johnrupe

Putting Your Dot on the Map

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They are “remembered landscapes.”

Nearly every weekend when I was growing up, my parents, my two sisters, our large family dog, and I would get in the car and head to my grandparents’ house in St. Maries, Idaho.  The trip was usually pretty boring for a kid, but we always got excited when we got to the White Pine Scenic Drive in the St. Joe National Forest.  The highway carved through the forest creating a tunnel effect, and in the middle was a sign along the highway that said “cool spring.”  Even the dog somehow knew when we were getting close to cool spring.  We’d stop, get a drink, walk into the woods a bit, and marvel at the dense trees with moss growing everywhere.  Down the road was the tallest white pine tree in the world, but that was just a boring statistic to a kid.   The statistics didn’t matter, but the place was special.

Today the sign is gone, cool spring is gone, and the trail has been expanded for motorized use.  White pine is incredibly susceptible to blister rust and many trees have died.  The large tree has fallen over.  My dad and my niece got their picture taken by the incredibly huge roots.  It doesn’t matter that the forest has changed, but the place will always be special.

When I was working in the Black Hills, I once talked to a county commissioner on the Wyoming side.  She told me that when she was growing up, her dad loaded up the Studebaker and headed up a road that isn’t even recognized as a road today.  They would reach a large meadow and have a picnic lunch.  Today, that meadow is overgrown with dense small trees, and probably needs to be thinned.  The place is special, but her experience is gone.

In Colorado, Monarch Pass feels like it’s on top of the world.  From the top, you can see an expanse of trees that seems to go forever.  For folks that have traveled on U.S. 50 from the east, this is their continental divide experience.

In the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado, you can go on a hike from the desert to a meadow with a stream running through it, and look up at snow capped peaks as high as you can imagine.  It’s unreal that you can see desert and tundra at the same time.

Social scientists often group participants in a forest planning process as members of a “community of place” or “community of interest.”  I don’t have a direct economic or social stake in how forests in Idaho are managed.  I don’t even live in Idaho any more, but I am still connected to a “place” in a forest along a 12-mile stretch of highway.

Before 1976, the Forest Service conducted “unit planning” with units roughly the size of ranger districts.  In part to increase the working circle of potential timber harvest to assure a continuous supply, NFMA established Forest Plans.  But Forests often were too big for the community of place.  Then, the scale of planning grew even bigger.  The St. Joe and White Pine Drive were administratively split between the Clearwater and the new monolithic Idaho Panhandle National Forests.   The area around cool spring fell on the Clearwater side.  The old Forest Plan put White Pine Drive in a scenic corridor management area, but the area was too small to show on the forest plan map.  The Clearwater has now combined with the Nez Perce to complete one large planning effort.

The area in the Black Hills fell into an inventoried roadless area subject to the 2000 roadless rule.  Monarch Pass was designated in the Westwide Energy Corridor EIS as an important corridor.  The multi-state decision doesn’t mention how the corridor entirely covers the Monarch Pass Ski Area.

Forest planners have discovered that place matters.  The Medicine Bow-Routt-Thunder Basin has done three plans.  The Pike-San Isabel-Cimarron-Comanche will do two.  There are some excellent examples of place-based planning in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Chugach, and GMUG forest planning processes, where forests are subdivided into “places” for planning.  These were discussed in a 2003 workshop in Portland.    The authors note:

“Place-based planning” refers to land and natural resource planning efforts that bring together diverse human values, uses, experiences, and activities tied to specific geographic locations. Although planning efforts have always focused on specific places through land use zoning frameworks, place-based planning is different from other types of approaches. For example, whereas land use zoning segregates dominant uses from one another on the landscape, place-based planning takes a more holistic approach, focusing on identifying current uses, values, and meanings. In addition, place-based approaches tend to take a longitudinal perspective, exploring desired future conditions for the landscape. This approach enables participants to identify a variety of uses that might occur concurrently rather than designating one primary use for the upcoming 10 to 20 years.

