The following article, written by Jordan Rane, ran in Columbia Insight on August 20, 2020. It was shared by Rob Klavins of Oregon Wild.
Forest Service wants to eliminate protections on large trees
The decision announced last week would allow logging some of the largest trees in more than 9 million acres of national forests in eastern Oregon
The U.S. Forest Service is a business. That fact was driven home in an August 10 bottom line memo U.S. Department of Agriculture (which oversees the Forest Service) Secretary Sonny Perdue sent to regional foresters around the country pressuring them to increase efforts to meet annual timber harvest goals.
The agency is behind on its yearly timber sales projections. Perdue is clearly anxious to get chain saws roaring. Perhaps to drive the point home the USFS recently posted job openings for all nine regional forester jobs (which pay between $175,500 and $186,500 a year) on USAJobs.gov.
But the USFS is also a government agency responsible for implementing good management policy that protects 154 national forests.
The tension between those two goals is already dominating reaction to one of the most consequential forest management decisions to hit the Columbia River Basin since President Donald Trump took office.
Last week, the U.S. Forest Service announced its intention to do away with a 25-year-old standard preventing logging companies from cutting down the largest trees in eastern Oregon. This potentially means logging old-growth trees.
Since 1995, a USFS public land management regulation known as the Eastside Screens has prohibited cutting down any live tree with a trunk exceeding a 21-inch diameter at breast height (DBH), which means about four and a half feet off the ground. The regulation affects public forests in Oregon east of the Cascade Range.
The “21-inch rule”—the most salient piece of the Eastside Screens, i.e. “screening questions” land managers must comply with before timber harvesting—was designed to protect wildlife habitat and water supplies, and maintain a healthy mix of young and old trees.
On August 11, the Forest Service announced a rollback of the rule that will affect more than 9 million acres in six national forests across eastern Oregon—the Deschutes, Fremont-Winema, Malheur, Ochoco, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests. A portion of the Umatilla National Forest in Washington might also be affected.
“The harvest limitation under the wildlife standard is being reassessed in light of current forest conditions and the latest scientific understanding of forest management in areas that have frequent disturbances, like wildfires,” stated the USFS last week in explaining its decision to retire the 21-inch rule.
The Forest Service’s draft environmental assessment was published in the Federal Register on August 11, beginning a 30-day public comment period that will close on September 10 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. To submit a comment go to the Forest Service’s Eastside Screens Plan Amendment and click on the “Submit a comment” link.
Opposition questions timing
If a once-protected tree is felled in eastern Oregon during a pandemic in a highly polarized country on the eve of a colossal presidential election, will it even make a sound?
Yes.
At least according to a raft of angry regional and national environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice. A growing coalition is voicing opposition to the Eastside Screens amendment—a move being branded as a thinly disguised, eleventh-hour USFS giveaway to Trump pals in the timber industry.
“If the agency starts cutting down old-growth forest, it’s not going to end well,” says Andy Kerr, veteran conservationist and founder of Ashland, Oregon-based, environmental consulting firm The Larch Company. “Right now the Forest Service is under a mandate to not log big, old trees. … If the agency is on a mission to lift limits in a manner that is not in the public interest, it’s going to activate people even more and will likely lead to litigation.”
Among a litany of issues, one of Kerr’s main contentions has to do with a USFS policy transition from enforceable standards to voluntary discretion when it comes to cutting old-growth trees or younger big ones.
“New science presented in the Forest Service’s latest study suggests that the 21-inch rule, which is an enforceable standard, is not perfect. But the question is what do you replace it with?” asks Kerr. “What they’re replacing it with is not a better enforceable standard but a voluntary guideline—essentially a recommendation. That’s like taking the speed limit off of highways and saying please drive sensibly. We hope everyone does the right thing. But they won’t.
“And this is in the context of the Trump administration, which has issued an executive order to increase the cut. So if you’re saying this is really about improving nature, let’s take a close, hard look at the specific timing of all this and not kid ourselves.”
New thinking on forest management
The Trump administration’s eagerness to expand logging on public lands has been clear from early in his administration.
