Sharon

Some Stories About Housing and Some Reflections: I. High Country News Article on Building on Public Land

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A recent High Country News story talks about housing developments on public land.

The U.S. government owns 49% of the land in the 13 Western states, including Hawai‘i and Alaska, according to Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group based in Montana. (And that’s not counting all the land owned by the states, municipalities and the military.) In the remainder of the country, the feds own just 3.5%.

At the same time, the West is also experiencing a severe housing crisis: Seven of the 10 states with the greatest housing shortages are on this side of the country.

It’s not surprising, then, that the region’s combination of limited housing supply and vast tracts of undeveloped land has prompted the question: Could building on public lands help ease the housing crisis? From Colorado to California, politicians, academics and housing advocates are trying to find the answer. Here’s what you need to know.

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Projects on federally owned land: These can occur when a federal agency, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), sells, leases or trades parcels of land for development. Due to the nature of federal holdings, these parcels are more likely to be on the outskirts of communities. In Nevada, for instance, the BLM has been selling land around Las Vegas to local developers since 1998, with profits flowing back into the state; a new bill could open up nearly 16,000 additional acres of land, most of it federally owned, for housing around Reno.

Federal lands in the Western U.S. managed by five agencies, using 2005 National Atlas data.Congressional Research Service

Lawson said we have two choices: Either build more densely on already available land, or open up new areas for development. The latter option, she said, is particularly pertinent in urban areas where land is scarce, and in rural communities that are surrounded by public lands. Teton County, Wyoming, for example, where Jackson is located, is 97% public lands.

In scenic places like Vail, Colorado or Bozeman, Montana, often referred to as  “gateway” communities, Rumore said that increasing the housing supply doesn’t necessarily result in affordability. “If you build more housing and your community is a very popular place to visit, then often that housing gets consumed by short-term rentals” or second homes, she explained. Unless new projects are “very carefully protected for the local workforce,” Rumore fears they won’t make a dent in the housing crisis.

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Lawson, the Headwaters economist, agrees, saying that it’s crucial for projects to explicitly tackle affordability. She is optimistic about one in Colorado, where the U.S. Forest Service leased a parcel of land to Summit County to build housing for middle-income earners, such as teachers and firefighters.

On the other hand, Lawson isn’t a fan of efforts that fail to guarantee affordability, such as the HOUSES Act sponsored by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. Research supporting the bill suggests that just 0.1% of the West’s federal lands could provide space for 2.7 million new homes. But the lack of affordability provisions in Lee’s bill has led some critics to call it the “McMansion Subsidy Act.”

While affordability is paramount, Lawson noted a few other factors to keep in mind.

  • The local economy: In areas like Jackson or Moab, where nearby public lands drive tourism, Lawson warned against developing any land whose loss could negatively impact the local economy— either by removing recreational areas or creating sprawl that detracts from the town’s appeal. As she put it, “It’s very difficult to undo these decisions.”

  • Infrastructure: When deciding whether a piece of land is worth developing, Lawson recommended examining the existing infrastructure. Are there water lines nearby? What about roads? If infrastructure is lacking, she said, residents need to understand that the cost of building it will likely fall on their shoulders.

  • Hazards: Communities should also ask whether building on a particular plot will increase the risk from natural hazards, especially wildfire.

Overall, Lawson believes housing projects on public land make a lot of sense when they’re close to towns and existing infrastructure. “It helps communities build more densely within their existing footprint,” she said. “Where I get concerned is when the parcels being talked about are on the fringes.”

 

 

 

 

 

New Sage Grouse Draft Plan Released: Incorporates Ideas from Obama and Trump Admin Plans

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This is a great article by Scott Streater of E&E News; fortunately a TSW reader forwarded it to me, as it has a paywall.  It’s pretty comprehensive and hard to excerpt from, but I’ll try.

Here’s the link to the BLM press release, public meetings and the DEIS.  Here’s the BLM’s title and tagline;

BLM proposes stronger greater sage-grouse conservation plans

Analysis uses best available science and lessons learned to benefit species and western communities

I’ll try to hit the main points of the Streater article.

  1. It blends some of the Obama decision and the Trump era decision. Perhaps some horse-trading with western Govs? Or realizing that the 2015 approach doesn’t fit with desired renewable buildout?

In essence, the proposal outlined in a draft environmental impact statement Thursday is a compromise that a BLM news release emphasized draws on “the most successful components” of the Obama administration plans in 2015 that mandated protections for the most sensitive grouse habitat across 10 states and revisions to those plans the Trump administration approved in 2019 that gave states more leeway to greenlight projects near grouse breeding grounds and other sensitive habitat.

2.  Sgamma thinks that it’s an improvement

“It’s positive that the preferred alternative seems to be a blend between the other approaches and prior plans, which indicates that BLM is trying to find a workable balance,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance.

