AWR: The Rest of the Story on the Little Belts Lawsuit

The Little Belt Mountain Range on the Lewis and Clark National Forest in central Montana as seen from overhead on this Google image. As anyone can clearly see, nearly the entire mountain range has been heavily roaded, clearcut and mined. Ask yourself: is this tremendous fragmentation good for native wildlife or native fish?

The following opinion editorial is written by Mike Garrity, Alliance for Wild Rockies. It appeared in today’s Great Falls Tribune:

The Tribune’s article on Nov. 18 about the Lewis and Clark National Forest left out some important details and readers deserve to know why the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council went to court to protect the Little Belt Mountains from the proposed “Hazardous Trees Reduction Project.”

First, it is important to bring some perspective to the scope of the project. Logging will take place on a whopping 575 miles of roads. If you were to jump on I-15 and head south, you’d have to go all the way to Salt Lake City to cover that many miles. But remember, all those miles of road to be logged are not spread out through three states from Great Falls to Salt Lake — they’re located in just one Montana mountain range.

The project would change those small roads and two-tracks to look like landing strips since all the roadside trees would be cut down for hundreds of feet. As a result, any elk that cross roads won’t be quickly sneaking across two-tracks, they’ll be fully exposed in an open area as long as a football field. That the project includes this kind of logging in wilderness study areas, research natural areas, inventoried roadless areas, and old growth also deserves explanation by the Forest Service, not obfuscation.

Widespread herbicide spraying is also proposed in several watersheds and streams that are already rated impaired due to sedimentation. More logging will dump even more sediment into these degraded streams, which is antithetical to state efforts to preserve Westslope cutthroat trout and keep Montana’s state fish off the Endangered Species list. The bottom line, however, is that the Forest Service is required by law to produce an environmental analysis for public review and comment.

While Forest Supervisor Bill Avey claims the agency wants more early public involvement, his attempt to use a categorical exclusion does just the opposite – it excludes the public and is the primary reason for taking the agency to court. The Forest Service has prepared an environmental analysis for all similar projects in Montana. Had this proposal been allowed to go forward, it would have set a terrible precedent not just for Montana, but nationwide.

Categorical exclusions were intended for purposes such as mowing lawns at ranger stations or painting outhouses, not logging over 17,000 acres along 575 miles of roads. Had Avey followed the law, the public would certainly have raised questions about the proposal. For instance, environmental analysis would reveal that massive infestations of noxious weeds such as thistle, knapweed, and hounds tongue already exist along these roads. The Forest Service admits it can’t control them now, but didn’t want to admit that logging will only make the situation worse.

Or how about the fact that Canada lynx, wolverine, black-backed woodpecker, Northern goshawk, Western toad, and Northern three-toed woodpecker are all known to occur in the Little Belts and that their numbers will be further reduced by these massive clear cuts? Or maybe Avey didn’t want the public to know that the Forest Service’s own studies show that logging wild lands has little effect on wildfires and that they even might make fires burn hotter because logged forests are hotter, windier, and drier than unlogged forests. Or perhaps Avey didn’t want to explain why the Forest Service wants to log these so-called hazardous trees at a cost of over $2 million to taxpayers when there isn’t a hazard.

Firewood cutters have already done a good job removing beetle-killed trees next to the roads — and they did it without a subsidy from taxpayers. And finally, the public might want to ask why Avey waited until he was sued in federal court to agree to follow the law and write an environmental analysis on this timber sale.

We explained to Avey at an appeal resolution meeting that the Forest Service was illegally excluding the public from having input on this proposal, but unfortunately, he ignored us until we sued, and then he pulled the project. We firmly believe that in America the public should have a say in the management of our public lands. It is unfortunate that we had to go to court to get it.

29 thoughts on “AWR: The Rest of the Story on the Little Belts Lawsuit”

  1. A couple of statements here appear to be inaccurate:

    Garrity states: “While Forest Supervisor Bill Avey claims the agency wants more early public involvement, his attempt to use a categorical exclusion does just the opposite – it excludes the public.” On page 16 of the 21 page decision memo is a description of the public involvement. The forest was following FS NEPA regs for scoping on CEs. I couldn’t copy it here due to how the DM was saved.

    Would they actually look like “landing strips” for “hundreds of feet”? What it says in the DM is “identified hazard trees” up to 1 1/2 tree lengths (say 50 feet is a tree length in that area, then 75 feet on each side)? But it sounds like the criteria are different in roadless areas. Landing strips have no trees. Based on the criteria in the DM, they would take hazard trees as defined. It is hard for me to believe that all the trees along the roads would fit those definitions.

    I recommend that everyone take a look at the DM here before making up their mind. Especially pages 2-5 and 16.

    I applaud Supervisor Avey for his work in attempting to use the best NEPA tool for the job.
    I would urge the forest to save NEPA documents online in a format where people can copy out parts for this kind of discussion, and also put some photos of the project area and what the trees look like. A photo of, for example a couple of different spots and what would fit the definition of “hazard tree” would be helpful.

