Matthew Koehler

Incorrect Road Data Presented to Flathead NF Collaborative

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Here’s another letter from Swan View Coalition Chair Keith Hammer to the Flathead National Forest and the Meridian Institute.  The letter is shared with Mr. Hammer’s permission, as it is part of the public record. The letter also highlights more problems and frustrations with the “collaborative” process as being carried out by the Forest Service in regards to the Flathead National Forest’s forest plan revision process. Previously this blog has devoted more attention to this specific issue on the Flathead.

Dear Folks and Flathead National Forest and Meridian Institute;

You have presented inaccurate and misleading road data to the Flathead Forest Plan revision collaborative. We ask that you make the following corrections and insure it is brought to the attention of the entire collaborative and other public participants.

We dowloaded the attached document from the Meridian web site and have attached it for your convenience; “Access Information for Desired Condition Discussion.”

1. On page 5, this Access Information states “A total of about 887 miles of road have been decommissioned” since 1995.

This is not true. Some 130 miles of those roads have not yet been decommissioned and the majority of those have languished on the landscape since 1996.

An example is the 72 miles of road never decommissioned though authorized under the 1996 Crane Mountain Salvage timber sale.

This is important because the Access Information continues on page 7 to claim “the amount of decommissioning each year has decreased as the backlog of decommissioning is reduced and the A19 commitments under project level planning have been largely accomplished” – which is also not true.

The above statement does not fairly or accurately explain why the amount of annual road decommissioning has decreased from an average of 43 miles/year from 2006-2010 to just 4 miles in 2013 – when there are some 130 miles of “shovel-ready” road decommissioning NEPA decisions sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

If this is due to a lack of funds, the Access Information should make that clear. Instead, the Access Information essentially states the Flathead is already at the one-yard line, a touchdown is imminent, and all is fine concerning road decommissioning.

The Access Information needs to make clear that the timber sales which authorized the road decommissioning did not raise enough money to pay for the decommissioning, nor has the Flathead secured enough funding elsewhere to accomplish 15% (that’s one out of seven) of the road mileage it has already decided is necessary to adequately protect fish, wildlife and other resources.

2. The remaining section of the Access Information dealing with road maintenance and budgets is equally misleading and remiss:

The Flathead’s 2004 Analysis of the Management Situation clearly indicated the Flathead receives less than one-sixth of the budget needed to maintain its road system to applicable standards for the protection of water quality, fish, wildlife and human safety. See page 4-2 of this 2004 document at: http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5432382.pdf

The attached Access Information at 7, however, presents a table that makes it look like a budget of as little as $1.3 million will adequately maintain 99% of passenger car roads and does not adequately summarize the environmental damage that occurs when roads are not maintained up to standards, including closed roads in Maintenance Level 1.

While the Access Information makes it clear that road management budgets continue to decrease, it does not – but must – contain a succinct summary of what budget the Flathead needs to meet all applicable maintenance standards and what budget it can reasonably expect to receive in coming years (as did the 2004 Analysis).

3. Finally, the Access Information does not provide the summary of road maintenance and road decommissioning costs necessary for the public to determine what mix of roads to retain on the Flathead and which to remove – nor does it provide the summary conclusion that it is cheaper to decommission a road than it is to maintain it with the required Best Management Practices. This is a conclusion announced by the Flathead in a 11/16/98 press release and subsequent 11/20/98 Missoulian news article. This conclusion was most recently confirmed in the Flathead’s 2/14/14 proposed Chilly James Restoration Project.

We ask that you make the above corrections to the Access Information and resubmit it to the collaborative with an announcement of the changes that have been made. And let’s be clear we are not suggesting a more complex presentation of the data. We find you must present it in a more accurate and summary manner in order for the public to grasp the relationship between roads, road funding, resource protection, and fiscal reality. As it stands now, the Access Information is incorrect and misleading.

Please respond and indicate what you intend to do about this.

Thank you,

Keith Hammer – Chair
Swan View Coalition

More Flaws in Flathead NF “Collaborative” Process

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For a few years now some of us have been trying to hammer home the point – based on our actual experiences – that not all Forest Service “collaborative” processes are created equal, and in some cases, lead to even greater feelings of mistrust and frustrations.

