One difference I noticed on my recent trip to the field was the way of looking at the world. Not surprisingly, technology has changed a great deal in 45 or so years. Folks take tablets to the field, and not paper maps. The view is from a satellite, not from the road, looking down, not looking up. A satellite gives a very different view than even aerial photos (remember them?). Like any way of observing, it’s an additional way to look at the world. There’s a layer for almost everything, that can be toggled on or off, or made more or less opaque.
Which reminds me of (some of) the media. Sometimes, these outfits act like they have an opaque “good guy, bad guy” layer. If a “good guy” does something questionable, it’s not worth looking at. If a “bad guy” does something good, it’s also not worth looking at. Many colleagues have told me that they had interviews with reporters and the story or their comments were never used, and later the story would come out without voices that questioned a certain narrative. They effectively couldn’t be seen through the GGBG (good guy bad guy) overlay. Now, no one will be surprised, if you have been following “media on the media” stories to learn that folks like the WaPo, NYT, AP, Propublica, and various public broadcasting outfits seem to populate their GGBG overlay with partisan political views (generally D’s good, R’s bad).
It seems like in this article Propublica and OPB knows who the bad guys are. It can’t be the Biden Admin.. so it must be the BLM (employees)! In this case, it seems to be that commercial logging is also bad. Did they not interview, or include the take of say, folks at AFRC? If we want to really understand what’s happening, seems to me that we would be well served to toggle off the good guy-bad guy layer.
The BLM also has tried to avoid detailed environmental reviews as it moves to log in new areas, saying it sufficiently considered impacts in 2016. Over and over, conservation groups have sued to demand full reviews, which can be required by federal law. Over and over, courts have decided against the bureau, in most cases directing it to redo its analysis before logging can continue. The BLM lost at least three such lawsuits between 2019 and 2022, with judges ruling that it failed to take a “hard look” at impacts or calling its decisions “arbitrary and capricious.”
Are the desired “detailed environmental reviews” EIS’s? How many lawsuits did the BLM win?
The BLM is moving forward with timber sales in dozens of forests like this across the West, auctioning off their trees to companies that will turn them into plywood, two-by-fours and paper products. Under Biden, the agency is on track to log some 47,000 acres of public lands, nearly the same amount as during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. This includes even some mature and old-growth forests that Biden’s executive order was supposed to protect.
I’d ask, “how do you define mature (was it in the EO?), and exactly what projects are cutting old-growth forests?”
OPB and ProPublica compared the agency’s forest database for Oregon to its timber records and found that in the past two years, the BLM oversaw logging in more than 10,000 acres of forest it labeled as at least 80 years old — the age at which the BLM and Forest Service consider western Oregon’s conifers to be “mature.” The average number of acres of older forest logged annually since the president’s executive order is already higher than in any two-year span since at least 2013.
This whole convo, as it’s been since the Executive Order has been about mature and old-growth in some folks’ minds.
Trees greater than 40 inches in diameter or older than about 175 years are, in most cases, protected under the BLM’s 2016 management plan for Oregon’s Coast Range. But if logging does go forward here, the intact forests these trees now anchor will be transformed, says Reeder, the retired BLM surveyor. The older trees themselves, more exposed in the landscape, could be more vulnerable to windstorms. The soil around them could dry out.
Or they could do better with less competition. Might be good to hear from someone other than one person.
Environmental groups in Oregon can’t challenge every BLM logging project. “We just don’t have the capacity,” said attorney Nick Cady of Cascadia Wildlands, one of three groups that filed a joint lawsuit to stop the plan for Blue and Gold. This one stands out, he said, because of the apparent age of the forest.
It seems like the below piece may have been intended to engender some “last-minute-ism on the part of the Biden Admin, those don’t usually work, except for Monuments.
The BLM still reports to Biden until Trump takes office again in January, and it’s unclear what changes, if any, the new administration will make. Outgoing presidents often use this lame-duck period to take additional action on the environment and to protect public lands. In a statement, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández wrote that the “Biden-Harris Administration has made unprecedented progress toward the climate-smart management and conservation of our nation’s forests.” He did not specifically answer questions about why Biden’s actions didn’t slow the BLM’s cutting of old forests — or about any further protections the administration is planning now.
But here the FS is good and BLM bad..
Unlike the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, the biggest federal forestland manager in Oregon and the country, responded to Biden’s order by proposing to update management plans for all national forests with new regulations for protecting old growth. These plans outline how a forest will be managed — like logging parameters, species protections, restoration projects and road maintenance. The updates will include a prohibition on cutting old growth solely for commercial reasons.
