Month: December 2011

Is Anyone Minding the Store?

by

For three years I’ve been wondering whether anyone in USDA pays attention to what the Forest Service does or says. Left to its own devices, the Forest Service is capable of much mischief. Here’s today’s example, from the “National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy“:

Wildland fire management actions are guided by a suite of laws, implemented through regulations and adopted as agency policy after public review and comment. Regulations and
policies, however, are often more limiting than the authorizing legislation itself, and sometimes may impede the accomplishment of management objectives and timelines. While legislation
such as the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) has been beneficial to active management of public lands, other legislation has been used to promote agendas and philosophies that are not necessarily in harmony with the legislation’s original intent. This is especially true of the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), which was meant to provide a means for underprivileged people to bring legal action against the federal government. Similarly, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are sometimes utilized by special interest groups to achieve objectives not considered by Congress when the bills were enacted. In addition to barriers presented by existing regulations and policies, the articulation of new or revised policies and changes in agency terminology and/or goals create challenges related to communication and implementation. It is important to seek out opportunities to streamline and coordinate procedures and to pursue broader use of authorities across jurisdictions to achieve common goals. Legislative barriers that are impeding project implementation must be examined and reformed to create incentives for resolving conflict through collaboration rather than litigation.

So, there we have it. The Forest Service now supports legislatively amending the Equal Access to Justice Act, the Endangered Species, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Is the Forest Service speaking for the Obama Administration? Does USDA know or care that its flagship agency has called upon Congress to amend three bedrock laws?

Needed: BLM and FS Lobbying Organization? “National Reserve Conservation Association”

by

Last week I was in DC and got a chance to ask some knowledgeable folks about the spate of “forests to parks” that have been proposed recently and discussed on this blog.

My personal opinion: I’d like all public land managers to have the funding to protect resources and to manage public use as appropriate. It would be fine with me if all the feds were all one agency and shared zoning of what’s OK and not OK to do in a certain place (say “blue” meant OHV’s OK, but no oil and gas). I just think time and funds spent switching agency ownerships on individual chunks of land could probably be spent better clarifying the issues of concern, and looking for areas where the land management agencies are inefficient or duplicate each others’ actions. I know that there are many obstacles to some kind of major change (one agency for all public lands), but even an effort to harmonize regulations would be a step in the right direction. See, for example, this piece in HCN (assuming that the statements are accurate). Here’sthe entire piece from HCN.

According to putatively knowledgeable sources, there were some efforts in the past, which led to an agreement between the Secretaries of Interior and Ag about “no poaching.” I’d appreciate more information on this history from readers if any of you are familiar with it.

Meanwhile the existence of the National Parks Conservation Association (website here) perhaps in and of itself, leads to the concept that “parks are better.”

Here is the information from their website on how and why that group was founded.

NPCA was established in 1919, just three years after the National Park Service. Stephen Mather, the first director of the Park Service, was one of our founders. He felt very strongly that the national parks would need an independent voice—outside the political system—to ensure these places remained unimpaired for future generations. Now, nearly one hundred years later, NPCA has more than 600,000 members and supporters.

Now, my current hypothesis is that if Parks has an independent group that lobbies for Parks, and if FS and BLM don’t have independent groups that lobby for them (we’ll call a new hypothetical group the National Reserve Conservation Association for now (other titles invited)), we would expect that Parks would get more money and attention to change land from BLM and FS to Parks. I like the term “Reserves” because it implies that the land has been reserved for some purpose. This is true of what NPS calls “reserves,” whose management sometimes allows a variety of preexisting uses, including OHV’s (see photo above).

Perhaps the solution is simply to start a lobbying group to balance the effects of NCPA, and to make sure that the taxpayer gets the best deal from the overall portfolio of public lands.

Last week, when news broke that much of West Virginia’s northern Allegheny Highlands might be considered for national park and preserve status, sportsmen raised a ton of questions:

How big would the park be? Would hunting be outlawed? Would trout stockings be curtailed? Who would manage the fish and wildlife? And what would become of trapping, ramp digging and ginseng hunting?

We have answers now for at least some of those questions. Earlier this week, I spoke with Judy Rodd, a spokeswoman for Friends of High Allegheny National Park and Preserve, who clarified some of the murkier points.

The preserve, as currently envisioned, would be pretty darned big – roughly 750,000 acres.

Rodd said it would start at Cathedral State Park in Preston County and extend southward to Cass in Pocahontas County. Its western boundary would start at Shavers Mountain near Elkins and would extend eastward to include current units of the George Washington National Forest in Hardy and Hampshire counties.

“All the lands that would be included in the preserve would be lands that are current state parks or are part of the Monongahela and George Washington national forests,” Rodd explained. “No private lands would need to be purchased.”

She added that only a portion of the land would be considered a full-fledged national park.

“The main units of the national park portion would include Cathedral, Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley state parks, and some portion of the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area,” she said.

“The Park Service folks have said units of the park could be spread apart like that. The rest of the land in the Allegheny Highlands – the vast majority of the land under consideration – would be in preserve status, where hunting and fishing would be encouraged.”

