the historical standard for occupation. Yet Wyoming argues that physical presence should not be the test, especially given the West’s expansiveness. According to Wyoming, the federal government’s proprietary power over its own lands, including its decisions to exclude hunters, demonstrates that the land was effectively occupied when it became a national forest.

Courts have held that the federal government has a substantive duty to protect ‘to the fullest extent possible’ the tribal treaty rights, and the resources on which those rights depend.   If Wyoming were to win their argument, treaty rights to accustomed tribal uses of national forests would no longer exist.  Because the federal government is defending the tribal interests in this case, one might think that the Forest Service would continue to protect these rights even without the treaty obligation.  However, in the past they have disagreed with tribes on issues such as campground fees and desired salmon populations.

Extinction on the national forests

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Larry Harrell asked recently (with a *smirk* no doubt) if any species have gone extinct on national forests.  Here’s a report (published in 2004) from the Center for Biological Diversity that documents 108 extinctions that occurred between the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and 1995.  Two are noted on national forests.  One was a mussel on the Carson National Forest.  Here’s the other:

The San Gabriel Mountains Blue butterfly (Plebejus saepiolus aureolus) was known only from a single wet meadow within the yellow pine forest near the Big Pines Ranger Station, San Gabriel Mountains, Angeles National Forest, California [14]. Its host plant was Trifolium wormskioldii. At a minimum it was seen in 1970, 1980, and 1985. It has not been seen since 1985 [14]. It was not found in a 1995 survey which was a very wet year that would have encouraged reproduction if the taxon still existed [97]. The meadow was still wet, but had been made smaller due to the diversion of some of the water from the natural spring feeding it. The diversion of the spring by the U.S. Forest Service has been suggested as the cause of the species extinction [189].

And it’s been another 20 years since then.  Another species that seems obvious, but its extinction probably pre-dates this study is the ivory-billed woodpecker, which ranged throughout the southeastern forests, and was killed off by logging. The Ocala National Forest in Florida was established in 1908, but ivory bills had apparently disappeared from there by 1940.  The last confirmed sighting was in 1944 in Louisiana.  One of the unconfirmed sightings after that was on the DeSoto National Forest in Mississippi.

It would be good to see more like this:

One rare desert plant has been removed from the endangered species list, and another has been “down-listed,” thanks to successful recovery efforts in Death Valley National Park.

National forest planning has been a contributing factor to the delisting of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem, and will be part of the consideration if Canada lynx are proposed for delisting.

History of logging in Montana

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The Missoulian is running a series of articles on this subject.  The one in Sunday’s paper asks these questions about the future:

“Banishment from the national forests would doom many Montana timber towns to welfare status, according to advocates in the wood-products industry. But if they’re dependent on access to public timber, isn’t that another form of welfare? Does my family’s tradition of working in the woods entitle it to public subsidy, especially if the commercial market finds Montana’s wood products uncompetitive? Does rescuing Montana’s timber industry justify rewriting some of the nation’s bedrock environmental protections, changing access to its court system, and spending millions of its tax dollars?”

Read the Multiple-Use Act

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It’s worthwhile to re-read the law every once in awhile.  This time, because of some recent discussions here, a couple of things stood out.  Here’s the definition of multiple-use:

‘‘Multiple use’’ means: The management of all the various renewable surface resources of the national forests so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas large enough to provide sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing needs and conditions; that some land will be used for less than all of the resources; and harmonious and coordinated management of the various resources, each with the other, without impairment of the productivity of the land, with consideration being given to the relative values of the various resources, and not necessarily the combination of uses that will give the greatest dollar return or the greatest unit output.”

The first italicized phrase indicates that any supposed “commitments” (by Gifford Pinchot or otherwise) prior to this law to any particular uses in particular places have been overwritten by Congressional authorization to change land management to meet current needs (to be determined by a forest planning process).  (I guess that also makes the “high level” of sustained yield in that definition something that has to be determined in light of current needs.)

The second refutes the notion that there is any requirement in the law that national forests be managed for “things” that produce dollars (or jobs).

It’s probably also worth reiterating the part of the law that nullifies the “wilderness is not multiple-use” argument:  “The establishment and maintenance of areas of wilderness are consistent with the purposes and provisions of this Act.”

