Matthew Koehler

Some people on this blog “don’t think AWR is an objective source of info.” Apparently, Dana L. Christensen, Chief Judge of the Federal District Court in Missoula, thinks otherwise, at least in this case.

Yesterday, Chief Judge Christensen ruled in favor of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in its lawsuit challenging the federal government’s refusal to provide enhanced protections for imperiled Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bears in northwest Montana.

The Court agreed with the Alliance and vacated the newly-issued “not warranted” status, reinstated the 2013 “warranted but precluded” status, and remanded the issue back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Here’s some more background information from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies:

After being reduced to only two percent of their historic range, grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states were listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, sparking efforts to recover the species, which have had positive outcomes in some areas. However, in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem in northwest Montana, which is isolated from other grizzly bear populations, grizzlies continue to teeter on extinction primarily due to human-caused bear fatalities, habitat destruction, and motorized intrusion into core grizzly areas. There are fewer than 50 bears in this area; mortality rates are high; and the population chronically fails all recovery goals.

Since the early 1990’s, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has admitted every year that this small grizzly population should be upgraded to ‘endangered’ status,” explained Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “But for almost a quarter of a century the agency has used administrative loopholes to avoid making that formal designation, which would require the agency to delineate federally-protected ‘critical habitat’ that is essential to the recovery of these grizzlies

In 2014, conservationists filed suit to challenge the agency’s 20-year delay listing this population as an endangered species, and in response, the agency abruptly changed course to issue a determination that the upgrade to “endangered” status is no longer warranted for this imperiled population. “The agency’s cursory one-paragraph decision that the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear no longer qualifies as ‘endangered’ fails to cite a single scientific paper or other source of evidence to support its rationale,” Garrity said. “But in sharp contrast to its public statements, internal agency documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Alliance found that the agency had no intention to issue a ‘not warranted’ decision and, in fact, found the isolated and small population and excessive human-caused mortalities warranted uplisting to ‘endangered’ status. Once we filed our first lawsuit, however, the agency issued the ‘not warranted’ determination as a strategy to render our first lawsuit as moot.”

After the first lawsuit was subsequently dismissed as moot due to the agency’s strategic and manipulative decision to issue a “not warranted” finding, Alliance filed a second lawsuit that argued that the “not warranted” finding itself was arbitrary and capricious. Yesterday, the federal court agreed, finding that it was arbitrary for the agency to apply a new policy redefining “endangered” at the eleventh hour. Because the agency’s decision relied on the new policy without sufficient explanation, its decision was arbitrary and unlawful and was vacated by the court.

“The facts present a stark picture,” Garrity explained. “Since 2007, the agency’s estimate for this population has dropped from 47 to 41 bears. For the bears native to the Cabinet Mountains, the population estimate has dropped from 15 to 5 bears – with the other bears being transplants. Added to that is the fact that the total mortality rate for the bears has tripled from 0.9 per year from 1982-1998 to 3.1 per year in the period 1999-2014.”

Garrity pointed to the agency’s monitoring report published in January 2015 which found: “The two periods (1983-1998 and 1999-2013) correspond to a decline in long term population trends beginning in 1999. Grizzly bear survival of all sex and age classes decreased from 1999-2013.” Garrity noted that “the population also consistently fails all agency targets for recovery. Grizzly bears fared no better in 2015, with at least six reported mortalities, including a mortality of a female, radio-collared bear in the Cabinet Mountains.”

“”It has been 24 years since the Fish and Wildlife Service first decided that this this small grizzly population should be upgraded to ‘endangered’ status, including over 20 years under a federal recovery plan. But the population of Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bears is simply not recovering,” Garrity said. “Instead, mortalities are increasing and we believe the population is actually dropping. That’s why we had no choice but to file our recent lawsuit seeking to force the uplisting of the Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies to ‘endangered’ status, which would ultimately allow the bears to obtain the “critical habitat” designation that “endangered” status requires.

