Selling Natural Resources and Land to People in Other Countries

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(Note: this post is more philosophical than usual. I’m interested in what people think, as I can understand both sides.)

We’ve had something before on this blog about wood exports to China. I think some people have brought up selling coal and oil and gas products, although not necessarily on this blog. I thought this piece was interesting about Chinese buying property, from a blog here by a local realtor..
I ask you, even if you disagree, not to say mean things about Jim.

Why are we doing this, and is it good policy to facilitate the purchase of American real estate by Chinese nationals?

It turns out that 85% of China’s 2.8 million high-net-worth citizens already send their children to study abroad and last year spent an estimated $50 billion buying real estate in 36 countries.

The United States is just one of many countries where the Chinese are buying real estate. A June 2013 report which I’ve posted at http://JimSmithColumns.com shows extensive buying of real estate in Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Brazil and Africa — not by businesses, but by individual Chinese wanting to invest/live outside China.

According to the China Private Wealth Report 2011, prepared by China Merchants Bank and Bain & Company, the key motivations for Chinese nationals to invest abroad are 1) children’s education, 2) getting cash out of China for security, and 3) preparation for retirement.

Chinese are not the only foreigners investing in and moving to the United States. Analyzing the list of sold homes published in last Saturday’s Denver Post, I figure that 4.5% of metro area sales are to buyers with Asian or Middle Eastern names.

But China is the only country with high-end cash buyers which severely limits online access to American real estate websites like realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow, as well as search engines like Google. That is what has driven the success of domestic Chinese websites like Juwai.com, which records 90 million searches per month within China.

Two readers sent me emails expressing the same questions and concerns which I had before signing up for this service, so I thought I would address them in this week’s column.

A reader from Morrison urged me not to “sell out” to the Chinese, who already own the Panama Canal. (I didn’t know that.) He suggested it was greed that would motivate me to advertise our listings in China….

First, there’s my responsibility to my sellers to market their home and sell it for the highest possible price. Having learned of this pool of cash buyers, could or should I refuse to show them our listings?

Secondly, these high-net-worth Chinese, themselves capitalists, are interested in the United States because they like living here in our free society.

Now, for natural resource exports, reason 2 does not apply. Do you think the landowner is “greedy” to sell outside the US, or “welcoming of strangers”? does this just apply to people in other countries, or Californians in Oregon? Why or why not?

If we have indeed extracted natural resources using our own (adequate) regulations, does it matter to whom we sell them? Is there something intuitively, or otherwise, different about selling products and selling land?

Shout-out to EDF Work on Proposed Oil and Gas Rules

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Here is a link to a Denver Post story on new Colorado rules..the reason I’m posting it (other than I suspect oil and gas is not covered well in other places) is to “catch people doing something right.” It seems like a great environmental step forward, so I would like to give a shout-out to the environmental groups who worked on this (assuming as always, that this is reported accurately).

Environment groups, led by the Environmental Defense Fund, helped craft the proposed rules.

“First in the nation, direct regulation of methane from oil and gas production facilities is a big, exciting step forward,” Conservation Colorado director Pete Maysmith said.

Below is the description of the draft regulations.

State health officials rolled out groundbreaking rules for the oil and gas industry Monday to address worsening air pollution, including a requirement that companies control emissions of the greenhouse gas methane, linked to climate change.

The rules would force companies to capture 95 percent of all toxic pollutants and volatile organic compounds they emit.

This would cut overall air pollution by 92,000 tons a year — roughly equivalent to taking every car in the state off the road for a year, state health chief Larry Wolk said. Such reductions could help bring Colorado’s heavily populated Front Range, where smog and ozone are on the rise, back into compliance with federal air quality standards.

No state has adopted rules directly limiting methane emitted by oil and gas operations. Federal government and United Nations authorities are developing rules to try to reduce such emissions because they are a large factor in global warming.

“These are going to amount to the very best air quality regulations in the country,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said.

He credited executives from Anadarko, Encana and Noble Energy — the state’s largest producers — for compromising and helping minimize environmental harm from drilling before the cost implications are fully known.

“They understand it is a shared responsibility,” he said, “and they have really stepped up.”

Under the rules, companies would have to:

• Detect leaks from tanks, pipelines, wells and other facilities using devices such as infrared cameras.