Some commentators are concerned that place-based planning and the new emphasis on collaboration are putting National groups at a disadvantage.  Ohio University political science professor Nancy Manring wrote a paper in 2004 about the 2005 planning rule provision that replaced the appeals process with an objection process.   She observed:

“McCloskey (2000), Coggins (2001), Foster (2002), Hibbard and Madsen (2003) and Kenney (2000) all have argued that collaboratives may maximize community-based interests at the expense of national stakeholders and values. As Weber (1999, p. 482) cautioned, “The danger is that such communities will develop a sense of themselves apart from and to the detriment of the nation.” No doubt, it will be easier for communities to develop a separate sense of themselves if representatives of national interests and values are not physically present at the negotiating table. The potential tensions between local and national values – between the communities of place and the communities of interest – are thrown into sharp relief by the realities of collaborative planning without the traditional appeals process as a safeguard. “

At the beginning of the planning process for the San Juan Forest Plan Revision, participants at public meetings were given sticky dots to place on a map.  There was even a parallel process on the web, where you could put a computerized dot on the map.  The idea was that participants could identify their special places, and where resource conflicts might occur.  These sticky dots were used in drawing the the forest plan map.  The Plan will use geographic areas as big as ranger districts, and within the areas, there are subdivisions displayed by using eight development “themes.”  A final Plan is expected next year.

Addressing NFMA Timber Requirements Through the Restoration Lens

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Arizona Lumber and Timber Company, Coconino National Forest, 1939, photo by Walter H. Shaffer

Sometimes language can get in the way.   Foresters are becoming aware that their traditional language for cutting trees confuses the public, and reduced their ability to explain what they are trying to accomplish.  This is especially true today when trying to reduce the chances of unwanted fire behavior, by “restoring” tree stands to conditions that were less dense.

In 2008, former associate chief Sally Collins coauthored a paper with Hutch Brown about the importance of rephrasing the purpose and need statement for vegetation projects, eliminating the use of traditional silvicultural terminology and replacing it with the language of a new collaborative process.  They pointed out that the technical language is difficult for lay audiences to understand, and because it originated in a timber culture, the language can cause confusion about a restoration project’s true purpose.  For collaboration to work and succeed, a new kind of language is needed that clearly communicates the intended restoration purpose.

In pointing out the problems with silvicultural terms such as “commercial” or “pre-commercial thinning”, “crown spacing”, “ladder fuels”, and “conifer competition”,  Collins and Brown point out: “Whereas Forest Service professionals and many interested groups are familiar with terms like these, others are not. Sustainable restoration efforts require broad public involvement and support, yet relatively few people are likely to engage in a project when they do not understand the terms used to describe it.”

The same criticism of timber project descriptions also holds true for planning under NFMA.  Perhaps there is a way to be faithful with the act, but translate the terminology in ways that explain the ecological purpose of the projects.

Here are some of the possibilities:

NFMA Requirement1982 TerminologyPossible New Terminology
Determine forest management systems, harvesting levels, and procedures, and the availability of lands and their suitability for resource managementMultiple-use prescription for each management areaAgree on a theme for an area – what is the degree of human influence on natural processes like fire and insect and disease outbreaks?;What are acceptable changes and rates of changes to the forest?What are acceptable types of burning of the forest?
Identify lands not suited for timber productionLands suitable or not suitable for timber productionIdentify areas where trees can or cannot be removed and sold
Insure that cut designed to regenerate an even-aged stand will be used (for clearcuts only where its optimal) where such cuts are consistent with soil, watershed, fish, wildlife, recreation, esthetic resources, and regeneration of the timber resourceEven-aged silviculture and even-aged standsIdentify landscapes where we prefer trees at the same age
Insure timber will be harvested only where there is assurance that such lands can be adequately restocked within five years after harvestRestocking lands within 5 years after final harvestProvide small 6-inch trees within 5 years after a stand of large trees has been removed

Lessons from the Northwest about Commitment to Adaptive Management

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Diagram from Dept of Interior Adaptive Management Technical Guide

Adaptive management could be a component of a new planning rule.  In previous posts we’ve discussed the need for adaptive governance.  We’ve discussed the legal challenges.   In a previous discussion thread, Martin points out what some consider a flaw in the 2005/2008 planning rule, where we “simultaneously deep six NEPA (at plan level) while forwarding some ill-defined adaptive management/EMS framework.”   But is it possible to make the commitment to adaptive management?  Does the Forest Service have the management and science capacity? 

