Friday the 9th on the Flathead

On June 9th, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal in a lawsuit against its revised forest plan.  The appeal involved questions about ESA consultation on the plan’s effects on grizzly bears, and the proper environmental baseline for the amount of roads used in the consultation process.  After the district court opinion found flaws in the analysis conducted for consultation, the Forest reinitiated consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has now been completed.  The 9th Circuit held that the new biological opinion made that issue moot.  (A new lawsuit was filed against the new biological opinion, discussed here.)

However, Kurt Steele won’t be overseeing the Flathead Forest Management Plan. As of Friday, USFS Region 1 press officer Dan Hottle said Steele “was offered and accepted” a new post as deputy director at the regional office that involves “environmental planning,” according to the Flathead Beacon. It is unknown who will be Steele’s replacement.

This was also announced on June 9th, but I assume there is no connection between the Flathead Forest Plan and Steele’s move to the regional office forest planning staff (he wasn’t hired by the Flathead until after the plan was done).  However, there may be a connection to his work on Holland Lake (discussed most recently here), since it’s hard to imagine that a forest supervisor would consider a deputy position on a regional office planning staff to be a great career move.  That connection is denied by the Forest Service.

“There’s no correlation with this (personnel change) and Holland Lake,” Hottle said. However, he said he did not know whether Steele had initiated applying for the position or if the Forest Service offered it to him first. Hottle characterized the change in position as a “lateral move” with a salary that should stay the same.

This is interesting to me because the regional planning staff didn’t have a deputy director position when I left, and the current agency directory does not show that there is such a position to apply for.  It’s not unheard of for the agency to create a position to place someone where they will be out of the way, and I’ve observed that planning staffs tend to be seen as places to put people who need putting (and of course, anyone can be a planner).  Or maybe there is some kind of vindication going on because he will nominally be overseeing the revision of the Lolo National Forest Plan, and the Lolo is where a lot of the same people who oppose the Holland Lake development like to hang out.

 

 

 

 

 

The Forest Service role in fire adapting communities

https://planningforhazards.com/wildland-urban-interface-code-wui-code

It’s rare when I run across reporting about the Forest Service taking an official position on development of private land.  Yet the importance of doing so is increasing in a world where more frequent and dangerous wildfires on national forests are affecting human developments.  Here is one of those rare examples.

Grand Targhee Resort in Idaho has proposed adding cabins to its base area of private land, 120 acres surrounded by the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.  This has been controversial, in particular because of concerns about limited access and how the Resort would plan for and respond to wildfire.  The Forest Service has expressed concerns to the county commissioners about the ability to fight wildfires there.

Asked where Targhee fell in his list of wildfire priorities, Jay Pence, Teton Basin District Ranger for the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, said the resort was “towards the upper end.”  “It’s always been that way,” Pence told the Jackson Hole Daily. But, he added, “the new development just adds additional people and additional values at risk.”

To mitigate wildfire risk, Pence asked commissioners to require a few things of Targhee. It would be “helpful,” Pence said, to have “a clear and agreed-to emergency plan for the entire resort” as well as a “loop road” within the resort, and more information about “how the entire development is envisioned to be constructed.”  He also asked for fuels reduction work to be done while the cabins are built.  And Pence asked commissioners to “insist” on a 300-foot setback from the U.S. Forest Service’s property line, hoping to prevent the forest from having to clear vegetation on public land to protect the cabins from fire.

But Pence said any fuels reduction done on the forest will require separate permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act. It would likely require a separate analysis from the ongoing analysis of Targhee’s request to expand its boundaries.

This commercial development of an inholding is kind of an extreme case, but the kinds of things the Forest Service is asking for should be considered in any WUI development.  The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy identifies “fire adapted communities as one of three goals, and “Protecting homes, communities, and other values at risk” as one of the four “broad challenges.  The Forest Service has a “Fire Adapted Communities Program,” which includes “tools of fire adaptation” like, “Wildland urban interface codes and ordinances can define best practices for construction and location of new development in a WUI community …”

I would like to know if there is also any agency guidance for Forest Service land managers for how to promote achieving these desired outcomes.  They need to be able to effectively participate in local planning for private land developments that will become “values at risk” for national forest fire management.  This ranger is doing the right thing, but is there any agency leadership that would encourage more of it?

 

Are large, eastside grand firs friend or foe?

Large-diameter grand fir (Abies grandis) in a mesic, mixed-conifer forest of northeast Oregon. Credit: Conservation Science and Practice (2023).

A new release from a some of our favorite authors about the proposed amendment to the Oregon and Washington Eastside Screens forest plan requirements – the “21-inch rule.”  The primary focus is summarized here (and there is a link to the research paper):

“Interest is growing in policy opportunities that align biodiversity conservation and recovery with climate change mitigation and adaptation priorities. The authors conclude that “21-inch rule” provides an excellent example of such a policy initiated for wildlife and habitat protection that has also provided significant climate mitigation values across extensive forests of the PNW Region.”