    Reply
    • I always get a chuckle when I read references to this captured agency (aka, the USFS), as “the forest.” One could almost get the impression it was doing all this to itself.

      My, how our language and its meaning has been cast into oblivion. I can only imagine the self-satisfied sneer on the first “forester’s” lips inventing the term, “hazard tree.”
      Now there’s opportunity screaming for a market based solution.

      There’s also more than a little irony in reading the defense and applause of “managers” who get paid to enact these various forms of terrestrial torture and its collateral damage upon wild denizens of the (actual), (public), FOREST, for the expressed purposes of “restoring” the previous mismanagement.

      And after that, there’ll be restoration of the restored mismanagement, and restoration of the …( ad infinitum.)

      You’re a brave soul Matthew, posting this citizen perspective here, reduced to red meat cast into a pit of snapping jaws. The measure of its truth being directly proportional to the spitting contempt reserved for those who would have the gall to … present the rest of the story.

      And the response? Such a high caliber of academic insights on the matter: “ludicrous…polemic”, “pile of self-serving crap”, “phony and contrived”, bald faced lie”, “self-serving nonsense” (and that’s just from a single comment !)

      it seems the satellite image of on the ground reality might’ve struck a proverbial nerve triggering the need for denial.

      Reply
      • A Huge amount of hazard trees have ZERO commercial value, David. In fact, they cost the loggers money to fell,skid, deck and clean up the significant mess that such snags make. Yes, David’s “broad brush” continues to paint all targets within reach. Again, I sure don’t FEEL “captured”.

        Reply
        • Larry, Thanks again, for demonstrating exactly my point, and illustrating the chasm that divides us.

          I refuse to buy-in to the agency-speak of “hazard trees” while people like you get paid to lament, “hazard trees have ZERO commercial value.” I do not share your pain here, you do not share mine.

          Your “ZERO” is what “foresters” tellingly lament as “market failure.”

          There’s no “market incentive” to prevent forest ecosystem failure — just laws and public process which “the forest”(sic;) finds too “cumbersome”– too “expensive” to follow.

          My point being, the “hazard” is not about the trees.

          The dominant hazard being discussed here is about Forest Supervisor Bill Avey’s moral hazard:

          “a tendency to take risks because the costs that could incur will not be felt by the party taking the risk.”

          Upton Sinclair had a perfectly logical explanation to all of this.

          “It’s difficult to get someone to understand (he’s captured, etc.) when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

          Reply
          • When in doubt, David pulls out the “power painter” to label us all as corrupt commercial raiders, pillaging the forest for ill-gotten gains. It is those non-commercial snags that are the most hazardous of all. Many roadside trees were damaged when the road was installed, with rot finally threatening the stability of still-green trees. Often, the oldest and largest have some kind of defect that could lead to injury, death, or resource damages. There is no reason at all why the merchantable wood from a hazard tree shouldn’t be utilized. On some of my own hazard tree projects, slash was actually required to be physically removed, to mitigate fire danger along those roads.

            And yes, I DO understand the site-specific science of what I do, and nothing you say can change the facts before me.

            Reply
          • David- A couple of points:
            a)
            I don’t understand if you are saying

            1) people should just let trees fall and then cut the dead trees after they’ve fallen (hopefully not on someone, and not knocking over live trees) OR
            2) it’s OK to cut hazard trees but just not to sell them.OR
            3) something else.

            b) Larry used to not work for the FS and now does; I used to work for the FS and now don’t. I doubt whether our opinions have changed as a result of our paychecks or not. You could examine our posts and look at your “capture” hypothesis. Ed did work for the FS and Bob never did (or did briefly). I just don’t see the relationship between our paychecks and our opinions.

            c) With regard to the “moral hazard”. There are risks to removing hazard trees, and risks to leaving them. And Supervisor Avey has all kinds of well-trained and experienced folks to tell him in explicit detail about these risks. Since probably every forest has a hazard tree program, then all Supes must be facing this “moral hazard.” If you are trying to say you don’t think he made the moral choice among risks, then for us to understand your point, you need to say more about why you have this opinion, based on the facts of this project.

            Reply
  2. After trying to envision an “elk sneaking across a two-track” (I’ve never heard of such a thing, or seen anything of the sort — elk are usually pretty blatant and out-front when they travel) and then reading the ludicrous descriptions of “landing strips,” I quickly skimmed the rest of this cut-and-paste polemic to get to the money line: “It is unfortunate that we had to go to court to get it.”

    What a pile of self-serving crap. It is “unfortunate” that these obstructionists are even allowed to file suit on these types of things in the first place, much less lie outright about their aversion to “going to court.” It’s what they do. Without these guys traipsing into courtroom after courtroom on their so-called mission to save whatever species is convenient to their cause, they wouldn’t exist. The whole series of claims is phony and contrived.

