An Unusual Choice for NRE Undersecretary: Michael Boren

by
Michael Boren (Credit: Daily Mail).

Here’s what soon-to-be Prez Trump said in a tweet..

I am pleased to announce that Michael Boren will serve as the United States Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the Department of Agriculture.

Michael is a successful businessman, who has founded six companies, including Clearwater Analytics. He has also served as a volunteer fireman for Sawtooth Valley Rural Fire Department, and as a board member of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

Michael will work to reinvigorate Forest Management at a time when it is desperately needed.

I checked here, some of us remember NRE having NRCS and the FS, it looks like right now it’s just the FS.

Boren seems to be an unusual choice from a historic perspective.

Just from my memory, there was Jim Lyons, Clinton Admin, from the Hill.
There was Mark Rey, Bush Admin, from the Hill (and prior from NFPA, the precursor to AF&PA, if I remember correctly).
One of my personal faves was Harris Sherman during the Obama Administration.
Here’s his background from an old EPA site.

Harris Sherman is the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at USDA. As Under Secretary, he oversees the United States Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Before joining USDA, Sherman served from 2007 until 2009, as the Executive Director of Colorados Department of Natural Resources, under Governor Bill Ritter where he oversaw Colorados water, energy, wildlife, parks, forestry, and state lands programs. Previously, at an earlier point in his career, he was Colorados DNR Director under Governor Richard Lamm. Sherman has also served as Chairman of the Colorado Oil & Gas Commission, Commissioner of Mines, Chair of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission, and Chair of the Denver Regional Air Quality Council.

Between his two stints as Department of Natural Resources Director, Sherman was the Managing Partner of the Denver Office of Arnold & Porter, an international law firm, where he specialized in natural resources, water, energy, public lands, and American Indian law. He has served on a wide variety of public and non-profit boards including the Denver Water Board, the National Advisory Board for Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy, and Colorado College.

Robert Bonnie was also Undersec during the Obama Admin. Here’s his Wikipedia page.

Then under Trump 1.0, another Coloradan, Jim Hubbard, who also had a terrific wildfire background.

James (“Jim”) Hubbard worked for the Colorado Forest Service for 35 years, serving as State Forester for the final 20 of those years (1984-2004). During his two decades as State Forester, Jim served on every NASF Committee, most notably as Chair of the Legislative Committee for 10 years.

In 2004, Hubbard accepted a position as Director of the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination for the United States Department of the Interior. In January 2006, Mr. Hubbard was appointed Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry at the USDA Forest Service (USFS). During his time with the agency, Hubbard guided the agency through years of catastrophic wildfire incidents and worked closely with State Foresters to promote a comprehensive, landscape-scale approach to forest management. In 2011, he was the recipient of the NASF Lifetime Achievement Award.

We wrote about him here on TSW at the time, and the above quote is from NASF (National Association of State Foresters)

In the Biden Admin, Homer Wilke was a career person from NRCS (even though NRCS is in a different mission area. Sec. Vilsack said in his appointment that he hoped Wilkes’ selection would lead to greater integration between NRCS and the FS, which makes sense.

So yes, Boren is very different in his prior experience in federal lands and forest issues, and government.

So far, this is what we’ve gotten on him. Here’s the Idaho Capital Sun view of the lawsuits he’s involved in.

Boren has been involved in several lawsuits related to a private airstrip he owns near Stanley, in south central Idaho. In 2023, he appealed a local judge’s dismissal of his defamation lawsuit against four critics of his airstrip, the Idaho Mountain Express reported.

Clearwater Analytics, based in Boise, has about 1,900 employees with offices in eight countries, according to the company’s website.

Here’s what Clearwater Analytics does. It’s investment accounting and reporting software.

Here’s his bio at Clearwater Advisors:

Michael Boren
Mike’s career in fixed income investment management, consulting, and analysis began in 1984 when he was appointed director of research at The Geldermann Group, a division of ConAgra. In 1986 Mike started an independent brokerage firm specializing in institutional brokerage of arbitrage and relative value transactions involving futures, spot and forward markets. In 1995, Mike and David Boren founded Sawtooth Investment Management, an investment advisor specializing in limited risk and relative value fixed income investment strategies. In 2001, he partnered to form Clearwater Analytics, an investment and accounting reporting software as a service company. Throughout his career, Mike has focused on providing superior investment advice and innovative financial services to sophisticated institutional clients.

Well, he seems like a money person, and the FS needs money, and apparently needs to manage what it has better to avoid large deficits, so there’s that.

So it appears until we find out more, that he will bring less experience in our field. But sometimes people think that that’s a good thing, as in a “fresh set of eyes.” Then there’s those folks who believe a “good leader” can lead any kind of organization.

In my experience, there can also be deputy undersecretaries that do much of the policy heavy lifting; there can also be “special advisors” to the Secretary who may have greater influence than the Undersecretary. As we saw in the Biden Admin, folks in the White House or CEQ could even be calling the shots. We’ll have to wait and see how the Department complex of decision-makers and influencers develops.

I think it’s safe to say that his learning curve is likely to be steep.

If I missed something, please put it in the comments. Also I know many FS employees worked as liaisons with NRE. It would be terrific if someone would write about their experiences, what went on at NRE when you were there. What was your day like? What surprised you? And so on.

Finally, this is not the place for generic “every R is bad, and therefore everything that anyone in Trump 2.0 does will be bad”; there are enough other places on the internet for that.

TSW Honors Jim Furnish

by

This is the first time, as far as I know, that we’ve lost one of our own here at The Smokey Wire. Jim Furnish was always a thoughtful contributor, and his passion for our National Forests was always front and center of what he told us. I’m glad he took his time in retirement to share his views and stories with us.  He was a great supporter and friend of The Smokey Wire, where heterodox thinkers of all persuasions are welcome.

Jim spent his early career in Region 2, and here, we have an annual ceremony to honor those who have passed on each year. We have a riderless horse ceremony, plant a tree, and it used to be that the Fiddlin’ Foresters played and sang. I may be able to recreate elements of this, but not in a timely way. So I ask you to imagine it, and Dave Mertz standing in front of us, saying:

A friend of mine, Jim Furnish, a former Deputy Chief of the Forest Service and Forest Supervisor of the Siuslaw National Forest, passed away on January 11 at his home in Gila, New Mexico. He occasionally commented and wrote opinion pieces on The Smokey Wire.

I got to know Jim in 2021 when he came to the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota to help us with some timber management issues. Blaine Cook, the BIack Hills NF Forest Silviculturist knew him from their days together on the Bighorn NF invited him and he readily accepted. I must admit, prior to meeting him back then, I didn’t really know that much about him. I knew that he had written a book Toward a Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition, and he had worked on the Black Hills NF at one time.

I liked Jim from the start. He was affable, knowledgeable, and more than willing to help us out. He traveled from his home at the time in Iowa just to be of assistance. He certainly had a lot of stories, and I enjoyed hearing his perspective and inside knowledge. He jumped right in here and met with the press and helped us with a public meeting. It helped to have a former Deputy Chief on our side!

Over the few days that we spent together, I came to understand where he was coming from and how he developed his beliefs on how the Forest Service was being managed. Later, I read his book and enjoyed it very much. I came to believe that I agreed with him on a number of issues, not everything, but quite a few things. I recommend his book to anyone interested in the management of National Forests. You may not agree with him, but you might be exposed to some thinking that you haven’t heard before.

