Matthew Koehler

Episode 35 of the Rewilding Earth Podcast, from the Rewilding Institute, looks like it could be of interest to many on this blog. It features Bruce Anderson. Below is Bruce’s bio as well as the topics discussed in the podcast, which you can listen to right here.

Bruce Anderson retired from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in July 2017. During his four years with the DNR he was Assistant Wildlife Manager and wildlife planner where he was involved wildlife surveys, planning, wildlife damage management, habitat assessments, invasive species management and Interdisciplinary support to timber management.

Prior to this, Bruce had a 35 year career with the US Forest Service where he worked in North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and most recently on the Superior National Forest in Northern MN. During his Forest Service career he worked in program management positions for invasive species, wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers, trails, rangeland management, wildlife, fire effects and recreation. Bruce also worked at length within five wilderness areas on wilderness related topics including fire effects monitoring, livestock and recreational grazing, wildlife damage management, invasive species control, motorized use management, and wild and scenic rivers.

Topics

• Effects of mining, timber extraction, invasive species, and development in North America since 1969

• Making an impact on the local level

• Collective effect of taking action where you live

• How to find $50-$100 billion dollars per year for conservation and restoration work from coast to coast

• How “big data” can help make the right management decisions on the ground

Extra Credit

• Reach out to local groups in your area, pick up a shovel, pull invasive species out of the ground on state and federal land, stay active!

• Know what’s been lost in your area in order to understand why taking one more square inch or board foot really does make a difference.

It will be interesting to watch how some of frequent apologists for industry, the agency or certain administrations on this blog explain this one and tell us it’s no big deal.

Documents: Mining company writing own environmental report
Source: https://www.idahostatesman.com/latest-news/article238363753.html
BY KEITH RIDLER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DECEMBER 13, 2019 04:40 PM

Documents show the U.S. Forest Service allowing a Canadian company to write a key environmental report on its proposed open-pit gold mines in central Idaho after the Trump administration became involved.

The documents obtained by conservation group Earthworks show British Columbia-based Midas Gold’s lobbying efforts after initial rebuffs from the Forest Service.

The report, called a biological assessment, would typically be written by the Forest Service or an independent contractor. Its purpose is to examine the potential effect the open-pit mines would have on salmon, steelhead and bull trout protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The assessment could sink Midas Gold’s Stibnite Gold Project if it results in habitat restoration work that makes the mines economically unfeasible.

An internal Forest Service document in February 2018 shows the agency deciding to deny Midas Gold’s request to participate as a non-federal representative in writing the assessment because the massive project would likely harm protected fish. But by October 2018, Midas Gold was not only a participant, it had taken over leading the process and writing the document.

“I think it’s particularly inappropriate for a mining company to be analyzing their own project,” Bonnie Gestring of Earthworks said this week. She obtained the documents as part of a public records request.

Mckinsey Lyon, vice-president of external affairs for Midas Gold, said it’s normal for a company to write the biological assessment for its project, and the company has been holding monthly meetings with federal agencies, state agencies and tribes.

“We will prepare the draft assessment from that collaborative process,” Lyon said. “We are really looking at this to make the process more inclusive and transparent in getting all the voices and input at the table.”

Documents show ongoing lobbying efforts with federal agencies and then a meeting in May 2018 between Midas Gold and Dan Jiron, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s acting deputy under secretary for natural resources and environment. In November, Midas Gold met with Jim Hubbard, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for natural resources and environment.

Meanwhile, Forest Service resistance to Midas Gold playing a significant role in writing the biological assessment crumbled, according to Forest Service internal emails, meeting notes and a memorandum.

“And to be clear,” then-Payette National Forest Supervisor Keith Lannom wrote in a short email to colleagues in October 2018, “Midas will have the lead on fish, wildlife and plants ESA (Endangered Species Act) consultation.”

Lannom, who earlier this year became a deputy regional forester based in Montana and no longer oversees Payette National Forest issues, didn’t return a call from The Associated Press.

John Freemuth, an expert on U.S. land policies at Boise State University, said it’s not unusual for companies to lobby whatever administration is in power. But he said having a company get the OK to write its own biological assessment is something he’s never heard of before.

“It looks like there was a lot of political pressure that Midas brought to bear at higher levels,” said Freemuth, who reviewed the documents. “It wouldn’t pass what people call the smell test.”