Until I saw this photo, I had imagined an army of evil grand fir trees sneaking up under pines and larch, and stealing their water and threatening to burn them up.  They seem to be the Forest Service’s Enemy #1 these days in eastern Oregon and Washington.  So dangerous, in fact, that the agency undertook another dreaded forest plan amendment process to give the agency more weapons to fight off this scourge.

This paper portrays them in a much different light, as providing benefits to both carbon storage and resilience to fire (along with their original wildlife protection benefits targeted by the original Eastside Screens amendment) – and NOT posing a substantial barrier to fuel treatment.

“The key rationale for amending the 21-inch rule is that increased cutting of large-diameter fir trees (≥53 cm DBH and <150 years) is needed to facilitate the conservation and recruitment of early-seral, shade-intolerant old ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and western larch (Larix occidentalis) by reducing competition from shade-tolerant large grand fir (Abies grandis) (USDA, 2021).

This represents a major shift in management of large trees across the region, highlighting escalating tradeoffs between goals for carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change, and efforts to increase the pace, scale, and intensity of cutting across national forest lands. The potential impacts of removal of large grand fir on wildfire are unclear, although a trait-based approach to assess fire resistance found that the grand fir forest type had the second highest fire resistance score, and one of the lowest fire severity values among forest types of the Inland Northwest USA (Moris et al., 2022).

Large ponderosa pine co-mingle with large grand fir about 14% of the time (259 plots), leaving 86% of plots with large ponderosa pine without large grand fir (1616 plots). Similarly, large western larch co-mingle with large grand fir about 56% of the time. Large ponderosa pine and grand fir are found together on only 8% of all plots in the region, while large larch and grand fir are found together on only 4% of all plots in the region.  (I added the emphasis for clarity.)

Enhancing forest resilience does not necessitate widespread cutting of any large-diameter tree species. Favoring early-seral species can be achieved with a focus on smaller trees and restoring surface fire, while retaining the existing large tree population.”

If nothing else, these conclusions clearly refute the Forest Service argument that reducing fire risk is “impossible” without logging the few (but important) large grand fir trees.

Nantahala-Pisgah forest plan revision – done

 

The Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest has completed revising its forest plan.  The final plan was released on February 16 and implementation began last week.  The revision website is here, and the response to the objections is here.

Said Sam Evans, leader of the National Forests and Parks Program for the Southern Environmental Law Center (and Smokey Wire contributor) “A big disappointment for me here at the end of the process is that it is more of the same. It’s going to drive a wedge between stakeholders that had found consensus.” “We can sue over the plan,” Evans said. “We can oppose projects as they come up under the new plan. I would say the only thing that’s not an option for us is letting this plan roll out and be implemented in a way that continues to degrade those same resources — unroaded areas, healthy, intact forests like the state Natural Heritage Areas and existing old growth.”  The ”stakeholders” would be the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership of 20 interested organizations.  This article continues to discuss these disappointments in more detail (though apparently not all of the stakeholders are unhappy).

The Partnership wanted to see various tier objectives tied together so that, for instance, the Forest Service couldn’t move on to Tier 2 timber harvest goals without first meeting Tier 1 goals in other areas, such as invasive species management and watershed protection. Additionally, the Partnership said, the plan should require ecological restoration treatments to be paired with any commercial timber harvest occurring on the forest landscape.

The group was also concerned that 54,000 acres of state Natural Heritage Natural Areas were placed in management areas open to commercial logging and road building, and that the plan didn’t allow for protection of old growth patches found during timber projects. The group wanted to see a “cap and trade” approach to the 265,000-acre Old Growth Network identified in the plan, so that lower-quality patches in the network could be swapped out for higher-quality patches encountered during projects.

According to Evans, only 30,000 acres of the 265,000 acres is at the minimum age level to qualify as old growth, and the remainder is middle-aged forest of 60-100 years. Meanwhile, known old growth stands were not included in the network. The Forest Service does not have a figure for the number of acres in the network that currently qualify as old growth. “We’re trading young forest that maybe will become older one day for existing old growth now,” Evans said, “and that isn’t a good trade for the species that live in old growth forests and don’t move around.”

The forest supervisor had an interesting response to this old growth issue:  “Because of the complexity of the forest, there’s always going to be places that we might find a particular stand that is in that older forest type, and we can say, ‘You know what, that’s an area that’s special, and that we want to favor for those types, and that’s part of a larger project that’s holistic in a given area,’” he said.  They CAN say that project-by-project, but by allowing that flexibility, does the PLAN comply with the requirements for it to affirmatively provide habitat for at-risk species?

