Sharon

More Colt Summit Than You Can Possibly Imagine

by

This is a pain in the patootie, but I noticed that we had run out of “replies” in our previous discussion of why Matthew is underpaid.
So to give him a chance to reply (and if we run out of other Colt Summit space)
Below is my comment # 16 restated so folks can respond. Here it is in its place in the prior discussion.

Your comment is very interesting. I said you were underpaid compared to these other folks. To which your answer was that they are underpaid compared to Plum Creek or DOJ.

But is Plum Creek or DOJ actually relevant in this case? Do you really think that someone is making a lot of bucks off 600 acres of commercial thinning?

I used WELC and thought it was relevant, because they claimed on their website that they had given their services to support FOWS and AWR on the Colt Summit project and claimed “Victory.”

Now suppose there was a group called “Friends of the Wild Collaboratives” who wanted to support Colt Summit. But they don’t have access to WELC or other “free” groups that donate their services. Yet FWC, our group of an equal number of equally legitimate citizens, compared to FOWS or AWR, does not have a seat at the table, because they can’t afford a lawyer.

That’s why WELC is relevant.

As to NRDC, I don’t see the relevant world of “highly paid” versus “no lawyers” simply related to timber sales.
I’m sure others could help, but a simple Google search on NRDC forest service cases yielded this project (no, not a timber sale, but still a project) http://www.law360.com/articles/75487/nrdc-sues-forest-service-over-rockies-gas-project

PS Matthew, in my culture it’s a compliment to say you are underpaid. Just sayin’

Defensible Space in Wildfire-Prone Areas Can Save Lives — So Why Isn’t it the Norm? by Char Miller

by

Here’s one by Char Miller..Below is an excerpt.

Those living in the subdivisions locked within Arizona’s flammable chaparral shrublands are not alone in having been slow to make their homes more defensible. To get at why this might be so, the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station conducted a careful survey of the fire prevention attitudes and actions of private landowners in the Cascades and Blue Mountains of Oregon.

The impetus for this survey is smartly laid out: “Because fire as a natural process operates across ownership boundaries, the Forest Service is taking an all-lands approach to forest management, and is making an effort to cooperate with other landowners across landscapes,” notes Susan Charnley, an environmental anthropologist working for the research station. “There’s very little information about how family forest owners manage their land for fire. We need to learn about how they’re managing their land for the same risks we face as an agency, to see what we might do differently to better address those risks.”

What Charnley and her colleague Paige Fischer discovered is that those whose properties abutted national forest lands and who perceived that there was a clear fire risk in the high hazardous fuel loads on these public lands, tended to be more proactive about making their properties less fire prone. They were also a lot more likely to act if their primary residence was on these forested acres than if theirs was a second home — eight times more likely, in fact.

This a key finding, as vacation homes make up a goodly number of the residences being slotted into fire zones of all kinds, exacerbating firefighters’ abilities to protect lives and property. “Nationwide, the trend has been toward a booming number of nonindustrial private owners, with a shrinking average parcel size,” observes John Bliss, the Starker Chair in Private and Family Forestry at Oregon State University. “Million-dollar homes are being built in the middle of harvested timberland without firebreaks. Many new owners who built their dream cabins live in an urban area and have no background in forest management, let alone wildfire prevention or fireproofing. When wildfires come through, these houses are sources of ignition and catastrophic loss.”

Just so folks remember that all forces of government need to be working together in the fuels reduction effort.. here’s another note from our county that shut down its slash disposal site.

“Fighting Back Fire” from the Denver Post

by
From CoreLogic Study
From CoreLogic Study

As I’ve said, I never learned how to do professional media analysis. Still I think it’s worth comparing the Rolodex Factor of the Denver Post story here to that of the NPR story below. These people are livin’ it, rather than modelin’ it. I give Bruce a 9.5/10 for this story.

Below is an excerpt:

Community fireproofing avoids the core issue of building in burn zones and, fire chiefs warn, is powerless against wind-driven super fires, such as the High Park, Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires that destroyed more than 1,000 homes this year and last.

Yet proponents contend that better community self-protection will minimize destruction.