Rodd said she wasn’t sure if the Park Service would allow trapping on the preserve. However, a subsequent Internet search of several preserves’ websites showed that trapping is allowed on most of them.

The question of ginseng hunting caught Rodd by surprise; she said she “would have to talk the Park Service about that.” As to ramp digging, she harbored a rather strong opinion: “I dig them too, so naturally I would want [that] to be allowed.”

One of the more ticklish questions surrounding the preserve concept would be whether the state Division of Natural Resources or the National Park Service would have primary control of fishing-related issues.

In the New River Gorge National River, for example, DNR officials manage fisheries as they see fit. One sticking point has arisen, though. Park Service officials several years ago asked that non-native fish – rainbow and brown trout, specifically – not be stocked within the park’s boundaries. Stockings continue to this day.

In the state’s mountain highlands, trout fishing is a big issue. Most of the state’s most popular stocked-trout streams and rivers are in the preserve area, and most of the fish stocked are rainbows and browns. Rodd said she didn’t know whether DNR or Park Service policies would prevail.

“That’s too technical an issue for me,” she said.

Rodd said provisions to address any or all of sportsmen’s concerns could be written into legislation that would establish the park.

“That’s a long way off, though,” she said. “The [upcoming] study is called a reconnaissance study. If it finds that the area is unique enough to be included in the national park system, a resource study would follow. And then there would be a period of time to write the legislation and get it passed. Park and preserve status is still years away.”

Loving the land to death? A 21st Century Problem

by
Summertime visitors dot the shores of Maroon Lake

Pressure mounts on forests as recreation groups demand their piece of the woods
From the Aspen Times here.

Editor’s note: Today’s third installment of the five-part Aspen Times series, “Land of Opportunity,” focuses on how the U.S. Forest Service manages the White River National Forest which, in many ways, serves as the area’s economic driver. The fourth part, set for Monday, Dec. 19, takes a look at the state of ranching and logging in the Roaring Fork Valley.

When it comes to recreation in the White River National Forest, everybody wants a piece of the woods.

There were 144 outfitters and guides operating in the forest in 2010. They did everything from leading hunters into the backcountry by horseback to hauling bicyclists by van to Maroon Lake so they could coast down the paved road.

Skiers and snowboard riders use public lands at 11 ski areas forest-wide.

Hikers and backpackers have 2,500 miles of trails at their disposal and there are 751,900 acres of wilderness, where motorized and mechanized uses are prohibited.

Mountain bikers are always looking for new opportunities, occasionally building bandit trails then trying to legalize them later.

Dirt bikers and other off-road vehicle enthusiasts clamor for more terrain where they can operate machines capable of covering more than 100 miles on a good day of trail riding.

Snowmobilers, rock climbers, big peak baggers, paragliders, anglers, trail runners, backcountry skiers, picnickers, sightseers, nature lovers — everybody wants to spend time in the forest.

The result is about 9.2 million visits annually from people pursuing recreation in the White River National Forest — more than Grand Canyon and Yosemite national parks combined. Throw skiing out of the mix and you still get more than 2 million visits to the White River. Many of those visitors want to go to the same spectacular places at the same time of the summer.

“We’ve reached a point of saturation in some areas,” acknowledged Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams. “There are times you go to the Maroon Bells wilderness and you run into hundreds and hundreds of people.”

The age of industrial tourism
Valley native Tony Vagneur has witnessed the surge in tourism in the forests surrounding the Roaring Fork Valley over the last five decades. When he was a kid growing up in Woody Creek his family would run 1,200 cows and calves onto 30,000 acres in the Kobey Park area above Lenado. The cows had the place nearly to themselves — no off-road vehicles, no mountain bikes, only occasional hikers and hunters.

It was even possible to find solitude on visits to scenic backcountry lakes.

“I clearly remember in 1965 or ‘66, my great uncle Tom Stapleton and I went deer hunting at Maroon Lake,” Vagneur recalled. It was October and the fall colors were in full splendor. Nevertheless, they were the only people there, he said. They actually hunted right around the lake.

Visit Maroon Lake on a sunny October day these days and you will be sharing the views with hundreds of other sightseers. Maroon Lake has fallen victim to what the late Edward Abbey labeled industrial tourism. Like many national parks, the Maroon Bells Recreation Area is so popular that access is restricted during the heart of summer and bus service is required to move the masses.

Vagneur also hiked one recent summer to Capitol Lake, a place he had visited several times before and often found a fair degree of solitude. On the latest trip, he found 13 occupied campsites around the stunning, high-altitude lake.

“You might as well be camping out in Paepcke Park,” he said.

The lake is a popular destination for climbers tackling Capitol Peak, which looms over the lake. As bagging 14ers — the peaks in Colorado that exceed 14,000 feet in elevation — has grown more popular, so has the pressure on the backcountry surrounding those peaks.