“Since the court just struck down this latest excuse to not list them as ‘endangered’ the Fish and Wildlife Service should do its job, list the Cabinet Yaak grizzlies as ‘endangered,’ and designate critical habitat so that the population will finally recovery,” Garrity concluded. “Until the agency takes those vitally necessary actions the Alliance for the Wild Rockies will continue to fight in both the courts and the public arena to recover the Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies.”

Please find the court order attached.

In case you haven’t heard, wild bees around the world aren’t doing that great. If you like to eat food, or enjoy having trees and other plants in your world, that’s a big cause for concern.

But, it turns out, according to this article from PHYS.org, that wild bees thrive after moderate and severe wildfires:

“Early results from a two-year study in southern Oregon suggest that moderate and severe forest fires create conditions that lead to greater abundance and diversity of wild bees. Because Oregon’s more than 500 species of native bees are important pollinators of wild plants and crops, the study suggests that fires may promote bee populations that in turn may influence agricultural productivity and overall floral diversity.”

In 2016, scientists began trapping bees at 43 sites in forests burned by the 2013 Douglas Complex fire north of Grants Pass. The sites ranged from places where fire severity was low—flames were confined to low-growing vegetation and failed to reach the canopy—to places where severity was moderate and high.

“In low severity spots, if you weren’t looking for the markers of fire, you wouldn’t know that it had burned,” said Sara M. Galbraith, a post-doctoral researcher in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. “The canopy is completely closed, and the trees are usually older. There isn’t a lot of evidence of fire except for some blackened areas on some of the tree trunks.

“And then, when you go to some of the high-severity fire sites, it’s a completely open canopy. There are a lot of flowering plants in the understory because the light limitation is gone. It just looks completely different,” she added.

In a study led by Jim Rivers, OSU forest wildlife ecologist, Galbraith and a team of field researchers collected bees with blue-vane traps, which attract the insects by reflecting ultra-violet light. “The bees basically think it’s a huge flower,” said Galbraith. “Once they get inside the trap, they are unable to fly out because of the shape of the entrance.”

In addition, researchers recorded the characteristics of each site, such as the types of plants, the degree of forest cover and whether or not logging had taken place after the fire.

Such studies are important, Galbraith said, because the early stages of forest development – what researchers call early seral forests—have become less common. “This research adds to the evidence that there is high biodiversity in early seral forests relative to older stands, and moving forward, this could have an impact on services like pollination in the landscape overall. Without this fundamental information, we can’t be sure of the best management actions to conserve pollinator populations within managed forests.”

Join The Biomass Monitor on Wednesday, August 16 at 8 PM Eastern (5 PM Pacific) as they host a debate between Dr. Chad Hanson, Director and Principal Ecologist for the John Muir Project and Marcus Kauffman, Biomass Resource Specialist for the Oregon Department of Forestry, over the effectiveness of cutting trees in backcountry forests to limit the spread and intensity of wildfire.

RSVP and email [email protected] for the call-in number and code to listen in and participate in Q&A.

The following piece was written by Andy Kerr and is available on his blog here. Kerr describes himself as a “Conservationist, Writer, Analyst, Operative, Agitator, Strategist, Tactitian, Schmoozer, Raconteur.” -mk

The Westerman Bill: The Timber Industry’s Wet Dream
By Andy Kerr

Who wouldn’t want “resilient” (“able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions”) forests? With the name Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017 (H.R.2936, 115th Congress), what could possibly be wrong with this bill?

Everything. Judge neither a book by its cover nor a bill by its name.

Introduced by Representative Bruce Westerman (R-4th-AR), the bill is the timber industry’s wet dream legislation. In only his second term in Congress, Westerman has received more campaign contributions from Big Timber than any other industry.

