Place-Based Bills & Agreements

Op-ed on Heritage Act by Former Forest Supervisors

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Guest opinion: Front legislation reflects local concerns

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Discussion

By GLORIA FLORA, SPIKE THOMPSON and RICK PRAUSA | Posted: Saturday, January 21, 2012 12:00 am | No

Two years ago, three former chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service asked Montana’s congressional delegation to support a local Montana effort aimed at protecting the Rocky Mountain Front. This is the first time that three former leaders of the Forest Service put their collective weight behind a collaborative process that would help manage a national forest. At the time they called it “the right prescription for the right place at the right time.”

The Heritage Act, a sensible and balanced proposal put forth by the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, was developed by ranchers, conservationists and others who live in and around the Front.

A year later, Sen. Max Baucus was impressed enough with this citizen-led initiative that he introduced the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act. In so doing, he also recognized the outstanding natural and cultural values of the Front and committed to protecting them for the use and enjoyment of generations to come.

In addition to the three chiefs of the Forest Service and three former Montana Bureau of Land Management directors, five former Lewis and Clark National Forest supervisors have endorsed the RMFHA. Together these land managers had 38 years of line officer experience spanning nine administrations dating back to President Lyndon Johnson.

We support the Heritage Act because, based upon our experience, it offers the best way to protect the wildlife, clean water, outstanding natural scenery, and cultural heritage of the Front is to develop a balanced plan. The Heritage Act meets these criteria by providing the Forest Service with the management flexibility to fight fire, harvest trees, and provide for motorized and nonmotorized recreation while defining a clear mandate to protect native habitat and opportunities for traditional backcountry experiences on foot and horseback.

Citizen-based collaborative problem-solving is a relatively new phenomenon for management of our national forests. Thankfully, the Heritage Act was developed using an exemplary collaboration that encouraged broad and meaningful public participation.

The Heritage Act, a sensible and balanced proposal put forth by the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, was developed by ranchers, conservationists and others who live in and around the Front. Hunters support the Heritage Act because it assures access to their favorite game areas and protects habitat for thriving wildlife populations. Motorized recreation users support it because it doesn’t close a single mile of roads or trails currently open for their use. Conservationists back it because it is a comprehensive plan that includes wilderness. Ranchers back it because it maintains their grazing privileges while helping to fight noxious weeds across all ownerships.

For these reasons, we wholeheartedly support this bill and urge the delegation to work to secure its speedy passage. This is the right prescription for the right place at the right time.

By enacting the Rocky Mountain Heritage Act, Congress will be laying down a solid framework for the careful conservation of the multiple resources and values of this extraordinary landscape. We endorse both the hard work that’s gone into crafting the Heritage Act and the final product itself.

Former Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisors Spike Thompson (2004-2011); Rick Prausa (1999-2003); and Gloria Flora (1995-1998) wrote this opinion.

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/guest/guest-opinion-front-legislation-reflects-local-concerns/article_db55790f-2a05-530f-95ff-29d906a04506.html#ixzz1k7AN0h4N

Here’s a link to the Coalition to Save the Rocky Mountain Front.

Sunday Op-ed and Editorial Roundup from the Interior West

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In today’s Sunday papers, The Denver Post and the Missoulian had three op-eds and an editorial of relevance to our usual topics. Ski Area Water Rights, 21st century conservation, private lands conservation and Tester’s bill. I lumped them together below and one separate in a separate post (restoration op-ed in the Missoulian), just to reduce my work here. Please feel free to comment on any or all of them.

One thing I thought was interesting was that in the Jon Christenson piece (third below), conservation easements protect the land from development by allowing the lands to be working for grazing, agriculture or timber. On federal lands, though, we were discussing if roadless is not adequately “protected” and only wilderness is really “protected” (albeit not from air pollution or climate change).

The recession presented land trusts with some great opportunities in recent years, as development stalled, and prime lands were available at distress-sale prices. But most of the growth has come through conservation easements, which are becoming ever more popular because they allow land trusts to protect land at an even lower price. “You pay 40 to 50 percent of the fee value of the land without any management costs,” explains Nita Vail, executive director of the rancher-led California Rangeland Trust. That’s because the landowners continue to own and manage their lands for grazing, agriculture, or timber.

These “working landscapes” — ranches, farms and timberlands — are now a priority for the majority of land trusts nationwide, according to the Land Trust Alliance survey.

Editorial- Denver Post #1

Editorial: The right to enjoy the land vs. ski resorts’ water rights
As water becomes increasingly scarce, it is important to bring clarity to the issue of who controls this resource at ski areas.
Posted: 01/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By The Denver Post

The intensifying battle between the ski industry and the U.S. Forest Service over water rights is far more complicated and nuanced than it might seem at first glance.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the matter has landed in federal court so a judge can parse through the issues and apply the law fairly.

At the end of the day, we hope the rights of citizens to enjoy recreational opportunities on federal land are appropriately balanced against the financial interests of ski resorts.

We’ve heard a lot about ski industry contentions that new rules by the government amount to a “taking” of water rights they spent millions to acquire. The industry makes a compelling case.

Yet it’s important to keep in mind the government’s argument. The Forest Service says it is proposing regulations that clarify a 2004 change to ski permit conditions made during the Bush administration.

The government’s position is that water rights associated with ski areas should remain with the government even if the ownership of a resort or its business plans change.

An important point of disagreement between the ski areas and the government is this: Federal authorities contend the water rights at issue involve water that originates on federal land and didn’t have to be bought by the resorts. This rule doesn’t, they say, have anything to do with private rights bought by resorts.

That is to say, water from federal land that is permitted for use in snowmaking ought to remain with the property even if a ski resort were to be sold.

The National Ski Areas Association sees the water rights issue in a different light — one they construe as an effort to confiscate private property.

In a lawsuit filed last week in federal court, the industry group says the government is seeking control over water rights that ski areas obtain “from private lands or lands miles away from the ski area.”

