Here’s a link to the announcement. Here’s the bill itself (only 21 pp).
Read a summary of the Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022 here.
Read a section-by-section of the Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022 here.
My comments are in italics.
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ITITLE I – ACCOMPLISHMENTS OVER RHETORIC
Section 101. Thinning Targets.
Section 101 directs the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to set annual acreage targets for mechanical thinning projects on National Forests and public lands. Under the
bill, agencies are to double their acreage targets by 2025 and quadruple them by 2027.
Just exhortation and funding won’t do it. Heck the Wildfire Commission couldn’t get going in the Congressionally prescribed timeframe with only picking people and having a meeting. And there are the workforce problems we’ve discussed many times. But perhaps timelines would be useful due to the next section.
Section 102. Annual Reports.
Section 102 directs the Forest Service and BLM to report certain acreage accomplishments,including whether the mechanical thinning targets in Section 101 have been met. If the targets
are not met, the agencies must report any limitations or challenges, including litigation or permitting delays that hindered their progress.
I think this one has value by making transparent what’s really holding up projects. We’ve discussed various sources of delays here, but with those reports everyone could get a better picture or what’s going on.
Section 103. Transparency in Fire Mitigation Reporting.
Section 103 increases transparency in fire mitigation reporting by directing the Forest Service and BLM to exclude acres that need to be treated more than once from output measures in
certain reports and budget request documents.
This sounds like cleaning up accounting, about time.
Section 104. Regional Forest Carbon Accounting.
Section 104 directs the Forest Service to, using data from the forest inventory and analysis program, determine whether National Forest System lands are carbon sources or carbon sinks,
and to publish that information online.
This sounds useful.
Section 105. Targets for Wildlife Habitat Improvement.
Section 105 directs the Forest Service and BLM to meet wildlife habitat improvement goals and targets relative to existing management plans.
There must be a backstory of how the FS is not meeting targets, the hook and bullet folks are on board with this bill so they must be concerned. There must be a write-up somewhere, has anyone seen it?
TITLE II – FOREST MANAGEMENT
Section 201. Land and Resource Management Plans.
Section 201 directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on whether shortening the length and development timelines of Forest Service land and resource management plans would help the agency address its backlog of out–of–date plans.
I think the FS should convene a Committee of Practitioners and Collaborators to review the successes and failures of the current planning process and recommend changes to NFMA. I don’t think the GAO has the folks to figure out how best to “shorten the length.”
Section 202. Management of Old Growth and Mature Forests.
Section 202 directs the Forest Service and BLM to adhere to the current definitions of “old growth forest,” and requires that any updates or revisions can only been made after a recommendation by a scientific committee, followed by a rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedure Act. Further, this section clarifies that “mature forests” are separate from old–growth forests, and that mature forests are to be managed according to current law.
This section also clarifies that executive branch actions shall not modify, amend, or otherwise change the duties of the Forest Service or BLM under current law.
This takes aim at the Moggie process which is I think a time-wasting (to the rest of us) bone thrown to certain supporters of the current Admin. This bill seems like a step in the right direction, especially the part about mature forests.
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Section 203. Assessment of Processed–based Restoration Techniques.
Section 203 directs the Forest Service and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to establish a pilot program to conduct research on and evaluate wetland and riparian restoration
techniques, including utilizing biologically–driven restoration.
Section 204. Intervenor Status.
Section 204 allows counties and local governments to intervene in lawsuits intended to stop wildfire prevention projects on nearby National Forests.
Help from legal folks here.. I didn’t know they couldn’t be intervenors..
Section 205. Utilizing Grazing for Wildfire Prevention.
Section 205 directs the Forest Service and BLM to develop a strategy to increase the use of grazing as a wildfire mitigation tool. This includes the use of targeted grazing, increasing
issuances of temporary grazing permits, and completing environmental reviews for vacant grazing allotments that could be used for grazing when drought and fires impact occupied
allotments.
TITLE III—WORKFORCE
Section 301. Logging workforce.
Section 301 directs the Forest Service to work with States to develop a universal, tiered program to train people to enter the logging workforce, and to examine ways to facilitate apprenticeship
training opportunities. This section also allows existing funding to be use for low–interest loans to modernize logging machinery.
Section 302. Break–in–service consideration for firefighter retirements.
Section 302 ensures that wildland firefighters can retain employment and retirement benefits for
breaks–in–service that are 9 months or less.
Section 303. Firefighter rental housing.
Section 303 places a cap on rent for wildland firefighters when they are forced to pay for agency–provided housing.
TITLE IV—CULTURAL CHANGE IN AGENCIES
Section 401. Mandatory use of existing authorities.
Section 401 requires each National Forest and BLM unit to use at least one existing streamlined authority for environmental review on a forest management project within the next three years.
Section 402. Curtailing employee relocations.
