The traditional way logging happens in the Black Hills National Forest is through timber sales. The U.S. Forest Service designates areas available for logging, and companies bid for the right to purchase and harvest the timber.
On Saturday in Spearfish, there was a forestry roundtable discussion about the reduced levels of timber sales in recent years.
U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, invited two of his fellow congressmen, Doug LaMalfa, R-California, and Austin Scott, R-Georgia. Johnson also invited two Forest Service officials, Regional Forester Frank Beum and Black Hills National Forest Forest Supervisor Shawn Cochran. The panel was rounded out with timber industry representatives and the South Dakota state forester.
After introductions, the panel quickly turned to grilling the two Forest Service officials. I am familiar with LaMalfa from watching him in congressional hearings. He can come across as combative, and he was all of that. Scott was also aggressive. It is not clear to me why these two were on this panel. They have absolutely no familiarity with the Black Hills. It appeared that they were there to browbeat the Forest Service. Johnson participated in these tactics as well.
An audience listens to a roundtable forestry discussion March 2, 2024, in Spearfish. (Courtesy of the Office of U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson)
At issue was why the Black Hills National Forest plans to sell only 63,000 CCF (1 CCF equals 100 cubic feet) of timber this fiscal year. The timber industry representatives said they need 120,000 CCF to survive as they exist today. Beum said that with budget limitations and 76 employee vacancies, 63,000 CCF is all the Forest Service can do. He also stated that to get to 120,000 CCF, the forest would need an additional $20 million of funding.
Much of the hour and a half revolved around blaming the Forest Service for not selling more timber and for being ineffective. This came from three members of Congress, which doesn’t exactly have a stellar record of getting things done. When will they pass a budget?
Repeatedly, panelists stated what the timber industry needs. Never was there any concern for what level of timber harvesting the forest needs. Only toward the end did the elephant in the room finally get discussed — that there are no longer enough sawtimber-size trees left on the forest to support the capacity of the timber industry as it exists today. (A tree big enough to qualify as sawtimber is one that’s at least 9 inches in diameter when measured at a point 4.5 feet above the ground.)
Large wildfires in the early 2000s, the mountain pine beetle epidemic and the associated aggressive timber harvesting to address it all led to a major reduction in sawtimber-sized trees across the forest. This has impacted how many trees can now be sustainably logged on an annual basis, and this will continue for a good while into the future. Acceptance of that is the key to finding solutions.
Beum explained that the Forest Service is conducting an inventory of the forest at a cost of $2 million with LiDAR, an aerial survey method that uses pulses of laser light to determine the presence, shape and distance of objects in great detail. Never before has this been done on an entire national forest. This will provide a 3D map of the forest down to individual trees, and give a very clear picture on how many sawtimber-size trees remain on the forest. This issue has been in dispute, because the timber industry discounts the numerous studies that show there is a problem.
At one point, Johnson thought the timber sustainability issue could be resolved with simple math. He asked Ben Wudtke, of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, a timber industry group, about the growth rate of the forest. Wudtke said it’s 2.5%. Johnson did some rough math and declared that there is no problem with the timber inventory or sustainability. He failed to take into account the long-term average mortality (rate of tree death) of 1%, and also that the whole forest is not available for timber harvesting for a variety of reasons — including the presence of non-forested areas such as meadows, terrain that’s too steep and rugged, restrictive land designations such as wilderness and recreation areas, access problems, etc. He should actually read the Forest Service’s General Technical Report, which goes into great detail on these issues.
Beum said the Forest Service is subsidizing the rail transport of logs from California and Oregon to the Spearfish and Hulett, Wyoming, mills. Something like this has never occurred before. There was no appreciation expressed.
Scott asked about the revenues generated by timber sales, and Cochran had to explain that since the Forest Service is now primarily using service stewardship contracts to help the timber industry find places to work, the Forest Service is not making any money. In fact, the Forest Service is paying private loggers to harvest timber in an area where the cost of logging exceeds the value of the timber. For example, the Topaz Timber Sale is costing the Forest Service $3.5 million to log 550 acres on steep ground that otherwise wouldn’t get logged south of Sturgis. The timber operator gets the logs at no cost, in return for some service work. Clearly, the Forest Service is doing some extraordinary things to assist the timber industry.