Changing trends
Martha Moran, recreation staff officer for the Aspen and Sopris Districts, has watched backcountry and wilderness use patterns evolve for more than a decade since she joined the office. Among her observations: Hunting in the Aspen area has declined significantly; forest visitors are taking shorter-duration trips; and people are willing to sacrifice solitude to visit the most scenic areas.

It seems that travelers stick around more for long weekends rather than week-long trips, Moran said, so they are determined to see hotspots like the Maroon Bells on their brief outing, regardless of crowds. That concentrates more visitors into fewer sites.

“People are attached to special areas,” Moran said. “They aren’t going to the deep, dark woods.”

When they do venture further into the backcountry, it tends to be concentrated on routes made popular by coverage in magazines like Backpacker, Outside and National Geographic Traveler, Moran noted. The Four Pass Loop — which makes an incredible 26-mile journey over Buckskin, Trail Rider, Frigid Air and West Maroon passes — offers unparalleled beauty, but it’s tough to avoid crowds in July and August.

To some degree, the cash-starved Forest Service is addicted to industrial tourism. While most areas in the forest can be visited without paying a fee, the agency still capitalizes on payments for recreational uses. It collected $372,840 in 2010 from fees charged to outfitters and guides, educational institutions and organizers of special events, such as a backcountry marathon.

In addition, the fees charged at Maroon Bells, Vail Pass Winter Recreation Area, Green Mountain Reservoir and the handful of campgrounds that it still operates totaled $607,611 last year.

The agency also reaps fees from the 11 ski areas with special-use permits. Aspen Skiing Co., for example, paid nearly $1.4 million last season to lease public lands for its four ski areas.

The greater the number of outfitters and guides, the greater the number of visitors to the Maroon Bells and the greater number of skier and snowboard riders, the more money the Forest Service collects.

Many of those funds are plowed back into forest projects or are used to hire staff such as backcountry rangers, but some of the funds simply vanish into the U.S. Treasury.

Feds use management tools
The Forest Service is adapting to the recreation explosion. Researchers for the agency have found little public support for limiting the number of hikers on trails or visitors to certain areas to ease the crush of crowds. But forest lovers will support limits designed to protect the ecosystem, according to the agency’s research.

The White River National Forest uses various management tools to ease the human impact:

• Permits used to be issued to outfitter and guide with few questions asked. Now the agency performs a capacity analysis on every proposal to determine if there is a need for additional permits. Special event requests using forest lands also get thorough scrutiny.

• The Travel Management Plan released last summer closed 692 miles of bandit trails, constructed or used illegally, and decommissioned another 519 miles of routes from the White River National Forest’s official inventory. In many cases, the agency couldn’t afford to maintain all those routes, Fitzwilliams said.

• Wilderness designation prohibits motorized uses, such as Jeeps and dirt bikes, as well as mechanized uses, such as mountain bikes. Trails outside of wilderness often have restrictions.

• Other rules have been in place for decades to prevent us from loving our special places to death. Camps must be a certain distance away from high-country lakes. Wilderness rangers vigorously enforce the rules at the most heavily visited areas such as Snowmass Lake, Fryingpan Lakes and Crater Lake. The Aspen Ranger District recently beefed up restrictions at Conundrum Hot Spring, placing limits on the camps near the springs and prohibiting dogs from the upper valley.

Nevertheless, the special places still get overwhelmed. West Maroon Pass on a weekend in July and August resembles the pilgrimage route to Mecca.

In other, less pristine areas, the experience is different. It remains much as it was decades ago. Vagneur likes visiting the Hunter-Fryingpan wilderness, north of Aspen and up the Fryingpan Valley. “If you go in there a day [of travel on foot or horseback], you can be the only person there,” he said.

Vagneur is a volunteer with the Forest Service. During big game hunting seasons, he often roams the hills above Lenado on horseback to visit hunters’ camps. He answers a lot of questions and tactfully offers advice, like urging hunters to haul out trash. He had made the rounds for 15 straight years until taking a break this year.

“The numbers have gone down since ‘08, the recession year,” he said. Even before that, the numbers of hunters were in decline.

Part of the problem is user conflicts, as Vagneur sees it. Dirt bikers have turned the Kobey Park and Sloan’s Peak area into a near exclusive playground. Their sheer numbers overwhelm hikers and equestrians. The result is all the trails have been rutted down about three feet, forcing dirt bikers to make new trails alongside the old ones.

“The dirt bikes have just totally trashed the area,” Vagneur said. “You can’t walk on any of the trails up there.”

Conflicts can’t be helped
But dirt bikers are also feeling squeezed in the White River. The Forest Service is funneling them into fewer areas even though it is a growing endeavor. That creates high concentrations that can lead to trail damage.

Dirt biker Traci Schalow of Carbondale understands the frustration some users feel while about having the share the forest, but feels most people are understanding and cooperative with one another.

“I am the multi-user,” she said. “I like backcountry skiing. That is my thing.”

The explosion of extreme sports has lead to more people in the backcountry, Schalow said. She no longer ventures to Marble Peak, a popular backcountry ski area. “You can’t even find parking anymore,” she said.