There is also disagreement about whether it does what it should to address climate change.  It apparently pits carbon storage (mitigation) vs “resilience” (adaptation).  Shouldn’t carbon storage projections include any additional risk of having less “resilient” forests?  There was a recent question on this blog about how forest plans are dealing with climate change.  This article (which also highlights the criticisms of the plan) lists the Forest Service’s seven main goals for “dealing with the impacts of climate change” (which are about adaptation rather than mitigation)

  • “Where there are species at risk that are susceptible to the effects of climate change, promote activities that support suitable habitat enhancement.
  • “Consider and address future climate and potential species range shifts when planning restoration projects, facilitating species migration and adaptation when possible.
  • “Monitor for new invasive species moving into areas where they were traditionally not found, especially in high-elevation communities. Utilize the monitoring information to assess threats and prioritize treating highly invasive infestations.
  • “Restore native vegetation in streamside zones to help moderate changes in water temperature and stream flow and enhance habitat.
  • “Anticipate and plan for changes in natural disturbance patterns.
  • “Prepare for intense storms and fluctuations in base flow using methods that maintain forest health and diversity, including controlling soil erosion, relocating high risk roads and trails, and constructing appropriately sized culverts and stream crossings while retaining stream connectivity.
  • “To maintain genetic resiliency, consider locally adapted genotypes for use in restoration projects.”

What’s next?  Will Harlan, a scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity said (here) communities still  not satisfied with the decision will “use every tool possible” including “public engagement, community involvement (and) litigation” to push back against what the plan could do to forests.

However, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was “pleased.”

New CEQ Guidance on Habitat Connectivity

Cascade Forest Conservancy

On March 21, the Council on Environmental Quality provided “Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on Ecological Connectivity and Wildlife Corridors” to federal agencies.  The Forest Service was a member of the working group that developed this guidance.

Connectivity is the degree to which landscapes, waterscapes, and seascapes allow species to move freely and ecological processes to function unimpeded. Corridors are distinct components of a landscape, waterscape, or seascape that provide connectivity. Corridors have policy relevance because they facilitate movement of species between blocks of intact habitat, notably during seasonal migrations or in response to changing conditions… Increasing connectivity is one of the most frequently recommended climate adaptation strategies for biodiversity management.”

“To the maximum extent practicable, Federal agencies are expected to advance the objectives of this guidance by developing policies, through regulations, guidance, or other means, to consider how to conserve, enhance, protect, and restore corridors and connectivity during planning and decision-making, and to encourage collaborative processes across management and ownership boundaries. Any existing corridor and connectivity policies or related policies should be updated as needed to align with the objectives in this guidance. Federal agencies should have new or updated policies ready to implement by the first quarter of 2024 and make their policies publicly available. Federal agencies should also actively identify and prioritize actions that advance the objectives set forth in this guidance.”

“Federal agencies should not limit engagement in restoration activities only to circumstances when restoration serves as a mitigation strategy to compensate for adverse impacts from projects or actions. Instead, Federal agencies should consider where there are opportunities in their programs and policies to carry out restoration with the objective of promoting greater connectivity.”

One of the specific “focal areas” listed in the memo is “forest and rangeland planning and management.”  “Connectivity and corridors should factor into high-level planning and decision-making at Federal agencies as well as into individual decisions that lead to well-sited and planned projects.”  “In carrying out large-scale planning required by statutory mandates (citing NFMA and FLPMA) Federal agencies should consider updating inventories of Federal resources under their associated management plans to assess connectivity and corridors.”

The Forest Service 2012 Planning Rule already includes language requiring that forest plans address connectivity as part of its wildlife viability considerations.  I had something to do with that, but I was regularly disappointed in the agency’s unwillingness to “think outside the green lines” about how species occurring on a national forest depend on connectivity across other land ownerships, so I’m always happy to see someone try to make them do that:

“Ecological processes and wildlife movement are not limited by jurisdictional boundaries. Therefore, Federal agencies should seek active collaboration and coordination with other Federal agencies, Tribes, States, territorial, and local governments, as well as stakeholders to facilitate landscape, waterscape, and seascape-scale connectivity planning and management, and consider appropriate collaboration with other nations. Prioritization and strategic alignment of connectivity efforts across partners improves the effectiveness of each entity’s activities and enables larger-scale conservation, enhancement, protection, or restoration to occur.”

“Federal agencies with investments on Federal lands or in Federal waters adjacent to designated areas that may have conservation outcomes (e.g., National Park System units, national monuments, national forests and grasslands, national marine sanctuaries, national estuarine research reserves, wilderness areas, national wildlife refuges, etc.) should explore collaborative opportunities to enhance connectivity across jurisdictional boundaries.”

These kinds of initiatives seem to come and go, but we should at least expect to see the land management agencies tell us what they think under this administration by next year.  If anyone happens to notice, let us know!

The “Climate in Forest Plans” Roundup- What Are Your Observations and Why?

I thought this was funny, it’s from Guido Núñez-Mujica of The Breakthrough Institute and used with his permission. No, I don’t addressing climate mitigation in forest plans is like this, except we could substitute emissions from recreation, wildfire, grazing, timber and so on..not to speak of what we used to call “sustainable operations” or the workings of the agency itself.