Instead of seeking solutions, it appeared that this roundtable was more of an ambush. The two Forest Service participants showed up in good faith only to be interrogated. What was the point of all this other than some people enjoying seeing the Forest Service get beat up? No solutions were found that I could tell.
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Dave Mertz
Dave Mertz retired from the Black Hills National Forest in 2017 as the forest’s natural resource officer. Over the course of his career, he was a forester, silviculturist, forest fire management officer and a fire staff officer.
Some of you may remember the Patrick Brown and Nature kerfuffle. I’ve got a whole future post that on “Patrick Brown didn’t go far enough” and one of the “emperor has no clothes” issues is that many climate modelers don’t, or can’t, incorporate actions of people on the landscape to adapt. Often, they don’t involve or model the work of what we might call “adaptation communities” or specialists in hydrology, wildlife, botany, forests and so on. As historically, in science world, physics (as in atmospheric modeling and vapor pressure deficits and so on) is cooler than.. all the other sciences. And as I’ve said before, the models don’t include new and improved technologies that the US is spending megabucks on, either (think wildfire sensors and unpersonned helicopters). It looks like one of the talks is by a person studying ignitions.. which seems important.
So I wanted to give a shout-out to the sciences who always seem to be at the bottom of the scientific pecking order.. the social scientists. And these have continuing ed credits for the Society of American Foresters and the Wildlife Society.
Forest Service R&D has a week devoted to their work: ScienceX Human Dimensions week. Here’s a link. Here’s the agenda:
Monday, Mar. 25
Recreating Equitably
Barriers and facilitators for accessing outdoor spaces among urban Hispanic recreationists | Lee Cerveny
Women hunters and the role of community in changing hunting representation | Lauren Redmore
‘Anywhere outside my room:’ Urban BIPOC youth perceptions of the outdoors | David Flores
Tuesday, Mar. 26
Partnering with Communities
Strengthening understanding of and support for Indigenous agroforestry in Hawaiʻi | Zoe Hastings-Silao
Stewardship mapping: Connecting those who care for nature | Michelle Johnson
Community forests in the U.S.: Diverse approaches to collaboration in forest governance and management under different ownership regimes | Kathleen McGinley
Thanks to a TSW reader for this. Anyone interested in viewing and reporting back, please let me know.
Biden officials due on the Hill to address wildfire crisis
Two Senate committees plan hearings this week on reducing the threat of wildfires for forests and nearby communities.
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On Tuesday, The Energy and Natural Resources Committee will take testimony from Biden administration officials on the findings and recommendations of a federal wildfire commission created through the bipartisan infrastructure law.
On Thursday, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hear from state, federal and local officials on responding to the continuing crisis.
The federal commission’s report issued in September 2023 lays out the situation in and around the nation’s forests, especially in areas of the West prone to drought and other climate-related dangers.
Federal fire suppression costs exceed $2.5 billion a year, and total wildfire costs across all types of landscapes and ownership may be in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Commissioners — made up of state and local officials, researchers and others — recommended greater coordination among officials at all levels of government, including tribal agencies, as well as a re-thinking of land management approaches.
At the same time, the leaders on Energy and Natural Resources, Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) have pushed their own solutions to the problem.
Last fall, they introduced legislation titled the “Promoting Effective Forest Management Act,” S. 2867, which would tilt federal policy toward timber harvesting by boosting logging workforce training, requiring forest-thinning targets and pushing back on Biden administration policies that could result in less harvesting of mature and old growth trees.
The Biden administration, however, has been cool to the proposal, as well as a separate revegetation plan from Manchin.
Officials from both the Interior and Agriculture departments, among others, will be on hand to answer questions about the recent wildfire commission’s report.
