Here’s the link:
The public is invited to attend a virtual informational engagement session about the mature and old-growth forests initiative on Monday, July 24 at 2pm ET. Information will be shared about where we were, where we are, and what is next. The session will be an opportunity for you to share your thoughts, concerns and to ask questions. We value your time and aim to make the 2-hour session informational, interactive, and worthwhile!
To attend, please register for the virtual Zoom meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation with a meeting link.
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Several of us attended one today for specific kinds of partners. It was very helpful to understand where the FS is coming from. I’m still confused about how data that is not ground-truthed (not actually true) can be used to make national and regional decisions, but that’s kind of a more epistemological question. Also I’m getting fairly leery of mapping exercieses.. data has confidence intervals associated with it… map colors not so much. Anyway, I think it’s well worth it. It’s also interesting to hear others’ points of view and realize how very different different parts of the country are and how hard it will be for the FS to develop a regional or national policy that makes any sense.
I’ll be interested to hear how “managed fire” policies contribute to Old growth. We are burning millions of acres on purpose with no accountability for disclosing cumulative effects and no analysis of impacts. See Sarah Hyden’s guest column on Smokey Wire
Where does the “million of acres on purpose”. come from
Just to clarify, I know that the data (except maybe climate projections downscaled) has confidence intervals. My point was that if you have a polygon and you estimate a number for it.. and that value has a confidence interval it seems like it would be hard to visualize that confidence interval (and whether that interval overlaps the value of the next polygon). But maybe I just don’t understand mapping that well.
Maybe the idea is that the policy development won’t use maps but the original data with the confidence intervals imbedded somehow.
Thanks for the heads-up. The Forest Service answered a question I think we were kicking around on another thread – it regards “mature” and “commercial” as the same thing. Now can such logging be done so that it is not “ecologically harmful?” It seems to me that it should be set up as the exception rather than the rule, meaning a plan standard requiring a project-specific amendment to deviate. Or perhaps a standard with very specific criteria for what conditions would constitute “ecologically harmful” (which would have to be specific to the ecosystem). (The presenter said the current practice is some kind of national review/oversight of projects that meet some criteria, which is ok as an interim protective measure.)
There was also an interesting discussion of wildfire use abuse – like the examples we have discussed about large prescribed burns done under cover of a wildfire without appropriate NEPA. This was in the context of “threats” – is the agency practice of WFU a threat to MOG.
Any such effort would necessarily HAVE TO AGREE on specific definitions, then. I doubt either side wants to risk having to lock anything in, for the near future. Especially when their ‘ask’ is ridiculously high. At risk is the public’s opinion on either extreme. The public will want a quick and equitable compromise, followed by plans and action.
We must also create plans that can actually be implemented, in the harsh realities of the ‘real’ human world. For example, we cannot base our definition of old growth (and the resulting plans) on age. That isn’t practical to use in the ‘real’ world of Forestry.