Sharon

More on What RO’s Do, and the Views of One Recreation Program Manager

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Below I am posting a comment to the previous post on RO’s by Josh..

As I’ve said, the FS has had many efforts to cut costs (and focus on service delivery at the District level) over time.  Yesterday I was talking to someone who remembers the Transformation effort. He told me that the the group came up with the idea of having basically three RO-like entities for the country in terms of technical support, but actually continuing to have Regional Foresters and a few staff, mostly concerned about relationships, and not the rest of the things ROs do. Which I think are…

1. Provide technical expertise on how to do things

2. Be involved with budget allocation to Forests

3. Conduct activities that occur infrequently on forests (e.g., litigation prep)

4. Provide next level review, e.g. Objections and unit reviews.  About reviews, over my time in the FS they changed from being meaningful to being performative, both in R&D and in NFS; this was never more obvious than when we did a joint review with BLM who still took the concept seriously.  We in the Region ran the appeal/objection process, but all the folks doing the work were borrowed from Forests, although as I recall the Deputy RF decided on them.

5. Work on regional projects (e.g. Southern Rockies Lynx Amendment).

Conceivably Forest and District folks could be rounded up to do 5, but then that would be less work done at the Forest and District level.

If there were a simple answer, it probably would have already been done.

Anyway, I’d sure like to see the details of what the Transformation group came up with..

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Here’s one person’s experience of their RO.  I think the FS’s apparent inability to highlight recreation over time is one of the ongoing flaws in the system seemingly regardless of kind of Admin in place.

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I’ve been a Recreation and Wilderness program manager on a district for 22 years in R4. I can’t recall a time when I or many of my immediate colleagues had anything positive to say about many of the Regionals. Oh, individually I’ve had many solid working relationships that seemed to function as intended but the majority of the time it has seemed like the RO’s just been a major interfering pain in the ass. For the past 15 years now it’s gotten worse, with unresponsive, non-supportive staff at the RO doing who knows what, the Regions taking their cut of the budget for pet projects and doling out pittances to the Forests for budgets. For example, GAOA! One RO engineer got it in his head he wanted to be the guy with the big dollar prize project so he and he alone slapped a concept together for all of the back country airstrips in the region to get a massive upgrade. He operated in a black box of his own design, somehow got the funding then got in touch with the folks on the ground who actually managed and maintain many of these airstrips. Turns out not every single airstrip needed high dollar work like his project called for. Three years later we’re still attempting to sort out his mess and a year after this reality hit he left the Regional Office and handed his problem off to the next person up who ended up being some guy on a Forest within the Region.

We often say that the role of the Region is to facilitate the work on the Forests but in practice it seems more like roadblock due to power mongering or due to pet projects or interference due to egos who want credit or fear driven agendas masquerading as priorities such as the wildfire crisis strategy, which is now being wordsmithed.

Every few years the new Admin with help of the WO/RO rolls out a new shiny ball priority with an unfunded mandate for Recreation. Think 10-year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge. There has never been a well funded, direct focus on Recreation in my entire career. A few years ago Recreation seemed to be getting it’s due with a National program called Recreation as a Priority…we had hopes this would provide more manpower and more funding. It didn’t get a good rollout and a few years in many of us hadn’t heard bupkus, then things started to happen. We were standing up the temp to perm concept when it got entirely subsumed by every other resource area and before you knew it there was a massive hiring effort occurring forest service wide.
However due to it being wide open and less focused on recreation, it turned into a massive financial crisis.
The simple fact that the RO staff and budget officers didn’t draw a line in the sand and instead willingly walked the agency into this situation still blows my mind. Zero accountability.

The RO has played a pivotal role in setting all the Forests priorities including how fleet is administered. But now fleet eats 75% of my forest budget!! We can’t even right size rigs to programs because fleet is what we’re told by the RO. Its enough to make one sick. Now we currently face the new administration and the slapdash directives, terminations/reinstatements of the boots on the ground and a freeze on all external communication. Forest level EAs are being briefed all the way up to the WO and Dept level in order to determine if “controversy” exists and the project is alignment with the administrations goals. Insanity has peaked and I can’t see how the Regional Office does anything but make matters worse. They are currently tight lipped and not sharing any information about the coming RIF either.

I’m certainly not advocating for the dissolution of the Regional offices, but a hard look at performance and steering new expectations and standards would be welcome. I’m all for fixing what’s broke and solving problems, I’m a recreation practitioner, that’s what we do! But I don’t support a bull in a china shop approach either.

 

Sammy Roth on the Power Companies and Taxpayers Wildfire Prevention Funding Problem in California

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John Thomas commented about power companies, wildfires, and ratepayers and I ran across this this morning. Sammy Roth of the LA Times used to be a reporter, and now his byline is “climate columnist” probably due to some of his op-ed like previous reporting on climate. With that caveat, it’s easy to read over climate-y asides (e.g. “with global warming speeding up”) and focus on the look at the mitigation funding problem.

A Coulson CH-47 Chinook helitanker funded by Southern California Edison drops fire retardant over a field during a 2023 demonstration in Irwindale. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Uncomfortable truth time: The biggest reason California’s electric rates are rising so fast is that utility companies are spending billions of dollars each year to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Does that mean Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric should spend less money trimming trees, burying power lines and funding night-flying Chinook helitankers?

