On Christmas eve, one hundred years ago, John Muir’s spirit left his body and set off into the pathless wild. For those of us who love the wild world and for whom Muir is an indispensable intellectual ancestor, the way Muir and his conservation legacy have been getting beaten up recently is hard to fathom. You may have noted the way that various postmodern greens have been using Muir as a punching bag.
We believe the man and his legacy need to be celebrated on the centennial anniversary of his death, and into the future through the resurgence of a parks and wilderness movement focused on protecting the wild.
If you agree, we hope you’ll consider passing along the attached editorial, “John Muir’s Last Stand,” which touches on the present philosophical dustup in conservation.
Best wishes for a happy and WILD new year!
—Tom Butler and Eileen Crist
Tom Butler is editorial projects director of the Foundation for Deep Ecology and president of Northeast Wilderness Trust. Eileen Crist teaches in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has removed key data from a statutorily mandated report measuring how well vast federal rangelands are protected from damaging overgrazing, according to an administrative complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The group is pressing BLM to restore data contained in previous annual reports tracking whether overgrazing or other factors are degrading the condition of 150 million acres of federal rangelands across a 13-state area covering most of the West.
People may want to view the following press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) in context of the so-called “Grazing Improvement Act” rider, which was attached to the $585 Billion Defense Bill. In Montana, this public lands grazing rider was proudly touted by Sen Tester and Rep Daises, while it wasn’t publicly opposed – or even mentioned at all – by the Montana Wilderness Association, The Wilderness Society or National Wildlife Federation.
According to public lands grazing policy experts, the so-called “Grazing Improvement Act” rider now means the automatic renewal of expiring livestock grazing permits on public lands, even if these permits are causing the decline of greater sage grouse, desert tortoise or other sensitive wildlife species, or even if public lands grazing is ruining riparian areas and watersheds.
These public lands grazing permits also must be automatically renewed even before the completion of any NEPA environmental analysis or public input process. So the Cliven Bundy’s of the world – and other welfare-ranchers who pay pennies on the dollar to graze their private livestock on our public lands – won big with this part of the public lands rider package, while native wildlife like elk, deer and bighorn sheep and countless other native wildlife species all lost big time. This public lands rider alone impacts approximately 200 million acres of public lands in the Western US.
For Immediate Release: Dec 22, 2014
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
BLM DUMBING DOWN REPORTS ON LIVESTOCK RANGE CONDITIONS
Complaint Demands Restoration of Data Quantifying and Qualifying Grazing Effects
Washington, DC — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has removed key data from a statutorily mandated report measuring how well vast federal rangelands are protected from damaging overgrazing, according to an administrative complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The group is pressing BLM to restore data contained in previous annual reports tracking whether overgrazing or other factors are degrading the condition of 150 million acres of federal rangelands across a 13-state area covering most of the West.
The BLM’s 2013 Rangeland Inventory, Monitoring, and Evaluation (RIME) report, released on November 4, 2014, differs substantially from previous reports by removing the following data:
The number and land area of grazing allotments meeting and failing rangeland health standards;
Information distinguishing between failures of the standards due to livestock and other causes; and
Whether land conditions are improving or declining or whether BLM is taking any management steps to restore degraded rangeland.
The new report is a significant departure from prior RIME reports which had been showing a disturbing trend of more and more lands failing to meet range health standards for water, vegetation, soils and the ability to support wildlife principally due to commercial livestock operations. In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled across the 20,000 BLM grazing allotments. Crippling drought in much of the Sagebrush West is undoubtedly further aggravating conditions.
“BLM is obscuring the very information Congress and the public need to gauge the success or failure of rangeland management,” said PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, calling out the new report as “RIME without reason.” “BLM cannot escape accountability by editing its books to remove all the modifiers.”
PEER today filed a complaint under the Data Quality Act which requires federal reports, especially those statistical in nature, to be complete, unbiased and of the highest accuracy and utility. The complaint demands that BLM retract the 2013 RIME report and reissue it with the full scope of data. Under its rules BLM has 60 days to comply or to reject the complaint, in which case PEER can appeal that denial.
“By law, BLM cannot seek to reduce the sum total of human knowledge,” added Stade, noting that BLM is playing statistical games to mask deteriorating range conditions, which is addressed in another part of the PEER complaint. “Last year, BLM claimed that it could not track grazing impacts due, incredibly enough, to insufficient data. This year it is trying to bury the data it claimed not to possess.”