It’s worth considering the experiences in the Pacific Northwest.  In a previous thread, Andy provided a link to a paper by Forrest Fleischman.  Here’s part of Fleischman’s analysis:

“Examination of existing literature on the implementation of adaptive management by the USDA Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest offers a few key lessons, however it also raises many interesting questions that cannot be answered with existing data. All of the literature indicates that the designation of areas devoted to adaptive management was not a successful strategy for promoting adaptive management. It appears that only one adaptive management area actually implemented anything that could be called adaptive management, and in that one case, the administrative designation does not appear to have been an important causal factor – instead, it appears that the designation occurred because of innovative research that was already occurring at the site.” p. 17

Here is a presentation from a 2005 conference from Forest Service research scientist Bernard Bormann on adaptive management in the Northwest Forest Plan.  Here and here are some additional publications.

In his presentation, Bormann says that adaptive management is harder than they first thought because adaptive management was never considered a “core business”, and most adaptive management areas are now idle. There are institutional barriers including lack of leadership, low budgets, and lack of learning structures. One idea he has is that the next generation of plans might contain “learning objectives.”  

There are many compelling reasons for the Forest Service to move from an “event driven” planning model (where large plan revision efforts occur every 15 years) to a more “continuous” planning model.  NFMA itself says that the planning rule should “insure research on and (based on continous monitoring and assessment in the field) evaluation of the effects of each management system to the end that it will not produce substantial and permanent impairment of the productivity of the land.” 16 USC 1604(g)(3)(C)    What will it take to successfully implement this requirement?

 

Dates Set for Planning Rule Meetings

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The announcement went out today for the dates of the initial series of public meetings on a new planning rule, including:

A science forum in Washington D.C. on March 29-30.

Three National Roundtable meetings on April 1-2, April 20-21, and May 11-12.

Regional roundtable meetings in April:

  • Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6), Portland, OR on April 6, 2010;
  • Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5),Sacramento, CA on April 6, 2010;
  • Intermountain Region (Region 4), Salt Lake City, UT on April 8, 2010;
  • Rocky Mountain Region, (Region 2), Lakewood, CO on April 12, 2010;
  • Northern Region (Region 1), Missoula, MT on April 13, 2010;
  • Alaska Region (Region 10), Juneau, AK on April 13, 2010;
  • Southern Region (Region 8), Atlanta, GA during the week of April 12, 2010 (exact date to be determined);
  • Eastern Region (Region 9), Chicago, IL during the week of April 28 (exact date to be determined); and
  • Southwestern Region (Region 3), Albuquerque, NM on April 28, 2010.
  • Region 2 will host additional meetings on April 14 in Cheyenne, WY and on April 21 meeting in Rapid City, SD.

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    The times and locations of the meetings have not been finalized.  The Forest Service is working with the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution and its roster of collaboration consultants across the country to plan and assist at these meetings.

    Forest Planning and Oil and Gas Leases

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    Forest planning got a lot more complicated in March 1990 when the Forest Service issued regulations at 36 CFR 228.102 in accordance with the 1987 Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act, and recommendations by a National Academy of Sciences group chartered by the Act.  Under these regulations, there are six steps to leasing, and Forest Plans in the 1990s and 2000s addressed the first step, sometimes the second step, and sometimes even a preliminary finding related to the third step:

    Step 1: The Forest Service identifies what lands may be available for leasing.

    Step 2: The Forest Service authorizes BLM to conduct leasing on specifically identified lands and under certain stipulations (in some cases no surface occupancy, controlled surface use, or timing restrictions).  The Forest Service leasing analysis can range from forest-wide to a smaller specifically defined area, with specific binding requirements to each 40-acre area.