That question is central to a raging debate in Sacramento over how to tame out-of-control utility bills. From 2019 through 2023, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E were collectively authorized to add $27 billion in wildfire-related costs to customer rates, according to the California Public Utilities Commission — 18% of their overall system costs.

Those wildfire-related costs caused bills to rise between 7% and 12% for the average residential customer — $24 per month for homes served by PG&E, $18 for Edison customers and $13 for SDG&E customers.

“The cost of doing nothing is enormous,” Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), who chairs the Utilities and Energy Committee, said this month at an oversight hearing on utility wildfire spending.

Before the Eaton and Palisades fires devastated Los Angeles County, there was momentum among lawmakers to reduce bills by steering utilities away from burying electric lines — a surefire but expensive way to avoid ignitions during dry, windy conditions. Burying local distribution lines — which is much less expensive than burying larger-scale, higher-voltage transmission lines — can still cost $3 million to $5 million per mile.

After the recent infernos, though, the political pendulum may swing back toward undergrounding, no matter the costs — even though there are less-expensive, highly effective fire-avoidance tools, such as “fast-trip” technology that shuts off power lines almost instantaneously when its detects the potential for an ignition event.

“Not having any risk from ignition requires an insane amount of spending,” said Matthew Freedman, an attorney for the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer watchdog group, in an interview.

When the “what if” happens, ADP prepares you for the “what’s next.”
We’ve seen a lot of changes in the work world. But an extra hour added to the day? Now that’s a new one.

Some losses can’t be measured in dollars and cents. Twenty-nine people died in the L.A. County fires.

Does that mean Edison, PG&E and SDG&E should be allowed to spend as much as possible to reduce fire risks — passing along those costs to ratepayers, often with an additional 10% profit margin for their investors?

No, definitely not.

But it does mean lawmakers and regulators face a terribly difficult balancing act as they scramble for solutions to the state’s affordability crisis, even as they look to protect Californians from worsening wildfires.

“This is a fiendishly difficult topic to try to come up with solutions,” Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura), who chairs a subcommittee on climate change, said at this month’s oversight hearing.

The fiendishness stems partly from the fact that global warming — fueled by coal, oil and gas combustion — has raised the likelihood of destructive blazes, and partly from the fact that people built so many sprawling cities and towns in parts of California that were prone to wildfire even before climate change.

The situation has reached crisis levels since 2017, with California suffering its nine largest fires and also its four most destructive fires on record. Several of those conflagrations — including the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and largely destroyed the town of Paradise — were sparked by electrical infrastructure.

Budget-conscious lawmakers have responded by letting Edison, PG&E and SDG&E do most of the heavy lifting of reducing wildfire risk — in effect sticking those utilities’ ratepayers, rather than all taxpayers, with the bill.

Since 2019, the companies have spent roughly $3 billion per year on wildfire prevention. The money goes toward tasks such as inspecting equipment, trimming trees near electrical towers and installing “covered conductors” on power lines that make them less likely to spark if they hit a tree branch during a wind storm.

Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers benefit from that work. But in many instances, so do millions of Californians who aren’t paying for it, including Los Angeles residents served by the L.A. Department of Water and Power.

One astonishing example: Since 2021, Edison customers have paid more than $100 million to help fund a fleet of state-of-the-art firefighting helicopters for the L.A., Orange and Ventura County fire departments. The helitankers are capable of working through the night and dumping massive amounts of water and retardant.

They’re available for use no matter how a fire started — even outside of Edison’s service territory.

“Even when fires escape initial attack and continue to burn out of control, the [Edison-funded fleet] has had its victories, including during the L.A. fires,” Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy told lawmakers at the recent oversight hearing. The aircraft, he said, “helped save Brentwood live on television.”

Edison isn’t funding the helitankers solely out of the goodness of its heart: The more the utility can do to limit the damage from fires sparked by its equipment, the less damage to its bottom line. Edison executives have been reminded of that reality as the utility confronts dozens of lawsuits over the Eaton fire, which many victims believe was ignited by one of its transmission lines. State and local officials are still investigating the cause.

Regardless, Edison shouldn’t have to keep paying for the helitankers indefinitely — not when the utility’s millions of customers are bearing the costs, and when all Southern Californians are reaping the benefits.

And consider this: Even as Edison, PG&E and SDG&E spend $3 billion per year on fire prevention, state taxpayers as a whole typically spend just a few hundred million dollars per year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The burden of preventing fires is falling disproportionately on Edison, PG&E and SDG&E ratepayers.

That’s just not fair. Even if you don’t live in an area that’s at high risk of fire, you’re still probably breathing wind-borne smoke that’s terrible for your lungs and heart. You’re still dealing with the consequences of heat-trapping carbon pollution unleashed by burning forests, such as deadlier heat waves and more intense droughts.

And even if state officials want some Californians to pay more for fire prevention, electric rates are a terrible way to divvy up the costs. High utility bills disproportionately burden low-income and middle-class families, eating up a bigger chunk of their monthly budgets. Rising rates have hurt those households most of all.

The results are clear in the data: Nearly one in five Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers are behind on their bills, according to the Public Utilities Commission. That’s more than 2.2 million customers, owing $769 on average.

The most straightforward solution would be for lawmakers to stop letting utilities do so much wildfire prevention and start paying for more of those projects out of the state budget. That way, the burden would fall on all Golden State taxpayers, not just Edison, PG&E and SDG&E customers — a much more equitable strategy, especially given California’s progressive income tax system, which requires higher earners to pay more.