To validate the actual state of range health, PEER has assembled a grazing website featuring an interactive map combining BLM range health data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act with high resolution satellite imagery to compare visible on-the-ground conditions versus BLM claims.
If you care about the future of America’s public lands and Wilderness legacy, please watch this video! – mk
Are we are in danger of losing the Wilderness System? Chris Barns is the Wilderness Specialist for the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center’s BLM National Landscape Conservation System in Missoula, Montana. With millions of acres of designated Wilderness in Montana and many millions more of undesignated roadless country on federal public lands, Barns’ comments should be considered by all Montanans who value our wildlands heritage. This is one insider’s plea to change direction before it’s too late, from a speech delivered in October 2014 at the Wilderness50 Conference in Albuquerque, NM.
The following press release is from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. – mk
The federal district court in Montana reaffirmed and clarified its September 2014 ruling that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it approved logging procedures for 111,740 acres of newly-acquired national forest lands.The Court’s ruling requires the Forest Service to halt logging until it complies with both the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act requirements to analyze “potential environmental effects, reasonable alternatives, and cumulative impacts on those lands” and “comply with the consultation requirements of Section 7 of the ESA with respect to those protected species affected on the lands.”
These so-called “Legacy Lands” in Montana’s Swan Valley were former Plum Creek Timber Co. lands which were purchased by the federal government and are now part of the national forest and subject to federal laws that protect the environment and threatened or endangered species. These lands are critical habitat for grizzly bears, lynx, wolverine, bull trout, and a very rare plant called water howellia.
Four conservation groups, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Swan View Coalition, Friends of the Wild Swan, and Native Ecosystems Council, filed a lawsuit in 2013 in Federal District Court challenging the Glacier Loon Timber Sale near Lindbergh Lake in the Swan Valley.
“The U.S. Forest Service authorized logging procedures and thousands of acres of clearcutting on these lands without any analysis of how the logging might affect and harm endangered species in the area,” said Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Of particular concern to local conservationists is the lynx, a rare forest cat that requires large expanses of unlogged area for survival. The Swan Valley is the best potential habitat in the Lower 48 states for lynx, but lynx may be declining in the area.”
“The federal court reaffirmed that the federal government violated the law and the ruling couldn’t have been more clear,” Garrity said, pointing to the language in the ruling that “the Court has compelled no substantive changes to Agreed Operating Procedures but merely required the Forest Service to take the procedural steps obligated by law.”
Moreover, in addressing Forest Service concerns that the ruling would enjoin new Harvest Plans until the required compliance with the law has been done, the Court put the blame directly on the agency, writing:
“In any case, the Forest Service’s argument regarding the difficulties and potentially adverse consequences of complying with the law carry little weight here, where the troubles complained of resulted from the Forest Service’s failure to follow the law in the first instance. Had the Forest Service conducted the requisite analysis prior to taking agency action through approving the Agreed Operating Procedures, the agency would not be in its current predicament.”
“The bottom line,” Garrity concluded, “is very good news for the threatened and endangered species that call these lands home, since all commercial logging on these ‘Legacy Lands’ must cease until the Forest Service conducts the proper analysis required by the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act and puts in place appropriate protections for the endangered species in the area.”
UPDATE: Here’s more background information about this issue, from the Fall 2014 Newsletter of the Swan View Coalition, including a discussion about the Plum Creek Timber Co and Nature Conservancy’s “Montana Legacy Project.”
Part of the 449 page Public Lands Rider Package on the $585 Billion Defense Bill includes the SE Arizona Land Exchange, which will give 2,400 acres of the Tonto Nation Forest – ancestral homeland of the Apache Tribe – to a foreign mining company and allow them to put in a huge copper mine on these sacred lands (pictured above).
A coalition of 47 public lands, Wilderness and environmental organizations from across the country have issued a letter to all members of the U.S. Senate demanding the removal of damaging public land “riders” that have been added to the Defense Authorization Bill, which passed the U.S. House last week and now awaits action in the Lame Duck senate.
Title XXX (30) of the bill includes several controversial and harmful public land proposals, including an exchange of National Forest land to a foreign-owned mining company seeking to operate a mine on land sacred to the Apache, a giveaway of 70,000 acres on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to Sealaska Corporation, notorious for its scorched-earth logging practices, and a stealth provision that removes protections from two Wilderness Study Areas in eastern Montana. The bill also contains numerous public land conveyances as well as Wilderness bills with special provisions allowing helicopter use and habitat manipulation.
