Endangered Species Day

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The third Friday in May is Endangered Species Day, where we should “celebrate saving species.”

We could certainly talk about past successes at saving and recovering some species, but here is a story that suggests the inadequacy of ESA for the task of mitigating or reducing the effects of human climate disruption on many (maybe all) species.  This species has apparently become extinct in the Mule Mountains of southern Arizona – on BLM land under federal land management.

Over the last 3 million years — a million years longer than humans have been around — the Yarrow’s spiny lizards in the Mules adapted to live in cool mountain climates called sky islands.  Because the desert floor below is too hot, the lizards were essentially marooned at higher elevations, as if on an island, and cut off from other Yarrow’s populations in southern Arizona and northern Mexico.

In 2014, the team could not find any lizards below 5,700 feet. Up to that elevation the temperature in the mountains had gotten too hot. In 2021-22, they returned to the Mules to count lizards in the same spot. They were gone.  At that point, the lizards could only be found living much higher, at 7,100 feet, a cooler elevation.

In a scientific paper, Wiens and his colleagues calculated the rate at which the lizards were dying, concluding that it is among the fastest rates ever recorded.

But because the highest peak in the Mules is 7,700 feet, the Yarrow’s spiny lizards were quickly running out of elevations with cooler air. Based on its calculated rate of decline, and with nowhere else to go, Wiens projected the lizards would go extinct here by 2025 — a phenomenon that scientists call riding the “elevator to extinction.”

In March of this year, a survey trip into the mountains with CBS News proved his hypothesis correct, one year ahead of schedule. Wiens could no longer find any lizards, though it will take several more trips before rendering a conclusion.

This species was apparently never listed under ESA, or even petitioned.  The BLM could have petitioned to list the lizard.  You might think that a federal agency responsible for species on its lands would want all the tools available to provide for the species survival, but I think petitions to list a species by federal agencies are unheard of.

We know that species may be listed under ESA because of the effects of climate change (e.g. polar bears).  The ESA would then force federal agencies to modify their actions that would adversely affect listed species.  In this example, changing BLM management practices might have been necessary, but not sufficient, to save the species.

If the species had been listed, at least in theory, other actions that are causing the loss of habitat could have been modified or eliminated which could have benefitted federal lands ecosystems.  A Congressional Research Service Report from 2019 found that unlikely:

Judicial review has helped to ensure that the Services consider projected climate change effects on species in their ESA decisions. However, the courts have not required the Services to curb activities that may contribute to climate change to protect threatened or endangered species.

Stakeholders disagree on whether the ESA should play a role in addressing climate change, with some arguing that the ESA is not equipped to mitigate climate change effects. Other stakeholders believe that the Services can and should wield the ESA to protect further species threatened by climate change by curbing activities contributing to climate change. From the Services’ viewpoint, the best available scientific and commercial data have been insufficient to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions from a proposed activity cause detrimental effects on a species or its habitat. In light of the judicial deference afforded to the Services, the courts have not expanded the ESA as a tool to protect listed species by regulating activities that contribute to climate change.

Despite some success challenging BiOps, neither the courts nor the Services have found that climate change effects from a proposed federal action jeopardize the species or adversely modify its habitat.

Even though that is what happened here.  Federal actions authorizing greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to a baseline for this species that trended toward and resulted in extinction.  This same trend is occurring for many other species in less obvious ways.  Nothing to celebrate here.

But the CRS authors offer this (faint) note of hope:

From the Services’ viewpoint, the best available scientific and commercial data have been insufficient to determine that GHG emissions from a proposed activity cause detrimental effects on the species or its habitat. However, as climate modeling and technology advance, the Services may be able to predict the causes and effects from climate change on species with greater scientific certainty and data.

(Note:  This report was written at the end of the Trump Administration and discusses its changes in the ESA regulations, which have since been changed by the Biden Administration.  Also, I have not tried to update what’s been happening in the courts.)

 

Could ‘Science Courts’ Help Build Public Trust?

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This essay in Undark describes a “a citizens’ jury” designed “to ask whether the U.K. government should allow scientists to edit the DNA of human embryos in order to treat serious genetic conditions. Convening a jury was a non-traditional approach to involving the public in decision-making on a complicated scientific topic that could affect public policy.” Such a “science court” might help the public understand forest health/resilience treatments and could perhaps increase the forestry community’s social license to actively manage national forests.