The Westerman bill would legislate horrifically harmful public forest policy into law. Among its many sins, the Westerman bill would

· gut the National Environmental Policy Act by giving the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) essentially a blank check to just start logging in many places for no reason other than getting out the cut;

· gut the Endangered Species Act by letting the Forest Service and the BLM—not the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service—judge whether federal logging will harm threatened and endangered species;

· gut the Equal Access to Justice Act so citizens and conservation organizations won’t get their costs reimbursed by the federal government for holding the federal government accountable in federal court to follow its own laws (the timber industry could generally still recover fees and costs);

· gut the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to allow wholesale logging in national forest roadless areas;

· gut the Administrative Procedure Act by allowing the federal forest agencies to avoid judicial review for up to 230 lawsuits each year;

· gut judicial review by making Lady Justice put not just her thumb but her butt on the side of the scale favoring Big Timber;

· make it nearly impossible for federal forest agencies to decommission environmentally harmful and fiscally challenging roads;

· gut the National Historic Preservation Act by short-circuiting procedures designed to protect historical resources;

· gut the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act by converting it to a Secure Timber Industry and Community Oppression Act;

· gut the Fair Labor Standards Act to allow children to work in the logging industry;

· gut the National Forest Management Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act by allowing national forest and public lands to be transferred to tribal control; and

· essentially require salvage logging after any disturbance regardless of any ecosystem benefits.

I could go on. And I will.

Most particular to the Pacific Northwest, the bill would abolish the survey-and-manage requirement of the Northwest Forest Plan and repeal the “eastside screens” that have protected large trees on eastside (non-spotted owl) Oregon and Washington national forests.

The Westerman bill would effectively transfer all road rights-of-way on BLM lands in western Oregon to private timber interests.

The Westerman bill would statutorily require that 500 million board feet of logs be sold each year off of the O&C lands. (The 2016 BLM resource management plan says a maximum of 278 million board feet annually could be logged and that’s only if you don’t mind older forest being clear-cut, scenic views being marred, watersheds being fouled, and wildlife being displaced).

Let’s focus in, in particular, on the part of Sec. 913 that says

All of the public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the Northwest District, Roseburg District, Coos Bay District, Medford District, and the Klamath Resource Area of the Lakeview District in the State of Oregon shall hereafter be managed pursuant to title I of the Act of August 28, 1937 (43 U.S.C. 1181a through 1181e). [emphasis added]

These fifty-seven words would

· exalt the Oregon and California (O&C) Lands Act of 1937 above any and all statutes that came before 1937 (for example, the Antiquities Act of 1906) or after 1937 (such as the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act);

· convert 400,000 acres of BLM public domain lands in western Oregon—federal public lands that were never granted away or taken back for noncompliance with the terms of the grant—to be O&C lands and managed exclusively for timber production;

· effectively override the two presidential proclamations—issued under authority granted by Congress to the president in the Antiquities Act—that established (2000) and expanded (2017) the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument;

· effectively disestablish the portion of the Wild Rogue Wilderness on BLM land, the Table Rock Wilderness, and the Soda Mountain Wilderness; and

· effectively disestablish the portions of the Sandy, Rogue, Salmon, North Umpqua and Elkhorn Creek wild and scenic rivers on BLM lands, and the Quartzville Creek Wild and Scenic River.

Will the Westerman bill pass the U.S. House of Representatives? Probably, as the Republicans control that body. Representative Greg Walden (R-2nd-OR) is a cosponsor of the Westerman bill, and the bill is expected to easily pass through the House Agriculture Committee. It has already been approved by the House Natural Resources Committee.

A big question is how the four members of Congress from Oregon who are Democrats will vote on the bill. Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-4th-OR), Earl Blumenauer (D-3rd-OR), Kurt Schrader (D-5th-OR), and Susan Bonamici (D-1st-OR) all need to hear from their constituents now. E-mails, phone calls, personal visits to their offices, attending their town hall meetings, and speaking to them while they are out and about in their home district are all appropriate and necessary.