The coalition of 47 organizations is calling on the Senate to remove Title XXX from the Defense Bill. Some proposals thrown into the mix would gain the groups’ strong support as stand-alone legislation, but the bill’s numerous “poison pills” mean that too high a price would be paid for a few conservation gains. The groups are submitting their letter to Senators ahead of its being brought to the Floor Tuesday.
UPDATE: This video produced by the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition and Concerned Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition gives more information about the SE Arizona Land Exchange, which will give 2,400 acres of the Tonto Nation Forest – ancestral homeland of the Apache Tribe – to a foreign mining company and allow them to put in a huge copper mine on these sacred lands.
An elk hunter walks through a roadless area on the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana, part of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The roadless area pictured here will NOT be protected as Wilderness by the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act (RMFHA). which is part of 449 pages worth of public lands riders attached to the $585 Billion National Defense Bill. Rather, under the RMFHA and other Defense Bill Riders, public lands livestock grazing in this roadless area must continue, regardless of the ecological consequences.
You may have seen the news of a supposed “Historic” day for Wilderness in Montana and America’s public lands legacy. For example: here and here.
For those who care deeply about the future of America’s public lands legacy, it’s very important for everyone to look at this 449 page pork-filled public lands rider package in its entire context, and what that means not only for Montana, but for America’s entire public lands legacy.
For example, the Sierra Club clearly has stated: “We’re not happy about how this thing unfolded. The losses far outweigh the wins. We should not be privatizing federal lands at the behest of a mining company. We should not be privatizing public lands that are sacred to Native Americans.”
Why would the Sierra Club say that? I mean, the Sierra Club is about as mainstream – and respected – as any conservation group in the country. You mean it’s not just “fringe environmentalists” and “obstructions” and those who volunteer or work for “pretend” groups that are opposed to this pork-filled public lands package? Well, read on and let’s look at some specifics.
WILDERNESS IN MONTANA & RELEASE OF WILDERNESS STUDY AREAS There are a total of 6,397,000 unprotected Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in Montana. This public lands rider would protect only 67,000 acres in Montana as Wilderness. That means that this “Historic” “new hope for Wilderness” would amount to protecting just 1% of the total Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in Montana as Wilderness.
Nationally, the number of Wilderness acres protected in this bill is even more pitiful. This ‘historic’ 449 page-long Public Lands rider attached to the National Defense Authorization Act would protect a whopping 0.2% of all remaining Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in the United States. Nothing says “Happy 50th Birthday Wilderness Act” than boldly protecting 0.2% of what remains, right?
Nothing says, “We ended Montana’s 33 year Wilderness protection drought by boldly protecting 1% of the remaining Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in the state,” right? Maybe in another 33 years we can get another 1% of the Wilderness-eligible roadless acres in Montana protected as Wilderness, right?
As you’ll see below, we must look at protecting 1% of the remaining Wilderness-eligible lands in Montana as Wilderness, and 0.2% nationally, in the context of what else is in the 449 page rider package.
Here are some more Montana Wilderness specifics. The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act does designate 67,000 acres of this world-class habitat as Wilderness, but that’s a paltry sum of the Wilderness-eligible wildlands on the Rocky Mountain Front.
The RMFHA also locks-in taxpayer subsidized public lands grazing across the Front by stating, “The Secretary SHALL permit grazing” where it currently exists. Under existing law, grazing MAY be allowed to continue, but it’s not mandated that it MUST continue. As such, the RMFHA ties the hands of the Forest Service by mandating the government must keep a private, commercial enterprise operating on public lands into perpetuity, regardless of the ecological consequences.
Groups like the Montana Wilderness Association, who support the RMFHA – and have remained 100% silent as to the last-minute changes with the RMFHA that you’ll read about below – are also telling the public that an additional 208,160 acres of the Front have been “protected,” but that’s not really true.
Fact is, the RMFHA clearly preserves existing motorized use, grazing (now mandated to continue indefinitely) and logging on these 208,160 acres of public lands. However, what’s happened is that MWA and bill supporters have simply renamed these lands the “Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Management Area,” a name that they made up, but doesn’t really mean anything. Click here for more info.
It’s clear in the bill that current on-the-ground management will be unchanged within this 208,160 acres under the RMFHA, except that now the existing grazing leases must continue into perpetuity, so one could more honestly argue that these supposedly 208,160 “protected” acres actually have LESS protection as a result of the RMFHA.
Also, keep in mind that the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act was changed at the last minute – in secret, back room horse-trading process between Montana Democrat Sen Jon Tester and Republican Rep (Sen-elect) Steve Daines.
