Jim Petersen just published this Evergreen Magazine profile of the new Chief of the Forest Service. He gave me permission to repost here without editing or paraphrasing: https://evergreenmagazine.com/tom-schultz-big-picture-thinker/
Schultz has been a topic of interest to this blog, naturally, and it will be interesting to see what others think of Jim’s insights and perspective. Here is the text and most photos to his article, but without direct links to related Evergreen essays:
Tom Schultz: Big Picture Thinker
Money doesn’t grow on trees…
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On February 27, Tom Schultz was named the twenty-first Chief of the Forest Service. Many of my friends know Tom from his 14 years with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and his years as Director of the Idaho Department of Lands and, more recently, Vice President of Resources and Government Affairs for the Idaho Forest Group.
I know him best from his IFG years. We visited at several conferences in Boise. He is a big picture thinker who brings exceptional leadership skills to the Forest Service at a time when both are desperately needed. He possesses what Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush called “that vision thing” when a Time Magazine writer asked him if there would be an over-arching theme in his 1988 run for the White House.
Schultz is only the third Forest Service Chief to be hired outside the ranks of the agency’s executive chain. The first was Jack Ward Thomas, an elk biologist in eastern Oregon before President Clinton picked him to lead the development of the controversial Northwest Forest Plan. He worked so impressed Clinton that he talked him into accepting the Chief’s post. The second was Mike Dombeck, a fisheries biologist, who was working for the Bureau of Land Management when President Clinton named him Chief in 1997, after Thomas resigned.
Jack and I got to know one another well during the years I was living in Bigfork, Montana. He had quit the Forest Service and accepted a Boone and Crocket-funded chair in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana. I wanted to know why he quit. His answers led to many heated conversations at his home in Corvallis, Montana, but we remained friends. We had planned one last get together before cancer killed him. I still have the message he left on my cell phone a few days before he died.
Apart from his excellent book, Journals of a Forest Service Chief, Thomas has more than 600 articles to his credit: chapters in other books, essays and articles on everything from elk biology to land use planning. He was a strong advocate for zoning national forests based on eco-types. We have many of his writings in our library, along with dozens of books that trace the history of the U.S. Forest Service.
Of these books, the most comprehensive is Harold Steen’s book The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Steen held a PhD in History and was the Executive Director of the Forest History Society during its rise to prominence after Steen moved it to Durham, North Carolina in 1984.
The Forest Service also published several books of its own that chronicle its progress following its founding in 1905. Among them, 100 Years of Federal Forestry, aka Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 402, a picture book assembled by Forest Service retiree, William Bergoffen in 1976.
My personal favorites were written by Forest Service Chiefs who had lived their stories. These include Bill Greeley’s 1951 book, Forest and Men. Although he was Chief from 1920 to 1928, his book opens on the fire lines in western Montana and northern Idaho during the Great 1910 Fire, still the largest forest fire in our nation’s history.
Greeley was then the District Ranger for District No. 1 which included federal forests in western Montana, northern Idaho and northeast Washington. Among his post-fire responsibilities was the identification and burial of the 78 men who died in the three million acre conflagration.
The tragedy haunted Greeley for the rest of his life and had much to do with his significant behind-the-scenes role in ratification of the Weeks Act in 1911 and the Clarke-McNary Act in 1926. Clarke-McNary put the Forest Service in the firefighting business alongside a series of privately-funded cooperatives assembled by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company following the 1902 Yacolt Burn. The fire leveled 239,000 acres of virgin timber in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington. Thirty-eight people were killed.
Greeley also wrote a lesser known book in 1953 titled Forest Policy, a three part compendium based on his years at the helm of the West Coast Lumbermen’s Association. He left the Forest Service to join the deeply-troubled association in 1928. He had concluded that WCLA was in dire need of a major course correction that would align it with Forest Service reforestation and conservation interests.
Gifford Pinchot’s Breaking New Ground also well worth reading. It was published by his estate in 1947, the year following his death. The Forest History Society published Jack’s Journals in 2004.
Both men were held captive by political events of their time. With Pinchot it was wildfire and his belief that regulation was the only way to control the harvesting excesses of private forestland owners. With Jack it was the northern spotted owl and wildlife habitat conservation.