Schalow feels that dirt bikers get a bad rap as people who don’t care about the environment. She is trying to do something about that (see related story). She said many riders enjoy the outdoors for the same reasons as mountain bikers and hikers.

“I find joy in the backcountry whether it’s skiing in the winter or dirt riding in the other seasons,” Schalow said. “Dirt bikes are a great mode for accessing wild places, especially areas that have distances prohibitive on foot or bicycle, unless you have several days to access it.”

She said there is a camaraderie in dirt biking that she hasn’t experienced in her other pursuits — mountain biking, trail running and backcountry skiing. “It’s a ‘we’ sport, more than any other sport I have participated in,” Schalow said.

Aspen Ranger District’s Moran said the White River National Forest probably experiences more users conflicts than forests closer to urban areas. The reason — so many passionate forest users. Dirt bikers want single-track trails while families want gentle backcountry roads to tour with their families. There are “flamboyant huckers” who use snowmobiles to get at powder-filled backcountry cliffs and there are cross-country skiers seeking solitude, according to Moran.

“It’s conflicts over access, really,” she said.

And that creates management headaches. Moran noted the “conundrum at Conundrum.” An environmental group called Wilderness Watch says the Aspen Ranger District’s recent limits on camping at Conundrum Hot Springs don’t go far enough to protect the area while some hot springs enthusiasts blast the agency for overreacting to alleged problems.

“There’s a lot of passion on how we manage our public lands,” Moran said.

The Forest Service has gone increasingly toward a “capacity limit” style of management. It examines the effects of human waste, user conflicts and quality of experience while contemplating rules.

“We’re trying to prepare for the next 70 years,” Moran said.

She personally feels that will force the Forest Service to sets limits on access to popular areas, at some point.

“I can visualize that’s where we’ll have to go eventually,” she said.

What’s the Right Source of Energy for Now? And Who Does the Analysis When?

by
A truck hauls 447 tons of coal at Peabody Energy’s North Antelope Rochelle coal mine in Wyoming. Environmentalists are suing the U.S. Forest Service over actions that would allow one of the world's largest surface coal mines to expand. (Courtesy photo/WesTech)

This news story reminds me that some people are against oil and gas development, some against coal, some against wind, biomass, and solar (and nuclear). It also reminds me that some agencies have argued that the right place to do NEPA on the GHGs from coal-fired power plants (or other plants) is when the plant is permitted. Not when the material is mined nor when the power lines are permitted. And certainly not to analyze the same GHG impacts several times..

Seems to me like the decision lies with the power plant owners who buy coal (since they are likely to buy it from somewhere else, if not Wyoming). This is from a person who may be paying higher electric bills because my utility wants to switch to natural gas fired power plants.

Environmentalists renew attack on Wyoming coal that fuels LES plant

By staff and wire reports | Posted: Saturday, December 10, 2011 10:45 pm

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Environmental groups last week took their legal fight to rein in carbon dioxide produced from burning Wyoming coal to a new agency, the U.S. Forest Service.

Their effort is directed at the potential expansion of a mine served by both the Union Pacific and BNSF Railway, and from which comes fuel for the Laramie River Station, a generating plant that is owned in part by Lincoln Electric System.

The Forest Service oversees national grasslands and in October signed off on expansion of the North Antelope Rochelle Mine farther into the Thunder Basin National Grassland. The surface coal mine there is among the world’s largest.

Three groups — WildEarth Guardians, the Powder River Basin Resource Council and Sierra Club — say the Forest Service didn’t adequately consider how burning the additional mined coal would affect the climate. They sued the Forest Service in U.S. District Court in Colorado.

The groups are opposing the agency’s OK of plans to lease the South Porcupine coal tract. The five-square-mile tract near Wright, Wyo., holds 402 million tons of coal and is owned by Peabody Energy Corp. of St. Louis.

Burning the additional coal beneath more than 1,600 acres of national grassland would release more than 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the annual output from more than 150 coal-fired power plants, the lawsuit said.

The Forest Service seems to have taken climate change seriously in other contexts, Jeremy Nichols with WildEarth Guardians told The Associated Press.

“They’ve said things like global warming is a serious threat to national forests and grasslands. Well, that’s great. Now do something about it,” Nichols said.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said the agency is reviewing the complaint. A spokeswoman for Peabody pointed out that the company is not party to the lawsuit and declined to comment.

Environmentalists are seeking all possible avenues to attack the coal industry, said Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.

“They’re just throwing everything they can at the wall and seeing what sticks. Hopefully the industries and the consumers will be successful in countering their arguments and will continue to rely on coal for many years in this country. Certainly the rest of the world will rely on coal,” Loomis said.

Two concentric loop tracks at the mine connect with the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific railroads’ joint trackage, according to Peabody’s website. Coal from the complex is currently delivered to more than 40 electricity generating customers operating more than 80 power plants throughout the United States, the website says.