The report noted that the federal government has put more money into reducing hazardous fuels such as dead trees or thick overgrowth, but it said officials have paid less attention to reducing the danger in built-up environments. Emphasis could be placed on fire-safe construction and defensible space near homes and other buildings, for instance, the report concluded.
As a person with several friends in the local wildfire preparation space, it seems to me that the way the Commission was structured did not necessarily hear from the “boots on the ground” community types and the difficulties they run into, accessing and spending the federal dollars that are already there. Again, as I’ve said before, it’s not about homes alone, it’s about infrastructure and barns and animals and evacuations and so on.
In addition, the report said, federal officials should consider policies that encourage a new relationship with fire, recognizing fire as an “integral and beneficial component” of forest management.
The commission said the government should “dramatically increase” the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning practices to make fire-adapted forest more resilient, in addition to maintaining timber harvesting, forest thinning and managed grazing of livestock.
Fire use
The recommendation for greater use of fire may raise questions with some lawmakers, as many Western communities already struggle with smoke from wildfires and face public pressure not to create more with fires lit on purpose.
Allowing some naturally lit fires to burn for ecological benefit is still more divisive, as some lawmakers and policy advocates press the U.S. Forest Service to return to an old policy of quickly extinguishing every reported fire, especially in places experiencing drought.
All of those approaches together are needed to lessen the crisis, while the government helps communities to coexist with wildland fire that’s a natural part of the landscape in many areas.
“Just as there is no single cause of this crisis, there is no single solution,” the report said.
Such changes will come at a cost, the report said, including establishing a year-round federal workforce aimed at wildfire policy and increasing wages and benefits for firefighters.
Congress has acted on the wages, extending a raise implemented a few years ago by the Biden administration, most recently in appropriations for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. But lawmakers have done so in patchwork fashion in recent years, advocates say, failing to make the increases permanent and ensuring that the money will be available for the long term.
The Government Accountability Office, among witnesses for the Homeland Security hearing, has made several recommendations on wildfire policies, including tightening controls on contracted services and procurement for disaster recovery, bettering recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters and improving delivery of post-fire assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Schedule: The Energy and Natural Resources hearing is Tuesday, March 12, at 10 a.m. in 366 Dirksen and via webcast.
Witnesses:
Meryl Harrell, deputy undersecretary, natural resources and environment, Department of Agriculture.
Joan Mooney, principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, Department of the Interior.
Cody Desautel, executive director, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
Madelene McDonald, senior watershed scientist, Denver Water.
Kelly Norris, Wyoming state forester.
Schedule: The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing is Thursday, March 14, at 10 a.m. in 342 Dirksen and via webcast.
Witnesses:
Lori Moore-Merrell, administrator, U.S. Fire Administration.
David Fogerson, chief, Division on Emergency Management and Office of Homeland Security, Nevada Department of Public Safety.
Jamie Barnes, director, Forestry, Fire and State Lands, Utah Department of Natural Resources.
Lucinda Andreani, deputy county manager and Flood Control District administrator, Coconino County, Arizona.
Christopher Currie, director, Homeland Security and Justice, Government Accountability Office.
I’m not following the Northwest Forest Plan update.. fortunately many members of the TSW community are tracking it and hopefully will provide us with updates. But when I read this paper (open access), it made so much sense to me that I thought it was worth sharing. It’s about how the Bureau of Reclamation, one of the Forest Service’s many cousin DOI agencies, deals with the complex world of uncertain futures, climate change being one of many. Not only that, but even if we could project future microclimates accurately (which we can’t), we don’t know how climate changes will cause different interactions with hydrology, temperature, plants, animals, the rhizosphere, insects, diseases, etc. So there are different ways of planning based on acknowledging uncertainties. And yet at some point, the modeling and scenario-building with acknowledged uncertainties could get so complex that no single person could possible understand it. And how can the public effectively be involved in that case?
The Forest Service is legally required via NFMA to do long-range planning (although the RPA Program seems to have fallen by the wayside). The question is “what is the variety with which agencies approach the use of climate as well as other uncertainties in decision-making?” Are they consistent (even within a department)? Should they be? Are some approaches better than others? Based on what criteria?