These are vastly different interpretations of the proposed permit language that need to be resolved.

The federal courts are well-equipped to pull apart the complexities of water law and rule-making procedure. However, a better outcome would be a settlement.

We hope the parties can agree on a resolution of their differences over ski permit language without a protracted and costly legal battle.

Homes and businesses have sprouted up around ski runs built on federal land and people have come to expect access to these areas for alpine recreation. Those towns could be decimated by a decision that could allow water to be siphoned off for other uses.

As water becomes increasingly scarce, it is important to bring clarity to the issue of who controls this valuable resource at ski areas.

It would be a travesty if the future of the recreation that has so come to define Colorado were undercut by an unjust policy.

In my opinion, this lays out some of the basic principles and echoes my frequently stated “is litigation the best path?” question.

These two are about 21st century conservation (creativity needed!) on public and private lands:
Op-ed Denver Post #2

Guest Commentary: Conservation for today, and tomorrow
Posted: 01/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By Tim Sullivan

The start of a new year is a natural time to turn our thoughts to the future. However, for the conservation organizations, local governments and state agencies protecting Colorado’s most special natural resources, thinking about tomorrow is already ingrained in everything we do. Every project we undertake must not only have a tangible result today, but provide benefits to Coloradans far into the future.

This past year, we continued to find a balance between meeting people’s immediate needs and ensuring nature continues to benefit us all in the long run. The state of the economy, increasing population, demands for water and energy, and a changing climate will be among the many complicated factors we need to consider as we look ahead. To solve these issues, innovation will be crucial.

One example of conservation work paying benefits long into the future is the restoration of unhealthy forests. There is no short-term fix, but it’s a problem we must address or future generations will face more severe fires, insect and disease outbreaks, and threats to our homes and water supplies that we simply cannot afford. This summer will mark a decade since the massive Hayman Fire. When it comes to preventing the next mega-fire, an ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure. Colorado hosts a number of promising collaborative efforts between citizens, conservation groups, local governments and the U.S. Forest Service. These efforts help set priorities and resolve potential conflicts, allowing critical forest restoration work to proceed today, with benefits to be realized for years to come.

While Colorado is best known for our forests and mountains, the grasslands covering the eastern part of the state are a remarkable piece of our heritage. This rolling prairie landscape is home to many longtime ranching families, provides food for our urban populations, and sustains globally significant wildlife.

A mix of economic realities can make it difficult for land to be shared or handed down to sons and daughters who want to carry on the tradition. This year, a remarkable partnership helped address this issue while permanently protecting vital grassland habitat.

When a large ranch east of Colorado Springs went on the market, several families holding adjacent property expressed interest. However, the cost made it impossible for just one family to purchase. Using conservation easements and monies from the lottery-funded Great Outdoors Colorado, an innovative financial model was born where the land was purchased and split between four families. The result was a win-win for wildlife and the local ranching community.

While it may seem natural for ranchers to pass on their conservation ethic to the next generation, children living in urban areas often have limited opportunities to connect to the natural world. Creating connections between youth, wherever they live, and the natural world is essential to the future of our state.

Environmental education, volunteer opportunities and youth internships with conservation organizations will serve as the catalyst to engage a future cadre of environmental leaders.

We still face many challenges to ensure our children, and theirs after them, will experience the same wonders we enjoy — the iconic places, amazing wildlife and abundant resources of Colorado. I believe we are up to the challenge and together can create a future where the lands and waters on which all life depends are protected.

Tim Sullivan is state director of The Nature Conservancy in Colorado.

This one’s also from High Country News
Op-ed Denver Post #3

opinion
Recession is aiding the conservation of Western lands
Posted: 01/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By Jon Christensen
High Country News

The Great Recession, it turns out, may have been good for one thing in the West: private land conservation. From the tiny Orient Land Trust in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which has nearly doubled its holdings to 2,260 acres, to the 138,041 acres of ranchland protected by the California Rangeland Trust over the last five years, statewide and local land trusts in the West have done better than ever recently, even as many environmental advocacy groups continue to trim budgets and federal funding for conservation falters.

The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, which agencies rely on to acquire valuable private lands, suffered a 38 percent cut and protected just over 500,000 acres over the last five years. During the same period, private nonprofit land trusts protected 20 times as much undeveloped land — 10 million acres nationwide, according to data in a new census of 1,700 land trusts in the national Land Trust Alliance.

Land trusts also grew in other ways, including a 19 percent increase in paid employees and contractors, a 36 percent increase in operating budgets, a 70 percent increase in volunteer numbers, and a near tripling of long-term endowments.

Land trusts protect land by either buying it outright or paying for a conservation easement, which restricts or removes the landowner’s right to develop open land. Landowners can also donate property and easements and then receive a break on their income taxes from the federal government and some state governments. The latest gains bring the total area protected by the nation’s land trusts to 47 million acres — more than twice the area covered by all of the national parks in the lower 48 states.

In fact, private land conservation is now shaping the future of much of the West as decisively as development. Land that is protected by conservation easements or bought by land trusts is legally required to be protected in perpetuity. And in recent years, local land trusts have been “saving more land than is lost to development,” says Rand Wentworth, president of the Washington, D.C.- based Land Trust Alliance. That pattern was apparent in the alliance’s last census five years ago, when new conservation barely edged out new development nationwide and in the West. It became much more dramatic during the recession, as new housing construction crashed and conservation efforts in most states continued to grow.

This trend is particularly strong in the Western states, where statewide and local land trusts conserved 2.6 million acres between 2005 and 2010, 30 percent more than they did from 2000 to 2005. These trends put California, Colorado and Montana among the top five states nationwide in total private land conserved. Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming made large gains compared to the previous period. And in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, so much more rural land is now being conserved than is being developed that it seems that much of their open land will likely remain undeveloped.