    Yes, I agree that it is unfortunate that these people went to court, too — but to say they “had” to do it is self-serving nonsense of a very high order (“bald-faced lie”). Is Congress really that blind to this ongoing waste of time and national resources? Or that incapable of putting an end to this charade? What a waste.

    Reply
    • Bob, You never saw elk ‘sneaking’ around during the 5 week general rifle season? You don’t think elk and deer get hip pretty fast to the fact that there is far less cover and security for them along roads? Talk to Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks elk biologists about roads and elk and see what they tell you.

      The rest of your comment reads just like so many of the “angry, old white guy” posts you see on the blog-o-sphere these days. Have you actually opened your eyes and taken a look at what some of these public forests look like?

      Here’s what the damn Little Belt Mountains look like from overhead:

      http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/ettien-ridge.png

      As anyone can clearly see, nearly the entire Little Belt Mountain Range has been roaded, clearcut and mined. Is this tremendous fragmentation good for native wildlife? What about native fish?

      So, Bob, please take your “pile of self-serving crap” and your claims of a “bald-faced lie” and stuff ’em in your turkey. Thanks.

      Reply
      • Hi Matt: Happy Thanksgiving to you, too! Good to hear from you.

        No, I have never seen elk sneaking around in the woods during the past 64 years, although I have seen thousands of elk during that time. I don’t know what “the 5 week general rifle season” is either (I’m guessing something adopted relatively recently in your neighborhood?), so have never witnessed a sneaking elk resulting from that cause.

        Yes, I am an old white guy (I’m guessing a similar description for you, too), but certainly not an angry one. And not only do I regularly spend a lot of time in the woods, I have tens of thousands of photos (many of them online) to document what I’ve seen. Nope, not a single sneaking elk and really not too many “two tracks” for that matter, either. And the public forests are a mess, and they’ve been getting worse during the past 20-30 years. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

        Thanks, too, for the cooking tip, but I use cranberries, fresh oysters, and hazelnuts in my dressing and it is usually a big hit — except for people who don’t like oysters.

        Reply
        • Ya know, what else get’s lost in all the “elk habitat” models, is the fact that Elk population numbers in Montana have like quadrupeled in the last 80 years(I got it somewhere in my pile of notes). The Elk population grew right through the era of big timber, 1960-1990. If logging is bad for Elk, you’d think it would have showed up in that era. And it didn’t.

          Reply
          • There were only a few small herds of elk in all of Oregon 100 years ago. Then three things happened: we began importing elk from Wyoming, we made it illegal to kill elk for more than 30 years, and we began increasing elk habitat on an unprecedented scale via catastrophic wildfires before WW II and by massive clearcuts after that. Now we have an abundance of elk, and have for decades.

            The best elk habitat that exists now is about the same as for milk cows. The whole “thermal cover” hoax was more about degrees of hunter difficulty and anti-logger politics than an actual biological need.

            Wild animal populations are primarily a function of predator-prey relationships — not structure and variety of local vegetation. Birds fly and fish swim — often to escape their predators and rarely in search of better forest aesthetics.

            Reply
            • Bob, Not too sure about the use of the word “primary” in your last paragraph. For many species (bob white quail) escape cover is an important component of habitat but, above all, critters gotta eat and drink. The limiting factor varies with species and circumstances but, in an unmanaged forest, lack of early successional habitat would appear to be critical. For a well-documented look at how this is playing out in the east, check out the “grouse powerpoint” attached to http://www.wvmcconnell.net/?page_id=162.

              Reply
  3. Out here in Oregon, the Mt. Hood NF has removed hazard trees from along many miles of road, much to the benefit of firewood cutters (myself included). Most were beetle-killed lodgepole. Many live trees remain — so many that you would know there had been any dead one removed unless you got out and walked through the road buffers.

    Reply
  4. I have done MANY roadside hazard tree projects and it is ridiculous to claim that road corridors will turn into .”landing strips”. The best thing for eco-groups to do is to monitor the trees that are being marked to cut, to see if those are legitimate hazard trees. Of course, you’ll need the knowledge of tree rots, defect and “local knowledge”, to know how hazardous a given tree is. Also remember that these kinds of projects come along about every 15 years, and that we need to err on the side of caution when selecting trees to be cut for safety. This means that if you think it COULD fall on the road during those 15 years, you should be cutting them, for safety. Also, remember that snags can plug culverts, which could cause a road slump, which could cause major erosion, which could kill fish, which could impact fish-dependent endangered species (and human drinking water!)

    Reply
  5. Could we have some before and after photos of these “landing strips”?

    A comment on the Little Belt Mountain aerial photo by an mellow old white guy who happens to be a forester/land management planner and hunter who has been a part of this debate for some 70 years. In looking at this photo I see diversity, edge effect, interspersed early successional habitat and vastly improved balance of age classes. I also see jobs, healthy industries, solvent counties, funded schools, stable communities and secure, enduring families, all supported by planned, sustainable use of a renewable resource. To this commentator it appears that the Alliance for Wild Rockies’ concern focuses on possible benefits to goshawks, western toads, and woodpeckers to the exclusion of the needs of a key component of the ecosystem – humans. Could this be the case?