Midas Gold says the Stibnite Mining District contains more than 4 million ounces (113 million grams) of gold and more than 100 million pounds of antimony. Antimony is used in lead for storage batteries as well as a flame retardant. The U.S. lists antimony as one of 35 mineral commodities critical to the economic and national security of the country. Midas Gold says the mines will directly create an average of 500 jobs for up to 25 years.

Mining in the area about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of McCall dates back more than a century and has resulted in two open pits, including one that has been blocking a salmon spawning stream since the 1930s. The site also has extensive tailings left from mining operations that are the source of elevated levels of arsenic.

Previous mining companies walked away, leaving cleanup to U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has spent about $4 million since the 1990s restoring habitat.

Midas Gold plans additional mining in the two open pits and to create a third open pit. The work would roughly double the size of the disturbed mining area to about 2,000 acres (800 hectares) and eliminate some previous reclamation work.

But Midas Gold’s plan includes cleaning up tailings by capturing gold with new technologies. Ultimately, the company says, it will restore much of the area when mining is finished.

The Nez Perce Tribe has treaty rights to the area and has come out against new mining amid concerns for fish habitat. Below the mining area is about 80 river miles of habitat for spring/summer Chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout in the South Fork of the Salmon River and its tributary, the East Fork of the South Fork. The Salmon River itself is home to additional federally protected salmon, including endangered sockeye salmon.

The biological assessment will be used to create a draft environmental impact statement expected to be released in early 2020, with a final decision possible later in the year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest Service will have to sign off on the plan.

Midas Gold officials said the draft biological assessment has not yet been written, but an outline of the document has been created.

Freemuth, the public lands expert, said if the project is approved, a lingering question will be whether land and wildlife managers or political appointees made the decision.

“At the end of the day, people are going to sue if they think that the document is insufficient,” he said. “This will be heavily scrutinized.”

UPDATE (12/23/2019): Foreign Mining Firm Writing Its Own Environmental Report For U.S. Forest Service Loses Round In Court

A Canadian gold-mining company allowed by the Trump administration to write its own assessment of the environmental impact of its proposed project on federal lands has lost a round in court against the Nez Perce tribe in Idaho.

What follows is a petition/action alert from the California Chaparral Institute. – mk

STOP destruction of 20 million acres of habitat and protect our communities from fire

The California state government has just refused to do what is necessary to protect us from the wind-driven wildfires that kill the most people and destroy the most homes.

Their solution? To double down on what they’ve always done – clear 250,000 acres of native habitat per year (20 million acres total targeted) through grinding, burning, and herbicides in their proposed Vegetation Treatment Program (VTP).* Even though the state admits that this approach will fail to protect lives and property during the most devastating wildfires, it nonetheless remains California’s priority solution to the wildfire problem.

Here is what the state admitted in response to our proposals to make communities fire safe:

“When high-wind conditions drive a large fire, such as when large embers travel long distances in advance of the fire, vegetation treatment would do little, if anything, to stop downwind advance of the fire front.”

In other words, the state is going to ignore the fires that cause the greatest loss of life and property. Instead, Cal Fire, the state fire agency, will only address 95% of the fires – the ones they can easily control under calm conditions.

This is absurd. Imagine if we designed buildings to withstand only 95th percentile earthquake movements, or what you would feel as a result of a magnitude 2.5.

The science is clear. Proper vegetation management around homes and directly around communities is an important part of reducing fire risk. But the wholesale destruction of the natural environment is not.

We need to follow the science. We need to protect communities from the fires that actually do the most damage. And we need to stop pretending we can control Nature by destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of native habitat through Cal Fire’s proposed Vegetation Treatment Program (VTP).

The California state government has shown a pattern of failure when it comes to protecting us.

State politicians say they agree that making communities fire safe is a priority, but Governor Newsom rejected $1 billion in funding to do so. Instead, he championed a $21 billion program to protect utility corporations from liability for the fires they cause. The state promotes it’s efforts to protect biodiversity, yet it is planning on clearing 250,000 acres/year of native habitat under the guise of fire protection.

The California state government needs to fulfill the main obligation it has to its citizens – protect them from harm.

What you can do:
Please sign this petition and forward it to family and friends.

Dear Governor Newsom,

We urge you to reject the California Board of Forestry’s and Cal Fire’s current approach to dealing with wildfire – clearing habitat as described in their recent final Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) for the Vegetation Treatment Program (VTP).

1. Reject Cal Fire’s refusal to protect us from the growing threat of extreme, wind-driven wildfires. Cal Fire’s approach wastes millions of tax-payer dollars and fails to protect communities most at risk.