“If it is a big crowning fire, we know what could happen. But if it is a moderate fire, we will have a fair chance of surviving,” said retiree Jim Lee, 69, who installed a rooftop sprinkler on his house in the woods near Frisco.

Lee also ripped cedar panels off the house and replaced them with nonflammable cement siding and switched roofing to fire-resistant shingles. He cleared a firebreak around the house, and got a special permit to thin dead pines 100 feet into the adjacent national forest.

Lake Dillon Fire Rescue District Deputy Chief Jeff Berino called Lee’s home “incredibly well-defended” — the gold standard as Summit County girds against wildfires likely to ignite on 156,000 acres of beetle-killed forest.

Dealing with Colorado’s wildfire problem more aggressively — by banning new building in burn zones — would probably be impossible, state natural resources officials say.

“It’s extremely hard to say to an individual who has bought land in the mountains that they cannot build on it. They may even have a legal right to develop it,” said Colorado Counties Inc. lobbyist Andy Karsian. “Development in the wildland-urban interface is going to happen. The question is how we find that balance between the personal responsibility for living in an area that will have fire and having good regulations.”

Strategies evolving While fireproofing must not substitute for wise planning, it makes sense, said Scott Fitzwilliams, supervisor of the White River National Forest, which spans an area from Meeker to Breckenridge and is plagued by a beetle epidemic.

“More and more of the risk associated with wildland firefighting is in the protection of homes and other structures,” Fitzwilliams said. “When we have these communities built right up against the National Forest boundary, we have a challenge to ensure we can manage or at least try to fight fire in a safe manner.”

and dealing with existing development:

But fireproofing has limits.

Policy debate”We can make the mountains safe by paving them. That’s not why we live in Colorado,” state emergency management director Kevin Klein said. “What level of protection are we going to to be able to afford and still enjoy what makes many people want to live in Colorado? That’s what policymakers are going to debate.”

Klein serves on a state task force charged with recommending state-level action to help deal with building in burn zones.

Beyond fireproofing houses and towns, “we have to look at where we are allowing new development to occur,” said Summit County Commissioner Dan Gibbs, who works as a wildland firefighter. “I don’t want to be voting for new development in areas where I think there’s going to be a major, catastrophic fire.”

Dealing with existing development looms largely unaddressed. Fireproofing tens of thousands of homes in forests could cost homeowners millions. An indoor water sprinkler system or underground cistern can raise house-building costs by more than $10,000.

There seem to be enough problems in Colorado without invoking future climate change.

A 2012 CoreLogic study of 13 Western states for insurers shows that after California and Texas, Colorado has more high-risk homes than any other state. At a time when dense forests and drought lead to high-speed wildfires, the study found 121,249 Colorado homes at very high risk for wildfire damage.

Texas is number 2 with one national forest. Who knew? Here’s a link to the CoreLogic study. Kudos to Bruce for linking to the source of the data.

The Moon and the Nautilus Shell: Read This Book!

by

moon

If anyone had been observing me as I was reading this book, they would have been highly amused. For one thing, it was the first book I’ve ever read on my IPad. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except Botkin had many sentences I wanted to highlight. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except highlighting involved 1) tapping the sentence 2) watching the IPad scroll to the next page, 3) tapping again 4) watching the IPad scroll to the previous page, 5) tapping again and watching a screen come up with pots of paint but didn’t seem to highlight, 6) tapping and tapping more earnestly when nothing happened, and so on. Occasionally, I would be surprised by some observation (along the lines of “The Emperor Has No Clothes and Here’s Why”) and I would mutter “OMG!” But the stories were so compelling I couldn’t stop reading to go look up “how to highlight.”

If you asked me why I like this book, I would say “all of us in the forest world are struggling to understand each other. We honestly try, but there’s something deeper that we just can’t get at.” For me, it’s like someone smarter and more articulate describes our world. The net result being that I can see it more clearly. Botkin has begun to explore the terrain of “something deeper”. He’s got a thesis; that a balanced and preferable past lies in our psyche (the Garden of Eden). But that doesn’t completely explain his observation (this was an OMG for me):
“If you ask ecologists whether nature is always constant, they will always say “No, of course not.” But if you ask them to write down a policy for biological conservation or any other kind of environmental management, they will almost always write down a steady-state solution.”