But as Andy Kerr says, the FS already rationalizes the projects it does now for non-commercial reasons, so there’s that. What he asked people to say in comments:
The final record of decision should:
1. End the cutting of old-growth trees in all national forests and forest types and end the cutting of any trees in old-growth stands in moist forest types.
2. End any commercial exchange of old-growth trees. Even in the rare circumstances where an old-growth tree is cut (e.g. public safety), that tree should not be sent to the mill.
Cutting down old-growth trees to save them from potential threats is a false solution. They are worth more standing.
Mature forests and trees–future old growth–must be protected from the threat of commercial logging in order to recover old growth that has been lost to past mismanagement. They must be protected to aid in the fight against worsening climate change and biodiversity loss. And they must be protected to ensure that our children are able to experience and enjoy old growth.
Failure to protect our oldest trees and forests undermines the objectives of this amendment, contravenes the direction of EO 14072, and ignores 500,000+ public comments the agency previously received.
OK, then, I guess, Biden Admin good, FS and BLM employees (?) bad.
Perhaps its just me, but I can’t tell if Sharon’s questions are rhetorical trolling or if they are legit inquiries wrapped in snark. Assuming the questions posed come from curiosity rather than malice I’ll take a stab at her sentences that end with a question mark.
1) Yes, many of us remember aeriel photos. Odd question.
2) AFRC gets plenty of press- just ask them or look at their web page where they tout their numerous media statements. In this article it appears the reporters interviewed a representative from the Association of O&C Counties rather than AFRC. In my opinion that was probably a good call.
3) The agencies often define mature as > 80 years of age. According to the agencies that’s when many forest types start exhibiting some late-successional forest character, its also the age that they use to calculate LSOG at the landscape scale.
4) A good rule of thumb for which projects are cutting old-growth is to look at the BiOps for NRF removal and RA-32 habitat removal. The FS doesn’t do a lot of NRF removal and it doesn’t do any RA 32 removal (to my knowledge) but most SW Oregon BLM projects -especially in the HLB- focus on removing existing NRF and replacing it with second-growth conifer stands. Many reasonable people describe this forest conversion process as “old-growth logging” as it removes the late-successional forest character (canopy cover, multi-layer canopies, complexity, snags, down wood) necessary for old-growth associated wildlife species to utilize the stand as habitat.
Thanks, George!
For myself and other readers, could you explain what LSOG, BiOps, NRF, RA-32 habitat and HLB mean?
Can do!
LSOG: Late Successional Old-Growth
NRF: Nesting Roosting and Foraging habitat for Northern spotted owls
RA-32: A conservation element of the spotted owl recovery plan in which the FS and BLM identify the best of the best old-growth habitat in a project area and retain it as a hedge against barred owl encroachment. Correction- I should say that the FS retains it while the BLM (often) logs it.
HLB: Harvest Land Base, an Oregon BLM land use allocation in the 2016 Resources Managment Plans.
All four acronyms originated from the agencies.
Best,
George
Thanks. I think the translation problem is between age of trees (one, most?) and the OG characteristics..” Many reasonable people describe this forest conversion process as “old-growth logging” as it removes the late-successional forest character (canopy cover, multi-layer canopies, complexity, snags, down wood) necessary for old-growth associated wildlife species to utilize the stand as habitat.”
Would it be correct to restate this as:
“Taking out trees of larger sizes (but unknown ages) in some types commonly found in SW Oregon, reduces quality of OG wildlife habitat.”
I like the suggestion Sharon, but in my opinion that proposed restatement language doesn’t quite capture the BLM old-growth logging prescriptions that have the conservation community so upset. Rather than removing some large trees and reducing the quality of OG wildlife habitat, the “gap creation,” “open seral,” and “regeneration” logging prescriptions on BLM public lands remove (rather than downgrade) late-successional habitat from the logging units. The individual timber sale and yearly programatic USFWS Biological Opinions are a good place to find the acreage numbers for those types of logging prescriptions that involve old-growth forest removal and clearly deliniate which logging prescriptions involve habitat downgrading and which result in habitat removal.
Ok, I let’s try this again. When I hear “gap creation” “open seral” and “regeneration” I think “openings”- is that correct? with the idea of getting regeneration established or establishing early seral kinds of habitat?
