Three environmental groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service to stop an 847-acre logging project on the Umpqua National Forest in southern Oregon, about 22 miles southeast of Cottage Grove.
Red tree vole surveys were also conducted during the fall of 2016. According to the lawsuit, the Northwest Ecosystem Survey Team found 75 vole nests in the forests slated for logging, but the Forest Service decided to proceed with the project.
The North Oregon Coast population of voles is considered a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, from the Siuslaw River north to the Columbia River, due to habitat loss and fragmentation.
(A candidate species is warranted for listing, but precluded by higher priorities.)
But here’s the part I thought might be interesting: “The Bureau of Land Management also lifted survey and management guidelines for the species in 2016.” As things get worse off for a species everywhere else, the national forests will necessarily be under more pressure to provide regulatory mechanisms to protect the species, and conditions external to a national forest will make it harder and more important to provide conditions on the national forest that promote a viable population. (Implications for revising the northwest forest plans?)
I wonder how many tree voles got toasted on Umpqua, Willamette, Rogue Siskiyou, National Forests last summer when the FS was playing with fire.
This is a perfect example of obstruction by environmental groups to accomplishing anything on our public lands. These projects take years of study to proceed, with tremendous amounts of consultation.
If I were Cascadian Wildlands I would be more concerned about how much old growth (along with the tree voles) is going to burn up this summer.
I agree that should have been part of this project analysis. This seems to be a key point in a lot of the debate about active management – whether the long-term benefits outweigh short-term risks. There’s not much analysis to support this conclusion in the EA, but here is what it says:
“The proposed action would have an indirect effect of accelerating the development of larger
trees and would likely reduce the risk of future loss of habitat to wildfire on the landscape level
by making the stands more fire resilient and offering strategic fuel breaks for future
management options. This may afford indirect beneficial landscape-level effects to the species
in the future as more high quality habitat may be retained in the event of a fire in the area, as
discussed by Wilson and Forsman (2013).” A lot of “mays.”
The EA acknowledges that there WILL be harm to the species, but in my opinion discounts the risk. In particular, it says: “However, these sites have been designated as non-high priority according to the process outlined in the 2001 ROD which defines them as sites that are not needed for species persistence.” The species was found warranted for listing in 2011, so the science their rationale is based on is clearly outdated. And they don’t mention the recent change in BLM policy to eliminate their survey and manage requirements for the species. If nothing else, this situation seems to warrant an EIS based on the current best available science about the species (nothing was said about the species status in the EA).
When you are talking about species that prefer to live in dense forests with complex structure, there is no way to log your way to better habitat (even if the goal is to save habitat form fire). Fuel = habitat. Logging unavoidably degrades habitat.
The location, timing, and severity of future fire events cannot be predicted making it difficult to determine which forests will benefit from treatment – consequently fuel treatments must be extensive and many stands will be treated unnecessarily, thus incurring all the costs of fuel logging, but receiving none of the beneficial effects on fire behavior. For every acre of fuel reduction that does experience fire, there are 3-10 acres of habitat that are degraded by logging and WILL NOT interact with fire or provide habitat benefits. If you are a red tree vole or a spotted owl, you would much rather take your chances with fire than deal with the certain harms of logging.
When logging intended to benefit habitat will also reduce the quality of habitat, the evaluation must consider both ecological costs and benefits — e.g., the probability that logging will degrade habitat vs. the probability that fuel reduction treatments will interact favorably with fire and thus benefit habitat. This evaluation requires an estimate of the probability of future wildfire. To assume, as many analyses do, a 100% chance of future wildfire over-estimates the likelihood of treatments will interact with fire, thus over-estimating the ecological value of fuel treatments, and under-estimating the ecological effects of logging on habitat.
Supporting analysis here:
Dennis C. Odion, Chad T. Hanson, Dominick. A. DellaSala, William L. Baker, and Monica L. Bond. 2014. Effects of Fire and Commercial Thinning on Future Habitat of the Northern Spotted Owl. The Open Ecology Journal, 2014, 7, 37-51 37. http://benthamopen.com/toecolj/articles/V007/37TOECOLJ.pdf
And here:
The Wildlife Society 2010. Peer Review of the Draft Revised Recovery Plan for Northern Spotted Owl. November 15, 2010. http://www.fws.gov/oregonfwo/Species/Data/NorthernSpottedOwl/Recovery/Library/Documents/TWSDraftRPReview.pdf
And here:
Heiken, D. 2010. Log it to save it? The search for an ecological rationale for fuel reduction logging in Spotted Owl habitat. Oregon Wild. v 1.0. May 2010. https://www.dropbox.com/s/pi15rap4nvwxhtt/Heiken_Log_it_to_save_it_v.1.0.pdf?dl=0
Second.. it seems to me that while logging on a specific site (site X) might not be good for habitat for that site (site X) , logging to change fire behavior on a different site (site Y) might be good to ultimately protect site X. Now even if you assume that logging decreases habitat on site Y, you still need to make assumptions about how many acres like site X that logging on site Y might protect, and the relative proportion of the species of interest on the X and Y sites.
This seems to be to be site-specific, (as are current conditions, and likelihood of next fire) and that’s probably why different studies have reached different conclusions about owls at least (different parts of the country with different assumptions).
This is way too complex, IMHO for generic statements like ” The location, timing, and severity of future fire events cannot be predicted making it difficult to determine which forests will benefit from treatment – consequently fuel treatments must be extensive and many stands will be treated unnecessarily, thus incurring all the costs of fuel logging, but receiving none of the beneficial effects on fire behavior. For every acre of fuel reduction that does experience fire, there are 3-10 acres of habitat that are degraded by logging and WILL NOT interact with fire or provide habitat benefits. ”
The other problem with the way you express this, in my mind, is that for most of us protecting habitat is only one thing that is being protected by aiding suppression efforts via fuel treatments. So the idea that folks are “logging to protect owls” when they do fuel treatments may not be accurate. I haven’t seen any purpose and need statements in NEPA docs that say that, but if someone else could send them that would be great.
If no one knows when fires will happen, then protecting from them is a public policy question and not a science question. Scientists don’t have a unique privilege in deciding what to do when something is unknowable, it’s a risk and people work through governments to determine how much risk they can accept.