It’s so..obvious… once he pointed it out. Enter “ecosystem integrity” and NRV from the Planning Rule Directives. But why do scientists exhibit this dualistic behavior? Of course, rewriting all those statutes, regulations, and directives would be a lot of work; not for scientists, though. But, in my view, acknowledging the facts might dethrone some scientists from the comfortable position they have, telling the world what to do and how to be. Right now they get to do this without the mess of elections, and the hassle of going to seminary. Human nature is such that if you’re at the top of the heap, even if the foundation is cracked, you don’t want to move to a more secure foundation.

Botkin says that a common question he gets asked is “if you say one kind of change is okay, doesn’t that mean every kind of change is okay, like killing off endangered species (or whatever interests the questioner).” But even that questioner in his audience mixes “observed change” with “bad”.

I will tell one story about taking this to extremes. I once reviewed a paper about a shelterwood and changes in gene frequencies in the seedlings compared to the parents. The conclusion was, since the gene frequencies changed between the parents and the offspring, that shelterwoods were having a negative effect on the genetics. Well, the new gene frequencies could be better for this climate. They could have been a random fluctuation.. perhaps the wind was blowing from a different direction during pollination seasons. The terminal inability to distinguish what is from what should be, empirical from normative, is really scary. Insofar as philosophies can be scary. Because humans do things in the environment, and if every change is labeled bad, then humans are bad. But we know that our intrinsic goodness or badness is the realm of the philosopher, the psychologist and ultimately, the theologian. How did we get from scientific curiosity .. the conversation with nature, where scientists ask and nature answers, to an alchemy of despair? A more in-your-face version of this book might have been titled: The Alchemy of Despair: How Science Became Theology and What We Can Do to Get Science Back.

When I read the book on my IPad, it was an easy read; by showing only 2-3 paragraphs at a time, it seemed to increase the folksiness and storytelling feel of the book. Maybe the sepia background helped also. And make no mistake, Botkin is a great storyteller. And he is gentle in making his points; nonetheless, his points are very clear.

People on this blog will probably enjoy the interplay between his observations of nature and current scientific concepts. If you’ve ever wondered why the minimum population size is thought to be 30, and yet the black-footed ferret (or Best Ferret Forever) has recovered from a population of 18- this book’s for you.

Because there is so much content in this book, I’m going to suggest we have a Virtual Book Club. To give you all time to order it and read it, Book Club will start around August 12th. Then we’ll start a series of posts where we can each tell our stories, relevant to Botkin’s points or stories, and go on to hopefully have a discussion of other points of view. I encourage others to post about parts of the book that do or don’t resonate with them, and we can discuss that. Please send these posts to terraveritasatgmaildotcom.

I think what Botkin writes about is extremely important, both for environmental and forest policy, but also for people’s psychological well-being- humans are ultimately beloved children of Gaia, or sinners who have sinned against Gaia and deserve to be punished. Those of you involved in formal spiritual traditions.. does this sound familiar? And a dichotomy older, than, say Methusaleh?

Here’s a link to the book.

Colt Summit- The Next Round

by

colt summit table

This is one of our favorite projects to follow, for newer readers. One of the reasons is that there is a narrative that you will hear from some “if only the FS worked with collaboratives, then litigation would cease to be a problem.” I think I even heard that in some of the Chief’s testimony before Congress. Colt Summit is a data point that refutes that narrative.

From the current EA (my bold):

In response, members of the Lolo Restoration Committee unanimously agreed Colt Summit was consistent with the 13 principles of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee and the project would accomplish its restoration, monitoring, and adaptive management goals. Members of the Southwestern Crown Collaborative applauded the project for its responsiveness to their strategy for landscape restoration. Support for the project was provided by the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and United States Fish and Wildlife Service; agencies responsible for managing the recovery of grizzly bear, Canada lynx, and other wildlife in the project area.

Last week, the next stage of Colt Summit was released. To summarize, the judge wanted more lynx cumulative effects analysis. As far as I can understand it, the claims that the project would hurt lynx were not upheld, but they just didn’t analyze the cumulative impacts the way (at the scale?) the judge thought was best. (other more legally minded folks are welcome to clarify my understanding). The FS provided it, but it wasn’t in the right format. (I don’t think folks are allowed to ask format questions, but I could be wrong; I’d like to hear the FS story of how that misunderstanding happened).