• Inspect for leaks at least once a month at large facilities and plug leaks.

• Adhere to more stringent limits on emissions from equipment near where people live and play.

• Use flare devices to burn off emissions from facilities not connected to pipelines.

Noble Vice President Ted Brown said the prescribed practices are “the right thing to do” but added that “it’s a tough rule.”

He and counterparts from Anadarko and Encana said they support the proposed rules as a way to operate more safely and build public trust.

“Regulatory certainty is important to the company, and doing the right thing also is important to the company,” Encana’s Lem Smith said. Reducing industry air pollution will bring a “quantifiable environmental benefit.”

The East Side of the Sierra Nevada

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I recently took a trip with my brother, as he wanted to try out my old digital camera. There is an abundance of “protected areas” here (including Wild Willies Hot Springs), and timber projects have been gone for about 20 years, now. Below is the Mono Lake Tufa Preserve, a fee-area which accepts the Park Service passes. There is a nice boardwalk down to the lake shore, paved parking and bathrooms.

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Turning off Highway 395, at Tom’s Place, there is easy access to the John Muir Wilderness. We took a short hike and found this really nice overlook to one of the many lakes close to the trailhead. Despite the lack of snow, there is no lack of cold, making persistent ice on the lake. This watershed extends up to 13,700 feet.

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I have visited North Lake, before, back in the mid-80’s, during a three-day ski mountaineering trip. This road has easy access to Paiute Pass and the nearly-14,000 foot Mount Humpreys, west of Bishop. This road has three forks, each of which provide access to the Sierra Crest (and hydro locations).

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More of my adventure, including Yosemite National Park, at www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

Fires Bad for “Biodiversity”?

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When I returned to Book Club, I noticed this review of Botkin’s book, referred to by Guy. If you are interested, you can read Botkin’s thoughts on some of the points made in the review here.

What intrigued me was this statement by Nekola, the author of the review:

Botkin spends almost two chapters talking about how essential disturbance, particularly fire, is to the maintenance of diversity in many USA grassland and conifer forest communities. However, he then chooses to ignore the accumulating empirical evidence documenting catastrophic biodiversity losses across many taxa groups following the reintroduction of fire into reserves (e.g., [8,9]). Such works suggest that the widespread improper use of fire management represent [sic] one of the single most harmful immediate threats to biodiversity within the USA today.”

My first thought was that “he can’t be talking about forests… wouldn’t we have heard about “catastrophic biodiversity losses across many taxa groups?””. And one could assume (perhaps) that wildfires would have similar impacts to prescribed fires? The “single most harmful immediate threat to biodiversity within the USA today.” Whew! On this blog you might think it’s the few surviving lumber mills, or perhaps breaking up habitat with houses, or some people think oil and gas development may make things difficult for the sage grouse.

So my finely tuned feelers went up and I looked at the cites (8 and 9).
Swengel, A.B. (1996) Effects of fire and hay management on the abundance of prairie butterflies. Biological Conservation 76, 73–85.

Nekola, J.C. (2002) Effects of fire management on the richness and
abundance of central North American grassland land snail faunas.
Anim. Biodivers. Conserv. 25, 53–66

I was intrigued by 9 so went to look it up. Here’s the paper and below is the abstract.

Effects of fire management on the richness and abundance of central North American grassland land snail faunas.— The land snail faunas from 72 upland and lowland grassland sites from central North America were analyzed. Sixteen of these had been exposed to fire management within the last 15 years, while the remainder had not. A total of 91,074 individuals in 72 different species were observed. Richness was reduced by approximately 30% on burned sites, while abundance was reduced by 50–90%.
One–way ANOVA of all sites (using management type as the independent variable), a full 2–way ANOVA (using management and grassland type) of all sites, and a 2–way ANOVA limited to 26 sites paired according to their habitat type and geographic location, demonstrated in all cases a highly significant (up to p < 0.0005) reduction in richness and abundance on fire managed sites.Contingency table analysis of individual species demonstrated that 44% experienced a significant reduction in abundance on firemanaged sites. Only six species positively responded to fire. Comparisons of fire response to the general ecological preferences of these species demonstrated that fully 72% of turf–specialists were negatively impacted by fire, while 67% of duff–specialists demonstrated no significant response. These differences were highly significant (p = 0.0006). Thus, frequent use of fire management represents a significant threat to the health and diversity of North American grassland land snail communities.Protecting this fauna will require the preservation of site organic litter layers, which will require the increase of fire return intervals to 15+ years in conjunction with use of more diversified methods to remove woody and invasive plants.