“The administration’s ‘vision’ includes increased forest thinning, more timber production, more grazing of livestock and shorter environmental reviews on land the Forest Service oversees,” according to E&E News, a respected journal for energy and environment professionals.
Coming as it does with the presidential election approaching, conservationists like Kerr have questioned the timing of this latest decision.
“This was the most significant environmental story in the state no one was talking about. That’s changed.” —Rob Klavins, Oregon Wild
The Forest Service views the amendment differently.
Invoking a quarter century of evolving ecological science since the Eastside Screen policies were passed during the Clinton administration, the agency’s latest studies recommend what it calls an “adaptive management” style in the discretionary monitoring of old trees and larger young ones.
“Old trees in eastern Oregon currently have a relatively high mortality rate,” Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region project coordinator Emily Platt told Columbia Insight. “Changing the 21-inch-rule standard to a guideline would allow managers to more effectively cultivate those old trees across the landscape.
“It would also allow managers to remove some young but large—over 21-inch—trees that now compete for resources like water with old trees and create ladder fuels that allow fires to more easily spread into the canopy of forests.”
In other words, while big trees may provide an emotional rallying point for conservationists, the USFS now says that over the years the 21-inch rule has actually been disadvantageous to some of those older trees the rule was meant to protect.
“Although the current 21-inch standard protects large trees from logging, it does not protect large trees from mortality from fire, insects and drought,” said Platt.
It may sound counterintuitive, the agency is saying, but to save large trees you have to cut down large trees.
It’s not an easy message to get across.
Eastern Oregon goes national
The Forest Service says that when they were introduced 25 years ago, the Eastside Screens were intended only as an interim measure. They were never meant to stand as a permanent policy.
This, too, is a point conservationists are calling foul on.
“The whole ‘interim’ or ‘temporary’ argument by the Forest Service is as misleading and disingenuous as those assurances of sound logging discretion when it comes to big trees,” says Rob Klavins, Northeast Oregon field coordinator for Oregon Wild. “Those rules were meant to be a placeholder until the agency put together more comprehensive environmental protections to address things like grazing, riparian logging, road building—not just old-growth and big tree protection.
“They skip the second part, which is that it was interim until the Forest Service provided a more comprehensive set of protections for landscapes and forests for eastern Oregon. The Forest Service never did that, and a lot of people can reasonably argue that this is essentially a broken promise.”
Klavins believes discarding the 21-inch rule will “undo decades of good work” in the fight to protect old-growth trees and extend conservation values.
Last month, he was busily getting the word out on the Eastside Screens amendment, calling it “the most significant environmental story in the state that no one was talking about.”
“Thankfully that’s very quickly changed,” he says now. “It’s not surprising that conservation groups are going to dust up with the Trump administration over all of these environmental protections being undermined across the board—wetlands in the Southeast, mining in the Upper Midwest and so on.
“But it’s not every day that you get some of the nation’s biggest environmental organizations weighing in on an issue that just affects eastern Oregon. Suddenly there’s broad nationwide consensus that this is extremely significant and consequential.”
Is the timing of these policy changes pertinent from a Forest Service perspective?
“We think this is the right decision to make,” said Platt. “Regardless of how it relates to political calendars.”
Jordan Rane is an award-winning travel writer whose work has appeared in CNN.com, Outside, Men’s Journal and the Los Angeles Times.
This is pathetic; talk about circuitous “reasoning”, or as MK points out, specialized terminology to promote logging!
The Forest Service needs to do more adaptive management, if this includes the harvesting of our wood resources, good. Sometimes it makes sense to remove larger trees. I don’t believe anyone is in a big rush to log the remaining old growth, but it does make good headlines for Oregon Wild.
We may not disagree on the principle here, but this proposal entirely removes protections for major cohorts of big and old trees across the extremely diverse landscapes of Eastern Oregon. To the extent any nominal protection remain, they would be entirely discretionary suggestions rather than clear rules that outline exactly when/where/why it might make sense to remove some larger trees.
The agency might have found this to be less controversial if they were honoring the promise they made over 20 years ago to replace these rules with something more holistic rather than rushing through a process that only undermines protections for big and old trees while under tremendous political pressure.
Does anyone really believe this administration is interested in protecting big trees, old growth, and wildlife habitat?