In stark contrast, last Wednesday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on Senators Ron Wyden’s and Jeff Merkley’s Oregon Wildlands Act of 2017 (S.1548, 115th Congress). The bill would, among other good things, establish the Rogue Canyon and Molalla national recreation areas, expand the Wild Rogue Wilderness, establish the Devils Staircase Wilderness, expand the lower Rogue Wild and Scenic River, establish the Franklin Creek, Wasson Creek, Molalla, Nestucca, Walker Creek, North Fork Silver Creek, Jenny Creek, Spring Creek, Lobster Creek, and Elk Creek wild and scenic rivers—all entirely or mostly on BLM lands in western Oregon and mostly O&C BLM lands at that.

Big Timber has long had the goal of exalting the O&C Lands Act of 1937 to override any and all other federal law—making it a combination the 11th Commandment and the 28th Amendment, if you will.

The battle for the heart and soul of low-elevation older (mature and old-growth) forest in western Oregon is joined. The timber industry has not been successful in court; will it be successful in Congress?

I am reminded of the words of that great environmentalist Thomas Paine, who said (now I’m recalling this from memory so it may not be exactly how Tom said it):

These are the times that try people’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their planet; but s/he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man, woman, descendant, forest, watershed, viewshed, and wildlife.

Big Timber, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

A federal judge has overturned government agency approvals for the proposed Montanore Mine, which would degrade wilderness trout streams and industrialize some of the last remaining grizzly bear habitat in the Cabinet Mountains of northwest Montana.

In two decisions issued late yesterday, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act in approving a massive industrial mining operation on the boundary of—and literally under—the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

The ruling came in response to two lawsuits filed by conservationists who oppose the mining proposal on the grounds that it would impermissibly dewater some of the nation’s purest streams and jeopardize the survival of bull trout and grizzly bears.

“Yesterday’s ruling underscores how wrong it is to site major industrial facilities on the doorstep of public wilderness lands that provide irreplaceable habitat for imperiled wildlife,” said Earthjustice lawyer Katherine O’Brien, who represented Save Our Cabinets, Earthworks, and Defenders of Wildlife in challenging the government’s Endangered Species Act approvals for the mine.

“The federal court’s decision stands for one fundamental point: Clean water, wildlife, and the free-flowing streams of the West cannot be sacrificed for short-term mining industry profits,” added Roger Flynn, an attorney with the Western Mining Action Project, who represented Save Our Cabinets, Earthworks, and Clark Fork Coalition in challenging the Forest Service’s mining approvals.

The Montanore Mine, proposed by Hecla Inc. (NYSE: HL), would transform a remote landscape in the Cabinet Mountains into a large-scale industrial operation involving the mining and processing of as much as 20,000 tons of ore every day for as long as 20 years.

The site of the proposed mine lies within and adjacent to the federally protected Cabinet Mountains Wilderness that contains pristine forests, glaciated peaks, and rivers and streams that are among the purest waters in the continental United States. The proposed mine site and surrounding public lands offer some of the last remaining undeveloped habitat for critical populations of bull trout and grizzly bears that are hanging on by a thread because of habitat destruction, pollution, and poaching across their range. As the court recognized in yesterday’s rulings, “[t]he project is anticipated to have serious negative impacts on local populations of bull trout and an already declining grizzly bear population.”

Nevertheless, in decisions issued in 2014 and 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service approved development of the mine—despite acknowledging a host of mining impacts including dewatering of streams in the Cabinet Mountains wilderness, dumping of waste water that is too warm for bull trout to tolerate, and increasing the likelihood that grizzly bears will be killed due to poaching and conflicts with humans. Yesterday’s court rulings invalidate those approvals, concluding, among other things, that the Forest Service’s action “puts the proverbial cart before the horse” in approving mine development despite prohibited impacts to wilderness waters.

“This is an important decision for the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, which was first recognized as a special place by Teddy Roosevelt,” said Mary Costello of Save Our Cabinets. “Today, the Wilderness still provides habitat for increasingly rare wildlife and contains some of the purest water in the lower 48 states.”