Section 402 directs the Forest Service to curtail employee relocations and to develop a program that provides incentives for employees to grow in place. Further, this section places a cap on
employee relocation expenses, and directs the Secretary to solicit employee applications in a manner that does not limit eligibility to current Forest Service employees.
I had to read the bill to see that the relocation is about line officers. Since BLM and FS line officers are always switching back and forth, I don’t know about this one:
“Sec shall solicit applications for line officer positions in a manner that does not limit eligibility for the solicited position to only an applicant who is a current employee of the Forest Service.”
Section 403. Repeal of FLAME reports.
Section 403 repeals a report within the FLAME Act of 2009.
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Please add your own thoughts and any analyses you run across, and it would be great if someone would read the entire bill itself.
Wow a cap on FF housing of 40% salary. Important to note because that means this part of the deal is just for show and not actually meaningful. Pretty sure no one is paying 40% of their salary for a bunk in a bunkhouse. Same to the 9 months break in service. How is that supposed to be useful if you can’t even take a season off? Smoke and mirrors…
Two quick responses:
>> I think the FS should convene a Committee of Practitioners and Collaborators to review the successes and failures of the current planning process and recommend changes to NFMA. I don’t think the GAO has the folks to figure out how best to “shorten the length.”
o GAO would likely rely heavily on experts selected pursuant to established methodologies, and report the views of these experts. It’s possible GAO would work through NAS. I’m no methodologist so I can’t comment specifically on how this might work, but I’m not sure the outcome of this review would be wildly different from an FS-convened committee.
>> Section 204 allows counties and local governments to intervene in lawsuits intended to stop wildfire prevention projects on nearby National Forests.
Help from legal folks here.. I didn’t know they couldn’t be intervenors..
o Determining whether a motion to intervene will be granted is often a fact-specific inquiry. The purpose of this provision is probably to deprive courts of the authority to deny a state or county motion to intervene, even if in practice that hasn’t happened all that often.
Rich, my experience with GAO reports has been that field perspectives are not necessarily taken into consideration. In fact, feedback from agencies (including my own feedback) have been ignored. So it’s like a box of chocolates or a pig in a poke.
My other experience is with the “Committee of Scientists”.. they had a academic experts (including a non-scientist for whatever reason..) who tended to have a theoretical view of What Plans Could or Should Do, with little input from people who did the work to produce them or from stakeholders.
Let’s do a flip… practitioners and collaborators are on the team, and ask academics to present their views. vs.
Academics are on the team and practitioners and collaborators present their views.
We’ve had too much of the latter, and not enough of the former in my view.
Thanks for the clarification on counties and local governments to intervene in lawsuits!
Based on Sharon’s description, I predict that public-lands ideologues in the Senate like Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) will oppose this legislation. Which means that it will go nowhere in that body. Same in the House: the Raúl Grijalvas of this world will quash it.
It seems like there is a DOA Christmas-tree bill like this every session. Calling it “bi-partisan” because it has Manchin’s name on it? (When I first started reading it, I was afraid this was part of Manchin’s permit streamlining extortion bill, which may actually pass – though I heard last night it may not be in the continuing resolution bill.) It is useful to use these kinds of proposed solutions to get a feel for what some people think the problems are.
§201 – “whether shortening the length and development timelines of Forest Service land and resource management plans would help the agency address its backlog of out–of–date plans.” Well duh. But would this reduce the amount of work to be done?
§202 – requiring rulemaking (Federal Register process) to change a scientific definition of old growth? I don’t think even the Forest Service wants this kind of meddling in its professional judgment turf. (Especially because there would have to be lots of them of if they are going to be NF/ecosystem/species-specific.) Right now the Forest Service sometimes doesn’t even think it should have to go through the amendment process to change a plan definition.
§102 – How reliable is self-reporting when one of the possibilities is your own failures?
Hmmm permitting “extortion”? It seems like he did a deal and possibly believed his colleagues might honor it. But I’m sure there’s more to the story.
Re: Sec 201 (LMPs) – the solution is easy…eliminate many of the required analysis process steps in the FSM and FSH. I would much rather see a planning team invest in public engagement than trying to check off analysis requirements that do not help a value-driven plan. Would anyone claim that the 2012 rule plans are SO much better given all the required analysis steps?
I wouldn’t argue that. FWIW.
I would have said there are fewer analysis requirements than there were in the old planning regs (mostly related to benchmark analysis), but I’m not sure what you are referring to in the 2012 directives. (And I haven’t been overwhelmed by the analysis I’ve seen for the new plans).
I guess I over-generalized all the 2012 rule-associated process requirements as “analytical requirements”…my bad. I never counted, but the current planning FSM/FSH have a lot more “shall” and “will” statements than I remember in the 1982 rule FSM/FSH. All those process requirements are an unwarranted burden on a planning team, but I also do not advocate removing ALL constraints/requirements (this would verge on “crazy talk”).