Rob, can you tell us where that promise was documented?
Perhaps we could notice that after years of not paying attention to Eastern Oregon, suddenly national environmental groups are interested .. could it be due to the fact they there’s an election and they support a candidate who will in turn give them access and other goodies?
But Trump and the Eastside Screens, I think that’s a stretch. For one thing, if it were important to the Admin, I think they would have started or sped up so that a draft EA is not out for 30 day comment in September of an election year. Also I don’t think eastern Oregon timber industry, such as it is, is even a blip on the screen of Trump nor his advisors.
I am glad that the Forest Service got five sentences to respond to the critiques from Andy Kerr and Rob Klavins that form the center of this story. I think it’s also interesting that Klavins says:
“Those rules were meant to be a placeholder until the agency put together more comprehensive environmental protections to address things like grazing, riparian logging, road building—not just old-growth and big tree protection.”
I wonder where this agreement is documented.
It’s also interesting when groups claim that the “latest science” is important and when not. If PNW rounded up the latest info, isn’t that a good thing?
When I posted the article to the blog, I knew that you’d have a pretty interesting comment Sharon….so thanks for never disappointing.
Perhaps you have never noticed that for decades national groups like the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice have, in fact, “paid attention” to old-growth logging and roadless issues on national forests throughout the country, including national forests in eastern Oregon.
I’m pretty sure that if you dug back into the U.S. Forest Service public comment archives for the Eastside Screen regulations from 1995 and prior, you’d see that national groups like the Sierra Club, NRDC and Earthjustice (which was actually called “Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund” during that period) did, in fact, participate. Likewise, if you dug into the public comment archives for the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP), you’d see these groups participated.
Also, while it’s true the Sierra Club is a “national” organization, they have state-wide chapters throughout the country. According to their website, “The Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club represents the organization’s 80,000 members and supporters in Oregon and has been hard at work protecting our state’s public lands since 1978.”
By the way, Oregon Wild was founded in 1974 (used to be called the Oregon Natural Resources Council) and this state-based organization has a 46 year history of working on national forest and public lands issues throughout the state, including lots of examples of decades of work in Eastern Oregon in general, and specifically, tons of work on the Eastside Screens since the 1990s.
Yet, Sharon, instead of even knowing (or acknowledging) some of this basic information and history, when the Trump administration (i.e. the people currently in power) make a decision to propose doing away with these Eastside Screens…..
Your first reaction and comment is to create a conspiracy theory that national groups haven’t paid attention to Eastern Oregon until “there’s an election and they support a candidate who will in turn give them access and other goodies?”
Wow.
Actually, the reason to do an amendment has come from the administration – so don’t kid yourself. The Chief of the FS wrote a letter to the RF of Region 6 directing him to amend the 21″ rule. I’m guessing the Chief did not come up with that idea herself.
Could you provide a copy of that memo, Anonymous? That might be helpful context for this discussion.
There’s a great deal of evidence of political meddling. The article points to some right off the bat.
There are also a series of memos from the administration showing a great deal of pressure being put on regional offices to essentially do favors for special interests and get the cut out.
Rob, I don’t think things done today such as this amendment will have much impact on “getting the cut out.” So your group disagrees with it, are you not also a “special interest”? Are you a “non-special” interest? Are you going to tell the new Admin that you don’t want them to make any decisions you agree with because that would be “favoring special interests?” I’m puzzled- it seems to me that interests are interests and you (we) are all special. 🙂
I’m not a big fan of cutting younger 21″+ pines. Those trees should be the replacements for the older trees, when they die.
I think they could do some other things, while still keeping the 21″ limits, in general. They could open logging to larger trees which meet special guidelines. Basal areas, crown ratios, tree vigor and species composition could all be factors, IMHO. Eastside stands are often quite variable, and blanket policies are doomed to fail.
Here’s what the EA says:
In the sentence “This standard is not suggested specifically by the scientific literature but rather is a recognition of trust issues deeply embedded in management activities involving old trees in the Northwest”. I like how they specifically called out “trust”. To think that this is a wrong thing to do (allow people to think large trees in a stand of large trees), you would have to think that the FS can’t be trusted to favor old growth trees, nor to determine which large trees need to be thinned to improve the chances of other large trees surviving. I’d think that whether it is a standard or a guideline doesn’t really matter if you don’t trust the FS. Unless you think that litigation is the only way to make the FS do what it says.
