Jon Haber

National forest plans aid in removing bat from ESA list

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The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to remove the federally “endangered” status from the lesser long-nosed bat found in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico.  Public lands play an important role in providing habitat, and federal land managers were among the “conservation partners anticipating that their 30-year recovery efforts have paid off.”

In the United States, most lesser long-nosed bat roosts and forage areas are managed by federal agencies (U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and the Army’s Fort Huachuca), which have integrated the management of lesser long-nosed bat forage plants – agaves, and saguaro and organ pipe cacti – into their land use and resource management plans.

The potential for this kind of success story is why the new requirement for forest plans to “contribute to the recovery” of listed species needs to be taken seriously by forest planners.

Lawsuit to stop federal highway on national forest lands

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The Sierra Club filed the lawsuit to stop construction of the U.S. 70 Havelock bypass in North Carolina.  According to their attorneys, “The important thing here is that this part of the forest is one of the prime examples still of what used to be a very common landscape in the coastal plain, which is the longleaf pine savannas, so there are parts of the forest that would be destroyed with the proposed bypass and that have intact, 100-year-old longleaf pine savannas that have good ground cover and are in good condition and that provide habitat for species like the red-cockaded woodpecker.”  They argue that there were feasible alternatives that weren’t considered.

The defendant is apparently the Federal Highway Administration, and the Forest Service isn’t mentioned at all.  There is a different set of laws governing federal highway projects, but they don’t exempt the FHA from NFMA’s requirement that “instruments for use and occupancy of National Forest System lands shall be consistent with the land management plans.”  The Croatan forest plan (2002) actually mentions this bypass proposal as an example of “requests for permits that serve a public benefit.”

There was no reference to this project on the Croatan website, but the FHA ROD discusses six issues raised by plaintiffs regarding consistency with the forest plan, finding them all to be without merit.  It talks about Forest Service participation in the project planning process and off-site mitigation elements, neither of which directly address the question of what the forest plan requirements for this area are.  It did mention that “some portions of the easement that would be transferred to NCDOT for the bypass are designated black bear sanctuary.”  How would a four-lane expressway be consistent with that?  There is something wrong with this process if it does not require the Forest Service to directly address the NFMA consistency requirement for highway permits.

Fracking on the Wayne protested

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This would be the first approval of fracking on this national forest, and it required a supplemental information review of the impacts of fracking, because that was not addressed in the 2006 forest plan.  I was curious about how the analysis would address the potential for earthquakes, based on what has been happening in Oklahoma.

The BLM’s analysis didn’t say much:  “Increased seismic activity has recently been a concern of the public following a number of low magnitude earthquakes centered on the Youngstown area. These earthquakes were within a mile of the Northstar 1 well, a Class II deep injection well…  In response to these seismic events and the possible linkage to the injection well the ODNR is pursuing reforms to the injection well program, including restrictions on injecting fluids in the Cambrian or Precambrian rock, requirements for testing and monitoring of pressures and injection rates and the installation of an automatic shutoff system, among other reforms (ODNR 2012).”

Talking about what the state might do is not exactly a disclosure of the environmental impacts.  The BLM concluded, “No additional analysis or protective measures are needed at the Forest Plan level, since the RFDS (Reasonably Foreseeable Development Scenario) discussed the common methods of waste disposal and this was used as the basis of the effects analysis conducted in the EIS.”

Some of the locals are not happy about the planned leases.

Lawsuit will question fuel breaks

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The Los Padres National Forest has proposed the Santa Barbara Mountain Communities Defense Zone Project.

“The desired condition for chaparral is to establish a diversity of shrub age classes in key areas near communities to improve the effectiveness of fire suppression operations. Adequate defensible space around communities could greatly reduce the risk of structure loss, as well as improve safety for residents. Thus, at the urban interface there will be a management emphasis on direct community protection. This could be accomplished in at least two ways: (1) by removing or heavily modifying shrublands immediately adjacent to populated areas (Wildland-Urban Interface Defense Zones); and (2) by strategically creating blocks of young, less flammable vegetation near the interface areas. Both types of fuels modification could slow or even halt the rate of fire spread into urban areas.”

Two conservation organizations have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court “to protect fragile habitat and rare species in the path of a massive, remote fuel break recently approved in the Los Padres National Forest.”  According to this article, “The suit is also an effort to encourage the Los Padres National Forest to focus on reducing fire risk where it matters most, directly in and around communities.”   Interestingly, the Forest Service used a categorical exclusion from NEPA, which suggests that they think there is no scientific controversy about the effects of fire breaks that are beyond the area needed for defensible space.  I’d like to see a court weigh in on this, and how far away “near” and “remote” are, but it might just decide that a CE for “timber stand improvement” can’t be used where there is no timber.