So hopefully now it is in the correct format. Here’s the link to all the analyses. An amazing amount of verbiage for 600 acres of commercial thinning. As Derek would say, this would probably not be a big deal in Wyoming, Colorado, or South Dakota (I don’t know about points west). If I had to generate a hypothesis, it would be that groups in Montana like to sue more, rather than any difference in environmental conditions. I’d be interested in other hypotheses that explain the data, including this data point. Here’s where WELC claims “Victory!”, perhaps a bit early. It does make me curious who funds them and why they pick the projects they do.

It is the July 2013 Supplemental EA here..

The original Environmental Assessment has been supplemented to assure the Court and the public the Forest Service has provided the hard look that is required; more specifically, to characterize past projects or actions the Court found to be lacking in the original Environmental Assessment and project record. In this SEA, the Forest Service describes past, ongoing, and reasonably forseeable actions and characterizes their aggregate effects on lynx. This characterization is provided at the scale of the LAU because the Forest Service prevailed in its selection of the LAU as the appropriate scale to conduct such analysis Friends of the Wild Swan et al v Austin (D. Mont. 2012) (9:11-cv-00125-DWM, Doc. 50, Filed 07/11/12, pp. 22-23 and 40-43). In response to public comment, activities outside of the LAU have also been examined. In addition, portions of the original Environmental Assessment have been modified to provide a more comprehensive discussion of the project in order to support the supplemental analysis for lynx.

I like that the District clarified and improved some other parts of the document based on what they were hearing. They are trying to do a good job at explaining what they are doing.

However, if the judge is happy with this one, the taxpayer paid for all the supplemental analysis because one group decided to sue. Somehow it doesn’t seem …er… just. And no, because the court system is called “justice system” does not change my impression. It seems like lawyers would say it provides “accountability” for the Forest Service, but there doesn’t seem to be much accountability for the watchers of the Forest Service to the citizens.

In my opinion, a certification-like process would do more for accountability across all forests, be more transparent, improve actions done rather than actions as written, and be less costly for the taxpayer.

The Power of Stories

by

campfire

I belong to the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation LinkedIn group..there are many interesting things posted there but this one I found particularly relevant. I hope this link works even if you’re not in LinkedIn.

It reminds me of some of the things I’ve written about Right-Brained Forest Planning:
…

In an age of cynicism about government and business intentions, what better way to show respect for community views and values than inviting people to tell their stories?

We are routinely asked to participate in surveys which constrict us into narrowly defined answers with little room for expression. Sometimes we engage in debates where winning is the objective and respect is in short supply.
…
A story is personal, will usually evoke respect from others and can capture those things we cherish most highly or feel most passionately about.

A smart policy maker can learn a great deal more about the needs and concerns of the community from this sort of engagement than from a survey.

Notice that rather than jumping to a position on the policy issue at hand the contributors told of their own experiences and fears. Often when we are talking about an issue people jump straight into a position and it is very hard to then tease out the reasons they have taken that position in the first place.

If I say ‘I oppose this policy’ and people start to then try and ascertain why, it is likely I will be defensive. If asked for my story – how I relate to the issue before I have taken a public position I will be much more likely to reveal my motivations which gives a much better chance of all sides of a debate reconciling their diverging views.

…
Stories for planning and development

Asking the community for their stories is a highly respectful way of beginning any project that will effect people’s lives and the places in which they live those lives.

Asking for stories about what is special about a place and what people might treasure about it before presenting proposals to change it can help planners,designers and architects to preserve the important features and to pay homage to history in new development. This can make for a much happier community and a much better result.

It’s something to think about; I know we tell lots of stories on this blog; but perhaps we can be more aware of their contribution to better understanding each other and our positions.