As the Montana Environmental Information Center points out in this blog post, Senator Tester and Rep Daines’ last minute change to the RMFHA now includes the release of two Wilderness Study Areas near Otter Creek, which is nearly 500 miles away from the Rocky Mountain Front. Plus they snuck into the RMFHA (again with no public input or process) a provision that will likely release another 14,000 acres of Wilderness Study Areas in eastern Montana near the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas development. These Wilderness Study Areas are about 350 miles from the Rocky Mountain Front.
Again, there were zero public meetings about this in Montana and Daines and Tester offered the public zero notice or opportunity to comment about their intent to release these public lands Wilderness Study Areas from their current protection. And clearly, Wilderness Study Areas 350 and 500 miles away from the Rocky Mountain Front have very little to do with a Rocky Mountain Front bill, other than Sen Tester and Rep Daines secretively used it as means to release eastern Montana Wilderness Study Areas for more development.
Also, according to MEIC, part of the public lands rider means that “Great Northern Properties gets its grubby hands on 112 million tons of coal adjacent to the Signal Peak mine. Great Northern has been wanting this coal for years as it knows developing the coal rights on Northern Cheyenne land would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop. The coal on the Northern Cheyenne reservation was omitted from the expansion of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in 1900. Now the Signal Peak coal mine that sends most of its coal overseas to Asian markets can further expand, continue to pollute water quality in the area, cause subsidence of surface owners property, and be responsible for hundreds of millions of additional tons of climate changing carbon dioxide pollution. Wilderness is not immune to the effects of climate change so should we sacrifice the climate for wilderness designation?”
MEIC has stated that, for reference, 112 million tons of coal is approximately 3 years worth of coal production by every single coal mine in Montana, one of America’s top producing coal states. MEIC has also figured out that all that additional coal just given away by Senator Tester and Senator Daines with zero public input or notice during secret “horse-trading” meetings in Washington DC would result in an extra 224 million tons of carbon pollution.
So honestly, the end result of this supposed “historic” day for Wilderness in Montana may be a complete wash. Hey, but at least David Letterman – who has given generously to the Montana Wilderness Association – gets his own private Deep Creek Wilderness protected right next to his sprawling ranch, right? And at least the Montana Wilderness Association and The Wilderness Society in Bozeman have those fundraising letters all set to mail out telling supporters about their “historic” Wilderness protection efforts in Montana.
PUBLIC LANDS GRAZING The so-called “Grazing ‘Improvement” rider in the bill – as was pointed out by a work colleague/public lands policy expert – is a complete roll back of environmental law and public input into public lands grazing permit renewals. Essentially, public lands grazing permits would now be renewed regardless of a NEPA analysis, public land health conditions and regardless of the impact on wildlife, including endangered species.
“The only environmentally beneficial part of the Grazing Improvement Act — voluntary grazing permit retirement — was removed, making this bill a wholesale disaster,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with WildEarth Guardians. “This bill would make it harder for government agencies to manage livestock grazing on public lands, and create new obstacles to restoring damaged habitats where livestock grazing is currently degrading the health of our public lands.” More info from a coalition of conservation groups is here.
Ironically, as the coalition conservation groups point out, and as Andy Kerr mentioned in the E&E article highlighted in a previous blog post, the Grazing “Improvement” Act all but ensures the US Fish and Wildlife Service will have to list greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act as it completely circumvents the current process of revising land use plans by the BLM and Forest Service. In addition, extending public lands grazing permits to 20 years will continue the fleecing of U.S. taxpayers. A General Accounting Office (GAO) report found that federal land management agencies lose $10 for every $1 paid in grazing fees.
PUBLIC LANDS GIVEAWAYS, RELEASES OR PRIVITIZATION The 449 page riders also includes a number of public lands giveaways and privatization schemes, in which politicians such as Sen Murkowski (R-AK) and Sen Reid (D-NV) clearly pulled some strings to help their campaign contributors.
The SE Arizona Land Exchange in the bill will give 2,400 acres of the Tonto Nation Forest – ancestral homeland of the Apache Tribe – to a foreign mining company and allow them to put in a huge copper mine on these sacred lands. The area contains Apache burial grounds, important medicinal plants, and irreplaceable ceremonial grounds and cultural sites.
Specifically, the mining corporation is Rio Tinto, a foreign corporation that also happens to co-own a uranium mine with the Iranian government!!
As you can see here, Rio Tinto formed a subsidiary called Resolution Copper that has fully acknowledged they will take this part of the Tonto National Forest in Arizona, put in a massive copper mine, and ship copper concentrate to China to be processed. Finally, all this would circumvent the normal process of permitting mines located on public land.