The recession presented land trusts with some great opportunities in recent years, as development stalled, and prime lands were available at distress-sale prices. But most of the growth has come through conservation easements, which are becoming ever more popular because they allow land trusts to protect land at an even lower price. “You pay 40 to 50 percent of the fee value of the land without any management costs,” explains Nita Vail, executive director of the rancher-led California Rangeland Trust. That’s because the landowners continue to own and manage their lands for grazing, agriculture, or timber.

These “working landscapes” — ranches, farms and timberlands — are now a priority for the majority of land trusts nationwide, according to the Land Trust Alliance survey.

Whether the blazing growth of private conservation in the West will continue unabated is unclear, though. The recession may yet have lagging effects. Like her colleagues around the country, Vail worries about the loss of generous tax incentives for conservation easement donations, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts to renew them.

Jon Christensen is executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University and wrote this for High Country News (hcn.org, where a longer version can be found). Also contributing were Jenny Rempel and Judee Burr, researchers at the center.

Finally this editorial from the Missoulian on the Tester bill.

Editorial Missoulian #4

Middle ground on forest bill

Posted: Sunday, January 15, 2012 8:00 am

It’s the beginning of a big election year, and the national spotlight is already shining on one of Montana’s U.S. Senate seats. Will Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester be ousted by Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg? We’ll find out in November.

In the meantime, many Montanans are justifiably concerned that the next 10 months will be hopelessly politicized, with two of the state’s three congressional delegates tied up in campaign-caused gridlock.

In meetings with the Missoulian editorial board earlier this month, both Rehberg and Tester provided assurances that they will not allow that to happen. Both candidates pledged to remain focused on their jobs in Congress. And both declared that no amount of campaign politics would prevent them from working together to do what’s right for Montana.

In fact, during his meeting with the Missoulian, Rehberg mapped out a road to compromise with Tester on one of their biggest sticking points: the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

Tester first introduced the act in July 2009 at the urging of a diverse coalition of timber interests and environmental groups, and has made several running attempts to push the bill forward in Congress. The bill, which links aspects of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, the Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project and the Three Rivers Challenge, is aimed at both designating new wilderness in Montana and setting logging mandates for the U.S. Forest Service.

Both Tester, a first-term senator, and Rehberg, a four-term congressman, have held multiple public meetings in communities across Montana to gather opinions on the proposal.

Those meetings resulted in several ideas that could be – and should be – used to improve the bill, Rehberg explained. One of them, he said, is the phase-in proposal he first began advocating for nearly a year ago. That measure would require that a treatment threshold for a set number of forest acres – say, 10 percent of the total outlined in the bill – be achieved before new wilderness and recreation areas could be designated.

Requiring logging or thinning triggers to be met before releasing new wilderness would help ensure that the bill actually does what it is aimed at doing – creating jobs, Rehberg said. As it stands, “there’s no such thing as a mandate for jobs in that bill,” he told the Missoulian.

While Tester has not been receptive to the phase-in suggestion – his spokesman has said previously that it would have no chance of gaining congressional approval – Rehberg invited Tester to take a second look at including the phase-in, and offered that he could “work with (Tester’s) bill if he can get something through the Senate and I can have this phase-in.”

Jobs are certainly a top priority in the nation and in Montana right now. Western Montana’s economy could use the boost this act would provide. While eastern Montana has been buoyed by the ongoing oil boom, western Montana has watched one mill after another shutter – including two in Missoula that once employed hundreds of workers.

We hold no illusions that incorporating a phase-in plan will resolve every one of Rehberg’s concerns with the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. But it’s a place to start – a hand reached across the aisle at a time when Montanans desperately need our elected officials to pass legislation that provides real economic progress.

From the beginning, the proposals that ultimately became the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act were marked by compromise. They brought people with very different and often opposing interests to the same table to reach an agreement on what’s best for all.

It would be wonderful, and a wonderful reflection on Montana, if our junior senator and sole congressman were able to bring this same spirit of cooperation to Congress.

EDITORIAL BOARD: Publisher Jim McGowan, Editor Sherry Devlin, Opinion Editor Tyler Christensen

Wuerthner on Rocky Mountain Front Range Heritage Act

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…
Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this link and also for the above photo
FYI: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/rocky_mountain_front_heritage_act_misses_on_weeds_and_wilderness/C41/L41/

Guest Column
Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act Misses on Weeds and Wilderness
A coalition claims it wants to protect Montana’s Rockies by supporting the proposed Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, but is it a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

By George Wuerthner, 8-21-11

The Coalition to Protect the Front supports the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act as a means of “protecting the Front”. It justifies the legislation by the “threat” noxious weeds make to the native plant communities of this magnificent landscape. Weeds, by displacing native plants, reduce the carrying capacity of the Front for native wildlife—which everyone agrees is one of the special attributes of the Front.

Unfortunately, the Heritage Act only proposes a paltry 67,000 acres as wilderness. While any new wilderness on the Front is welcome, the Heritage Act misses an important opportunity to protect the bulk of the wildlands that exist here, including the Badger Two Medicine and other important roadless lands.

Indeed, on its web page, the Coalition describes the threat of more wilderness as one of the reasons for supporting the plan. So to prevent the “threat” of wilderness, locals want to designate the majority of land along the Front as “Conservation Management Areas.” What a misnomer that name is.

Conservation Management would permit logging, livestock grazing and motorized use in some areas. All of these activities have been recognized time and again as destructive to native ecosystems, and biodiversity and ironically all are among the major sources for the spread of weeds.

Yet the participants supporting the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act either do not know, or more likely, have agreed to ignore the well-documented role that logging, motorized use, and most especially livestock grazing have in the spread of weeds and for creation of the disturbed soil habitat that favors weed establishment to garner support from these constituencies.

It’s like a coalition made up of tobacco companies agreeing that lung cancer is a serious threat to American health without mentioning that cigarette smoking is a major contributor to that cancer.

