Matthew Koehler

Standing trees better than burning ones for carbon neutrality

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DURHAM, N.C. — The search for alternatives to fossil fuels has prompted growing interest in the use of wood, harvested directly from forests, as a carbon-neutral energy source.

But a new study by researchers at Duke and Oregon State universities finds that leaving forests intact so they can continue to store carbon dioxide and keep it from re-entering the atmosphere will do more to curb climate change over the next century than cutting and burning their wood as fuel.

“Substituting woody bioenergy for fossil fuels isn’t an effective method for climate change mitigation,” said Stephen R. Mitchell, a research scientist at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Wood stores only about half the amount of carbon-created energy as an equivalent amount of fossil fuels, he explained, so you have to burn more of it to produce as much energy.

“In most cases, it would take more than 100 years for the amount of energy substituted to equal the amount of carbon storage achieved if we just let the forests grow and not harvest them at all,” he said.

Mitchell is lead author of the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy. Mark E. Harmon and Kari E. O’Connell of Oregon State University co-authored the study.

Using an ecosystem simulation model developed at Oregon State, the team calculated how long it would take to repay the carbon debt – the net reduction in carbon storage – incurred by harvesting forests for wood energy under a variety of different scenarios.

Their model accounted for a broad range of harvesting practices, ecosystem characteristics and land-use histories. It also took into account varying bioenergy conversion efficiencies, which measure the amount of energy that woody biomass gives off using different energy-generating technologies.

“Few of our combinations achieved carbon sequestration parity in less than 100 years, even when we set the bioenergy conversion factor at near-maximal levels,” Harmon said. Because wood stores less carbon-created energy than fossil fuels, you have to harvest, transport and burn more of it to produce as much energy. This extra activity produces additional carbon emissions.

“These emissions must be offset if forest bioenergy is to be used without adding to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the near-term,” he said.

Performing partial harvests at a medium to low frequency – every 50 to 100 years or so – could be an effective strategy, O’Connell noted, but would generate less bioenergy.

“It’s a Catch-22,” she said. “Less intensive methods of harvesting release fewer emissions but yield less energy. The most intensive methods, such as clear-cutting, produce more energy but also release more carbon back into the atmosphere, prolonging the time required to achieve carbon sequestration parity.”

Given current economic realities and the increasing worldwide demand for forest products and land for agriculture, it’s unlikely that many forests will be managed in coming years solely for carbon storage, Mitchell said, but that makes it all the more critical that scientists, resource managers and policymakers work together to maximize the carbon storage potential of the remaining stands.

“The take-home message of our study is that managing forests for maximal carbon storage can yield appreciable, and highly predictable, carbon mitigation benefits within the coming century,” Mitchell said. “Harvesting forests for bioenergy production would require such a long time scale to yield net benefits that it is unlikely to be an effective avenue for climate-change mitigation.”

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The research was funded by a NASA New Investigator Program grant to Kari O’Connell, by the H.J. Andrews Long-term Ecological Research Program, and by the Kay and Ward Richardson Endowment.

4FRI Update: CBD’s Statement on FS Contract Award to Pioneer Forest Products

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This statement was release yesterday:

The Center for Biological Diversity is a founding member of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative. The Center co-founded, participates in and supports the Initiative as a vehicle for corrective ecological restoration treatments that lead to the re-establishment of climate-entrained fire regimes and native biological diversity across landscapes dominated by ponderosa pine forests in northern and eastern Arizona.

The Four Forests Restoration Initiative envisions deploying a patchwork of ecological restoration treatments in ponderosa pine forest landscapes to create conditions that reduce the potential for large-scale, stand-replacing fires, that sustain native biological diversity, and that, across much of the landscape, allow natural fire to safely resume its keystone role of regulating ecosystems structure and composition over time.