Mohit Chhabra, a senior analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, supports that approach. In a recent report, he encouraged state officials to find funding sources other than electric rates for important programs — not only wildfire prevention, but also energy efficiency incentives and low-income utility bill discounts.

“Of course, it’s easier said than done,” Chhabra acknowledged in an interview.

Indeed, despite an initial $322-billion budget proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom for next year, the governor and lawmakers face a giant juggling act of competing priorities. And unfortunately, climate rarely seems to rank high on the list, despite its importance to voters — and the existential threat posed by rising temperatures.

That dynamic was on display at the recent oversight hearing, as several lawmakers seemed hesitant to commit to spending more on wildfire prevention. At one point, Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) asked a PG&E executive, “Is there a way we can give some relief for ratepayers without turning to the taxpayers?”

Bennett, too, said he was “not convinced that we’ve made a good case to change things away from the ratepayer doing it.” He expressed encouragement that PG&E has said its rates should stabilize this year, and suggested that perhaps the skyrocketing electric rates of the last few years won’t continue.

“I hope we don’t have a knee-jerk — which is oftentimes what happens in the democratic process — a knee-jerk reaction to one problem, and then create another problem because we’re trying to fight that last thing,” he said.

If you ask me, that’s wishful thinking.

Maybe the last few years were as bad as it’s going to get, with residential rates increasing between 48% and 67% for PG&E, SDG&E and Edison customers from 2019 through 2023. But it’s hard to imagine this problem resolving itself. Not with global warming speeding up. Not with more than 150,000 miles of overhead wires crisscrossing a state home to tens of millions of fire-prone acres — and countless communities spread across those acres.

No, lawmakers and Newsom will have to own this one. Hard decisions lie ahead.

The problem, as Stanford University energy and climate scholar Michael Wara sees it, is that California “wants to spend as little money on wildfires as possible” — when in truth taxpayers are on the hook no matter what.

When I talked with Wara, he had just finished touring the Eaton fire burn zone in Altadena — a gut-wrenching experience. He listed a few of the ways Californians will be paying for the devastation for many years, including rebuilding costs, higher insurance premiums, healthcare for smoke inhalation, taxes that fund Cal Fire and more.

Some lawmakers may not want to burden taxpayers with more spending. But taxpayers are already burdened by the high cost of wildfires. Edison, PG&E and SDG&E ratepayers bear the additional cost of wildfire prevention.

“It’s the same people spending the money,” Wara said. “Taxpayers, ratepayers, insurance premium payers.”

The unavoidable reality is that wildfires are expensive, especially in an era of climate crisis. California will need to keep spending huge sums to lower the risk of ignitions, and to prepare for the fires that inevitably do ignite.

The politically difficult questions are who pays, how much they pay and what exactly they’re paying for. Is burying more power lines the answer? Or are there lower-cost solutions? What if those solutions involve blackouts?

It’s time for lawmakers to grapple with those questions. I’ll have a few suggestions in next Thursday’s column.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

I’ll post Sammy’s suggestions next week.

Wildfires Can Be Bad for Endangered Species And They Shoot Squirrels Don’t They?

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I thought it might be worth taking a look at the study Greg Walcher (former Colorado DNR director among other things) he refers to in a post today.

In 2017 the Arizona Game and Fish Department estimated that there were only 252 Mount Graham red squirrels left. They only inhabited a few hundred acres in the 10,000-foot Pinaleño Mountains, not equipped to survive the heat of the surrounding deserts. Then, a lightning strike started a 48,000-acre fire in that section of the Coronado National Forest, incinerating all but 35 of the Mount Graham squirrels in existence. Federal and state wildlife officials thought the species faced likely extinction.

It is a more common story than you might think. The Journal Science published a study in 2020 called “Fire and biodiversity in the Anthropocene,” analyzing the danger of wildfires to threatened and endangered species. Across nine taxonomic groups, the study found that “at least 1,071 species are categorized as threatened by an increase in fire frequency or intensity…” That included 16 percent of all endangered mammals, nearly 20 percent of listed birds, and almost a third of non-flowering plants such as evergreen trees.

Recent wildfires in California reportedly pushed dozens of species to the brink of extinction, utterly devastating miles of habitat that will take decades to recover. Less widely reported was how many endangered birds and animals were burned in those fires (nobody really wants to see that on TV), but as the study euphemistically concluded, “wildlife often cannot adapt quickly enough to escape rapid changes in fire patterns.”

In Colorado we know the extreme fire seasons of 2002 and 2020 destroyed much of the habitat for the Mexican spotted owl, and the Hayman Fire alone destroyed over half the known habitat of a rare yellow butterfly called the Pawnee montane skipper. In California the same is now said of the mountain yellow-legged frog and the Amargosa vole, both of which are now nearing extinction. Burning most of them alive certainly didn’t help.

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One bit of good news: contrary to the dire predictions, there are more than 200 Mount Graham red squirrels again, apparently more adaptable than the “experts” expected.

I found the study which is a synthesis paper,  it seems to have a paywall, so I can’t tell how much work went into it.