    Reply
      • Mac: I agree with you and Derek. That is what I see, too — and maybe it is because we know what we are looking for. That is bias, sure, but it is also fact.

        If I were a benign dictator with an ability to transform the past, I might make the travel routes and forested areas reflect topographical lines rather than survey lines, but the current product would look very similar to this, and for all of the reasons you list.

        People matter. Nice photo interpretation.

        Reply
  6. Matthew, I was looking around on the web and found this photo of the Little Belts. It looks like there was a fire.. “it’s titled “Sage Creek facing east” can you help with how this photo fits into the Google Earth maps?

    Reply
    • It sure appears like the wildfire has “fragmented” habitats much more significantly than roads, logging and mining, at least in this view.

      Reply
  7. It makes you wonder how many of those 40 acre clearcuts would fit into that burn in the NW corner of the photo(the bare area in the middle-I’m not sure if a burn or natural). Or how many would fit into the brown MPB mortality in the SE corner. It’s obvious that if those weren’t clearcut in the last 50 years…they would be dead now. So that’s a moot point. How much of that photo would be green if it wasn’t for 100 years of fire suppresion? Just like man uses reservoirs to harvest the spring floodwaters that would otherwise runoff to the ocean, we also harvest the timber that otherwise would have burned off. When you read the EIS “vegetation section” for forests of this type, it’s obvious there’s way more “mature” now then what the early foresters found (Losinsky, ect.)

    What it really all boils down to, is either man harvests it for his habitat , or we let it die for the Black Backed woodpecker’s habitat. On this Thanksgivng, I’m thankfull for the thin 2×4 wall that seperates my warm cozy home from the howling cold winds outside. I’m sure we’re all thankfull that the CAnadians don’t seem to have a problem clearcut logging in their grizzly bear habitat to provide us with the wood for all, and I mean ALL of our homes.

    PS-It would appear to me in the Google earth photo above, in the MPB mortality, that the only “hiding and thermal” cover for the Elk will now be the old regen clearcuts. “remember forest role.”
    reversalhttp://ncfp.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/forest-role-reversal/

    On a related note, I wonder at the effectiveness of the newly created “MPB forage.” On one of the giant EIS’s in Colorado, they made mention to the forage being limited because of access through miles of deadfall. I wonder if there has been any research on that? I guess Colorado has just began a long term research project into that, whether they know it or not.

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  8. Wow…and the spin continues. How we love our positions.

    “Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said he doesn’t challenge any project unless he thinks environmental laws are not being followed.”

    This should read, “Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said he doesn’t challenge any [TREE CUTTING] project unless he thinks environmental laws are not being followed.” That would make his assertions a little less hypocritical.

    Speaking of following environmental laws, can someone please refer me to the CE category for culvert replacements? WHAT? There isn’t one? How come the FS routinely uses a CE to authorize the replacement of culverts to facilitate “aquatic organism passage”? That would seem like a clear violation of the law and a certain court victory! Where is AWR!? Laws are being broken!

    I mean really…putting an excavator in a creek and creating all that sediment!? What about the fish!? Circumventing, er, “excluding” the public by using a CE where one is clearly not allowed? Where is AWR??? According to Mr. Garrity, “Categorical exclusions were intended for purposes such as mowing lawns at ranger stations or painting outhouses…”, certainly not putting an excavator in the creek!

    I sure wish they would add such grievous violations of the law to their repertoire of lawsuits! I like fish, but unfortunately I’m a mere practitioner and not part of the AWR caste. Hopefully someone acts, and acts quickly!!!

    And what of those pesky road decommissioning EA’s? Where are the watchdog groups on these??? Apparently the FS really has their technical writing and cumulative effects analysis skills together on these little gems…to my knowledge a road decom EA has never been challenged by an enviro group. Perhaps Matt can steer me otherwise.

    WOW….dozens and dozens of miles of roads can be authorized for decommissioning in an EA that’s so thin you can practically see thru it. “Massive” amounts of sediment entering the creeks, wildlife travel corridors interrupted (er, restored, depending on your position), access further diminished…seems worthy of a higher level of analysis than what is done. Certainly there are grievous violations of environmental laws in these documents as well.

    The truth is the level of analysis/documentation matches the level of controversy. Mr. Garrity’s (and others) will never challenge a project that they like…no matter how badly the FS screwed/screws up their analysis and/or violates the laws. Prove me wrong please.

    Reply
  9. The specific risks associated with this moral hazard seem so clear to me, Sharon.

    You’re wondering, “if I am saying”:
    a:
    1) people should just let trees fall and then cut the dead trees after they’ve fallen (hopefully not on someone, and not knocking over live trees) OR
    2) it’s OK to cut hazard trees but just not to sell them.OR
    3) something else.