2. Immediately develop and fund a comprehensive and effective program to reduce the flammability of our communities through retrofits, exterior sprinklers, etc., so that our communities can survive wind-driven firestorms. We can do it, but it will require objective leadership OUTSIDE the Cal Fire bureaucracy, a bureaucracy trapped by its own paradigm paralysis – they can’t think outside their own priorities. Assemblyman Wood’s bill (AB 38), passed last term, provided an opportunity to make communities fire safe, but you did not support funding the program. The funding needs to be reinstated.

3. Develop and promote the policies needed to:

a. form community fire safety teams that will develop evacuation plans for actual disasters that will occur (not the minor events that we have been able to control in the past),
b. create fire safety parks WITHIN threatened communities where people can go and remain safe during a wildfire
c. form community-based volunteer fire response teams of people who DO NOT evacuate, but stay to assist their disabled and/or trapped neighbors
d. STOP the *unsustainable practice* of placing people in harm’s way by allowing development in known fire corridors

Here is a complete list of recommendations.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS supporting this petition

*To see the VTP, you can go to this link:
https://bofdata.fire.ca.gov/projects-and-programs/calvtp/

In case you might think the title of our petition is hyperbole, here is the text from the VTP EIR:

“Expansion of CAL FIRE’s vegetation treatment activities to reach a total treatment acreage target of approximately 250,000 acres per year to contribute to the achievement of the 500,000 annual acres of treatment on non-federal lands…” Page ES-2

And…

“Using this method, 20.3 million acres within the 31 million-acre SRA were identified that may be appropriate for vegetation treatments as part of the CalVTP…”
Page ES-3

An added note:
87% of the destruction to communities in 2017-18 was caused by 6 wildfires (out of 16,000), all wind-driven. The VTP admits it doesn’t address those. Let that sink in for a bit.

Here is the Los Angeles Times’ editorial that repeats much of what we are saying in this petition:

Editorial: California will never control raging wildfires if it doesn’t stop building in high-risk areas
By The Times Editorial Board
Nov. 29, 2019

After three years of devastating and deadly wildfires, perhaps we should no longer be surprised by them.

It was shocking in 2017 when the Tubbs fire jumped the 101 Freeway and charred a suburban subdivision in Santa Rosa. It was unthinkable last year when Paradise residents had to run for their lives as the city was almost entirely destroyed by the Camp fire. And still people were caught off guard last month when the Saddleridge fire forced hundreds of residents in Sylmar and Porter Ranch to flee their homes in the middle of the night.

A terrifying pattern has been revealed. California’s wildfires are now regularly destroying subdivisions and established neighborhoods that once seemed at low risk from wildfires. There’s ample scientific data and research to explain why: Climate change amplifies natural variations in the weather, leading to more frequent and more destructive wildfires. Poorly maintained utility lines are setting blazes.

Despite that, we’re still building homes — more and more of them — in fire-prone areas. State and local leaders have been slow to adopt the housing, land-use and development reforms that would make California communities much safer in the coming years. Here are a few suggestions culled from experts that, if enacted soon, could deliver lasting security.

Harden homes

The devastation in Paradise, Santa Rosa, Ventura County and Malibu demonstrated that homes are not only casualties in the fires, but also the fuel that feeds and exacerbates the blazes. Wind-driven fires can blow embers over great distances. The embers lodge under eaves, get sucked into vents or broken windows and can ignite a house from the inside out, which creates more embers and more heat. The fire then spreads from house to house, sometimes leaving surrounding trees largely untouched. The first and most obvious step is to retrofit homes in high-risk areas to make them more resistant to fire. Researchers analyzed some 40,000 buildings exposed to wildfires between 2013 and 2018. They found that homes built to keep out embers and withstand extreme heat were much more likely to survive. Yet so far, the state has done little to require home hardening or to fund it.

The needed retrofits aren’t very expensive. Homeowners should cover their vents with fine wire mesh and enclose their eaves to prevent embers from getting inside the structure. Double-paned windows are less likely to shatter in high heat, and steel shutters can help too.

Properties also need regular inspections to make sure they are prepared for fire season. Are there gaps in roof tiles that might allow embers into the attic? Are the gutters full of dry leaves and twigs? Do the residents know to shut the doggie door when they evacuate?

Earlier this year, Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) proposed creating a billion-dollar revolving loan fund to help homeowners pay for retrofits and to remove flammable vegetation near their homes. The funding was cut from the bill.