Instead of dealing directly with the cause of weed spread, the Coalition wants to treat the symptoms. It’s analogous to promoting cigarette smoking while advocating for more hospitals to treat cancer victims. This never works, and will only result in more weeds, and greater tax payer subsidies of these industries and activities.

The best way to slow and prevent the spread of weeds is to eliminate motorized access, logging, and cattle grazing. Designation of wilderness is by far the best solution (other than it unfortunately allows cattle grazing to continue—thus guarantees more weed spread).

If people are truly concerned about the spread of weeds, then we need to recognize that livestock (also an exotic species that displaces native species) grazing, motorized use and logging are incompatible with that goal. And the silence on this issue by the Coalition to Save the Front makes them all the more culpable in the spread of these unwanted plants.

What makes the Heritage Act even more disappointing is that the Rocky Mountain Front wildlands received some of the highest wilderness quality ratings of all federal lands outside of Alaska during the RARE11 (Roadless Area Review Evaluation) in the 1970s. These are among the best wildlands left in the lower 48 states, and to allow a small group of self appointed local folks to degrade wildlands values that belong to all Americans by allowing continued logging, motorized use, and livestock grazing is an affront to Americans and future generations.

The best way to save the Heritage of the Front is to eliminate these degrading uses and designate all the remaining roadless areas as wilderness. The Coaliton to Protect the Front Heritage Act is nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing designated to permanently protect activities known to degrade and destroy public values.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist, former government botanist, and author of 35 books.

Oregonian Editorial- Down the center path on federal forests

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Here is the link.

Congress has to get cracking; time is running out on timber counties

Three Oregon congressmen recently described on these pages the outlines of a plan aimed at breaking the impasse on federal forests and preserving basic county services across timber country. It looks promising, and we’re eager to see more.

Democrats Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader, and Republican Greg Walden, say they have worked through their differences and are preparing a bipartisan plan that would create thousands of new jobs by expediting harvest of previously logged forests, protect old-growth and critical wildlife areas and provide steady funding for rural schools, roads and law enforcement.

Of course, lawmakers have raised hopes for this sort of grand forest legislation before, only to have their best-laid plans go nowhere in the face of environmental opposition and congressional inattention. But now there’s an unmistakable fiscal crisis looming across timber country, where federal payments to counties have expired and some local governments could plunge into insolvency in the coming year.

The prospect of failing local governments and families fleeing declining rural communities ought to focus minds both in Oregon and in Congress. The issues surrounding federal forests and rural counties simply can’t be pushed off any longer.

The three Oregon congressmen seem to be headed down the right path. They describe a plan that would allow a steady and sustainable level of timber harvest primarily from younger second-growth forests. Sensitive areas and mature and old-growth forests would be set aside and protected. The forest lands open to harvest would remain under the ownership of the federal government, but be managed by a diverse, public board in trust for the counties.

Other elements of the proposal will appeal to those concerned with the future of the old-growth and other sensitive areas. The management of mature and old-growth forests would be transferred from the Bureau of Land Management to the U.S. Forest Service. The plan also proposes major new wilderness and wild and scenic river protections in key areas, such as the Rogue River area.

There’s a lot to like in this broad outline, but Oregonians ought to reserve judgment until the lawmakers fill in the details early next year. But something has got to change on the federal forests that cover half or more of many Oregon counties.

The status quo — the administrative gridlock and legal appeals, the drip, drip, drip of mill closures, the failing counties — threatens to hollow out rural Oregon. Already, falling school enrollments across timber country indicate that many families don’t see a future in these communities.

Of course, this congressional plan will trigger all the usual suspicion and reflexive opposition from those who have spent their lives fighting over activities in federal forests. But we still hope there is a place where most people can meet in the middle on federal forests, where timber harvest is carried out in a sustainable manner, where ancient trees are preserved, where rural counties can survive on stable federal timber revenues and fair contributions from local property taxpayers.

DeFazio, Walden, Schrader say they have put aside their differences and found that place in the middle. That’s good. Now they must lead the rest of us there.

A Couple of Bipartisan Place-Based Bills

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From Oregon here:

