Range of variation webinar (and more)

This is a topic that at least Sharon and I like to debate (though for some reason she didn’t weigh in here).  The Western Environmental Law Center is offering this hour and half webinar on July 17.  As far as I know, it’s open to the public.

PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 3: Historical Range of Variability (HRV): Uses and Various Approaches
 
Range of Variability (ROV) concepts – including Natural (NRV), Historic (HRV), Current (CRV), and Future (FRV) – are frequently used by the US Forest Service to help define land management goals. Nathan Poage, Forest Service Ecologist, joins us to provide an introduction to ROV terminology and examples of how the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests in the Blue Mountains have applied ROV concepts during project planning when addressing key requirements of the Eastside Screens. The discussion will include overviews of tools commonly used to conduct ROV analyses. Q&A will follow the presentation.
This webinar will be on Friday, July 17 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Registration is required for this event. Register today by clicking this link.
Note that it also involves the Eastside Screens.  I don’t think I can make it, but I’d be interested in hearing about it.  I also wanted to point out that this is about how to apply these concepts to projects developed under antiquated forest plans that don’t include the concepts.  It was this kind of thinking that drove development of the requirement to do this instead as part of revising forest plans under the 2012 Planning Rule.  Natural Range of Variation (NRV) embraced by the Planning Rule is a required desired condition for ecosystems, which should not change over time, and therefore should not be redecided for each project.  I’d be interested in knowing how, once ROV is determined for a particular project here, it is then documented and used for future projects in the same ecosystem.
But maybe there would be more interest in this one:
PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 2: Collaborative Administrative and Judicial Review Opportunities
In this follow-up webinar to NEPA 101, WELC attorney Susan Jane Brown will give a presentation on and answer your questions about collaborative administrative and judicial review opportunities, and dig deeper into the administrative review process for the Forest Service, judicial review of agency decisions, and how collaborative groups can engage in these processes.
This webinar will be on Thursday, July 9 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Registration is required for this event. Register today by clicking this link.

8 thoughts on “Range of variation webinar (and more)”

  1. Actually, the HRV webinar is organized by Sustainable Northwest. WELC (me) is involved in the second webinar about judicial and administrative review opportunities for forest collaborative groups 🙂

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  2. Jon, is it June or July 17? Both webinars sound interesting. Looking forward to them!

    I didn’t weigh in because I am starting a different line of argument on the HRV/NRV thing.

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  3. Natural Range of Variation is a good idea, but – as usual – has limitations, especially for wildlife occupying large ranges and having specialized habitat requirements. (1) It often does not incorporate topographic habitat needs (though topography and vegetation are generally correlated). (2) I does not incorporate the needs for juxtapostion of suitable habitat areas, and thus fails to deal with needs for local migration corridors. These apply especially to bighorn sheep. (3) the assumption is that if the NRV during the last 100 years was good enough to sustain species, it must still be good enough. This assumption fails because habitats that were once used, but are now outside the Forest boundaries, have often become unavailable, or destroyed. NRV does not deal with any need to compensate for what has occurred on parts of home ranges that are now outside the Forest. One example: for bighorns, a “new” habitat requirement is distance from domestic sheep and goats. I believe that many bighorn herds once used habitats, now outside the Forest, that now have domestics. Consequently, if we are to maintain bighorn herds that are of a viable population size, within the Forest, we must compensate for habitats lost just outside the Forest. NRV will not necessarily solve this problem.

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  4. All good points. NRV is only the coarse filter part of providing for species viability, and the science indicates that viability for most species would require forest plans to do more than that (fine filter plan components). Also, the Natural Range of Variation is not defined as necessarily “historic.” The Planning Rule doesn’t define it, and the Handbook is contradictory and mostly beats around the bushes, but suggests this purpose, “The natural range of variation is a guide to understanding how to restore a resilient ecosystem with structural and functional properties that will enable it to persist into the future.” It recognizes that, “it may be necessary to manage for characteristics that were rare or never occurred in the past” in parts of an ecosystem. In addition to NRV, the Planning Rule also requires conditions that “can withstand and recover from most perturbations …”

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  5. Jon, I agree..
    “The Planning Rule doesn’t define it, and the Handbook is contradictory and mostly beats around the bushes, but suggests this purpose, “The natural range of variation is a guide to understanding how to restore a resilient ecosystem with structural and functional properties that will enable it to persist into the future.” It recognizes that, “it may be necessary to manage for characteristics that were rare or never occurred in the past” in parts of an ecosystem. ”

    As I said at the time (and was overruled), writing a regulation that requires something undefined doesn’t seem like good practice.

    I think it would have been easier and less convoluted to simply define resilience as a goal.

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