Next year, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers should invest that $1 billion — or more — to help people in high-risk areas make their homes more fire resistant. But it’s not enough to have individual homeowners voluntarily harden their houses if neighboring properties are tinder boxes. Fire is contagious. The greatest protection comes when entire neighborhoods are hardened together and maintained together. Whatever legislation is passed should reflect that.

Buy out burned properties

Still, all the fire-resistant materials and hardening in the world can’t guarantee safety. During the 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura County, new houses built to the strictest fire codes still burned down. The houses were in a state-designated “very high fire hazard severity zone,” which means the area has the greatest probability of burning based on vegetation, topography and fire history. And when 80-mile-per-hour winds blow embers across a landscape that is already prone to burn, the fire can quickly overwhelm hardened homes.

State officials have to recognize that there are some homes and neighborhoods that shouldn’t be rebuilt. Or rebuilt again, since some communities have burned more than once. For decades, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has helped buy out properties destroyed by flood waters, in a bid to stop the expensive and sometimes deadly cycle of flood-rescue-and-rebuild in high-risk areas. In Texas, communities have used a combination of local bonds, drainage fees and federal dollars to buy out flood-prone houses.

Buyouts are considered one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent flood destruction. These are voluntary sales and the government pays fair market value. The homes are demolished and the property becomes open space. It’s pricey to buy up dozens of properties at a time, but it can be cheaper and more effective than developing new flood control infrastructure.

Yet there’s been little discussion in California of trying to use FEMA grants or other funds to make similar buyout offers in high fire-risk areas. It wouldn’t be possible to buy out every property owner in the very high fire hazard severity zones — there are an estimated 2.7 million Californians living there. Rather, a buyout program could target the areas at the very greatest risk, perhaps because the community was built without adequate evacuation routes, or because the neighborhood has been burned two or more times before.

Don’t build in high fire-risk areas. But if development must be approved, build exceptionally safe communities

The best way to prevent wildfire destruction and death is to stop building houses in the path of fire. Half of all buildings destroyed by wildfire in California over the last 30 years have been in developed areas next to wildlands.

So far, though, gentle suggestions that local governments should consider wildfire risk when approving development aren’t working, and neither is Newsom’s call to “deprioritize” development in high fire-risk areas. Land-use decisions are made by local elected officials and they’ve proven themselves unwilling to say no to dangerous sprawl development and equally unwilling to say yes to denser, urban infill housing construction that would be more sustainable. Just look at Los Angeles County, where the Board of Supervisors approved construction of a 19,000-home mini-city to be built at Tejon Ranch in a remote valley that has been deemed a high risk for wildfires.

California lawmakers need to push — even force — local elected officials to make more responsible development decisions.

Earlier this year, Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) introduced Senate Bill 182, which would prohibit cities and counties from approving new housing developments in high fire-risk areas unless the projects meet new “wildfire risk reduction standards.” Those would include siting the homes so they have natural fire breaks and are easier for firefighters to defend, building evacuation routes, and having an ongoing, funded program to inspect and maintain defensible space around homes.

The bill was held up amid concerns that it could allow anti-growth cities to use the presence of some high fire-risk areas within their borders as an excuse to shirk their responsibility to build enough housing in the non-fire-risk areas of the city. That should not be allowed.

Yes, California has a severe housing shortage that is making the state unaffordable and unlivable for too many people. But the state can’t keep counting on sprawl to solve the housing crisis. That only puts more people at risk in future wildfires, and it generates more greenhouse gases as residents commute from far-flung subdivisions. That hastens climate change, which, in turn, worsens wildfire conditions in California.

The entire history of the state’s effort to ignore the fires that cause all the damage can be found here:
http://www.californiachaparral.org/threatstochaparral/helpcalfireeir.html

Steve Wilent posted about the Trump administration allowing motorized electronic e-bikes on nonmotorized trails back in August. Here’s that post and discussion/debate.

Today, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and a coalition of conservation groups and affected individuals filed a lawsuit to restore the ban on e-bikes in National Parks. Here’s the PEER press release:

Washington, DC — The recent National Park Service (NPS) order allowing electric bicycles on park trails violates several federal laws and should be rescinded, according to a lawsuit filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and a coalition of conservation groups and affected individuals. Nearly 25 National Park System units have acted to implement the e-bikes order.

Following a Secretarial Order by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt directing that all Interior Department agencies, including the NPS, immediately allow e-bikes “where other types of bicycles are allowed,” on August 30, 2019, Deputy NPS Director P. Daniel Smith issued a “Policy Memorandum” ordering all park superintendents to now allow e-bikes on trails where the parks currently allow bicycles.