From Guido Núñez-Mujica here https://twitter.com/OSGuido/status/1628833580649684992/photo/1

Now it’s time to share your examples of climate in forest plans.. I posted on some possible ways to look at “how well” forest plans deal with climate change last week. As I said before, one of my contacts had been asked “what forest plans do you consider to have handled climate change best”. So this thread is an opportunity for anyone to weigh in on the forest plans you have worked with, and what you think.

How does addressing climate change make a difference in desired conditions (maybe resilience, but I think many folks are managing for that anyway via projects), standards and guidelines, land allocation and other plan-level decisions?

That’s precisely what we should be able to see in some of the new forest plans. So please let us know what you think!
*************

In a research paper to be discussed later this week, the authors state:

Forest planning is a relatively obscure and byzantine policy process for most ordinary citizens. In contrast, it is a high priority to interest groups because of the ability to impact long-term outcomes on the national forests.

I will be interesting to see who has actually read forest plans (and EIS’s) among us. For one thing, they are so very complex (obscure and byzantine, as the authors said). For another thing, an individual’s opinion probably does not matter much, so in the weighting of spending of time, reading plans may not rank highly. There seem to be no powerful interest groups representing “general interest” or “recreation tolerance” or even “resilient ecosystems”- the latter concept seems to get broken down into the same old “manage vegetation or not”; even when there isn’t a timber industry to speak of. So I think it will be interesting to see who among us has taken the time to read what’s in them and why.

Finally, for those who are following individual forest plans, it would also be interesting to track whether and how climate change comes up in forest plan-related litigation. And whether “integrity” and “resilience” are ever in tension- seems like they might be.

Why People Disagree About (How Forest Plans Deal With) Climate Change. II. Some Philosophical Orientations and The Problem of Climate Everythingism

Ski area parking lot.There are many AGW-Climate Change philosophical differences that are out there that may influence forest planning. I’m sure there are more that readers can add. I’ll use “you” to mean a forest or other planning entity.

1. How do you handle uncertainties about future climates? How explicit are you about them? How do you treat model outputs, or like Denver Water, do you use a pretty broad uncertainty envelope? How do you combine uncertainties about climate with uncertainties about other things.. population, recreation use, economics? Do you use scenarios and involve the public, or what is your approach to discussing uncertainties with the public? (this was discussed more generally in the previous post).

2. I give adaptive management its own category here because it is something that the FS (and BLM?) were supposed to be doing, but may have had trouble.  At least at the level that some have talked about it (extremely formalized, scientist design, and so on).  Perhaps at the District human being observational level or the specialist level (say fuels or wildlife or reforestation)  it is working just fine using old-fangled communication- person to person and through professional groups. But maybe different “adaptive management” aficionados simply mean different things by their use of the term. How is adaptive management currently working on the forest, and how is the plan going to help- does it have a role; what are the requirements of the 2012 Rule on this, and how are they being applied?

3. Climate mitigation. Seems like we mostly hear about SOSO (same old same old) with regard to mitigation. ENGOs who didn’t want to cut trees now say it’s bad for carbon. ENGO’s who don’t like cattle grazing say it’s bad for methane. Less fossil fuel leasing seems like it would be mitigation, until you analyze it and discover that the sources simply move to private land or offshore. And what about recreation? Most recreators, myself included, use vehicles to access NF lands that are powered by fossil fuels directly or via electrical sources. What are the key issues in the plan vis a vis mitigation?

4. There’s also a bit of meta-thinking that I call Climate Everythingism.
To some, climate now the mantle for everything- other environmental issues, all natural hazards, as we have seen with EPA, CEQ, and many media outlets now have environment as a subset of climate. Check out the WaPo main page where Environment is a subset of Climate.

Others think that climate another source of uncertainty, like population and economics, which all need to be addressed through planning- and it is the role of each discipline to learn about what CC means for their resource.

Most Everythingists I’ve met consider themselves to be “climate experts” (whether I would consider them that or not). But for every Forest Service Everythingist who thinks we need climate specialists advising on each project, there is someone outside the Forest Service who thinks the agency itself can be done away with and replaced by a Climate Adaptation Agency staffed with.. climate experts. 
I often find what is least talked about in these discussions are the disciplinary and authority implications of Everythingism, as well as moving the locus of knowledge and authority away from experts on the ground and the people most affected. At its worst Everythingism could be a systemic antagonist to the idea of empowering disadvantaged communities. I find Everythingists not usually involved with forest planning, but their ideas are in the atmosphere, and may well be among partners and the public, so I think it’s something to be aware of.

Addition: I just ran a across a job ad for a Climate Editor at Vox Media on Linked-In. Under “About the Job” it says:

Climate change is the most important story in the world. It’s no longer a looming consequence in the far-off future, but rather a present challenge that’s forcing all of us to adapt. Wildlife and natural habitats are disappearing, driving a biodiversity crisis.