    Answer: “3) something (entirely) else” (see below)

    b: “I just don’t see the relationship between our paychecks and our opinions, (which you are suggesting I’m using to support, my ‘“capture” hypothesis.’)

    Answer: ( Thanks for augmenting my great delight in Larry’s reiterations of, “Funny I don’t FEEL Captured !?!?!?”)
    I never implied your posts or Larry’s were the prima facie evidence of a captured agency, they are merely reflective of the agency culture which has been shaped by a persistent state of agency capture. The evidence springs from the very subject of the article which the courts obviously concurred, by ruling against the attempted use of a CE which circumvents the intent of NEPA. This “fuels reduction project” is taking full advantage of former timber industry lobbyist, Mark Rey’s machinations to do end runs around NEPA and NFMA. This is painfully clear, and hardly “hypothetical.” Your denialism may ignore facts but it does not alter their existence as evidence of regulatory and management agencies and their captured states. (Otherwise, we would not have enjoyed the “James Watt effect” (ie. public outrage at Watt’s open contempt while Secretary of the Dept. of Interior.) Never mind that, “During 1995, Watt was indicted on 25 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury.” Or how about Anne Gorsuch as EPA Administrator? The evidence of captured agencies goes on and on, ad naseum.)

    Rey made no secret for his contempt for environmental laws, while he was in charge of overseeing the USFS. That you are on record being openly supportive of Rey’s tenure speaks volumes for your own shared contempt for the same laws and those who would defend them. I find this attitude emblematic of an agency culture that as a matter of course, could ONLY be expected to mismanage on the grand scales that it has. It then follows, this has resulted in a crisis of public faith in an agency which is bound by those same laws it openly subverts and vilifies.

    c.”…you need to say more about why you have this opinion, based on the facts of this project.”

    I will explain, with this caveat: Why is it you expect detailed answers to your questions, but routinely ignore my requests and expectations in the same spirit of dialog in several other posts over the past months? In the spirit of good faith and reciprocity I hope you’ll provide answers to the questions I pose at the end of this comment. If you choose to ignore them, please unsubscribe me from your decidedly un-level playing field, I find your rules of debate very arbitrary and capricious. They are unevenly applied, especially, when in mid-debate and confronted with evidence which refutes your claims, you simply exit mid-dialog. I find this insulting, and patronizing.)

    Answer:
    We are talking about risks arising from an undisguised attempt to circumvent NEPA’s and NFMA’s purpose. NEPA’s purpose is to disclose potential impacts from federal actions on public land — with taxpayer money. And since it’s their money at stake, their resources at stake, their best interests at stake, to give the public an opportunity to understand what those risks are, and to be able to comment on a range of alternatives which include alternatives that are designed to minimize those risks.

    Avey is Categorically Excluding the application, intent and purpose of NEPA on an obviously large project deserving much greater scrutiny of potential harm arising from that project than he was willing to admit, (that is, until faced with adjudicatory scrutiny.)

    The oped clearly identifies concerns about potential harms associated with:

    1) risks from logging activities of old growth applied to 575 miles of roads occurring in “wilderness study areas, research natural areas, inventoried roadless areas” — conceivably resulting in increased sedimentation to streams of watersheds already suffering degraded conditions.

    2) risks associated with herbicide treatments in proximity to these already degraded streams.

    3) risks associated with large scale removal with potential degradation of old growth habitat having impacts on, “Canada lynx, wolverine, black-backed woodpecker, Northern goshawk, Western toad, and Northern three-toed woodpecker are all known to occur in the Little Belts and that their numbers will be further reduced…”

    4) risks associated with establishing precedents to DMs which undermine the belief that “in America the public should have a say in the management of our public lands.”

    (This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of your hostile characterizations and antagonistic attitudes — as former agency careerist — that you would devote so much energy vilifying citizen oversight of an agency so obviously responsible for a legacy of fantastic scales of mismanagement. I hope someday, you will understand how deeply, deeply, insulting your antagonism is to fellow taxpaying citizens who have watched the steady degradation and destruction of their public lands and are insisting their government follow environmental laws. That you would ignore the phenomenal costs borne by our national forest system and its denizens, and all the taxpayer subsidies funding colossal mismanagement, — and instead, grandstand the far smaller court costs associated with defending Dns like this one or disastrous RODs of the past, provides confirmation of an agency culture wholly incapable of personal and professional accountability.)

    Finally, as Matthew pointed out, there are risks associated with altering the vegetation cover which occurs in elk travel corridors. Such elk are forced to negotiate heavily fragmented habitats of their home ranges. Imagine if you will, hunting season and you are the target species which must run the gauntlet of legions of “hunters” shooting from the road system from their ATVs,etc.. Road densities factor heavily in the incidence of poaching. Altering the cover conceivably increases the hazard and risks to elk management.