Other recent lawsuits linking Wyoming coal and climate change targeted the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Citing federal figures, environmentalists say that more than 40 percent of all U.S. coal comes from Wyoming, making the state the original source of about 13 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

The BLM has been planning to lease the coal that is the subject of the lawsuit in February, said BLM spokeswoman Mary Wilson.

The lawsuit also said the coal mine expansion would disrupt wildlife habitat, land used for ranching and recreational opportunities.

Scientific Integrity on the Range

by

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has filed a scientific integrity complaint with the Department of Interior. DOI issued rules for maintaining scientific integrity back in January of this year.

I wonder how the Forest Service would fare if it proposed to do in depth assessments of ecological conditions on national forests without considering the effects of grazing?

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1537
For Immediate Release: November 30, 2011
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337

GRAZING PUNTED FROM FEDERAL STUDY OF LAND CHANGES IN WEST — Scientists Told to Not Consider Grazing Due to Fear of Lawsuits and Data Gaps

Washington, DC — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is carrying out an ambitious plan to map ecological trends throughout the Western U.S. but has directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a possible factor in changing landscapes, according to a scientific integrity complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The complaint describes how one of the biggest scientific studies ever undertaken by BLM was fatally skewed from its inception by political pressure.

Funded with up to $40 million of stimulus funds, BLM is conducting Rapid Ecoregional Assessments in each of the six main regions (such as the Colorado Plateau and the Northern Great Plains) covering the vast sagebrush West. A key task was choosing the “change agents” (such as fire or invasive species) which would be studied. Yet when the scientific teams were assembled at an August 2010 workshop, BLM managers informed them that grazing would not be studied due to anxiety from “stakeholders,” fear of litigation and, most perplexing of all, lack of available data on grazing impacts.

Exclusion of grazing was met with protests from the scientists. Livestock grazing is permitted on two-thirds of all BLM lands, with 21,000 grazing allotments covering 157 million acres across the West. As one participating scientist said, as quoted in workshop minutes:

“We will be laughed out of the room if we don’t use grazing. If you have the other range of disturbances, you have to include grazing.”

In the face of this reaction, BLM initially deferred a decision but ultimately opted to –

Remove livestock grazing from all Ecoregional assessments, citing insufficient data. As a result, the assessments do not consider massive grazing impacts even though trivial disturbance factors such as rock hounding are included; and
Limit consideration of grazing-related information only when combined in an undifferentiated lump with other native and introduced ungulates (such as deer, elk, wild horses and feral donkeys).

“This is one of the screwiest things I have ever heard of. BLM is taking the peculiar position that it can no longer distinguish the landscape imprint of antelope from that of herds of cattle,” remarked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting BLM has far more data on grazing than it does on other change agents, such as climate change or urban sprawl, that it chose to follow. “Grazing is one of the few ‘change agents’ within the agency’s mandate to manage, suggesting that BLM only wants analysis on what it cannot control.”

Earlier this year, the Interior Department, parent agency for BLM, adopted its first scientific integrity policies prohibiting political interference with, or manipulation of, scientific work. The PEER complaint charges that BLM officials improperly compromised the utility and validity of the Ecoregional assessments for reasons that lacked any technical merit and urges that responsible officials be disciplined.

“This is like the Weather Service saying it will no longer track storms because it lacks perfect information,” added Ruch, pointing out that an extensive formalized Land Health Assessment database, including range-wide assessments of livestock grazing across the sagebrush biome, has existed since at least 2008. “If grazing can be locked so blithely into a scientific broom closet, it speaks volumes about science-based decisionmaking in the Obama administration.”

More Roadless Courtroom Drama

by

For those who just can’t get enough Roadless…

US Appeals Court Asked To Rehear Roadless CaseDecember 5, 2011 4:08 PM
US Appeals Court Asked To Rehear Roadless Case

DENVER (AP) – The state of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association want a federal court in Denver to reconsider a rule prohibiting roads on nearly 50 million acres of land in national forests across the United States.
In a motion filed Monday, the plaintiffs say the U.S. Forest Service’s roadless rule was a “sham process” designed to circumvent Congress.
Last month, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Lawyers for the state of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association contended it was a violation of the law. Monday’s notice to the court asks for a rehearing.
The roadless rule was put in place by the Clinton administration in 2001, just before George W. Bush took office.

UM Biomass on Hold as Natural Gas Prices Dip

by

Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this one..

UM biomass project on hold as natural gas prices dipBy CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian | December 2, 2011
http://missoulian.com/news/local/um-biomass-project-on-hold-as-natural-gas-prices-dip/article_d266a47c-1ca1-11e1-9c21-0019bb2963f4.html

For the first time since natural gas prices began to dip, the fate of the University of Montana’s proposed woody-biomass gasification plant is clear: the project is on hold.

“It’s not financially viable at this time,” said Rosi Keller, UM associate vice president for administration and finance. “We won’t move forward until it is.”

Keller’s comments came during an open forum on campus Thursday directed at educating UM students on the $16 million industrial-sized heating plant project that UM proposed to reduce its carbon footprint.

