andystahl

The smoking gun that proves Trump’s Forest Service now denies climate change! Compare Obama’s FY 2017 Budget Justification:

“Agency operations and assets must become more resilient to the impacts of a changing climate so we can continue to provide a high level of service while caring for the National Forest System lands.”

With Trump’s FY 2018 Budget Justification:

“Agency operations and assets must become more resilient to extreme weather so the agency can continue to provide a high level of service while caring for the National Forest System (NFS) lands.”

Gotcha!

Flying under the radar, especially when piloted by a savvy and experienced hand, is the key to financial survival in the Trump administration. Although OMB’s new FY 2018 budget is dead on arrival in Congress, much of the Forest Service may wish it isn’t. The Forest Service’s bottom-line is slated for a $1 billion cut compared to FY 2017, but $800 million of that cut comes from zeroing out the FLAME wildfire suppression reserve fund. The Forest Service knows that Congress always makes up the difference in subsequent appropriations if it overspends on firefighting.

Trump’s budget calls for increasing national forest system spending by 6%. Challenge for the reader — Is there another domestic, discretionary federal agency that receives such generous treatment in this most fiscally conservative budget in modern history?

The balance of the cuts comes from the expected sources. Forest Service Research and State and Private Forestry each get hammered by 20%. Rounding things out, Capital Improvement & Maintenance, aka “infrastructure,” gets slashed; and, predictably, so, too, does land acquisition.

Bottom line? In this new era of savaging discretionary domestic spending, the Forest Service makes out like a bandit. Corollary — who needs a permanent Undersecretary of Agriculture when you’ve got D.C. at the helm?

Today, Senate Energy Natural Resources Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell sent a letter to President Trump asking him to support more Forest Service wildfire spending. She says that the 10-year average spending amount of $2.4 billion Trump promises isn’t enough, which she illustrates with the following alarming statistic — “To date this year, wildfires have already burned 2.2 million acres: this level of activity is 400 percent above normal.”

She might just as well have cited the acres burned this year in Russia for how much relevance they have to Forest Service wildfire spending. Turns out that 1.3% (one point three percent) of the acres burned in 2017 are on national forest land. Private and state lands account for 96.9% of the acres, mostly grassland in Kansas and Oklahoma. And guess what? The U.S. Forest Service doesn’t pay the cost of fighting fires on private and state land.

Methinks the Trump administration, its OMB, the House Freedom Caucus, Heritage Foundation and other budget hawks have figured out that profligate wildfire spending is a Democratic Party-conceived federal jobs program that bears little, if any, relationship to actual on-the-ground needs. And, incidentally, does more ecological harm than good.

Trump’s budget blueprint proposes a 21% cut in USDA spending, while fully funding Forest Service fire suppression at $2.4 billion. How does that solve the borrowing problem? There won’t be any other FS money from which to borrow.

Senator Leahy (I-VT) released yesterday a sky-is-falling analysis of what would happen to federal agencies and programs if Congress adheres to Trump’s budget outline, which calls for cutting non-defense discretionary spending by $54 billion below sequestration levels. Here’s Leahy’s analysis of what the budget cuts could mean to the Forest Service:

Forest Service Firefighting: If the Forest Service is cut by 13 percent it would mean a cut of $417 million from the FY 2016 enacted level for wildland fire management. This would directly impact preparedness and suppression of forest fires. A 13 percent cut to fire preparedness programs would translate to a loss of 1,300 firefighters, 117 fire engines, 15 helicopters, and 3 aircraft. These reductions could have the unintended consequence of actually increasing firefighting costs. Due to the current level of assets, the Forest Service has a 98 percent success rate on initial attack against fires. With fewer assets the potential for more escaped fires increases, which means increased suppression costs. If the Forest Service wildland fire management account were to be held harmless to the 13 percent cut, it would mean large cuts to the rest of the agency. Holding firefighting harmless would result in a 30 percent cut to the Forest Service’s non-fire accounts, or $736 million from FY 2016 enacted. Due to the Forest Service’s primary responsibility. to manage the health of the national forests, at that level of spending, Research, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Forest Legacy, and grants to states could be abandoned. The Forest Service would likely prioritize restoration work to mitigate the risk of catastrophic fire – which is increasing due to climate change – and close campgrounds, shut down road access, stop maintaining trails, and reduce visitor services that are essential to hunting, fishing, hiking, off road vehicles, and other recreation activities.

Leahy thinks spending money on firefighting is the key to high initial attack success. Forest Service researchers say he’s wrong: “Achievement of these [high initial attack success] levels is often hailed as extraordinary success, but, as we explain here, environmental factors alone (e.g. weather, fuels, terrain) will tend to constrain the majority of wildfires to < 300 acres, regardless of suppression activities."If the cost cutting becomes real, will the Forest Service have the guts to admit that it can just as effectively respond to fire ignitions with much less money. Or will the agency jettison its national forest system management, research, and conservation missions altogether and double down on chasing fire dollars.

With Trump agriculture secretary nominee Sonny Perdue still awaiting a confirmation hearing, which has not been scheduled because the dog appears to have eaten Perdue’s financial disclosure homework, the Forest Service has been trying to figure out what message will best protect its budget from the new boss’ meat cleaver.

The first clue to the agency’s thinking appeared on its homepage today — make timber #1 again. The short post re-arranges the Forest Service’s Strategic Plan Goals by putting “Economic” benefits ahead of “Social” and “Environmental.” [Note how the two titles switch Social and Environmental between positions #2 and #3, while retaining Economic in first position].