    Of course, these risks will not be borne by Avey, if anything, Avey’s career will benefit from a DN which breaches the intent of NEPA. Apparently, this happens to be a rare case in which he withdrew his decision when that decision was confronted in court. There are plenty of examples of line officers who have made many decisions in repeated violations of NEPA, but which obviously suffer no negative effects as evidenced by their promotions.

    I have direct personal experience of the opposite occurring within the USFS. I know how and why former Tongass Forest Supervisor Abigail Kimbell was promoted to Chief — she ruthlessly destroyed careers of dozens of agency whistleblowers everywhere she went.

    This included my friend, Tongass Wildlife biologist Glen Ith, who as IDT leader, had to appeal agency actions as a matter of professional conscience. Glen was successful in his appeal and consequently treated as a criminal, humiliated, falsely charged with trumped-up allegations and reassigned to menial tasks, and in the stress of those intimidation tactics, and the stress of losing his job and the financial risks to his wife and daughter, died of sudden cardiac arrest syndrome despite being in excellent health in his 40s.

    Now, a few questions for you:
    You have opened your own can of worms opining:

    “Suppose the USG tab was $400K per year for 6 years, say 2.4 million. If good goshawk habitat is $5K per acre, we could buy 480 more acres of habitat, not near a WUI. If you put that with what the plaintiffs spent, you gotta wonder if this way of doing business is really good for birds or taxpayers.”

    a: Are you seriously suggesting “purchasing” 480 acres old growth goshawk habitat is preferable to correcting unchecked systemic agency malfeasance? Have you no idea what the ultimate cost of agency mismanagement actually costs the US taxpayer? I do — Billions and billions. (a Billion alone on the Tongass.) Agency malfeasance as a result of being captured is inestimably greater than whatever the remedial benefits you cavalierly suggest above.

    1)Would you please quantify the hazards of these trees while you’re so stridently defending the DN? It is not at all clear to me the extent of these hazards which justify such an extensive investment of taxpayer funds to fulfill the agency’s “moral obligations”(I quote the 60 page manual written for the Tongass, ” “Hazard Trees in Alaska: A Guide to the Identification and Management of Hazard Trees in Alaska” by Lori Trummer and Paul Hennon.” which uses all of two references–.Albers, J.; Hayes, E. 1993. How to detect, assess and correct hazard trees in recreational areas. State of Minnesota, Department of Natural Resources- Forestry. 63p.
    and;
    Farr, W.A.; LaBau, V.J.; Laurent, T.H. 1976. Estimation of decay in old-growth western hemlock and Sitka spruce in Southeast Alaska. USDA Forest Service Research Paper PNW-204. Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. 24p.

    2)What are the actual existing costs (incidents of fatalities or injury, as opposed to the costs of supposedly eliminating the hazard trees?”

    What is the frequency of roadside “hazard” trees falling on agency personnel or members of the public? Surely they must be extensive to justify such a project, but I’ll be darned if I can find any stats after much googling.

    3)What are the odds of this happening to anybody on the NFS road system? My sense is there is a far greater chance of being struck by lightning than falling trees on a NFS road.

    Reply
  10. David, this is as far as I got on replying to your message.. more tomorrow.

    You said
    “I never implied your posts or Larry’s were the prima facie evidence of a captured agency, they are merely reflective of the agency culture which has been shaped by a persistent state of agency capture. The evidence springs from the very subject of the article which the courts obviously concurred, by ruling against the attempted use of a CE which circumvents the intent of NEPA.”
    If we are talking the Roadside Hazard project, it appears that the courts did not concur, as the Forest Supervisor decided to pull the decision and do the EA.
    I do not agree that using the CE “circumvents the intent of NEPA”. I try to determine intent from the legislation directly, that is Section 101
    1. What is the intent of NEPA?:
    “The purposes of this Act are: To declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man; to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation; and to establish a Council on Environmental Quality.

    TITLE I
    CONGRESSIONAL DECLARATION OF NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
    Sec. 101 [42 USC § 4331].
    (a) The Congress, recognizing the profound impact of man’s activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment, particularly the profound influences of population growth, high-density urbanization, industrial expansion, resource exploitation, and new and expanding technological advances and recognizing further the critical importance of restoring and maintaining environmental quality to the overall welfare and development of man, declares that it is the continuing policy of the Federal Government, in cooperation with State and local governments, and other concerned public and private organizations, to use all practicable means and measures, including financial and technical assistance, in a manner calculated to foster and promote the general welfare, to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.
    (b) In order to carry out the policy set forth in this Act, it is the continuing responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable means, consistent with other essential considerations of national policy, to improve and coordinate Federal plans, functions, programs, and resources to the end that the Nation may —
    1. fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations;
    2. assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings;
    3. attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the environment without degradation, risk to health or safety, or other undesirable and unintended consequences;
    4. preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage, and maintain, wherever possible, an environment which supports diversity, and variety of individual choice;
    5. achieve a balance between population and resource use which will permit high standards of living and a wide sharing of life’s amenities; and
    6. enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the maximum attainable recycling of depletable resources.
    (c) The Congress recognizes that each person should enjoy a healthful environment and that each person has a responsibility to contribute to the preservation and enhancement of the environment. “
    The documents are simply a means to achieve the end of “balancing” and “harmonizing” human uses and the environment.
    Here is what it says:

    “to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.”