 

 

How are Climate and Finance Interrelated and How Should They Be: Research Institutions and Insurance Markets

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I’ll propose Friedman’s law: The further people are from a location where a problem occurs, the less likely they are to understand it, and to view the problem through the lens of their own values, needs and philosophies- which may further their own goals, but not actually solve the initial problem.

I’ve also noticed a general tendency for forest policy to become more overrun by people and disciplines from outside our traditional communities.  I try to welcome these new folks with grace.  They bring interesting and novel ideas, energy, enthusiasm and sometimes lots of political pull and funding to get things done.  I’m concerned, though,  that our world of trees and people is becoming more abstract, controlled non-locally, and financialized (since, say, Hayfork doesn’t have a big presence in the financial sector, the latter two tend to go together).  Just yesterday I was on a phone call with some folks who thought that current investments in federal lands were not going to be “enough” and we need to have “durable financial mechanisms” to support federal land management, possibly including using federal lands for offsets.   Like I said, they might be right.  But I think we should be able to engage with local people, elected officials and practitioners and before the policy ideas become hardened.  That is,  groups go to their buds in Congress, who happen to be partisan, so when local people respond negatively (especially those who are of the Other Party), political lines are drawn and defended when they don’t need to be.  Perhaps we need more mechanisms to encourage discussions between these different communities.. local people and and practitioners, traditional forest users, interest groups and scientists,  and the new philanthropy, political and academic folks, earlier in discussions of policy options.

Anyway, today I have two stories that focus on financialization and climate, and how that affects, in turn,  research priorities and insurance rates.

Forest Science is Too Focused on Climate and Climate Finance; Nature Editorial

What’s interesting about this Nature open source editorial is how it internationalizes our own field of forest policy.

It has a pretty weird headline, though, “forestry social science is failing the needs of people who need it most”: way to blame the victim, Nature!  No, big scientific institutions are more interested in climate modeling than in solving today’s problems.  They allow scientists to prioritize, design, and fund and publish research without feedback from people.  But a full scale redesign of research governance is not what Nature has in mind..

The review is far from the first to highlight that research that should aim to benefit all stakeholders instead focuses on areas that are priorities for the governments of high-income countries. This is an important and timely reminder. It should not be difficult for the researchers involved in the world’s largest scientific networks — the IPCC for climate and IPBES for biodiversity — to create a shared agenda for the study of forests that extends beyond climate change and climate finance. And, given the need for such action, funders should respond positively to such a proposal.

Earth’s forests have the potential to benefit people everywhere. Researchers, policymakers and funders must ensure that everyone’s needs are taken into account.

There are actually plenty of forest social scientists around, though they are chronically underfunded, at least in the US.  There’s a difference between the people at IPCC and IPBES “aiming” to benefit all stakeholders and developing an agenda with stakeholders.  But perhaps the questions and solutions would then be local,  and not international.  Anyway, it’s fascinating to think about how over time the ideas of “climate” and “biodiversity” have changed the locus of inquiry (to international), changed who counts as experts and which disciplines, what questions are asked and what data is used (satellites) and so on.  Meanwhile, I hope social scientists are studying the non-powerline sources of wildfire ignitions  with the idea of understanding and reducing them.  So much more valuable than studies like “impacts of climate change in 2070 on beer production.”

Who’s Running and Supporting the Climate Insurance Scam?

Some of us simple people wonder what all the recent wildfire-but-not-really insurance drama is about.  Yes, climate change can increase risks.  But is there any reason to think that these increases won’t be gradual such that past pay-out history will gradually change, and insurers can still use history to set rates? Not to speak of the fact that for wildfires, the USG and philanthropists are spending zillions on the technology of detection and response, which will conceivably have some kind of effect.

And in my hood, hail is bigger than other risks to home and auto owners, and so far there isn’t a climate signal to hail.  So the stories don’t seem to add up.  I’ve found in my experience, that when claims are made that don’t seem to parse out logically, that there is usually politics of some kind involved, and too many efforts to understand might make you unpopular in certain quarters.

Anyway, there’s a professor named Jessica Weinkle who works at the coastal end of the climate/insurance drama biz, and she often has insights that are applicable to wildfire insurance, the bogus maps,  and all that.  The financial part of her analysis in this Breakthrough Substack article is over my head, but somehow I am not trusting of the financial industry.  Perhaps all the vitriol directed at the oil and gas industry is a magician’s trick to divert us from looking at what the financial folks are up to.  Like most folks, I use oil and gas products daily, and they are important for, among other things, fire suppression; but derivatives could go away tomorrow and I wouldn’t miss them.