One such recent example of a questionable “collaborative” process has been on the Flathead National Forest in Montana, concerning the Forest Plan revision process, which has been highlighted on this blog with the following posts:

Swan View Coalition Shares Perspective on Collaboration

Another invite-only “collaborative” leads to unprofessional Forest Service conduct

Flathead NF Skews Forest Plan Revision Process, Deceives Collaborative Group

The following letter from Keith Hammer of the Swan View Coalition was provided to the Flathead National Forest leadership and the private Meridian Institute, which the USFS has contracted with to help run the “collaborative” process on the Flathead’s forest plan revision process.  The letter is shared with Hammer’s permission, as it is part of the public record.

Dear Folks at Meridian Institute and Flathead National Forest;

While we appreciate being involved in the Jan 20 conference call discussing problems with the Flathead Forest Plan revision collaborative process, we are very disappointed in the outcome. It seems at most every turn this process has turned into more sub-groups, more meetings, and less transparency – making it increasingly difficult for folks to be meaningfully involved and to provide informed input.

At the Sept 25 Process Workshop, Connie Lewis made it clear that folks “Encourage transparency and accessibility throughout the process.”

More meetings and more groups do not provide more accessibility or transparency. Well facilitated meetings faithfully recorded in written form and posted publicly in a timely manner does provide better accessibility and transparency.

We appreciate that Meridian has begun posting written summaries of the meetings on its web site and has begun sending emails with links that go directly to those summaries and other recently posted materials.

The summaries, however, do not provide an accurate record of who said what at the meetings. This makes it impossible for people to determine what differences or common ground exist between who, or whom to turn to if they would like to know more about what they have said. Recording and associating the names of the people with their comments is absolutely essential to providing accountability and the building blocks necessary for any progress to be made in common understanding of the issues.

Having people keep their name placard on the table in front of them at the Jan 22 meeting was a step in the right direction, but we are at a loss why, in the summary, those names were not then recorded in association with comments being made. It should be standard practice that folks state their full name before commenting – for the benefit of the record keeper and all others in the room.

From an accountability standpoint, folks should be required to provide their first and last names when commenting at meetings or in the forums provided on the Meridian web site – for the reasons provided above and to keep things from running amok in an unaccountable manner. In this regard, we found it troubling that one person speaking at the Jan 22 Vegetation group had only what we assume to be a nickname on his pre-printed placard – something along the line of “Boomer.” Are you allowing folks to participate in this process without firstly identifying themselves, or is this person’s full given name actually “Boomer” or whatever?

We offer these criticism after having attended all of the collaborative meetings thus far, but having also been promised full transparency and accessibility via eCollaboration and other means for when folks can’t make the meetings. Can you imagine not being able to attend these meetings and trying to track who is involved and what is being said via the meeting summaries you have thus far provided?

We ask that you follow up on your promise to make this process transparent and accessible to everyone. We urge you to put yourselves in the shoes of someone that can’t make a single meeting and then conduct this process accordingly.

Keith Hammer – Chair
Swan View Coalition

 

Wildfire: Study questions U.S. policy of forest ‘restoration’

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Please consider this article from E&E a companion to this February 10th post on this blog. – mk

WILDFIRE: Study questions U.S. policy of forest ‘restoration’
By Phil Taylor, E&E reporter, 2/14/14

Western forests today experience fewer high-severity wildfires than they did more than a century ago, depriving some fire-dependent species and stifling biodiversity, according to a new study.

The study challenges conventional wisdom held by politicians and the Forest Service that the West is experiencing an unnatural burst in uncharacteristic wildfires as a result of a century of wildfire suppression.

In fact, some Western forests are experiencing a “deficit” in high-intensity blazes and in some cases should be encouraged to burn, said the study published this month in the journal PLOS ONE.

It questioned the government’s policy of mechanically thinning, or “restoring,” backcountry areas to ensure fires stay low to the ground and create “park-like” conditions. Thinning to reduce high-severity wildfire can reduce habitat for the imperiled black-backed woodpecker, often requires new roads and can introduce invasive species into the forest, the study authors said.

It’s bound to spark some controversy considering high-severity wildfires threaten lives and property and drain billions of dollars in taxpayer money each year. Moreover, aggressive forest thinning and restoration policies are politically popular because they create rural jobs and seek to mitigate wildfire threats to communities.

“Given societal aversion to wildfires, the threat to human assets from wildfires, and anticipated effects of climate change on future wildfires, many will question the wisdom of incorporating historical mixed-severity fire into management goals,” the study said. “However, a major challenge lies with the transfer of information needed to move the public and decision-makers from the current perspective that the effects of contemporary mixed-severity fire events are unnatural, harmful, inappropriate and more extensive due to fire exclusion — to embrace a different paradigm.”

