It seems to be a little-known benefit of forest plans, but they can be used to support decisions to turn down requests for special use permits. The high profile case of a proposed Lolo Peak ski resort near Missoula made it to district court, where Judge Molloy upheld the Forest Service decision to reject the proponent plaintiffs’ request. The process for initial screening of a proposal requires a finding that it would be consistent with the forest plan. In this case, the court reviewed the forest plan direction for the area proposed for development and found that the Forest Service was not arbitrary in finding that a ski area would not meet the goals and standards of the various management areas. It didn’t help that the developer had already built ski runs on the private land, and photographs of them were used to demonstrate how the ski area would not meet visual quality requirements in the forest plan. (This is what I see across the valley every time I drive into town.)
Jon Haber
Northwest Forest Plan successes (Geos)
Under the 2012 Planning Rule, the best available scientific information must be used to inform the assessment, which is then to be used to determine the need to change a forest plan. The Geos Institute has gotten out ahead of the pack with its ‘assessment.’ I’m most interested in this:
“Scientists involved in the Northwest Forest Plan recognized that even with the Plan’s protective standards it would take at least a century to restore the late-successional (mature and old growth) forest ecosystem reduced by logging to a fraction (<20%) of its historical extent. While it is premature to judge the efficacy of a 100-year plan in just two decades, scientific assessments have shown that it has achieved many of its ecosystem management targets.”
The Planning Rule specifically requires that forest plans “include plan components, including standards or guidelines, to maintain or restore the ecological integrity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and watersheds in the plan area …” Ecological integrity requires that ecological characteristics like composition and structure “occur within the natural range of variation.” With regard to wide-ranging at-risk species (such as spotted owls), the Planning Rule requires “plan components, including standards or guidelines, to maintain or restore ecological conditions within the plan area to contribute to maintaining a viable population of the species within its range.”
Assuming that “<20% of its historical extent” is at least in the ballpark, what is the rationale (and the supporting best available scientific information) for changing forest plans to allow increased levels of logging of late-successional forest ecosystems? (Has the ‘bare minimum’ changed, or has the science behind how to achieve it?)
National monuments as an incentive for place-based planning
“The Bears Ears proposal comes amid Rep. Rob Bishop’s regional land-use planning initiative and a growing sense that if Utah doesn’t do something to protect threatened public lands such as Cedar Mesa, President Barack Obama could be persuaded to declare another national monument in the state before he leaves office.”
A connection I hadn’t made before.
This also got me to look at Rep. Bishop’s website on his “Public Lands Initiative,” which describes a county-based approach to negotiating some land use decisions. Pretty thorough, with lots of partners, but does this process include any kind of effects analysis (especially where it’s not obvious that wildlife concerns are well-represented).
Usettling Forest Service settlement
The continuing judicial story of the South Canyon Road on the Jarbridge River (where the first battle was fought with shovels).
Legal arguments center on an 1866 law that established so-called RS 2477 roads by granting states and counties the right of way to build highways on federal lands… The government denies such a right of way exists. But under political pressure, the Forest Service signed a settlement agreement in 2003 with assurances it no longer would challenge the county’s claim.
The Wilderness Society and Great Old Broads for Wilderness sued to block the deal, saying U.S. officials lacked the authority to cede control of the road and shirked their responsibility to protect the bull trout. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and tossed the agreement out in 2005, before the agency signed a similar deal in 2011 and conservationists sued again.
Congress supports unloading national forests
From a New York Times op-ed by the president of the Trust for Public Land:
Last week, the United States Senate voted 51 to 49 to support an amendment to a nonbinding budget resolution to sell or give away all federal lands other than the national parks and monuments.
This was bad enough. But it followed a 228-to-119 vote in the House of Representatives approving another nonbinding resolution that said “the federal estate is far too large” and voiced support for reducing it and “giving states and localities more control over the resources within their boundaries.” Doing so, the resolution added, “will lead to increased resource production and allow states and localities to take advantage of the benefits of increased economic activity.”
The measures, supported only by the Republicans who control both houses, were symbolic. But they laid down a marker that America’s public lands, long held in trust by the government for its people, may soon be up for grabs.
Is this purely symbolic, or does it mean a Republican president in 2017 would get a bill to do this, and would sign it? Should maybe the Republican presidential candidates be asked what they would do?
The Forest Service as Noah
High-elevation headwater streams that provide refuge for native bull trout and cutthroat trout would remain cold enough even under the worst warming scenarios to protect and support them. These streams, in places like Central Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains, can carry these native trout through the global warming bottleneck – when many species will disappear – that scientists say the world faces even if nations are able to stop the rise in greenhouse gases. “They are like Noah’s ark for bull trout and cutthroat,” Isaak said.
In February, Isaak and Young briefed forest officials and others working collaboratively across Idaho to restore the health of forest ecosystems while providing jobs for rural communities. The briefing gave local land managers like those on the Boise National Forest a chance to see how their plans fit into these “climate shields.” “There were a few areas in the Lowman District and in the upper Boise,” said David Olson, a Boise National Forest spokesman.