The viability of such an effort hinges in large part on the ability of a contractor to deploy a range of high-quality, cost-efficient treatments. That contractor must process small diameter trees in an economically viable way, and it must be financially and operationally capable of adjusting treatments to avoid unforeseen or undesirable ecological impacts, like population-scale losses of canopy-dependent species. The viability of ecological restoration also depends on the Forest Service’s ability, in cooperation with its collaborators, to detect, adjust to and avoid unforeseen, undesirable ecological effects. This requires a robust, transparent and responsive monitoring and adaptive management program that, despite legal requirements, has so far proven elusive in southwestern national forests.

For these reasons, the Center for Biological Diversity has long supported the economic model proposed by Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP). Grounded in proven technologies and markets, the AZFRP proposal was focused on the economically viable utilization of small-diameter trees and promised the financial capacity to deploy a full range of treatments, as ecologically appropriate. The strategic partnership developed by AZFRP with the most proven northern Arizona restoration thinning professionals promised high-quality woods work. AZFRP’s proposal included a substantial financial commitment for ecological monitoring and up to $500,000 per year for 10 years. AZFRP’s long-standing engagement in the collaborative process for more than six years has demonstrated a commitment to forging agreement, building new partnerships among traditional adversaries, and ensuring the overall success of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative’s ecological goals.

On Friday, May 18, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it had awarded to Montana-based Pioneer Associates a stewardship contract to cut mostly small-diameter trees across 300,000 acres of national forest land in northern Arizona. The tree-cutting is intended to implement part of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative. In light of the above-described rationale, and for reasons listed below, the Center for Biological Diversity believes the U.S. Forest Service made the wrong decision. Little is known about Pioneer Associates’ plan, but what little is known points to a strategy that, from economic, ecological, socio-political, and ethical standpoints, raises serious questions about its merits relative to competing bids.

A $9-million loss to taxpayers
The Forest Service walked away from $9 million in its award to Pioneer Associates. Pioneer offered the Forest Service $6.3 million; Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) offered a total of $15 million. This $9 million loss to taxpayers comes at a time when many funding needs for Four Forests Restoration Initiative are likely to remain unmet. This may for example come at the cost of activities critical to biodiversity conservation, like ecological monitoring, and riparian and spring restoration that have traditionally been difficult to fund.

No money for monitoring
The Forest Service walked away from ecological monitoring funds. AZFRP specifically offered the Forest Service $5 million for monitoring across 10 years. Pioneer apparently didn’t even address monitoring funding. Concurrent with its rejection of AZFRP’s offer, the Forest Service continues to cite a lack of funding for its ongoing failure to monitor threatened and endangered species populations in Arizona national forests. Since the Mexican spotted owl’s recovery plan was issued in 1995, the Forest Service, despite clear legal obligations, has routinely refused to monitor owls to understand of population trends and responses to management. As regional forest cover losses accumulate with mega-fires and ecological restoration, the need for that knowledge is more important than ever; yet, consistent with its past behavior, the Forest Service in this case has squarely rejected an opportunity to finally begin collecting that critical information.

Unproven technology for the worst fire hazards
Pioneer’s strategy relies on being able to convert small trees, branches and tree tops into cellulosic bio-diesel. Cellulosic bio-diesel technology is experimental and unproven; we are aware of no examples where it has ever been shown to be feasible in commercial applications. Small trees, tree tops and branches are the least valuable and most flammable material to be removed from the woods, and the contract is expected to generate hundreds of thousands of tons of it annually. Failure to address this material will sharply increase fire hazard and saddle the public with resulting treatment or fire suppression costs; by betting on Pioneer’s unproven, experimental bio-diesel technology, the Forest Service is gambling with exactly that outcome.

Risky business, global markets
Pioneer’s strategy also relies on being able to compete in global markets against Asian furniture manufacturing that uses high-grade timber and third-world wages. The demise of America’s southeastern furniture industry, even with its reliance on plantation wood and minimum-wage labor, illustrates this challenge. We are skeptical that making products from high-cost, low-yield, small-diameter ponderosa pine with federally-mandated wages can compete against Asian imports or, as a business prospect, attract necessary investment. In contrast, competing bids relied on proven technologies in well-established markets. At stake is the ability to deploy restoration treatments; here, the Forest Service again bets on a risky utilization scheme rather than proven business models.