3. WEG and CBD don’t like it.

People familiar with the plan under development at the BLM previously said they expected the proposal to include 11 million “acres of critical environmental concern” to safeguard priority grouse habitat. But the preferred alternative released Thursday did not include ACEC designations, which provide strict land-use regulations that would severely limit livestock grazing, recreation and other activities. Other alternatives, which could still be selected in the final plan, do include the conservation designations.
The proposal would also remove one of the most contentious aspects of the 2015 plans: the designation of 10 million acres of “sagebrush focal areas” considered vital to the bird’s survival, where mining and oil and gas development would be prohibited. These areas will now be managed as priority habitat management areas.

My understanding is that the focal areas were added at the last minute by folks in DC, and stuck in some craws of some State folks who had worked collaboratively on effort.  If you remember from my story on  it, that my source said:

Folks from Garfield County, CO did a FOIA and found out that the changes were associated in time with meetings with various environmental organizations, including Pew. One particular idea added during these last changes was the idea of “focal areas”. The States went ballistic.

The Governors sat down with Secretary Jewell and tried to negotiate.

4. Pew Does Like It

For whatever reason, Pew seems to have an outsized influence on federal decision making under this Admin and also the Obama Admin, so this could be significant.

Marcia Argust, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. Conservation program, applauded the BLM “for bringing the latest science, including planning for climate impacts, to this round of sage grouse plan updates.”

5. If Grouse don’t like roads and footprints of O&G operations, they probably don’t like roads and footprints of renewable energy and transmission lines.

This has become an issue as the Biden administration works to build renewable energy projects on federal lands as well as the transmission lines needed to carry that green energy to market. BLM press materials announcing the proposal mentioned “clean energy projects” in discussing how the plans will allow for multiple uses “in a manner that limits impacts to sensitive resources and can also help combat climate change — the main driver of greater sage-grouse habitat loss.”

Actually, what the press release says is  “Populations once in the millions now number fewer than 800,000, largely due to habitat loss exacerbated by climate change, such as drought, increasing wildfires, and invasive species.”   Habitat loss seems to be the actual main driver, not climate change.

6.  RMP Amendments Around 2015 Sage Grouse Plans for Transmission Lines.

The BLM this month announced it was exploring amending three federal land-use plans to work around mandates in the 2015 grouse plans limiting the size of transmission lines and their proximity to priority grouse habitat. The BLM concedes it might need to do so in order to approve the 235-mile-long Greenlink North power line in Nevada that’s a Biden administration priority due to renewable energy

Hopefully those transmission lines will be well-maintained..and not cause further fires which are bad for sage grouse.

Human Being Throws Shade at Oregon State Prof Johnston and Blue Mountain Forest Partners

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As you know, I am a fan of Blue Mountain Forest Partners and the entire post Timber Wars peace-seeking enterprise.
So this story from Daily KOS struck me as odd.

The court case took a turn when James Johnston, an Oregon State University assistant professor, filed an amicus brief supporting the Forest Service. The amicus brief included a letter that Johnston and 14 other forest ecologists signed that contended the six conservation groups’ arguments “are designed to give the impression of scientific controversy where no meaningful controversy among scientists exists.”

Many non-industry ecologists disagree with the sentiments in Johnston’s letter. More than 100 independent scientists signed an open letter to the Forest Service in 2020 that argued, “removing protections for large trees is highly controversial from a scientific perspective.”

When Jerry Franklin signed the letter, he wasn’t a minion of timber industry but there’s a bit of an implication.  “Independent” researchers, regardless of quantity, may also know less about the forests involved.

“There is scientific controversy regarding the removal of large old trees and forests preemptively before fire burns,” says an experienced ecologist that wishes to remain anonymous. “[L]ess than 1% of thinned areas experienced fire annually.

Many acres are thinned and also experience wildfires. I’m not sure where the 1% figure comes from. It sounds relevant but may not be. I’m a little leery of scientists who “wish to remain anonymous.”

The USFS and its supporting consultant are promoting cutting of large old trees in the name of “restoration,” yet in the six eastside national forests, […] the largest 3% of trees on inventory plots account for 42% of the biomass carbon.”

“Only a very small percent – 8% – of all the plots have the large-tree co-occurrence of ponderosa pine and grand fir that is their primary reason for doing away with the protections for big trees. The fact that 92% of the forested landscape does not fit their rationale to open up the entire landscape to large tree logging is a key part of the scientific controversy,” adds the anonymous ecologist.

Johnston was the lead author of a paper that showed diameter limits on logging hindered forest restoration in eastern Oregon. The research was funded by the Forest Service and Blue Mountains Forest Partners, a forest collaborative operated by and for private timber industry interests.

(my bold)

More than half of BFMP’s Board Members, including their President, have direct ties to the timber industry.

I think Susan Jane, for example, has “direct ties”  but not the kind of ties that a reader might think- based on the way this is written. Here’s their board.

