Jon Haber

ESA lawsuits: fair and balanced

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Environmental litigants seem to be a favorite target these days of both Congressional hearings and criticism on this blog.  So after reading (here) about a recent lawsuit that led to DE-listing of species, I decided to look into what these anti-environmental plaintiffs were trying to accomplish with it.  What we have (here) is an exact mirror image of the litigation strategy to list species under ESA, and the same reason they won – failure to meet deadlines.

In this example, plaintiff’s reasons for de-listing have nothing to do with the species or restrictions resulting from the listing.  The species will still be protected.  As the other article says, the lawsuit was merely “symbolic.”  Harassment maybe.  Now wasn’t defending against it a good use of our tax dollars?

Just saying – it’s ok to talk about whether limiting litigation is a good idea, but let’s not suggest that judicial review inherently favors any particular position.

 

A New Year of Forest Planning under the 2012 Rule

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The Sierra, Sequoia and Inyo national forests have released their first ‘decisions’ in their plan revision process as early adopters under the 2012 planning rule.  Their ‘Preliminary Need for Change’ can be found here:

Click to access stelprdb5444578.pdf

Some things I found interesting:

“Under current plan revision timeline, it is possible to address only a few emphasis areas.”  I wonder what role collaboration played in setting deadlines, or how well collaboration can work if there are deadlines (especially if not collaboratively agreed upon).

“Not all changes must be addressed now.”  Have you revised a plan if you put off revising parts of it?

“Single species management approaches in the current plans limit landscape approaches that are critical to address dense forests and uncharacteristic fire.”  I’ll be looking for facts that support this statement, since viability of species of conservation concern is a key provision of the 2012 planning rule (and isn’t much different from the viability requirement of current plans).

“We are designing a programmatic plan. Most roads issues are more appropriately dealt with at the project level.”   Shouldn’t forest plans provide guidance for transportation systems and their use for both travel management planning and projects – excluding roads in some places or encouraging them in others?  Can a transportation network be designed project by project?  Hasn’t the FS said these kinds of questions are outside the scope of projects?

“Current forest plans emphasize fuel hazard reduction in the immediate area around WUI. This has led to less treatment in the surrounding wildland landscape.  … Increased pace and scale of restoration of resilience in the surrounding, larger landscape would have a substantial effect on fire threat in the WUI.”  From numerous posts here, this seems debatable.  Does this mean the plan needs to emphasize fuel hazard reduction beyond the WUI and less treatment in the WUI?