If you’re an Everythingist, I suppose biodiversity is a subset of climate. It’s a mantle that you can place over everything, except perhaps non-native invasive species. But we don’t hear about the latter much anymore.

Please add your own philosophical differences that may affect the approach to climate change in forest plans.

Why People Disagree About (How Forest Plans) Deal With Climate Change. I. Introduction and How Broad are the Scenarios?

This is the first of a series of posts that lay out a framework for thinking about how forest plans address climate change.  Some people are curious as to what we might think are the forest plans that have handled climate change the best, and so we’ll have a post later that will ask that question.

But I think we need to be upfront on where we stand on different approaches or philosophies for how AGW-CC (I’ll just call it CC for the rest of these posts) should be handled.  It seems to me that there are two components to this question: first, do you agree with the approach of how they handled it, and second, given their approach, how well do you think they handled it?

I hope by consciously thinking about how diverse approaches might work, we might be able to contemplate the true diversity of approaches in addition to what is in current forest plans.

One of the things I did around 2010-ish was help forests in Region 2 develop their “climate action plans”, I think they were called.   I was the climate change coordinator for the Region, so I was on some of the conference calls. The interesting thing about this effort was that it was not tied to NFMA planning, but more about “are there things we are doing we would do differently if we considered climate change?”.  In many cases, they already were considering CC and the plan simply documented how they were thinking about it.

Our Regional view was to use generic scenarios based on down-scaled models (I mean really generalized, like “hotter and drier” generalized) and to use a “no regrets” strategy.
Just now I tried to find a definition for “no regrets’ strategies and discovered a plethora of literature with not-exactly-identical definitions.
But I liked this one from Law Insider (!)

no regrets means taking climate-related decisions or actions and/or investments that can be justified from economic, social, and environmental perspectives whether or not a specific climate threat materializes in the future, and this is achieved by building resilience to different hazards/risks (Heltberg, Siegel, Jorgensen, 2009; Siegel, 2011).

Well, Region 2, if I can generalize, has always been a relatively poor Region and employees are pretty pragmatic and don’t tend to overthink things.

So we ran through some of this stuff with one forest (may have been the Nebraska) and the conversation went something like this:

“So we need to protect our riparian areas because it might get hotter and drier?” a Forest employee asked.

“Right,” we said.

“And we need to monitor what we do to be sure it works as the climate is changing?”

“Yes,” we agreed.

“In other words, for climate we should be doing the things we were already supposed to be doing?”

“Well, there are some differences, but.. pretty much.”

*********************

That was perhaps too minimalist for some. Today I’d add consciously managing for resilience.

But why not manage for resilience under a variety of future climate (and other) scenarios?  When we visited Denver Water and looked at their scenario planning, climate wasn’t the only unknown.  At the time, they also considered different plausible scenarios about populations and their uses of water. If you look at their website, they are not even sure about hotter and drier, but also include hotter and wetter.

Denver Water is adapting to, and addressing, climate change through what it calls “scenario planning.” That means building flexibility into its operations and decisions to prepare for a range of plausible futures climate change could bring. Simply put, those scenarios range from warmer and wetter to hotter and drier.

“Uncertainty is the name of the game going forward,” said Laurna Kaatz, Denver Water’s climate program manager. “We don’t know exactly how it will unfold on the ground, but we do know it’s going to keep warming. Climate change is here and now.”

Then there’s resilience of communities to climate hazards (or things now defined to be “climate” hazards such as drought, wildfire, and flooding). For example, in this Western Watersheds Assessment study plan,

but could take the form of collaborative scenario planning processes that engage diverse stakeholders to explore climate projections, sources of vulnerability, and strategies for increasing resilience.

Which sounds like what the FS may have done a while back (at least some forests did this with the aid of FS R&D) . And of course, community resilience is related to economics, so that ties back to a topic that fits forest planning.

Next time: Some Categories for Climate Approaches in Forest Plans

Planning News – Late Fall Edition, 2022

Back to the roots of this blog.

  • Black Hills NF revision

On November 1, USDA responded to the Request for Reconsideration from the Black Hills Forest Resource Association pursuant to the Data Quality Act regarding the assessment of timber harvest on the Black Hills National Forest.  It found “no compelling evidence to support your request to retract (withdraw) GTR-422,” while directing the Forest Service to release an addendum addressing some issues.  The Report indicates that current harvest levels are too high.  (The article includes links to the response and the Report.  We discussed the agency’s original response here.)

On November 29, the governors of South Dakota and Wyoming sent a letter to the Forest Service criticizing the GTR and asking the Forest Service to produce another assessment for the forest plan revision process that avoids relying on the GTR.  This article includes a link to the letter.