The PEER suit cites several legal impediments to the NPS order, including that it:

• Violated NPS’s own regulations that may not be set aside by administrative fiat;

• Improperly evaded legally-required environmental reviews; and

• Came from an official, Smith, who lacked the authority to issue such an order.

“This e-bikes order illustrates an improper and destructive way to manage our National Parks,” stated PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse, a former enforcement attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Concerned groups and individuals are joining PEER in demanding that the Park Service follow the normal regulatory processes and assess the additional impacts that higher speed e-bike riders pose both to other trail users and to wildlife in the parks.”

It also turns out that Bernhardt and Smith’s staffs have been regularly meeting behind closed doors with an industry-dominated advisory committee called the “E-bike Partner & Agency Group” at Interior Headquarters and through teleconferences. E-bike vendors stand to profit from the NPS move. The PEER suit demands a halt to these meetings because they violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires transparency to prevent such clandestine lobbying.

“The impetus from industry is not surprising given that, as a former industry lobbyist himself, Secretary Bernhardt is known for hearing industry concerns and not public concerns,” added Whitehouse, noting that other Bernhardt moves, such as forbidding parks from trying to limit plastic bottle sales, are a form of creeping commercialization affecting park policies. “E-bikes represent another inroad of commercialized recreation into our National Parks.”

Joining PEER in the suit as co-plaintiffs are Wilderness Watch, Marin Conservation League, Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, Save Our Seashore, and three impacted individuals.

Read the PEER suit

See partial list of National Park units moving to allow e-bikes

Find out more about the issue

The following piece was written by Brandon Keim, who provides comments on this blog once in a while. It’s shared here with his permission. – mk

When to let a dead tree lie

It’s often argued that logging trees killed by insects or diseases is beneficial for forests—but evidence is mounting that it causes long-term ecological disruption.

By Brandon Keim

When trees are damaged by insects or disease, there’s often pressure to cut them down. It’s argued that “salvaging” these trees is actually beneficial for forests—but evidence is mounting that it causes long-term ecological disruption.

The latest findings come from Białowieża Forest, a 550-square-mile woodland that straddles Poland and Belarus and is a last redoubt of the vast forest that once stretched from France to Russia. Long the protected domain of aristocracy, Białowieża escaped large-scale logging; it’s one of the few places in Europe where natural cycles of wind, fire, and disease still shape a forest at landscape scales.

Only during the last century has logging taken place. A prime target is the dead trees that are present in far larger numbers than in commercially-managed forests, in particular trees afflicted by bark beetles. Salvage logging following outbreaks is presented by supporters as ecologically beneficial, but it “alters the potential for natural regeneration,” says Anna Orczewska, an ecologist at the University of Silesia.

Orczewska is the lead author on a new study, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, of what grows in the aftermath of salvage logging in Białowieża. The forest is set on a new trajectory; “the human ‘clean-up’ attitude,” writes Orczewska and colleagues, “inevitably leads to the homogenization of the forest.”

The researchers looked at the so-called herb layer—low-growing grasses, ferns, and flowering plants—in sites where spruce and pine trees were killed by beetle outbreaks and either logged or left alone. Salvage logging in Białowieża, as in many places worldwide, involves clearcuts followed by removal of trees with heavy machinery and plantation-style replanting.

Several years later, the herb layer in logged sites was dominated by disturbance specialists rarely found within the intact forest. The previous herb layer was largely destroyed by machinery or withered in the suddenly intense sunshine. Their seeds did not sprout. When beetle-killed trees were left alone, though, the original herb layer regrew. Dead trees provided necessary shade; their fallen trunks and branches created pockets of protection from grazing.

In short, the regrowth that occurred after natural disturbance was dramatically different from that which occurred after human-driven disturbance. And whereas the former represent the first stages in a cycle that will eventually restore the original plant community, the latter represent something different. The new, disturbance-specialized assemblage may persist for decades. “In some cases, it seems that pre-disturbance herb layer assemblages never recover,” write Orczewska’s team.

They argue that salvage logging is actually worse than disease outbreaks for Białowieża’s plant communities—a lesson that, though based in this study on the research in Białowieża, is broadly applicable elsewhere. Natural disturbances create structurally and biologically complex forests.

“In the era of global warming we should eliminate salvage logging, at least in forests which still hold the potential for natural regeneration,” Orczewska says. “Instead we continue cutting.”

Source: Orczewska et al. “The impact of salvage logging on herb layer species composition and plant community recovery in Białowieża Forest.” Biodiversity and Conservation, 2019. Open access here.