Remember, Nekola said “single most harmful immediate threat to biodiversity within the USA today.” Not to be disrespectful, but did anyone at the journal actually review/edit/read this?

So now to the constancy thing.. if we read “catastrophic biodiversity losses across many taxa groups following the reintroduction of fire into reserves” we have to wonder what the point you are measuring the “loss” from and why. This may be a switch as Botkin points out from the idea of “climatic climax” to “what was there before Europeans was the right condition” to “what is there now is the right condition.”

For non-scientists, just remember scientists make all kinds of claims in their summaries and abstracts (and university press offices add their own spin). You often need to look for yourself for the connection between facts found and conclusions drawn (as we say in the more humble world of administrative appeals). My impression is that when I was growing up in science we were very careful about that link and that our major professors would get on our case if we were not. And I’d say that what’s in the research articles themselves tends to be more careful. It’s when the article is cited that writers claims’ become exaggerated. If claims seem too broad to be true, they are probably leaps of hype. Nowadays it is easy to check in most cases thanks to the internet.

Government should return forest lands to Hispanics: Op-ed

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Here’s the link to an op-ed in the ABQ Journal.

Here is an excerpt:

The recent decision by the U.S. Forest Service to ban motorized vehicles on 100,000 acres in the Carson National Forest (mostly in Taos County) is going to hurt tens of thousands of Hispanic families in northern New Mexico who rely on cutting their firewood each winter in these same lands to keep their families warm during the cold winters.
This Forest Service ban will effectively put all this land off-limits to the Hispanic families and communities of northern New Mexico starting immediately and will make it very difficult – if not impossible – for Hispanic families to cut their firewood for next winter and all future winters, unless this decision is reversed soon.

In addition to firewood cutting, this ban will effectively make it impossible for Hispanic families in northern New Mexico to use these lands for our traditional cultural uses as we have for 400 years.
These traditional Hispano cultural uses include grazing our small cattle herds in these lands, hunting, fishing, and piñon and herb gathering, among other traditional uses.

It seems the Forest Service is now allowing the anti-Hispanic environmentalists to ban the Hispanic families from using these lands controlled by the Forest Service. The anti-Hispanic agenda of the environmentalists and their movement is well-known in northern New Mexico, where Hispanic families, individuals and communities – along with our Hispano culture – have been under attack by this anti-Hispanic movement for many years now.

These anti-Hispanic environmentalists have been running a campaign of lies for many years, falsely claiming their movement is so diverse and so helpful to the Hispanic communities. The reality is the environmentalists have a selfish, elitist and anti-Hispanic agenda whose goal seems to be the destruction of the Hispanic communities and culture in northern New Mexico

I’m assuming that the road closure is for environmental protection or to save money. If that were the case, I think it’s really hard to argue that something happening all over the country is anti-Hispanic. People of all races, and from the Native Americans to this decades’ immigrants use public lands. Note to readers: I disagree with Mr. Martinez that environmental groups are specifically anti-Hispanic. Closing roads may well have different impacts to different ethnic groups and social classes, though. Hopefully that’s addressed in the environmental justice part of the social analysis in the environmental documentation.

What is different for Native Americans, is that they have treaty rights are in a “government to government” relationship, so it’s fundamentally a legal difference compared to run-of-the-mill forest neighbors.

Considering that more than 90 percent of the lands claimed by the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests were stolen from the Hispanic land grant communities by corrupt and racist U.S. government officials, this latest ban is further proof that our government should return the land grant lands to the Hispanic land grant communities in northern New Mexico, who remain the legal owners of these lands.

Our Hispano families, communities and culture in northern New Mexico have a right to exist and a right to survive, just as the Native Americans and other group enjoys that right. Our Hispano communities’ right to exist and survive includes the return of our land grant lands.

If Mr. Martinez’s claim about the origin of the national forests in New Mexico is accurate, then Hispano families also have a unique property right to that land.