Vilsack and Jewell Talk About Protecting Reservoirs from Wildfire

by
Organic debris and sediment were deposited in Strontia Springs Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to the cities of Denver and Aurora. This debris came from two watersheds (Buffalo Creek and Spring Creek) burned by the 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire. Associated with this debris was an increase in manganese, which increased the chlorine demand of water treated for municipal usage. Photo by John A. Moody
Organic debris and sediment were deposited in Strontia Springs Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to the cities of Denver and Aurora. This debris came from two watersheds (Buffalo Creek and Spring Creek) burned by the 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire. Associated with this debris was an increase in manganese, which increased the chlorine demand of water treated for municipal usage. Photo by John A. Moody

We’ve talked about the WUI quite a bit in terms of fuel treatments, and I know some of you want to talk about other fire effects. This story in the Denver Post this morning highlights tree thinning and prescribed burning around reservoirs.

Below are some excerpts:

— Top U.S. environmental officials Friday began a push to protect the nation’s federally run water-supply reservoirs against wildfires.

The fear is that worsening wildfires will trigger erosion that damages dams, canals and pipelines, and shrinks water storage, ultimately driving up water costs for ratepayers.

“Climate change is upon us, our ecosystems are changing and it’s up to us to work collaboratively,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told state, federal and local participants before signing a teamwork agreement at Horsetooth Reservoir, west of Fort Collins, an area where 11 wildfires since 2010 have unleashed sediment that threatens to clog water facilities.

Full funding has not been secured for work to protect 43 Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs in the West. But teamwork deals linking federal agencies, state foresters and water providers are enabling six startup tree-thinning and prescribed-burn projects in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Washington.

“When you’ve got a situation where there’s not enough money to go around, you have to pick your highest priorities,” Jewell said in an interview before the signing. “Obviously, protecting lives and property is important. But watersheds are really important. And I don’t think they’ve been on the radar to the same extent.”

Major wildfires in 1996 and 2002 burned 150,000 acres of Denver’s forested watershed and unleashed an estimated 1 million cubic yards of sediment into Strontia reservoir. Denver Water utility managers say they’ve spent $45 million trying to deal with wildfire erosion, including $17 million for dredging Strontia, a job still not done

I like this quote from Secretary Jewell:

Tree-thinning and prescribed burns around federal reservoirs — before anticipated wildfires hit — can reduce fires’ severity and minimize downstream damage from erosion, Jewell said. “If we get ahead of this, you will be spending less money.”

This statement by Vilsack is particularly interesting..

Changing how fire suppression is funded could help free funds for tree-thinning, prescribed fires and restoration work at federal reservoirs, he said without providing details. “This is about reducing the risk of contamination — sediment and ash getting into the water supply — which increases the cost of treating the water and the availability and the quality of water.”

I think folks tried to change how fire suppression if funded.. the FLAME Act, which didn’t work so well. I wonder what ideas the Secretary has?

If tree thinning is important, than why would you cut the budget from last year for doing this by 37%? Maybe USDI thinks differently and didn’t cut their as much?

For the Forest Service, one story would be that the broader Wildland Fire line item had to average out to 5% for sequestration. Another would be OMB doesn’t believe that thinning treatments work. It’s all very confusing.

For me.. if Secretary Jewell says thinning is important in words, then it should be translated into the most powerful policy document there is.. the budget, for all agencies involved. I guess reservoirs could be good to protect, towns not so much; but as a veteran of Colorado Roadless, I can tell you that some folks who don’t want people living in the woods are not really fond of reservoirs either.

Addendum.. there’s also an AP story in the Idaho Statesman here and here’s a press release.

Here’s some information on the Forest to Faucets partnership with Denver Water, which was spearheaded by folks in the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service, pre-Vilsack.

Let’s Analyze the NPR Story “Fires Will Worsen”

by

I found this story interesting on all kinds of levels. Let’s analyze it. I have never been trained in media analysis so here goes, hopefully someone on the blog can add some insight.

ROLODEX FACTOR:

First, I like to look at the “rolodex factor.” Who did they talk to:

Ray Rasker, Headwaters Economics economist. His bio says he has expertise in rural development, and we have talked about the recent report of his previously on this blog.

Elizabeth Reinhardt, Assistant Director, Fire Management. Of these, she is the only one I think is competent to talk about it.

Anthony Westerling, Professor at UC Merced. He is a member of what I would call the “climate modeling industry”. That is his expertise seems to be in models and not in fires as experienced in the physical world.