About the author: Brandon Keim is a freelance journalist specializing in animals, nature and science. He is now writing Meet the Neighbors, a book about what animal personhood means for our relationships to animals and to nature. Connect with him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

“You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire.”
– The Doors (1967)

The following was posted by the California Chaparral Institute (https://www.californiachaparral.org/) and I thought it was worth sharing their post:

“Next time you hear someone claim California, the Sierra Nevada (pick your spot) is supposed to burn every 5-10 years or so, or when someone uses the pine forests in the Southeast or Arizona/New Mexico as a model of what is supposed to happen in California fire wise, show them this map. The natural fire return interval in California is pretty low… from nothing to pretty darn infrequent when compared to the rest of the country.”

Here’s a press released from Western Watersheds Project:

Saint George, UTAH – Western Watersheds Project is suing the U.S. Forest Service in Utah for allowing ongoing overgrazing on Monroe Mountain by a handful of non-compliant permittees. The agency, faced with threats of armed resistance, has capitulated to rancher demands allowing excessive stocking rates, repeated trespass, and non-compliance with federal regulations.

“When the Forest Service tried to do the right thing and suspend these livestock grazing permits for multiple willful violations of the terms and conditions, the ranchers responded with threats of violence,” said John Persell, staff attorney with Western Watersheds Project. “That’s an ugly ultimatum, and it’s unfortunate that the Forest Service has to deal with these folks. But it’s unfair to the Americans who own these public lands to let them be continually degraded by scofflaws.”

The Forest Service has gone overboard in accommodating these bad actor permittees, working around the requirements for permit renewals by repeatedly offering “temporary” permits to the ranchers, unlawfully failing to respond to appeals of grazing decisions, ignoring requirements to incorporate sage-grouse protections into permits, and allowing increases in cattle numbers the agency never environmentally analyzed.

“When I visited these allotments last month with other members, we saw severe over-use of new aspen shoots and native bunchgrasses, as well as damage to riparian areas near springs,” said Laura Welp, an ecosystems specialist for Western Watersheds Project. “We could visibly see the degradation of these lands due to years of hands-off management by the Forest Service.”

In the spring of 2019, the agency’s Washington office intervened to order local Forest Service managers to waive basic permit terms requiring ear-tagging of cattle on public lands, and to allow the Monroe Mountain permittees onto the allotments despite ranchers’ attempts to re-write permit terms and conditions eliminating any land stewardship obligations.

“Allowing Cliven Bundy to get away with trespass grazing for over twenty years has surely sent a message to other fringe property rights ranchers that threats of violence work with federal agencies,” said John Persell. “However, the Forest Service is beholden to its own regulations and all of us as public land owners. This lawsuit will affirm the rule of law.”

A copy of the complaint can be found online here.

Here are some excerpts from the lawsuit:

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s wildfire tweets not grounded in facts

The president in recent tweets blamed California and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for the fires because of state forest management practices and said California’s fires were too expensive and worse than in other states. In fact, the fires were not raging mostly in forests. The bulk of California’s forests are also federally managed, and other parts of the U.S. are burning even more.

Four university professors who study fires and the environment faulted the president’s tweets Sunday to varying degrees.

TRUMP: “Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing – and then he (Newsom) comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states.”

THE FACTS: Not true. There are far fewer acres burned in California than other places, like Alaska.

So far this year, slightly more than 266,000 acres (108,000 hectares) of California have burned in more than 7,700 fires. That’s fewer than in recent years for California, but the fires command attention because they are close to people.

While Alaska has had only 700 fires, it has lost 2.57 million acres (1.04 million hectares) to wildfires this year, more than nine times as much as California, according to statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center.

The Great Basin, Southern and Southwestern regions have all had more than 440,000 acres (180,000 hectares) burned this year, far more than California.

“Fire is increasing everywhere because of climate change, but the impacts on people are more directly observable in California because of its population and wealth,” said LeRoy Westerling, a fire expert at the University of California, Merced.

California did have the most acres burned in 2018, but Montana and Nevada had more acres burned in 2017 and Oklahoma had the most acreage burned in 2016, while Alaska and Washington had more in 2015, according to fire center statistics.

___

TRUMP: “The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met he must ‘clean’ his forest floors, regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers.”

THE FACTS: Trump is sidestepping responsibility. Of the 33 million acres (13.3 million hectares) of forest land in California, 57% is owned and managed by the federal government, 40% by private landowners and 3% by the state, according to Newsom’s office, Forest Unlimited and the University of California’s Forest Research and Outreach center.