A package of bills dealing with Nevada will undermine the Wilderness Act by allowing a number of non-conforming uses, while 10,000 acres of public lands in Nevada currently managed by the BLM will be conveyed to the City of Yerington to facilitate mineral production.
In Alaska some of the public lands pork includes a transfer/giveaway of 70,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest (including some amazing, ecologically important old-growth forests) to a private logging corporation for the purpose of cutting down the old-growth forests that were formerly part of the Tongass National Forest, and likely shipping them to Japan and China. This blog has had two previous posts on this issue, one by a retired Forest Service economist on the folly of the Sealaska Bill. The other previous Sealaska post was from two area biologists with the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game Habitat Division.
Another section of the rider extends an existing program to speed up and streamline processing of public lands oil and gas permits by the BLM (i.e. including the controversial practice of fracking, which currently produced around 280 billion gallons of wastewater in the U.S. annually). Another part sets the oil and gas permit processing fee at a flat rate for 10 years (likely yet another costly taxpayer giveaway to Big Oil) and adjusts the interest rate paid on oil and gas royalty (another taxpayer giveaway to Big Oil?).
Don’t be fooled by the politicians, industry spokespeople or the people who work for multi-million dollar conservation organizations. The Sierra Club is right on the money when they clearly state, “The losses far outweigh the wins.”
What’s highlighted here is just sampling of some of the terrible riders that will undermine America’s public lands legacy that were included in this 449 page package. Once the public and public lands policy experts actually have time to review the entire bill you can bet there will be more pork-filled egregious examples of how Congress completely sold America’s public lands down the river to benefit their campaign contributors, and how a small handful of very well funded conservation groups remained silent and/or celebrated this “historic” package.a
Bottom Line: This public lands package attached as a rider to an unrelated National Defense Authorization Act will mean more public lands grazing, mining, oil and gas development and logging…and less public input, less protection for wildlife species and less science-based management overall.
“Strikes the right balance?” “Historic?” Look at the details and decide for yourself if this is how to preserve and protect America’s public lands legacy.
UPDATES: Below are some of the many updates that have been coming in after citizens and organizations have actually had time to review the 449 pages of public lands riders. I’ll keep updating this original article as they come in. Thanks. – mk
What they didn’t tell you about the public lands riders
By Steve Charter, who ranches over coal that would be traded by the public lands proposal, and is the chair of Billings-based Northern Plains Resource Council.
When U.S. Rep. Steve Daines and Sens. John Walsh and Jon Tester were celebrating the public lands package they sneaked into a defense bill, I wonder if they thought about the landowners and taxpayers they threw under the bus by doing it. Their package transfers valuable coal under my family’s ranch and our neighbors in the Bull Mountains to Great Northern Properties, a mega-corporation spun off from the railroad years ago, in exchange for other coal in southeastern Montana. Great Northern Properties gets a windfall by giving up low-quality coal that will almost certainly never be mined and gains high-quality coal next to mines with a high likelihood of development. It’s like trading a trailer house for a mansion. [Full Article Here]
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47 Public Lands & Wilderness Groups Blast Riders in Defense Bill (Click here)
Both sections designating new Wildernesses in Nevada have bad special provisions that would undermine the viability of both areas as Wilderness in the long term. They include:
• Pine Forest Range Wilderness, Sec. 3064, p. 1366. A 26,000-acre Wilderness.
– Buffer zone language
– Military overflights language
– Water rights language (no federally-reserved water rights for the Wilderness)
– Release of two Wilderness Study Areas (Blue Lakes and Alder Creek)
– Fish and wildlife language. The State may continue to use aircraft (including helicopters) “to survey, capture, transplant, monitor, and provide water for wildlife in the Wilderness.” (presumably for guzzlers). Plus the State or its designee may conduct wildlife management activities in Wilderness in accordance with a 2003 MOU between BLM and the State.
• Wovoka Wilderness, Sec. 3066, p. 1395. A 48,000-acre Wilderness.
– Buffer zone language
– Military overflights language
– Water rights language (no federally-reserved water rights for the Wilderness)
– Fish and wildlife language. Allows the temporary and occasional use of motor vehicles and aircraft. The State may continue to use aircraft (including helicopters) “to survey, capture, transplant, monitor, and provide water for wildlife in the Wilderness.” (presumably for guzzlers). Plus the State or its designee may conduct wildlife management activities in Wilderness in accordance with a 1984 MOU. Also contains explicit language allowing the construction of guzzlers (“Wildlife Water Development Projects”).