    2. Does the use of a categorical exclusion “circumvent NEPA”?
    Categorical exclusions are defined here in the NEPA regulations promulgated by CEQ. Now people can be afraid to use them, say, for example, that agency lawyers “won’t defend you if you use a CE.” I have heard that second hand, don’t know if that’s a true rumor or not..
    Look for 1508.4

    3. What is a “significant effect” in the NEPA sense?

    Check out 1508.27 at the same link. There is also case law, but that is the opinion of judges on what the intent was. You are talking about intent, which in my opinion is most readily found in the statute and the implementing regulations.

    More tomorrow.

    Reply
  11. II. David, you said:

    “Rey made no secret for his contempt for environmental laws, while he was in charge of overseeing the USFS. That you are on record being openly supportive of Rey’s tenure speaks volumes for your own shared contempt for the same laws and those who would defend them. I find this attitude emblematic of an agency culture that as a matter of course, could ONLY be expected to mismanage on the grand scales that it has. It then follows, this has resulted in a crisis of public faith in an agency which is bound by those same laws it openly subverts and vilifies.”

    I am not “openly supportive of Rey’s tenure”. I think he did some things right and others not so right. Which turns out to be EXACTLY the same things I think about the Jim Lyons tenure and the Harris Sherman tenure.
    Here are my bits of evidence against “agency capture”.
    1) I’ve said this before. The FS does what administrations want, however silly. You have to give the President some credit or blame for what goes on in the Executive Branch. If a Forest Service Chief isn’t doing what you want you can berate them until they retire or give them a new assignment in the bowels of the South ( or whatever the current name is) Building. It’s been done.
    2) Anyone who has been around an ID Team sees that the “agency” doesn’t have one opinion. Like I learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis at the Kennedy School, there are different subgroups pursuing their own agendas. Made more complicated by the existence of political appointees who call the shots. I’ve said it before, but your view of “agency capture” does not agree with my lived experience of working for the agency.

    Finally, on a more down-to-earth point:

    The oped clearly identifies concerns about potential harms associated with:
    1) risks from logging activities of old growth applied to 575 miles of roads occurring in “wilderness study areas, research natural areas, inventoried roadless areas” — conceivably resulting in increased sedimentation to streams of watersheds already suffering degraded conditions.

    Really? If we are hauling trees within a tree length and a half from a road?
    How exactly is that going to cause increased sedimentation?
    Of course a person could ask “what the heck is the road doing in an IRA or WSA or RNA to start with?” Perhaps, those designations were not properly applied in the first place… er.. how could a road be in a roadless area?

    2) risks associated with herbicide treatments in proximity to these already degraded streams.

    Read the mitigation in the DM.
    ….

    (This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of your hostile characterizations and antagonistic attitudes — as former agency careerist — that you would devote so much energy vilifying citizen oversight of an agency so obviously responsible for a legacy of fantastic scales of mismanagement. I hope someday, you will understand how deeply, deeply, insulting your antagonism is to fellow taxpaying citizens who have watched the steady degradation and destruction of their public lands and are insisting their government follow environmental laws. That you would ignore the phenomenal costs borne by our national forest system and its denizens, and all the taxpayer subsidies funding colossal mismanagement, — and instead, grandstand the far smaller court costs associated with defending Dns like this one or disastrous RODs of the past, provides confirmation of an agency culture wholly incapable of personal and professional accountability.)
    Finally, as Matthew pointed out, there are risks associated with altering the vegetation cover which occurs in elk travel corridors. Such elk are forced to negotiate heavily fragmented habitats of their home ranges. Imagine if you will, hunting season and you are the target species which must run the gauntlet of legions of “hunters” shooting from the road system from their ATVs,etc.. Road densities factor heavily in the incidence of poaching. Altering the cover conceivably increases the hazard and risks to elk management.

    I am not “hostile” I am simply asking questions, which others also ask about whether this is the best way to run our public lands. I don’t even use bad language, like other posters and commenters on this site.

    I don’t see how if there is a road, and dead trees are removed from a tree length and a half before they fall down on their own, what that does to elk compared to if the trees do fall down on their own. In fact, the elk should be healthier as they won’t have to expend energy hopping over dead trees as they dart across the road (and should get across the road faster). And the trees will, of course, fall down because they are hazard trees.

    Reply
  12. Sharon,
    You have again, ignored my specific requests for a response:
    I asked, ” a: Are you seriously suggesting “purchasing” 480 acres old growth goshawk habitat is preferable to correcting unchecked systemic agency malfeasance?”