After his trip to the Black Hills, he was quoted in an article of E&E News saying “I’m kind of the turd in the punchbowl.” And so he was. Within the Forest Service circles, he was probably not viewed by many as a favored son. I think he was perfectly fine with that. He brought some uncomfortable truths, and some Agency people struggled with that.

I know this, Jim was passionate about the management of National Forests and he wasn’t afraid to bring it up. To challenge the establishment. It is extremely rare for a retired, Senior FS employee to speak out about things they think the FS is doing wrong, but he was willing to do that. Agree with him or not, at least he was out there trying to improve things. After he was here in 2021, he kept in touch and helped us with several efforts. I feel fortunate to have met Jim and gotten to know him. Rest in peace, Jim.

More information about him is in his obituary here.

A memorial service is being planned for the Spring in Iowa City, Iowa. For more information or to send remembrances, contact the family at [email protected]. Memorial contributions can be made to the “James Furnish Scholarship in Forestry (fund 2705130)” at the Iowa State University Foundation. Online giving can be made via www.foundation.iastate.edu/giveonline

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of James “Jim” Richards Furnish, please visit our floral store.

You can also leave a memory on the Tribute wall.

As for me, when you get to be a certain age, it’s clear that we are on a downhill trail from the high country to the Home Ranch.  It can be steeper or more gradual, and the trail can be longer or shorter, but the destination is not in doubt. I’ll see you there, Jim!

Please feel free to share your own memories in the comments.

My Guide to Wildfire News Stories I. The Ideological, Political, and Generalized

by
It says photo by NASA but I found it at https://www.gallatinscience.org/

 

Well, we’ve all had a chance to read many wildfire news stories.  Reporters of all abilities and proclivities have swarmed upon the tragedy in LA like ravens on a bison carcass.

I’ll attempt to group them here.   It’s interesting to me that the blaming effort tends to be big picture, and the fixing effort tends to be lots of little things.    This is not unlike our NEPA/project planning discussion.  Similarly, the policy discussion tends to take place in “big picture” places, like think tanks, law schools, other academia, and political entities; while practitioners are often not involved in the discussions. We also  need to pay attention for how the specific can lead incorrectly to grandiose prescriptions and vice versa.  For example, these fires are not in forests… so let’s not even introduce our usual forest discussions.  This seems obvious, but folks like to ride any disaster horse toward their preferred destination.  Specific- not forest.

So let’s start with the biggest of big pictures:

(1) They shouldn’t have built there.  In this Leighton Woodhouse piece

Twenty-seven years ago, Mike Davis wrote Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. One of the chapters is titled “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” In it, he argued that the area between the beach and the Santa Monica Mountains simply never should have been developed. No matter what measures we take to prevent it, those hills are going to burn, and the houses we erect upon them are only so much kindling.

OK, as a former resident of a nearby and less well-off area, I would have liked it all turned into a park so I could visit.  And that (Malibu and environs) is a specific area.  But does this apply to Altadena, or other places destroyed in this set of wildfires?  In fact, some people are suggesting this about all of the west, as well as the SE (hurricanes and floods). Then there are earthquakes. 

(2) There’s nothing you can do. High winds, dry veg and houses, and ignitions.

Well, that’s a cheery, and not very helpful, way of looking at things.  And as we shall see, there are plenty of things homeowners, communities, and suppression folks can do.  In fact, other places, like the Front Range of Colorado have similar conditions in the winter (see the Marshall Fire).

(3) Various “it’s all about climate change” narratives

Then there’s “it’s all about climate change and things will get a lot worse!” and/or “it’s all about climate change so we need to change drastically to keep up.”  As you can see, climate change itself can go either way..  giving up and freaking people out, or adding to the impetus for implementing a reset of the whole interlocking systems of development, home hardening, vegetation and suppression.

So many people get stuck here at climate change . but scientists disagree on the proportionate contribution as well as on what we should do about it.  Most of us see some possible climate impact. But why is it so important for some to blame climate? Sure that gets politicians off the hook, but is that a good goal?  And I don’t understand why the details are so important.  Let’s see, what should we do differently if models predict we get these conditions 10 percent to 30 percent more often.  How much would our potential fixes change? The conversation also devolves weirdly.  Like Steve Koonin writes an article saying “not so climate change”; he’s got the political street cred (Undersecretary for Science at DOE under Obama) but is criticized because he’s “not a climate scientist.” So, as we have seen, Jon Keeley who studies wildfires has one view based on historical records and his own research.  But we’ve also seen Dan Swain say (who now works for UC Ag and Natural Resources) quoted.

Swain is big on the “whiplash” of wet springs and dry winters (this is similar to the Marshall Fire). I thought that this was an interesting take by ABC news.
“As Daniel Swain, the lead author of the research and a climate scientists with UCLA explains, “This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold: first, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”

Less than a year ago, Los Angeles had historic flooding and is now facing severe drought conditions. That literally adds fuel to the fire.

Finally, it’s important to reiterate that California has and will always be particularly vulnerable to wildfires simply due to its natural climate. The state historically experiences highly variable weather and climate conditions, typically shifting from periods of very dry to very wet weather.

Across the continental U.S., California has the most year-to-year variability between wet and dry conditions. As you move down into Southern California, that variability increases even more, according to Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist and deputy director of operations at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Conceivably, wet winters in and of themselves, are not a problem for urban areas. The LA area has a sophisticated system of flood control. An example is the watershed management plan of my home watershed of La Ballona Creek. The urban area is already managed for whiplash, so it seems to me that increased whiplashiness would mostly affect the dry wildland veg getting drier. But how much drier can they get? It seems like too much of this climate discussion gets stuck at the “it’s bad and the reason sounds vaguely plausible” rather than going deeper, into the vegetation or fuels characteristics, and how they are managed today and how that might be expected to change. Because atmospheric scientists aren’t experts on those topics. So when folks say “Koonin isn’t a climate scientist”, I’d say “impacts of climate change are mediated through vegetation, hydrology, suppression and other areas of scientific expertise. It’s the scientific equivalent of “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

(4) Then there’s the political view.. articulated by Sammy Roth, who has changed from being a reporter to a columnist.

For many Angelenos, this is our most jarring confrontation yet with global warming. But hundreds of millions of Americans have faced fossil-fueled disasters, and the politics of climate obstruction have hardly budged……………

None of those climate disasters changed the fact that the Republican Party is almost totally beholden to the fossil fuel industry. None of them changed the fact that the Democratic Party, although largely committed to climate action — see President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — still hasn’t done nearly enough to phase out fossil fuels.

But what was running the cars that folks evacuated in? Water pumps? Fire trucks? Aviation resources? Could it be that our current physical reality needs to be dealt with alongside climate aspirations?  It makes me wonder a bit about whether there is an element in the climate change advocacy movement that was never really about rational approaches to decarbonization, but about sticking it to the the industries- who have traditionally donated and voted for the wrong people in the eyes of some. Will we see big “thank you” banners hanging out for the people who supplied the energy to fight the fires?

And just like the Marshall Fire, we seldom hear  “maybe houses shouldn’t be so close together”; “without cars, could people have evacuated safely?” “does it make sense to electrify everything if you have to turn electricity off in high winds?” “could intentional densification have downsides with regard to wildfire resilience?” or other questions that question currently dominant planning paradigms.