“This decision sends an important signal to permitting agencies and to Hecla Mining Co. that you need to get it right when it comes to water,” said Karen Knudsen, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition. “Permanently drying up pristine wilderness streams is not getting it right, and we’re glad that the court agreed.”

“This is great news for the struggling populations of bull trout and grizzly bears that find refuge in the Cabinet Mountains,” said Bonnie Gestring, northwest program director for Earthworks. “Our iconic wildlife deserve a fair chance at recovery.”

“Grizzly bears and bull trout are vital parts of our wildlife heritage,” said Jonathan Proctor, Rockies and Plains program director for Defenders of Wildlife. “This decision gives them the chance to remain.”

Read the legal document.

View the photo feature on the Cabinet Mountains.

According to Bill Gabbert over at Wildfire Today:

Dr. Jack Cohen received the first National Legacy Award given by the U.S. Forest Service, National Association of State Foresters, National Fire Protection Association, and International Association of Fire Chiefs in recognition of outstanding career-long contributions to wildfire mitigation as an alternative to suppression. Dr. Cohen helped develop the U.S. National Fire Danger Rating System and developed calculations for wildland firefighters’ safe zones; created defensible space principles, which resulted in the Firewise program; the Home Ignition Zone; and conducted research on ember ignitions and structure ignitability.

His research laid the groundwork for nearly all of today’s work on wildland urban interface risk reduction. Until his 2016 retirement, he was a research scientist at Missoula Technology and Development Center. The award was presented at the IAFC WUI Conference in Reno, Nevada.

Readers of this blog may remember that Dr. Jack Cohen’s research has been shared many times before. In the following video – produced by the National Fire Prevention Association – Dr. Cohen explains current research about how homes ignite during wildfires, and the actions that homeowners can take to help their home survive the impacts of flames and embers.

“Uncontrolled, extreme wildfires are inevitable. These are the conditions when wildland-urban interface disasters occur – the hundreds to thousands of houses destroyed during a wildfire.

Does that mean that wildland-urban interface are inevitable as well? No! We have great opportunities as homeowners to prevent our houses from igniting during wildfires….There a lot that we can do to the little things – to our house and its immediate surroundings – in order to reduce the ignition potential of that house.” – Jack Cohen

Please watch and share this video. Your home can survive a wildfire if, as a homeowner, you know what to do and take these simple steps to prevent your home from igniting during a wildfire.

If you listen to most western politicians – regardless of political party – talk about the U.S. Forest Service’s timber sale program you’ve likely heard them describe it as a failure. Many of these same politicians give the general public the impression that next to zero logging is taking place on America’s national forests because of countless lawsuits from “extremists” and “obstructionists.”

The other day, to dig a little deeper into this issue, I contacted the U.S. Forest Service Northern Region’s public affairs officer. I told her I wanted to compare the annual timber sale volume attained by the U.S. Forest Service in Montana and north Idaho with the timber sale volume targets set by the U.S. Forest Service, which are based on the funding the agency receives from Congress.

After the Forest Service’s public affairs officer and myself shared a chuckle about how terrible the U.S. Forest Service’s websites are, especially if you want to explore some of these issues in more detail, I was directed to this website.

I was told, “Look at the Periodic Timber Sale Accomplishment Report (PTSAR) reports. The 4th quarter of each year is the final report for that particular fiscal year. Line T and Line U give the planned and completed targets.”

So, that’s what I did to come up with the chart above. There’s lots of ways to look at those numbers I suppose. One way is to say that overall, during the past 15 years, the U.S. Service in the Northern Region has attained 89% of their timber sale volume targets, which again are based on funding from Congress. 89% seems like a B+, if we were grading papers in school, and far from a failing grade.

