NY Times Editors Need New Nemesis

Here’s the link and here’s what is says about the planning rule:

The other piece of news is more complicated. Last month, the Agriculture Department proposed long-awaited forest-planning rules. The rules, mandated by 1976 National Forest Management Act, are supposed to guide forest managers as they decide which parts can be logged and which should be fully protected.

The act’s bedrock principle is that the health of the forests and their wildlife is to be valued at least as much as the interests of the timber companies. The Clinton administration’s rules firmly embraced that principle; the industry-friendly Bush rules did not.

The Obama administration’s proposed rules improve on the Bush rules and are full of high-minded promises about maintaining “viable” animal populations. But they are disappointingly vague on the question of how — and how often — the biological diversity of any particular forest is to be measured and what actions are to be taken to ensure its survival.

The net result is to give too much discretion to individual forest managers and not nearly enough say to scientists. This is dangerous because, over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.

As secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack has been more attentive to the needs of the forest, so far, than any agriculture secretary since the Clinton days. He should make sure these rules are strengthened.

When we had the law students visit earlier this week, they also talked about “industry,” and I asked them who do they mean? The ski industry, the oil and gas industry, the ranching “industry” (not sure anyone uses that expression, but..). Is there anything they are all united on? Do they actually work together to “open up” NFs to all uses? No.

Earth to NY Times editors- timber wars are over! They need to find new evil empire or federation of empires. Timber industry folks just aren’t very scary- see this press release about the Montrose mill.

Of course, my favorite part of this editorial was this quote

“The net result is to give too much discretion to individual forest managers and not nearly enough say to scientists. This is dangerous because, over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.”

Now, if we were on this side of the Hudson looking in that direction, we might suggest that the NY State Legislature, or perhaps the Mayor of New York could also be replaced by scientists. Because, after all, their “local” elected officials can be too easily influenced by industries of various kinds, instead of listening to those who know better, perhaps the editors at the Denver Post ;)?

14 thoughts on “NY Times Editors Need New Nemesis”

  1. In a way giving more “say” to scientists is a must in moving toward adaptive management. Still, we can’t give them too much say, as I noted in my epistle to the Clinton Era Committee of Scientists:

    As technocrats, it seems that when we get into trouble we search our Progressive Era science roots and conclude that, “Science will find the answer.” We certainly seem to have done so during the forest planning process. And we did it again when we reached the RPA/forest planning impasse. When we switched gears and launched our big-deal assessment/plans that today have eclipsed the forest plans in terms of controversy, we seemed to have forgotten to ask ourselves, “What lessons did we learn from the earlier effort and what lessons did we fail to learn?”

    At the impasse of RPA/forest planning, when the environmental community got good at setting up what some of us like to call “master switches” that turn out our plan/project lights, we began to think in terms of large-scale assessments and plans as a way out of that dilemma. We super-sized on scale and doubled-down on science. Other than that, though, what was different in our approach? Had we learned either our politics or our science lesson?

    I argue that we haven’t learned our science lesson. It is folly to assume that, “Science will find the answer,” as if science alone were the key to resolving social problems. Such thinking hasn’t been helpful to medical practitioners, engineers, even scientists when challenged to help explain the cultural mess we’ve gotten ourselves into relative to sustainability. Even though people haven’t given up on science altogether it still viewed very much as a two-edged sword–capable of aiding either the forces of darkness or of light. Scientists are hard pressed to show that their brand of science–no matter what brand–is likely to serve the forces of light more than the forces of darkness. Maybe it is time for us to rethink our stance on science, to reposition it to put science in dialogue with management and to put both in dialogue with the public….

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  2. Ummm, are not “forest managers” ALSO graduates with science degrees, and henceforth, should labeled as “scientists”, as well? This is no broad brush. This is a giant paint roller that says all “forest managers” need to be stripped of any shred of “discretion”, as they simply cannot be trusted, as a group. We keep seeing this undercurrent of distrust that won’t go away. In the end, it will be the “Ologists” who will be hamstrung and they watch their ESA habitat continue to dwindle, ensuring that ESA species remain listed.

