Thanks (again!) to Nick Smith for this link…. It’s an Oregon Public Broadcasting article from April 2 on the eastside screens, which we’ve discussed several times, such as here and here.
Federal judge finalizes protections for large trees east of the Cascades
A federal judge has finalized the return of national forest protections for large trees growing east of the Cascades.
The order brings back protections that had long prohibited logging trees larger than 21 inches in diameter from six national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington.
During the final days of the Trump Administration, the U.S. Forest Service amended its guidelines known as Eastside Screens. The amendment removed the agency’s 21-inch standard that had protected large trees across 8 million acres of forestland since 1994.
The agency at the time determined the change wouldn’t significantly impact the environment, and it bypassed procedures that would typically give the public opportunities to comment. The Forest Service claimed this sudden change was needed to thin forests and prevent major wildfires.
Six conservation groups sued the agency in 2022, arguing the policy change violated national forest and species protections laws. The following year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Hallman recommended the Forest Service restore the large tree protections, calling the agency’s decisions “arbitrary and capricious.” But his recommendations needed final approval from a U.S. district court judge.
On Friday, District Judge Ann Aiken issued an order agreeing with Hallman. Aiken concluded the Forest Service violated several federal laws and “failed to take a hard look at the amendment’s change and its impact on aquatic species.”
Aiken’s order calls on the Forest Service to prepare an environmental impact statement, which is required when a new policy could harm the environment. That process also requires the agency to collect public comments.
The Forest Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Conservation groups applauded Aiken’s decision, calling it a win for eastside forests where just 3% of trees are larger than 21 inches in diameter.
The nonprofit Greater Hells Canyon Council was among them.
“The amount of trees that this actually applies to is very few,” conservation director Jamie Dawson said. “So it’s very important that they stay standing and are providing that wildlife habitat value: Storing carbon dioxide, cleaning pollution from the air, influencing the water cycle, cleaning our drinking water, all of the stuff that large and old trees do.”
“The amount of trees that this actually applies to is very few,” conservation director Jamie Dawson said. “So it’s very important that they stay standing ..”
I think the logic is a little odd.. if there aren’t many trees, it shouldn’t make any difference either way, cut them or not?
I think the point, perhaps muddled by condensing longer quotes into a short news story, is that the few trees the 21″ rule applies to have outsized impacts, which is why it’s important they stay standing. The 3% of trees that are greater than 21″ dbh store 42% of the above-ground carbon in these forests:
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-biggest-trees-capture-carbon-large.html#:~:text=Researchers%20examined%20the%20aboveground%20carbon%20storage%20of%20large-diameter,the%20total%20above-ground%20carbon%20within%20these%20forest%20ecosystems.
Large trees also have substantial wildlife and microclimate benefits. Large trees remain at a deficit across these forests. Keeping or cutting these large trees will make a difference. The 21″ rule doesn’t stand in the way of cutting the vast majority of trees on these forests.
No one is against large trees. I think the point is to protect large fire resistant trees like PP and WL by cutting some large GF to reduce ladder fuels and fuel loadings. I don’t think the FS cares about cutting “the vast majority of trees”; in certain specific conditions they wanted to be able to cut (some) large trees with the goal of ultimately protecting other large trees so that, in the presence of fire or drought, more large trees will ultimately survive.
Anon., I’ve mentioned here before the stands in eastern Oregon I’ve seen, where old-growth ponderosa pines are dying because they are surrounded younger, thirsty grand fir, many of which are more than 21 inches DBH. The effect is a steady shift from ponderosa-dominated stands (fire resistant) to grand fir stands (prone to stand-replacing wildfire) — very different. If that’s what is wanted, nothing need be done. If one wants to save the big, old ponderosas, taking out some or most of the grand fir is needed. In such cases, in my view, the arbitrary 21-inch eastside screen rule is counterproductive.
Large PP and large GF only co-occur on 8% of plots:
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/csp2.12944
“In other words, large ponderosa pine are by far the most common tree species found in these six National Forests and infrequently co-mingle with large grand fir at the FIA plot scale”
“Large PP and large GF only co-occur on 8% of plots: ”
OK, there are other species at play, but NOT harvesting on those 8% of plots is justified because…. why?
The relatively infrequent co-occurrence of large PP or larch and large GF does not justify replacing the 21″ rule across six national forests with a “flexible” guideline with no accountability measures built in.
From the link above:
“Enhancing forest resilience does not necessitate widespread cutting of any large-diameter tree species. Favoring early-seral species can be achieved with a focus on smaller trees and restoring surface fire, while retaining the existing large tree population.”
I’m curious what kind of “accountability measures” would be acceptable? Doesn’t the project NEPA also analyze exactly what is intended in each place?
There was accountability in the EA that was just overturned in the form of required monitoring and an adaptive management plan that required an annual meeting. If the monitoring was not conducted or if the monitoring showed that the landscape was moving away from desired conditions for large and old trees, the guideline would revert to a standard.