I kind of like this approach; at least it might be worth a try in a pilot. Or perhaps the Northwest Forest Plan revision?
Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty
A focus on vulnerability, robustness, and adaptation necessitates an expansion of analytical methods beyond those traditionally used in long-term water resources planning. Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) is a subfield of decision science that focuses on developing and applying the frameworks, tools and techniques necessary to produce actionable information while appropriately accounting for deep uncertainty (Marchau et al. 2019). Models have long been used to answer “what-if” questions (Bankes et al. 2013) and have been widely adopted in many planning contexts, including in the Colorado River Basin. DMDU builds on this model-informed decision making by helping planners strategically design the “what ifs” and offering new quantitative tools to drive models and analyze output. Since the early 2000s, a dedicated and rapidly growing community of researchers and practitioners forming the Society for DMDU (http://www.deepuncertainty.org) has been applying and refining DMDU methods in a wide range of domains including national security (Dixon et al. 2008), energy planning (Toman et al. 2008), and water resources management (Lempert and Groves 2010; Means et al. 2010; Basdekas 2014; Raucher and Raucher 2015; Groves et al. 2019).
DMDU techniques share a common underlying philosophy of designing iterative planning processes and analyses to identify actions that reduce a system’s vulnerability to uncertain future conditions. Robust Decision Making (RDM) (Lempert 2002) is described here as an example because Reclamation has used components of it in the past and is continuing to explore and develop related methods.
RDM is designed to facilitate a “deliberation with analysis” process through which parties can systematically integrate a large amount of information and wide-ranging positions about possible future conditions, important performance objectives, and appropriate actions to address challenges. The ultimate goals of RDM are to develop shared understanding of a system and identify a broadly acceptable plan or policy that is robust to a range of futures. The steps of RDM are depicted in Figure 3 and summarized below. Note that although the steps are numbered here and described in order, in practice the relationships between the components of RDM are flexible.
In Step 1, stakeholders define key components of the analysis: performance objectives and criteria; the sets of possible actions, or strategies, that could be undertaken in pursuit of the objectives; ranges of values for uncertain future conditions; and a model that simulates relationships between objectives, actions, and uncertainties. In Step 2, a proposed strategy is tested in a wide range of future conditions to generate a thorough representation of performance variability. In Step 3, the performance information is analyzed with statistical data mining techniques that seek to “discover” decision-relevant scenarios, or those combinations of uncertain conditions that cause the strategy to perform poorly. (This is a departure from traditional analysis in that the scenarios themselves are not dictated in advance of the procedure.) In Step 4, tradeoffs with respect to robustness, vulnerabilities, and costs among different strategies are analyzed, and a single strategy may be agreed upon. If insights from Step 3 or Step 4 warrant it, Step 5 may be necessary to reframe the decision and develop new strategies, at which point the RDM process repeats.
It’s Women’s History Month, and I know many TSW readers entered the workforce at the dawn of time (er.. the 70’s and 80’s) when women were few and far between in natural resource fields. And yet, the enterprise always rested on the work of women in administration, for the expected work as well as much of the unpaid emotional work of the office. IMHO, that’s one reason the Forest Service lost so much by centralizing administrative services. Then there were wives of Forest Service employees.
You may want to check out the podcasts developed by the National Museum of Forest Service History called “What Did We Get Ourselves Into?”
There is an old adage that “it takes a village to raise a child.” This is also true for the United States Forest Service, a sprawling outfit that employs 30,000 people spread over nine regions and across 600 ranger districts ranging anywhere from 50,000 to more than 1 million acres. This expansive organization has always required the help of an army of unpaid wives, sons, and daughters.
”What Did We Get Ourselves Into?” tells the stories of those intrepid women who gave their lives to “the outfit” without any expectation of notoriety or reward. Over the course of several episodes, listeners will hear stories of rugged terrain, unforgiving dirt roads, spartan housing accommodations, difficult childbirths, wild animal encounters, and much more. They will be taken inside a world that time has left behind, a world powered by loud diesel generators, crank telephones, and wood stoves. And amidst all these obstacles and inconveniences, Forest Service wives stood resilient, ready to overcome any challenge with a stoic determination and can-do attitude. “What Did We Get Ourselves Into?” is essential listening that acknowledges those ordinary families who made extraordinary efforts to achieve “The Greatest Good.”