The study was funded by Environment Now, a nonprofit foundation in California whose goals include “preserving and restoring coastal, freshwater and forest ecosystems.”

It was independently conducted by 11 scientists from several Western universities, the Canadian Forest Service, the Earth Island Institute and Geos Institute.

The study used U.S. Forest Service data and other published sources to explore the historical prevalence of “mixed-severity fire regimes” in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests in western North America and to try to determine whether mixed-severity fire patterns in those forests had changed as a result of the past century of fire suppression.

On the latter question, it concluded that the past century of fire suppression has not “greatly increased the prevalence of severe fire,” even though fuel levels in Western forests are believed to be much higher.

Since 1930, the rate of young forest establishment fell by a factor of four in the Sierra Nevada and Southwest, by a factor of three in the Klamath, and by half in the eastern Cascades and central and northern Rockies, it said.

The study recommends the government focus its fire mitigation work adjacent to homes in the wildland-urban interface instead of in the backcountry, where managed wildland fires could promote ecological benefits.

“The need for forest ‘restoration’ designed to reduce variation in fire behavior may be much less extensive than implied by many current forest management plans or promoted by recent legislation,” the study said. “Incorporating mixed-severity fire into management goals, and adapting human communities to fire by focusing fire risk reduction activities adjacent to homes, may help maintain characteristic biodiversity, expand opportunities to manage fire for ecological benefits, reduce management costs, and protect human communities.”

But other scientists and policymakers have argued that the societal benefits of taming mega-fires often trump whatever ecological benefits they may produce. In addition, climate change is expected to intensify droughts that create dangerously dry fuel conditions. Fire seasons are more than two months longer than in the 1970s, the Forest Service has said. (Editor’s note: using 1970s as the starting point is disingenuous–the 1950s-1980s were cooler and moister)

A study commissioned by the Interior Department and led by Northern Arizona University last spring found that although hazardous fuels treatments near communities can reduce wildfire risks to homes and people, backcountry fuels treatments are important to prevent mega-fires that can scorch watersheds and drain federal wildfire budgets (E&ENews PM, May 28, 2013).

While fire in the backcountry can be beneficial if it stays low to the ground, landscape-scale “crown” fires can damage watersheds, tarnish viewsheds and threaten communities, NAU’s Diane Vosick, one of the study authors, said last spring.

“In order to get ahead of the cost of large and severe fire, more treatments will be needed outside the wildland-urban interface,” Vosick told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June.

The Forest Service and Interior Department also face political pressure to restore backcountry areas.

In December 2011, Congress inserted language in its appropriations report ordering both agencies to halt policies that direct most hazardous fuels funding to the wildland-urban interface, spending it instead on the “highest priority projects in the highest priority areas.”

For now, “restoration” across the National Forest System remains popular policy in Congress and in Western states.

According to the Forest Service, the states of Florida, Georgia, Utah, California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have all experienced their largest or most destructive wildfire in just the last several years. Wildfires burn twice as many acres annually compared with the 1970s, and the number of wildfires annually that cover more than 10,000 acres has increased sevenfold.

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell last week told Congress there are nearly two dozen landscape-scale collaborative forest restoration projects underway that seek to “re-establish natural fire regimes and reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire.”

“Our findings are sure to be controversial as each year federal agencies spend billions of dollars in fuel reduction costs in the backcountry based on the assumption that we have more high-severity fire now than we did historically,” said Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at the Geos Institute, one of the study’s authors. “Fuel treatments are best targeted immediately adjacent to where people live, given that the increasing costs of suppressing fires is not ecologically justifiable and may, in fact, produce artificially manipulated landscapes that need more fire to remain healthy and productive.”

GOP attack on ESA fueled by “Tea Party Fantasies” by Bob Berwyn

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You can read Bob’s entire article over at the Summit County Voice.  Apparently the House GOP report also failed to cite any peer-reviewed science.

Below is the first paragraph of Bob’s article.

Anti-environmental Republicans in the House are once again twisting the facts and distorting science in their efforts to dismantle the Endangered Species Act on behalf of various extractive and environmentally harmful industries.

Also, last Thursday, Rep Doc Hastings (R-WA), the GOP Chair of the House Resources Committee, announced that he will not seek reelection this year.