Here’s an excerpt:

Last fall, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced an investigation into the ways in which insurance companies are managing “mounting risks from climate change.”

The senators foresaw climate change leading to a systemic financial crisis as rising insurance costs put heavy pressure on the mortgage market. “A widescale decline in coastal and wildland-urban interface (WUI) community property values would present a systemic risk to the U.S. economy,” they noted, “similar to what occurred in the 2007-2008 mortgage meltdown.”

The senators’ evidence for this looming catastrophe?

Insurers’ own climate change risk models.

Whitehouse and Wyden’s insurance investigations come after a series of hearings last summer that kicked off with a familiar character: Carney, along with Robert Litterman, a former asset manager and member of government advisory groups on climate related financial risk. Both argued that climate change is causing increasing frequency and intensity of weather extremes and losses creating risks to financial stability. Both argued for managing emission to control losses. For his part, Litterman, referenced his work as chairman for the development of a report of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on managing climate risk. The report, of course, made ample use of Bloomberg funded modeling projects.

In a later interview about the investigation, Whitehouse zeroed in on climate risk and financial risk. “There’s a core underlying reason for the insurance problems that Florida’s experiencing right now and for the risks it faces,” Whitehouse said. “And that is the persistent failure to deal with the problem of climate change.”

This is wrong. The underlying problem is the failure of policymakers to inspire a critical debate about urban development and risk mitigation—and about the misguided investor risk perceptions that may be inflating insurance costs.

Food for thought.

Reforming Federal Land Laws, Too Difficult to Attempt?: Reflections on CU 2010 Land Law Conference

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Rich J. noted yesterday that public land laws are antiquated, which reminded me of this CU Law School conference at the 40th Review of the Land Law Review.   At that time, the thoughtful and talented planner John Rupe and I helped our Regional Forester,  Rick Cables with this presentation.  This was during the period of the 2005-2008 Planning Rule. Many thanks to CU Law for keeping all this posted on their website.

John Rupe posted an excellent summary of the conference at TSW  here.

Here’s one paragraph from John’s post:

The 1970 report led to the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA).  According to Charles Wilkinson, FLPMA was a textbook example of Congress taking the long view – carefully studying the problem through a commission, and then crafting a bill which addressed those concerns.  He noted that the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) was very different – it went through Congress in less than a year because of a timber cutting crisis.

The speakers at the conference generally concluded that today’s political environment makes it difficult to repeat a 1970-type commission.  Congress is too polarized.  We may be too impatient to repeat the process that took six years from 1964 to 1970.  There may not be a political sponsor like Wayne Aspinall, the Congressman from Colorado who pushed for the formation of the Commission as part of a 1964 compromise legislative package which enabled the package of the Wilderness Act.  In addition, the problems today with public land management may not be grabbing the attention of the public, more concerned with the economy and other pressing matters.

Hmm… “too polarized” 14 years ago.  I wonder (certainly I run in less political circles) if the idea of “we are too polarized” keeps us from taking steps, perhaps incremental, to hash out and perhaps heal disagreements.  Words themselves have power, I believe, to lay tracks in our consciousness.  I’d instead ask “how can we design a system to get away from polarization?”.   If we had started with a small effort in 2010, where might we be today?

We could start with “what behaviors would we like to see in the next Admin that could help with that? or “what would be a tiny step that could be taken to develop a bipartisan process to remove the most problematic aspects of the current “mess o’ statutes”.

Anyway here’s a link to the conference, it’s full of interesting powerpoints and videos.  Reflecting from 14 years on, we seem to have all the same issues.

Well, David Bernhardt (he of the Trump Admin) talked about oil shale, you don’t hear about that anymore.  But not much about renewable and transmission buildout, and minerals were not strategic at the time.

Particularly with the current pressure toward Monumentizing, including what seems to be a massive media campaign, I’d like to draw your attention to the thoughtful presentation on Monumentizing by Jim Rasband: The Moral and Ethical Dimensions of Decision-Making on Public Lands: National Monuments and Beyond.

There’s also a set of slides of that presentation, with some quotes people might want to borrow for their own presentations.  Note how the Solum quote is related a bit to our discussion earlier this week of litigation as policy setting.. rights talk rather than justice talk.  Anyway, take a look at anything at the conference that interests you and we can discuss below.