Oregon’s rural communities cannot afford another 20 years of gridlock in our federal forests. Without a new path forward, mills will continue to disappear, forest jobs will be outsourced and counties will be pushed off the budgetary cliff. During a time when it’s particularly hard to find common ground in public policy, we think we have achieved a balanced forest health and jobs plan — and in a uniquely Oregon way.
As a bipartisan coalition, we have worked through our differences to forge a plan that would create thousands of new jobs, ensure the health of federal forests for future generations and provide long-term funding certainty for Oregon’s rural schools, roads and law enforcement agencies.
Federal support payments to rural and forested communities, commonly known as “county payments,” helped support rural Oregon counties for more than a decade. They expired Oct. 1.
Absent a long-term solution, diminishing county payments will have serious consequences for Oregon families and businesses.
A recent Oregon State University study found that without county payments, Oregon’s rural counties will shed between 3,000 and 4,000 jobs. Oregon business sales will drop by an estimated $385 million to $400 million. Counties will lose $250 million to $300 million in revenues.
Counties already near the financial cliff and facing depression­like unemployment soon may call for a public safety emergency and will be forced to eliminate most state-mandated services — including services that help the neediest citizens in our communities.
Failing counties will have consequences for the entire state. Those counties will continue to release offenders and close jail beds. Potholed roads and structurally deficient bridges will be neglected. And already-underfunded rural schools will be devastated.
Given the serious fiscal crisis our forested communities face, we believe a new approach is necessary to create jobs, help stabilize Oregon’s rural communities and better manage our forests.
We hope to release the full details of our plan early next year. But, given the importance and enormous amount of public interest in this issue, we wanted to update Oregonians on the broad outlines of our work:
Our plan would create an estimated 12,000 new jobs throughout Oregon. To preserve and expand Oregon’s manufacturing base, our plan would continue the ban on exporting unprocessed logs from federal lands and impose penalties on businesses that violate the law and send family-wage jobs overseas.
Our plan would allow sustainable timber harvest primarily on lands that have been logged previously. It sets aside sensitive areas and mature and old growth forests. The timber harvest lands would remain under the ownership of the federal government but would be managed in trust for the counties by a diverse, public board under strict guidelines to ensure sustained yield and to protect and improve clean water and terrestrial and aquatic values. The mature and old growth forests would be transferred from the federal Bureau of Land Management to the U.S. Forest Service.
Our plan would provide counties in Western Oregon with a predictable level of revenues in perpetuity to support essential county services such as law enforcement, health care, education and transportation. It would reduce counties’ dependence on uncertain federal support payments in favor of a long-term solution that allows them to return to the tradition of self-reliance that embodies our state’s heritage.
Our plan is expected to save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars by reducing the annual federal management costs associated with the management of Western Oregon timber­lands and making Oregon counties self-sufficient and not dependent upon federal county payments.
Our plan proposes major new wilderness and wild and scenic designations to protect some of Oregon’s most incredible natural treasures, such as the iconic Rogue River.
Our plan is a moderate approach.
It will not appease those who insist on returning to the days of unsustainable logging and clear-cutting old growth on public lands. It will not win the support of those who are content with the status quo — administrative gridlock and endless legal appeals that have led to unhealthy forests, failing rural counties and a deteriorating timber industry.
And like all legislation in Congress, our plan still is subject to the legislative process. While we believe the plan we have crafted is a reasonable compromise that serves the best interests of Oregon, we must work with the House Committee on Natural Resources and our colleagues in the greater House of Representatives, the Senate and the Obama administration.
Fortunately, the most persuasive arguments are on our side. Our balanced, bipartisan plan would create thousands of jobs in our forests, mills and communities, stabilize rural communities, save taxpayers money, protect old growth and ensure the health of federal forests for future generations.
It’s a solution that Oregonians deserve. We look forward to working with those who want to make this long-term vision a reality.

U.S. Reps. Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader represent Oregon’s 4th, 1st and 5th congressional districts.

From Montana:

Battle for Preservation In Montana Is Nothing New
By Gabriel Furshong / Writers on the Range on Wed, Dec 28, 2011
http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/12/28/north/battle-for-preservation-in-montana-is-nothing-new.html

More so than any other landscape in Big Sky Country, Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front derives its wonder from a violent juxtaposition of geological forms. The Front is the convergence of two mega-ecosystems that together cover roughly a quarter of our country – the Northern Plains and the Northern Rockies.
This is where each seemingly limitless region reaches its limit. Within this thin strip roams the second-largest elk herd in the Lower 48, as well as 13 species of raptor and a third of all plant species known in Montana. It’s the only place south of the Canadian border where grizzlies still den between the peaks and the prairie.
For 100 years, this landscape has been the subject of debate over the limits of acceptable change. Montanans along the Front have fought oil and gas exploration. It is a measure of their success that the battle cry of each generation has gradually shifted from our grandparents and great-grandparents, who wanted to “return it to the way it was,” to our parents and ourselves, who now want to “keep it the way it is.”
This last phrase – keep it the way it is – has for 10 years been the unofficial motto of the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, a loose affiliation of outfitters, ranchers, farmers, community organizers, business owners and outdoor enthusiasts. Thanks to this coalition, the debate over change on the Front is now closer to resolution than ever before.
Last October, Montana Sen. Max Baucus introduced the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which would designate 67,000 acres of wilderness and prohibit road building or any expansion of motorized use on an additional 210,000 acres. That’s big news. Yet, the relative calm with which the news was received has been surprising. When I asked a veteran writer and former journalist for the Missoulian newspaper what he thought about the media coverage of Baucus’ announcement, all he could say was, “I just don’t understand why it hasn’t gotten more attention.”
His words followed me to the Front where I retreated for a hunting trip just a week after the announcement. While waiting on white-tailed deer, I found myself reflecting on the twists and turns of our local debate over change. I wondered why this pending resolution has been received so quietly after so much time and such a lot of fuss.
The coalition’s many predecessors fought seemingly endless battles for the better part of a century, from the near-extinction of the buffalo and other species to agency road building and aggressive oil and gas exploration. Our first victory finally came in 2006, when Republican Sen. Conrad Burns and Democratic Sen. Max Baucus banned all leasing of federal minerals along the Front. Forest Service travel plan decisions that followed in 2007 and 2009 emphasized traditional use over motorized recreation, and suddenly, a once-complicated landscape was largely cleared of competing interests.
It was then that farmers and ranchers affiliated with the coalition raised an important question: Would we have the restraint to avoid becoming agents of change ourselves? Over the next four years, we interviewed grazing permittees, argued with county commissioners, developed alliances, held meetings of 100 people and meetings of 10 people, and sought out hundreds of kitchen-table conversations, one person at a time.
We drew boundaries. We nearly fell out with each other several times, but we hung onto the ideal of restraint. In the end, it was not just the landscape that we chose to the keep the way it was. We chose to maintain all existing uses as well, including motorized and bicycle use alongside traditional horse and hiker travel.
So after going through so much, it’s understandable that this final stage in the fight is underwhelming. Indeed, the only evident opposition to the Heritage Act so far came in the form of an indignant email from a small western Montana environmental group decrying the legislation as containing far too few wilderness acres. I mentioned this to a Vietnam veteran and local lawyer from Choteau, Mont., when I ran into him on my hunting trip. As he trailed his horse around me, he just shook his head and said, “Well, we’ve had that debate a million times before.”
Yes, we have, and with any luck it won’t change a thing.