As we have seen from the history of wilderness bills, setting bad precedents for one area often means that these precedents get replicated and expanded in future wilderness bills.
The following article was written by Josh Schlossberg and appears in the current issue of the Boulder Weekly. – mk
Drive along Highway 119 south of Nederland or Highway 9 south of Frisco and you’ll see large swaths of bare soil and scattered slash — including entire hillsides — where once there was forest. These aren’t future subdivisions, but the Arapaho and White River National Forests.
The U.S. Forest Service is undertaking logging with the goal of keeping communities and the forest safe from wildfire. The project is funded by taxpayers to the tune of $1,200 per acre. But some locals, upset about the changes to the forest they know and love, are questioning if logging can really protect their homes and whether wildfire is as much of a threat to the forest as they’re being told.
Some residents of the mountain towns Nederland and Frisco are up in arms about these “fuel reduction” logging projects. Forest Service efforts often include cutting down thousands of acres of public forests that many enjoy as a quiet place to recreate, including the popular West Magnolia Mountain Bike Trail in Nederland and the section of the nationally renowned Colorado Trail outside of Frisco.
The Ophir Mountain Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project consists of 1,500 acres of clearcuts in the White River National Forest outside of Frisco, with trees chipped and trucked 70 miles to the Eagle Valley Clean Energy biomass facility in Gypsum. The Lump Gulch Fuel Treatment Project will cut 500 acres in the Arapaho National Forest outside of Nederland, with much of the material piled to burn on site, according to Marcia Gilles, public affairs specialist for the Arapaho National Forest. Both areas have recently experienced the native mountain pine beetle, an epidemic that peaked between 2007 and 2009 and has since subsided.
The Forest Service contends that logging these forests, which are in some cases miles from the nearest home, will “protect communities and restore natural processes to forest ecosystems.” Yet some Coloradans point to science demonstrating that logging is often ineffective at stopping large wildfires and can even make them spread more quickly by opening the forest to sunlight and wind.
“We have learned that forest thinning is rarely effective under extreme burning conditions, and the severity of fire in adjacent forests has little to do with whether a home burns,” says Tania Schoennagel research scientist at University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and co-author of a new study titled Learning to Coexist with Wildfire.
While the wisdom of logging to prevent wildfire continues to be debated, the most effective action homeowners can take to prevent their homes from burning is to tend an area 100 feet to 200 feet surrounding the structure, called the home ignition zone, according to the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. One study showed 95 percent of homes with metal roofs and a maintained area of 30 feet to 60 feet survived fires.
Vivian Long of Nederland, president of the Magnolia Forest Group, says she doesn’t subscribe to the Forest Service “rationale of logging for fire protection to save us from the big fire.” She’s concerned that clearcutting will simply create another “spindly, lodgepole thicket” in the forest, which the agency might want to log again in the future for the same reason. Her group is in discussion with the agency in hopes of amending some of the ongoing logging in the area.
As in Nederland, locals in Frisco are concerned that logging will have a negative impact on recreational resources that are a national draw, including ski areas and the Colorado and Continental Divide trails.
Having spoken to forestry experts and studied the woods as he hikes, Howard Brown of Silverthorne says he would prefer to see the lodgepole pines around trails like the Peaks Trail left alone to eventually become spruce-fir climax forest, rather than turned into a “war zone.” He’s worried about the harm to the local resort community of Breckenridge, as the clearcuts transform from “thickets, to overgrown Christmas tree lots, to dense scrawny lodgepole monoculture.”
“When you live next to the forest, there’s a chance there’s going to be a forest fire,” says Frisco resident Don Cacace, who has opposed the Ophir Mountain project since its inception. “The last thing we want to do is cut down the forest.”
No one denies the inevitability of wildfire in Colorado. Rocky Mountain forests have evolved with fire over the millennia as a natural and essential component of western forest ecosystems. Fire kills off some trees to make room for future growth, returns vital nutrients to the soil and creates wildlife habitat.
Over the past century, attempts have been made to suppress wildfire out of concern for communities and at the behest of the timber industry. The perspective of industry, the Forest Service, and some environmental groups is that fire suppression has resulted in overgrown forests full of dangerous “fuel” — either dense stands of live trees or beetle kill — that is causing more frequent and destructive wildfires. The proposed cure for these sick forests is a logging prescription that will restore the forest and keep people safe, while gleaning some merchantable lumber or biomass energy.