Our synthesis shows that interactions with anthropogenic drivers such as global climate change, land use, and biotic invasions are transforming fire activity and its impacts on biodiversity. More than 4400 terrestrial and freshwater species from a wide range of taxa and habitats face threats associated with modified fire regimes. Many species are threatened by an increase in fire frequency or intensity, but exclusion of fire in ecosystems that need it can also be harmful. The prominent role of human activity in shaping global ecosystems is the hallmark of the Anthropocene and sets the context in which models and actions must be developed. Advances in predictive modeling deliver new opportunities to couple fire and biodiversity data and to link them with forecasts of multiple drivers including drought, invasive plants, and urban growth. Making these connections also provides an opportunity for new actions that could revolutionize how society manages fire. Emerging actions include reintroduction of mammals that reduce fuels, green fire breaks comprising low-flammability plants, strategically letting wildfires burn under the right conditions, managed evolution of populations aided by new genomics tools, and deployment of rapid response teams to protect biodiversity assets. Indigenous fire stewardship and reinstatement of cultural burning in a modern context will enhance biodiversity and human well-being in many regions of the world. At the same time, international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are crucial to reduce the risk of extreme fire events that contribute to declines in biodiversity.

Seems to me that targeted fire suppression to protect species habitat  is quite  valuable, although it doesn’t seem to be on this list. Also the 35 left and back to 200 story.

Here’s what the USFWS is doing to help the Mt. Graham Red Squirrel (known as MGRS), including various silvicultural manipulations of interest, pheromones, cone collection, fuel treatment projects, as well as supplemental feeding and shooting Abert squirrels to decrease competition.  Perhaps it’s less controversial than the PNW owl shooting for various reasons? Birds vs. squirrels have different advocates? Numbers and dollars involved?  What do the Arizonans out there think?

Post- St. Patrick’s Day FS News Roundup

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Illlegal pot grows were a big thing on the Chic- Nic about 10 years or so ago, I wonder if they still are? See new item #4.

(1) We still don’t have a of the USDA AARP; it would be interesting to get Interior’s as well, at least the parts that refer to the FS and BLM.   We could FOIA them, and will if we can’t get it. But we are still waiting on FOIAs from last year, so.. Here’s a link to what’s supposed to be in them. Below is an excerpt.

  1. II. Principles to Inform ARRPs
    ARRPs should seek to achieve the following:
    1. Better service for the American people;2
    2. Increased productivity;
    3. A significant reduction in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by
    eliminating positions that are not required;
    4. A reduced real property footprint; and
    5. Reduced budget topline.
    Pursuant to the President’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination
    of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient
    delivery of their statutorily-required functions.
    Agencies should also seek to consolidate areas of the agency organization chart that are
    duplicative; consolidate management layers where unnecessary layers exist; seek reductions in
    components and positions that are non-critical; implement technological solutions that automate
    routine tasks while enabling staff to focus on higher-value activities; close and/or consolidate
    regional field offices to the extent consistent with efficient service delivery; and maximally reduce
    the use of outside consultants and contractors. When taking these actions, agencies should align
    closures and/or relocation of bureaus and offices with agency return-to-office actions to avoid
    multiple relocation benefit costs for individual employees.
    Agencies should review their statutory authority and ensure that their plans and actions are
    consistent with such authority.

(2) The Hotshot Wakeup had a podcast out yesterday on the Oklahoma fires, more resignations, and some discussions he had with people at the Forest Service  Now, we don’t know that that what those folks said is the the case, because he heard from some “sources not allowed to speak on record.” At the same time, many traditional outlets use the same kind of sources including our main other outlet, E&E News.  A brief summary: RF’s taking deferred resignation, there were plans floated to get rid of Regions before new Admin due to budget crisis, 9 Regions brought down to 3, budget saving, budget is in so much trouble- how dire it was.  When THW asked about where the bucks went, a source said that  BIL and IRA given billions give the bucks to NGOs, they were asked to get the money out ASAP, slush fund recycled into political campaigns, organizations friendly to those in power at the time.  Negligence or on purpose, the source’s  opinion was that it was on purpose, and the new Admin   ” inherited a budgetary nightmare”.

How could we know what the truth is?  Someone from relatively high in the food chain would have to tell us, and they are  unlikely to do so; either they’re still working or signing agreements about what not to talk about.  Certainly there was an unusual  cone of silence about the Keystone Agreements that Dave Mertz and I could not penetrate completely.  We did not receive answers from the folks administering the program, and many of my usual sources stopped talking to me entirely when I brought up the subject.  At the same time,  giving funding to your friends is part of being in an Admin.. but it’s the recycling to political campaigns that seems unlikely or unusual.  At the same time, people delving into the National Baptist/Coconino project wondered about some of the organizations skimming bucks in the name of equity (check out the comments and links to organizations). We only heard about the NBC  grant via a whistleblower who was concerned about the religious connection; how many more of these (non- Keystones) are out there?  How could we even find out where these apparently extra layers of overhead would ultimately go?

(3). Instead of an all-employees meeting for Forest Service employees, Chief Schultz had a “Chat with the Chief” video, in which he answered questions from specific employees. I think they missed the historical boat on this video by not mentioning Chief Silcox, but it didn’t affect the main point, that the Chief was new to the agency and that that is unusual.  I don’t think the format works, as the length makes it superficial for anything worth diving into.  Plus, I’m sure that the District Ranger is worth getting to know, but the time constraints mean that any hints of interestingness tend to get squeezed out.  On the other hand, everyone (non-employees) can watch it, so that part is good.   On the third hand, before current technologies we employees never had ‘all employees’ meetings” and we never missed them, so there’s that.  Rumor has it that the Chief wanted to do a deeper dive, but “everyone has a boss.”