About 45 people showed up to listen to presentations by Keller and Ben Schmidt, an environmental health specialist at the Missoula City-County Health Department. The forum, hosted by the ASUM Sustainability Center, was aimed at informing students so they could make up their minds about the project.

Recent media reports of UM’s request for an air quality permit in order to build the project have sparked increased student interest, said Stacy Boman, ASUM sustainability coordinator.

“Students have come into the center wanting to know more about it,” she said. “We hope that they understand the issue and can join the discourse surrounding the biomass project and can offer up their own thoughts and opinions.”

Most of the students in attendance at Thursday’s panel discussions were environmental studies majors or members of the UM Climate Action Now! Many support UM switching from natural gas to woody biomass.

“It’s much less controversial among the student body than with the community,” said Zach Brown, a 21-year-old environmental studies major.

Brown wants to see power generated locally, which is why he supports UM’s proposal to burn upward of 16,000 tons of biomass trucked in from local forests. UM currently imports natural gas, which means the side effects of drilling and hydraulic fracturing are left for others to clean up.

While switching to biomass in some cases would increase emissions in Missoula’s air shed above the level of natural gas, Brown thinks forcing consumers to have to deal with these issues may change their habits.

“If those side effects were in our faces, we may question our level of energy consumption,” he said.

If anything, students had concerns about the kinds of biomass that would be used and where it would come from. It’s important that the fuel is collected from areas within 100 miles of Missoula, said Alison Wren, a 21-year-old environmental studies student. And Brian Nickerson, 21, hopes UM ensures that it only uses biomass that is sustainably harvested.

However, none of this will matter if the price of natural gas continues to decrease.

The state of Montana negotiates a two-year contract for natural gas, which includes UM. Currently, UM pays $7.10 per dekatherm for natural gas. Only if the price reaches $8 a dekatherm would the university’s biomass project become financially viable, Keller said.

Since the beginning of the project, natural gas prices have decreased 15 percent, said Tom Javins, UM biomass project manager. And it’s possible that once the state renegotiates a contract for natural gas a year from now, UM may be paying a price for natural gas that biomass can’t beat.

Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at Chelsi.moy @missoulian.com.

Another Eastern National Forest Celebrates 75 Years

by

Given the discussion about the possible Maine National Park, I thought this- sent by Terry Seyden- might be relevant.

Francis Marion forest marks 75 years
By BO PETERSEN – [email protected]

http://www.thestate.com/2011/12/05/2069175/francis-marion-forest-marks-75.html

WAMBAW — The wild calls. Under dangling live oak limbs, 19-year-old Thomas Grimsley yanks on a riding outfit that looks like it’s been paintballed, and he straps on a helmet. He pulls the motorbike down from the pickup bed, an ’07 Yamaha YZ250, a powerful, competition-grade motocross burner, and cranks up the two-stroke motor.
“Fast. Scary fast,” Grimsley says. The Charleston retail worker and Grand National Cross Country rider is ready to rumble — off on a remote cycle trail through the Francis Marion National Forest.
Yep, those “empty” miles of pines in Berkeley and Charleston counties aren’t quite naturalist John Muir’s backcountry anymore. The Francis Marion celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, and a few hundred thousand people will hike, bike, hunt, fish, paddle, camp, horseback ride, birdwatch, even target shoot in it. That’s more people than lived in the three counties around Charleston when the forest opened in 1936.