President Theodore Roosevelt named Pinchot the first Chief of the Forest Service at its founding on February 1, 1905. They had been friends and confidants since Roosevelt’s years as New York Governor. On that same day, Roosevelt signed the Transfer Act, moving 63 million acres of designated Forest Reserves from the scandal ridden Department of the Interior to the newly formed Forest Service. About 500 employees answered to Pinchot.
Those 63 million acres were in Forest Reserves designated by Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland – most of them in the West.
Tom Schultz’s Forest Service includes 154 national forests, about 30,000 mostly demoralized employees and 193 million acres. About 180,400,000 of these acres are located in 84 National Forests in the West and about half – some 93 million acres– are dying, dead or burnt to a crisp.
I have been flooded with questions from worried westerners who want to know what Schultz thinks or how he might tackle the mess he faces. My guess is that he will first hire a Washington Office staff he trusts, then he will turn his attention to the regulatory impacts of the Supreme Court’s Chevron Deference ruling. More on this in a moment.
We are fortunate to already know a few things about Schultz’s 30,000-foot view of the Forest Service and its tattered relationships with states, counties, and stakeholder collaborative groups because he joined three other big picture thinkers who were asked to pen their thoughts in an essay that appeared in 193 Million Acres: Toward a Healthier and More Resilient U.S. Forest Service, a 2018 book published by the Society of American Foresters.
Their essay was titled Cooperative Federalism, Serving the Public Interest: A Policy Analysis of How the States Can Engage Local Stakeholders and Federal Land Managers to Improve the Management of the National Forests.
Schultz’s co-authors were Holly Fretwell, then a research economist with the Property and Environment Center [PERC] in Bozeman, Montana, Dennis Becker, then Director of the Policy Analysis Group within the University of Idaho’s College of Natural Resources, now Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Kelly Williams, a natural resources lawyer and Adjunct Professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.
The essay is long, but it will tell you what Schultz and his big picture colleagues saw when the looked at the struggling Forest Service eight years ago and asked themselves what could be done to help the agency get back on its feet again.
It seems inconceivable to think that Schulz ever thought the task of rescuing the Forest Service would fall to him – but he is now at the helm of a shell-shocked agency that is in real danger of tumbling off the crumbling cliff it has occupied since the federal government added the Northern Spotted Owl to its list of threatened species in June 1990.
There is no point in rehashing the history of how the world’s most admired natural resource management agency became one of the most reviled.
Far more important are the tasks that Chief Schultz faces now and in the near future….Here is a brief summary:
Terminate the Forest Service’s Overreaching “Managed Fire for Ecosystem Benefit” Policy
This is one of the most controversial, perplexing, and misled practices the agency has embraced in its 120-year history.
The concept of “managed fire” as a standalone approach is misleading – as it neglects the crucial need for regular thinning and prescribed burns under the right conditions – to restore balance to our overstocked public lands.
New Mexico’s 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire is a prime example. It started as a prescribed burn on long-neglected land, despite conditions being too windy and too dry—directly contradicting the Forest Service’s own guidelines for a “managed burn.”
The fire quickly escaped its handlers. Some 341,400 acres and several hundred homes were burned.
Taxpayers have thus far paid more than one billion dollars in damage claims. This recurring scenario across the West continues to leave devastation in its wake.
How much more destruction must occur before the Forest Service’s reckless “managed fire” practices are abolished?
Chief Schultz can do it in a heartbeat with his own executive order aimed at forest-to-community health – a holistic, mutually inclusive approach to management, stewardship, ecosystem stabilization, and conservation.
Decades of scientific studies support the necessity of periodic thinning and prescribed burning in overstocked forests. When evidence-based science is applied, there is no safer or more cost effective way to reduce the risks associated with insect and disease infestations – and inevitable wildfire.
Just ask our First Nations citizens—they successfully managed the land long before science recognized the wisdom of Indigenous knowledge.
States, tribes, and private landowners regularly thin and burn to reduce biomass, manage debris, improve soil health, promote a healthy forest ecosystem, improve tree propagation, and mitigate insect and disease infestations. The Forest Service once did the same, but after the spotted owl was listed in 1990, it abandoned these practices. Too often now, the Endangered Species Act is used as an excuse for inaction.