No commitment to collaboration
Representatives of Pioneer have occasionally attended Four Forests Restoration Initiative monthly meetings, but have largely avoided engagement in difficult negotiations about key issues whose resolution has turned the Four Forests Restoration Initiative into an actual program. Pioneer’s actions suggest that they view the Four Forests Restoration Initiative as little more than a vehicle affording access to large-scale timber sales not previously offered by the USFS. Ecological restoration appears to be an afterthought and collaboration a procedural box to be checked on the way to a wood contract. By selecting Pioneer, the Forest Service undermines the social license that it demanded from members of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative and casts even more doubt on the agency’s willingness or ability to engage in collaborative ecological restoration.

A federal-industry revolving door
Pioneer is represented by Marlin Johnson, a retired regional silviculturalist for the Forest Service in Arizona and New Mexico. In his federal capacity Johnson was a liaison to Pioneer’s timber sale inquiries. Within a year of retirement, Johnson was representing Pioneer’s inquires to the same office in which he earlier worked. In his federal capacity Johnson was also privy to the business plans of bidders that Pioneer would later compete against. Finally, over the concerns of staff and other agencies, Johnson, during his time at the Forest Service, advanced a “reinterpretation” of regional wildlife rules that sharply increased the amount of mature and old forest that can be logged while in some cases reducing stand-scale forest cover to below 20 percent—a methodology that has since caused regional timber sales to crumble under internal review prompted by administrative objections from the Center. The Forest Service is now using that same “reinterpretation” to justify old-growth logging — logging that Johnson and Pioneer could profit from if awarded those timber sales. This revolving federal-industry door in the Forest Service’s southwestern region raises several additional ethical questions about the merits of the agency’s award to Pioneer.

In making its contract award decision, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the Forest Service did not adequately consider criteria relating to (1) cost, (2) technology reliability, (3) economic or market viability, (4) the ability to conduct ecological and endangered species monitoring, or (5) collaboration and a commitment to maintaining a social license. With so many obvious problems and ethical questions outstanding — and given the consequences of failure that may well attend the wrong contract award decision — not questioning the Forest Service’s contract award to Pioneer is, in our view, foolish. While we are keenly aware that “best value” tradeoffs allow the government to award to other-than best-priced or most technically advanced proposals, best value in this case appears to have been assigned to whichever proposal best insulated the Forest Service’s bureaucratic discretion from perceived threats arising from a “social license” forged at the request of the Forest Service between communities, environmental groups, local governments and locally-based industry. There are very real, rational and disturbing problems plaguing the award process. These problems inescapably point to the primacy of political motives in the Forest Service’s selection process and, given all that’s at stake, they demand immediate transparency, third-party investigation and corrective action.

Did Sen Tester tell Glacier NP Superintendent to stop pushing for Wilderness?

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Some of you may remember that a few years ago the superintendent of Glacier National Park, Chas Cartwright, was very proactive in pushing for Wilderness designation. This is a snip from an article in the fall of 2009:

Cartwright said wilderness inside Glacier, and all national parks, is not a new idea. He said park managers were asked decades ago to identify possible wilderness areas within Glacier’s boundaries. “That went to President Nixon 35 years ago,” he said. Nixon recommended to the Congress to affirm those designations, but Congress has not acted on that recommendation in almost two generations. “Thirty-five years is a long time to wait,” he said. His comments were the second time in two days that Cartwright has publicly pushed for park wilderness.

Shortly after these statements supporting Wilderness designation for portions of Glacier National Park, all of a sudden, the effort just seemed to evaporate and Superintendent Cartwright stopped talking about the idea.  Well, a forest scientist that I work very closely with might have found the reason why.

When this forest scientist talked with some Glacier National Park staff last year, this topic came up and their understanding was that Senator Tester had directly approached Superintendent Cartwright and “asked” him to stop pursuing the Wilderness idea because Senator Tester felt it would complicate his efforts to push the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act through Congress.