The swampy environs once described as “unwanted land” have become a destination and its popularity has brought new troubles.
More people wanting to do more things have to be accommodated while $6 million per year of timber is harvested, acres of native longleaf pines planted, and thousands of species of plants and animals managed from hooded pitcher plants to black bear. The forest spreads across a quarter million acres and operates on tight budget with a cut-back staff of 42, who face a wide range of emerging issues.
“Twenty years ago we weren’t dealing with meth labs,” said regional U.S. Forest Service supervisor Paul Bradley.
But the Francis Marion remains “a tremendous public natural resource, and one of the cornerstones of conservation on the East Coast,” in the words of Michael Prevost, White Oak Forestry Corp. president, who formerly worked with the Nature Conservancy conserving tracts in the forest.
Maybe the best way to describe the public value of this place is to talk turkey, wild turkey, and longleaf pine. A generation ago, wild turkey were rarely seen, hunted almost to extinction in South Carolina. Today, more than 100,000 of them are out there, in all 46 counties. They have reclaimed their status as a sought-after game bird.
Every one of those wild turkeys came from a few hundred trapped in the forest a half-century ago for a captive breeding program run by the foresters and S.C. Natural Resources. The birds were what was left of the native Francis Marion flocks, a strain considered to be one of the purest strains of wild turkey anywhere in the world.
Thousands of animal species live in the Francis Marion along with more than 1,600 plant species, in some 30 distinct natural environs. That makes the place one of the most ecologically diverse forests in the Southeast. Its heart is the longleaf pine savannah — home to 300 varieties of native plants, birds including the wild turkey, 170 species of reptiles or amphibians, and 36 mammals.
At one time, 90 million acres of the cathedral-like savannahs of tall, straight trunks and tufted needle crowns spread across the Southeast.
Timbering and other farming chopped it up. Timber companies replaced it quicker-growing loblolly pine.
Today only four million acres of longleaf stand. About 40,000 of those acres are in the Francis Marion. In contrast, the forest has 120,000 acres of mostly loblolly pine. The forest service, working with other groups, is replacing the loblolly tracts one-by-one with longleaf, in an effort to completely restore its savannahs.
Longleaf is more valuable timber and the slender needles a sought-after ground cover. It stands up better to hurricanes. It’s fire-resistant. In fact, it’s the mainstay of the savannah “fire ecosystem,” habitat that depends on periodic burning to nurture all those species.
“Fire ecosystem is one of the most diverse plant communities we have in North America,” said Bill Twomey, forest service silvaculturist.
That pine ecosystem, though, and its “urban interface,” might be the biggest problem the forest faces today. With more people living nearby and commuting through the Francis Marion, foresters have to wait for just the right winds and weather to do controlled burns. Twomey estimates the forest service only burns half the acres it needs to each year.
Meanwhile, partly because of the backlog of unburned undergrowth, wildfires crop up frequently, often because of human carelessness. People bring invasive species, littering, illegal dumping and poaching everything from deer to bamboo.
“Any time you have more people in a constrained area you have more conflict,” Bradley, the forest supervisor, said.
Policing creates its own problems. In 2010, a father camping with his daughter was outraged to find a hidden surveillance camera at the campsite.
Earlier this year, two Boy Scout leaders were ticketed $225 each for “illegal parking” after putting trucks in the wrong place when they arrived at a camp at night. The fines were thrown out in court.
Francis Marion workers still pick up phone calls from people asking when the national park opens for the day. The distinction often gets lost. A park is more of a preserve with set hours and controlled access. This is a working forest, balancing preservation with recreation and industry, like timbering, that helps pay its way.
Jannah DuPre, Sewee Visitors Center co-director, puts it succinctly: In a national park you camp in a designated campground; in a national forest, you can camp almost anywhere with a permit.
The Francis Marion has a slew of historic sites — its namesake’s grave and the Revolutionary War-era Battery One along the Santee River, for examples.
It has wilderness areas like Wambaw Swamp, even a Cape Romain boat landing.
But there’s no one focal point. It remains the place for the Lowcountry to roam.
“The beauty here is a more subtle, discovery experience,” DuPre said.

(Note: links to this and other recent news stories about the US Forest Service can be found at http://www.seyden.net. )

A North Woods National Forest?

by

Debate over the creation of a new national park in Northern Maine rages on. Well, maybe not exactly rages, but there’s no lack of discussion and opinions. An opinion piece in the Maine Sunday Telegram suggests that a new national forest might make more sense. The White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and western Maine is cited as an example of balancing preservation with multiple use. However, some Mainers oppose any additional Federal control and Burt’s Bees magnate Roxanne Quimby , at least for now, is willing to donate land only if it is for a new National Park. Residents in the Millinocket area are split. Some see a park as a way to inject vitality into a sagging economy. Others see Federal land ownership as a threat to the region’s two paper mills (just recently reopened) and as potentially undermining the long tradition of commercial logging and public recreation on private lands. Still others would like to see a broader study of the region’s economy.

October 9
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Bell of Weld teaches high school English.

Maine Voices: Park not only way to save North Woods
Establishing a Maine Woods National Forest would achieve many goals for preservation, recreation and industry.

WELD — Conspicuously absent from current debate over the fate of Maine’s North Woods has been mention of national forest designation for some portion of 10 million acres of unorganized territory. A national forest would achieve the same ends as a national park, and is better suited to northern Maine in a number of ways.

The debate about the future of Maine’s forests has needlessly pitted environmental concerns against the interests of the people who need to make a living. Forests and parks are similar, with one major difference between them: National parks allow no timber harvesting; strict preservation is the rule. National forests allow for sustainable logging activity, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Both feature federal ownership, and each has a recreational mission that allows for multiple uses within certain bounds. What both manage to secure is the protection of wild land, and the preservation into perpetuity of public access to it.

A long-standing and cherished tradition in Maine, our access to the woods is at present threatened as never before. An unprecedented pattern of anonymous, absentee and mercenary ownership has settled over the North Woods in recent years; none of Maine’s remaining paper companies owns any portion of the forest anymore.

CHANGING FOREST
Seven million acres have changed hands since the late 1980s — the last to divest was Mead in 2005 — and the new owners are aware that there are quicker means to a return on their investment than waiting for trees to grow. Witness Plum Creek’s massive development proposal for the Moosehead Lake region.
Development in the North Woods is the looming threat these days; vacation-home building means fragmentation of the forest, with attendant damage to its ecology, diversity and resiliency. Public access will also be lost. If one accepts the premise that something needs to be done — on a broad scale and soon — to safeguard both the integrity of the forest and the public’s access to it, then the question becomes one of how best to accomplish this.