We like stories, here at TSW, so please consider submitting your story and we’ll post them this month. Or if you’ve heard a great story from someone, encourage them to write it down and send it in.
The Center for Western Priorities had piece in their newsletter that I think is worthy of discussion.
The Dolores River Canyon in southwestern Colorado contains significant historical and Indigenous cultural sites, spectacular geological formations, world-class recreation opportunities, and incredible biodiversity, all in the largest stretch of unprotected public lands in Colorado. A presidential monument designation—which 92 percent of respondents said they support in a Colorado College poll released last month—would help protect this canyon from industrial and extractive development, while increasing economic activity in rural communities along the river corridor.
Contrary to inaccurate claims made by a small contingent of monument opponents, all existing mining, drilling, and grazing rights will continue to exist if the monument is designated. That means anyone who holds a valid mining claim, drilling lease, or grazing right will be able to use the land just as they would have prior to designation. In addition, visitors and local residents would be able to continue engaging in a wide variety of recreation activities, and Tribal members would also be able to continue accessing land inside the monument for cultural, spiritual, and traditional uses and activities.
Finally, a monument designation would likely have a positive economic effect on Mesa and Montrose Counties due to increased tourism.A 2017 report by Headwaters Economics looked at the economic impact of national monuments on seventeen neighboring western communities and found that they all experienced economic growth following the designation of a new national monument. Learn more about the proposed Dolores Canyons National Monument in a new blog post from Center for Western Priorities Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger, and in this short film, part of CWP’s Road to 30: Postcards series.
“Protected” seems to be a code word used by certain interests. Is standard BLM and FS management not “protected”? On The Smokey Wire, we spend many, many electrons on various facets of protective designations and regulations. I’d like to substitute for “protected” in this discussion “not protected enough for us” which would encourage them to tell us to learn exactly what the land is to be protected from. If there is some looming threat out there, what is it?
I’ve seen maps in which Roadless doesn’t count as “protected” because to some folks’ way of thinking, it’s not “permanent.” In real life, though, Roadless has stood the test of time. Using the Antiquities Act to make land management decisions actually may not stand the test of time.
Again, we hear the argument “your access won’t change” but that’s not folks’ experience. Maybe another option to Monumentizing would be to restrict future mining and oil and gas via a withdrawal.. if that’s really the point. but maybe withdrawals don’t count in meeting the “protected” target.
The USFS and BLM requested 224,713 acres of lands be withdrawn from all forms of entry, appropriation, and disposal under the public land laws, mining laws, and mineral and geothermal leasing laws, subject to valid existing rights
To ensure these values are lasting, in October 2022, the Biden administration announced it would protect the area from new oil and gas drilling. This move, formally known as a “mineral withdrawal,” would take more than 225,000 acres off the table for oil, gas, and mining development, protecting an area long known to be too special to drill.
Just an aside, when I worked on Colorado Roadless, some groups did not want leasing even with NSO stipulations (no surface occupancy), which means that it could be drilled only from structures outside the “protected” area. I asked them why this mattered since there is no environmental impacts to the protected area (other than carbon, but that’s another story). All I can figure is that there is a deeply imbedded form of “oil and gas” hate in some folks, which I would like to understand better. Or perhaps I should say a “domestic oil and gas hate”. Which may remind us a bit of the wood products industry.
But what I think is most interesting is the economic argument. What happened to Edward Abbey’s thinking? I thought that that was part of the western US environmental movement.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
There is certainly a counterargument from the quality of life perspective. First, “economic growth” doesn’t help everyone equally. Trails become more crowded. You can’t find a place to park at the trailhead. Camping needs to be restricted to campgrounds due to overuse. Then you have to make reservations through recreation.gov and a large corporation gets its take. And more than likely you won’t be able to get a reservation at all. Tourists need housing, they use water and sewage and electricity. Rentals become too expensive for workers in comparison to tourists. Life is just not as good for people who live there, especially for those who are at the lower economic rungs.