Recasting the Wrecking Ball: Reforming the Equal Access to Justice Act
The EAJA was created to help ordinary citizens stand up to the government overreach, but elite environmental groups have hijacked it into a weapon for their own agendas.
Well-funded organizations, backed by wealthy donors, file endless lawsuits – to block responsible forest management.
They claim to be committed to justice, but they exploit a law meant for the underprivileged, forcing taxpayers to pay for their legal battles.
They claim to fight for conservation, yet their legal obstruction to thinning and prescribed burns has led to more devastating wildfires, insect infestations, and diseased forests.
The EAJA must be reformed to ensure our forests are managed with science – not endless litigation that hurts communities, damages our forests, and squanders public funds.
Reform will take time – but until it is done – all of the current Administration’s forestry-related executive orders will be challenged by serial litigators. This is an ongoing cycle, regardless of the administration – because they risk nothing.
While Congress is unlikely to exempt federal lands from the EAJA, it could replace litigation over forest plans with binding, baseball-style arbitration.
In this process, serial litigators and stakeholder collaboratives would each present their case, and arbitration judges would determine which proposal best aligns with the goals and objectives of the disputed forest plan.
Some experienced advisors suggest that the Equal Access to Justice Act could be improved through executive orders that reverse specific changes made during the Clinton Administration.
These modifications, introduced long after Congress originally passed the Act during the Reagan years, expanded its misuse – allowing well-funded groups to exploit taxpayer dollars for endless litigation.
Restoring the EAJA to its original intent through executive action could help curb these abuses and ensure the law serves those it was meant to protect, rather than elite litigators and obstructionist organizations.
Return to Evidence-Based Forest Service Culture
A profound cultural shift is underway within the Forest Service, driven by a sharp decline in the quality of forest science education at U.S. universities.
This decline stems from universities prioritizing federal research funding tied to political agendas, leading to an education system that promotes selective science rather than comprehensive, evidence-based forestry practices.
Decentralize the Forest Service’s Organizational Structure
Decision-making about our public lands must shift away from Washington and Regional Offices and return to District Ranger Offices. Local staff—who understand the land, have community trust, and can foster collaboration—are best equipped to make informed decisions.
However, given shifts in education and experience, some Ranger Districts may need support. Recent Forest Service retirees and qualified mentors can help by completing essential NEPA documents, including Environmental Impact Statements, Environmental Assessments, and Categorical Exclusions.
Jack Ward Thomas likened NEPA’s regulatory process to a ‘Gordian Knot,’ suggesting it was nearly impossible to navigate without facing lawsuits – lawsuits often used as a delay tactic to stall timber salvage after wildfires.
However, successfully navigating NEPA without litigation is possible. A retired Forest Service expert on our Evergreen Foundation Board has done so multiple times.
With intention and a commitment to collaboration, we can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, disease, and insect infestations while maintaining environmental balance and strengthening the connection between forests and communities.
Align Forest Service Regulations with New CEQ Standards Under the Supreme Court’s Chevron Deference Decision
In Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo [Gina Raimondo was the Biden Administration’s Secretary of Commerce from 2021 to 2025] the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Loper Bright, a New Jersey Fishing Company that sued the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Chevron Deference was established in 1984 by the Supreme Court in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Justices ruled for NDRC, requiring lower courts to defer to the agency’s interpretation of a statute if the statute was ambiguous. Justices assumed that the agencies were experts in their subject matter areas and that Congress intended for the agencies to fill in gaps in statutes.
By a 6-2 margin the Roberts-led Supreme Court overruled Chevron Deference, citing the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act. APA spells out the process that federal administrative agencies must use to propose or establish administrative laws or regulations. It also grants federal courts oversight over all agency actions.
The upshot of the Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo ruling is that CEQ – the Council of Environmental Quality – must now revisit and revise decades of federal regulatory overreach involving federally-owned natural resources.
To wit: Jack Thomas’ Gordian Knot.
Once CEQ finishes its work, it will be Chief Schultz’s job to lead the same effort within the Forest Service. My guess is that he is up to his eyeballs in this process.
CEQ’s draft regulations are expected to be released soon. A 30-day comment period will follow, then a 45-day timeframe for implementation. It will be Chief Schultz’s responsibility to bring Forest Service regulations into alignment with new CEQ standards.