Farm Bill Update

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I’m not following the Farm Bill, so it would be nice if a member of the TSW community would volunteer to keep us abreast of the latest. Here’s what came across my desk:

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Chairman Thompson, House Ag Committee, released additional details related to Farm Bill reauthorization last Friday. While the release does not include bill text, a more detailed summary is now available at:

detailed_summary_-_pdf.pdf (house.gov)

 

While bill text is not yet available for review, there are several interesting provisions. Some of the notable items include:

 

  • Includes H.R. 1450 to authorize counties and tribes to retain and use timber sale receipts on land covered by the GNA agreement.
  • Includes H.R. 3562 to provide flexible housing partnerships to alleviate rural housing challenges and provide up to 100-year lease terms and renewals on administrative sites.
  • Reauthorizes and modernizes the Wood Innovation Grant Program, reduces the non-Federal match, and authorizes grants for hauling hazardous fuels reduction materials to locations that can utilize it. Reauthorizes and modernizes the Wood Innovation Grant Program, reduces the non-Federal match, and authorizes grants for hauling hazardous fuels reduction materials to locations that can utilize it.
  • Establishes a CE for high priority hazard tree activities.
  • Includes a Cottonwood Fix
  • Increases the threshold required to advertise timber sales on National Forest System land to reflect inflation.
  • Extends the authorization of Resource Advisory Committees and the Regional Forester appointment pilot program.
  • Provides the Forest Service direct hire authority for Job Corps graduates.

 

Stay tuned as actual bill text from the House Ag Committee could be available in the next week or so. You may also recall, Chairwoman Stabenow also released the following summary of her Farm Bill last week at:

Rural Prosperity and Food Security Section-By-Section (senate.gov)

 

Similarly, we do not have bill text from Senate Ag, but the summary includes the following notable provisions (among others):

  • Authorization for Lease of Forest Service Sites. Increases lease terms to 100 years.
  • Expands GNA to allow counties and Tribes to retain revenue received from the sale of timber. Allows authorized restoration activities in certain circumstances on non—Federal land.
  • Authorizes a pilot conservation finance program
  • Builds on the REPLANT Act by establishing dedicated staff for the Forest Service Reforestation, Nurseries, and Genetic Resources program, expands technical assistance and workforce development training for nursery and tree establishment programs, and creates a grant program for State, Tribal, and private nurseries to improve nursery production capacity.
  • Expands the reach of the Wood Innovations Grant Program by reducing the match requirement
  • Establishes an Urban and Community Forestry Office within the Forest Service and a microforest grant program

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Inventory of Environmental Permitting Tools

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The Forest Service and BLM are part of  “permitting world,” so while this is a little NEPA-nerdy for TSWites…

I ran across this application inventory from the Federation of American Scientists , their idea being to:

“survey permitting tools for interested users, open up lines of dialogue for cross-application learning, and highlight where we see needs for further permitting tech investment. ”

It’s pretty interesting to look at the federal lineup of apps.. I didn’t know that EPA has all EISs since 2012 online (of course, I retired in 2012); also CEQ has a comprehensive list of all CEs. Hopefully the descriptions of FS and BLM apps are accurate.

The world is obsessed with forests’ climate benefits. Here’s the problem.

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Interesting essay in Grist. Not directly applicable to national forests, but there are some insights here to consider when pondering call for setting aside national forest lands as “climate forests.”

The world is obsessed with forests’ climate benefits. Here’s the problem.
People depend on forests for food and income. Offset projects can kick them out.

“The conversation about how to manage forests “has been overtaken by the climate discussion,” said Daniela Kleinschmit, an author of the report and the vice president of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, the network behind the research. The result? Indigenous peoples are getting pushed out of their lands because of carbon offset projects. Native grasslands are getting turned into forests, even though grasslands themselves are huge, overlooked reservoirs of carbon. And offset projects in forests, more often than not, fail to achieve all of the emissions benefits their backers had promised.”

 

Litigation Settlement in Montana and Social Justice Concerns

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While this is normally Jon’s bailiwick, this settlement is of particular interest. Here’s the article from the Daily Montanan, without a paywall.