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  3. In response to Sharon’s
    “Earth to NY Times editors- timber wars are over! They need to find new evil empire or federation of empires.”

    My personal experience and observation of the national forest system management is that the Timber wars are NOT over, the editors of the New York Times are not the New York City government, nor have anything to do with New Yorker magazine, but I concur with the implication that the institutional dysfunction of the USFS and municipality of New York share common dynamics.

    Just as there is a well known culture of corruption in municipal governance which periodically gets exposed, yet with no systemic changes occurring to prevent further corruption, there’s an identical pattern occurring in the Forest Service.

    The perpetuation of corrupted institutions is directly linked to the failure of the rank and file to demand the causes of corruption be addressed and to advocate– no, DEMAND changes occur around causes.

    NCFP’s advocacy has a curious selectivity about what is worthy of discussion in such matters as science-based, decision making on national forests.

    While there’s plenty of antipathy expressed here against environmental legislation and the scientific basis for its implementation there’s a distinct pall of silence around the agency’s tragic history of manipulation and suppression of science-based management.

    Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this agency culture is the refusal of those line and staff officers within the Forest Service who bear witness to the systematic intimidation and expulsion of whistleblowers —

    yet, choose to say nothing.

    To sanction by silence an indisputable culture of coercion and suppression of principled scientists who themselves know (as Dylan said), “when something’s not right, it’s wrong”– is really no different than accepting public corruption in city hall.

    Sharon’s threat that “perhaps the Mayor of New York could also be replaced by scientists” while on its (absurd) face eliminates what little remains of the facade of democracy (which is thoroughly under corporate control), it also illuminates the parallel nature of this predicament within the Forest Service and academic institutions receiving massive infusions of corporate/foundation cash, right-wing think tanks and institutes pushing neoliberal agendas.

    Don’t count on reading about such matters here though.

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    • Earlier this morning I was thinking of writing a post for my Econ Dreams – Nightmares blog on the need to protect whistleblowers rather than killing them (often literally, via long-term chronic or short-term acute illness). In the arena of big finance, the idea would be to reward whistleblowers handsomely, e.g. give them enough money that they need not work on Wall Street any longer — since likely as not they never again would work there. I was then going to cross-walk that post over here. So maybe now I have once more reason to do it. 🙂

      Reply
  4. David,

    You said

    While there’s plenty of antipathy expressed here against environmental legislation and the scientific basis for its implementation there’s a distinct pall of silence around the agency’s tragic history of manipulation and suppression of science-based management.

    Not clear what you mean.. most folks would consider what we do “science-informed” if not “science-based.” Could you give some examples of “manipulation and suppression”?

    BTW I hope you are not thinking that I have antipathy toward environmental legislation.. and I know the difference between the NY Times, the government of NYC, and the New Yorker Magazine. I posted the famous New Yorker cartoon to express the concept that perhaps folks at the NY Times editorial page are not paying much attention to what is going on elsewhere in the country.

    Some of us remember this quote from Jack Ward Thomas, Chief of the Forest Service, in testimony in 2001 (ten years ago now).

    The transition to the environmental era has not been easy and is still underway. On one side, the hard-core environmental movement cannot come to grips with the consequences of victory. They are still wandering about the battlefield bayoneting the wounded. Having won great victories, it is essential that they move to support the changes in agency missions they have helped engender.

    On the other edge of the spectrum of interest in the National Forests are those who engage in a ritualized ghost dance aimed at resurrection of the good old days of the 1980s. Having suffered great defeats, it is essential that they move to ensure that some justifiable and needed level of resource extraction continues.

    It has been observed that, in our democracy, decisions are made by the majority of the minority that is deeply concerned about a particular issue. These are the people, on both sides of the debates, who are the minority that truly cares about the future of the public lands.