    Step 3: After parcels have been identified for leasing, the Forest Service verifies that potential effects have been adequately considered, and that leasing is consistent with the Forest Plan.

    Step 4:  BLM does an assessment, and determines if there are any additional stipulations for a parcel.

    Step 5: BLM conducts a sale.

    Step 6: BLM issues the lease and begins the permitting process.  The lessee must fill out an “application for a permit to drill” (APD) that includes a Surface Use Plan of Operations (SUPO).  The Forest Service approves the SUPO after an evaluation of environmental consequences and stipulation consistency.

    It’s been challenging for planners to decide how many of these steps to link with the forest planning decision.  However, only the first step is truly consistent with the current idea of a broad, strategic forest plan.  In dedication to efficiency and economy, many decision-makers may naturally conclude that combining the first two steps is more efficient and economical than keeping the decisions and their supporting analysis processes separate.  However, in a number of cases to date, imbedding oil and gas leasing decisions in forest plan revisions has been neither efficient nor economical.  In fact, combining the first two steps in a single decision-making process has led to significant delays and increased costs, has been unwieldy to manage, and has confused the public.  Since the emphasis on forest planning is being “strategic”, it’s difficult to combine the more detailed analysis and prescriptive oil and gas decision-making.

    This has been especially difficult because a leasing analysis requires a “reasonably foreseeable development” (RFD) scenario report.  This report provides a quantitative (if possible) description of oil and gas occurrence and development potential, along with well projections, and specific information about probable characteristics of wells and productions.   This report can quickly become dated, and the longer a planning process, the greater the risk of inaccurate information.

    If we want to streamline planning, it may be better to make the oil and gas leasing decision as a “program” decision outside of forest planning, much like specific road by road travel management decisions are made outside of forest planning.

    Adaptive Governance and Forest Planning

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    Army Officer at Nine Mile Camp, Mt. Baker National Forest, 1933, photo by W.L. Baker

    The more we look at the literature, the more evidence we find that our current NFMA management system doesn’t align with the current thinking about land use management.  We gravitate toward adaptive management, but we don’t quite grasp it yet.

    A slight twist on the adaptive management idea is the concept of “adaptive governance.” The word “governance” instead of “management” recognizes the collaborative aspects. It’s similar to the idea of “adaptive co-management”  that Dave Iverson has described in his post here and here on this blog, citing the summary from the Resilience Alliance.

    The concepts of adaptive governance are worth considering in the forest planning and management system for a couple of reasons. First, it includes the idea of learning-oriented planning similar to what Jim Burchfield proposes in his earlier post on this blog. Second, the role of science is different. Instead of relying on scientific management as the foundation for policy development, adaptive governance integrates various types of knowledge in a contextual manner.  This is similar to what Sharon describes here and here about analyzing specific questions posed by land managers and the public .

    In the book Adaptive Governance: Integrating Science, Policy, and Decision Making by Ronald Brunner, Toddi Steelman, Lindy Coe-Juell, Christina Cromley, et. al., the authors use five case studies across the West.  amazon.com oxford journal review

    The authors make the following points about adaptive governance:

    • Planning sets goals. You try alternatives. The burden of decision making shifts to monitoring and evaluation and terminating policy alternatives that fail.
    • No policy is permanent because interests, knowledge, and other significant details of the context are subject to change.
    • There is an understanding that politics are unavoidable. Participants assume responsibility and accountability for the policy because they must live with the consequences of implementing it.
    • Best available science is integrated with other kinds of knowledge, including local knowledge.
    • Science must be contextual, necessitating interpretations and judgments that integrate what is known about the context.