  • Blue Mountains socioeconomic report

On another side of this coin, an editorial in northeast Oregon has praised the release (in October) of the “Blues Intergovernmental Council Final Socioeconomic Report.”

This new socioeconomic report is important because it gives officials who will craft another Blue Mountains Forest Plan the kind of data that is specific to our region. To create a plan of any kind, the right kind of information is necessary. Now, federal officials will be able to draw from information that is more comprehensive and detailed.

(Of course, some might reply that providing more information is a waste of time because it won’t actually influence the decision.)  The Report may be found here:

  • Nantahala-Pisgah NF revision

The Carolina Public Press has run another series on the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest.  This one delves into the how and why of their planning for old growth.  In short, according to the forest supervisor, “We’re trying to find a way to get this issue out of the limelight every time we propose a project.”  I also found these perspectives interesting:

Although old-growth is currently underrepresented in Pisgah and Nantahala, Forest Service “natural range variation” models suggest old-growth should be roughly 50% of the forest, and the Forest Service expects that over time, forests currently not considered old-growth, will age into that category. 

According to the agency, even if the stand on Brushy is considered old-growth, Brushy Mountain and other stands like it throughout the forest and within the 18,944-acre project analysis are not uncommon; 33% of land in the analysis area have forest stands 100 years or older.

“Only one-half of 1% of the forest is old-growth in the Southeast,” Williams (Chattooga Conservancy) told CPP in 2019. “That is the reason within itself to leave it alone. Cutting old-growth right now under any circumstances is foolish and irresponsible.”

In relation to that last comment, I’d also note that, while a forest plan only governs management of national forest lands, here is what is required if a viable population of wildlife species cannot be supported by a national forest (36 C.F.R. §219.9(b)(2)(ii)):

Include plan components, including standards or guidelines, to maintain or restore ecological conditions within the plan area to contribute to maintaining a viable population of the species within its range. In providing such plan components, the responsible official shall coordinate to the extent practicable with other Federal, State, Tribal, and private land managers having management authority over lands relevant to that population.

The release of a final plan is apparently imminent.

  • Other forest plan revisions

Here is the most recent revision schedule posted by the Forest Service, dated May 18, 2022.  It does not show any new revisions starting in 2022 or 2023.  However ….

On December 14, the White River National Forest discussed their forest plan revision process.  According to this article:

The exact objectives of the revised plan are still a work in progress, according to Bianchi, but broader goals have been outlined. One is to increase restoration of forest space damaged by fires, insects, disease and invasive species by prioritizing strategies like prescribed burns that can lessen the spread of wildfires and lead to healthier soil in the future. 

Other goals are to allow the plan to respond to modern issues that weren’t present when it was last updated in 2002, such as the threat of the mountain pine beetle and the impacts of e-bikes.  The plan’s revisions are also expected to focus on the impacts of climate change, something Bianchi said “wasn’t a big conversation in 2002.”

The revision process for the Lolo National Forest Plan will also begin this month.  The Forest solicited input about public engagement through December, and highlighted new technology.  A regional team is also being used.  Completion is expected in 2025, and the first webinar is scheduled for January 10.  (This article includes a link to the Forest website.)

  • Northwest Forest Plan FACA committee

On November 18, the Forest Service published a Federal Register Notice inviting nominations (by January 17) for a Northwest Forest Plan Area Advisory Committee.  While the term “revision” is conspicuously absent, the new committee’s likely use in revising plans for national forests in that area can be inferred from some of its purposes.  In general,

“The purpose of the Committee is to provide advice and recommendations on landscape management approaches that promote sustainability, climate change adapations, and wildfire resilience while providing for increasing use of and demands from National Forest System lands in the Northwest Forest Plan area.”

The Committee will be asked to make recommendations in the following areas (with my links to planning highlighted):

 

  1. Planning options that complement the national Wildfire Crisis Strategy to assist the U.S. Forest Service transition to greater proactive wildfire risk reduction and related vegetation management.

 

  1. Approaches to address the dynamic nature of ecosystems, utilize adaptive management, monitoring, and integration of future uncertainty into land management planning.

 

  1. Application of the best available science regarding the following primary issues: (a) the ecological importance of mature and old growth forests; (b) climate change, fire, and associated disturbance processes; (c) terrestrial and aquatic reserved land use allocations and the relationship between the two; (d) the climatic diversity of forests encompassed by the NWFP area; and, (e) habitat connectivity at multiple scales in light of changed conditions.

 

  1. Incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous perspectives and values into federal forest planning and management.

 

  1. Communication tools and strategies to: (a) help provide greater understanding of landscape or programmatic level planning options and requirements and (b) enhance outreach efforts, public engagement, meaningful Tribal consultation and participation, targeted outreach to underserved communities, and stakeholder collaboration within the scope of the Committee.