Do elk need trees? Maybe.

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This is an update to a September 12 post “Do elk need trees?”  The Forest punted the issue to its forest plan revision: http://helenair.com/news/natural-resources/forest-service-withdraws-controversial-big-game-standard/article_e5e22d8b-41f3-535f-94e6-58e098c86958.html

The first draft of the proposed Helena-Lewis and Clark revised forest plan punts elk security to project-level decision making. Here’s the draft guideline: “In order to influence elk distribution on NFS lands, management actions should not reduce the amount of elk security available during the archery and rifle hunting seasons over the long-term (generally ten or more years). Short-term reductions in elk security may occur when needed to achieve other resource management objectives. Elk security should be defined and applied at a scale that is informed by interagency recommendations if available, knowledge of the specific area, and the best available scientific information.”

The Forest Service is back to writing 1970s-era “plans” that left everything up to the local ranger. I foresee lots of litigation about the validity of these individual security interpretations on each project (instead of just determining if the project is consistent with the forest plan).

History of logging in Montana

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The Missoulian is running a series of articles on this subject.  The one in Sunday’s paper asks these questions about the future:

“Banishment from the national forests would doom many Montana timber towns to welfare status, according to advocates in the wood-products industry. But if they’re dependent on access to public timber, isn’t that another form of welfare? Does my family’s tradition of working in the woods entitle it to public subsidy, especially if the commercial market finds Montana’s wood products uncompetitive? Does rescuing Montana’s timber industry justify rewriting some of the nation’s bedrock environmental protections, changing access to its court system, and spending millions of its tax dollars?”

County job description for biologist: “help us combat the radical environmental influence”

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This job interview of a former Forest Service employee by Tuolumne County Supervisors didn’t go well.

Supervisor Evan Royce noted he wanted to be explicit with Boroski, trying to make sure they are on the same page, by saying, “I think we have experienced a lot of extreme environmental influence on public lands policy and in Tuolumne County 78% of our county is publically owned and that has a huge effect on our communities, and we fight very hard on this board to try to protect our communities and represent them in a way that will preserve our quality of life and prosperity…looking into the future, as we are about to adopt a general plan and we’re dealing with new forest plans, it’s very critical to us that if we are going to do business with you that you represent us in that way and you help us combat the radical environmental influence that you see from groups like Center for Biological Diversity. That’s what we want.

A revealing look at their approach to forest plan collaboration.

Who gets the most legal fees from the federal government?

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Environmental groups barely register.  And it’s a good bet that the partner-named law firms on this list are not doing much public interest litigation.

The article this is taken from was about the novelty of Earthjustice being on the list, and its focus on EPA.  It added:

“Garcia said these fee awards play no role in determining which cases her attorneys will take and that Earthjustice does not depend on them for financial sustainability. They made up less than 4 percent of the group’s more than $54 million in revenues in 2015, according to its annual report for that year. The vast majority of Earthjustice’s revenue comes from charitable contributions from foundations and individuals.”

But who does Congress want to punish?

A test of the 2014 insect and disease categorical exclusion

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The Center for Biological diversity is suing the Tahoe National Forest for its decision on the Sunny South timber sale. The sale is designed to “reduce the extent and risk of insect infestations, as well as to reduce the negative effects of those infestations on forest health and resilience.” Plaintiffs allege, “Six (California spotted) owl territories are slated to be logged …, all of which are important contributors to the overall owl population given the high degree of successful owl reproduction in these old forested areas.”

Section 603 of the amended Healthy Forests Restoration Act establishes a categorical exclusion for qualifying insect and disease projects in designated areas on National Forest System lands. An insect and disease project that may be categorically excluded under this authority is a project that is designed to reduce the risk or extent of, or increase the resilience to, insect or disease infestation in the areas.  The project must be located in an area designated pursuant to a Governor’s request for areas in their State that are experiencing, or at risk of, an insect or disease epidemic. The project must also meet other criteria, including these rather subjective ones:

  • The project was developed through a collaborative process that includes multiple interested persons representing diverse interests and is transparent and non-exclusive.
  • The best available scientific information must be considered to maintain or restore ecological integrity, including maintaining or restoring the structure, function, composition and connectivity.

We might find out a little more about what these things mean from this court.

There used to be a sort of rule of thumb that if a project looked controversial, the Forest Service wouldn’t pursue a categorical exclusion (in part because they may be difficult to defend in court). The new agency policy appears to be to thumb its nose.