(4)  We’ve all heard about grants being held up (but some are not, this seems confusing) but this E&E story was about a grant to the FS that the FS decided not to take. The title of the E&E News story was:

 Forest Service halts grant for cleaning up illegal Calif. cannabis operations

The $989,400 grant was intended for the removal of waste and of infrastructure illegally diverting water in 10 counties in Northern California. It also was intended to include “development of a training program to formalize reclamation protocols to meet USFS and BLM safety standards” in order to increase the number of nonprofit groups around the state qualified to remove trespass grows from public lands.

CDFW told POLITICO that none of the activities outlined in the project plan had yet been conducted by the USFS, and the funds will be reallocated to other grant programs.
In the subcommittee hearing last week, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Larry Lopez told lawmakers that illegal pesticides like carbofuran smuggled in for use on unlicensed cannabis grows were having a terrible impact on California’s public lands.
“This poses a severe public health threat and contributes to the environment degradation,”

I don’t know, but it sounds like it might be dangerous. Carbofuran is really bad stuff… and maybe the growers would return while non-profit groups are attempting to remediate  trespass grows? Sounds scary.

The move comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s layoffs at federal agencies — including USDA (which oversees the USFS) and the Department of the Interior (which oversees BLM) — and frozen federal grant projects. It also comes as Congress considers legislation that would increase federal funding to do cleanup of illicit cannabis grows on federal lands around the country. The bill had a hearing in the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands last week.

Sadly, both those links go to Politico Pro instead of the hearing or legislation, so I had to try to find it..

It might be this bill (from 2023)..

This bill will:

  • Authorize $250 million over five years for the Forest Service to use Superfund toxic waste remediation authorities to address environmental damages caused by the release of banned pesticides on federal lands for cannabis cultivation; and
  • Raise the criminal penalties for using banned pesticides in illegal cannabis cultivation to a maximum of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in criminal fines to establish parity with the criminal penalties for smuggling banned pesticides into the U.S. The U.S. Sentencing Commission would then be required to review and update its sentencing guidelines for these crimes.

The idea for the bill came from a series of investigative stories by San Diego journalist J.W. August published in the Times of San Diego.

In 2019, the San Diego-based Border Pesticide Initiative was formed with members of the Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Homeland Security, California Department of Toxic Substances Control, and the City Attorney’s Office. In 2021, the group announced it had prosecuted over 50 defendants and seized over 1,000 containers of illegal pesticides.

Reps. Peters and LaMalfa first introduced this bill in October 2022.

It made me wonder how much of a problem this is outside of California. I remember there were issues in Colorado as well.

Co-Stewardship is Great, Say Conservation Groups.. Except When We Disagree With Tribes

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Please be patient as you follow me down this bunny trail.

It started with our discussion which seems to have been in an Oregonian letter by Ingalsbee and Wheeler mentioned  by Steve Wilent in a comment.

The inclusion of tribal co-stewardship and Indigenous knowledge represents a profound change that goes beyond undoing past wrongs to Indigenous peoples — it will help restore species, habitats and landscape diversity. But these benefits are under threat. The Trump administration now threatens to subvert the progressive prospects of the Northwest Forest amendment by its effort to banish the words “diversity” and “inclusion.”

1) Certainly the Oregonian is not The Smokey Wire, but it probably doesn’t matter what the “generic Trump Admin” says about abstractions.. what probably matters is what the new Chief,  and the Secs of Int and Ag think about the topic, specifically, co-stewardship and co-management. We’ve discussed those before in detail last year, riffing on a Mother Jones story.

but 2) I know people make the claim that co-stewardship will “help restore” those thing; but co-stewardship, again, is kind of a generic abstraction.  I’m sure that the FACA recommending folks for the Northwest Forest Plan would be more specific, because I have much respect for them, and perhaps someone else can look it up or knows offhand what page it’s on..

But folks keep making that claim,  like this generic statement (in bold) by a professor at the Yale School of the Environment:

Gonzales-Rogers is hopeful that, exponentially, these choices will compound, “and may even have a nexus to say something like landback” a reference to a movement that is not only rooted in a mass return of land to Indigenous nations and peoples, but also tribes having sovereignty to steward the land that was taken from them.

Gonzales-Rogers thinks the two terms have not been very well-defined over the years, but said co-stewardship agreements might be a good way to start building to co-management.

And the more tribes have autonomy over their ancestral lands, the better it is for conservation goals. According to a recent study, equal partnerships between tribes and governments are the best way to protect public lands — the more tribal autonomy, the better the land is taken care of.

This seems like an odd generic statement to make. It’s one of those statements that I think people keep saying because they operate at the abstraction level, and not at the observational level. I’ve run into those kinds of statements a few times in my career, and in my experience it can be an academic/media echo chamber.  And it seems that  the folks with the observations are never brought into the conversation, nor is there an opportunity to have the discussion. It’s kind of like a policy mantra.

Then there was our post earlier this year on George Wuerther’s idea of the “Indian Iron Curtain” and his review of Native Alaskan support for energy projects. In fact, if you scroll down on the right, there are categories for posts, and if you look on Tribes you’ll see that we’ve had many posts on this topic.