The collaborative’s Executive Director said BFMP “staked extensive political capital on the validity of an alternative approach” to the 21-inch rule in a letter to the Ochoco National Forest’s Forest Supervisor.

Johnston says that all of his papers “are robust and objective,” given that they went through peer review.

He believes that the large trees likely to be logged as a result of the 21-inch rule’s amendments “have little value to most timber operators” and that “the most highly valued trees [in eastern Oregon] are smaller ponderosa pine.” However, the owner of Rude Logging, an AFRC member, mentioned in an article that sturdy pines over 21 inches are more valuable than smaller pines when discussing the benefits of the Forest Service’s decision to eliminate the 21-inch rule.

The below is also a little weird.

Johnston also consulted for the Forest Service during the 21-inch rule amendment process.

“It’s my job to provide information to land managers, members of the general public,” says Johnston. “[The] Forest Service asked me for information about their revision, and I provided them information upon request just as I do for anyone and everyone that asks me, including conservation groups.”

A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that a Forest Service Special Project Coordinator emailed Johnston about payment for his consultation work. The Special Project Coordinator asked him to send them an invoice and said the Forest Service set aside $2,500.

Johnston says that he cannot find that email and that he has no recollection of reading it. “I never invoiced the Forest Service. I’m unaware that they set any money aside for me. They didn’t pay me any money,” adds Johnston.

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Timber industry representation

Forest Service interveners AFRC noted that Johnston filing an amicus brief was peculiar. “Participation from scientists in cases like these is uncommon, which signals that the 15 forest ecologists felt strongly that the court should be provided with an accurate portrayal of the state of the science,” stated an AFRC newsletter.

Two attorneys from Northwest Resource Law PLLC, an AFRC member with a history of representing timber industry interests, represented Johnston in his amicus brief. Johnston declined to comment on his choice of legal representation, citing the ongoing court case. However, he ignored requests for comment after the case ended.

One of Johnston’s Northwest Resource Law attorneys participated in a legal presentation at AFRC’s 2021 annual meeting. The presentation explained how AFRC develops legal precedent, defends timber volume, and defends its members.

You say peculiar, I say uncommon.  Maybe it should become more common in cases in which “the science” is at issue? And was Johnston supposed to find another lawyer for free, and if no one volunteered, simply give up because AFRC is tainted- according to some?

The comments are a bit of a hoot. Most are about Trump. In response to one comment that articulated the case for thinning, the author said:

Oh look — someone decided to show and spread industry propaganda here. You’re greatly exaggerating the need for thinning and the harm of wildfires (for obvious reasons). And if you think logging is such an ecological necessity than surely you must agree that the industry should be nationalized, right?

At first I thought it might be an AI story since the claims about BMFP and Johnston seemed not to be true, but sounded plausible if you don’t have previous knowledge. Now I’m not as sure.. Jon has pointed out that outlets need content, and may not be careful as to the accuracy thereof. Perhaps that’s the case here.

We know what the timber industry needs, but what can the Black Hills provide? Commentary by Dave Mertz

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An area of the Black Hills National Forest east of Custer in 2023, where the forest was previously thinned by logging. (Courtesy of Dave Mertz)

Here’s the link. I posted it below.

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)
 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

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.

Science X -Forest Service R&D- Next Week is Human Dimensions Week

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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

Wednesday, Mar. 27

Valuing Benefits of Nature

  • Land use change and forest markets |​ Jesse Henderson
  • Managing urban forest pests: Using game theory to model cost share programs for pest treatments | Andrew Tilman
  • The value of information for spongy moth management | Matthew Sloggy

Thursday, Mar. 28

Managing Urban Forests

  • Management where homelessness and nature intersect | Monika Derrien
  • Selection and the city: A nursery supply chain analysis exploring domestic selection of urban trees | Nancy Falxa Sonti
  • Sustainability and resilience of social and ecological technology systems in the tropics | Tischa Muñoz

Friday, Mar. 29

Preparing for Wildland Fire

  • Are you set? California residents personal preparations for wildfire | Alyssa Thomas
  • Examining the influence of socioeconomic factors in human-caused wildfire ignitions | Jeff Kline
  • Systemic challenges for the federal wildland firefighting workforce | Erin Belval

Wildfire Crisis Hearing Tuesday and Thursday: E&E Story

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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.

Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty: Should the Forest Service and BLM Try This?

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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.

Forest Service Stories Request: Women’s History Month

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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.

Thanks!

Increased Tourism Through Monumentizing: Whom Does it Serve? and.. Why Not Withdrawal Instead?

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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.

This is what the FS and BLM are doing with the Thompson Divide:

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

Apparently this is for 20 years, according to the Center for American Progress.

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.”

― Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

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.

Let’s go to a Headwaters analysis.

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.

 

Appropriations News: Wildland Firefighter Pay Raise Preserved

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Many thanks to a TSW reader for this!

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?