Headwaters Economics, a non-partisan, non-profit economic research institute conducted three studies covering 17 national monuments designated between 1982 and 2001. They have released new numbers for 2017, and those numbers are exciting. According to Headwaters: “…trends in important economic indicators either continued or improved in each of the regions surrounding the 17 national monuments studied. Data for per capita income, a widely accepted measure of prosperity, show that this measurement increased for the studied counties adjacent to every national monument in the years following establishment. This rise in personal wealth is significant, particularly in rural areas where average earnings per job are often declining.”
With all due respect to our Headwaters friends, and given that some of my favorite people are economists, per capita income may be greater because more well-off people moved there. Or some people are making more money from tourists. What if we interviewed people (not in the tourism industry) about their quality of life and how it has changed? How is this process different from gentrification in cities, which everyone acknowledges has a good and a bad side?
Anyway, it just seems odd to me that an Admin who cares about the marginalized and lower income folks may be acting in ways that are counter to their interest. I wonder whether this point of view is expressed in WH discussions about Monumentization. And if the communities are not as well off, shouldn’t their voices be heard more or less as preferentially as other less-well-off communities? If Monumentizing is about what Western Priorities says it is.. then why not do a mineral withdrawal? If not, what is it about? Other than meeting someone’s protection targets.
Here’s what’s in the first spending package from E&E News:
Lawmakers released final fiscal 2024 bills Sunday for most of the federal government’s energy and environment programs.
Interior, natural resources Even though overall discretionary spending at Interior would remain roughly the same, lawmakers took a knife to several of its bureaus. The Fish and Wildlife Service would see a $51 million cut, the National Park Service a $150 million drop and the Bureau of Land Management an $81 million reduction, lawmakers said in summaries.
The bill would cut allocations for BLM’s renewable energy programs by $1.6 million — to $39.3 million from $40.9 million enacted for fiscal 2023. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is in line for a $28 million cut. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement would get $18 million less. The U.S. Geological Survey would see $42 million below fiscal 2023 levels, and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement would get $18 million less. The package includes $141.9 million for BLM’s contentious wild horse and burro program, less than either the Biden administration’s request or last year’s level of $148 million.
Even with the widely distributed cuts, congressional Democrats said they were relieved to have fended off more dramatic reductions initially sought by Republicans. “We keep our promises to brave wildland firefighters and protect vital investments to stay the course on historic climate action taken by the Biden administration while safeguarding our public lands,” Murray said. As for riders, the House Republicans’ original plan would have blocked the Fish and Wildlife Service from implementing the rule that moved the northern long-eared bat from threatened to endangered status. The final package opted instead for language acknowledging the “on-the-ground impacts” of ESA listings and urging the agency to “continue to collaborate” with states, local communities and others on “improving voluntary solutions to conserve species.”