 

  1. Issue preliminary discrete recommendations in sequence with Forest Service NWFP planning timelines.

News articles suggest the public has made the same connection:

“The committee’s recommendations will become the basis for the first significant updates to the (plan) in nearly three decades.”  (Cascade Forest Conservancy)

As to those “planning timelines:”

“The Committee is expected to need two years to carry out its objectives. All deliverables will be submitted to the Designated Federal Official (DFO) according to planning schedule needs.”

I would infer that this is viewed as pre-work for the revision process, and that there may not be much other public engagement for the next two years, but who knows?  (If somebody does, please share.)

  • Mountain Valley Pipeline amendments

Following litigation that stopped construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline across part of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, the Forest Service is proposing to amend its forest plan to allow the project to cross 3.5 miles of the Jefferson National Forest.  On December 23, the agency published a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Notice of Availability.  In all, the Forest Service  proposes to amend 11 standards in its plan to accommodate pipeline construction.

This article includes a link to the project website.  More background on the litigation may be found here (Wild Virginia case).

  • BLM habitat connectivity

On November 15, the BLM issued a new policy “designed to protect connections between habitats for fish, wildlife, and native plants, preserving the ability of wildlife to migrate between and across seasonal habitat.”  The policy, in the form of an Instructional Memorandum, calls for BLM state offices to assess areas of habitat connectivity and conduct planning, on-the-ground management actions, and conservation and restoration efforts to ensure those areas remain intact and healthy, and able to support diverse wildlife and plant populations.  The BLM Press Release includes a link to the policy.

  • BLM solar energy

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced on December 5, 2022, that the Bureau of Land Management will develop an updated Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to help guide solar energy development on public lands throughout the West.  The proposed updated PEIS will replace the existing Western Solar Plan, developed in 2012.  That Solar Plan for six southwestern states categorized land according to its suitability for solar infrastructure by establishing solar energy zones, which were areas of land prioritized for development; areas of land that should be excluded from development; and variance areas, or areas of land that were neither excluded nor prioritized.  The update is necessary because of “technology advances, new resource information, and shifts in energy market economics.”  It may include the five northwestern states and incorporate two other regional plans in California and Arizona.  This article includes a link to the press release.

 

More on the Holland Lake Project, CEs and the Flathead Plan

 

Martin Nie helpfully pointed me to the text of his letter on the Holland Lake project. What’s interesting about this, to me, in light of the decision, is how this highlights the role of environmental analysis compared to public engagement.  Some folks seem to like to lump them together (not Martin).. “with a CE the public won’t be involved” but this particular CE had public meetings and obviously a comment period (evidence-  this letter, among others).  And whether the FS uses the CE when this decision comes back around, I would expect them to do the same kind of public involvement.

Here’s  a link to Martin’s letter , and here is a link to the scoping document.  Lots of interesting stuff in there, including upgrading water and sewer, and  clarifies the Forest Plan direction for the area.

Increased use is also occurring at the adjacent USFS East Holland Lake Connector Trailhead. This increase in use is creating a situation in which users park along the Holland Lake Road because there is no longer room in the existing trailhead parking area. Additionally, the existing vault toilet is no longer adequate to handle the amount of use it experiences. This situation may be causing additional resource concerns as users find alternative options*. Improvements at the Holland Lake Lodge and the East Holland Lake Connector Trailhead would offer the opportunity to satisfy some of the increased demand for outdoor recreation on public lands in the Swan and Flathead Valleys (Figure 2 & Figure 3). Holland Lake is identified by the Flathead National Forest Land Management Plan as a Management Area 7 – Focused Recreation (USDA 2018). The improvements proposed at Holland Lake Lodge align with recreation uses permitted in Management Area 7. Focused Recreation Areas typically include public recreation areas at or near a lake, large campground, developed ski area or year-round resort. Recreation in these areas is already occurring and is often enhanced by further development to increase public access and benefit local economies.

*Hmm. I wonder about the exact nature of these “alternative options,”; perhaps not best left to the imagination.

Here’s what Martin said about the Plan:

So much time, energy and resources collectively spent on revising this Plan, one of the first to be revised under the 2012 Forest Planning Regulations-Regulations that require the use of best available scientific information, public participation, and an “all lands” approach to National Forest management. So much work and money spent on the Montana Legacy Project, so carefully done so to protect the ecological and rural community values so cherished in the region. So much effort to protect the ecological integrity and feel of a special place. And yet none of that work seems to have shaped or informed a proposal that would undermine it all.

The agency’s purpose and need for action statement references the revised Forest Plan’s desired conditions for Management Area 7, Focused Recreation. This vague and discretionary plan component calls for providing “sustainable recreational opportunities and settings that respond to increasing recreation demand.” But this provision does not call for generating greater demand for even more intensive recreation nor can it be understood in isolation from other relevant parts of the Revised Plan, including the plan components for the Swan Valley Geographic Area, and requirements under 36 C.F.R. §219.9 “to contribute to the recovery of federally listed threatened and endangered species, conserve proposed and candidate species, and to maintain a viable population of each species of conservation concern.”