Let’s think about this.. what if there were a review of the first 20 silvicultural prescriptions under the new guidelines, complete with pre-marking of trees, and a multi-party review of the marking of those sites? My thinking is that there are many different ways of building trust that may not fit into the standard NEPA process. At least it would move the discussion from “evil Trump Administration” to “a standard that broad doesn’t work for every situation across the diverse East Side.”
As a person who used to work on the East Side, the standard never made sense biologically, but was the best deal that someone could do in the 90’s and that’s totally OK. I’m just surprised it’s taken such a long time to take another look.
So, can we assume that timbermarkers will be fully-qualified to make decisions based on ample experience, education and skill?
Of course not. Hey, you probably cannot even get a group of foresters to agree on which trees should go and which trees should stay.
But Larry, wouldn’t that be interesting to have 1) the prescription (with all the specialists’ input) , 2) how markers would mark it, and 3) what environmental NGO reps think of the marking?
This would possibly require an on the ground visit- people could understand each other’s concerns, etc. The NEPA doc/prescription/marking process has had long-observed opportunities for problems- but also things change from year to year (like bugs attacking a tree).
At times in the past, we would prepare “Sample Marking Areas”, so that potential purchasers could see an example of how the rest of the not-yet-marked areas would be marked. I guess that would be useful for concerned people to see, in the interest of full transparency and good intentions. However, can these increasingly-complex silvicultural prescriptions be taught to and implemented by Temporary Employees, over expanding acreages?
Some forests on the Eastside such as the Malheur have been implementing projects for years with site-specific forest plan amendments that allow for the removal of large but young fir (mostly grand fir). The prescriptions are fairly straightforward, and yes, operators can implement them with just a little instruction in the field. And yes, seasonals can also understand and implement the prescriptions as well: loggers and techs *are* trainable, it turns out 🙂
We’ve also conducted pre- and post-project monitoring, so we know whether the prescriptions are meeting expectations (they are, although it will obviously take years and more natural disturbance to determine whether the Rx is “working” to recruit old growth trees and reduce fire risk).
Thanks, Susan. I read enough of the EA to find out that one of the stated reasons was that different forests were doing different things with the Screens which is among other things confusing to collaborators. Although you could argue that that way lies incubators of innovation and adaptive management.
The work you are doing with the Malheur sounds impressive. Thank you for your efforts! Is there a description of the effort (blog post sized with links) you can point me to ?
Some of place-based research we have done is here: https://www.bluemountainsforestpartners.org/work/research-and-reports/. Much of this has been peer-reviewed.
This research has informed our collaborative “zones of agreement,” which are here: https://www.bluemountainsforestpartners.org/work/zones-of-agreement/. I would recommend you look at the Upland Zones of Agreement, which puts forward not only the science behind the ZOAs, but also our proposals for action to the Forest Service.
One of the recent projects where trees larger than 21″ were harvested is the Big Mosquito project. The USFS’s website for that project is here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=41022
You can read some about our monitoring efforts here: https://www.bluemountainsforestpartners.org/work/multiparty-monitoring/
It’s good to know there are success stories out there. Oregon Wild has been involved with – and helped design – a few over the years.
However, we’ve also seen discretion and conditional agreement on this matter be abused quite regularly.
There are very different ecological and social conditions across the 9 million acres this amendment would apply to, so while I celebrate the successes, I’d urge caution about applying it more broadly or without the clear context.
Current standard – replaced with a guideline (squishy discretionary suggestion)
“The intent is”…”as much as possible”…”should retain”…”generally emphasize”…”should first prioritize”…That’s just the first couple sentences. It doesn’t get much squishier than that.
I have old USFS materials and timber industry propaganda going back to the 1930’s. None of it talks about getting rid of the old growth and often says the latter. Yet, somehow we got to this place where the vast majority of it is gone.
Litigation may be a dirty word, but it’s the way that the public can hold their government accountable to its own laws.