On the other side, it’s the “poor management by D Administrations” political view.   The political view, in either direction, doesn’t help us at all. Like the framings above, it’s too far away from the real problems and the idea that “if you vote for us everything will be fine” doesn’t seem to be working for either party, and especially not for citizens in general.

**************
Maybe, just maybe, if we paid more attention to how to fix things, we would involve more people and scientists who understand the problems, practitioners and actually, mutually, improve. With less blame and more creativity; after all that’s the culture of wildfire. Learning organizations, after action reviews, and all that.
As for me, it’s the next layer down that’s interesting.  What could communities, homeowners, fire suppression and allied folks, and planners do better? We’ll try to round up those news stories in the next installment.

If you have any other stories you’d like to draw attention to, of the generic persuasion, please post below and add the specific quotes, or describe what about it you think adds value or is off base.

 

Building Resilient and Affordable New Developments in the West (BRAND West) Livestream: Western Governors Association

by

 

I know that many of you are concerned about housing, for the purposes of The Smokey Wire, the problems employees have finding affordable housing, or other issues including fire-resilient housing. So you might be interested in the livestream today of the Brand West initiative.

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

The second workshop of the Western Governors’ Association’s Building Resilient and Affordable New Developments in the West (BRAND West) initiative will be held at the Oxford Hotel in Bend, Oregon on January 15 and 16.

Following years of underbuilding, underinvestment, and extraordinary growth – driven by a complex mix of factors – the West is facing severe housing shortages.  This workshop will highlight strategies to advance rural, middle-income, and affordable housing development and recommendations to ensure that federal programs function effectively for western states.  Key topics include regulatory reforms, attainable homeownership, and resilient housing.

BRAND West is the 2025 WGA Chair initiative of New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.  The initiative focuses on increasing access to housing in western states, looking specifically at how to address housing availability and affordability and promote smart and sustainable development in communities throughout the West.

View the agenda and register here to attend the workshop. WGA will also provide a FREE livestream for those unable to make it to Bend. Watch here.

BRAND West – Oregon Workshop Agenda

Bend, Oregon

Wednesday, January 15
12:15 pm

The Oxford Hotel –Minnesota Ballroom

Lunch
1:15 pmWelcome and Introductions

Jack Waldorf, WGA Executive Director

1:30 pm

 

Panel 1: Advancing Middle Housing

This panel will address the growing need for “missing middle” housing – affordable, workforce-oriented housing types such as duplexes, townhomes, and small multi-family units that serve middle-income earners, including essential workers and professionals.  These individuals often fall between subsidized and market-rate housing, leaving them with limited options.  The discussion will highlight effective strategies and best practices for developing these units, with a focus on zoning reforms, state efforts, and collaborative public-private solutions to expand housing access.

  • Sean Edging, Senior Housing Planner, Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development
  • Mary Kyle McCurdy, Associate Director & Managing Attorney, 1000 Friends of Oregon
  • Deborah Flagan, Vice President of Community Engagement, Hayden Homes
  • Russell Grayson, Chief Operations Officer & Assistant City Manager, City of Bend
2:35 pmRemarks

Mayor Melanie Kebler, City of Bend

2:50 pmTour (transportation provided)

Mayor Melanie Kebler will lead participants on a tour of three sites in Bend, showcasing creative approaches to affordable and middle-income housing development, attainable homeownership opportunities, and sustainable design:

  • Crescita by RootedHomes – Net Zero community composed of five permanently affordable, single-family homes for households earning less than 80% of the area median income (AMI) and up to 120% AMI.
  • Woodhaven Estates by Thistle & Nest – Development slated to include 133 townhome-style units to assist the local workforce in attaining stable housing and equity building through homeownership.
  • NW Cottages by Habitat for Humanity – Net Zero, affordable housing project offering eleven cottages for families earning between 40% and 80% AMI.
5:30 – 7:00 pm

Crux Fermentation Project

Reception (transportation provided)

 

Thursday, January 16
7:30 am

The Oxford Hotel – Minnesota Ballroom

Breakfast
8:00 amWelcome and Day One Recap

Jack Waldorf, WGA Executive Director

8:05 am

 

Panel 2: Improving Access to Affordable Housing

This panel will analyze how to address persistent affordable, low-income housing shortages.  The discussion will center on ways to enhance federal housing program efficiency and foster better coordination across all levels of government and the private sector to maximize impact.  Panelists will identify actionable solutions to strengthen low-income housing initiatives.

  • Moderator: Olivia Barrow Strauss, Vice President, Global Philanthropy, JPMorganChase
  • Bryan Guiney, Oregon Field Office Director, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Andrea Bell, Executive Director, Oregon Housing and Community Services
  • Ben Taylor, Vice President & Project Partner, Lincoln Avenue Communities
  • Will Cooper Jr., Chief Executive Officer, WNC & Associates
9:10 amBreak
9:15 amPanel 3: Planning and Development Challenges in Rural Communities

Rural communities face distinct housing challenges, including barriers to developing infrastructure, limited financing, high levels of substandard housing, and a lack of capacity.  This discussion will focus on innovative partnerships, housing preservation and rehabilitation efforts, and strategies to align housing development with local workforce needs to foster thriving economies and build stronger rural communities.

  • Moderator: Vikki Breese-Iverson, Representative, Oregon House of Representatives
  • Seth Leonard, Program Manager, Center for Multifamily Housing Preservation, Housing Assistance Council
  • Jill Rees, Deputy State Director, USDA Rural Development, Oregon
  • Lisa O’Brien, Executive Director, Taos Housing Partnership
10:20 amBreak
10:25 amPanel 4: Encouraging Attainable Homeownership

Homeownership is a cornerstone of financial stability and generational wealth in the United States, but it is increasingly out of reach for many Americans.  During this panel, speakers will discuss proposals to strengthen pathways to homeownership.

  • Moderator: Kil Huh, Senior Vice President, Government Performance, The Pew Charitable Trusts
  • Talia Kahn-Kravis, Assistant Director of Homeownership Programs, Oregon Housing and Community Services
  • Kelly O’Donnell, Chief Research and Policy Officer, Homewise
  • Jackie Keogh, Executive Director, RootedHomes
  • Qualen Carter, Assistant Vice President of Oregon & Community Lending Manager, Umpqua Bank
11:30 amLunch
12:15 pmPanel 5: Scaling Modular Housing Solutions

This panel will explore the role of modular housing in efforts to bolster housing supply.  As a cost-effective alternative to traditional construction, modular housing has the potential to help increase supply and improve affordability.  However, the supply chain, restrictive regulations, public perception, and other factors have hindered its adoption.  This panel will consider how innovative modular housing solutions can be scaled to meet housing demand while contributing to broader housing and community development goals.

  • Moderator: Dick Anderson, Senator, Oregon Senate
  • Megan Yonke, Senior Housing Policy Advisor, Office of Colorado Governor Jared Polis
  • Max Wei, Staff Scientist, Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • Bob Worsley, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, ZenniHome
  • Margaret Van Vliet, Principal, Trillium Advisors
1:20 pmBreak
1:25 pmPanel 6: Building Resilient Housing

As extreme weather and natural disasters become more common, resilient building techniques can help mitigate risks to housing infrastructure and foster more sustainable communities.  This panel will analyze policies and investments to align land use planning with environmental considerations, promote adaptive housing development, and explore the effects on housing affordability.