    The vast majority of those not so committed to their causes weary of the noise and smoke of a battle that is over and demand a truce and the stability (which will be temporal) that comes with that truce. So, I suggest, it may be time to fall back on that ancient wisdom to be applied when we weary of battle “Come, let us reason together.”

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    • (examples of agency “manipulation and suppression” are best deferred to GAP, AFSEEE and PEER, but my references involve):

      Manipulation:
      The “timber wars are over” — is a trademark roundtable collaboration catchphrase. I beg to differ with its thesis, being intimately familiar with such agency spin, which depends more upon people not knowing the on-the-ground reality, than those who live it. (The strategy being, “timber wars are over” when repeated often enough, the majority of the public believes it as “true”.)

      “Wars” are even more renewable than “wood fiber”, or “stems” (as the agency prefers to refer to our rainforests here). That there has been widespread mismanagement and unsustainable levels of timber harvest across our national forest system which necessitates periodic lulls in large-scale harvest, affords a brief media window to pitch “timber wars are over”. But that would also require ignoring hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies funding mandated biomass projects on the Lower 48 national forest system.

      On the Tongass National Forest, (our nation’s largest) the USFS is currently planning the Big Thorne Project on Prince of Wales Island, whose watersheds were hammered with hundreds of thousands of acres of clearcuts during the previous 50 years of the pulp era.

      Manipulation of science:
      Despite the recent favorable “Roadless” ruling, the Big Thorne will add 37 miles of new roads and reconstruct an additional 26 miles in order to remove up to 100 million board feet of virgin oldgrowth rainforest from 5800 acres from the same hammered road system and watersheds. The concurrently planned Wrangell Island Project takes out 91 million board feet, building yet more roads and there are several other large timber sales going on across the Tongass — too many to list here. These are occurring despite the imminent listing of species of concern and claims “the timber wars are over”.

      Meanwhile, on the Tongass, we are subjected daily to the promised USFS “Transition” media spin and hype including the new Planning Rule penned significantly by Mark Rey and approved by the USFS on 12/12/06 that categorically excludes the all-important nationwide forest plan revisions from NEPA.

      The National Fish and Wildlife Service, (among many, many others) has many concerns with the Big Thorne, such as “…(some) OGRs do not include patches of old growth critical to maintaining habitat integrity and connectivity in areas that have been extensively harvested”. (OGRs being “old growth reserves” functioning supposedly as biological lifeboats in vast seas of clear cuts, which get routinely parasitized by timber planners looking for increasingly scarce “economic” timber.)

      Suppression: (far, far, too many examples to list here)
      Again, I’ll start with personal experience from the loss of a dear friend and personal hero, Glen Ith, a USFS biologist who felt it was his professional duty to turn whistleblower, successfully appealing and prevailing against the agency in court. As a biologist, Glen knew the further clearcutting would result in severely compromised winter deer survival and marten populations. (Briefly excerpted below but FSEEE provides far more detailed content)

      http://www.adn.com/2009/06/14/831061/feds-must-pay-legal-fees-for-whistleblower.html
      Published: June 14th, 2009 08:34 PM


      JUNEAU — A federal court judge says the U.S. Forest Service must pay the legal fees for the widow of a Tongass National Forest whistleblower who died shortly after he lost his job.
      U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick in Anchorage issued the order Friday. Sedwick is the same judge who sided with Glen Ith, a federal biologist who sued the Forest Service in 2006 after discovering that the agency was building bridges and repairing logging roads for timber sales that had not been approved.
      Ith was placed on administrative leave after he filed the lawsuit and appealed two Tongass timber sales.
      Ultimately, his position was eliminated in a downsizing. Four days later, he died of a heart attack.
      Glen died while under intense, prolonged (several weeks) professional humiliation and intimidation by his supervisors yet healthwise, was in excellent shape, a committed father husband, craftsman, biologist, community volunteer, among many other qualities, and capacities.”(end)