Rob, as a former East Sider, my memory is different. We were using Keen’s classification on the East Side in ponderosa pine for a long time, but then got into clearcutting due to influence from the West Side. I don’t really know what the 30’s has to do with this.
Would you be happier with the squishiness if the same words were written as a standard?
I would argue that 1) you can still hold the FS accountable outside of the legal process. See our discussion of the marking of trees on the Daniel Boone National Forest https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/05/18/kentucky-heartwood-13163-trees-illegally-sold-on-the-daniel-boone-national-forest/
and the Forest went back and looked at it and provided this report https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/06/10/the-daniel-boone-national-forest-response-on-greenwood-vegetation-project/
That seems pretty accountable to me.
2) I’m a member of the public and I don’t get to hold them accountable for what’s important to me via litigation. Because I don’t have the funds to hire an attorney. So some members of the public are privileged to have their concerns addressed but not others.
There are a lot of people with fewer funds than you who are holding the federal government accountable through their membership in groups. If there is no group representing your interest, you could start one, and ask for money. If there is little interest in your interest, then how important is this “want” to the greater good? (This reminds me of the idea in the last post about not funding research that few people are interested in.)
Hi Sharon,
In addition to seconding what Jon just said, I’d also like to say thank you for providing (in your point #2) a great real-world example of why the Equal Access to Justice Act is so important.
Suppose the people who agree with me don’t have money either?
People actually are not allowed to weigh in to questions of research funding.
FIRE MOVIE
Did anyone else watch the film WilderThanWIld that Sharon posted info about a couple of weeks ago?
Today I watched the film and participated in the discussion. VERY thought provoking!
Excellent film!! I highly recommend it to y’all!
You can probably find it @ WilderThanWildFilm.org
>>> BTW the director says it will be showing on PBS TV
Especially relevant right now while fires are burning in a variety of ecosystems in California. It’s not all about public forest land or thinning or the issues we discuss here.
The Wine Country Fires a few years ago burned in cities and consumed the KMart and entire neighborhoods!
What’s the common thread between those fires in coastal shrublands and the fires in the Sierras?
CLIMATE CHANGE — IMO we need to get much more serious about climate change because it affects virtually every ecosystem on our planet!
Well, there is also the fact that there are ample fuels around, too. Decades of fuels build-ups. Additionally, NONE of these wildfires are “wind-driven”, like the fires of 2 years ago. The fires may have the ‘normal’ fire-generated updrafts but, there has been no “wind event” associated with these fires, currently.
An upper diameter limit makes no sense silviculturally or economically. A 30 inch ‘poor risk” tree that is going to die in near future should be removed to make way for a replacement and to salvage its value. The objective of management for other than wilderness, scenic areas, and other reserved areas is to maintain a healthy vigorous forest producing a variety of ecosystem services.
The rules that guided my axe 75 years ago when marking virgin short-leaf on the Ouachita N.F. still make sense:
Cut trees with: red heart, root rot (sporophores) , lightning scars old or recent, over-mature (stag headed, tight barked, flat topped), unsound fire scar, southern pine or sever turpentine beetle attack.
What makes sense silviculturally and economically often doesn’t make sense ecologically or socially…or for things like clean water, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration.
just what we need — forests across America devoid of snags and down dead…
JFC. MK never fails to disappoint with appealing to emotions and not science. Or just rational debate. But by all means, sound the alarms and rile the donor base.
Interesting that you can be so opinionated and informed in Montana on what is going on in Oregon, just like how you can relentlessly attack a poster over a single photo, when heroes like Hanson and Halsey can put any photo from anywhere and claim it is anything anywhere to fit an agenda, even when said photo is being used in a completely false and misleading fashion (ever seen a “CLEARCUT!!!” photo that was actually a landing for a single tree selection area? I have. Multiple times. From said Hero Activists and Scientists”).
Sad part is, I and others sometimes agree with your side, but you make everything so winner take all and win/lose and black/white that it’s all but impossible to ever really move forward. You all are your own worst enemy.