Lawmakers also gave FWS and the park service instructions to provide an “in-depth” briefing regarding plans to reintroduce grizzly bears into the North Cascades region of Washington state. The package includes language that would prohibit the Interior Department from listing the greater sage grouse for protection under the Endangered Species Act. This rider has been inserted into every Interior funding bill since fiscal 2015
Forests, wildfire The Forest Service would receive just over $6 billion in discretionary spending, which appropriators said would preserve the pay raise wildland firefighters first received in fiscal 2023. Wildfire suppression would be funded at $4 billion, of which $2.65 billion would be in the off-budget wildfire disaster fund established by Congress in 2018. The bill includes $175 million for hazardous fuels reduction in national forests, such as thinning vegetation. That’s a reduction of $31 million, according to budget documents. Lawmakers also asserted in a joint explanatory statement that wood gained from forest thinning can qualify as renewable biomass under the federal renewable fuel standard
Agriculture The Agriculture-Rural Development bill, with more than $26.2 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Agriculture and related agencies, reflects a slight increase from USDA’s fiscal 2023 level. Even though the legislation would boost agricultural research programs, it would shave some conservation efforts. The Natural Resources Conservation Service would receive $951 million, down from $1.03 billion in fiscal 2023, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture would see a $22 million reduction, to $1.68 billion, according to budget documents. Republicans said the NIFA reduction would maintain funding for top priorities and reduce it for “several low-priority research programs.” And they won a provision rejecting the NRCS’s use of funds for equity initiatives, which the Biden administration says help farmers from historically disadvantaged groups that may have been denied agency loans in the past, for example. The Agricultural Research Service would see a $44 million increase, to $1.79 billion. Lawmakers decided that additional research funds should go to matters including soil health, effects of wildfire smoke on wine grapes and other specific areas. Appropriators agreed to a Republican-led provision blocking the USDA from expanding staff in the nation’s capital and instead instructed the department to report on how to improve staffing levels in field offices of the NRCS and other agencies. And while the agreement doesn’t include an effort by House Republicans to heavily cut the Rural Energy for America Program, it does call for a rescission of $10 million from prior appropriations.
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“Appropriators agreed to a Republican-led provision blocking the USDA from expanding staff in the nation’s capital and instead instructed the department to report on how to improve staffing levels in field offices of the NRCS and other agencies.” I wonder if that applies to the FS, since the FS is under Interior Approps?
A tree begins to bloom inside Dolores River Canyon, Apr. 23, 2023, near Bedrock. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
Shout-out to Jason Blevins of the Colorado Sun for this story that shows the different local points of view around Monumentizing.
Pond, a former nuclear engineer who now runs an RV park in Naturita, quickly launched a petition at change.org saying the monument designation would cancel all mining in the uranium-rich area, end hunting and cattle grazing and curtail motorized travel.
“I think it absolutely, positively could be a threat,” Pond told The Colorado Sun. “If you look at the history of monument designations over time, more and more restrictions are put in place as more people start coming. We could start losing access. These are public lands me and my family and our neighbors have enjoyed for decades. A lot of local people have a lot of concerns.”
In the first 10 days more than 2,100 signed the online petition, many leaving comments blasting the plan.
Scott Braden, a Western Slope conservation advocate whose Colorado Wildlands Project is among the 13 conservation groups behind the monument proposal, said the petition “is making mischaracterizations about what a monument will or won’t be.”
“It will not end ranching. It will not close Jeep trails. It will not stop hunting. That is simply not what we are proposing,” said Braden, pointing to an online fact sheet he helped assemble to better inform residents about the plan.
This is the old “not in this decision” trick, as we have seen with the BLM Rock Springs draft RMP.. no, strictly speaking, this decision isn’t made in the designation but it narrows the activities allowed in future decisions. And if the point is not to change activities to “protect” things.. ultimately.. why make BLM and FS folks go to the work of developing a new plan for the Monument.. unless the whole point is to attract more tourists.. and thereby not really “protect” it at all. Puzzling.
And the ever-popular State of the Rockies poll, (generic and biased questions asked of people who aren’t familiar with the issue, IMHO).
Colorado College’s annual State of the Rockies poll this year asked 436 Colorado residents about protecting existing public lands surrounding 162 miles of the Dolores River to “conserve important wildlife habitat, and safeguard the area’s scenic beauty and support outdoor recreation.” The poll showed 92% of respondents support the protection plan and 6% oppose.
Advocates for the monument last year commissioned the nonprofit research group Conservation Science Partners to identify “biologically rich pockets of unprotected public lands” in Colorado. The group’s report showed the five-county region around the Dolores River as the largest and most biodiverse of the 71 areas identified, with high biodiversity values that support a variety of animals and plants.
Here we go.. unprotected from whom and what, exactly?
Natalie Binder, who has converted a 120-acre former mining camp above the San Miguel River in Naturita into a boutique retreat and artist compound, said even if a national monument increases visitation to the region, “it will not change the remoteness of these lands.”