      The Supervisor of the Tongass at the time was Abigail Kimbell who, from there, was promoted to the Bighorn, where she continued to harass, reassign, intimidate and expunge whistleblowers to the extent of being promoted to Chief of the Forest Service (excerpts of suppression of science from http://www.peer.org/docs/fs/07_1_2_bighorn_whistleblowers_story.pdf)

      “* suppression of science demonstrating that Forest Plan standards were violated. Environmental assessments, riparian surveys and range assessments were left unfunded, stalled or ignored.
      * circumvention of environmental laws by limiting assessment of impacts to piecemeal consequences, instead of analyzing how activities would affect the whole forest ecosystem, as well as failure to conduct prior environmental assessments at all for some issues such as soil erosion. Another example includes reopening portions of the forest for motorized roads without an environmental assessment, in violation of a 1983 NEPA decision.”
      http://www.peer.org/docs/fs/07_1_2_bighorn_whistleblowers_story.pdf

      The following is a but a small sampler:

      U.S. OFFICE OF SPECIAL COUNSEL ANNOUNCES GROUP SETTLEMENT OF WHISTLEBLOWER RETALIATION COMPLAINTS FILED BY FORMER AND CURRENT EMPLOYEES OF THE BIGHORN NATIONAL FOREST

      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 4/22/03
CONTACT: JANE MCFARLAND
(202) 653-7984               
          Today, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) announced the favorable settlement of eight whistleblower retaliation complaints filed by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) on behalf of both former and current employees of the U.S. Forest Service’s Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming. Under the settlement, the Forest Service will pay a lump sum amount of $200,000 to be divided between the complainants.

      http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_18145.shtml
      U.S. Forest Service Suspends Whistleblower
      By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
      Associated Press
      Tuesday, May 31, 2005
      Over a period of nine years, 44 employees at Bighorn complained about local managers. Thirty were subsequently forced out of the Forest Service. Others had their jobs eliminated, were reassigned to other Forest Service locations, and passed over for promotions. In 1997, a new supervisor mandated a massive reorganization of the Bighorn office. The whistleblowers’ lawyers say this was nothing more than an effort to purge the site of the remaining whistleblowers.

      “An Open Letter to all Americans…”
      http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/ew920330
      “PROTECTING INTEGRITY AND ETHICS CONFERENCE” 3/30/92

      John McCormick, retired Whistleblower Program, Forest Service. John was
      introduced by facilitator as the person “that the Forest Service made a mistake
      with–they put him at the desk for whistleblowers.” McCormick said that the
      Forest Service is organized in a way that it investigates itself. The Forest
      Service has ways to avoid resolving Whistleblowing (W) complaints

      http://www.endgame.org/weyer-probe.html
      WASHINGTON – The U.S. Forest Service obstructed an investigation into allegations that Weyerhaeuser Co. illegally harvested millions of dollars of timber from national forests

      http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/a-rare-whistleblower-victory/A Rare Whistleblower Victory

      By Notra Trulock  |  June 4, 2003

      http://www.endgame.org/weyer-probe.html
      WASHINGTON – The U.S. Forest Service obstructed an investigation into allegations that Weyerhaeuser Co. illegally harvested millions of dollars of timber from national forests

      Matters of Political Inconvenience: Scientists in the
      Public Service
      http://apatriotsmanifest.com/may08/index08050701.html
      Simona Perry | Interview with Jeff Ruch, PEER
    t r u t h o u t
          Wednesday 07 May 2008
      An interview with Jeff Ruch, Executive Director of PEER, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

      As far as Thomas’ “transition to the environmental era” that supposedly started ten years ago… leading to “changes in agency missions” — I’m waiting…. especially for the environmental part.

      Unfortunately, the only meaningful changes I’m seeing are through a systematically defunded agency which is transitioning through incremental privatization of public resources and outsourcing of agency functions.