Is this perhaps yet another example of where politics – especially election-year politics – get in the way of good public lands policy? I mean, who could seriously be against Wilderness designation for the wildest, most spectacular parts of Glacier National Park?

Commentary: Colt Summit timber sale based on false assumptions

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Ecologist and former hunting guide George Wuerthner has a new piece on the Lolo National Forest’s Colt Summit Timber Sale over at The Wildlife News.   Below is a snip, but make sure to give the entire article it a read.  We’ve also debated the substantive issues related to this timber sale numerous times on this site.

The Colt Summit timber sale on the Seeley Lake Ranger District is the first logging proposal on the Lolo National Forest to be challenged in five years.  It has become symbolic of a bigger fight over logging in the Northern Rockies. It is the proverbial line in the sand. It is actually typical of the may timber sales now being promoted by the Forest Service based on flawed assumptions about fire ecology and exaggerated public benefits, so in a sense is worthy of scrutiny since it is representative of what environmentalists around the West are encountering these days.

The Colt Summit Timber sale is being challenged by the Friends of the Wild Swan, Native Ecosystems Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and Mountain Ecosystems Defense Council. They have filed a law suit to stop the timber sale arguing that the logging may jeopardize endangered grizzly bear, lynx and bull trout. Also, Wildwest Institute filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs (they are members of the Lolo Restoration committee).

Wuerthner also recently got some new pictures of the Colt Summit timber sale area from the air.  You can also take a Google Earth tour here. As anyone can clearly see from the aerial images, the surrounding area (including the portions of the Lolo National Forest and private lands) have already been heavily logged and roaded, significantly compromising critical habitat for lynx, grizzly bears, bull trout and other critters.  In fact, these images makes it pretty clear that the Colt Summit project area is smack dab in the middle of one of the only wildlife corridors in that part of the valley.  Really, most of the valley has been clearcut, logged and roaded from the border of the Mission Mountain Wilderness on the west to the Bob Marshal Wilderness on the east.   Yet, despite tremendous fragmentation of the landscape, The Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation, Yaak Valley Forest Council and others joined up with the Montana Wood Products Association and Montana Logging Association to file a brief in support of more logging in the area.

Past logging has heavily degraded the Seeley-Swan Valley in Montana, including here on either side of Lake Inez and Seeley Lake on the Lolo National Forest. Photo by George Wuerthner.

Clearcuts in the Swan Valley, MT near Loon Lake on the slope of Mission Mountains. Photo by George Wuerthner.
Clearcuts in the Swan Valley, MT near Loon Lake on the slope of Mission Mountains. Photo by George Wuerthner.

AWR Responds to Timber Industry Ads: No ‘lawless logging’ in Montana

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On Wednesday RY Timber, Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Roseburg Forest Products and Sun Mountain Lumber took out this full-page advertisement in at least six Montana newspapers, including the Helena Independent Record, Missoulian, Kalispell Daily Interlake, Great Falls Tribune, Montana Standard and Bozeman Chronicle. According to Ad reps, the retail cost of the advertisements likely ran between $27,000 and $31,000. 

Among other things, the timber industry Ads called for 1) scrapping the entire Forest Service public appeals process and 2) exempting many timber sales in Montana from judicial review.  These are the same timber companies pushing Senator Tester’s mandated logging bill, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, which would require logging on over 156 square miles of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenia National Forest over the next 15 years.  More information on the timber industry Ads can be found here.    Today, Mike Garrity – Alliance for the Wild Rockies executive director and a 5th generation Montanan – responds to the Ad with this guest column in the Montana Standard.
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No ‘lawless logging’ in Montana
By Mike Garrity

A handful of timber corporations recently took out full-page ads statewide to criticize the Alliance for the Wild Rockies for doing what we do well — working to keep Montana “high, wide and handsome” as Joseph Kinsey Howard famously wrote.

We protect public land from corporations and government bureaucracies that want to log public lands without following the law. To put it simply, they want to return to the “good old days” before we had any environmental laws and corporations such as the Anaconda Company called all the shots.