MODEL THE ROLODEX FACTOR:
Given that Rasker’s group just wrote about “houses in the WUI growing is big problem for fire”, and Westerling is a climate modeler, we can predict “this story will talk about climate as the reason for fires, and people in the WUI.” This story will follow the same trail as the one I posted yesterday here. Uh.. oh.. looking at it it actually sounds like the SAME story. Except in that one Reinhardt is a “fire researcher” (a previous position).

The only mystery is “What will Reinhardt say?” She has been a fire researcher, worked in the climate advisor’s office and now is an AD for Fire Management, in which she will be expected to toe the F&AM line.

WHAT THE STORY SAYS:

Rasker says: In Montana, when it’s just one degree warmer than average, 35 percent more land burns. That costs money.
“The really interesting thing is that when the average summertime temperature is just one degree Fahrenheit warmer, the cost of defending these homes doubles,” he says. Rasker says these numbers are similar in California and Oregon.

This does not sound like an assertion based on data because no one has done the experiment of raising a degree and then watching fires. All it would take is the statement “my colleagues and I have done some modeling and it shows”.. for this to be more honest/em>

He notes that about 84 percent of the private land around national forests is open to development, versus 14 percent of surrounding land that’s already built up with housing developments, resorts and vacation homes.

Given that this is true (it doesn’t match my observations), you would have to understand why, and how that is going to change as the economy comes back. I like that Ray is so confident about the economy, though. Maybe I’ll call my stockbroker. Those predictive economic models have done so well in the past..

Already, the firefighting portion of the Forest Service’s budget is higher than ever. “In 2012 [the share of budget] was over 47 percent,” says David Cleaves, the service’s climate and fire expert. That’s tripled over the past decade or so.

Cleaves says it’s not a crisis now, but “economically, and in a policy sense, you could call it a crisis in the future.” That’s because more money that goes to firefighting means there’s less money available for prevention.

Note that Cleaves didn’t say the last statement. If we use a health analogy, it would be something like “people keep shooting each other and require ER visits, so we need to stop that because it takes money from preventive health programs.” We all know that a budget pot (what is in the same pot) is a policy choice, just as how much money goes into each pot. And suppression and fuels are not the same pot. Anyway, I bet someone has explored the reasons for any tripling of budget for suppression over the past decade. Any reports on this?

Now this is interesting:

Nowadays, the U.S. Forest Service has less money to spend on trimming back or burning undergrowth and trees to prevent bigger fires in the future. Estimates put the area of forest that needs fire prevention work performed on it at over 200 million acres, but the service is only able to treat about 3 million acres a year.

One solution is to let some natural fires burn longer instead of putting them out right away. That gets rid of built-up fuel, and it’s cheaper than mechanically thinning forests or doing prescribed burns. But this tactic isn’t popular with homeowners nearby.

“So many of the places where we have fire are near where people live,” says Reinhardt. “Or, say it’s early in the fire season and you have months of fire season ahead of you, and you just don’t feel like you can take the risk of having a big fire out there in the backcountry.”

It could also be reported that “for mysterious reasons that have been critiqued by a bipartisan group of folks in Congress, the tactic preferred by real life voting homeowners is having its funding reduced by the Obama Administration. They think it’s more cost-effective to have large fires and let them reduce fuels, but those darn people are in the way.” Another thing is that prescribed fire is not so popular with nearby communities. Errr. communities. Remember towns like Idlyllwild are not a part of this story. It is, at this point, framed to be about “homes” and “homeowners.”

Westerling works at the University of California in Merced but he’s been watching the Rocky Mountains a lot. He says spring is coming earlier, and it’s hotter. Many forests there are near their heat and drought limit.

You can’t visit the University of Colorado (or even a Starbuck’s in Boulder) without stumbling over a climate modeler modeling.. the Rocky Mountains. Rolodex again..

And Rasker says there are ethical as well as economic reasons to limit development near forests — the lives of firefighters are at stake.

“It’s a tough thing to see people go in, to have to risk their lives” to defend structures in towns that have been evacuated, he says. “Empty structures.”