    These guidelines appear to converge with other ideas that we’ve noted on this blog.  There seems to be evidence that this works.  Although NFMA and the previous forest planning rules are grounded in the scientific management process, the 2000, 2005, and 2008 rules introduced the concept of collaboration in all aspects of planning, monitoring, and evaluation, and required the consideration of uncertainty and risk. But what is missing in those rules is the idea that we are committed to using dynamic monitoring and a collaborative evaluation process in order to change policy.  For those that think that the NFMA planning rule is just about writing a Forest Plan, this would be a huge surprise and some would argue, a wake-up call.  Are the concepts of adaptive governance the next step?

    Article: Why Don’t We Want EISs with Forest Plans?

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    No EISs for Forest Plans?  At the time a revised planning rule was released in 2005, and then 2008, NEPA compliance was among the most criticized piece of those rules.  The preamble to the 2008 rule explained the reasoning that this provision was included (p. 21473):

    Throughout 28 years of land management planning, the Agency has learned that tiering to the cumulative effects analysis in a plan EIS did not provide nearly as much useful information at the project or activity level as the Agency had expected. The effects analyses in plan EISs were often too general to meet analytical needs for projects and activities. Meaningful cumulative effects analyses cannot be conducted until project design and location are known or at least reasonably foreseeable. Plan-level analysis would, however, evaluate existing conditions and broad trends at the geographic scale of the planning area. The Department believes these rules provide for the development and consideration of planning alternatives with much more robust public participation than previously afforded.

    What’s the problem?

    Tulane law professor Oliver Houck wrote an opinion piece last year in the Environmental Law Institute’s Environmental Law Reporter entitled “How’d We Get Divorced?: The Curious Case of NEPA and Planning.” 39 ELR 10645, July 2009

    Houck explains that the framers of NEPA back in 1968 were concerned that the environmental crisis stemmed from poor planning, which NEPA was to address, and that the Forest Service (along with the Federal Highway Administration) was front and center as an agency most in need of the NEPA remedy.  However, he explains that over time courts have allowed agencies to not only divorce NEPA from planning, but to relegate it to what he calls the latest, smallest, and most foreordained step in the process.

    As early as 1991, Houck was advising CEQ to strengthen the link between broad planning and NEPA:

    “NEPA is missing the point.  It is producing lots of little statements on highway segments, timber sales, and other foregone conclusions; it isn’t even present, much less effective, when the major decisions on a national energy policy and a national transportation policy are made.  On the most pivotal development questions of our time, NEPA comes in late in the fourth quarter, in time to help tidy up … As I see it, CEQ’s challenge is not, per your invitation, to make NEPA a “succinct review for a single project.”  It is rather to make NEPA work for legislative proposals and for programs that all but conclusively determine what the subsequent projects will be.”

    Houck explains that some agencies like the Park Service and DOE have applied NEPA conscientiously to planning decisions.  He says the BLM has waxed and waned on the issue, applying NEPA to range management plans but trying to avoid NEPA altogether for oil and gas leasing.

    Regarding the Forest Service, Houck rejects the agency’s traditional arguments about NEPA and forest planning.  As far as flexibility, he says there is no reason that an EIS cannot be written on a flexible plan.  As far as saving time during the planning process, he says that the Forest Service is actually saving more time in the long run with the availability of “tiering”. 

    He concludes that the real reason that agencies don’t want to do EISs are human reasons.  On big decisions, NEPA puts other people’s noses in their business.   Other people ask embarrassing questions, propose unwanted alternatives, go to the press, make things difficult, even change outcomes.  For employees that have been educated to manage the forest in a certain way, they naturally wouldn’t want to let outsiders in to simply challenge what they are doing.   He concludes:

    “NEPA is so difficult because its few demands are so counterintuitive, so contrary to normal human behavior: think long term, reveal your defects, expose your risks, consider other ways of doing things than the one you have in mind, let others in on these considerations, which after all are your responsibility, not theirs, and about which you may (but less often than you think) know more than they do, and then actually agree that another way is better.  These are a very hard ask.  For all of these reasons, attaching NEPA to planning, the heart of all decisionmaking, remains as stiff a challenge today as it was in 1969. When this very idea gave rise to a process that is so magnificent in its ambition and so unfulfilled.”

    Are these criticisms correct?