As a fifth generation Montanan, I clearly recall the days when Silver Bow Creek ran red with mine waste and the Clark Fork River was a dead, sludge-filled industrial sewer. And it was not that long ago when you had to turn your car lights on in the middle of the day in Butte because the air was so polluted. These were also the days when our forests had little big game and native fish were beginning to vanish because of massive clearcutting.

Today Montana has some of the best hunting and fishing in the world. The state recently celebrated the return of native westslope cutthroat trout to Silver Bow Creek and Milltown Dam no longer holds millions of tons of toxic waste seeping into the groundwater.

Do we really want to go back to these good old days of cut-and-run where there are no environmental laws? Montanans love our national forests, which belong to the American people, not to the career bureaucrats in the Forest Service or the CEOs and stockholders of timber corporations.

Yet, in their ads, the timber corporations clearly laid out their goals for the conditions and laws they want applied to their personal profit-driven extraction of public resources. In their own words, the timber companies want to “scrap the entire Forest Service Administrative Appeals Process,” “exempt from judicial review those timber sales which deal with trees that have been killed or severely damaged by the Mountain Pine Beetle,” and “amend the Equal Access to Justice Act by requiring a cash bond in these types of administrative appeals and lawsuits.”

In plain language, what that means is that these corporations no longer want citizens to have a voice in how our public lands get used or abused. But that ignores both the history and intent of law and policy on public lands management.

Congress placed citizen suit provisions in virtually all federal environmental laws because citizens are often the only group willing to police the government. As the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals famously wrote, citizens “stand in the shoes” of regulatory enforcement agencies to enforce the law — and to do so without any prospect of personal benefit. If someone throws a brick through a window, the police would enforce the law. But when the federal government breaks the law, citizens are often the only enforcers.

Unfortunately a disturbing trend has appeared as big environmental groups such as the Montana Wilderness Association and The Wilderness Society increasingly take foundation money to “collaborate” with timber corporations. And much like the Vichy French helped the Nazis occupy France during WWII; these collaborators now have to face the harsh and shameful legacy of what they have done and continue to do.

Behind it all is the very simple truth now revealed by the timber companies’ own damning ads: these corporations want access and the subsidy to extract timber resources from public lands unencumbered by environmental laws. Their profit, our loss, and a return to the bad old days of corporate domination of Montana’s lands and people. But Montanans don’t want to return to those days when corporations like the Anaconda Co. controlled public policy and the rivers ran red with mine waste. We want a sustainable supply of clean water, fish, wildlife and timber.

It’s time to tell these corporations and their collaborative partners that the days of rape and run in Montana are over. Montana is worth fighting for, which is exactly what the Alliance for the Wild Rockies intends to continue to do.

Mike Garrity is executive director Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Congressional Logrolling Threatens Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

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Writer S.E. Robinson has a new post up over at The Blaze looking at the Sealaska Corporation, Tongass National Forest and H.R. 1408. The entire article is well worth a read. Here’s a quick snip, which illustrates some of the feelings local residents have about the issue:

Referring to Sealaska Corporation and its allies in Congress, Gerry D. Misner an avid outdoorsman and resident of Kosciusko Island,  said, “In my opinion, for what it’s worth, these guys operate like the mafia if I’ve ever seen mafia, and you can quote me on that.”

NASA’s Mt. St. Helens timelapse shows progression of clearcuts

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The other day a friend sent me a link to a series of satellite images of the Mt. St. Helens areas. The images – from between 1979 and 2011 – were part of the Landsat satellite program operated by NASA and the USGS.   The time-lapse video shows the May 18, 1980 explosion and subsequent recovery of life on the volcano.  However, the time-lapse video also shows something else: The steady progression of clearcuts in the forested landscape around Mt. St. Helens.