Many of the fires burning the past week or so are not in forests but shrub, agricultural areas and grasslands, so forest management is not an issue, University of Alberta fire expert Mike Flannigan said in an email.

Westerling showed pictures of the areas before the fire, illustrating mostly grass and shrub. It is not a forest, and clearing debris would be of little use there.

“Are there things California should be doing to reduce the risks?” asked Chris Field, director of the Stanford Wood Institute for the Environment. “Yes. I agree with the president that fuel reduction and fire breaks are important.

“But they are just the beginning. We also need to upgrade homes and businesses to make them more fire resistant, improve defensible spaces around buildings, and limit ignitions, including from downed power lines.”

The recent Tick and Maria fires in Southern California were mainly in chaparral and grassland. In such habitats, Field said, “widespread fuel reduction doesn’t provide a benefit, but defensible spaces and modern building codes can be hugely helpful.”

While California is increasing its spending for reducing fuels for fire by about $200 million for five years, federal officials are crying for money, Westerling said.

The National Forest Service’s California office says it needs $300 million more a year to meet its goal of restoring 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) per year, up from 200,000 acres annually.

___

TRUMP: “Also, open up the ridiculously closed water lanes coming down from the North. Don’t pour it out into the Pacific Ocean. Should be done immediately. California desperately needs water, and you can have it now!”

THE FACTS: Trump’s point is irrelevant to battling wildfires.

“Fire suppression is not limited in any way by the availability of water,” Westerling said. “How does President Trump propose that these waters be used to reduce fire risk? Is he proposing to build a statewide sprinkler system with federal money?”

The following press release was issued by the Republic, Washington-based Kettle Range Conservation Group on October 23, 2019. It can be viewed here.

For Immediate Release: October 23, 2019

Colville National Forest Plan is a Public Disgrace: 17 Years of Collaboration is Ignored

On October 21, U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Glen Casamassa signed the Record of Decision finalizing the revised Forest Plan for Colville National Forest. The plan signals a significant increase in logging – including a large areas of clearcutting – as much as 25,000 acres per year across the 1.1 million acre Colville Forest and above prior recommendations. The Colville’s 5-year logging levels are now projected at 100 to 150 million board feet per year or about two to three thousand log trucks filled each year. [MODERATOR NOTE: I believe 100 to 150 million board feet would require 20,000 to 30,000 log trucks. – mk]

“The visual impacts are going to be very, very significant and increasing each year from now for the next 20 years as hundreds of thousands of acres are logged,” said Timothy Coleman, executive director of Republic-based Kettle Range Conservation Group. “The visual landscape-scale degradation is already in full swing and visible now on Sherman and Boulder Pass, but it’s just the beginning.”

The Forest Plan Revision Process has dragged on for over 15 years and countless hours have been volunteered by the public to inform the Forest Service’s process. Two earlier draft Plan proposals recommended far less logging and far more wilderness acres be protected. The Final Plan is a complete reversal of those early plans.

“I have participated in countless Forest Service-led collaborative processes and I never once heard the public ask for more clearcut logging,” said Coleman. “One forest supervisor after another told us the Forest Service would use our comments to craft a plan we could feel good about. Well, in the final hour it was Colville Supervisor Rodney Smolden, who supervised plan creation, pulled the rug out from under all of us.”

Coleman is a 17 year veteran of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC) considered to be the most successful forest collaborative in the country and working with the Colville National Forest has made it famous. The Colville has the highest timber volume production in the entire National Forest System.

“Seventeen years of my life has been wasted getting the public to believe the U.S. Forest Service had changed its history of clearcut logging and could be trusted to care for our public lands. NEWFC even had a collaborative agreement between the Timber Industry and environmental community to support 200,000 acres of wilderness management in the Forest – but Supervisor Smolden stabbed collaboration in the back. It’s almost uncanny release of the final plan was timed to coincide with Halloween – the trick really is on us,” Coleman said.

In the face of mass extinctions of wildlife caused by climate change and loss of forest and other critical habitat, it is absolutely unconscionable what Supervisor Smolden is proposing to do,” said Coleman. “I believe the Colville National Forest and the U.S. Forest Service will rue the day it went back on its word to support collaborative agreements and restore “healthy” forests. It’s just another ruse by the U.S. Forest Service adding to a long history of disservice to wildlife and public interests.”