Of Wolves and Wilderness

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The following guest column was written by George Nickas, executive director of Missoula-based Wilderness Watch, and one of the nation’s leading experts on  Wilderness Act policy and management.  Please consider this opinion piece a follow-up to this January 8 post. – mk

Of Wolves and Wilderness
By George Nickas

“One of the most insidious invasions of wilderness is via predator control.” – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Right before the holidays last December, an anonymous caller alerted Wilderness Watch that the Forest Service (FS) had approved the use of one of its cabins deep in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (FC-RONRW) as a base camp for an Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) hunter-trapper. The cabin would support the hired trapper’s effort to exterminate two entire wolf packs in the Wilderness. The wolves, known as the Golden Creek and Monumental Creek packs, were targeted at the behest of commercial outfitters and recreational hunters who think the wolves are eating too many of “their” elk.

Idaho’s antipathy toward wolves and Wilderness comes as no surprise to anyone who has worked to protect either in Idaho. But the Forest Service’s support and encouragement for the State’s deplorable actions were particularly disappointing. Mind you, these are the same Forest Service Region 4 officials who, only a year or two ago, 
approved IDFG’s request to land helicopters in this same Wilderness to capture and collar every wolf pack, using the justification that understanding the natural behavior of the wolf population was essential to protecting them and preserving the area’s 
wilderness character. Now, somehow, exterminating those same wolves is apparently also critical to preserving the area’s wilderness character. The only consistency here is the FS and IDFG have teamed up to do everything possible to destroy the Wilderness and wildlife they are required to protect.

Wilderness Watch, along with Defenders of Wildlife, Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, and Idaho wildlife advocate Ralph Maughan, filed suit in federal court against the Forest Service and IDFG to stop the wolf slaughter. Our suit alleges the FS failed to follow its own required procedures before authorizing IDFG’s hunter-trapper to use a FS cabin as a base for his wolf extermination efforts, and that the program violates the agency’s responsibility under the 1964 Wilderness Act to preserve the area’s wilderness character, of which the wolves are an integral part. Trying to limit the number of wolves in Wilderness makes no more sense than limiting the number of ponderosa pine, huckleberry bushes, rocks, or rainfall. An untrammeled Wilderness will set its own balance.

The FS’s anemic defense is that it didn’t authorize the killing, therefore there is no reviewable decision for the court to overturn, and that it was still discussing the program with IDFG (while the trapper was in the field killing the wolves). Unfortunately, the district judge sided with the FS and IDFG, so we filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Rather than defend its action before the higher court, Idaho informed the court that it was pulling the trapper out of the Wilderness and would cease the program for this year. In the meantime, nine wolves are needlessly dead.

We will continue to pursue our challenge because the killing program will undoubtedly return. The Forest Service can’t and shouldn’t hide behind the old canard that “the states manage wildlife.”  Congress has charged the FS with preserving the area’s wilderness character and the Supreme Court has held many times that the agency has the authority to interject itself in wildlife management programs to preserve the people’s interest in these lands. Turning a blind-eye is a shameful response for an agency that used to claim the leadership mantle in wilderness stewardship.

Wilderness Watch expresses its deep appreciation to Tim Preso and his colleagues at Earthjustice for waging a stellar legal battle on our behalf and in defense of these wilderness wolves.

George Nickas is the executive director of Wilderness Watch. George joined Wilderness Watch as our policy coordinator in 1996. Prior to Wilderness Watch, George served 11 years as a natural resource specialist and assistant coordinator for the Utah Wilderness Association. George is regularly invited to make presentations at national wilderness conferences, agency training sessions, and other gatherings where wilderness protection is discussed.

Examining Historical and Current Mixed-Severity Fire Regimes in Ponderosa Pine and Mixed-Conifer Forests of Western North America

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The other day I got the following note and link to some new relevant research from Douglas Bevington, author of The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism and the New Conservation Movement, 1989-2004.  Bevington’s note is shared below with his permission, along with a link to the new study and article. . – mk

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I wanted to let you know about an important new study that was just published by the high-profile science journal PLOS ONE. The article, titled “Examining Historical and Current Mixed-Severity Fire Regimes in Ponderosa Pine and Mixed-Conifer Forests of Western North America,” was co-authored by 11 scientists from various regions of the western US and Canada.

Their study found that there is extensive evidence from multiple data sources that big, intense forest fires were a natural part of ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer ecosystems prior to modern fire suppression. These findings refute the claims frequently made by logging and biomass advocates that modern mixed-severity forest fires (erroneously called “catastrophic” fires) are an unnatural aberration that should be prevented through more logging (“thinning”) and that more biomass facilities should be built to take the resulting material from the forest.