    Accountability in Plans so Adaptive Management Can Work

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    So we want a simplier, more adaptive management structure for forest planning and implementation?   This won’t work until we first address the questions  of public accountability and success in court.

    In his law review article “Regulation by Adaptive Management – Is it Possible?”,  Florida State Law Professor J.B. Ruhl argues that environmental regulation (which can also be applied to forest planning) needs to move away from “prescriptive regulation” to adaptive management, but there are barriers.

     If we were to apply an adaptive management approach in forest planning, the Forest Service needs to consider the battles that Ruhl says will come from three fronts:  legislative, the public, and the courts.  He gives a case study of a Fish and Wildlife Service adaptive management approach to the Endangered Species Act. He observes that over time, agencies find that interest groups and the courts peck away at adaptive agency behavior, and that under conventional administrative law, agencies adopt adaptive management at their own peril.

    Ruhl suggests a model of regulation (which we could embed in our forest plans) that sets boundaries that can be monitored and enforced in courts. There are two elements that we could put into plans. First, a decision shouldn’t be altered too soon after being made – what Ruhl calls “volatility.” A radical departure made quickly after the initial position suggests that the agency’s operational model is faulty, its monitoring is defective, or something else is fundamentally flawed. The other problem is the concern that an accumulation of small adjustments over time may put the agency too far from its initial position – what Ruhl calls “drift.” So a forest plan could establish the boundary of acceptable volatility (narrow at first which can broaden over time), and a broader boundary of acceptable drift.  What would such a plan look like? 

    Should Forest Plans Establish Management Areas?

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    For some people, the essence of a Forest Plan is the establishment of “management areas”.  But do they work?  Does it make sense to equate a Forest Plan to a zoning document?

    Under the 1982 planning rule, management area prescriptions are one of the Forest Plan content requirements (along with a summary of the management situation, multiple-use goals and objectives, and monitoring/evaluation requirements.)  A management area prescription addresses multiple-uses with “associated standards and guidelines for each management area including proposed and probable management practices such as the planned timber sale program.”  (36 CFR 219.11(c) – 1982 version)

    The weakness of this approach is that management areas are often viewed as single resource by single resource emphasis areas.

    In their book Designing Sustainability Forest Landscapes, Simon Bell and Dean Apostol observe:

    “NFMA led to development of complicated zoning maps for each national forest.  In essence, the attempt was (and still is) to resolve competing uses by creating overlays and associated standards, very similar to what one finds in local land use planning.  The Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon, for example, identified over 40 separate zones, including such designations as timber emphasis, developed winter sports, scenic viewsheds, a big-game winter range, and late successional reserves.  Each zone has a set of standards that specify whether logging can occur, and if so at what rotation, the size of clearcuts, the allowable density of roads and so forth.

     The level of zoning typical on US national forests today demonstrates the limits of what can be accomplished through zoning-based plans.  At its worst, it represents an absurd division of the forest to a point where it cannot even be understood, let alone competently managed.  The managers are tied in knots, and neither they nor the public who owns these forests can effectively visualize what the forest will look like or be.”  p. 25

     The requirement to identify management areas was absent in the 2005/2008 planning rule.  Rather than “prescriptions”, the intent was to identify “desired conditions” at multiple scales, and “overlays” of specific suitable use maps at broad scales with approximate lines.  There are many advantages to this approach – plans are more adaptable, maps are consistent with the unique role and scales of contributions that a particular Forest may serve, and plans don’t seem more prescriptive than they really are.  Still, it seems like planning teams couldn’t get away from the concept of management areas.   In some cases, some teams used the identification of “special areas” as a replacement for management areas.  While it certainly makes intuitive sense that you don’t need zones to cover every inch of a National Forest, it also makes sense to limit the types of special areas to a consistent National set (recommended Wilderness, research natural areas, botanical areas, National Recreation Areas, etc.)

    Should management areas still be a component of Forest Plans in a new planning rule?    Are Forest Plans really zoning documents, and how can they represent themes rather than specific actions?