At this time of the year, I am working on my end-of-year donations. I received a “Top 10 Reasons to Give” list from an international environmental law NGO that I support. One of the bullets on the list was “because forest peoples deserve a say in how their land is used…. we will continue to work to safeguard the rights of indigenous people and other local communities in the implementation of projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation (REDD).” It’s a good question for consideration, I think, in the New Year. We should be considering property rights, local history, and political legitimacy in terms of the legitimate role of local people in our own country.

What kind of “rights” should local communities have in terms of decision making on federal lands? It reminds me of a dinner I had once with a Senior Executive of another federal agency. His point of view was that the people of Delta don’t deserve any more of a voice in the management of public lands around Delta than people in the Bronx. On the other hand, we have the county “coordination” movement and increasing local/federal tensions. What can we learn from the two examples above, who seem to have managed to find a middle ground?

Two Views of the Tester Bill

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for finding this..

Missoula Independent December 22, 2011

Nada for collaborators: Tester’s forest act isn’t sleeping–it’s dead
http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/nada-for-collaborators/Content?oid=1525219
by George Ochenski

It’s the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Trees are up and lights are twinkling to fend off the darkness, as gifts are exchanged to bring cheer in this holiday season. But there won’t be one gift for the small band of collaborators who support Senator Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. That rider was struck from the bill to fund the federal government, and it’s unlikely to see the light of day again. On the other hand, for many, and for reasons beyond partisan politics, that’s something to celebrate.

The story is long and ugly. Way back when Republican Conrad Burns was Montana’s junior U.S. senator, a handful of people from a few conservation groups decided they needed to find some way to pass a new wilderness bill for Montana. Montana’s senior senator, Max Baucus, a Democrat, was in a great position to do it, but he was too timid to wade into the contentious wilderness debate.

It’s customary in Congress that before any state wilderness measure is passed, the delegation from that state must agree on it. So the die was cast for Burns, who had ridden into office thanks in part to President Ronald Reagan’s pocket veto of a 1988 wilderness bill that had successfully passed both houses of Congress. Reagan vetoed it in order to defeat incumbent Democratic Senator John Melcher, by showing the power Burns carried with a sitting president while still a candidate. It worked.

Knowing that the chance of Burns losing his seat would be almost non-existent, since incumbent U.S. senators typically have the money, connections and power they need to stay in office, the small band of collaborators set out to devise a wilderness bill that could satisfy Burns. To get even some slivers of new wilderness, the conservationists decided they needed to give up swaths of forested lands to the timber industry, give up roadless areas to destruction by all-terrain vehicles and even give away Wilderness Study Areas that were protected by the visionary Wilderness Study Act of 1977, which had been sponsored by Montana’s great Democratic senator and wilderness supporter, Lee Metcalf. And so the first incarnation of what would become the basis for Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act was born as the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership.

But then the unexpected happened. Somehow, Jon Tester, a state senator, unseated Conrad Burns in the 2006 elections by a hair-thin margin of 3,000 votes. Many would say those votes came from supporters of Paul Richards, a candidate in the Democratic primary who dropped out of the race only days before the election and urged his supporters to vote for Tester in both the primary and the general election. Richards did so based on a meeting with Tester to get his personal assurance that all roadless lands would be protected and that no significant natural-resource legislation would be attempted as a rider on unrelated bills. Tester promised Richards it would be so.

Shortly after Tester’s victory, the conservationists presented him with the agreement they had reached “collaboratively” with a few small timber mill owners that, among other things, contained mandated levels of timber harvests from national forests—just as the housing market collapsed and the demand for timber vanished.

Up to this time, the general public had been excluded from the collaboration and remained so up until the time Tester dropped his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act in the hopper. A measure designed to please a Republican senator and Republican president was now embraced and defended by a Democratic senator under a Democratic president.

The way legislation is supposed to work in Congress is that a bill is introduced in either the Senate or House while a similar measure is introduced in the other chamber. There are public hearings in both chambers. If both bills pass, Congress irons out the differences and sends the reconciled bill to the president.

But that didn’t happen with Tester’s bill. Instead, thanks to the public land giveaways and the dangerous precedent of congressionally mandated harvest levels on national forest lands, Tester’s bill never made it out of committee. No companion bill was introduced in the House.

So Jon Tester broke his promise to Richards and tried to slip his measure through Congress by attaching it as a rider to an unrelated “must pass” funding bill. Ironically, one of Tester’s most damaging attacks against Burns during his campaign was for using riders to pass significant legislation.

Last Christmas, Tester tried to slip his rider by Congress on an end-of-year government funding measure, but failed. This year, he did the same thing and failed again. Democrats are quick to blame Republican U.S. Representative Denny Rehberg for that failure, but the measure deserved to fail, both for its ramifications and the way its passage was attempted.

As the campaign for Tester’s seat garners national attention, it looks like the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, which didn’t even have the guts to mention “wilderness” in the title, is kaput. There’s no chance House Republicans will pass it.

Perhaps this is karma from Tester’s broken promise to a fellow candidate whose supporters’ votes helped give Tester his win. Or maybe the spirit of Lee Metcalf is saying, “Hands off my wilderness study areas.” But one thing seems certain: The collaborators will get no Christmas present this year, and likely none in the foreseeable future.

Helena’s George Ochenski rattles the cage of the political.

And this one from the Missoulian by Rob Chaney was sent by Terry Seyden.

Tester: Congress could learn from supporters of defeated forest jobs bill

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

SEELEY LAKE – Congress could learn a lot from supporters of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., told a roomful of timber workers and environmentalists here Wednesday.

“The only folks who hate this bill are to the far right or the far left,” Tester told the people gathered at Pyramid Mountain Lumber Co. “Once we get this done, it puts a whole different model out there that can work in the forests. It can be replicated just about everywhere.”

Tester’s unusual wilderness and logging bill failed last week to remain part of the Senate version of the $1.2 trillion omnibus budget package. The bill combines a new timber management plan with provisions to create about 1 million acres of wilderness and recreation areas in Montana.

Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., who is challenging Tester for his Senate seat in next year’s election, took credit for keeping the bill out of the omnibus legislation. He argued last week that the legislation guaranteed wilderness but didn’t guarantee jobs, saying “it’s not a fair deal for Montanans.”

On Wednesday, Rehberg spokesman Jed Link said the congressman had co-sponsored a better way to create jobs in the timber industry through the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, “which would open millions of acres across the West for multiple use, including a little responsible timber in appropriate areas.”

“The idea that the only way to put Montanans to work in our forest is to carve out a bunch of new wilderness is just not honest,” Link said. “Senator Tester seems to be under the mistaken notion that Denny Rehberg is the only person in Montana who opposes his legislation. The simple fact is, if he really wanted to generate broad support for his legislation, he’d be out listening to the folks in Montana who have honest concerns about his bill and be open to their common-sense improvements.”

Tester’s Forest Jobs Act grew out of logging and wilderness compromises worked out on three separate national forests in Montana: the Lolo, Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai. In all three places, timber mill workers, conservationists and environmentalists drafted plans to free up access to marketable trees and protect wild areas.

The collaboration angered some other environmental groups who claimed the timber mandates were excessive and shouldn’t be linked to wilderness designations. Some multiple-use and ranching groups complained their access to trails and grazing lands would be reduced.

During the 2 1/2 years the bill was reviewed in Congress, Tester made several revisions to make it easier for the U.S. Forest Service to work with the logging requirements, while clarifying places where motorcycles and snowmobiles could play.

“How do we reframe this debate?” Pyramid controller Loren Rose asked Tester at the Seeley Lake meeting. “Denny keeps talking about its wilderness, and you keep talking about jobs. We’ve found it’s not that hard to sit at the table and work on those together.”

“I’ve been involved with this for five or six years, and been to more than 100 meetings,” said Bruce Farling of Trout Unlimited. “The one thing everybody said was they liked seeing people who’d always been at odds now working together. I think 90 percent of Montanans want something like this.”

During a tour of Pyramid’s sawmills, Tester said the logging mandates were necessary to keep jobs in places like Seeley Lake. The Forest Service’s current methods of offering timber for sale aren’t working, he said, as evidenced by places like Colorado where almost all sawmills have gone out of business.

“When you lose all that infrastructure, that doesn’t do anybody any good,” Tester said. “And then when you need management, the taxpayer gets hooked with an even bigger bill if we don’t do something sooner rather than later.”

Tester said he expected his bill would again be attached to some larger piece of legislation, rather than passing on its own. Asked how he would overcome the opposition of Rehberg, he said he was working to build relationships with other House Republicans.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me to stop it unless you stop it for political reasons,” Tester said. “Rehberg is on record (opposing this). We just need to influence Dennis in a way that makes sense for these communities.”

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/tester-congress-could-learn-from-supporters-of-defeated-forest-jobs/article_e55ddc32-2c49-11e1-b32f-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1hIV2q0gY

Bugs, fire, politics threaten western Montana forests: from the Missoulian

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Here’s the link.

Three things will combine to radically transform Montana forests in the next 50 years: bugs, fire and politics.
Mountain pine beetles have killed millions of acres of lodgepole pine trees. Those dead stands, combined with a progressively drier climate, will likely burn in wilder, more intense fashion. The biological aftermath should bring a wider mix of tree species, open areas and wildlife habitat, according to new computer models.
How humans tinker with that progression remains a wildcard. During this month’s Society for Conservation Biology research symposium at the University of Montana, several scientists demonstrated a technique called landscape simulation modeling. They’ve built software that juggles invasive weeds, weather patterns, logging plans, road removal and a lot of other factors to see how a forest will change over time.
“We see more of a natural sequence of events that could result in a more normal habitat distribution,” Michael Hillis of Missoula’s Ecosystem Research Group said of his model for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. “But the forest will look much different.”
The “B-bar-D” forest covers 3.4 million acres of southwest Montana, bigger than Glacier and Yellowstone national parks combined. Hillis said most of its spruce and Douglas fir stands were logged a century ago for the state’s mining industry. The resulting lodgepole stands grew up and matured at the same time, producing what Hillis called the “forest demographics of a rest home” at the perfect age for a beetle epidemic.
Many of those dead trees will then fuel forest fires. While the research is mixed whether a beetle-killed stand burns more dangerously than a green canopy, Hillis said the certain result is more fire scars on the landscape. Those scars in turn will eventually hobble later fires with a matrix of burned and unburned patches. Burned areas may return as new lodgepole stands, which regenerate best after a fire. But the unburned zones could see a return of fir, spruce and other tree species that get a chance to grow without the lodgepoles’ choking shade.
Assuming that model is correct, what do humans do with the information? Hillis, a Forest Service researcher before he moved to private practice, said his analysis helped inspire the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, a coalition of conservationists and loggers who proposed a new way of managing the national forest. Their plan eventually became a cornerstone of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.
That legislation has also drawn critics who warn that tinkering with the forest’s natural process could produce bad results.
“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”
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Tester’s bill would designate about 1 million acres of new wilderness and recreation areas in Montana. It would also require the Forest Service to open at least 100,000 acres of timber over 15 years to logging, thinning or other mechanical treatment in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Lolo and Kootenai national forests. Last month, the senator successfully got it inserted in the Interior Department’s spending bill, which is awaiting congressional action.
Nikas and other opponents have objected to the bill’s mixing of land protections and land management orders. The forest treatment requirements “devolve public lands into local fiefdoms, allowing individual senators to write management plans into law for national forests,” he said.
But Nikas further argued actions like thinning hazardous fuels around the edges of communities is a waste of taxpayer dollars at the forest’s expense.
“If the problem is a risk of fire on the wildland-urban interface, then we need to put zoning restrictions on building, or adopt policies that say if you want to do it, good luck,” Nikas said. “You can’t manipulate forests because of decisions people are making to build in the forest. It’s just like not encouraging people to build in the floodplain.”
John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association is one of Nikas’ regular debating partners. His organization was one of the founding members of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. He said the Forest Service’s inability to get either logging or habitat work done helped form the compromise.
“There were 106 watershed projects backlogged on the B-D that were not happening,” Gatchell said. “When you look at the landscapes and the condition they should be in, you start seeing all the work that needs to be done.”