In contrast to these claims, logging done ostensibly to reduce fire severity now appears to be not only unnecessary, but also potentially detrimental when it is based on erroneous notions about historic forest conditions and fire regimes. These findings have big implications for biomass and forest policy, so I encourage you to take a look at this article.

The full article in PLOS ONE is available here.

Here are a few key points from the abstract and conclusion:

Abstract, p. 1

“There is widespread concern that fire exclusion has led to an unprecedented threat of uncharacteristically severe fires in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests of western North America. These extensive montane forests are considered to be adapted to a low/moderate-severity fire regime that maintained stands of relatively old trees. However, there is increasing recognition from landscape-scale assessments that, prior to any significant effects of fire exclusion, fires and forest structure were more variable in these forests….We compiled landscape-scale evidence of historical fire severity patterns in the ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests from published literature sources and stand ages available from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program in the USA. The consensus from this evidence is that the traditional reference conditions of low-severity fire regimes are inaccurate for most forests of western North America….Our findings suggest that ecological management goals that incorporate successional diversity created by fire may support characteristic biodiversity, whereas current attempts to ‘‘restore’’ forests to open, low-severity fire conditions may not align with historical reference conditions in most ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests of western North America.”

Conclusion: p. 12

“Our findings suggest a need to recognize mixed-severity fire regimes as the predominant fire regime for most of the ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests of western North America….For management, perhaps the most profound implication of this study is that the need for forest ‘‘restoration’’ designed to reduce variation in fire behavior may be much less extensive than implied by many current forest management plans or promoted by recent legislation. Incorporating mixed-severity fire into management goals, and adapting human communities to fire by focusing fire risk reduction activities adjacent to homes, may help maintain characteristic biodiversity, expand opportunities to manage fire for ecological benefits, reduce management costs, and protect human communities.”

Timber Changes Reflect Inequality: Wood products companies have busted labor unions and pay less in taxes, all to the benefit of the 1%

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The following opinion piece is from Ernie Niemi, president of Natural Resource Economics Inc. based in Eugene, Oregon.

From leaders as diverse as Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich, we’re hearing a desire to rein in the nation’s extreme inequality — inequality in incomes, wealth and political power. It’s about time. The forces underlying inequality have harmed Oregon’s workers, families and communities for several decades, and they undermine our children’s economic future.

Today’s economic inequality is staggering. The top 1 percent — 1.6 million families with incomes more than $394,000 in 2012 — currently captures about 20 percent of the nation’s total income. In contrast, from the end of World War II until 1980, that group collected only about 10 percent of total income.

In recent decades, as the nation’s total income has grown, the top 1 percent has captured an increasing share of the aggregate growth: more than two-thirds since 1993, and 95 percent of all increased income since 2009.

Inequality in Oregon shows similar characteristics. Between 1990 and 2012, the median income (half have more, half have less) of year-round workers remained essentially unchanged, at about $35,000 in 2012 dollars. Not so the richest Oregonians. Over the same period, the top 1 percent saw their incomes increase by about 40 percent, to almost $240,000.

The growth in inequality likely stems from several factors, but two stand out: the decline in labor unions and reductions in taxes. The changes in Oregon’s timber industry illustrates the importance of those trends.

Before the mid-1980s, most timber workers belonged to strong unions and the industry employed about 70,000 to 80,000 workers. Then the industry busted the unions and began cutting labor costs. It did so largely by eliminating jobs, so that it now employs only about 25,000 workers statewide.

Contrary to common belief, most of the job losses have not resulted from environmental restrictions that reduced logging on federal lands. In the 1990s, when most logging reductions occurred, for example, the Forest Service estimates that those restrictions caused only about one-third of the industry’s job losses.

Most job losses stem, instead, from management’s efforts to get rid of workers, replace workers with technology, and avoid hiring workers by shipping logs overseas.

Management also has reduced wages for the industry’s remaining workers. Before the unions were busted, the industry’s average wage was about 40 percent higher than the statewide average for all workers. Now, it has fallen to near or slightly below the statewide average.

If unions had remained in place and kept timber-industry wages 40 percent above the current statewide average, wages in the industry would be about $17,000 more per worker. Do the math.