What we have here is a significant opportunity to loosen the “Gordian Knot” by adding much needed efficiency to the National Environmental Policy Act,
NEPA has become a tangled mess after 40 years of improper court rulings and excessive agency regulations. However, the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo has undone much of this bureaucratic overreach, providing an opportunity to restore clarity and proper implementation of the law.
The Supreme Court has shredded the litigation-based business model that opportunists and obstructionists have relied on to push a false narrative about public land management.
They only make money if the public believes that conservation and management are mutually exclusive – that any form of active management is harmful – and that humans cannot play a responsible role in maintaining balanced ecosystems.
Chief Schultz is going to need his own chorus – composed of conservationists, forest scientists, stakeholder collaborative groups – everyone who enjoys the environmental and economic benefits that flow from well managed forests…
Clean air, clean water, abundant fish, bird and wildlife habitat and the very long list of year-round outdoor recreation activities that can only be found in healthy, thriving forests.
As I’ve said before but it bears repeating…
It’s time to saddle up and ride hard. We have a long way to go and a short time to get there.
Bob, I already posted the piece that Schultz wrote with Fretwell et al. here https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/02/27/cooperative-federalism-insights-into-some-ideas-of-new-chief-schultz/
and Silcox was actually the first and only FS Chief to have come from outside the agency.https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/02/28/outsider-vs-career-appointee-for-chief/
(1) Both Dombeck and Thomas had worked for the FS, but were promoted to SES without going through the traditional within-agency SES development channels. They were both also career feds, selected for their (perceived) alignment with Admin goals. Also the rumor is that Dombeck wanted to be BLM Director, but some Congressperson didn’t want it, and this was the next best thing. I can’t remember the exact story but I’m sure folks out there do.
My point being, Dombeck and Thomas both had experience in the FS, and were career folks, Silcox and Schultz are substantively different.
2) there are many quotes in the piece, but they are not from the essay. It’s not clear what they are from. Maybe you could clarify this, because otherwise people might be confused. It sounds like maybe they are from Jim, but then why are they in quotes? Readers might be confused and assume the quotes are from Schultz or the the essay, which they are not. There are enough bad vibes going around without unintentionally adding to them. IMHO.
3) it sounds as if the writer is claiming that the New Mexico fires were caused by “managed fires” which generally means managed wildfires not prescribed fires. It helps to clarify using word as commonly used.
4) “However, successfully navigating NEPA without litigation is possible. A retired Forest Service expert on our Evergreen Foundation Board has done so multiple times.” I know and respect this individual (if it’s who I think it is) but I think different parts of the country and different kinds of projects face different litigation challenges.
5) Changing NEPA regs requires proficient NEPA people, who are usually located in the WO, and might be called “unnecessary overhead.” Personally I would not devote attention to that until I saw what the other agencies were doing and how successful they will be in court.
Remanding lands in the public domain to the Indigenous Nations from whom they were seized can’t happen soon enough.
I believe that Jim Petersen is right on target with his stated assessment of our new Chief, Tom Schultz. It is going take him some time to get his feet on stable ground and gain understanding on how far the leadership of the Forest Service, has declined away from it’s lawful Mission and Goals. As a retired 17 year USFS employee as a Forester, Hydrologist, District Ranger, Mad River District, Aviation, Fire, Lands and Minerals Staff Officer, and Acting Deputy Forest Supervisor Six Rivers National Forest in Region 5, I left the Agency because of its decline due to excessive Washington Office and Regional Office Regulations and Overhead staffing, the Consent Degree in Region 5, Spotted Owl Hoax and many other issues of the Northwest Forest Plan that former President Bill Clinton and Al Gore designed to destroy the USFS as we knew it.