These time-lapse images of the clearcuts surrounding Mt. St. Helens reminded me of this passage from William Dietrich’s book, The Final Forest: Big Trees, Forks, and the Pacific Northwest:

There’s a story, possibly apocryphal, about President Jimmy Carter’s flight across the foothills of southwest Washington to view the devastation caused by the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Peering down at the shaven hills, the president expressed horror at the destruction below him. The state officials who were his guides had to gently explain that the helicopter had not reached the volcano blast area yet, that was Carter was seeing was clearcut logging.

Montana ‘Timber Partners’ Drop $30,000 on Ads Calling for Lawless Logging, No Public Appeals Process

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Just in time for the “Forest Jobs Tour ”  (a series of one-sided presentations around Montana about Senator Tester’s mandated logging bill, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act) “timber partners” RY Timber, Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Roseburg Forest Products and Sun Mountain Lumber took out this full-page advertisement today in at least six Montana newspapers, including the Helena Independent Record, Missoulian, Kalispell Daily Interlake, Great Falls Tribune, Montana Standard and Bozeman Chronicle  According to Ad reps I spoke with at two of the papers, the retail cost of the advertisements likely ran between $27,000 and $31,000.

The title of the Ad is “Out of Control Administrative Appeals and Frivolous Lawsuits Against the U.S. Forest Service Must be Stopped Now!!!”

The full-page timber industry Ad is full of statements such as this:  “We believe the Forest Service is being held hostage by a small group of professional obstructionists.”  The Ad ends with these timber mills providing the following “solutions,” including suggesting that Congress could simply exempt many timber sales from judicial review, just as was done with the Wolf Rider from Senator Tester.  [note: all emphasis is as it appeared in the Ad]

“We see several options available to Congress to immediately rectify these abuses:

1) Amend the Equal Access to Justice Act by requiring a Cash Bond in these types of administrative appeals and lawsuits. Amend the Act further by implementing a Loser Pay System, where the loser is responsible for paying the attorneys’ fees and costs of the overall prevailing party.

2) In designated Timber Management Areas already established under the approved Forest Plans, Congress could exempt from judicial review those Timber Sales which deal with trees that have been killed or severely damaged by the Mountain Pine Beetle. The authority of Congress to limit court jurisdiction can be found under Article III Section 2 of United States Constitution. A similar limitation was recently enacted by Congress when they removed Gray Wolf from the Endangered Species List and barred the federal court from any further review.

3) Scrap the entire Forest Service Administrative Appeals Process and use the more streamlined approach that the Department of Interior – BLM uses for their timber projects.”

More about the timing of these Ads.   It must be pointed out that these same exact timber mills are sharing the stage this week and next week with their friends – or is the correct term ‘collaborators’ –  representing the Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation, Montana Trout Unlimited and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition for the Forest Jobs Tour to support Senator Tester’s mandated logging bill, S. 268.   So, the timing of the timber industry’s $30,000 Ad ‘Blitzkrieg’ couldn’t be more transparent.

Honestly, having already attended a number of these one-sided FJRA dog-n-pony shows I doubt I’ll waste my time – and a perfectly good spring evening – attending any of the ‘Forest Jobs Tour.’  In the past, these events have been carefully scripted to limit any tough, substantive questions or dissent and I assume that tonight’s Tour stop in Missoula will be the same.   Heck, during a similar FJRA event – held in a public building at the University of Montana – a representative of Montana Wilderness Association even attempted to prevent one of our interns from passing out simple handbills announcing a “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act Study Club,” the sole purpose of which was to simply read the actual bill language, and then discuss what the language means.

However, I can’t help but wonder if during this so-called “Forest Jobs Tour” if these conservation groups will bother to express concern or speak out against their “timber partners'” wish list for more logging, less public and scientific over-sight and no judicial review of Forest Service timber sales? Or will these conservation groups give their consent through their public silence?  I have a hunch I know how the “collaborators” will roll.  And, if that hunch is correct, what does that truly say about the state of their collaboration with the timber industry?

