Sharon

Eastern Colorado BLM RMP Strikes a Balance; Both Wildlife and Energy People Satisfied; District Manager Explains Rationale

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First thing.. this RMP covers more subsurface mineral estate than surface

The Eastern Colorado RMP planning area consists of approximately 35 million acres of land under various jurisdictions in eastern Colorado, including 7,177,100 acres of federal mineral estate, which may lie beneath other surface ownership. The BLM actions considered in the Approved Eastern Colorado RMP would only apply to those areas for which the BLM has the authority to make management decisions (the decision area), which comprise 658,200 acres of BLM-administered surface land and 3,311,900 acres of BLM-administered mineral estate.

If you’re interested, I posted some maps below.

According to TRCP,  the fact that there was a South Park Coalition made the difference.

Before the formal planning process began, Park County, Colorado Wildlife Federation, TRCP, several other conservation organizations, and water providers came together as the South Park Coalition and began identifying areas suitable for development and areas key to conserve.

“I think the work we did well before the formal process made a big difference to enable the really good outcome for the unique resources of the South Park area,” said Suzanne O’Neill, executive director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation. “We applaud BLM’s recognition throughout the process of this iconic basin’s distinctive and largely unfragmented wildlife habitats, prized trout streams, water quality, and spectacular vistas. In addition, the plan’s treatment of the areas managed by BLM in eastern Colorado outside of South Park has been much improved.”

This is a good story from the Colorado Sun.  Apparently CBD is not a fan.

“Unfortunately, the BLM maintains the status quo, which is basically the oil and gas industry can have whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and however it wants,” said Nichols, whose group estimates the plan allows for a doubling of oil production on public lands over 20 years. “And that is not a solution to both the climate crisis or the clean air crisis that is affecting the Denver Metro area and the Northern Front Range.”

And many wildlife groups and the energy folks are satisfied.

“BLM chose a balanced alternative, not the most extreme conservation-only alternative,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance. Of course some environmental advocates are not happy, she said, because they are “never happy unless a decision is made that shuts off all oil and natural gas, but that would be unlawful. BLM has a duty to balance energy development with environmental protection.”

I thought what the Royal Gorge District Manager had to say was interesting:

The BLM’s Royal Gorge district office, which guided the resource plan, said the draft process included a long schedule of community meetings for input. The BLM’s call for public involvement included a first-time effort to divide the broad swath of Colorado into four geographic regions with a unique sense of geography and culture. South Park community advocates had a big impact on the plans, Royal Gorge district manager Keith Berger said.

The early 2019 draft of the now-final plan had only about 1,300 acres set aside for land with wilderness characteristics, Berger said, and public calls for more eventually pushed the BLM to set aside more than 114,000 acres in that protected category.

Oil and gas development was taken off the table for 93% of the Eastern Colorado land, he added. (Nearly all the mineral rights BLM deals with in Eastern Colorado are oil and gas, rather than coal rights the agency controls in other districts.) BLM decided to allow new oil and gas development in northeast Colorado, for example, in part because those areas already have oil and gas as a common land use, he said. Much of the BLM-controlled mineral right is interspersed with private lands where oil and gas drilling is already dominant.

If BLM stops new leasing, the technology of fracking allows a private well nearby to reach underground and take federal resources without compensating the U.S. taxpayer through royalties, Berger noted.

“It sets up a scenario where the federal mineral estate would still be drained by that adjacent development going on on private lands,” he said.

If that’s true,  then can what Ramey says here be equally true?

“While we celebrate the new lands protections, it’s confounding that the final plan will increase climate-damaging emissions,” said Jim Ramey, Colorado State Director for The Wilderness Society. “

Do Ramey and CBD disagree that the gas will be extracted either way? I would have asked, since both of their statements would not be true if that is the case (increase emissions). Aside from the whole “reducing emissions by keeping fossils in the ground in the US is the best way to reduce global emissions” argument which I don’t agree with.

Anyway, check it out.    It does make you wonder whether there might be a partisan subtext to choosing the preferred alternative in Wyoming.