I moved on with my Career where I went back to DoD and established an Organization in the Department of Defense for all Military Service Installations, Training Ranges and Defense Laboratories Worldwide, it was patterned after the structure to the USFS, Mission, Goals and Objectives. with the additional mission that this organization would assist the DoD in providing for First Class Forest, Range and Watersheds that support the Warfighter and provides the best Training Lands, Ranges, Waters and Watersheds to develop their skills and capabilities. We also produced Forest Products, Forage, Water Recreation, Hunting ,Fishing and all of the other Uses that the Forest Service has walked away from over the last three decades. My first few years was to implemental massive Forest Range and Watershed Restoration Programs on our Installations, Training Ranges to include DoD Installation in Host Nation Countries being used under Special Use Agreements such as Hoeffel’s in Germany and 100 other NATO Nation agreements. Many of those lands had been overused and destroyed and no longer resembled anything like a natural landscape. With great effort we were able to teach the Military Services how to use the ranges, without destroying them and meet all environmental laws and regulations, We used a Training Range, rest and restored and rotated those lands and waters back into the training schedule as a they stabilized for a quality Landscape feature. You can easily see that we were successful as DoD has numerous environmental awards from Federal, State and Natural Resource Organizations as Model Program Areas of Stewardship. WE were successful as The DOD Command and Service Leadership made it the highest priority to hold themselves personally accountable in their personal Annual Leadership Fitness Reports and passed the Environmental Ethic
of “Taking Care of the Lands, Waters and Natural Resources and Warfighter Capability they Hold in Trust” to the PUBLIC!
The new 2025 Forest Service Organization should be overhauled and reduced;
with consolidation where it makes sense, reduce the size of WO and RO’s moving the Technical Interdisciplinary Teams to the Forest Supervisor Office Level to support the District level Staff and Program Managers to implement the Programs and Approved Projects and administer Contract oversight to ensure Goals and Objectives are met with the Best Quality Performance Possible. The Agency is Extremely Top Heavy with Inadequate Staff at the District Execution Level.
Now that significant changes are being made for the overreaching of NEPA, EAJA and many other problem areas we can finally start providing the needed Management and Maintenance, Repair and Restoration to Make our National Forest System a Proud Legacy for our Public Lands and Resources,
What is his perspective on the Chevron decision with regards to maintaining wilderness trails with chainsaws. NPS and BLM both use them in the wilderness trails.
Also the wilderness act clearly states “tools of the time”. Chainsaws were in use then. Also if this is reversed the public would clear trails saving the FS millions of dollars.
Also what would you think his plan would be to deal with inept forest district rangers. Like all the DEI hires. Our forest just hired two separate D Rangers with no fire or timber experience. Both districts are in major timber and annual major fire areas.
Thank you A 25 plus year permitted outfitter on the Klamath National Forest
Duane Eastlick
I love how so many us know who the DEI hires are. Are they the ones who didn’t come from the “good-old-boy” network?
It’s an outfit from Siskyou County. They hate the government while receiving some of the most from the local, state, and federal government.
“Our forest just hired two separate D Rangers with no fire or timber experience. Both districts are in major timber and annual major fire areas” from someone running essentially a recreation business. Plus, the Klamath produces plenty of Region 5 timber, relative to its size.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/forestmanagement/documents/sold-harvest/reports/2024/2024_Q4_C&S_R5.pdf
Before 2025, the KNF also had quite a few wilderness rangers who actually cleared trails and enforced laws, but hey, they all got fired.
The public also already clears trails. And also happen to take mountain bikes in to alpine wilderness areas. Dirtbikes to do illegal hunting. Do illegal tree cutting. Drugs and illegal encampments. Etc. KNF is up against a lot it seems. https://www.facebook.com/KlamathNF/posts/pfbid0czCmRMbXgNaASrvzgzWbqzwi4ZM9UzjMQ9xLwzy57ENizCjjDehfNCjUKHNZmYEcl
“While Congress is unlikely to exempt federal lands from the EAJA, it could replace litigation over forest plans with binding, baseball-style arbitration. In this process, serial litigators and stakeholder collaboratives would each present their case, and arbitration judges would determine which proposal best aligns with the goals and objectives of the disputed forest plan.”
I agree with Sharon that it’s hard to tell who is saying what, but whomever this is is clueless about forest planning. It’s the goals and objectives of the forest plan that are often being disputed, and the idea that an arbitrator should determine what those are for a national forest is pretty disturbing. As opposed to a court telling the agency to just comply with the law. And the only alternatives offered would be from “serial litigators” and “stakeholder collaboratives,” but apparently not from the Forest Service? (Who is representing the national interest?) This seems like a pretty warped view of reality.