Statewide, 25,000 loggers and mill workers lose about $425 million in wages per year. For the 3,300 wood-products timber-industry workers in Lane County, the loss is about $56 million per year.

Where does all that money go? Nobody knows for sure. It seems safe to say, though, that much of the money that otherwise would be going to middle class workers now goes, instead, to upper-income owners and managers of timber companies.

The shift has real, negative economic impacts on Oregon’s workers, families and communities. It also negatively affects our children’s future: The greater the degree of income inequality in our society, the greater the consequences if they become stuck on rungs of the economic ladder where incomes remain stagnant or decline.

The timber industry has accentuated these negative effects by obtaining tax reductions. In the early 1990s, the industry paid a severance tax of about $50 million per year on the volume of timber harvested in Western Oregon, with the proceeds going to support various types of public services. In 1993, though, it used the spotted owl’s impacts on federal logging and other arguments to persuade the state Legislature to begin phasing out this tax.

That arrangement contrasts with timber harvest taxes that timber companies — often the same companies that are doing business in Oregon — pay in Washington and California.

In Washington, for example, the industry pays a timber harvest tax dedicated to county governments. If Oregon had a similar tax, it would have provided Lane and other counties in Western Oregon with about $40 million in 2011. That amount would have filled much of the funding gap that has caused counties to lay off workers in their transportation, public safety, health and other departments.

The timber industry’s experience is not unique. The crippling of labor unions in other industries and changes in taxes at all levels of government have shifted income away from workers and middle-class families and to the very rich.

The extreme inequality we see today is not an unavoidable result of natural forces, however. It results, instead, from political decisions our parents and we made in the past.

We can reverse the effects of these decisions. We must do so if we are to arrest the growth in inequality that increasingly is producing an economy, a political system and a society of the people and by the people, but for the rich.

Ernie Niemi is president of Natural Resource Economics Inc. in Eugene.

Research survey does not support logging as beetle outbreak remedy

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sixOne of the nation’s leading mountain pine beetle experts is Dr. Diana Six, professor of Forest Entomology/Pathology at the University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation.  As the Bozeman Chronicle reported yesterday, “On Friday, in the online journal Forests, University of Montana pine-beetle biologist Diana Six and two University of California-Berkeley policy experts published a review of the scientific evidence to date on whether forest manipulation is effective at preventing pine-beetle outbreaks. The answer is generally ‘No.’”

You can download the full PDF of the study here.  Meanwhile, the full abstract follows below:

ABSTRACT:  While the use of timber harvests is generally accepted as an effective approach to controlling bark beetles during outbreaks, in reality there has been a dearth of monitoring to assess outcomes, and failures are often not reported.  Additionally, few studies have focused on how these treatments affect forest structure and function over the long term, or our forests’ ability to adapt to climate change.  Despite this, there is a widespread belief in the policy arena that timber harvesting is an effective and necessary tool to address beetle infestations.  That belief has led to numerous proposals for, and enactment of, significant changes in federal environmental laws to encourage more timber harvests for beetle control. In this review, we use mountain pine beetle as an exemplar to critically evaluate the state of science behind the use of timber harvest treatments for bark beetle suppression during outbreaks. It is our hope that this review will stimulate research to fill important gaps and to help guide the development of policy and management firmly based in science, and thus, more likely to aid in forest conservation, reduce financial waste, and bolster public trust in public agency decision-making and practice.

Here’s a large chunk of Laura Lundquist’s article, “Research survey does not support logging as beetle outbreak remedy” from yesterday’s Bozeman Chronicle:

Logging trees in a forest can serve certain purposes, but preventing pine-beetle damage doesn’t seem to be one of them, and policy makers should stop making such claims, according to a University of Montana researcher…..Yet politicians and agency policy makers increasingly push logging projects with the claim that they will help stop the spread of pine beetles.

During the past decade, a handful of bills were introduced each year that promise bark beetle control. That number rocketed to 13 in 2013 and included bills such as Rep. Doc Hastings’, R-Wash., Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service has a number of projects intended to ward off beetle attacks such as one in the Bass Creek area of the Bitterroot National Forest.

“We wrote this paper because we’re seeing less of an interest for policy makers to include science in policy. We don’t really have the time to write things like this but someone has to do it,” Six said. “There’s this big push to do ‘something’ and people take for granted that there’s science behind these claims. Often there is not.”

Six poured through the scientific literature for any and all studies dealing with the control of pine beetles, from direct controls, such as traps, insecticides or wholesale salvage that gets rid of infected trees, to indirect controls, such as thinning, that seek to improve the health of remaining trees to improve their odds of holding off beetle attacks.