Said Isaak: “The hope is that the information provides a strategic tool that can be used to make more efficient local investments in stream restoration and protection projects, so that the broadest possible distributions of cutthroat trout and bull trout remain later this century.”
Isaak’s Noah’s ark approach won’t just help aquatic species, but also can help managers determine what other habitat will remain viable as warmer winters, earlier runoff and increased wildfire accelerate with warming temperatures. Wolverine biologists are looking at many of the same areas, Young said. Pika, lynx and other mammals that depend on cool summers or good snowpack may find refuge in Idaho’s high country.
This story describes a concrete step towards being strategic about climate change by identifying areas that should be used to build the ‘ark.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t make the connection to national forest plans, where strategic choices about management priorities need to be made. It will be interesting to see how the Nez Perce-Clearwater forest plan revision incorporates this strategy.
Counties want into the Forest Service budget process
“Siskiyou supervisors want a say in national forest budget process.”
That would be collaborative, wouldn’t it? As long as other interested parties are invited to the party, too.
Clearwater travel plan remanded (again)
Environmental plaintiffs successfully overturned the Clearwater National Forest travel plan in district court (newspaper coverage here). There are some implications for forest planning.
The court found the travel plan to be inconsistent with the forest plan’s requirement for elk habitat effectiveness (EHE) because it used the same methodology to evaluate EHE that was used for the forest plan. The methodology currently used (that the Forest Service helped develop) had added trails with motorized use to its road density calculations. The court considered this to be the best available science, which must be used in determining consistency with the forest plan, even though that creates (as the Forest Service put it) a ‘moving target’ for NFMA consistency. That’s an interesting argument for the Forest Service to make because the trend is for forest plans to defer more determinations to the project level, instead of having more specific direction in a forest plan.
The court also explained what is needed to demonstrate that an action ‘minimizes’ some outcome. (This case was specifically about ‘minimization’ criteria in an Executive Order related to motorized use, but the term is commonly found in forest plans.) Project documentation must explain exactly how a project was designed to meet the minimization criteria. General discussion of the criteria was not sufficient in this case.
The court upheld the NEPA analysis for the travel plan. However, it may have given the Forest Service a break by basing that decision on the fact that the decision was for an ‘entire forest’ and that it was ‘programmatic.’ The idea that NEPA analysis can be less demanding for broad-scale or programmatic decisions stems from the existence of another NEPA decision prior to actual impacts. While that is true for decisions to close roads (closure orders), it is not true for decisions to open roads.
(Since the Clearwater previously settled with motorized users in a case before a different Idaho judge, who kept the travel plan in effect, I’m not sure where this remand leaves travel planning on the Clearwater – especially in the context of ongoing revision of the Nez Perce-Clearwater forest plan.)
Flathead forest plan revision NOI
The Notice of Intent to initiate scoping for the Flathead revision EIS has been published and comments are due by May 5. Here is a newspaper article. Here is the website. Here is my summary of the summary of the changes needed from the current plan:
- 2012 Planning Rule requirements. Eight specific categories of requirements are described.
- Grizzly bear habitat management. Relevant portions of a new interagency draft grizzly bear conservation strategy will be incorporated to provide regulatory mechanisms that could support de-listing. It would generally follow the model from the existing plan (given its apparent success at promoting recovery), and would add some plan components for a larger area, including connectivity zones.
- Bull trout and native fish habitat. It would replace the Inland Native Fish Strategy with ‘equivalent’ direction, but would not include numeric riparian management objectives or a requirement for watershed analysis prior to projects.
- Canada lynx habitat management. It would replace the current Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction with a modified version. Changes would include additional exceptions to allow precommercial thinning. Mapped lynx habitat has also been updated.
- Inventoried roadless areas. In accordance with the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, they will be removed from lands suitable for timber production. Other decisions to be made in these areas involve recreation opportunities and travel management.
- Old growth forests. Current plan requirements to retain existing old growth would be included in the revised plan, but changes would be made in how to provide snags and down woody material in the long term, and to address landscape pattern.
- Winter motorized recreation. There would be no net increase in designated over-snow routes or play areas, but boundaries would change and offsetting additions and reductions would be made to two areas.
(Timber harvest is apparently not included as a ‘change’ because the volume objectives are comparable to recent volumes sold.)
There are some unusual things going on with the wildlife direction in the proposed plan. First, the Forest Service has recognized that including a consistent and scientifically defensible conservation strategy for grizzly bears in its forest plans throughout the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem is its best hope of providing adequate regulatory mechanisms that will allow the species to be delisted. That is the same philosophy that was behind the Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction, and to some extent the Inland Native Fish Strategy. And yet with changes in the Flathead plan, the Forest Service may be starting to disassemble those consistent and scientifically defensible strategies piece by piece. That would be in line with expectations of the Fish and Wildlife Service IF the forest-specific changes are needed to achieve the original purpose of the strategy, but addressing forest-specific conditions (using best available scientific information). It would probably be out of line, and not supportive of recovery, if it simply represents disagreement with the original direction (which was imposed by a higher authority).
It will be interesting to see how the Forest Service manages this process at a broader scale, and whether it is setting a precedent for disassembling the Northwest Forest Plan and other broad-scale conservation strategies through plan revisions.