      Ten years after Thomas’ claim, the only “bayoneting” is through the neoliberal project and the “free market environmentalists” attacking NEPA, NFMA, ESA and those who dare invoke such laws challenging their corporatized government to accountability.

      Reply
  5. “On one side, the hard-core environmental movement cannot come to grips with the consequences of victory. They are still wandering about the battlefield bayoneting the wounded.”

    Jack Ward Thomas has literally been giving this same “bayoneting the wounded” speech for ten years now, maybe even longer. I’ve heard it about 6 or 8 times, as he’s a frequent speaker in Missoula. It’s a good line for him that obviously plays to the crowd (and media) pretty well…even if it’s out-dated and doesn’t really reflect reality.

    The snip Sharon provided is from JWT’s 2000 Congressional testimony. As you can see, by 2006 JWT had mixed it up a bit, as this was what he said at UM conference on the future of the Forest Service (http://www.headwatersnews.org/p.charmiller1214.html)

    “Many of the environmental persuasion,” the former chief of the Forest Service asserted in his address in Missoula, “unable to recognize or appreciate their overwhelming victory in efforts to bring down the [National Forest] timber harvest levels, continue even today to wander around yesterday’s battle fields bayoneting the wounded.”

    JWT also scored bonus points during that 2006 conference for referring to me as an “Eco-War Lord.” What was kinda funny about JWT’s 2006 “bayoneting” and “Eco-War Lord” comment is that the local Forest Service district ranger actually stood up and told JWT he didn’t really have much of a grasp on the current status of efforts to work together to find common ground.

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  6. Sharon, Based on my experience and where I’m sitting, this statement from the NY Times is pretty on-the-money and not really worthy of much hand wringing:

    “The net result is to give too much discretion to individual forest managers and not nearly enough say to scientists. This is dangerous because, over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.”

    I believe that any objective look at the situation will reveal that “over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.”

    Honestly, I’m sort of surprised that anyone would think this wasn’t the case in many circumstances and throughout much of the country. Wow! You mean resource extraction industries and their local political supporters aren’t trying hard to influence forest managers?

    Anyway, I’m off to wander around yesterday’s battle fields bayoneting the wounded….

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    • So, the mere fear of influenced “forest-ologists” trumps meaningful restoration decisions. We get it, Matt. Yes, the punishment from eco-sins of the last millenium must be “preserved”. Even in an “open and transparent” process.

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  7. Matthew, even if we added other “extractive industries” to the timber list.. like “when we say “timber”, we really mean, “timber, oil and gas and coal”? I think we need to identify the “extractive industries” that currently exist and are problematic.

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    • Your point, that of identifying and differentiating threats of all extractive industries is well-taken. Currently, there’s the threats of gold mining and uranium ore mining on the Tongass. The timber industry, easily being the greatest historical threat, is certainly not the only threat on public forest land.

      Hopefully, you can appreciate the fact that threats from the timber industry’s decades of extraction are on-going and not “outdated”.

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      • Is the cutting of trees averaging 14″ dbh in Region 5 still a “threat”, David? There is a single lumber mill in all of southern California but, does that make it a “threat”? I choose to think that budget cutbacks in fire suppression is more of a threat to forests here in California. I foresee states starting to withold fire resources that used to go to Forest Service wildfires. They already are doing that to city and county fire organizations.

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      • My concern is that if the Times editors only see “timber” as a threat (that is what they said, after all), they are not aware that in many parts of the country it is not an issue.

        If Colorado is having trouble with having our Montrose mill, there is one in S. Calif (which is influencing local politicians? please…) , the 4Fri in Arizona is trying to get industry going, it seems that we have a pattern. If the Times editors see that nationally Forest Service issues are “enviros vs. timber” we need to speak out and say “that is not true for many parts of the country.” They are reacting to an abstraction of “national forests” and not to our patchwork, nation-wide, reality.

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