Another way to look at those numbers is that in 7 of the past 15 years the U.S. Forest Service has attained between 94% and 117% of their timber sale volume targets. When is the last time you heard a U.S. senator or representative from Montana or Idaho celebrate and share numbers like this with the general public?

Also at the link provide by the Forest Service, there’s a section about “Uncut Volume Under Contract” and “Timber Sale Program Statistics.” That information was also very interesting to me, but I noticed that no link was provided. I was told by the Forest Service public affairs officer “Those links are disabled right now as the reports contained errors so we removed them.” I have to wonder what errors those reports contained and how long the errors were in those reports. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the timber industry objected to not only the specifics of what was contained in that “Uncut Volume Under Contract” report, but also perhaps objected to its presence in the first place. Hopefully the errors are corrected soon and the links go back up on the Forest Service website.

In March of 2015, the Flathead National Forest’s Joe Krueger was interviewed on Montana Public Radio about their on-going forest plan revision process. One question was specifically about the Flathead National Forest’s projected timber sale volume in their new forest plan. Krueger had this to say:

“A big factor that constrains how much wood products is coming off the [Flathead National Forest] is our existing budget. So that number of 28 million board feet of timber that we’re projecting as our timber sale quantity is constrained by budgets.”

Which brings us back to those western politicians, especially the ones who hold the U.S. taxpayer’s purse-strings and divvy up the federal budget. While practically every time any of these politicians talk about logging on National Forests they will blame lawsuits from “extremists” and “obstructionists” environmentalists for the (supposed) lack of logging, when is the last time you heard the Montana or Idaho congressional delegation call on the rest of Congress to greatly increase the U.S. Forest Service’s timber sale budget?

Seems to me that since the U.S. Forest Service in the Northern Region has managed to attain 89% of their targeted timber sale volume over the past 15 years that our political leaders should be much more honest and share this fact with the general public, and perhaps if they want to increase logging on National Forests the politicians should look in the mirror and put money where their mouth is.

NOTE: This post has been updated to include the total annual timber sale volume target in CCF, in addition to the percentage of that volume that was attained in any given year. As you can see, the timber volume targets themselves have changed over time.

In fact, the 2016 target is 72% higher than the 2002 target. And in general, the target has increased steadily over the past 15 years. This should put the 89% attainment in even greater focus, as the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Region has attained 89% of their steadily increasing timber sale volume targets over the past 15 years.

Also, corrected was incorrect date for FY 2006. Originally, I listed 44%, but upon further review that 44% was only the attainment for one national forest in the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Region, not the total attainment for the region, which in FY 2006 was actually 76%. I apologize for the error, which was in part caused by the fact that for some reason the Forest Service chart for FY 2006 lead with the individual national forests, not the region-wide totals, as all the charts from the other years did.

A new study recently published in ECOSPHERE, an open access journal, found “found forests with higher levels of protection had lower severity values even though they are generally identified as having the highest overall levels of biomass and fuel loading.”

Here’s the Abstract, and again the full study can be viewed here.

ABSTRACT:

There is a widespread view among land managers and others that the protected status of many forestlands in the western United States corresponds with higher fire severity levels due to historical restrictions on logging that contribute to greater amounts of biomass and fuel loading in less intensively managed areas, particularly after decades of fire suppression. This view has led to recent proposals—both administrative and legislative—to reduce or eliminate forest protections and increase some forms of logging based on the belief that restrictions on active management have increased fire severity. We investigated the relationship between protected status and fire severity using the Random Forests algorithm applied to 1500 fires affecting 9.5 million hectares between 1984 and 2014 in pine (Pinus ponderosa, Pinus jeffreyi) and mixed-conifer forests of western United States, accounting for key topographic and climate variables. We found forests with higher levels of protection had lower severity values even though they are generally identified as having the highest overall levels of biomass and fuel loading. Our results suggest a need to reconsider current overly simplistic assumptions about the relationship between forest protection and fire severity in fire management and policy.