However, I hope that all “National forest neighbor” communities have some “a right to exist and a right to survive,” and their traditional uses should be respected.

Lawsuit: “no material threat of wildfire”

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A comment on opposition to another USFS project. I don’t know anything about this project except from the Decision Memo, here:

http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/ltbmu/landmanagement/projects/?cid=stelprdb5314648

This is a 100-acre fuels-reduction project. There are ~60 cabins and outbuildings within the project area.

Would this project affect the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog? I don’t know. However, having worked on the El Dorado, just over the hill from this project, and having fought fire in that area, including in the adjacent Desolation Wilderness, I disagree with the biologist’s opinion that “no material threat of wildfire exists at all.”

The DM says:

“In project treatment areas the landscape would shift from Fire Regime Condition Class 2 and 3, toward 1 and 2, improving the overall resiliency of the forest to large scale disturbances.”

Article below from Greenwire. A Sacramento Bee article, which mentions that the biologist’s family “has owned a cabin for three generations,” is here:

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/11/17/5919990/unr-prof-lawsuit-seeks-to-block.html

 

Nev. professor sues Forest Service over logging proposal

Published: Monday, November 18, 2013

A biologist has filed suit against the Forest Service for its plans to log above Lake Tahoe.

The agency is ignoring its own analysis of the wildfire risk in the high-altitude, old-growth forests near Echo Lakes, said Dennis Murphy, a biology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. The region is located about 8 miles southwest of South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

“Cutting activities on the Pacific Crest Trail/Tahoe Rim Trail in the scenic Lake Tahoe Basin are occurring where no material threat of wildfire exists at all,” said Murphy, who has done research for the agency for more than a decade.

He argues that the logging threatens the survival of the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, which is being considered for endangered species protections.

“In its zeal to implement the project, the Forest Service has disregarded these facts and is violating procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act by blazing ahead,” according to the lawsuit filed earlier this month.

Murphy’s lawyer, Paul Weiland, last week filed a motion seeking a temporary restraining order to suspend logging operations. But U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell denied the request, saying Murphy should have made a request earlier if it was an emergency (Scott Sonner, AP/Sacramento Bee, Nov. 17). — JE

How likely is a home to burn in wildfire? New scale rates the risk

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Below are excerpts from Rob Chaney’s article in today’s Missoulian:

It’s common to assume the walls of flame under a towering smoke column pose the biggest threat in a wildfire, said Jack Cohen, a scientist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula. That’s true for people, but not for houses.

“The same heat radiation that on my exposed skin will give me a second-degree burn in 5 seconds, takes 27 minutes to ignite wood,” Cohen said. “Firefighters are way more vulnerable to big flames than a house is. That tends to skew what we pay attention to.”

In most of the lost-house incidents he has studied, Cohen found the residential destruction took place eight to 10 hours after the big flame front moved through. That’s when embers finally ignited piles of pine needles in a rain gutter, or leftover lumber under a deck, and eventually burned the house down.

“Unless houses are mitigated to be ignition-resistant, firefighters can’t be effective in well-developed residential areas,” Cohen said. “There aren’t enough firefighters and resources to assist and suppress ignitions on all houses exposed.”

Several new tools have appeared in the past year that may make the homes lost in Lolo Creek less common. A fire hazard scale developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and U.S. Forest Service can suggest changes in building codes similar to how the Richter Scale defines risk in an earthquake region.

Last month, a task force gathered by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper proposed a way to rank homes based on fire risk. [Note: We discussed the findings of the task force on the blog here.]  Montana Building Association government affairs specialist Dustin Stewart attended the conference where it was unveiled.

“Every home would be given a grade on a sliding scale from 1 to 10 to determine its susceptibility to wildland fire,” Stewart said. “It’s not entirely clear who would use the grade. Insurance companies could potentially use it when developing policies for wildfire. Or it could trigger a mandatory fire mitigation for those homes with high grades.”

Stewart said the Colorado Homebuilders Association members he talked with were not in favor of the plan, warning it could “hang a scarlet letter on the house.”

“It could severely impact resale value,” he said. “And it becomes very politically unpopular when you tell 10,000 residents across the state they have to disclose this number when they sell their house.”….