Recent science has challenged these assumptions, demonstrating that wild fires, including large, catastrophic ones, were historically quite common in Colorado and that large fires are more a product of drought, high temperatures and wind than fuel levels. Studies have shown that large wildfires are often just as likely to burn through clearcuts devoid of most fuels, as they are through densely-stocked forests.
While beetle-killed trees in the Rockies have been impossible to ignore, Bill Romme, who teaches forest and fire ecology at Colorado State University, says there is “little or no such relationship between beetle-caused tree mortality and subsequent fire occurrence and severity in lodgepole pine forests,” as quoted in an article written for NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Scott Fitzwilliams, forest supervisor of the White River National Forest, acknowledges the controversy, yet explains the need for projects such as Ophir Mountain and the upcoming Keystone Vegetation Management to give firefighters a “chance to protect homes, property and power lines.” He is also concerned about what’s going to happen over the next few years when beetle-killed trees start falling, risking the safety of recreationists and creating a “tangled mess.”
As more and more people inhabit Colorado’s forests, the chance of a community experiencing wildfire increases. Federal, regional, state and local grants are available for home treatments, while Saws and Slaws is bringing community members around Nederland, Coal Creek Canyon and Sugarloaf together to make homes firewise and feast together afterward, with projects starting up again in the spring.
No matter what happens in the forest, Fitzwilliams says the Forest Service is going to feel the heat. If they cut trees in an attempt to prevent wildfire, they’ll be criticized by those who’d rather see nature take its course. If they do nothing and a wildfire ignites, they’ll be blamed for that, too. Fitzwilliams says there’s science and emotion on all sides of the issue, and adds “we’re going to have to make some choices that are sometimes hard to swallow.”
A new scientific study titled Historical, Observed, and Modeled Wildfire Severity in Montane Forests of the Colorado Front Range should be of interest to blog readers. The study is by Rosemary L. Sherriff, Rutherford V. Platt, Thomas T. Veblen, Tania L. Schoennagel, Meredith H. Gartner. View the full study here.
Abstract
Large recent fires in the western U.S. have contributed to a perception that fire exclusion has caused an unprecedented occurrence of uncharacteristically severe fires, particularly in lower elevation dry pine forests. In the absence of long-term fire severity records, it is unknown how short-term trends compare to fire severity prior to 20th century fire exclusion. This study compares historical (i.e. pre-1920) fire severity with observed modern fire severity and modeled potential fire behavior across 564,413 ha of montane forests of the Colorado Front Range. We used forest structure and tree-ring fire history to characterize fire severity at 232 sites and then modeled historical fire-severity across the entire study area using biophysical variables. Eighteen (7.8%) sites were characterized by low-severity fires and 214 (92.2%) by mixed-severity fires (i.e. including moderate- or high-severity fires). Difference in area of historical versus observed low-severity fire within nine recent (post- 1999) large fire perimeters was greatest in lower montane forests. Only 16% of the study area recorded a shift from historical low severity to a higher potential for crown fire today. An historical fire regime of more frequent and low-severity fires at low elevations (,2260 m) supports a convergence of management goals of ecological restoration and fire hazard mitigation in those habitats. In contrast, at higher elevations mixed-severity fires were predominant historically and continue to be so today. Thinning treatments at higher elevations of the montane zone will not return the fire regime to an historic low-severity regime, and are of questionable effectiveness in preventing severe wildfires. Based on present-day fuels, predicted fire behavior under extreme fire weather continues to indicate a mixed-severity fire regime throughout most of the montane forest zone. Recent large wildfires in the Front Range are not fundamentally different from similar events that occurred historically under extreme weather conditions.
WASHINGTON — Current and former female firefighters of the United States Forest Service have filed a complaint with the Department of Agriculture alleging that they suffered job discrimination, harassment and sexual abuse at the hands of male co-workers and that top agency officials failed to stop it.
The women said the complaint, the first step in a potential class-action lawsuit, was filed late last month on behalf of hundreds of women who worked in the Forest Service’s Region 5, which encompasses more than 20 million acres in 18 national forests in California. The seven women who are the lead complainants said they faced retaliation when they reported the offenses to superiors….
One of the current complainants, Alicia Dabney, a former firefighter in the Sequoia National Forest in Centerville, Calif., said in an interview that she was the subject of repeated verbal abuse and physical taunts. “It was a frat boy atmosphere,” said Ms. Dabney, who was usually the only woman on her 20-person crew. “You are often isolated because where you work is so remote.”