JFC “anonymous” Of The Woods. I simply posted an article from the Columbia Insight here, without any comments of my own. Then I simply offered some history of the involvement of certain environmental groups in East Oregon national forest issues, to refute what Sharon was saying. I’m sorry that this was such an obvious trigger to you.
Also, I most certainly have not “relentlessly relentlessly attack(ed) a poster over a single photo.” Here’s that discussion, in which I questioned the very nature of the photo and then reached out to Dr. Diana Six.
Can you please provide evidence to back up your anonymous claim that Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute supposedly “can put any photo from anywhere and claim it is anything anywhere to fit an agenda, even when said photo is being used in a completely false and misleading fashion?”
Thank you. I’m not aware of Richard Halsey doing any such thing, on this blog or elsewhere, and I certainly fail to understand how I’d be to blame, or responsible, for this anyway.
Finally, I do recall that about 7 years ago an article ran in a publication that featured Dr. Chad Hanson and his thoughts on the Rim Fire and post-fire management activities. My recollection is that the publication’s article included a photo from a photographer (who was not Hanson) and that the photo may have been incorrectly identified by the publication. I have no idea why I’m also to blame, or responsible, for this in anyway.
By the way, a big thanks to anonymous Of the Woods for making great, substantive comments about the Trump administration’s proposal to do away with the Eastside Screens, which have provided some protections to larger trees on national forests in eastern Oregon over the past 25 years
Hanson’s people used that photo for months, to fight against pro-forestry legislation and plead for donations. I notified them of their mistake but, it took 3 months for them to remove the photo. It took me less than 5 minutes to find the piece of land in the picture used by Hanson’s people, and to prove that it was private land. Additionally, when that picture came out, Forest Service logging hadn’t even been approved, yet.
Clearly, they used the picture to illustrate the false claims of the Hanson minions.
Can you please identify who “Hanson’s people” are, Larry? Also, are “Hanson’s people” the same as “Hanson’s minions?”
Regardless, thank you for identifying them Larry.
Earth Island Institute and The John Muir Project both used the photo and claimed that the Forest Service was clearcutting in the Rim Fire.
(Edit: The John Muir Project still claims that the Forest Service used clearcuts in the Rim Fire, and uses dubious photos that look like private logging. Notice the prominent property lines in the background. https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/RimFireFactSheet.pdf )
If folks are interesting in reading about the best available science regarding the east side screens rule please see the the recent GTR put out by a panel of highly respected scientists: https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr990.pdf.
There’s science-driven policy and then there is policy-driven science. Many would argue this is the latter. The conclusions that the agency put out in this report were heavily criticized by independent scientists during – and after – a public meeting: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r6/landmanagement/planning/?cid=FSEPRD710229
Which independent scientists criticized the findings in the report and where can I find those criticisms? The link you posted just leads to the general EA homepage.
Watch the first two forums under the public involvement section for a start.
Hmm. I think the policy-driven science goes both ways. Can you tell us more about the specific criticisms? I’m sure we’d like to have an open discussion here.
I’d suggest watching the Science Forum in the public involvement section here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r6/landmanagement/planning/?cid=FSEPRD710229
I watched part of it.. I listened to the Q&A and it sounded like the same stuff Della Salla, Hanson, and Law always say, as we have discussed many times here. IMHO this is a good example of why discussions online work better.
I hope you’re not saying that they are independent scientists and therefore have no or fewer biases..
There was also a question about whether monitoring showed that the Screens worked for birds or not. I’m not a bird person, but it seems to me that if you want to know if something works, you need a meaningful control. Which you can’t get if the Screens were applied everywhere. Which they were because it’s a regulation.
Anyway, I’m sure that there’s much good stuff here, but it’s hours long. If you want to pull out specific claims and we can discuss them here that would be good.
FWIW:
This sentiment: “It sounded like the same stuff XX, YY, and ZZ always say, as we have discussed many times here.”
Could apply to most everything posted on this blog during the past 10 years.
However, when it comes to Dr. Della Salla, Dr. Hanson and Dr. Law I certainly don’t believe a couple of the commenters and contributors on this blog who have tried hard to discredit them have actually done that.