Six points out that the problem with both types of controls is they don’t address the underlying conditions of a beetle outbreak, which is tree stress due to drought and ultimately, climate change.

“People tend to think that it’s the forest’s fault, because the trees are too thick,” Six said. “In an outbreak situation, the trees are doing worse while the beetles are doing better because of the underlying conditions.”

Direct controls are expensive and deal only with a particular section of forest, so their effect appears to be limited.

It’s actually hard to nail down the effect of various controls, Six wrote, because there has been little monitoring of forests after controls were used, in spite of the fact that the U.S. and Canadian governments have spent millions to counter recent beetle outbreaks.

In one the few large studies conducted that compared treated areas to untreated areas in Canada, results seem to show that traps and tree removal limited infestation only when beetle populations were small.

When beetle populations increase, such as during an outbreak, no treatment made any difference.

Studies showed that direct efforts to keep beetle populations down must be extensive, long-term and work only at the beginning of infestation.

Six wrote that the mechanism of thinning is not well understood as far as how it improves tree health. Many studies that record success were done right after thinning occurred and could have more to do with changes in local climate than tree health.

Six said that thinning operations that don’t diminish beetle kills are often not reported, leaving a gap in the information that could further inform scientists.

No long-term studies have looked at the effect of thinning during outbreaks.

Six noted that researchers struggle to accurately assess beetle density, which is not surprising when dealing with a flying insect the size of a grain of rice. So often, efforts to keep beetle populations low may already be too late because the population is larger than what people assumed.

During winter cold snaps, many hope that the temperatures dip low enough to kill the beetles hunkered down under the pine bark. Scientists know that temperatures need to go below minus 30 degrees and stay that low for several days to do the trick.

Six said even extended cold is no guarantee.

“Even when there’s a cold snap, there will always be some that survive. That’s what happened in the Big Hole a few years ago. Ninety percent were killed, but now they’re back,” Six said.

The paper concludes that weakening environmental laws to combat beetle outbreaks is unjustified given the high financial cost of continual treatment, the negative impacts such treatment can have on other values of the forest, and the possibility that trying to control beetles now could hurt forests as they try to survive climate change in the future.

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester’s spokeswoman, Andrea Helling, said Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act evolved out of concern over beetle outbreaks but does not argue that the mandated logging would control beetle populations.

“That said, dead trees in the urban interface are a significant fire hazard to forested communities and harvesting some of the dead trees would reduce some of the risk,” Helling wrote in an email.

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NOTE: Here’s the opening paragraph of Sen Tester’s website devoted to his mandated logging bill, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act:

“Montana’s forest communities face a crisis. Our local sawmills are on the brink and families are out of work while our forests turn red from an unprecedented outbreak of pine beetles, waiting for the next big wildfire. It’s a crisis that demands action now.  That’s why I wrote the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.”

It’s also worth pointing out that during the first two Senate Committee hearings on the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, Senator Tester opened the hearing sitting right next to huge blown up pictures showing bark beetle outbreaks. But, hey, Sen Tester “does not argue that the mandated logging would control beetle populations” right?

“Wild Buck” Timber Sale Undercuts Forest Restoration

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Screen shot 2014-02-03 at 7.52.58 AM
By Jay Lininger
http://www.azcentral.com/opinions/articles/20140202old-growth-logging-undercuts-forest-restoration.html

The old “yellow-belly” ponderosa pines anchoring the majestic forests of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim grew up long before European settlement. Precious few remain.

More than 1,000 of them will be lost forever in the “Wild Buck” timber sale later this year, undercutting U.S. Forest Service claims that it is restoring this fire-adapted forest ecosystem.

Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that 38 percent of timber volume in the Wild Buck sale will come from logging 1,174 trees larger than 24-inches diameter. Field surveys by the Center for Biological Diversity revealed that many of those giant trees stood tall when the United States declared independence well over 200 years ago.

Old-growth pines are rare as a result of past logging. Their towering canopies and thick bark make them naturally fire resistant.

Hundreds of thousands of smaller trees that would have burned off as saplings during natural fire events have encroached on the forest during a century of fire suppression. Small trees now blanket Arizona’s forests like kindling.

Wild Buck is part of a larger project spanning 20,000 acres on the north rim with a stated purpose to reduce fire hazard and restore historic forest conditions.

