Month: January 2011

Practical Wisdom For Land Managers

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Jim Fenwood sent this in..

Here’s a sample chapter of a new book entitled Practical Wisdom by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe.

Rules and incentives may improve the behavior of those who don’t care, though they won’t make them wiser. But in focusing on the people who don’t care—the targets of our rules and incentives—we miss those who do care. We miss those who want to do the right things but lack the practical wisdom to do them well. Rules and incentives won’t teach these people the moral skill and will they need. Even worse, rules can kill skill and incentives can kill will.

It would be interesting to peruse this book and see if there are potential applications in our line of work. It would be interesting to hear from our wise elders and their experiences. Posts on this topic are welcome.

Beaverhead Deerlodge- Another “Who’s At the Table?”

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Here’s a link to a newer lawsuit on the Beaverhead Deerlodge plan.

County Commissioner Mike McGinley said the Forest Service’s plan included wilderness areas that were never before considered and don’t meet the criteria for the highest level of land protection under federal law. And he said the plan, which guides management of the 3.3-million acre forest, was crafted after closed-door meetings between then Beaverhead Forest Supervisor Bruce Ramsey and the partnership members.

It seems like once again the issue is who was at the table. Is this an argument for formal advisory committees which include governments? Where should cooperating agencies and others fit? I hope that folks in Montana will share their insights.

My Take on the “Science Integrity” Guidelines

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If you haven’t been following this issue, OSTP (the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President) (for whom I once worked on agbiotech regulation- great perks, BTW, highly recommended as a DC experience!) released some guidelines, based on a President’s Memo, here.

Some people are aware of the situations which apparently triggered the perceived need for these guidelines. However, it is not really clear at this point what those were, nor how the memo or the guidelines would help resolve similar problems. As regular readers know, I am a fairly concrete thinker. It could just be that the concepts are too abstract for me. Nevertheless, in some old jobs I’ve had, I would be one of the folks in the agencies charged with implementing the guidelines. I can’t help but think we have better uses for the time of a small army of GS-14s and 15s than writing more policy on something that doesn’t seem very clear. Or even necessary, if we can’t clearly articulate what we are trying to keep others from doing. Even in our humble daily world of administrative appeals, we try to link facts found and conclusions drawn.

Also of concern is that Roger argues that in some cases the problem was not caused by the agencies (who are required to “fix it”) but by the EOP, when the agencies “did it right.” See his comments here.

By the way, if this is a policy on the use of science in policy development, then its development should follow its own rationale- it should use science and technology policy scholars (e.g., Jasanoff, Pielke, Sarewitz) to give scientific advice in its development.

Anyway, in this guest post for Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog, I attempt to make sense of the President’s memo. Also, the comments and thought of David Bruggeman are of interest. My post is part of a series on Roger’s blog.

The New Yorker on the Decline Effect

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A colleague sent this link to me.. for sheer curiousity, it’s hard to beat.

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe

Who’s at the Table and Who Decides?

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Observing the stories in the press on our favorite topics over the past two weeks, I found a common set of questions that I hope can illuminate the controversies. ”Who’s at the Table and Who Decides?” There is another thread, in some of these stories, of the appropriate role of state and local governments.

In this post, we’ll examine the settlement of case against four forest plans (82 Rule) in southern California.

Here’s the link to the below quote. http://lakeconews.com/content/view/17531/931/
Here’s the link to another piece on the settlement on this blog.

SAN FRANCISCO – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. has announced a settlement that requires the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider its plans regarding wilderness lands in four national forests, including the Los Padres, home of the endangered California condor. “With this settlement, the state of California will now play an active role along with the Forest Service in determining which areas of Southern California forests will be preserved as wilderness,” Brown said. The settlement resolves a lawsuit brought by Brown and various state agencies and environmental groups against the U.S. Forest Service for its plans to allow roads to be built through hundreds of thousands of acres of wild lands in the Los Padres, Angeles, Cleveland and San Bernardino national forests.

Who’s at the table? The plaintiffs (listed in the agreement) and the Forest Service and DOJ.
Who decides? The Department of Justice and the Forest Service and the plaintiffs, which in this case includes the State of California.

It appears to me that the State and groups that used the tactic of litigation moved the decisions in forest plans from being an open process, where the FS decides, to a not- open process where it is not so clear who decides. If land management allocations are ultimately to be made in the courts, because plans are so complex that it is difficult to do one perfectly- especially when people are paid to find flaws- perhaps it tells us that more conflict resolution, and not more analysis is what is needed. Again, I think it’s OK to use that as a tactic, but using that as a tactic has potential negative ramifications, from the perspective of openness and transparency, that need to be acknowledged.

It looks like the settlement imposes roadless-rule like requirements or, in other words, establishes a policy for federal lands in part of the State. We have had the discussion before on this blog about whether settlement agreements actually set policy. This seems to be an example of that.