“NEPA has become a tangled mess after 40 years of improper court rulings and excessive agency regulations. However, the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo has undone much of this bureaucratic overreach, providing an opportunity to restore clarity and proper implementation of the law.”
Can someone translate this? What did loper bright do to reverse or otherwise modify rulings pertninet to FS NEPA practice? In what way does changing the standard of deference (note, not abolishing deference) and reallocation of power to the courts lend itself, by some inevitable logic, to streamlining? This reads like PR copy.
It reads to me like someone knows just enough about the subject to be dangerous. FS NEPA regulations are still in place for now (but I assume they’ll be up for grabs soon). But this doesn’t have much to do with Loper Bright at this point. (More here: https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/02/20/new-nepa-guidance-from-ceq/)
I call “BS” on the claim the USFS has paid “over a billion dollars to victims of the Hermit’sPeak-CalfCanyon escaped “prescribed burn” burn from the Pecos Wilderness Area in the Santa Fe NF APRIL 6, 2022. Fire burned into August but was “controlled” in mid June, 2022. 341,471 acres.
The Administrative branch of the US Government has no tort liability for a planned event gone astray. FTCA has its “discretionary function exemption” in the law, protecting employees and agencies following a legal plan and protocols. 903 “structures” were lost, 85 were damaged, and “several hundred homes were lost.”
Soon after the fire was close to being contained, Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez (D) NM offered a bill to pay the victims of the HermitsPeak-CalfCanyon fire. Speaker Pelosi accepted the proposed law, and sent it to committee. It came out of committee with a “do pass” and was inserted into the Dept of Defense Emergency Aid to Ukraine appropriations bill. Passed on a yeas and nays voice vote, sent to Senate President Schumer who had it passed by his majority and on to POTUS Biden who signed it. (or at least the auto pen signed it).
Over a Billion dollars? By a mile. $2.5 billion “for the tribes.” (former NM congresswoman Deb Haaland at the time was Sec. of The Interior, and a tribal member. ) $1.45 Billion for all other victims. FEMA was the agency tasked with distributing the money. Got it off the ground in calendar 2024. 3 offices in NM. By December 1, 2024, 10,450+ had filed claims and the claims process was to close the first friday in December. A litigation by persons “damaged” by the fire who lost no tangible assets, owned no homes nor property, had filed a claim that was dismissed and the case was in US Federal District Court. So before year’s end, the US District Court has awarded the victims with no property loss $1.5 Billion for “pain and suffering” albeit having no tangible losses to the fire. No stated number or names until the ‘victims” apply and DOGE can’t stop that.
The “last day (one of many to date) to file a claim is now Friday, March 14, 2025. My math says $5.45 Billion dollar fire that Congress with majorities in both bodies and the President, all Democrats, with no legal tort liability for the Executive or the Administrative branch, GAVE $5.45 Billion for victims of USFS “prescribed fire” that “slopped over” (R-6 description of trespass fire from USFS land onto private land in Oregon, and the Burn Boss was arrested by Oregon Grant county DA, the case heard in US District Court for Oregon at its Pendleton Magistrate court by District Court Judge McShane and it was “case dismissed” with the Judge citing the US Constitution, Article VI, second paragraph “Supremacy clause” that explicitly states that Federal law is the law of the land, and supersedes state laws to the contrary. I believe (no lawyer, I) the operative word is “notwithstanding” as who can believe otherwise. The local county DA has no “standing” to file charges.
So I have never read of the USFS being held liable for escaped fire. On the other hand, the Justice Dept Civil Law section regularly sues private property owners or operators on private land or government land for “unplanned ignitions” that damage federal land, assets, and the costs to suppress the trespass fire at double damages due to negligence being the source and reason for the ‘unplanned ignition.’ As in currently asking for $950,000,000+ from PacificPower for having energized lines with east winds forecast and “equipment failure” which is a gale force wind blowing a tree, any tree from any ownership, across a narrow easement or right-of-way less than 30 feet wide and the tree over 90 feet tall. Labor Day 2020 “Archie Fire” in Douglas county. The law is based in “inverse condemnation” and of course, double damages. USFS burns 10 billion board feet and explains they don’t keep numbers of probable losses to fire. Yet I read the verdict and damages assessed to the Union Pacific RailRoad for a fire in the Feather River canyon, California, that was an “unplanned ignition” by a UPRR track gang making emergency repairs on a broken rail. Grinder sparks set the fire and Hispanic speaking track gang also was not trained in wildfire nor could they read English or understand the English spoken on portable communications. $112 Million dollar verdict against the railroad. Including “loss of grandeur of the landscape, ” only now seen due to the trees lost to the fire.