Ah.. so we finally get to “towns” and not “homes”. But if we take Ray at his quote, it would then be unethical for firefighters to fight home or office fires if people had been evacuated. But why stop there? It would also be unethical for police to risk their lives in confronting people robbing buildings without people in them…and so on.

Really, it’s kind of a silly quote. Didn’t anyone else notice?
I actually agree that new developments in the backcountry need increased scrutiny. But this story..does not do the issue any kind of justice and leaves out some important things. You could pretty much predict the story by who the author picked to interview. And it’s not clear why they picked whom they did, except for Reinhardt.

Just Move Out of the Woods, Because of Climate Change?

by

Idyllwildpanorama This is the town of Idyllwild (Inciweb had no photo links)

I thought, given our discussion here and elsewhere on the framing of the issue as “just move ’em out of the woods”, it was interesting to see, once again, exactly who and what is “in the woods.” Check out this article on the Idyllwild fire:

The communities of Idyllwild, Fern Valley and smaller surrounding communities in the mountains southwest of Palm Springs were under evacuation orders affecting some 2,200 homes and 6,000 residents and visitors, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Carol Jandrall.

People were being allowed home long enough to pick up essential items before evacuating as the flames crept over a peak just east of the towns, Jandrall said.

There were 4,100 residences threatened by the fire including homes, hotels, condominiums and cabins, Forest Service spokeswoman Melody Lardner said.

Coincidentally, there was this story on Southern Cal public radio.

I wonder if the Forest Service ever said the below specifically (new fire policy = function of climate change) or this was an interpretation..

Climate change is forcing the US Forest Service to rethink how it fights large wildfires. Global warming has increased the intensity of fires, forcing the USFS to spend more and more of its money fighting them. Now the agency has decided that it should be less aggressive in attacking big blazes, so long as they are not threatening property.

In 1991, the US Forest Service’s spent 13 percent of its budget on fire management. Today, because of climate change, that figure is more than 50 percent, officials say.

The change is visible at the top. Three years ago, the USFS added a chief climate advisor. Agency veteran Dave Cleaves holds the job; he’s been with the Forest Service for more than 20 years. He says forest managers used to consider global warming as a future problem, “but now we’re finding more and more it is an issue of the present and the future.”

Headwaters Economics, a Montana think tank, found that when the temperature is one degree warmer, fires burn on average three times as much terrain. Headwaters economist Roy Rasker said the cost of fighting larger fires could overwhelm local, state and even federal budgets.

The Forest Service already cuts underbrush and thins tree stands to minimize risks. But agency predictions of increasing fire intensity suggest that, even with these tactics, the amount of forestland vulnerable to burning will increase in the years to come, says U.S. Forest Service fire researcher Elizabeth Reinhart.

That reality is changing federal fire management. The Forest Service has been successful over the decades fighting fires with personnel-heavy attacks that aim to shut a blaze down right when it starts. Reinhart and other federal officials say sticking with that strategy is costly, and could overwhelm other necessary work in the forest.

“So in some cases, rather than direct aggressive suppression tactics, we’re able to monitor wildfires to stop its movement in one direction while letting it burn in another,” Reinhart says. “This sets up the landscape to be more resilient to the next wildfire.”

Picture supplied by Larry, below.

Chuck Roady on Budget Cuts

by

Gil suggested posting this...

I don’t believe that people litigate for the money. I think they believe that they are doing good. However, it does seem that some people’s opinions count more than others and there are issues of justice involved in who has access to these decisions, as we’ve pointed out on this blog before.

My curiosity was aroused by his figure of $350 million for NEPA and where it comes from. As Fred Norbury used to say, how can we say NEPA takes too long and costs too much if we don’t track how long it takes or how much it costs? And I don’t think we actually know. Further, I have opinions (and I’m sure you do) about some NEPA investments being worth more than others. For example the latest Colt Summit redo required by the courts has 0 value. Whereas the GMUG and White River oil and gas leasing decision has substantial value. In my opinion. How about you?

I agree with Chuck, and so does the GAO report, that something is different in region 1 and in Montana, at least compared to Wyoming and Colorado. And if I had to give any impressions from the last couple of years of observations on projects in Montana, I would have to say it has to do with specific groups, such as Garrity’s, who do business there. I also agree with Chuck that it is not a partisan issue..