Conservation easements, though effective in their own right, are inadequate and piecemeal. The state of Maine is in no position to purchase extensive tracts. Federal ownership remains the best way to achieve large-scale and permanent protection of Maine’s forest lands. Those with an aversion to a federal presence in the Maine woods would like even less their own permanent exclusion from it someday.

RESTORE’s protracted campaign for a 3-million-acre Maine Woods National Park stretching from Moosehead to beyond Katahdin has yet to generate enthusiasm among the people who live in the northern counties. It has succeeded only in alienating those it needs to win over, through an implicit and explicit denigration of North Woods culture — of traditional modes of vocation and of recreation. National park promotional rhetoric has been rife with elitist assumptions and insinuations, chief among them that logging is somehow morally wrong.

It is not oversimplification to observe that it is precisely this aspect of the national park campaign — waged by outsiders, for the most part — that has engendered widespread resentment rather than receptivity, and it is precisely because national forests allow logging that any mention of this option has been scrupulously avoided by mainstream environmental organizations.

It seems appropriate and just that the people who live within and adjacent to the region in question might see a federal designation that would represent a respect for their traditions, rather than a contempt for them.

The rationale for a national forest goes well beyond this consideration of social justice and regional identity, however. Silviculture — the science of carefully considered manipulation of the successional stages of a forest — can enhance the entire ecosystem and render it both more resilient and more diverse. (A forest is not necessarily better off left alone; the wildfires in Yellowstone after 100 years without tree harvesting come to mind.)

NEARBY EXAMPLE
The nearby White Mountain National Forest is a widely popular destination for millions of outdoor enthusiasts and an economic boon to the region that invigorates traditional economic sectors as well as those of modern ecotourism.

Thirty-five percent of its 800,000 acres is open to logging; extensive environmental review and public comment precede any instance of timber harvest.
Maintaining a carefully managed balance between strict preservation and multiple, responsible use, the White Mountain National Forest works quite well.

A national forest represents a good compromise — certainly not in any sense of abandoning principle, but in the democratic sense of how Americans accomplish things: by meeting on common ground. While we argue self-righteously, Wall Street does not sleep. There is no time to waste.

– Special to the Telegram

Is Biocoal the Answer?

by

biocoalA recent Bangor Daily News article (here) discusses how the new owners of two paper mills in Millinocket, Maine plan to use this technology to convert wood waste into torrefied wood also known as biocoal. Proponents tout the technology as carbon neutral if waste material is used as the source for the process.

Nick Sambides Jr., BDN Staff
Posted Dec. 01, 2011, at 12:56 p.m.

MILLINOCKET, Maine — Cate Street Capital has purchased for more than $20 million the North American rights to the technology to manufacture biocoal, a huge step toward adding the production of treated wood at its Katahdin Avenue paper mill and creating several hundred jobs, officials said Thursday.
Cate Street subsidiary Thermogen Industries LLC secured exclusive rights from Scotland-based Rotawave Biocoal to manufacture a type of machine — called Targeted Intelligent Energy System, or TIES — that makes biocoal, or torrefied wood, which would replace coal burned at electricity plants, Cate Street spokesman Scott Tranchemontagne said.

“It is the most tangible sign of our commitment to moving this project forward,” Tranchemontagne said Thursday of the $20 million deal. “We have the technology. We have a wonderful site at the end of the Golden Road and we have a labor force that is ready and willing to work. Those are some key pieces to any business looking to start up.”

If Thermogen’s plans reach fruition, Cate Street senior vice president Richard Cyr said, Thermogen’s production of biocoal would help transform the state forest products industry.
Thermogen and Cate Street subsidiary Great Northern Paper Co., which operates the East Millinocket and Millinocket paper mills, would also benefit from several independent and ongoing governmental and private business initiatives.

Those initiatives include the $10.5 million reconstruction of 233 miles of northern Maine railroad tracks, the expansion of the shipping port in Searsport, Gov. Paul LePage’s proposal to extend a natural gas line to the Katahdin region by 2013, and Cate Street’s own revitalization of the mills.

By acquiring the rights to TIES, Rotawave Biocoal’s microwave-based biocoal production system, Thermogen has solidified plans to install five or six TIES machines in Millinocket starting in November 2012. Creating jobs for 22 to 25 workers directly and dozens of truckers, loggers and other support providers indirectly, the first $35 million TIES machine would supply United Kingdom utilities with biocoal, Cyr said.

Millinocket would be the site of the first of four or five biocoal mills eventually nationwide, Cyr said. Rotawave’s attempt to sell its technology rights to a Vancouver company that would have built a biocoal factory in British Columbia last year fell through, he said.

“We have been looking for a home for Thermogen for two years. Over that time we have been studying a lot of technologies,” Cyr said, calling Rotawave’s “the one that created the best end product.”

Engineers are developing plans now to site the machines at the Millinocket mill as Cate Street assembles its financing and seeks engineers to build the Rotawave machines, Cyr said. Cate Street hopes to have the design and financing ready within four months, with mill site work possibly beginning then as well, Tranchemontagne said.