“A monument is not the magic wand, nor does it come without some complexities,” she said. “However, we are rooted in supporting efforts that allow us to bring more people together, provide opportunities for more people and open our doors with kindness to all travelers who are passing through looking for something a little different.
It does sound a bit like.. more people are wanted, at least by some.
Pond said a shutdown on new mines would not work for the communities along the Uravan Mineral Belt, a 210-square-mile geological zone that has produced more yellowcake uranium and radium than any other region in the country. But there hasn’t been any hardrock mining in the 2,100-resident West End community for several decades and the coal-fired power plant in Nucla closed in 2020 and was demolished. There are hundreds of dormant mines in the area needing remediation.
But the price of uranium is up, over $100 a pound for the first time since 2007. There is a buzz in the West End communities of Bedrock, Naturita, Nucla and Paradox around a mining revival, Pond said.
What I think is missing from that part of this piece is: there seems to be a nuclear energy renaissance going on around the world, including this COP28 statement:
At COP28, Countries Launch Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050, Recognizing the Key Role of Nuclear Energy in Reaching Net Zero
Logically that would require more uranium mining. And as we know, some Tribes don’t want it, so.. wouldn’t we want to think about that before Monumentizing? As to polls, here’s another one (granted it was Australia)
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows 55 per cent of all Australian voters supported the idea of small modular nuclear reactors as a replacement technology for coal-fired power. But support was highest among 18 to 34-year-olds – the demographic most concerned about climate change – with 65 per cent saying they would approve of such a proposal.
If I were involved in that discussion, I’d ask the proponents exactly what they are looking to “protect” from.. industrial scale recreation? Moabization? and then have the discussion move on from there. Because right now, it looks to me (to link to our previous discussion on targets) that certain groups, those with a heavy influence on certain politicals, have a “protection acres”… target. And in pursuit of that target, perhaps they don’t actually care what “protection” means exactly. And these local people in the article do care about the specifics. So, given that.. what is the right process to involve local people in Monumentizing?
This is a re-ask from 2022. Accountability has come up in our recent discussion, and we have new TSW readers. I’m still looking for the Tom Mills Accountability Task Force report. Rich J has a number of interesting links in the comments.
I know that given what folks have heard about Google Gemini, you are curious about its take on The Smokey Wire. I posted it below. Of course, Google knows that I am me, so maybe it tailored its response to be nice. Maybe others would like to try? Here’s a link.
Feel free to ask it questions on our kinds of topics and post in the comments. Here’s what it told me.
The Smokey Wire is a community-sourced online platform focused on news and views related to Forest Service and public lands policy in the United States [1].expand_more
Here are some key points about The Smokey Wire:
Mission: To facilitate open dialogue and information sharing among various stakeholders involved in public lands management, including practitioners, the public, and academic and scientific communities [3].
Content: The platform features articles, discussions, and resources on diverse topics related to wildfire management, forest health, wildlife conservation, and recreation on public lands [2, 4, 5].expand_more
Source of information: While not directly affiliated with the Forest Service, it serves as a platform for sharing perspectives and promoting collaboration on issues related to public lands management [3].expand_more
Overall, The Smokey Wire serves as a valuable resource for staying informed and engaged in discussions about the management and use of public lands in the United States.
I don’t know if people have read about Matt Taibbi’s experience with Gemini but I can only hope that The Smokey Wire stays under their “let’s make stuff up that’s negative” radar screen. Oops. I wonder if it’s absorbing this post into its maw of information?
At one point, Johnson thought the timber sustainability issue could be resolved with simple math. He asked Ben Wudtke, of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, a timber industry group, about the growth rate of the forest. Wudtke said it’s 2.5%. Johnson did some rough math and declared that there is no problem with the timber inventory or sustainability. He failed to take into account the long-term average mortality (rate of tree death) of 1%, and also that the whole forest is not available for timber harvesting for a variety of reasons — including the presence of non-forested areas such as meadows, terrain that’s too steep and rugged, restrictive land designations such as wilderness and recreation areas, access problems, etc. He should actually read the Forest Service’s General Technical Report, which goes into great detail on these issues.