  • Moderator: Brian Rankin, Long Range Planning Manager, City of Bend
  • Kirsten Ray, Senior Management Analyst, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Doug Green, Program Manager, Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire, Headwaters Economics
  • Jeff Pemstein, Associate Vice President for Advocacy, Western Region, National Association of Home Builders
2:25 pmRecap

Lauren Cloward, WGA Senior Policy Advisor

2:30 pmAdjourn

f

Federal Lands Litigation – update through January 10, 2025

by

Kind of quiet at the turn of the year …

FOREST SERVICE

New lawsuit:  Mahler v. U. S. Forest Service (S.D. Indiana)

On December 16, a group of forest protection organizations, neighboring landowners, and regular users of the Hoosier National Forest challenged the Paoli Tornado Response and Research Project, three days after work on the Project allegedly commenced.  On December 23, the district court denied a request for a temporary restraining order.  Plaintiffs specifically allege that the Forest Service inappropriately used a CE and ignored cumulative effects of another project under NEPA, as well as Migratory Bird Treaty Act violations.  The court determined that plaintiffs had “not clearly shown that the risk of irreparable harm is so immediate that Defendants should not first be given an opportunity to be heard in opposition.”  A motion for a preliminary injunction is pending.

Court decision in Central Oregon Wild Horse Coalition v. Vilsack (9th Circuit)

On January 3, the circuit court affirmed the district court opinion, and upheld a herd management plan that involved removing two-thirds of a wild horse herd from the Ochoco National Forest.  The court found no violations of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act when adopting the plan.  The court found that plaintiffs’ objections to the data used by the Forest to show overutilization of forage (in lieu of a map plaintiffs had submitted) as “quibbling.”  The court also found that an EIS was not necessary.

New lawsuit:  Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Mulholland (D. Montana)

On January 8, four conservation organizations sued the Flathead National Forest over its Round Star Vegetation Management Project decision.  The decision authorizes logging on 9,151 acres, including more than 6,300 acres of “core” habitat for lynx and grizzly bear, as well as nearly 20 miles of new permanent roads and trail and trailhead improvements.  Plaintiffs are concerned about cumulative effects of other projects encompassing 41,863 acres with more than 100 miles of new roads, especially on habitat connectivity.  Issues include violations of NEPA and NFMA, and identification of wildland-urban interface under HFRA, or see how the plaintiffs see it here.  The header article includes the complaint.

This complaint doesn’t include any ESA claims related to effects on lynx and grizzly bears.  It wouldn’t be surprising if these don’t follow after plaintiffs meet ESA notice requirements; this article addresses the use of the Endangered Species Act in litigation against the Forest Service.   (An interesting note:  “About 13% of forest projects receive legal challenges in the Northern Region, according to Cassie Wandersee, press officer with the Forest Service’s Northern Region.”)

Grizzly bears are in the spotlight, and the Fish and Wildlife Service decided on January 8 that grizzly bears should remain listed as threatened, rejecting petitions from Montana and Wyoming officials (and litigation from Idaho) to delist the species in specific recovery zones.  The FWS is affirming that there is a single grizzly bear population, so it will not base a decision on the status of individual subpopulations.  However, it is revising the listing to include a specific area for which grizzly bears are listed (parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho and all of Washington), and to modify its requirements for incidental take to “give management agencies and landowners greater flexibility and tools to take bears in the context of research and conflict management.”

BLM

New court filings

On December 4, the State of Utah amended filings it submitted to the Supreme Court in August.  Originally, Utah asked justices to “[o]rder the United States to begin the process of disposing of its unappropriated federal lands within Utah” overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. It now says “Utah is not ‘ask[ing] this Court to exercise … the power to dispose of public lands,’” but to declare federal ownership of such lands unconstitutional,” and it targets the validity of “the portions of [the 1976 Federal Land Policy Management Act] that announce and implement an indefinite land-retention policy…”  This would leave it up to Congress to come up with a constitutional fix.  (One option not mentioned here would be to “appropriate” those lands, such as reserving them as national forests/grasslands.)

Post-litigation action following Conserve Southwest Utah v. USDI (D. D.C.)

On December 20, the BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service reversed their approval of construction of a four-lane highway through Red Cliffs National Conservation Area near St. George, Utah.  The court in this case (discussed here) ordered a new study of the right-of-way, which found that the highway would create risks to the threatened Mojave Desert tortoise and its critical habitat.  The article links indirectly to the Record of Decision.

Court decision in Wyoming v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. Wyoming)

On New Year’s Eve, the district court held that the BLM had discretion to lease or not lease three parcels for oil and gas production, but that it had abused its discretion with regard to its failure to lease one of the three.  While the court found adequate rationale in the record for the two decisions to not lease, it found there was a “complete dearth of evidence in the administrative record” for the third.  Remedies have not been determined.  The article has a link to the opinion.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (E.D. California)

On December 30, the Center sued over the Fish and Wildlife Service decision that it was “not prudent” to designate critical habitat for the endangered Sierra Nevada red fox.  Such habitat may exist on the Stanislaus, Humboldt-Toiyabe, and Inyo National Forests. Plaintiff alleges that the Trump Administration rule governing the use of the “not prudent” exception violates the Endangered Species Act in this case, and that the red fox decision violates the ESA and the APA.  The article has a link to the complaint.

Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (9th Circuit)

On January 10, the circuit court affirmed a district court opinion that upheld the agency’s decision to not list the Tucson shovel-nosed snake, found in the northern Sonoran Desert of central Arizona.  After reconsidering its classification as a separate subspecies, the agency properly found that it falls into the same subspecies category as a larger group — the Sonoran shovel-nosed snake, so it “occupies a much larger range than previously believed,” and habitat loss is not a threat.  The article includes a link to the opinion.

OTHER

New lawsuit:  West Virginia Highlands Conservancy v. South Fork Coal Company, LLC (S. D. West Virginia)

On December 16, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Appalachian Voices sued South Fork Coal Company for water pollution at five coal mines near the Monongahela National Forest and Cranberry Wilderness.  The claims include violations of the Clean Water Act and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.  They previously sued the Forest Service for authorizing the use of roads in the area for mining.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

New lawsuit:  Montana v. Haaland (D. Montana)

Also on New Year’s Eve, the State (through its governor, Montana Department of Livestock, and Montana of Fish, Wildlife and Parks) sued Yellowstone National Park over its plan to increase the number of bison in and around the park and establish greater tolerance for their presence outside its boundaries.  The complaint alleges its creation violated several provisions of NEPA and also the National Park Service Organic Act and Yellowstone National Park Protection Act.  The adjacent Custer-Gallatin National Forest supported the expansion.

  • Marijuana

It was not a merry Christmas for a couple of individuals.   On December 17, one man pleaded guilty in federal court to damaging land with toxic pesticides in habitat for the California condor on the Los Padres National Forest in pursuit of manufacturing and distributing marijuana plants in six grow sites.  He faces a maximum statutory penalty for each offense of 20 years in prison and a fine of $1,000,000, plus restitution.  Fixing the environmental damage to this area cost over $92,540 per site.  Another man was sentenced to two years in prison with five years’ supervised release on December 18 for illegally growing marijuana in southern Oregon and filing tax returns falsely claiming a religious tax exemption.  He was also ordered to pay more than $290,000 in restitution to the IRS and more than $12,000 in restitution to the Bureau of Land Management for damaging land with the marijuana grows.