My point is not to “discredit” them.. but we discuss specific claims that they have made and farmings that they have of issues. For example, I thought I heard on the recording someone saying that only 1% of the forest will burn. I don’t understand how this fits other models that say fires will be everywhere due to climate change. That’s the kind of discussion that would be interesting to have IMHO.
“I’m not a bird person, but it seems to me that if you want to know if something works, you need a meaningful control. Which you can’t get if the Screens were applied everywhere. Which they were because it’s a regulation.”
Could adjacent, ecologically similar, private land provide a natural control? Private land is not subject to Forest Service plans or regulations.
The screens were not applied everywhere. The Malheur at least made project-specific amendments to avoid them. Maybe they learned something.
The intent of the Eastside Screens is explained in its 1995 decision document:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5284206.pdf
It is referred to as “interim management direction.” It is “intentionally restrictive, reflecting a conservative interpretation … for the short term.” The 1995 replacement of a 1994 amendment retained the original intent, “to preserve future planning options until completion of the Eastside EIS” (expected at that time to be 1996, later becoming the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project.) That was expected to produce a comprehensive ecosystem management strategy that would provide overall guidance that would perhaps be less conservative, but it was never finished. So a “quick and dirty” fix is inconsistent with that intent.
I’m glad to see that the Forest Service’s efforts to reduce accountability are finally getting the public’s attention (it’s common in recent revised forest plans). They cloak it in the terminology of “adaptive management,” but rarely do their actions meet even the agency’s definition: “Adaptive management is a structured, iterative process for decisionmaking to reduce uncertainty through structured hypothesis testing and monitoring of outcomes.”
What they really mean is “trust us to do what we think is best.” (I will give credit to them recognizing that may be the real issue here.) NFMA was passed because the Forest Service failed the trust test, and it requires accountability in forest plans, especially with regard to ensuring survival of at-risk species (this amendment will have to comply with the 2012 Planning Rule requirements for viability). The timing of this amendment is especially bad because the Trump Administration has reminded everyone of why we should be wary of trusting the government.
Whatever happened to the ICBEMP? I thought they did finish it. So adaptive management is bad, unless what exactly? Again, you can say that it “reduces accountability” but I feel multiparty monitoring is better accountability than a non-biological legal requirement. Not only is it better for accountability on the big tree question because people go on site, but MPM can identify many other issues and concerns.
People who did the deal to have Adaptive Management Areas in the NW Forest Plan may also mistrust the government. Not only are individual admins untrustworthy but over the timeframe that incorporates flip-flopping of admins, it gets even more dicey, and as we have seen, litigation can slow down or stop any deal.. Like I said, I’d rather put my faith in the hands of MPM.
“Whatever happened to the ICBEMP? I thought they did finish it.” Nope.
Actually, ICBEMP *was* completed.
In January 2003, the USFS, BLM, and cooperating agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding completing the Project, and agree to cooperatively implement ICBEMP. No ROD was signed. I’ve never seen any “cooperative implementation” of ICBEMP, so I’m not sure what the signatories actually intended.
In July 2004, the USFS and BLM develop an Aquatic/Riparian Habitat Framework to clarify ICBEMP relative to the aquatic and riparian habitat components, but this framework was never incorporated into LRMPs.
For more, see: https://www.fs.fed.us/r6/icbemp/
“Completed” = “Decision” in my book. Northwest Forest Plan was “completed.” ICBEMP was not.
This provides a short history of ICBEMP: https://www.fs.fed.us/r6/icbemp/
A final EIS was completed at the end of 2000, but the project was officially abandoned with an MOU in 2003. While this synopsis points out that President Clinton ordered this project, it didn’t mention that there was a party-changing election in 2000. My personal observation (as the R1 rep to ICBEMP) was that this reduced the influence of the regulatory agencies and produced a watered-down version of direction to the Forest Service and BLM.
Any future forest plan changes should be using the ICBEMP direction as part of its purpose and need. But here’s all it says about old growth.
“Planning Principles:
Restore, maintain, and enhance appropriate levels of late-successional and old-growth forests to conserve the species dependent on them. These forest ecosystems should be well-distributed, functional, and interconnected.
Consider natural range of variation and climate change when developing strategies to sustain late-successional habitats to improve their resilience to disturbance.”