People in Tribes are ultimately people. And people disagree with each other. Like other folks, they handle decisions that have to be made jointly via some kind of governmental organization. So folks who make claims that “autonomy is the best way to protect public lands” have a great deal of confidence not only in the philosophies of individual Tribal members, but of the ability of Tribal governments to act in the way that some individuals would define as “conservation.”

Let’s look at some observations of where conservation organizations and Tribes apparently do not agree. Some have argued that the definition of “conservation” is a Euro-American concept, so that is a bit of a philosophical issue, but still relevant.

There is the Ute support of the litigated oil train, which Colorado is against.
The Navajo did a deal with Energy Resources allowing uranium access (but not all Navajos agreed with their government, duh, see above).
The Navajo did not agree with the buffer zone around Chaco Canyon (apparently Pueblo and Navajo did not agree).

Conservation groups were against the Izembeck Road (apparently because doing what the King Cove people want would “set a dangerous precedent by undermining conservation laws.”

In our world,

The Kalispels supported the Sxwuytn-Kanisksu Connections Trail Project which was litigated by AWR.

And the Black Ram project, poster child of the “Climate Forest Campaign”, the project supported by the Kootenai.

“The Tribe supports the Black Ram project, because it protects our Ktunaxa resources, furthers restoration of Ktunaxa Territory forests and was developed through our government-to-government relationship with the United States Forest Service,” said Gary Aitken, Jr., Vice-Chairman, Kootenai Tribe of Idaho.

But apparently not by the below groups, who support the Climate Forest Campaign (there are more, but I think everyone from Earthjustice to FUSEE (the very Ingalbee of the Oregonion op-ed) gets the point across.  Sometimes when some folks are for “co-stewardship” they seem to think that means.. ?unless the Tribes want to do something we don’t support.”

Some organizations who consider themselves “conservation organizations” are not in favor of cutting trees;  for some, pretty much not on private, state, nor federal land, and yet many Tribes have forest management programs, and some have their own sawmills.

In fact, there is an active Intertribal Timber Council.

It seems that another op-ed could be written on how by deferring to the wishes of some environmental groups (aka “conservation organizations”) the Biden Admin went against the will of Tribes as evidenced by their Tribal Governments.  In fact, I attended a webinar early in the Biden Admin on oil and gas policies and the two Tribal organizations (Native Alaskans and that spoke both preferred “all of the above.”

 

 

 

Comment Reminders: Three Doors of Charitable Speech, Generalizing About Groups, and Sticking to the Topic

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Gentle reminder:

When commenting, please consider the three doors that charitable speech must pass through. The gatekeeper at the door asks, “Is it true?” The second gatekeeper asks, “Is it helpful?” The third gatekeeper asks, “Is it kind?” (adapted from the writings of Krishnamurti by James Martin on p. 169 of his book “Between Heaven and Mirth.)

There are many new people here so, to reiterate:

Here we don’t make broad claims about groups of people.  We stick to our own experience, and use the word “some” a lot. Like “some” FS employees do this or that, or some political operatives from X party, or…  The more specific your claim is, the better we understand.  This is not the place to decry generic evils of generic groups.

Also here we stick to the topic.  Any Admin or Congress may, and will, do all kinds of things we don’t agree with. But we don’t switch from the topic at hand to something else.

Jon’s post on the GSA leases is an excellent example.  He picked a topic and related it to the FS and BLM.

I’ve not approved some comments recently because they veered off topic or made unnecessary generalizations about groups.  If you remove those sentences they will be approved.

For new people, I will give you a chance and point out the problems the first or first few times.

 

More on FEMA and Hermit’s Peak Calf Canyon, With a Side Visit to California Fuelbreaks: Joe Reddan

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Joe Reddan requested that his Comment in response to Jonn Thomas regarding the politicized FEMA response to the 2022 Hermit’s Peak /Calf Canyon Fire be posted. It couldn’t be inserted in the Comment section because of featuring a photograph: https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/03/07/jim-petersen-and-evergreen-on-usfs-chief-tom-schultz/comment-page-1/#comment-534102

Joe worked for the USFS for 37 years, with six as District Ranger for the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District where the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire took place. He is currently Chief Forester and consultant for Flexilis Forestry, LLC, with offices in Colorado and California

Signing of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for $75 million “earmarked” to Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) for “shaded fuel breaks in the Pacific Regions.” L-R California Representative Doug LaMalfa; former USFS Chief Randy Moore, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and SPI Chair and Chief Financial Officer Mark Emmerson. Note fuel break poster in the background. February 27, 2025 photo courtesy Flicker, USDA.

 

John Thomas, Jr.: Good points on the Moon Light Fire! Continuing our dialogue, here is a summary of the current Continuing Resolution (CR) forking out money to FEMA under the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Wildfire Recovery Act and $75 million to Sierra Pacific Industries for fuel breaks.

Note from Sharon, as of earlier today this is the Dec. 21, 2024 CR, not today’s (out of Senate March 14, 2025) CR

American Relief Act Resolution (November 2024 – March 14,  2025) Continuing Resolution (CR) (PL 118-58)

FEMA:

$1,500,000 supplemental to the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Restitution, on top of $4 billion appropriated in the Ukraine Supplemental of 2022, Division G.