That’s Not How it Was: Sharon’s Response to Tinder Box Book Review

by

I have seldom read a book review whose narrative runs so contrary to my lived experience. My opinion is that we can’t solve real world problems if we frame them at some abstract ideological level, and ignore the nuts and bolts of the way people behave in the real world. Or we extrapolate from one part of the FS (region, staff area) to the entire agency.

All I can share is my personal experience.  I was involved in women’s issues on the Eldorado National Forest in Region 5 for part of that time.

It all started with the idea that women should not be discriminated against in hiring in the government, including the Forest Service.  However, we were.  I was there then, as my forestry degree was in 1975 from Berkeley. I was told the FS wasn’t hiring women, so I went back to school.  One of the reasons I was working on a  Ph.D. is that I couldn’t get hired in any other work than being a research assistant.

So Region 6 simply got on with hiring women.  I was hired off a cert to work in Lakeview, Oregon.  As a new employee, I was taken under the wing of our Forest Silviculturist, John Nesbitt, and inculcated with FS culture via lots of field lunches and one-on-one time, or as one-on-one as it could be given we were all in the upstairs of the Fremont SO with about 20 people in the same space.  This was all pre-cubicle, pre-flex hours, pre-smoking in the office bans.

I applied for laterals because my husband was working on the West side and guys were always selected over me.  Because Region 6 had second-order discrimination problem in some sectors.. a hiring official wouldn’t actually discriminate, but would listen to gossip by people who didn’t like women professionals.  My Forest Supe once called the Supe on the Umpqua to held me get a lateral. That Supe said it was up to the Ranger, who had heard bad things about me.  My Supe had a list of people who supported me, but those didn’t count.  It could be that they were only biased against uppity women, but a person has to wonder whether uppity =self-confident, which was a leadership skill in men and a problem with women.

In hopes of my husband and I finding work together, I moved to Region 5 to head up a new genetics lab working on national forest problems.  I did have some culture shock when I moved to Region 5.  There were many organizational and management issues  with the way the Consent Decree was carried out.

For example, I tried to hire a well-qualified woman, but she was part of a dual career couple and I was told we couldn’t hire him (from outside).  My boss Rex somehow finessed that, for which we were all immensely grateful. It involved getting the North Central Station to hire him back.  My point is that there was an idea of what we should be doing, but at the same time, well-intentioned, but impractical, barriers to actually doing it, that is, hiring women.

We had to do “consent decree action plans” and I wrote an idea about having a natural resources training so that we could hire experienced administrative women into line officer jobs. The RO told me to stop talking about it, as it might raise peoples’ hopes.

In my experience, fire, of all the areas, was worst.  Women would call me from Region 6 and say “hey what’s up in 5, they keep bugging me to accept a job there at a lower grade level than I currently have, maybe they inhaled too much smoke from those illegal marijuana grows?”

My boss, the Timber Staff on the Eldorado, Rex Baumback, managed to hire a female check scaler, two geneticists and a nursery manager.  He was (and is) as far as I know a “get it done” kind of person. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the whole process was run by a group of people hired to do paperwork, and telling us what not to do.  When the Consent Decree kept running into trouble, I suggested that they put more of a can-do, knowledgeable person in charge who understood the agency.

There was a lot of resentment at the time, for sure.  Our Forest Supe had a meeting in which someone stood up and said “there are no opportunities for white males in silviculture” and I stood up and said “look around you and at who is in the RO”.  I was told to .. be quiet.

This quote in my view is breathtakingly untrue:

In their place the agency introduced a lethal plutonium rule. Incoming employees would not be required to adapt to their senior employee’s expectations or traditions – so essential to meeting mission objectives. Rather, the new employees would see to it that the seniors adapted to their expectations and innovations.”

I’m thinking of where I worked at the Placerville Nursery.  Pat, the Nursery Manager, Safiya, the Resistance Geneticist, me and Betsy and Suellen who worked in the lab with me.. were hardly vectors of revolution.  And it’s just silly to think we were.  We were just trying to do our jobs, and we adapted to the culture.  As Larry H. has pointed out, one of the values was getting the Wage Grade lift and pack crews paid, with the idea that they needed the money most.  I wonder if getting rid of the many women in HR via centralization cut out the heart and soul of the outfit (but that would be another post).

One more thing that I think is important.  At the same time that women came into the workforce, many specialists were hired, like me.  Transportation engineers, wildlife biologists, soil scientists, botanists, archaeologists.  There’s another whole history that says that’s where “the problem” started.  So I’m not sure that there IS  a “problem.” Just change, that can be managed better or worse, more or less gracefully.

At some point when I was in DC,  the Pinchot Institute held a session where Chief Thomas spoke.  It was at one of those swanky, think-tanky places whose name I can’t remember now. He mentioned that there were many women wildlife biologists and they weren’t listened to because they were wildlife biologists.  I asked the question “but I’m in silviculture and people don’t listen to me either, maybe it’s the fact that they’re women, and not just anti-wildlife bias?”  Later, when I read the Chief’s journals, I noticed that the only woman who seemed to show up in them was Katie McGinty.  I’m only pointing this out to say “if you don’t like the changes in the FS at that time, it’s hard to separate the “woman” part from the “new kinds of specialists” part.”

I’m sure that there are plenty of female TSW readers out there who can share their own experiences.

Guest Post: Karl Brauneis’ Review of Burchfield’s 2014 “The Tinder Box”

by

This is “A Book Review and Associated Thoughts” regarding Christopher Burchfield’s 2014 book, The Tinder Box – How Politically Correct Ideology Destroyed the U.S. Forest Service. It was written by Karl Brauneis, posted here with his permission, and published last year in Smokejumper Magazine. Karl is a retired USFS Forester and Fire Management Officer and “Missoula Smokejumper Class of ‘77” member.

Here is a link to Karl’s new book, The Blackwater Fire and the Men Who Fought It: How Firefighters Turned Tragedy into New Beginnings: https://warnercnr.source.colostate.edu/karl-brauneis-blackwater-fire-book/

Here is his review of Burchfield’s book:

The Tinder Box is a must read for those who struggle to understand what happened to the U.S. Forest Service in our lifetime. Burchfield begins with a short background of the why and the how. He breaks open the Bernardi Consent Decree (1981) that required the Forest Service to reach the goal of a 43% female work force in just a few short years.

This is how, in part, Chief Max Peterson and his Pacific Southwest (California) Regional Forester Zane Grey Smith destroyed the U.S. Forest Service. There was no need for the Bernardi Consent Decree because the Forest Service had done nothing wrong. The Justice Department, representing the Forest Service, could have easily won the case brought by plaintiff Gene Bernardi. However, Max Peterson wanted to re-make the Forest Service and he certainly did. Once a stellar organization it is now ranked among the worst of the federal agencies to work for.

As an older man I feel some compassion for men like Zane Grey Smith. The consent decree made life a living hell for not only those who were affected by it but by those who proposed and initiated it. Burchfield uncovers the trauma experienced by so many.