    I asked, “Would you please quantify the hazards of these trees while you’re so stridently defending the DN? It is not at all clear to me the extent of these hazards which justify such an extensive investment of taxpayer funds to fulfill the agency’s “moral obligations””

    Enough time has passed to understand pretty clearly what’s going on here. We are talking past each other. You pick what you want to respond to, and ignore what I specifically ask you to respond to.

    I have carefully responded to what you’ve asked. You have carefully avoided reciprocating in good faith.

    Earlier I asked you what happened to Dave Iverson, as I noticed an abrupt disappearance of his valued presence here. You ignored that question too.

    I think I know now, and have likely made the same decision as Dave.

    I have tried twice to manually unsubscribe using the WordPress options and have failed.

    Please UNSUBSCRIBE ME from your NCFP posts.

    Your tactics and agenda are now crystal clear despite your claimed goals in “About” (NCFP):
    “To solicit broad participation…”
    Broad participation is unlikely when the point of the solicitation is to use participants as scapegoats. I now know I, and others with very different values and ethics have been used for your larger purposes. As a consequence, there has not been broad participation from our ranks.

    “We especially seek to share perspectives among practitioners, the public and the academic and science communities.”
    To “share” invokes or implies reciprocity. Shame on you for making the same self-serving, disingenuous claims as the agency you devoted your professional life to.

    You have every right to service your own agenda and that agency. You do not have the moral right to imply this blog of yours represents a level playing field in which you, no — “(we?)… seek to share perspectives.”

    I’ve known for awhile, that “sharing perspectives” is not what you seek.

    You and your followers seek a live target.

    Reply
    • David, I don’t think that I can unsubscribe you, I think you have to do that.

      I looked at the WordPress Forum here
      http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/a-blog-is-forcing-me-to-follow-it-and-i-dont-want-to?replies=7

      Here are brief instructions for unsubscribing
      1. click the “unsubscribe” link on the emails of the posts at the very bottom of the emails.
      2. go here > http://wordpress.com/#!/read/edit/ locate and click the “x” next to any blog there to unfollow it and no longer receive posts in the Reader or by email.
      3. go to the blog in question and click the unfollow/follow link on your Admin bar.

      If none of those work please post again and we can flag this thread for Staff intervention.

      Now as to your points…

      1. I don’t believe that there is such a thing as “unchecked agency malfeasance”. I think there are a bunch of good public servants (and some not so good, but that’s another story) of incredibly different opinions about everything, doing their best to find a way to honor the wishes of all three branches of government. But if you are going to make that claim, you would have to provide evidence, not only that there is something you consider to be malfeasance, but also that the initiator of the action was the Forest Service, and not Congress, the courts or the Administration.

      2. Hazard trees are trees that would fall down into a road or potentially knock into another tree that would fall into a road. It actually costs more to wait for each one fall down and then cut it up and remove it from the road. And the FS or other land manager has responsibility for making sure the roads are not obstructed and are relatively safe to drive on. So it’s pay me before the trees fall down, or for years as individual trees fall down.

      3. I don’t know what happened to Dave Iverson, or other people who used to post but don’t as much. I assume that they have something else to devote their energies to that is more compelling. The only person who has left and told me their reasons is Derek.

      4. I honestly seek to hear different perspectives and hear the exchange among people who feel differently. But part of that is for me to share how I feel.

      When I grew up in the scientific business, critiquing someone’s work in a caring way was a way to show respect.
      Let’s call that cultural value A.

      You wouldn’t spend time on it if you didn’t think the ideas you have to share about improvement would go to a mutually better understanding of the research topic. If you don’t engage and critique, you don’t respect that person’s work enough to bother.

      When I moved to the bureaucratic business, I found cultural value B.

      Open and honest and criticism (even when done in a caring way) was less appreciated. because someone’s feeling might get hurt and they would potentially not be an ally in the future, or say bad things about you behind your back. In that culture “not criticizing” and letting people go on doing questionable things is a way to show respect.

      Which is an interesting thing to discuss further. You bring up many valuable topics, David.

      I’d like this blog to be more A than B.
      David, you are welcomed, valued, and respected but not always agreed with.

      Reply
      • Trees fall on roads QUITE OFTEN, as evidenced by the last several days in the area of the project I am working on. Yes, we saw about TEN trees land on the roads from the weekend’s storm. Additionally, there was an actual fatality on this Ranger District in the early 90’s.

        Roads MUST come with buffers, regardless of where they go and what they go through. This even includes the cut-slopes and fill-slopes. These buffers vary with the steepness of the uphill side of such roads. It is people like Chad Hanson, and maybe some others on this blog, who will deny that hazard trees are a problem, and will sue to get their way. Besides, what kind of analysis is needed to deal with hazard trees?!?! If a hazard tree is located in a sensitive area, we can always fell it and leave it where it is.

        There is MUCH more to hazard tree impacts, including plugged culverts from branches and chunks. Additionally, there are fuels issues associated with hazard tree concentrations. Here in California, we actually removed the logging slash from the project area, altogether.

        Reply

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