“The ignition zone is usually on private property, and that changes the social dynamics,” Cohen said. “We don’t have the authority to go in and tell people to make changes or to make changes ourselves. We have to have homeowner agreement, engagement and participation in reducing their vulnerability.”

In other words, labeling people from space won’t save any houses next summer. Stewart, at the Montana Homebuilders Association, had a similar observation.

“I think incidents like Hurricane Sandy, the Oklahoma tornadoes, the wildfires in Colorado – they’re going to become a bigger part of the public discussion in new construction standards,” Stewart said. “But there are things people can do without creating another level of government. That’s a nice thing about living in Montana. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time there’s a storm or fire. We can find a solution that isn’t heavy handed and gets the job done. There may be a big national debate, but the tenor is different as a result of where we live. It would help everyone if a few more homeowners would take care of a few simple things on the to-do list before we enter that debate.”

See also:

Fire Prevention Plans: “Almost impossible unless we have a different mindset”

CO Task Force: Homeowners should pay to live in burn zones; developers/real estate industry oppose parts of plan

Lolo National Forest: “Hunter” Shoots Pet Malamute with Rifle while Dog was 15 yards from Cross-Country Skiing Owner

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Dog shot

I’m just back from a few days of elk hunting in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and woke up this morning to learn about this terrible, irresponsible, unnecessary tragedy, which happened to a guy well-known in Missoula simply as the “Malamute Guy.”

Layne Spence was cross-country skiing on a popular portion of the Lolo National Forest near Lolo Pass when, according to this morning’s Missoulian, this happened:

Layne Spence was skiing with his three dogs on a quiet logging road in Lee Creek when, according to Spence, a rifle shot echoed through the air.

Then, Spence saw his 2-year-old brown and white dog, “Little Dave,” fall down with a shot to a leg.

About 15 yards away from him and his dogs, Spence saw a man in camouflage holding an assault weapon.

“I started screaming ‘Stop, stop,’ and the man kept shooting,” said Spence, 48, and who is often seen walking his dogs around Missoula’s river front. “And he kept shooting.”

“My dog is lying there, dead and I shouted ‘What are you doing?’ and the guy said, ‘I thought it was a wolf.’ ”

After the man allegedly shot Spence’s dog six times, he took off without another word, leaving Spence to deal with the tragedy of his dead dog….

“This doesn’t have to happen,” said an obviously distraught Spence. “Not every big dog is a wolf. These are pets, they all had their collars and lights on, they were all with me the entire time.

“People need to know what a wolf looks like before they start shooting,” he said. “And I was standing right there.

“What if I had a child on a sled, what would have happened if a bullet ricocheted?”

“There are other people who use the woods besides hunters this time of year.”

Make no mistake, I’m seething in anger about this tragedy.  Mr. Spence is entirely correct that other people besides just hunters use their public National Forest lands this time of year.  What about their rights as tax-paying Americans?  They have every right to use their public lands for hiking and crossing country skiing.

One question I have is should the Forest Service allow assault-rifle carrying wolf “hunters” to roam the woods in the middle of popular, high-use recreation areas? Another question deals with the increased use of assault rifles by some hunters. Should it be allowed? [UPDATE:  The Missoulian has updated the story and now says an assault rifle wasn’t used in the shooting of this pet dog.] However, the question still remains.  The practice seems to be taking off among some hunters, at least here in Montana, and this year I’ve heard more rapid “herd shooting” with these modified assault rifles than ever before.

UPDATE: In his own words, this is the account of the tragedy posted on Facebook by Layne Spence, owner of the dog:

What is on my mind is the tragedy that has taken place and the miss quotes from the media and the Sheriffs dept. So I am setting the record straight. This is what happened….

I went crosscountry skiing up at Lee Creek campground where I have gone in the past. Knowing it was hunting season I put the bright lights that are on all three of my dogs collars.

After skiing for about 200-300 yards I here “tat”, my dog in front of me, his rear leg is blown off.  I scream “no,no,no,stop stop” and as I near my dog who was 15 yards in front of me I hear “tat,tat,tat,tat.”

I look up and there is the “hunter” and I screamed “what have you done?” Screaming hysterically, the man says ” I thought it was a wolf.”

I said “You just killed my dog, you killed one of my kids.”

I started screaming “noooooo.”  He started to say something like “can I do something,” not I am sorry.