In the spirit of the goal of this blog being “to solicit broad participation from a cross-section of interests in a respectful atmosphere of mutual learning on topics related to the Forest Service and public lands policy”, here’s a press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). – mk

Washington, DC —David Bernhardt, Trump’s nominee for Interior’s Deputy Secretary, abetted the doctoring of scientific findings about effects of oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in his first stint at Interior, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Bernhardt was the key aide to then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton when her office substantially rewrote official biological assessments to falsely downplay impacts of drilling before she transmitted them to Congress.

Back in May 2001, Senator Frank Murkowski, then Chair of the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, asked Norton for Interior’s official evaluation of the impacts of oil drilling on the Porcupine caribou herd in ANWR. Norton tasked the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) with developing answers. The resulting FWS findings were then rewritten in Norton’s office when Bernhardt, one of the few political staff in her office, served as Counselor to the Secretary and Director of Congressional Affairs.

The extensive changes made by Norton’s shop were extensive and all skewed one way by:

• Changing Numbers. While FWS noted “there have been PCH [Porcupine caribou herd] calving concentrations within the 1002 Area in 27 of the last 30 years,” Interior changed that to say “Concentrated calving occurred primarily outside of the 1002 Area in 11 of the last 18 years.” [emphases added]

• Ignoring Key Data. FWS reported that calving reproductive “pauses” (years that females do not produce a calf) is higher in developed areas in Prudhoe Bay than in undisturbed areas. Interior left these data out and instead stated that “Parturition and recruitment data do not support the hypothesis that oil fields adversely affect caribou productivity.”

• Spinning Absence of Data. Norton stated that “There is no evidence that the seismic exploration activities or the drilling of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation exploratory well…have had any significant negative impact on the Porcupine caribou herd,” but she omitted the FWS disclaimer that “no studies were conducted to determine the effects of the above activities on the PCH.”

“It appears Mr. Bernhardt shares an unfortunate affinity for alternative facts,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Bernhardt was a point person on both Arctic and petroleum issues when he was at Interior. “The Senate needs to thoroughly investigate his role in this blatant political manipulation of science before considering his nomination.”

In letters Bernhardt sent to Senators to contain fallout from PEER’s revelation of these falsifications, he sought to minimize the discrepancies, writing “we made a mistake in the letter” as if there was only one alteration. He later wrote that the FWS assessment had been “edited for responsiveness.”

“Interior is largely a science-based agency, necessitating a Deputy Secretary dedicated to scientific integrity over political spin,” added Ruch, who is asking the Senate to hold up confirmation proceedings until Bernhardt’s exact role can be determined. “It is beyond ironic that Mr. Bernhardt resurfaces at Interior just as the status of safeguards for the Arctic Refuge is revisited.”

###

Read PEER’s letter to the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee

View the changes Interior made to Arctic assessment

Look at Bernhardt’s damage control letters to Senators

See the letter FWS transmitted to Norton

Compare how it emerged from Norton

A new summary and analysis of S. 879, the “National Forest Ecosystem Improvement Act” – which Senator Barrasso (R-WY) introduced on April 6 – is available here. It was put together by Mike Anderson at The Wilderness Society.

The text of S. 879 is available here.

Below is Mr. Anderson’s summary of the bill.

“S. 879 would greatly increase logging of national forest lands, while reducing environmental safeguards and opportunities for public involvement in national forest management. Annual acreage mandates for mechanical treatments would compel the Forest Service to prioritize logging over all other uses and resources. Large expanses of forest up to 15,000 acres in size could be logged with no consideration of the impacts to water quality, wildlife habitat, or recreational opportunities. The legality of Forest Service management activities would be essentially unchallengeable in court, removing an essential check on federal agency compliance with the law. Two bedrock environmental laws – NEPA and ESA – would be undermined. In sum, the bill poses a serious threat to environmental stewardship, public involvement, wildlife conservation, and the rule of law in the national forests.”