The text of the post re-writes the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act’s alphabetical listing of the multiple uses, by which Congress intended not to prefer one use over others, by putting timber first. And if anyone misses the point, just look at the photo.

Will the tactic work to save the agency from massive budget cuts? Should the Forest Service double-down on its image as the nation’s firefighting heroes or turn the clock back 30 years? Can the Forest Service persuade Congress to increase spending to produce more timber in places where there are few, if any, mills remaining, e.g., Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and southern California? Will the Forest Service be able to convince the House’s budget hawks that spending $100 tax dollars to produce $1 worth of timber makes sense in southeast Alaska?

Several comments on this blog argue that the U.S. depends on forest products imports to satisfy its consumption. That’s half correct and misses the point.

In 2014, the U.S. bought forest products from other countries to the tune of $42 billion. We buy wood products from Canada, China, and the EU.

But, wait, there’s more! In 2014, the U.S. forest products industry also sold $41 billion of wood products to consumers in other countries — Canada, China, with the EU and Mexico tied for third. In other words, we buy as much wood stuff from other countries as we sell to other countries, and to and from the same countries, too.

It’s also worth noting that “Timber demands—not timber supplies—currently limit production growth in the United States” (quoting the abstract). The U.S. has seen a long-term decline in paper and pulp demand associated with decreasing manufacturing (less demand for cardboard boxes to package the stuff we aren’t making so much of) and increasing use of computers that replace paper to record and store information.

The U.S. forest products industry depends on trade. It depends on international trade agreements. It depends on interest rates, currency exchange rates, and other macroeconomic factors that serious people think about. Those people don’t care about national forest logging levels.

Snowing on the Soup Complex Sept 22, 2016

On September 17, an arsonist is suspected of setting six fires along a remote one-mile stretch of gravel road near the Soup Springs campground on the edge of the Modoc’s South Warner Wilderness. Four of the fires were contained promptly at less than a half-acre each and a fifth was held to less than 300 acres after a couple of days. The sixth, called “Soup 2,” escaped initial attack. Blown by westerly prevailing winds, it moved uphill to the sparsely-vegetated wilderness where, over the course of a week, it burned about 2,200 acres.

From their outset, these ignitions threatened one “uninhabited structure.” Details regarding the structure are unknown. But, of one thing I’m confident, it’s not worth the $5.4 million spent fighting this fire.

On day 2, for example, over 900 firefighters were assigned to the fire as it burned largely, and appropriately, unchecked into the wilderness. On day 3 alone, the Forest Service spent $909,655!

Why spend so much money watching a fire burn into the wilderness, with nothing of consequence threatened and season-ending rain in the forecast? One explanation might be the $2.3 million in “indirect” costs the Modoc national forest is allowed to charge to the fire. With the fiscal year about to expire at the end of September, every national forest has an incentive to spend as much as possible against the agency’s $1.6 billion wildfire suppression account. Which may help explain how the Forest Service managed to spend its largest fire appropriation in history during a decidedly uneventful national forest fire season.

Today the Seattle Times reports on a lawsuit FSEEE filed challenging the Forest Service’s failure to comply with NEPA before logging old-growth forests during the Wolverine Fire.

Happy to answer questions readers may have. I recommend reading the complaint, especially Exhibit A, which is an affidavit by a recently-retired Forest Service employee who lives in the area affected by the Wolverine Fire logging.

Today’s Seattle Times reports on a 5 million board foot timber sale conceived and consummated as a part of fighting the Wolverine Fire near Lake Chelan in Washington State. The sale, which cut a 50-mile long, 300-foot wide “community protection line” through spotted owl critical habitat and over streams, was logged primarily after rain had stopped the fire’s advance 8 miles from the Lake Wenatchee and Plains communities it was intended to protect. Contemporaneous Forest Service and FWS employees’ objections to the logging were overridden by the Wenatchee River district ranger.

Under normal circumstances, the National Environmental Policy Act would have required the Forest Service to assess this logging in an EA or EIS. But, Forest Service rules include an exception to NEPA analysis “[w]hen the responsible official determines that an emergency exists” and the actions are “urgently needed to mitigate harm to life, property, or important natural or cultural resources.” 36 CFR 220.4(b). In this instance, there is no written record of that determination having been made by “the responsible official,” or anyone else, for that matter. That’s the norm for Forest Service firefighting, which seeks to fly under NEPA’s radar using this regulation without ever following the regulation’s own terms itself. To the best of my knowledge, at no time does a Forest Service responsible official document that “an emergency exists” and that a particular action is “urgently needed.”

In the Wolverine Fire, the Forest Service’s behavior and facts on the ground belied any urgency to log this timber. If an urgent need to protect life or property had existed, the Forest Service would have warned the Lake Wenatchee and Plain communities to be prepared to evacuate. There are three levels of evacuation alert – Level 1 (Be Ready), Level 2 (Leave Soon) and Level 3 (Leave Immediately). At no time did the Forest Service put these communities on even the lowest level (Be Ready) evacuation alert. In contrast, Holden Village and Lucerne, which the Wolverine Fire actually threatened, received evacuation alerts and were evacuated.

When a wildfire threatens national forest visitors, the Forest Service also closes the area to public visitation. But here, when logging began, the Forest Service began relaxing public closures in the Wolverine Fire area, including reopening the Pacific Crest Trail to hikers.

Unaddressed in the news article is whether this 50-mile fuel break would have prevented the fire from spotting over the line. Had weather conditions been such that Lake Wenatchee or other communities actually been threatened (which they were not), it’s a fair bet that the fire could have jumped the line readily. In fact, the Forest Service warned that the Wolverine Fire might even jump Lake Chelan, which is a lot wider and less flammable!