The Forest Service assured the public last year that “little more than 1 percent” of trees to be removed from the North Rim are larger than 16 inches diameter.

However, nearly 30 percent of trees to be cut in the Wild Buck sale — 78 percent of total volume — are larger than 16 inches diameter. In other words, the Forest Service’s first move out of the gate in a “forest restoration” project is to sell thousands of large and old trees for commercial purposes rather than meeting its own mandate to clear small trees for fire safety.

Ponderosa pine forests need small-tree thinning to safely reintroduce natural low-intensity fires without causing undue harm to wildlife and the amenities that people cherish.

Recognizing this, the Center for Biological Diversity collaborated with partners of all political stripes to develop an old-growth protection and large-tree-retention strategy for the historic Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) that will expedite thinning across millions of acres.

Unfortunately the Forest Service dismissed the collaborative 4FRI strategy and routinely rejects good-faith restoration proposals from the public, opting instead to log big, old trees, as evidenced by the Wild Buck timber sale.

Wild Buck is separate from the 4FRI, but it is on the same national forest (Kaibab) dressed with the same restoration purpose. It demonstrates the Forest Service’s willingness to exploit a lack of accountability and mine large, fire-resistant trees from the landscape.

At a time when the Forest Service claims to be working with stakeholders to do the right thing, the Wild Buck timber sale is a vivid example of what’s wrong with the agency. Its addiction to logging big, old trees and its refusal to collaborate in management of public forests demonstrate a need for better leadership and reform.

Reform should start with permanent protection of the irreplaceable old-growth pillars of our region’s unique natural history.

Jay Lininger is a senior scientist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. Read him via email at [email protected].

Farm Bill Rider Amends Clean Water Act in Giveaway to Timber Industry

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What follows is a press release from WildEarth Guardians:

Seattle, WA (January 28, 2014) – The House and Senate agreed today to reduce oversight for our Nation’s clean water. Under the guise of protecting the timber industry, Congress included a rider in the compromise Farm Bill that significantly weakens the Clean Water Act by exempting certain silvicultural activities from permitting under the Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. The Clean Water Act has been incredibly successful in cleaning up polluted water in the United States. As a victim of its own success, it is now under regular attack in Congress by democrats and republicans alike. This controversial amendment was unlikely to succeed had Congress used normal legislative channels for making this change. Instead, they attached this unnecessary legislation as a rider to the Farm Bill, short-circuiting the regular legislative process.

“Congress has decided to protect the timber industry instead of protecting America’s drinking water. This new provision allows the timber industry to continue to pollute our nation’s drinking water with sediment,” said Bethanie Walder, Public Lands Director for WildEarth Guardians.

The Forest Service estimates that well over 50% of the American public lives in communities that rely on public and private forest lands for their drinking water supplies. Numerous studies have identified forest roads as the principal source of accelerated erosion in forests throughout the western United States. With so much of the Nation’s drinking water impacted or potentially impacted by sediment pollution from logging roads, the Clean Water Act provides an important regulatory backstop.

“This fundamental change to the Clean Water Act undermines our Nation’s clean water and was unnecessary. It will tie the EPA’s hands. Now, even where logging roads are causing significant water quality problems, citizens and the EPA will not be able to ensure that landowners address those impacts,” said Paul Kampmeier, Staff Attorney at the Washington Forest Law Center.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Kurt Schrader were key spokespeople promoting the rider. Oregon has 70,000 miles of roads on Forest Service lands; Washington has 22,000 miles. Together the two states account for nearly 25% of the entire Forest Service road system. A recent study from the Forest Service found that 78% of all Forest Service watersheds in Washington and Oregon are being negatively affected by roads. “We are extremely disappointed that some members of the Oregon delegation not only supported but championed this effort to diminish Clean Water Act protections. With so many Oregonians dependent on forests for our drinking water, and so many roads bleeding sediment into our streams, our delegation should be putting the people’s need for clean water above corporate profits,” said Chris Winter, Co-Executive Director of the Crag Law Center.

“This rider is a giveaway to the timber industry that threatens our drinking water and fisheries. But reducing regulation of logging roads under the Clean Water Act doesn’t change the fact that logging roads remain a primary cause of sediment pollution,” added Bethanie Walder.

The Farm Bill has not been finalized by Congress yet, but votes in the House and Senate are expected imminently now that the compromise has been finalized and introduced. Assuming the bill passes, this rider to amend the Clean Water Act will become law.