 

FOREST SERVICE

Forest Service Operations:                     $68,100,000

Forest and Rangeland Research:            $26,000,000

State, Private & Tribal Forestry:            $208,000,000*

 

* includes Forest Health Protection (FHP) of  $14,000,000 primarily in Maine, for Eastern Spruce Budworm control.

 

NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM           $2,523,000,000*

 

*includes $2,448,000,000 mitigation of wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters for the years of 2022, 2023, and 2024, of which $75,000,000 is for “shaded fuel breaks in the Pacific Regions.”

 

Authority: Recruit and directly appoint personnel into the competitive service not withstanding all of the personnel laws until September 20, 2029.

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For those who wondered how the FS could fund the shaded fuel breaks when it couldn’t hire back temporaries, this explains that the funding was a specific earmark.

 

Hurray Firefighter Pay is Permanent.. Finally and No Government Shutdown!

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This is great news for wildland firefighters and their families, for people who support wildland firefighters, and for people who are tired of waging this campaign.

I tried to find a story with the details. Here’s an  NBC news story

Federal wildland firefighters secured a permanent pay raise Friday after years of waiting for Congress to answer their plea.

Included in the spending bill approved by Congress is a new pay scale and incident-response premium pay, which would apply to employees assigned to active fires.

The bill next goes to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

The new pay scale means firefighters will keep their temporary pay raises of either $20,000 annually or 50% of their base salary, enacted in 2021 under the Biden administration.

Firefighters will not be eligible for premium pay for fires contained within 36 hours. The pay will be calculated at 450% of their hourly base rate for each day a firefighter is on an active fire and will be limited to a total of $9,000 in any calendar year.

This marks the first time federal firefighters will get paid for the hours they rest and sleep while away from home, which is standard practice in most municipal and state departments.

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The pay bump comes as federal firefighters recover from cuts to their ranks after the Agriculture Department, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, reinstated more than 5,000 probationary employees who had been fired in February. At least 2,000 of them had primary or secondary firefighting duties, according to the NFFE.

This was surprising to me.  I had heard the 70% figure for probationary employees with secondary firefighting duties, as primary firefighters were exempt, for those previously let go and now reinstated. But 2000 out of 5000 is 40%.  Have NFFE’s estimates changed? Did NBC quote them incorrectly? Why is it so difficult to get consistent numbers about employees?

 

If There Were No Regional Offices, Would We Have to Invent Them?

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It really makes you feel old when people you knew as young sprouts are retiring. Happy Retirement, Jennifer, if you are reading this!

Marc Heller of E&E News had a story today about people retiring and changing positions.

The most recent to announce their departures are Leanne Marten in the Northern Region, which covers parts of five states from Idaho to the Dakotas, and Jennifer Eberlien in the Pacific Southwest Region, covering California.

The retirements come as other reshufflings shake up the Forest Service in the new administration. Deputy Chief Chris French has been named acting associate chief — the agency’s second-in-charge — and Keith Lannom has left after serving as a deputy regional forester and associate acting chief for the national forest system, among other titles, according to a Forest Service employee familiar with staff moves.

I’ve heard of associate chiefs and acting associate chiefs, but never “associate acting chief for NFS.”  Maybe someone can explain whether this is a new position, and what the role is, for us retirees and others.

But what’s really interesting about the story are the different views of folks about Regional Office reduction. Many of us have been there and done that, at least talked about it, on previous iterations. As I recall, the proposals always foundered on the shoals of local politicians wanting to keep the positions. But today, since Portland, the Bay Area, and Denver all have serious housing crises, maybe they would be happy to see fewer commuters on the roads?

At the Forest Service, that could involve paring back the Washington headquarters as well as staff at the nine regional offices, according to proposals circulating among agency employees and described to E&E News. Such a realignment would put more management decisions for national forests at the local level, an approach in line with the administration’s overall approach. Whether the administration and the new Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, decide maintaining the regional forest setup fits the policy remains to be seen.
Regional foresters already serve that purpose in many ways, said Char Miller, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who’s studied Forest Service history. Without regional foresters, the power at the Forest Service would probably shift in the opposite direction the administration endorses — and toward Washington — Miller said. “Getting rid of the regional foresters would be a major example of that,” Miller said. Consolidating regions isn’t unprecedented, as Region 7 in the East was wrapped into two other regions in 1965. But that’s the most recent example.
In 2007, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the Forest Service to estimate the cost of running regional offices. The agency at that time put the cost at $224 million a year, according to a paper by Andy Kerr, an environmental consultant in Oregon who runs the Larch Co. Kerr called for regional offices to be eliminated, which he said would put more control in still-more-local hands.

So Char Miller and Andy Kerr see it differently. If we go to Andy K’s paper.

Budget reductions have forced the Forest Service to share rangers and other staff between ranger districts and merge national forests for administrative purposes. Yet, no Forest Service regional office has been eliminated or merged since 1965. Forest Service regional offices should not be merged or preserved, but eliminated entirely. Little conservation good is generated out of regional offices. The private sector has essentially eliminated middle management. Necessary functions now performed by the regional offices could be transferred to the national forest level, Washington Office level or the Albuquerque Service Center.
Unnecessary functions currently assigned to the regional offices could be eliminated with cost savings used for other purposes—preferably on-the-ground management at the national forest and ranger district level.

 

I’ll just say that many employees’ experiences with various administrative centralization efforts at Albuquerque and elsewhere at the time did not make us want to say”more service centers, please!”