Hillis’ research looked into some of the treatments, such as fuels thinning and prescribed burns. His conclusion was that where work took place, the result was better habitat connectivity, a more varied mix of trees and a 50 percent reduction in fire incidence and severity.

“Opponents who don’t like selling trees say this is wrong,” Hillis said. “But the objective research shows thinning provides long-term benefits for forest health.”

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at [email protected]

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Note from Sharon: I thought this paragraph was particularly interesting..there are different ways of dealing with uncertainty. Some are arguing for managing based on down-scaled model results (the “best available science”?), and some admitting we just don’t know. Admitting we don’t know can also lead us down a number of different paths, though, at least partially depending on our previous predilictions.

“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”

Bosworth Op-Ed on Tester’s Bill

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one!
From the Billings Gazette, here.
Guest opinion: Tester’s jobs & rec bill would benefit Montana forests

By DALE BOSWORTH

As regional forester for the Forest Service here in Montana and as chief of the Forest Service in Washington, D.C., I have watched how the heavy traffic of opinion about public land management has grown more and more contentious, until our management processes resemble traffic jams. When so much comes to a halt, our forests suffer.

More recently however, I’ve found cause for encouragement in the local community partnerships on three national forests in Montana, partnerships that laid the groundwork for Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

Like many Montanans, I read the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act when it was first introduced and I let Sen. Jon Tester know that I supported his efforts, but I also took the time to offer a few suggestions. Then, over the next couple years, I watched as something very uncommon happened. As the suggestions came in, changes were made and the bill got better and better.

Timely land legislation

With the news that the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act may move forward in the Senate as part of the Interior appropriations bill, it’s important to recognize why this legislation is both necessary and timely.

First, there are many areas in Montana that are long overdue for being protected as wilderness. Almost half of the elk harvested in Montana come off the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, where most of the lands in this bill are located. The elk are there because the backcountry is there. Many of these special places, from the Sapphires to the Centennials, have been in limbo for decades, and it’s time for Congress to act.

Second, Sen. Tester’s bill will enable the agency to take a larger, watershed approach to managing our forests. It gives the agency tools to help it succeed. And, it requires the use of stewardship contracting to accomplish much needed restoration work on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests. This tool allows the Forest Service to harvest timber and reinvest that income in other local projects like removing unusable roads so that elk can flourish, or restoring streambeds to support native fish. I strongly support the use of stewardship contracting and I believe it is the tool of the future for accomplishing needed work on national forest system land.

Unprecedented Montana partnerships

Third — and perhaps most important — this bill is based on collaborative efforts across Montana. Members of communities from Deer Lodge to Troy who have historically been at odds did the hard work of working together. And they have stuck with it. That itself is huge. We need to make sure these efforts are rewarded so that we can build even stronger partnerships in the future.

The chairman of the Senate appropriations committee said this about the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act and the work that went into it: “Decisions on how to use and protect our natural resources are never simple or clear-cut. They require commitment and fortitude. They force conversations and compromise. They make us stronger by overcoming differences and looking toward the future.”

I commend Montanans for working together on this vision. After a career of 41 years as a steward of our national forests, I’m truly encouraged by their commitment and fortitude.

Dale Bosworth of Missoula served as U.S. Forest Service Northern Region forester from 1997 to 2001 and as U.S. Forest Service chief from 2001 to 2007.

Draft Omnibus Bill

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Crossposted from Left in the West here.

Draft Omnibus Bill: North Fork Flathead protections in, Tester’s mandated logging bill out
by: Matthew Koehler
Wed Dec 08, 2010 at 12:57:22 PM MST

The folks at Politico have obtained a draft copy of the “Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2010“, which is currently being circulated by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.).

A quick search of the 327 page draft turned up good news for clean water and wildlife habitat for Montana’s North Fork of the Flathead region:

Title XXXI – North Fork Flathead River Watershed Protection (page 115-116)

“Subject to valid existing rights, the eligible Federal land is withdrawn from – 1) all forms of location, entry, and patent under the mining laws: and 2) disposition under all laws relating to mineral leasing and geothermal leasing.

Perhaps equally important is what’s missing from the draft Public Lands Omnibus Bill: Senator Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.” Since my views regarding the FJRA have been well-stated over the past two years here at LiTW and elsewhere, I won’t bore anyone – or annoy anyone – with too many additional thoughts on the matter, except to repeat this.

I’d encourage Wilderness supporters in Montana to consider the fact that if Senator Tester and the collaborators (Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation, Montana Trout Unlimited and few timber mill owners) would have accepted the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s draft revisions back in May 2010, Montanans would have seen about 660,000 acres of new Wilderness designations – and some important watershed restoration provisions – included in this draft Omnibus bill.

However, what transpired was actually what we predicted all along. The bull-headed insistence from Senator Tester, MWA, NWF, Montana TU and the timber mills that any Montana Wilderness bill must include mandated logging of over a minimum of 100,000 acres cost all of us the opportunity to see over 660,000 acres of world-class wildands in Montana designated as Wilderness.

Hopefully in the next session of Congress, Senator Tester and his collaborators won’t hold Montana Wilderness protection hostage in order to get their wish for mandated logging. Then again, all indications are that Senator Tester will simply reintroduce FJRA as is.

Ironically, Senator Tester’s bill might find a warmer reception in the new Congress, where Republican members might actually like the idea of politicians by-passing science and the established open, inclusive and transparent processes which currently govern the Forest Service and other public lands agencies, in favor of mandating logging, drilling, mining and grazing on federal public lands in their own states. Stay tuned….