Ms. Dabney said that her supervisor, who is still employed by the Forest Service, put her in a chokehold and tried to rape her in 2012. In another instance, she said, fliers with the words “Alicia Dabney is a whore” were left on the floor of the fire station.
She said that after she reported the harassment, the Forest Service fired her in 2012, citing what her superiors said was her failure to disclose her past criminal record on her job application. Ms. Dabney said that the agency had long known about her record and that “this was dredged up after I complained.”….
The current gender discrimination complaint is similar to ones filed in the 1970s and 1990s by female workers in Region 5 who said they were denied promotions and harassed by male co-workers. As part of the settlements stemming from those complaints, the Agriculture Department required the Forest Service in California to hire more women and to put in place civil rights enforcement programs, sensitivity training and a unit to investigate and resolve sexual harassment and hostile environment claims.
What follows is a press release from Friends of the Clearwater.
Moscow—In an ongoing effort to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Friends of the Clearwater released a report today that critically examines the Clearwater Basin Collaborative (CBC)Agreement and Work Plan. If enacted by Congress, the agreement would put into place provisions that are incompatible with the Wilderness Act, potentially causing a ripple effect throughout the entire National Wilderness Preservation System, too.A copy of theanalysis can be found atfriendsoftheclearwater.org.
“If passed in its current form, the legislation could have a detrimental effect on the entire National Wilderness Preservation System,”said Gary Macfarlane, Ecosystem Defense Director for Friends of the Clearwater. “Citizens need to be aware that there is a group proposing legislation that would designate a minimal amount of supposedly new Wilderness in the Clearwater basin of Idaho, but that proposal contains provisions incompatible with the letter and spirit of Act. That would be “wilderness” in name only.
The Clearwater Basin Collaborative Agreement and Work Plan could give the Idaho Fish & Game Department motorized access to manage wildlife in newly designated Wilderness.
“The CBC Agreement and Work Plan could give the Idaho Fish & Game Department authority to land helicopters and use motorized equipment in newly designated Wilderness,” said Brett Haverstick, Education & Outreach Director. “This equates to the department running a game farm in what is supposed to be untrammeled and wild.”
Another red flag for conservationists is that the agreement contains language that would grant special rights to commercial outfitters in newly designated Wildernesses. These are rights not enjoyed by the general public or outfitters elsewhere in national forests, let alone Wilderness. Commercial enterprises are generally banned in Wilderness and only a narrow provision for outfitting is allowed so long as the outfitting is necessary and proper.
“As proposed, the potential legislation would grant special rights to outfitters, allowing them to maintain existing permanent structures in newly designated Wilderness, plus give them veto authority over the Forest Service if they are requested to relocate their camp due to resource damage or for any reason,” continued Brett Haverstick. “The Wilderness Act prohibits commercial services but makes a narrow exception for services like outfitting only as long as it is necessary and proper. Permanent structures, which are prohibited, and special rights for outfitters are neither necessary nor proper in Wilderness.
The Clearwater Basin contains 1.5-million acres of unprotected roadless wildlands. A study in 2001 (Carroll, et al.) noted that the basin contains the best overall habitat for large carnivores in the entire northern Rockies, including Yellowstone National Park and the Canadian Rockies. The group also claims that current management direction under the 1987 Clearwater National Forest Plan (as amended by the 1993 lawsuit agreement) provides far better protection than the proposed Agreement and Work Plan, even though the agreement also covers most of the Nez Perce National Forest.
“Out of 1.5-million acres of roadless wildlands, the CBC Agreement and Work Plan would designate 20% of the roadless base as Wilderness, or roughly 300,000-acres,” said Gary Macfarlane. “Areas such as Weitas Creek and Pot Mountain have been completely ignored for Wilderness. Current management direction on the Clearwater National Forest, as per the lawsuit settlement agreement, has over 500,000 acres managed as recommended wilderness.”
The CBC proposal also includes two special management areas, approximately 163,000 acres, with some protection, though one area would be open to some motorized use. Haverstick noted, “Ironically, the proposed western West Meadow Creek special management area on the Nez Perce National Forest, seems to have better overall protection than the proposed wildernesses because this proposal has provisions that would weaken wilderness protections.”
In addition, the Friends of the Clearwater report notes that the CBC proposed protection for wild and scenic rivers would be less than that proposed by the Forest Service and also the CBC agreement would lead to substantial increases in logging, even though many streams are not currently meeting water quality standards.
Gary Macfarlane concluded, “This agreement is a giant step backwards and a net loss for the roadless wildlands of the Clearwater Basin. On the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, this special place deserves much better.”