The court found that the new guideline reduced future judicial and public oversight.
The Forest Service’s decision adopting the screens amendment is pretty vague on when monitoring (or no monitoring) would have required a shift to a standard:
“Thresholds
A. If large trees are not increasing in number with appropriate composition, the Regional Forester will impose the Age Standard Alternative across the whole analysis area or by national forest or potential vegetation zone.
B. If effectiveness monitoring does not occur, the Regional Forester will impose the Age Standard Alternative across all six national forests.”
Not clear how “appropriate composition” would be determined, but likely wouldn’t involve the public: “The Regional Forester may choose to invite outside review if desired.”
Also not clear whether only a complete absence of effectiveness monitoring would trigger the age standard. Plus, the standard would be age-based, not size-based, which is much less straightforward to implement.
And this language seems to allow years of over-cutting of large, old trees before intervention: “The Regional Forester will conduct a review of monitoring data once a year. Once every five years, a decision will be made on whether to continue with the guideline or move to the age standard, as described in the alternatives section of the EA.”
Sorry, but 1) This is one study that is actually a “Perspective”, based largely on modeling with minimal info on methods and assumptions, 2) opinions need to be based on *science* from multiple scientific studies using multiple approaches from multiple authors who have their own bias’ (and every scientist has bias, just like all the ones in the linked study), before painting such a broad brush blow off of something with simple statements.
Should the USFS have done an EIS? Probably. Yes. And *good* science, not opinions and feelings, should reign supreme. There are so many places where fire was excluded, humans harvested and replanted densely/incorrectly/let nature take its course, that it is somewhat ignorant to just say “No we can’t ever do that. Leave nature be”.
I wish the original Eastside screens amendment that established the 21″ rule would have had an EIS completed as well! Never happened. The “interim” guidance stood for decades with essentially no completed NEPA. So the agency finally did NEPA (an EA) that was signed in 2021, but that wasn’t good enough apparently.
So much wasted time and effort on this issue. Trees grow to well over 21″ in the other western FS regions where there are no diameter limits and some really great recent management occurring to reduce fuel loadings and accelerate development of large, old trees. Good luck to R6 with this never ending fiasco.
Wait.. how could you have an amendment without NEPA? Puzzled…
The original screens were adopted pursuant to EAs. ICBEMP was supposed to provide a more thorough analysis for longer-term measures but got scrapped.
OK, I’m confused .. one Anonymous says there were EA’s but the other Anonymous says no NEPA decision.
Forest Service issued an EA in May 1994 for initial screens, followed by an EA in June 1995 for some revisions to those screens. ICBEMP EIS was supposed to follow.
If an EA were good enough for the initial and the revision, I wonder why it wouldn’t be equally OK for this revision to have an EA?
Sounds like the Forest Service knew it needed an EIS and prepared one for ICBEMP but shelved it. The earlier EAs were meant to be interim until that EIS. The Forest Service intended the recent EA to be more permanent. Plus, protection of large trees compared to rollback of 25 years of protection for large trees is a different type of impact.
Yes, the “interim” nature of the Screens permitted an EA, whereas ICBEMP was intended to be longer term (until forest plans were revised). Of course ICBEMP was much more than the Screens, so I would go with this court’s reasoning for a new EIS here. (As I remember it, the screens were originally conceived as an internal process of “screening” projects that didn’t need to be in forest plans at all, and there may have been a court say otherwise.)
I also agree that NEPA to add environmental protection requires less (perhaps nothing) than to remove it (though I’m sure the Forest Service doesn’t agree since I couldn’t sell that idea to them for a plan amendment categorical exclusion).
But don’t many “protections” also have trade-offs.. say one species for another, or increased danger of wildfires? Seems like there might be controversy.. maybe enough for an EIS?
NEPA is not required for no action. It follows that it should not be required for preventing action or limiting the effects of future actions (such as forest plan standards). Courts seemed confused about this once, but I haven’t looked recently.
The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP) was supposed to develop the EIS that supported the interim 21″ rule. A final EIS was developed but a record of decision was never signed. There was eventually a MOU signed by the various land management agencies that agreed to implement some of the findings in the ICBEMP EIS but NO DECISION was ever signed.
So the interim 21″ diameter limit that was supposed to only last 18 months has now essentially been in effect for almost 30 years with no NEPA decision.
The original study is a research article published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. The 2020 study was based on Forest Inventory and Analysis Data from the United States Forest Service. The study states “A total of 54,651 individual trees were measured on the microplots, subplots, and macroplots, which represented 636,520 trees after applying the expansion factors for each type of plot. Overall, we used data from 3,335 plots in this analysis.” Comments by Anon that this study is based on modeling are incorrect. Results are based on detailed repeat forest measurements taken as part of the FIA program and included every plot across all six national forests. The Perspective piece utilized the same dataset to address co-occurrence of large trees.
For additional studies on large trees:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036131
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/geb.12747