Book Review: “Toward a Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition” by Jim Furnish

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toward a natural forest

Many thanks to Teri Cleland for her contribution!

Review by Teri Cleeland, who retired from the US Forest Service in 2013 after a nearly 30 year career with assignments in Arizona, Washington DC, and Florida.

After seven years working as a seasonal archeologist for the Forest Service and Park Service, I finally landed a permanent job in 1989 on the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona. The job only came about because of a consent decree the Forest Service had signed to settle a lawsuit based on careless destruction of significant southwestern cultural sites during logging operations. “Save the Jemez” brought together a coalition of Tribes, environmental groups, even the State of New Mexico, against the Forest Service. The Agency bowed to legal pressure and instituted reforms that were a boon to my career and began a sustained period of protection and interpretation of many archeological and historic sites, as well as improved relations with Tribal governments. I got a ground floor view of the beginning of change in the Forest Service, change that has come fitfully through the years and continues today.

So it was fascinating to read Jim Furnish’s memoir about his career in the Forest Service, “Toward a Natural Forest” (Oregon State University Press, 2015). Furnish started as a company man in the “timber is king” era of the 1960s and slowly evolved a new land ethic, ending his career at the pinnacle of the agency as an iconoclast—and outcast—for his unconventional ideas and style, pushing for the embrace of ecosystem management.

This is a personal account that traces Furnish’s career and how certain experiences through the years changed his view on Forest Service management practices and his own land ethic. Only 200 pages long, it is well-written and engaging, short on details but with an unflinching viewpoint. It focuses primarily on timber issues, which keeps the book at a manageable length; although I found myself wishing he had included more about other issues such as recreation and tribal relations.

Anyone who worked for the agency (or against the agency) in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s will be interested to read Furnish’s accounts of some of the great controversies of the times. I found myself reflecting on my own perspective as a field staff officer hearing the buzz about how politicized the agency had become. I wanted to find out how Washington ticked, and so became an idealistic newbie in the Washington Office, where I briefly worked with Furnish on the Recreation Fee Demonstration program. From the fights over unrealistic timber targets to the Spotted Owl controversy and Chief Dombeck’s race to institute a Planning Rule and Roadless Rule in the waning years of the Clinton administration, Furnish provides his unique perspective.

The book also includes frank acknowledgement of Furnish’s own shortcomings and a fascinating account of how he vaulted from the supervisor of a relatively small national forest (the Suislaw) to the Deputy Chief for the National Forest System. Many names in the book will be familiar Forest Service followers. Furnish heaps praise on some and scorn on others, but never gets too personal. And he doesn’t spare himself from scrutiny.

Of his first ranger job on the Tensleep District on the Bighorn National Forest, Furnish said “. . . I came to sense I hadn’t made the grade as a district ranger, certainly not in the eyes of many of my peers, nor, to a degree, in my own eyes.” Later, as acting Forest Supervisor on the Suislaw National Forest, a clash of viewpoints on logging brought many personnel changes. “When presented with opportunities to bring careers to an end, I seized each chance. I had been ruthless in ways I thought myself incapable of.” That statement might have come back to haunt Furnish when the end of his own career came with the Bush administration: “I clearly had no legitimacy . . . I was marginalized, irrelevant. . . . Though the treatment was not unexpected, the rapidity with which it happened surprised me.” For Furnish, the end came not with a bang but a whimper, eased out with little fanfare.

But he continued to advocate for change in the Forest Service, and felt “sweet vindication” when a court ruling in 2012 supported his Roadless Area Conservation Rule. And he approves the latest Planning Rule as an improvement on the 2001 version he helped craft. Although the Forest Service has left many of the old timber battles behind, according to Furnish, it has a long way to go toward both restoring trust in the agency and restoring the National Forests. I think Furnish might be underestimating how far the agency has advanced a restoration ethic in the 13 years since he left the agency. But there is no doubt in his assessment that bold leadership is needed to achieve the goal of restoring and sustaining our nation’s forests.

With an excellent forward by historian Char Miller, I recommend this book as a contribution toward understanding a tumultuous period of land management in the United States with unique insights into the Forest Service organization and some of its key players.