The root of destruction is found in the Frankfurt school of Germany and its quest to spread their neo-Marxist philosophy throughout the world. In short, communism could claim only limited  success in countries where the masses attempted an overthrow. The only true success had been in Russia with the Bolsheviks.  And it was bloody.  The neo-Marxist philosophy taught that the destruction of western civilization could only be accomplished through the elites via an insidious takeover of western institutions. A demolition from within. From the top down. We see this everywhere today from the destruction of the middle class and open borders to a 32 trillion dollar national debt.

The Frankfurt school of thought was first imported to Columbia University in the 1930’s and soon spread to other institutions of higher learning. We might call this the same spirit that sparked and drove the Nazis in their quest for world domination.

When reading The Tinder Box my thoughts affirmed the psychological study of the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. An Army psychologist assigned to the trials arrived at this secular conclusion: “Evil is the absence of empathy.” This also confirmed what I experienced in my forest service career. I began under a Christian culture and set of norms. A strong Judeo-Christian work ethic existed. This was soon taken from us and replaced with neo-Marxist dogma. Their tenants violated not only the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution (equal protection of the law) but also the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Title VII), as passed by the US Congress, and the Civil Service merit promotion standards. But the law was ignored and twisted in policy by our leaders. Their absence of empathy only accelerated. Discrimination against white males became a corporate manifesto. Part way through my career, candidates for promotion were no longer evaluated by their knowledge of forestry, fire and range but rather by their adherence to affirmative action and multiculturalism. Consideration for promotion was now based on race, color, sex and creed. Females were given privileged and preferential treatment. When I left the agency all of the forest supervisors and park superintendents in the greater Yellowstone area were female.

Christopher Burchfield writes about the Plutonium Rule:

“Implicit with the extralegal incorporation of 43 % (Females by Consent Decree) was the extinction of the Golden Rule, the universally accepted premise, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Dead too was the notion of reciprocity – that everyone has a right to just and equal treatment and a responsibility to ensure that others receive the same just and equal treatment.

In their place the agency introduced a lethal plutonium rule. Incoming employees would not be required to adapt to their senior employee’s expectations or traditions – so essential to meeting mission objectives. Rather, the new employees would see to it that the seniors adapted to their expectations and innovations.”

Then there was the clandestine back room development and enforcement of quotas by the agency, unknown to Samuel Conti the federal judge presiding over the case. When he learned that the Forest Service had gone behind his back the judge had enough. He then held the agency to their arrogant stupidity and labeled it “consent decree as amended”.

In contrast? Hubert Humphry vigorously declared when addressing the wealth of Civil Rights laws passed by congress:  “I will start eating the pages of the law, page by page, if anyone can find a clause that calls for quotas or preferences of racial balance in jobs or education.”

Pete Barker was one Forest Service fire engine captain interviewed in the book. Asked about the performance of the Forest Service from when he began in 1977 until he retired in 2007. His answer? He guessed the agency was running at 50%. Later, Randal O’Tool in “The Rot Starts at the Top” would evaluate the agency at 20%.

This is my second reading of The Tinder Box. Burchfield explains so much in detail that I had to read the book again.

Christopher writes; “It was not simply the numbers Stewart (Pacific Southwest Regional Forester replacing Smith) and Chief Forester Robertson (replacing Peterson) were seeking to transform. Lace curtain radicals almost without peer, they were determined to uproot by trencher, bulldozer and front end loader, every last vestige of the forest service culture advanced by Pinchot, Silcox and McArdle.”

The women of the forest service even filed a class action suit separate from the men against the leaders of demolition de-construction. The women were then called in a very condescending way by court monitor Jeannie Meyer “good old boys in women’s clothing,” There was no end to their arrogance and subterfuge.

Burchfield surmises;

“Postmodern forestry’s real mission was the tree by tree, acre by acre, employee by employee destruction of a male dominated institution that since its inception had performed with such striking success. If dismantling that male institution injured the interests of more women than it benefitted, that was unfortunate but incidental to the task.”

When the South Canyon (1994 – Death of 14 Firefighters on Storm King Mountain) tragedy unfolded the subsequent investigation brought new concerns to congress. Why was so little of the money allocated to finance fire preparedness ever seen on the ground? Tired of lip service congress forced the agency to develop a fire budget process that would ensure that the money sent from Washington went to the field. Our small fire budget on a “cowboy ranger district” in Wyoming went from $7,000 to $77,000 dollars overnight. The bureaucrats had scammed 90% of the districts fire budget to finance their social agenda. I was not alone. A hot shot superintendent told me that 60% of his operating budget had been siphoned off the top. It was an eye opener for me.  But the betrayal only continued.

Arlen S. Roll of the Northern Rocky Mountain Region was bold in his zeal to usurp federal law with forest service policy.  He seems more a patron of the Goering – Goebbels inner circle than a forest service official. Already the agency had lost 500 cases in court that required backpay and promotion to individuals suing the agency for discrimination due to affirmative action quotas. The costs alone in California for these losses ran at around 2 million dollars. It is estimated that another 500 cases were settled out of court in favor of the plaintiffs. But Arlen pressed on claiming there was no such thing as reverse discrimination and that employees must follow policy or find another job. While others worked in the shadows to break the law Arlen was bold in his proclamations. Christopher Burchfield states “What is so astonishing about him was his Hitlerian bluntness.” The real power in government no longer resided with its elected officials or in the rule of law.

It was the dawn of an agency weaponized against its own employees. Policy would now usurp the law. But the new Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas cried foul when he took over. He told his employees to tell the truth and follow the law.  The entrenched ignored Thomas and continued to undermine their own chief. The culture change was now complete and further sealed with the early buy outs of the late 1990’s that gutted the agencies’ remaining resource management expertise. When Jack Ward Thomas left he noted nine matters he never wanted to deal with again. The top of the list included political correctness, the violation of civil rights and dismissal of equal employee opportunities.

A deep state, a shadow government or fourth branch of the government was now reality. While the agency consolidated field units and closed ranger stations, guard stations,  forest fire lookout towers and some forest supervisors offices it also added 300 new employees to the Washington headquarters. In Wyoming I counted six small town district ranger stations closed. Two forests and one national grassland (Routt – Medicine Bow – Thunder Basin) were combined across the Colorado and Wyoming state lines and their respective congressional districts to promote centralization. The forest service soon became irrelevant in rural America as the Washington office seized more power to promote their policies of social re-invention, environmentalism and off forest hiring practices.

Local individuals who knew their communities became difficult to hire under a new national and regional employment and review system focused on multiculturalism. This further separated the agency from what rural roots might have been left.  Forest service engine captain Tom Locker stated that the agencies subversive goal was to, “Out and out culturally cleanse the small towns of America.”

I have worked with some outstanding women in the forest service and fire. Woman that will be the first to stand up for civil rights and merit promotion. I have coached boys and girls in high school (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) cross country and track. I have sons and daughters and nine grandchildren so far. So, why should I write this review? Because I want an even and fair playing field for all of them. Discrimination based on race, color, sex and creed is against the law and has no place in our society. “Content of character” is what counts. We must also be confident that our federal agencies follow the law and not contrived policy.

We live in the present and not yesterday. Our actions speak for today. I also know that we are bound to repeat yesterday’s mistakes if we do not study the past. What happened to the U.S. Forest Service is history that should not be swept under the rug. In history you take the bad with the good. You learn from it.