The special use permit and proposed expansion of Holland Lake Lodge is clearly and directly related to forthcoming activities and an environmental footprint that will extend far beyond the 15 acre permitted area. The type of intensive year-round recreation associated with the POWDR corporation makes this clear and is entirely inappropriate in an area so ecologically significant. The NEPA case law forbids the segmentation of related actions and requires that the cumulative effects of related actions must be considered, usually in an EIS. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) also states that “federal agencies must be sure the proposed [CE] captures the entire proposed action” and “should not be established or used for a segment or interdependent part of a larger proposed action.”

It seems to me that this argument could be made for any project that has a appropriate CE. Perhaps all fuel treatment projects on the Forest could be characterized as “related actions” despite the existence of legislated and regulatory CEs.  And it can be argued that anything is in some sense a “related action.”

I also question this claim :”The type of intensive year-round recreation associated with the POWDR corporation makes this clear and is entirely inappropriate in an area so ecologically significant.”  With my experience with ski area expansion, every area is “ecologically significant” to someone; and these ski areas have opened to year-round recreation.  To my mind, you’d have to tie a specific time of use to a specific environmental impact.

Since Martin is the Director of the Bolle Center (although he writes this letter in a personal capacity), I guess it was natural to bring up the Bolle Report from 1970 (52 years ago).  For non-Montanans who have dealt with other permitted recreation expansions (in my case, ski areas) it seems a bit of a stretch, but OK.

Here we are, decades after the Bitterroot controversy, only to find local citizens and the public once again treated as antagonists, with a proposal to exclude them from a fully informed, scientifically credible, and participatory NEPA process.

Of course, development at Holland Lake is no  Bitterroot controversy in terms of scope, scale and implications. But both cases signify something far bigger within the agency and Montanans clearly recognize something is once again amiss. Rarely have I been approached by so many citizens about a local project or proposal, all with deep concerns and lots of questions about the proposed expansion and the Forest Service’s misuse of NEPA. (my italics)

If you don’t agree with certain members of the public, are you “treating them as antagonists”? Despite public meetings, comment periods, etc.? And if the decision, as in this case, goes with those members of the public, are you still “treating them as antagonists”?  Is it the process, the feelings of some (which ones?) or the decision itself the location for these antagonistic expressions?

Now is where the letter gets interesting:

To categorically exclude some projects and activities from full environmental review is both reasonable and necessary. Doing so can help the agency focus on proposed actions most likely to actually have significant environmental effects. But the USFS is now using its growing list of “CE” authorities to an alarming degree. Roughly 84 percent of the agency’s NEPA work is now done using CE determinations. The Forest Service seems intent on excluding even more projects and actions from NEPA review in the future, using new exemptions provided in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), among several other new authorities granted by Congress, and more controversially by the agency itself.

But to abuse this tool is to risk the agency’s credibility and social license. The intention to categorically exclude such a significant action sends a message that CEs are being used not as a way to do NEPA more efficiently, or to make better decisions-which is the whole point of NEPA-but rather a way to avoid the use of best available science and informed public participation in public lands management. The backlash is already evident and I’m afraid it will taint future good faith efforts aimed at actually improving the USFS’s implementation of NEPA.

In my old job in NEPA in DC, we’d see real CE abuse.. and this is not it. IMHO.

The Forest Service “seems intent” on following statutes legislated by Congress.. I certainly hope so! And why would the CEs in the BIL be less controversial than those developed by the agency (or Agency)?

I guess I just don’t see the logic path from “many people in the area and elsewhere don’t want more people at this 15 acre (based on Martin’s letter) permitted developed recreation site .” and (implied) the Forest Service “is intent on” “even more projects and actions from NEPA review”.

By the way, I took a brief scan of the Flathead Current and Recent Projects, specifically Under Analysis and Analysis Completed. It looks to me as if all the vegetation management and fuels projects are EISs or EAs. Perhaps the problem with CEs is the FS uses too many of them for common decisions like Ultra-Marathons? Or bike races (if Andy is reading this far).

We’ve also had a good discussion of CEs and their use in the previous post’s comments.

****************

And for the even more NEPA-nerdy..

As to the percentages of CE’s, it turns out that Martin used what is in this 2020 NEPA regulation :

The Agency devotes considerable financial and personnel resources to NEPA analyses and documentation, completing on average 1,588 categorical exclusion (CE) determinations, 266 environmental assessments (EAs), and 39 environmental impact statements (EISs) annually (based on Fiscal Years 2014-2019).

The  Fleischmann et al. (2020) estimate of CE% was  for 2005-2018 and came up with 82.3 % CEs, and the FS estimate 84%, is from 2014-2019.  We might expect that if the FS’s intention were to use more CEs, and it was busy generating administrative ones and the Congress was busy legislating CEs, since 2015 we would see more of an increase over that time period. The averages actually seem pretty invariant over those time periods.