But if the idea is “removing some large trees” in a stand with a size mix, I originally thought about taking out trees individually. So to use silvicultural terminology (which I argued for changing about 20 years ago) I was thinking originally “removing some large trees” with what we would call “individual tree selection” with the trees taken out not clustered spatially. But gaps sounds more like “group selection” which was designed with the intent of regenerating intolerant species. I know that’s a lot of silvicultural lingo, but us being able to translate back and forth might reduce our disagreements.
I think we’re on the same page with those harvest definitions Sharon. My experience is that within individual timber sales in SW Oregon is that the BLM conducts some logging treatments designed to create openings and other logging treatments that involve individual tree marking/removal- and that often these different treatments even occur within the same harvest unit. Sometimes individual OG trees are removed and sometimes *most* of the individual trees (that are not in road/landing/yarding locations) are retained. Most of the time forest stands that currently type out as LSOG or NRF get “removed” (as opposed to retained or downgraded) in SW Oregon BLM logging prescriptions, regardless of the land use allocation, such that stands that provided late-successional forest habitat prior to the logging no longer provide that habitat after the logging. USFWS defines that as NRF removal- which I think is a pretty darn accurate surrogate for “old-growth logging.” Definitionally I think we’re close!
If we don’t address the Western wildfire issue through sound fuels management—including thinning and controlled burning, old and mature forests will continue to be lost. Mega forest fires will release tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
Ron Cerruti
Camp 70 Foresters
The legal and agency descriptions of supposed “critical old-growth habitat” don’t match the history of most forests in the Douglas Fir Region and has largely been constructed by modelers and other ologists with inaccurate assumptions regarding past histories of fire, wind histories and regular human occupation.
Most Douglas fir does not exist as “multi-layered canopies,” but rather as even-aged stands following stand replacement events such as wildfire, windstorms, volcanic eruptions, bugs, disease, and clearcuts. When large, dead trees begin forming — or are created — the forest is dying and headed toward fire or bugs. “Multi-layered canopies” that form during this dying process have traditionally been called “ladder fuels.”
There is a reason our forests have been erupting in catastrophic wildfires since the creation of spotted owl “critical habitat,” and this form of government pseudo-science is a principal cause. As accurately predicted, unfortunately, since it was invented.
And why aren’t we harvesting the millions of acres of plantations on public lands? They have directly compromised native “biodiversity” and created closed canopies waiting for a crown fire. Current management approaches are a colossal failure by almost every measure. Opinion, based on documented observations.
Pretty sure plantation thinning is happening widely across NFS lands in the PNW Region. There are exceptions, including stands over 80 years old where it is deemed infeasible to pursue requisite survey requirements due to funding and/or time constraints (e.g., 2-year owl surveys).
Why are they thinning? To create future product? Firebreak? Do these thinnings produce jobs or require tax revenues? Can “widely across” be measured at the same scale as 100,000-acre wildfires? I’ve seen only minor evidence here and there.
Perhaps this is a task for …. the People’s Database? I can imagine an annual map of thinning via GIS and a spreadsheet with annual and cumulative plantation thinning by forest and type.
IMHO, ProPublica has exhibited bias in the recent past. Last February, Propublica and The Oregonian wrote “The Oregon Timber Industry Won Huge Tax Cuts in the 1990s. Now It May Get Another Break Thanks to a Top Lawmaker.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/oregon-timber-industry-tax-cuts-legislature
However, they did not report what the timber industry currently pays in taxes. Even after the reductions in the 1990s, Oregon forest industry taxes are 5.6%, and 6.8% if fire-suppression assessments are included, according to an Ernst & Young report commissioned by the Oregon Forest Industries Council.
https://ofic.com/our-industry/forest-taxation/
That’s far higher than the 3.7% paid by Oregon manufacturers and the average of 4.4% paid by all businesses in the state. Without these facts, readers are left with an incomplete and misleading picture. Bias or sloppy journalism?
In Late Sucessional Reserves, the plantation thinning is done to increase the vertical and horizontal diversity within the stands to accelerate the development of late successional characteristics. In Matrix, it depends on the Forest Plan Land Allocation direction, but again, mostly it is to increase vertical and horizontal diversity. Firebreaks may be planned in plantations. In Matrix, future harvested wood products are certainly an objective. The volumes removed from both LSR and Matrix have been much greater than initially expected – the first widespread plantation thinnings that I worked on about 15 years ago in both LSR and Matrix had 20-30 MBF per acre removed. Most of the Forest Service harvest under the NWFP is in plantations due to Survey & Manage requirements in older stands.
Thanks for this info, A2!