Some miscellaneous tidbits, following up on other stories…
1. What is the linkage between bureaus and the USWFS and how is it supposed to work?
The Office of Communication at DOI got right back to me when I asked the question about how things are supposed to work between the land management agencies and the USWFS, so shout-out to them.
The transition guidance issued in April is current.
The increasingly complex wildland fire environment now requires a professional workforce that is positioned to meet wildfire response and mitigation needs year-round. The U.S. Wildland Fire Service works in close collaboration with the Interior Department’s land management agencies to ensure fuels treatments, wildfire prevention strategies, and post-fire recovery efforts are fully aligned with public land management goals. This integrated strategy is intended to meet wildfire response needs while also building long-term landscape resilience.
2. Do Piles of Logs Left Over From Wildfire Suppression Actions Go Toward FS Timber Targets? Thanks to Andy Geissler of AFRC for this one!
Most of the time the Forest Service will sell log decks associated with fire suppression in a competitive manner in the same way they sell green timber sales. You can take a look at the Willamette National Forest’s current timber sale page and find four deck sales over the past year: Willamette National Forest | Timber Sales | Forest Service.
The volume sold is part of the agency’s accomplishments. The Forest Service has a unique “salvage sale fund” that often pays for these sales. If those funds are unavailable, they will typically use “timber” dollars (i.e. National Forest Timber Management dollars (NFTM)). However, both the salvage funds and NFTM fall under the blanket “timber program funding” according the agency’s accounting. Bottom line, these deck sales are funded by timber dollars.
It’s also worth noting that, in most cases that I’m aware of, the fisheries program gets “access” to the logs in these decks for in-stream wood placement. In some cases I’ve seen the Forest Service haul logs to a location and then fly them into rivers and creeks via helicopter. That work can be funded with timber receipts too.
Conversations in Comments to Bring Forward to More People
3. Litigation is Used to Affect Policy. It’s really OK. People who have different views use legal means to achieve their ends. These organizations tend to also work in politics via their c4 wings, and policy. That’s fine. Jon said, and not to pick on him, but I’ve heard this before,
Litigation is not an adversarial process for “determining policy.” It determines what the law requires.
In reality, there are entities that use legal means to pursue their ends. Folks like Earthjustice are pretty direct that that’s what they’re doing. I also get it that folks who use this method would want to create executive branch actions that have legal hooks that they can use. And they will resist changes that seem like common sense to many of us, that they argue could interfere with their access to the levers of decision-making.
For example, this letter about FOFA (my understanding is that the current Senate version is 150 days).
Section 121 also dramatically limits the time to seek judicial review to 120 days after the date of publication of a notice in the Federal Register of agency intent to carry out the fireshed management project. This abbreviated timeframe places an undue burden on interested parties and communities with limited resources and would likely have the unintended consequence of leading to more litigation, not less, as interested parties may be forced to file suit to protect their legal rights. This is especially true if a claim requires a pre-suit notice period, such as the 60-day notice period required by the ESA. Finally, Section 121 creates a new, restrictive standard for standing to sue by requiring a litigant to have participated in the rulemaking in a very specific way that goes beyond the standard required by federal courts for Article III standing. We therefore oppose this provision of the bill.
Note what groups signed this letter to the Senate.
Like I said, it’s really OK for them to have their views and pursue them in whatever ways the US governments systems allow. And it’s equally OK for others to push back in courts. Personally, in my lived experience, courtrooms are not the best place to settle federal lands disputes, and we should be more transparent and design policies that favor other means of dispute-settling, but that’s the way it is.
4. More on How the USWFS and Bureau Interface Will Work
As an FS retiree, I’m having trouble understanding Jesse’s comments, I think at least in part, because I don’t understand how the DOI operates without what we would call “charge as worked.” From my FS experience, it seems like budgets are limiting… if you have the budget and don’t have the people, you can contract or grant the work. If you don’t have the budget, you will just do less. Anyway, maybe someone with both FS and BLM experience can translate.
If it were the FS, for example, (and say the wildfire folk were stovepiped in a similar way) all the “Wildfire Folks Approved” projects would have employees doing monitoring, NEPA, etc. would charge to the Wildfire account. If the FS wanted to do prescribed fire for other reasons than fuels, they would have to fund it through the benefitting function. Of course there is a tendency, when many functions benefit, to assign the charges to the function with the most available bucks. So there will be fuels people deciding if fuels bucks should be used. Wouldn’t we expect wildlife people to decide if wildlife bucks should be used on projects intended to help wildlife?
So when I look at the transition function list, I see the issue as “who is paying for it” and not so much “what is done.” Maybe the way people are paid in Interior makes the whole thing more difficult than it needs to be? And would that be a good argument for keeping the FS out of Interior (if they don’t use “charged as worked.”)?
3. Maybe the distinction is that parties may use a legal strategy (when to sue, what issues to raise and how) to pursue their goals, but the only question a court should be addressing is what the law says about it. I would happily support your carrot approach, “design policies that favor other means of dispute-settling,” but not the stick approach of discriminating against certain kinds of potential litigants.