(From “The Interior Columbia Basin Strategy: A Strategy for Applying the Knowledge Gained
by the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project to the Revision of Land Use
Plans and Project Implementation.” 2014) https://www.fs.fed.us/r6/icbemp/html/ICBEMP_Frameworkmemorandum-and-strategy_2014.pdf
1) Those sound like good planning principles to me. What would you want instead?
2) IMHO regulatory agency personnel aren’t always right.
I think a lot of this history was about turf and power rather than either effective conservation or agency efficiency. The vision of the regulatory agencies was a consistent broad-scale approach to ecosystem management, and therefore species habitat management (largely following the model of the Northwest Forest Plan), that they could use in the ESA consultation process (fish were probably the biggest concern in the Basin). They saw benefits in terms of consultation efficiency and effectiveness of species conservation. But the management agencies would rather everything be decided (and debated, and often litigated) at a finer scale of individual plans and projects. Instead of planning at the scale that at-risk species live in. The ICBEMP FEIS preferred alternative included something closer to what would work to conserve species (though two decades later, I’m sure it could be improved upon).
Timeline:
1993: The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitions the USFS to halt all timber harvest activity in old growth forests east of the Cascades.
1994: USFS issues “Interim Management Direction Establishing Riparian, Ecosystem and Wildlife Standards for Timber Sales.”
1995: “Temporary” ban on cutting trees larger than 21 inches DBH (the “Eastside Screens”).
Steve,
Thank you so much for providing this timeline. It proves my point (above, in a previous comment) that national groups like NRDC participated in the process back in the 1990s and have, in fact, had an interest in national forest issues in Eastern Oregon for quite some time. Given NRDC’s history on the issue of protecting larger trees on public lands east of the Cascades it shouldn’t surprise anyone that when the Trump administration decides to try and remove large tree protections for 9 million acres in Eastern Oregon that NRDC may have something to say about it, regardless of if there will be an election in a few months.
Could it be that the USFS developed the eastside screens as a way of heading off an NRDC lawsuit? I don;t know what happened behind the scenes.
Yes.
So.. was it a formal settlement? Or just some kind of deal between the then-Admin and NRDC?
There was never a lawsuit to settle. Every public policy, including maintaining the status quo, results from dealmaking of one kind or another.
I understand that, and also that one person’s “caving in to special interests” is another person’s “seeing the wisdom of the interest group’s position.” 🙂
Do you have any evidence that the reviewing of the east-side screens rule comes at the direction of partisans within the Trump administration? If this is a partisan attack on forest protections why is it supported by the leading researchers in east-side forest ecology and why on earth would they nominate the former director of the Gifford Pinchot Task Force as the project coordinator? Just because you have an emotional belief opposing any forest management doesn’t make the USFS a bunch of partisan hacks.
Jon, if environmental effects are best determined at the spatial scale of the project (your argument against CB NEPA), wouldn’t that also be true for environmental effects related to species? And consultation efficiency sounds a bit like what’s easiest for the regulatory agency.. nothing wrong with attempting to minimize your workload, that’s what agencies would all like to do.
I think efficiency is in the eye of the beholder, take NEPA efficiency for example..
NEPA requires analysis and disclosure of both site-specificity and cumulative effects. ESA consultation must consider the listed entity as a whole. Consultation is a workload for both agencies, and the Forest Service has benefitted from consultation on forest plans being used to streamline consultation on projects. (Multiple “streamlining agreements” among the agencies have addressed this for ESA consultation.)
Another bit of trivia in the history of the Eastside Screens – the Forest Service initially tried to adopt the screens outside of the forest planning process. They were sued by the timber industry (Prairie Wood Products) and lost, so then adopted forest plan amendments.
And what do the indigenous people who lived on that land over thousands of years have a say in this? Having their land taken away and stripped down? By the need of power and greed. Logging companies and the government taking away lands where indigenous peoples ancestors hunted protected the forest until rifles and canon balls created war for the need of power over lands. This land is not Iraq or Iran. We are free. Keep our sacred lands safe. Don’t ruin it for the next generation.
Kristina, I think Tribal consultation would be required for this kind of decision. You might want to check the documents.