What’s Changed Since 2007 Review of HFRA Implementation.. and What Hasn’t

I’ve been thinking about how much the current FOFA is a this decade’s version of HFRA and the Healthy Forest Initiative.  It’s actually surprising how similar the ideas are “delineate an area”, “use special authorities”. Been there, done that.

I asked “what worked and what didn’t?” and “what can we learn?”  If you were around then, please add your own observations.  I did find this 2007 review of HFRA implementation.

INTRODUCTION
Following the exceptionally severe wildfire seasons that punctuated the past decade, the Administration and Congress authorized a suite of administrative and legislative tools to expedite the reduction of hazardous fuels and restoration forest health. These Healthy Forests authorities include the Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI), the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) and expanded authority for stewardship contracting and agreements. These authorities call for increased collaboration with stakeholders and provide streamlined administrative processes. The goal is to increase the acreage treated annually and to reduce overall treatment costs.

Although the Forest Service has strongly encouraged the use of Healthy Forests authorities over the past three years, Forest Service personnel and stakeholders have voiced frustration over their implementation. In response, the Forest Service conducted an internal review of its use of Healthy Forests authorities during the 2006 field season.
The purpose of the review was to 1) gauge Forest Service employees’ understanding of Healthy Forests tools, 2) identify opportunities to improve the tools, and 3) determine how Forest Service leadership can better support the use of Healthy Forests authorities. The review noted both significant barriers and challenges to Healthy Forests implementation and elements of successful Healthy Forests implementation. This report includes  recommendations to address the barriers and improve Healthy Forests implementation.

Overall, the review team found few major problems with the use of Healthy Forests authorities. While some region-specific issues exist with the use of Healthy Forests tools, there are also several common trends that are applicable more broadly. This report documents the review findings and recommends actions to improve the implementation of Healthy Forests authorities nationwide.
The Executive Summary highlights the major findings and recommendations. These and some additional findings and recommendations are detailed in the Discussion section that follows. The Appendices include regional summaries, briefing papers on the threat assessment centers, coordinated resource offering protocols, strategic placement of treatments, and numerous useful references for field personnel wanting to improve the efficiency of their fuels reduction and forest health programs.

DISCUSSION
Barriers and challenges to successful Healthy Forest implementation
Aside from environmental challenges such as continuous drought, insect and disease outbreaks and overly dense vegetation, many units nationwide are also experiencing social, economic, institutional and cultural challenges.

Social
The Healthy Forests authorities strongly emphasize collaboration. While some units have successfully engaged in collaboration with local communities, others are having trouble establishing collaborative relationships for a host of reasons. For example, some communities are engaged in collaborative planning, but are unable to fully realize their goals due to challenges from outside the local area or the collaborative group. In other locations community collaboration groups have expanded their collaboration, broadening the geographic area from which to draw partners while focusing on activities on a smaller geographic area.

This seems like it may have been fixed since 2007?

Economic
The declining forest products industry presents a continual challenge to the implementation of Healthy Forests activities, particularly with biomass utilization and stewardship contracting. In many regions, the milling infrastructure necessary to process biomass from hazardous fuels treatments or merchantable timber from stewardship contracts is absent or inadequate.
The shrinking availability of infrastructure has coincided in some areas with a loss of individuals with the necessary skills to perform forest restoration work. For example, the Rocky Mountain region has recently experienced a surge in the oil and gas industry; as these industries have increased their wages and workloads, individuals who once worked in the forest products industry have transitioned into the more lucrative oil and gas business.
Further, the low value of timber removed reduces economical treatment options, forcing many national forests into expensive service contracts to remove the hazardous fuels. Continuously rising fuel and transportation costs are often cited as contributing factors to the increasing costs of service contracts and as impediments to economically viable biomass utilization and stewardship contracting.

Seems like, except for the O&G industry, this has possibly gotten worse (Montana mills).

Institutional
Although external factors such as the economics and politics of a particular area affect Healthy Forests implementation, review participants also noted that procedural obstacles to the use of Healthy Forests authorities exist within the Forest Service itself. With continuously expanding workloads, many units expressed frustration with their inability to provide adequate staff and expertise to all of the projects in their program of work. In effect, Healthy Forests projects are sometimes given lower priority for staffing than forest plan revisions, major EISs for fire recovery, other large scale projects and high priority planning work.

Further, Forest Service personnel cited the lack of integration between staff areas as a major challenge to Healthy Forests implementation. Without clear communication between resource program managers, it has been difficult for units to incorporate Healthy Forests projects within their larger program of work. Many units requested strong, clear, consistent guidance from all levels of Forest Service leadership on how to integrate Healthy Forests authorities into existing policies and procedures.

I would guess the FS Implementation memo is designed to get at this, but perhaps only for the areas with existing (or should I say remaining) infrastructure.

Cultural
While the barriers mentioned above do not hinder Forest Service personnel from specifically using or attempting to use Healthy Forests authorities and tools, they do create a climate of frustration when Healthy Forests projects do not come to fruition, whether designed specifically with the newer authorities or with traditional ones. This is where the corporate culture of the Forest Service or of an individual can affect use of Healthy Forests authorities. In the face of this frustration, personnel who tend to take a conservative approach to accomplishing their work are reluctant to adopt new techniques and prefer to stick with tools with which they are familiar. On the other hand, the “early adopters” recognize the benefits of the newer tools and aggressively use them even if their initial attempts are not fully successful.

Again, the FS implementation memo appears to seek to abjure conservatism in using authorities and technologies.   The below part of the Secretary’s memorandum has a bit of a “continuous improvement” ring to it, so perhaps attention will be paid regularly to progress and impediments?  I really, really hope that the FS will make these reports public and we won’t have to FOIA them.

e. REPORTING
Each calendar year, the Forest Service shall report to Natural Resources and Environment on the use of emergency authorities that will include those actions taken pursuant to this Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Emergency Situation Determination detailing:
• Status of any ongoing environmental analysis or compliance actions;
• Listing of completed (signed decision) or future compliance actions;
• Status of any ongoing consultation, including the National Historic Preservation Act and Endangered Species Act;
• Status of any ongoing coordination with local or state emergency management offices or other federal agencies;
• Status of coordination and consultation with federally recognized Tribal governments and/or Alaska Native Corporations; and
• Listing of any completed (implemented on the ground) or future mitigating emergency actions, to include number of acres treated or anticipated to be treated

Back to the 2007 Review..the Biomass section is good, but also depressing.  If you’re interested, check it out.