The individual tragedy for many of us is that our boy hood dreams in the calling of  conservation at a once premier forest service lay dashed upon the rocks. As a hot shot, smokejumper and forester I went from the “golden boy” to the “black sheep” in a few short years. I never changed. But the agency did. I loved a forest service that I soon came to distrust. Tragically, I experienced the change from a highly decentralized conservation learning organization to a highly centralized politically correct environmental bureaucracy.

In closing. There are agendas and then there is reality. When the agenda does not match reality we call its proponents delusional. Thank you Christopher Burchfield for exposing the delusion of the Great Betrayal in The Tinder Box.

 

History Lesson: Woodsworker Deficit Supplied by POWs in Wyoming in 1940s

by

Currently we have education programs preparing people to work in the woods. Back in the 1940s they had the same kind of problem, and fixed it with… training POWs.

Thanks to the Cowboy State Daily and author Dick Perue for this one.

Worth reading, but this reminded me that some things haven’t changed much in the last 80 years..

Political and Otherwise

“Last week’s issue of the Saratoga Sun related that 150 war prisoners from the camp at Douglas are at work for the R. R. Crow Timber company in Carbon county. Inquiry in Cheyenne revealed that the number of war prisoners to be so “employed” is to be increased to 300.

“What’s funny about that? Nothing at all except that this is an educational project authorized and supervised by the state department of education.

“The educational feature of the project is supposed to derive from the fact that these war prisoners who recently were engaged in the business of shooting down American soldiers in North Africa are being educated in the art of logging—through the beneficence of the state department of education with benefit of a grant from the federal treasury.

“The logs will be ‘processed’ in the sawmills of R. R. Crow company at or near Saratoga.

“(Mr. Crow is a staunch Republican—[and] twice was a candidate for the nomination for the U. S. senate in the Republican primaries).

“And who are the teachers? Well10or 11 of the Crow Lumber company’s employees have been put on the payroll of the department of education. They are the faculty, as it were.

“These loggers turned teachers, however, do not suffer the financial handicaps of school teachers who teach Wyoming youth in Wyoming schools. Not at all.

“These Crow employees who have switched to the department of education payroll are paid $1.50 per hour for a 44-hour week. We can imagine that many Wyoming district school teachers that is fancy wages. And we believe there are members of the University of Wyoming faculty who willing would trade their pay checks for one of the pay checks that will go to the state department of education’s ‘teachers”’ at or near Saratoga.

“This project no doubt is strictly on the up-and-up. But we never heard of the state department of education paying $1.50 an hour for teachers to teach American youth how to chop down a tree or any other kind of a trade. And if the department of education were staffed by Democrats, we can imagine the nasty things the Republicans would be saying about the waste of federal funds in the timber near Saratoga. They will continue to sob about federal expenditures, but they will not mention the steady flow of federal funds through the department of education—as long as that department is staffed by Republicans.

“For this ‘logging school’ near Saratoga is only one of a number of projects engaged in by the department of education which in the eyes of the taxpayers who pay the bill are of questionable value.”

Let’s Review Some Forest Service NEPA Stats

by

If you all have been following the California wildfires, you’ll discover that everyone tends to attach their favorite hobby horse to the disaster.

Politicians, climate change, patterns of housing, and even… vegetation treatments and permitting.   My pet peeve about coverage is how easily folks get into a forest discussion about what, in this case, was coastal scrub and grasslands.  Having said that, I think we need to engage with the permitting folks for many reasons,  not least because permitting reform of various kinds will be on the table in Congress again.  However we might disagree about what should be done, it seems to me that we should work together to get both facts and disagreements on the table.

I try to be hospitable to new people entering the space. Interestingly, permitting reform folks, who work on permitting infrastructure, renewables and so on, tend to use the Forest Service as an example. So we can help them out by adding value and/or questioning their observations.

I’m going to reprint Tom Hochman’s Substack post below.  Remember, we want to share our knowledge with a welcoming spirit. Also it doesn’t seem (as usual) that partisan-ness helps our policy discussions in any way. I’ve spent some time talking to DC folks in the last few weeks, and I think both sides needs to take a deep breath and try to move on past the acrimonious past (do politicians forgive?) so we all can move forward together.

So, from what you know, do these observations make sense and track with your experience? Here’s Hochman’s piece.

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

By now, everyone has heard about the wildfires sweeping through the Los Angeles area. The sheer scale of destruction is hard to make sense of. My cousin, aunt, and uncle in Pasadena spent days anxiously packed, ready to evacuate at any moment. Their friends lost their homes; the local elementary school is rubble.

It’s tough to pinpoint a single cause for any given wildfire—and wildfires sometimes happen regardless of human activity or government policy. But there’s no doubt that forest management and wildfire-prevention policies can reduce both the probability and severity of wildfires. In California and at the federal level, those policies have often fallen disastrously short.

With that, here’s a wildfire-focused edition of NEPAstats. I’ve compiled data (all cited at the bottom) on how NEPA and similar review processes intersect with wildfire prevention, and I’ve pulled together a number of specific case studies.

Case Studies

Jimtown Project (Helena National Forest)
  • Proposed thinning/underburning across 900 acres + underburning 220 more
  • EIS and Decision Notice released in May 2001
  • Project appealed despite support from 12 of 22 local landowners, county disaster services, and a tri-county fire group
  • By July 2003: ~45% of the proposed project area had already burned in a wildfire (Kimbell, 2005)

Six Rivers National Forest

  • December 1995: A storm topples trees across 35,000 acres
    • Fuel loads reach 300–400 tons per acre—10x normal
  • 1996–1999: Only 1,600 acres treated while “wrestling through analytical and procedural requirements”
  • September 1999: The Megram and Fawn Fires consume the remaining blowdown area plus 90,000 additional acres
  • Seven years later: The project remains in limbo after a court injunction (USFS, 2002)

Berry Creek (California)

  • Critical thinning projects were delayed by CEQA reviews
  • The North Complex Fire hit in 2020 before completion, resulting in 16 fatalities (Regan, 2025)

Grizzly Flats (California)

  • A forest-restoration project was held up for nearly a decade by NEPA and other environmental reviews
  • In 2021, two-thirds of the community burned before the project was completed (Regan, 2025)

Timing and Delays

Average time before treatments under NEPA
  • 3.6 years to start a mechanical treatment once the Forest Service initiates review
  • 4.7 years to start a prescribed burn under the same conditions
  • For projects requiring an EIS:
    • 5.3 years on average for mechanical treatments
    • 7.2 years for prescribed burns (Edwards & Sutherland, 2022)

Forest Service resource allocation

  • The Forest Service manages 192 million acres—8.5% of U.S. land area—but spends ~40% of direct work hours (>$250 million/year) on planning/assessment rather than active project work (USFS, 2002)
    • An estimated $100 million annually could shift from “unnecessary planning” to on-the-ground treatments with improved procedures
  • Annually, the Forest Service completes:
    • ~5,000 EAs,
    • ~120 project-level EISs
    • 15,000 CEs per year (USFS, 2002)

Litigation Patterns and Impact

  • Sierra Club v. Bosworth (2007) invalidated the Forest Service’s attempt to create a CE for fuel-reduction projects, meaning prescribed burns require a full EA/EIS
  • For NEPA-Related Appellate Court Cases:
    • Fuel-treatment projects that face legal challenges see an additional 1+ year of delay on average
    • Agencies prevail in 93% of NEPA fuel-reduction appeals, with 96% of these challenges brought by NGOs
    • An average of 3 years elapses between permit issuance and final resolution in these cases (Chiappa et al., 2024)