Here’s Kerr’s last paragraph:

Does getting rid of Forest Service regional offices also mean the elimination of regional foresters? It might or might not. A case can be made to retain regional foresters to coordinate national forests facing similar “regional” issues. However, existing regional boundaries have little to do with geography, ecology or politics. For example, the Northwest Forest Plan (covering an area that is approximately the range of the northern spotted owl) spans parts of two Forest Service regions. In this case, there is a benefit to regional coordination between national forests. These new regional coordinating relationships should be flexible and based on current and emerging ecological and political needs, rather than based on a tradition or arbitrary administrative boundaries.

I didn’t see a date on Kerr’s paper; I suppose it could have been written any time in the last 30 years or so.

What seems to be missing from th e E&E  story are the views of anyone who has ever worked in an RO, or been a Regional Forester.

I’ve been involved in many kerfuffles between Forests and DC as a Regional Planning Director. I’ll just take one example, during the Obama Admin. The Bighorn had a shovel-ready project for ARRA funding to move some campsites in a campground, which got funded (hurray!). But it turned out later that other political entities at the FS were concerned about the fact that part of the rerouting (to protect the watershed) was in a roadless area (not so fast, Forest!). So it had to be reviewed. Of course the RO backed the Forest, and we wrote briefing papers that laid out the issue. Could the Bighorn have done the briefings themselves? Yes, of course. Conceivably the centralized Planning Experts Service Center could have helped them and reviewed it. Not every Forest could afford their own Roadless Geek.  Did our Regional Forester (Rick Cables’) personal relationships with higher-ups make them listen to him more (or less? who knows?). Clearly, the Chief and Associates and Deputies can’t have the same kinds of relationships with 154 Forest Supervisors as they do with 9 RFs. It seems like perhaps having 154 Supes would make the recommendation of the relevant WO Director mean more to the Deputy Chief, but then many issues cross WO Directorships.  Maybe there are other models out there somewhere?

Or a goal could be to harmonize with BLM and have State Directors, perhaps non SES, which could foster better “all lands” kinds of efforts and coordinate better with states. For example, Wyoming currently has to deal with two Regions of the Forest Service. Maybe BLM has some insights into the importance of that middle layer and how it works for them, of course, given that their organization is different and has a political director.

If the intention were to support local decisions (which our RO was in the habit of doing), can we think of a workaround with no RFs and functional service centers for the expertise? Ground folks have been concerned about the new budget system leading to decisions being made in the RO; with no ROs would the budget system have to be reinvented?

Please add your thoughts and experiences below. Finally, we are still interested in seeing and discussing those proposals currently circulating,

Has There Been a 30% Decline in FS Employment in the Last 30 Years?

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We have covered many things over the past 15 years of The Smokey Wire.  We’ve had number questions about timber, and folks like Mac  and Gil and Andy could always make sense of them.  Never before have I run into so much difficulty as with Forest Service employment figures.

Most recently, I ran across this letter sent on Feb. 14 by various members of the Colorado delegation to the US Congress, Bennet, Hickenlooper, Neguse, Pettersen, and Crow.

Our offices have heard for years about chronic understaffing at the USFS. Today, the agency’s workforce is nearly 30% less than it was three decades ago.  This significant reduction in staff has occurred even as the country’s population grew by over 100 million people, visitation to national forests exploded, and wildfire risk increased drastically. Agency employees have entered public service despite low pay, the frequently seasonal nature of the job, and limited housing in the remote areas they serve. With the rising cost of living across the state, Colorado communities are already challenged with limited USFS staff to confront land management challenges. Combined with the existing hiring freeze, yesterday’s staff reductions will stretch the agency to its breaking point and place an enormous burden on Colorado communities.

If I count back from 2025 for 30 years, I get 1995. If I go to this handy  John Kusano powerpoint about workforce trends from 1992 to 2001. It looks here remarkably consistent in terms of permanents .. a little over 30K in 1995 and 35,560 in 2024.  If I eyeball the Kusano powerpoint graph at 31K, then there’s actually a 15% increase in permanents over the last 30 years.

Since these numbers are so different, I have a phone call in to Bennet’s office to find out where those numbers came from.

 


People were working on diversity way back then (2001)

 

I thought that this slide was particularly interesting..given the recent problems (24 years since this ppt was presented)  with over-hiring.

Looking for historic trends, I found this story in the Mesabi Tribune from August 23, 2002:

Fewer are being asked to do more. And the trend applies nationally.

“We are down nationally about 10,000 employees overall from where we were eight to 10 years ago,” Sanders said.

This statement doesn’t exactly match the powerpoint, but we don’t have 1991 in the powerpoint.

In fact, between 1991 and 1998, the total Forest Service workforce fell by about 21 percent or from 50,238 to 39,782, according to a January Forest Service report.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that people apparently use different sets of numbers, but it does make life difficult. I suspect that the  “total workforce” from Sanders  might include temporaries.

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I’d like us to all use one set of numbers.  Temps and perms should be separated, and maybe a “total hours worked” if we could go back in time and do that.  I hope that somewhere out there such numbers exist?

And I agree that “the FS has been historically understaffed ” and I’d add “underfunded” and that’s a great discussion to have.

But let’s agree on the same set of numbers first.  I’m sure there is an official  set of numbers out there somewhere.