This story describes a settlement of litigation on a project in Montana.  It would appear to an outsider, and by Garrity’s own claims as reported (I bolded below), that their organization’s views had an outsized role in determining on-the-ground specifics of projects.  Once again, the way it works is that DOJ gets credit for settling..the Forest Service gets credit for doing things, so it appears that different federal agencies have different goals.  For folks relatively new to TSW,  I wrote a post  in 2011 on Chief Jack Ward Thomas’s  experience at being overruled by DOJ:

The Department of Justice is, in my opinion, almost always too eager to settle legal actions, particularly when plaintiffs are of the environmental persuasion. It was a shock to my system to find that the Department of Justice does not consider the Forest Service a client. They have little concerns as to the desires of the Forest Service or any other agency. They set their own course and in doing so are de facto setters of policy. Somehow that seems to be a serious flaw in the system. But for now, at least, it is the system.

Now I don’t have any insider information about this particular settlement, so perhaps this was not the case with this one.  From the news article:

Under the agreement, accepted by federal district court Judge Dana Christensen, the United States Forest Service can still move forward with aspects of the massive plan, including the Crouching Trout Timber sale, which authorizes nearly 25 miles of temporary or current road construction. The Crouching Trout timber portion covers approximately 1,600 acres.

Originally the project touched three Montana counties — Lewis and Clark, Meagher and Broadwater counties — and called for more than 53,000 acres of tree cutting and burning, 6,669 acres of commercial burning, and 45,934 acres of burning, plus more than 100 miles of road building. The groups had argued in federal court that the project was illegal and could disrupt critical habitat for several species.

The project was originally slated as a 20-year project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Big Belt Mountain Range.

As part of the agreement, the Forest Service can continue with the “associated activities” in the Crouching Trout Timber sale. The service also agrees to limit prescribed burning to the “inventoried wilderness areas” of no more than 25% of any area.

The U.S. Forest Service also agreed to produce annual summaries of the prescribed burning in the Middleman Project, “including units where burning has occurred and the acres burned.”

The U.S. Forest Service also agreed to a $39,000 lump sum payment to settle claims of attorneys’ fees.

Previously, the conservation groups had argued that the central Montana land was a key part of grizzly bears’ habitat and made it easier for “genetic exchange” between the populations of Yellowstone and Glacier National Park areas.

“We are thrilled that the Forest Service agreed to settle this case,” said Mike Garrity, executive director for the Alliance of the Wild Rockies. “We stopped over 100 miles of road construction and reconstruction in the forest, and we stopped over 5,000 acres of commercial logging in lynx and grizzly habitat.”

I’ve looked at the Board of Alliance for the Wild Rockies and they seem like nice people.  There appear to be two Montanans, a Utahn, and an Idahoan.  It’s not clear to me who funded the lawsuit.

Here’s a link to their 990. It looks like the source of their funding is restricted, but maybe I’m reading it wrong.

My point is not that folks shouldn’t have views. It’s not even that rich people shouldn’t fund whatever they want, through the processes like 501c3s and c4s, that we have in this country.

My point is about justice.  Some people’s views count much more than others, apparently. Possibly people (funders) who have never set foot in Montana.  They are not political folks who have some accountability to the broader (Montana) public via elections.  We can’t even examine their diversity in the terms we usually use.

As far as we know, they (nor the DOJ) folks haven’t read nor considered public comments on the project.

I haven’t mapped the project itself, but certainly parts of  Lewis and Clark County are identified as disadvantaged in the CEQ Climate and Economic Justice screening tool.  So I guess there is an environmental justice perspective as well.  We need to listen to the voices of those communities, and that’s a major push for this Administration.. but they were not in on the settlement discussion. Maybe this is another case in which agencies are not aligned.

Interestingly, AWR has a page about its supporters.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Montana, Reps Raul Grijalva from Arizona, Carolyn Maloney from New York, Jimmy Carter, Carole King (Montanan), and Gloria Estefan.

Now, I’ve heard the argument that they are federal lands, and so anyone across the country should have an equal vote on what happens.. as one EPA senior executive said to me “an apartment dweller in New York should have an equal voice to a resident of Delta” (we were in Delta, discussing a project on the GM).

I call that the “property rights” argument.  But this is not that.

Funders we don’t know, from where we don’t know, whom no one elected, are effectively setting policy for a piece of the country, with those policies having an outsized influence on local residents.  Their intentions are noble. I agree. But noble intentions combined with political power don’t always work out so well for ordinary people, as some of us older folks recall from 20th century history.