I said “Do you know what a wolf looks like? You killed my dog.”

The man took off, I just screamed “noooooooo” and tried to put him back together but his leg was torn off and yes 15 yards in front of me and yes he was shot with an ASSAULT rifle, I know I have seen them it was either an AR 15 or AR 14. It was all black had a sound supressor and that was why no big BOOM BOOM semi automatic.

I know guns, I don’t have any but I have shot them before, and yes I have hunted both Bow and Rifle. It is the irresponsible hunters who think they can shoot any animal they see if they are in the woods.

The MT Fish and Wildlife said they couldn’t press any charges because it wasn’t a game animal on the road, it was a domestic animal. What???? Bullshit, So I left my skiis and poles there, put my Little Dave’s bloody and broken body on my shoulder and hiked out to also get my other dogs to safety.

So no charges, I call the police dept who gives me examples of people getting hurt because of the public outcry and are afraid of vigilante violence. But the truth is still one of our rights and so is freedom of speech. I don’t want this guy to get hurt , but something needs to be done…I am heart truly heart broken, everything I do is for my dogs, from where I live, to what I drive, and what I do is predicated on the lives of my dogs…Thank you to everyone who has wished myself and my other dogs Frank and Rex well…Layne

Pisgah “old-school logging project” Appeal

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Here’s a project getting some attention that isn’t in the West: the Courthouse Creek Project, on the Pisgah Ranger District, Pisgah National Forest.

News article in the Black Mountian News yesterday:

Groups appeal to stop Courthouse Creek logging project

Excerpts:

“This is the worst possible place for an old-school logging project,” said D.J. Gerken, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The views from the Blue Ridge Parkway and Devil’s Courthouse are worth far more than the timber this project will generate.”

The logging, which could begin as early as 2015, would include 30 harvest sites that range in size from 4 to 34 acres, dispersed across the 7,000-acre Courthouse Creek area. The project would take four to five years and harvest about 6 percent of the trees in the Courthouse Creek area.

and:

“The Forest Service promised to manage this area as intact, mature forest for black bear,” said Ben Prater of Wild South. “The Forest Service bills this timber sale as a restoration project — but the pristine habitat in this area doesn’t need restoring; it needs to be protected.”

The appeal was filed on behalf of the Wilderness Society, Wild South, and Western North Carolina Alliance.

OK, so I took a look at the EA, which is here:

http://www.fs.usda.gov/projects/nfsnc/landmanagement/projects

There are 10 items listed under Purpose and Need for Action. This one seems to be the one the groups object to:

4) There is a need to develop between 64-192 acres of early successional habitat in MA 3B and up to 324 acres of early successional habitat in MAs 4A and 4D (Forest Plan, page III-31). There is currently no managed 0-10 year age class habitat in MAs 3B, 4A, and 4D in the AA. Two-age and group selection harvests would provide this needed habitat.

Under the preferred alternative, the Pisgah would take these actions:

In stands harvested with a two-age prescription, an average minimum of 20ft2/acre residual basal area would be left in a non-uniform distribution, where some trees are clumped and others are scattered as individuals. Preferred leave trees are hickory species, white oak, and chestnut.

In stands harvested with a group selection prescription, small openings of 0.2 to 1.0 acres would be harvested, distributed over a stand size area, with the intent to establish three or more distinct age-classes within a prescribed rotation.

Some of these stands “would be harvested with the objective to improve golden-winged warbler habitat and would be permanently maintained as shrub habitat. The target basal area for these units would be 20 to 40 ft2 basal area per acre.”

I can’t imagine these activities would bother black bears in the least.

The EA also note that “Many of the proposed activities in the Courthouse Creek analysis area correspond to the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forest Restoration Focus Areas, which were developed collaboratively between the National Forests in NC, partner organizations, and research scientists in August 2008.”

Of course, there’s lots more detail in the 139-page EA.

Is this an “an old-school logging project”? I don’t know anything about the Pisgah. Anyone care to comment?

My main question is why these groups would appeal an apparently benign project, one that would seem to meet the “developed collaboratively” objectives? I can see a lot that I imagine these groups would support. If this was an “old-school” clearcutting project, I could understand. Maybe these groups think all logging is bad. Or maybe they just have to make some noise.