Well, it’s easily accessed, and it’s right at 4 Billion dollars (Federal $), and counting!
The claim that the Forest Service has paid “over a billion dollars to the victims of the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon” Fire is fallacious on its face! The Forest Service’s culpability was absolved by Congress. The Forest Service damaged and destroyed approximately 171,000 acres of deeded non-industrial private forest lands, for a distance of 20-miles from the national forest boundary, not to mention a nearly equivalent amount of national forest acres.
Senator Schumer was not the president of the Senate, he was at the time, Senate Majority Leader. The sole constitutional duty of the vice president is to serve as the presiding officer and president of the Senate. Vice president Harris was not involved in the passage of the “Department of Defense Emergency Aid to Ukraine appropriations bill.”
The Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Assistance Act, Division G of the ‘‘Continuing Appropriations and Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2023’’ (PL 117-180) placed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as the administrator for the $4billion appropriation. The four-letter agency, like a commonly used four letter vulgarity has continue screw the Norteños of San Miguel, Mora and Taos counties.
Because of USDA culpability the former Secretary of Agriculture inserted his Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) as an arbiter of wildfire caused damages and impacts on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. The monetary model used by NRCS and FEMA is a timber model for compensation, but without sawmills, the timber model of restitution pays little. And we all know that forests are more than their timber value.
The Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Fire was more than a Ricky Snodgrass slop over. It is an example of rural cleansing. The burn boss for the Las Dispensas Rx burn (Hermits Peak) enjoyed a family immunity that Ricky Snodgrass did not enjoy. The San Miguel County Sherriff is the burn boss’s brother-in-law!
My company has 18 Hermits Peak Calf Canyon claimants under the Disaster Assistance Act, for which none have had their claims reviewed or even partial settlement offered. Indeed, NRCS has muscled in to my client’s property and provided their low-ball assessments based on timber values, which are pennies on the dollar, of my assessed claims based upon Habitat Equivalency Analysis protocols. The same protocols used by the United States to “stick it” to Sierra Pacific Industries in the 2007 Moon Light Fire!
More egregious though, is the attitude of the Forest Service and USDA. The former chief at a 2023 February public meeting in California, where I was present, stated that the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Fire was the result of “global warming,” where the Calf Canyon piles were snowed-on twice and rained on once, and there was little the Forest Service could do in the face of global warming. Mind you, on the other side of the Santa Fe in the Jemez Ranger District, mis-managed activity slash piles – snowed on twice and rained on once – came to life on April 22nd – Earth Day as the planet hit critical ignition temperature, this became the 45,000-acre Cerro Pelado Fire.
In a blatant act of shirking accountability, the former chief left the regional forester in-place and promoted the Nere’ do well forest supervisor as the deputy chief of staff in his office and last fall a deputy regional forester for the Alaska Region.
The November 2024 continuing resolution appropriated an additional $1.5 billion to FEMA for the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Disaster Assistance Act.
Truly the best government money can buy!
You forgot to mention in the litigation of Red Emmerson’s Sierra Pacific Moonlight fire, CalFire failed to present evidence in discovery that their fire lookout was so terrified of the thunder storm lightning that he smoked all his dope and came out of his dope coma after ten the following morning, the fire by then a conflagration. Since SPI had accepted a settlement, 9th Circuit dismissed the claim. SPI used the Feather River UPRR fire Justice Dept valuations of Wilderness to allow SPI to offer 22,000 acres of checkerboard former SPRR lands inside a Wilderness as fair trade for part of the monetary settlement prior going to jury. That is how a $775,000,000 damage claim ended up costing SPI a bit more that $50 million and the isolated sections USFS would not allow SPI even to fly over with logs hanging from a helicopter Erickson had. R-5. It will burn, those former SPI railroad sections. Meanwhile SPI has purchased Eugene, OR, Seneca Lbr and is said be soon building another conversion facility in Oregon.