Update: People may be interested to know that Montana Trout Unlimited and Pew’s Campaign for America’s Wilderness have deleted the following comments I made on their Facebook pages (here and here) and have blocked me from commenting ever again in the future. This tactic has also been recently used by Montana Wilderness Association (here and here) and Hellgate Hunters and Anglers, which is part of the National Wildlife Federation.  In fact, Hellgate Hunters and Anglers (a group I was once a member of) censored and removed my substantive comments regarding the FJRA, including the actual official testimony of the head of the Forest Service from their ironically named “Bully Pulpit” blog.  This has been a very common tactic used by the “collaborator” conservation groups supporting the FJRA and I believe the public should be aware of this tactic.


4-Forests Restoration Initiative Update: A sinking feeling the Forest Service has done it again

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There’s more fall-out from the Forest Service’s questionable decision to award a massive 300,000 acre timber harvesting contract as part of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI) in Arizona to an under-the-radar Montana timber corporation represented by a retired Forest Service official.  The 4FRI is a showcase forest restoration project for the Obama administration under what’s known as “the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act” and program.  Late last Friday, the Center for Biological Diversity sent out this press release.

Tommie Cline Martin, County Supervisor for Gila County, Arizona and a member of the 4FRI, had this to say.

“In my opinion, the Contract that was selected is bogus in several ways: If in fact, an agency insider that was involved in setting policy and advising potential contractors in the process and knew the particulars of the other bidding proposals, then “retired” and helped craft the winning bid is true, this is a perversion of our public trust at the highest level.

Meanwhile, yesterday the Grand Canyon Trust – a founding member of the 4FRI – issued this press release, which among other things said:

[W]e were shocked – and to honest – extremely disappointed that the Forest Service did not choose Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) as the contractor responsible for implementing 4FRI treatments over the next decade….AZFRP did not receive the 4FRI contract. Pioneer Associates [from Montana] did. We, and the rest of the northern Arizona community, know almost nothing about the rationale for this decision, and know even less about Pioneer Associates. Some of what we do know is not at all encouraging. Pioneer Associates offered $10 million less than did AZFRP in the bidding process – a sum that would significantly address the critical shortfall in funding currently faced by 4FRI….We at the the Grand Canyon Trust find the recent contracting decision made by the Forest Service extremely problematic and worrisome….

We believe that the Forest Service should, for the sake of transparency, release all information regarding the decision-making process and rationale underlying the contract decision. Similarly, we believe that Pioneer Associates should follow the transparency lead modeled by AZFRP and share, in detail, their business model, implementation strategies, and plans for collaboration. Finally, we believe that an independent and transparent review of the bidding and contract award decision-making process is warranted and should be conducted with all due haste.

Yesterday also saw this hard-hitting editorial from the local newspaper, the Payson Roundup under the title, “We have this terrible, sinking feeling that the Forest Service has done it again” below are some snips from the editorial:

Last week the Forest Service somehow managed to turn the most hopeful and visionary consensus on how we can save our forests and our communities into yet another muddled controversy….So after all that preparation, study, waiting and hope — the Forest Service announced its choice: Pioneer Forest Products — an out-of-state [Montana] wood products company. The company plans to partner with Marlin Johnson, formerly the chief Forest Service logging industry supervisor in the Southwest.

The choice proved instantly controversial, mostly because Johnson spent years battling the very environmental groups whose agreement made the 4-FRI approach so promising. Johnson and groups like the Centers for Biological Diversity fought one another to a deadlock, largely over whether the Forest Service should let the timber companies continue to cut a large share of the remaining old-growth trees.

Even conservative, pro-industry experts like Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin have expressed concern about the choice, although they have focused on other elements of the contract — like the assumption that Pioneer can make a go of using a lot of the brush and small trees in a relatively untested process for making diesel fuel from wood products….

Now, we hope we’re wrong. We hope that the Centers for Biological Diversity is overreacting when they condemned as ‘cronyism’ the inclusion of Johnson as a partner with a company he used to regulate….But we have to admit, we’re unnerved by the immediate outbreak of controversy and the Forest Service’s stubborn refusal to accept the advice of local officials, conservationists and other stakeholders. Other bidders seemed to offer a much closer working relationship with those groups at a seemingly lower cost to the taxpayers.

