andystahl

K.I.S.S. in Rule Form, Part I

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Our task is to write regulations required by NFMA. Having proposed a framework in previous posts (K.I.S.S. and K.I.S.S. II), it’s time to put rubber to the road. Here’s the introductory framework. What have I missed?

36 CFR 219.1: Purpose and principles.

(a) The rules in this subpart set forth the process for revising land management plans for units of the National Forest System as required by the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, as amended. Land management plans shall be revised when conditions in a unit have significantly changed, but no less frequently than every fifteen years.

(b) A land management plan revision shall:

(1) Decide the vegetation management and timber harvest sale program and the proportion of probable methods of tree removal timber harvest (Sec. __);

(2) Include an assessment of new information and changed circumstances since adoption of the previous land management plan or revision thereof (Sec. __);

(3) Be prepared by an interdisciplinary team (Sec. __);

(4) Be based upon inventories appropriate to inform the decisions made by the plan revision (Sec. __);

(5) Involve the public in its promulgation (Sec. __);

(6) Provide for diversity of plant and animal communities and preserve the diversity of tree species (Sec. __);

(7) Ensure that, subject to valid existing rights, all outstanding and future permits, contracts, cooperative agreements, and other instruments for occupancy and use of affected lands are consistent with the revised plan (Sec. __); and,

(78) Review previous decisions to classify lands as suited or not suited for timber production if the prior classification decision is older than ten years (Sec. __).

QLG – Granddaddy of Place-Based Collaboration

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The granddaddy of place-based national forest legislation is the 1998 Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act (“QLG”), which resulted from a 1993 collaborative group “community stability proposal.”  So how has the law worked out?  Here’s what the Forest Service reported in its latest QLG monitoring report:

Implementation of the Pilot Project continues to be affected by litigation and appeals. Court decisions are pending on cases that have been in litigation for up to four years. In FY08, approximately 90 percent of all timber sales or service contracts across the HFQLG Pilot Project area were stalled due to litigation or appeals. As a result, volume of both sawlogs and biomass sold declined by 50 percent from FY07 levels.

Since 1998, QLG-area sawlog volume sold averaged less than 20% of the 1992-1997 average level.  Forest Service expenses have stayed constant, but timber revenues have declined to 35% of pre-QLG law levels.  Forest industry jobs have dropped 25% and several of the area’s largest sawmills have closed.

The Forest Service bureaucracy is the major beneficiary, as QLG proved to be a magnet for federal spending.  But few would argue that the original “community stability” goal was realized, nor, perhaps, could changes in natural resource policy alone alter the downward economic trajectory suffered by most of the West’s rural communities.

Modern-day proponents of similar schemes, e.g., Beaverhead-Deerlodge and eastern Oregon legislative proposals, would do well to learn from QLG’s experience.

Project-based Forest Planning and Collaboration

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People collaborate best when they are in the woods talking about real forests and what to do with them.  On the other hand, put them in a conference room to debate the merits of hypothetical silvicultural standards and you end up with the sort of nonsense we are seeing in northern Arizona. There several prominent, litigious environmental groups have made peace with local timber mills and workers regarding which trees to log on several national forests.  The Forest Service, however, doesn’t want to play ball.  Instead, its regional staff in Albuquerque is busily re-writing northern Arizona NFMA plans to include silvicultural standards that are inimical to agreements reached in the woods between the green groups and industry.

This bureaucratic passion play could be avoided altogether if NFMA plans were based on projects, not standards.  Recall that NFMA requires only one thing of forest plans:  “the planned timber sale program and the proportion of probable methods of timber harvest within the unit necessary to fulfill the plan.”  Recall also that NFMA does not mandate one forest plan for each national forest.  The Forest Service has broad discretion to decide the geographic scope of each plan, i.e., a single national forest can be divided into several NFMA plans.

Under the current two-tier planning regime, the Forest Service and its protagonists get to fight twice over what to do with national forests.  The forest plan fight is all about the adequacy of standards, the aspirational zoning of land, and the magnitude of largely irrelevant allowable sale quantities.  The second fight, at the project level, often repeats all of the above (because forest plan standards become ripe for legal challenge only when implemented in a project), with plan-consistency arguments thrown in for good measure.

Let’s just cut out the middle man altogether.  A forest plan should be no more than the logging projects the Forest Service proposes for the next several years.  The plan’s NEPA document (probably an EIS, but an EA is not inconceivable if the logging projects are environmentally modest) would evaluate alternatives, disclose effects, and form the basis for any required inter-agency consultation.  The plan’s Record of Decision would set forth the site-specific projects to be undertaken,  eliminating separate project-based planning and decision-making.  Forest planning collaboration, if pursued, would consist of people talking in the woods about each of the projects.