NOTE: Tim Coleman has been active in the conservation of forest and water resources since 1971, nearly 50 years. Tim is a Vietnam-era Navy veteran. Tim and his wife built and live in a hand-crafted solar-powered log cabin north of Republic, Washington. Since 1993, Tim has served as director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group. Tim cofounded the Wild Washington Campaign that led to the passage of the Wild Sky Wilderness, and he is a cofounder of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition and the Columbia Highlands Initiative. In 1998 Tim received the Environmental Hero Award from the Washington Environmental Council.

David Beebe writes: Most of the last of the large tree rainforests of Amazonia are falling and/or on fire. Most of the last of the large tree rainforests of Southeast Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago are also long gone – permanently gone.

The Roadless Rule and all the remnant wild watersheds it protects are all we have left on the islands of the Tongass National Forest. We can never personally know the full extent of what, and for what, we have lost forever. We can never fully know where and how far the dominoes of irreparable harm such “management” has set in motion across the planet.

If the agency and its industry cynically hiding behind Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl; and,

If the Southeast Alaska Native Regional and Tribal Corporations hiding behind their stumps of ancestral cultural values; and,

If all the salaried nonprofit collaborationists hiding behind “conservation” “restoration” and “cultural” values; and,

If Alaska’s elected representatives in Washington DC and Alaska’s Governor all hiding behind a known, tried and failed social, environmental and economic policy —

If all these financially and ethically conflicted agents and cheerleaders of neoliberal colonial plantation “forest management” — “get their way,” a terrible injustice and grandest of thefts of the planet and its future generations will have also been allowed.

Exempting the Tongass from the Roadless Rule would be a mistake

The following piece, written by John Schoen and Matt Kirchhoff, appeared recently in the Anchorage Daily News. Both Schoen and Kirchhoff are retired wildlife ecologists living in Anchorage. They both have research experience working on the Tongass and collectively have more than 70 years of wildlife research and conservation work in Alaska.

The Trump and Dunleavy administrations’ plan to exempt Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from the national Roadless Rule is ecologically and economically unwise. The Tongass is our nation’s largest national forest and contains the greatest remaining area of old-growth temperate rain-forest in North America. The Tongass provides critical habitat for fish and wildlife, including all five species of salmon, deer, bear and other species uniquely adapted to this rainforest ecosystem, such as the Alexander Archipelago Wolf, the Queen Charlotte Goshawk, the Prince of Wales Flying Squirrel, the Marbled Murrelet, and the Prince of Wales Spruce Grouse. Not only does the Tongass support vibrant tourism and fishing industries as well as local subsistence use of fish and wildlife, it also stores more carbon than any other national forest, and plays an important role in moderating climate change.

Supporters of the timber industry point to the small percentage of land area logged as an indicator of the impact. This is misleading, because only one-third of the Tongass supports forests of potential commercial value, and only a small fraction of that is economically valuable. The timber industry has always targeted (high-graded) the largest and oldest trees, but those large-tree old-growth stands have always been rare on the Tongass. An analogy would be fishermen catching only a small percent-age of all the salmon, but catching nearly all the king salmon (the least abundant but most valuable species). Seven decades of high-grading has dramatically depleted the Tongass Forest’s largest (4-10 feet in diameter) old-growth trees. And those rare, old-growth stands provide some of the most valuable fish and wildlife habitats on the Tongass. If the new Prince of Wales timber sale moves forward and the Roadless Rule protections are removed, most of the remaining large-tree forest stands will be clear-cut and their habitat values for wildlife and salmon will be permanently lost. The ecological structure of old-growth forests are not renewable on 100-year timber harvest schedules.

There is strong scientific consensus on the ecological importance and rarity of old-growth forests. In 2003, former Forest Service chiefs Jack Ward Thomas and Mike Dombeck urged that “…harvest of old growth from the national forests should come to an end…” In 2015, seven scientific societies, representing a combined membership of over 30,000 scientists and natural resource professionals, sent a joint letter to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack requesting that the timber industry on the Tongass transition from old-growth logging to second-growth harvest as rapidly as possible. Today, the Tongass is the only national forest that still clear-cuts old growth. And it is past time to bring that practice to an end.

Exempting the Tongass from the Roadless Rule and further high-grading of the rarest, most valuable old growth will result in unsustainable forest management and risk significant impacts to fish and wildlife as well as jeopardize two of southeast Alaska’s significant economic drivers: fisheries and tourism. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Tongass Forest has lost $30 million on timber sales annually during the past two decades. For both ecological and economic reasons, this is why the Tongass should not be exempted from the Roadless Rule.