The Human and Environmental Costs

  • Forest density: Parts of the Sierra Nevada are now 6–7x denser than a century ago, fueling more intense megafires
  • GHG impacts: California’s 2020 wildfire emissions wiped out nearly two decades of the state’s greenhouse gas reduction progress
  • Species: Giant sequoias are dying in megafires; conifer forests are sometimes replaced by shrubland in the aftermath (Regan, 2025)

State-Level Barriers: CEQA and CalVTP

  • In 2020, California pledged to treat 500,000 acres per year by 2025—but remains far off due to lengthy reviews, public comment periods, and litigation (Regan, 2025)
  • California Vegetation Program aka CalVTP:
    • Projected 45,000 acres of treatments in the first year, but zero completed after 2+ years
    • 28,000 acres approved but not implemented
    • Project managers cite “unfamiliar and burdensome” documentation, multiple CalFire unit boundaries, and a pending lawsuit from the California Chaparral Institute and Endangered Habitats League (Friedman, 2022)
The CalVTP “fast-track” workflow

Recent Reform Efforts

  • California SB1159 (2024)
    • Would have exempted roadside vegetation clearing within 30 feet from CEQA
    • Died in committee
  • Federal TORCH Act
    • Would expand NEPA Categorical Exclusions for forest thinning and post-fire recovery, limit repeated ESA re-consultations for new species listings, and create larger “CLEAR Zones” for power line vegetation management (Regan, 2025)
    • Didn’t make it to the Senate floor
  • Fix Our Forests Act (2024)
    • Would expand NEPA Categorical Exclusions for certain forest management projects
    • Passed the House, didn’t make it through the Senate

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

What are your thoughts?

Interview with Jon Keeley on LA Wildfires

by

 short-wave infrared satellite image captured by Maxar Technologies on Wednesday of burning buildings in Altadena, Calif.Maxar Technologies / DigitalGlobe / Getty Images

 

Examining media coverage of the California wildfires has been interesting.

My favorite is The Hotshot Wakeup, (might be paywalled) who wisely asks us to hold our opinions until we get the results of investigations and reviews.

I think it’s illuminating to look at what AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science, sort of a professional society for scientists with a definite political veneer) tells journalists via Sciline.  It’s interesting to think you can cover wildfires in the LA metro area (a fairly unique place in terms of wildfire) and spice it up with quotes from people who are not talking about the LA Metro area.

Check out the AAAS recommendations below the asterisks.  Meanwhile, Michael Shellenberger interviewed Jon Keeley of the USGS, someone whose work we are familiar with, talking real time about these specific wildfires.

Two people are dead, and 80,000 have been forced to evacuate neighborhoods in Los Angeles thanks to fires raging out of control. According to the media and some scientists, climate change is causing the fires. “Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity,” reported the BBC.

But one of the country’s top fire experts disagrees. “I don’t think these fires are the result of climate change,” Jon Keeley, a US Geological Survey scientist, told Public. “You certainly could get these events without climate change.”

Keeley has researched the topic for 40 years. In 2017, Keeley and a team of scientists modeled thirty-seven different regions across the United States and found that “humans may not only influence fire regimes but their presence can actually override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.”

Keeley’s team found that the only statistically significant factors for the frequency and severity of fires on an annual basis were population and proximity to development. “We’ve looked at the history of climate and fire throughout the whole state,” said Keeley, “and through much of the state, particularly the western half of the state, we don’t see any relationship between past climates and the amount of area burned in any given year.”

What about scientists who claim that the dry conditions are unusual? “If you look at the past 100 years of climates in Southern California,” said Keeley, “you will find there have been Januaries that have been very dry. And there’s been autumns that have been very dry. There have been Santa Ana winds in January. So these sorts of conditions are what contribute to a fire being particularly destructive at this time of the year. But it’s not the result of climate change.”

It’s true that “We are seeing changes in Santa Ana winds,” said Keeley. “For example, we’ve looked at fire history going back to the middle of the 20th century. For the first half of that record, Santa Ana winds were more common in September than they are today. They were less common in the winter than they are today. It appears that we are seeing a shift in the distribution of Santa Ana winds.

“But we have no basis for saying that’s due to global warming,” Keeley said. “There’s no evidence that climate change has impacted Santa Ana winds.”

And the fires appear to have started in the residential areas, not in the wildland vegetation known as chaparral. “It doesn’t appear that the wildland vegetation had a lot to do with the fire because the fire didn’t start in the wild land areas. That started within the urban environment. And whether these are unique? I would say, definitely not unique. Fires in Southern California are not an abnormal event. We get them all the time throughout the year. The fact that we have a high-intensity fire in Southern California, that’s a normal event.”

The issue is, overwhelmingly, more people in harm’s way. “If you look at fire history in the San Gabriel Valley, which is where the Eaton fire occurred 50 years ago, we didn’t have events where fires burned into communities. In part that was due because the urban environment was surrounded by citrus orchards. And that’s what buffered the communities from the wildland areas. And if fires started within those citrus orchards or burned into them, they generally burned out. Today, we don’t have citrus orchards. We just have more homes.”

This seems like a bit of a theme.. agriculture manages vegetation, until they move away, and then vegetation grows up and dries out (like Lahaina).

Why, then, does so much of the media coverage focus on climate change? “It all depends on who the journalist interviews,” said Keeley. “If they interview a climatologist who really doesn’t know very much about wildland vegetation and also has an agenda of demonstrating climate change, they’re going to see climate as a major driver.”

It all depends on whom the journalist interviews, so see the AAAS list below.

Are such forest preventable? Said Keeley, “I don’t think these fires are 100 percent preventable. We can reduce the probability of a fire. You can reduce the probability that they’ll be destructive. There are things you can do. But, these fires are a normal part of the environment. Chaparral fires have been around for at least 20 million years. So we have a greater probability of a fire during a Santa Ana wind event. And we have a greater probability that people are going to be affected by that fire because there’s more people out there on the landscape.”

************************************
Here are the sources AAAS recommends.  Remember, this part of Calif is chaparral or brush, not forest.

Wildfire Resources

Covering the Southern California wildfires? Need expert quotes and science resources for your news stories? SciLine has several FREE resources available for local reporters to use.

Wldfire prevention

Potential causes of wildfires

Possible after effects of wildfires
Impacts on communities
Recursos en español

**************”Want to speak to an expert directly? Our expert matching team (M-F, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. EDT) can rapidly connect you to articulate, knowledgeable experts – for free!

SciLine is a free service for journalists and scientists based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society. Editorially independent, nonpartisan, and funded by philanthropies, SciLine has the singular mission of enhancing the amount and quality of scientific evidence in news stories.”

Financial support for SciLine is provided by the Quadrivium Foundation, with additional funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Heinz Endowments, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Rita Allen Foundation. AAAS provides in-kind support. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.359.6383.1479-a

And yet, philanthropies have their own philosophies and interests.  We expect that this does not influence the scientists selected or not selected, or the outlets supported or not supported.

SciLine reserves the right to deny service to any reporter or news outlet that, in its judgment, fails to adhere to widely accepted journalistic practices, including editorial independence from advertisers and donors and clear distinction between news and opinion.