We hope it blows over. We hope the Forest Service and Pioneer find a way to quickly reassure the critics, who have worked so hard and so long to achieve the agreement that this choice of contractors threatens to unravel.  But we’d certainly feel better if this didn’t feel so familiar — and if we could put out of our minds the unnerving recollection that it was the Forest Service’s cozy and short-sighted relationship with industry that got us into this mess in the first place.”

Analysis: How HR 4089 Would Effectively Repeal the Wilderness Act

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“The purpose of the Wilderness Act is to preserve the wilderness character of the areas to be included in the wilderness system, not to establish any particular use.”
– Howard Zahniser, chief author of the Wilderness Act

One of the activities I enjoy more than any other is waking up before dawn on a crisp, late-fall morning, loading up my backpack, grabbing my .30-06 and walking deep into a USFS Wilderness area in search of elk and deer.  Because of this, and many other reasons, as a backcountry hunter I’m adamantly opposed to HR 4089, the so-called “Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012.

The folks at Wilderness Watch have put together a very detailed analysis of HR 4089 titled, “How the Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012 (HR 4089) Would Effectively Repeal the Wilderness Act.”  The analysis describes in detail how the incredibly destructive provisions of HR 4089 would effectively repeal the Wilderness Act of 1964.  Make no mistake about it, if HR 4089 becomes law – and it has already passed the House with all but two Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats voting for it – Wilderness as envisioned in the Wilderness Act will cease to exist.  Here’s the intro to that analysis:

Introduction
On April 17, 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 4089, the Sportsmen’s Heritage Act, supposedly “to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing and shooting.”  But the bill is a thinly disguised measure to gut the 1964 Wilderness Act and protections for every unit of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

HR 4089 would give hunting, fishing, recreational shooting, and fish and wildlife management top priority in Wilderness, rather than protecting the areas’ wilderness character, as has been the case for nearly 50 years. This bill would allow endless, extensive habitat manipulations in Wilderness under the guise of “wildlife conservation” and for providing hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting experiences. It would allow the construction of roads to facilitate such uses and would allow the construction of dams, buildings, or other structures within Wildernesses. It would exempt all of these actions from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review. Finally, HR 4089 would remove Wilderness Act prohibitions against motor vehicle use for fishing, hunting, or recreational shooting, or for wildlife conservation measures.

According to some news reports, Senator Tester (D-Montana) is the guy the NRA and Safari Club are hoping will sponsor the bill in the Senate. They’ll need Democrat support and Tester is a target for obvious reasons, since he’s locked in a tight re-election campaign with Congressman Denny Rehberg (R-Montana).   In addition to the detailed analysis from Wilderness Watch more info concerning HR 4089 from the Animal Welfare Institute is contained in this action alert, where you can quickly send a note to your two US Senators.  According to the Animal Welfare Institute, other extreme provisions within HR 4089 include:

  • Amending the Marine Mammal Protection Act to permit the importation of polar bear hunting trophies from Canada for bears killed before May 15, 2008 — the date when polar bears were designated as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.  This would reward 41 hunters for bad behavior: they either killed bears who were off limits or wanted to get their kills in knowing the bears were about to be listed;
  • Requiring the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Department of the Interior to open nearly all public lands (including National Wildlife Refuges!) to recreational hunting, and directing them to do so without following the environmental review processes required under the National Environmental Policy Act; and
  • Eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to protect wildlife, habitat, and people from lead and other toxic substances released by ammunition waste under the Toxic Substances Control Act, thereby undermining the ability of the Agency to fulfill its obligation to protect public health and the environment.

During a recent interview on C-SPAN, the head lobbyist for the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance, one of the groups pushing the bill, admitted that most federal land is already accessible to hunters and anglers, and that this bill was simply a proactive measure in case something happens at a later date.  That just reaffirms what Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) correctly noted during his speech against the bill:  “The problem this bill claims to solve actually does not exist.”

As an avid backcountry hunter, I couldn’t agree more.