 

It’s a little confusing, because to Coloradans, “eastern Colorado” is not in the mountains, whereas most of the BLM surface in this RMP is.  Here’s the surface estate:

If I used the eplanning site correctly, here’s the subsurface estate. I haven’t figured out the red vs. black. Maybe someone can help?

 

M

A Roundup of Tribal Views on Energy Projects

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Photo is from AP story on SunZia transmission line (see last story below).

 

Utes Supports Rail Transport of Crude Oil.  These Utes seem fairly invisible in the media reports on  the Forest Service permit for the oil train.  I looked at several news stories about the Forest Service decision on the railroad. The AP story did not mention the Utes.  All of the Colorado stories I reviewed did not mention them. Only the Salt Lake City Tribune, in my review, mentioned them.

The Ute Indian Tribe, whose reservation is in the Uinta Basin, and Utah’s elected officials support the railway, arguing that it would boost struggling local economies and aid domestic energy production.

Here’s a link to an op-ed I think I posted before. Title:  “Opinion: Blocking the Uinta Basin Railway is another injustice to the Ute Indian Tribe Hickenlooper, Bennet and Polis are wrong to oppose this project needed for the reservations.”  It’s one thing for your opinions to be ignored; it’s another to be mostly invisible to the media, at least compared to the examples below.

Tribes Against Uranium Mine.

Grand Canyon -Guardian Article

“There are so many reasons why this mine doesn’t belong where it is,” said Amber Reimondo, the energy director with the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental group focused on protecting the region. “And the fact that it is allowed to operate is a stark example of the weaknesses in our regulatory system.”

Across the south-west, local communities and tribes have been pushing back against uranium mining proposals, including in Utah, where the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe is concerned about air pollution from a nearby Energy Fuels mill facility. Similar tensions have arisen around lithium mining in the west, as a need for the metal in clean energy components grows.

Tribe Against Wind Turbines.

Federal Judge Sides With Osage Nation, Orders Removal Of 84 Wind Turbines

Tribes Against Transmission Lines

From the AP yesterday.

Pattern Energy officials said Tuesday that the time has passed to reconsider the route, which was approved in 2015 following a review process.

“It is unfortunate and regrettable that after a lengthy consultation process, where certain parties did not participate repeatedly since 2009, this is the path chosen at this late stage,” Pattern Energy spokesperson Matt Dallas said in an email.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Tohono O’odham Nation, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the nonprofit organizations Center for Biological Diversity and Archaeology Southwest.

“The case for protecting this landscape is clear,” Archaeology Southwest said in a statement that calls the San Pedro Arizona’s last free-flowing river and the valley the embodiment of a “unique and timely story of social and ecological sustainability across more than 12,000 years of cultural and environmental change.”

The valley represents a 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch of the planned 550-mile (885-kilometer) conduit expected to carry electricity from new wind farms in central New Mexico to existing transmission lines in Arizona to serve populated areas as far away as California. The project has been called an important part of President Joe Biden’s goal for a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.

Work started in September in New Mexico after negotiations that spanned years and resulted in the approval from the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency with authority over vast parts of the U.S. West.

The route in New Mexico was modified after the U.S. Defense Department raised concerns about the effects of high-voltage lines on radar systems and military training operations.

Work halted briefly in November amid pleas by tribes to review environmental approvals for the San Pedro Valley, and resumed weeks later in what Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon M. Jose characterized as “a punch to the gut.”

SunZia expects the transmission line to begin commercial service in 2026, carrying more than 3,500 megawatts of wind power to 3 million people. Project officials say they conducted surveys and worked with tribes over the years to identify cultural resources in the area.

A photo included in the court filing shows an aerial view in November of ridgetop access roads and tower sites being built west of the San Pedro River near Redrock Canyon. Tribal officials and environmentalists say the region is otherwise relatively untouched.

Yakama Tribe and Washington State Land and Solar

From High Country News.

Does the Old Growth Amendment Supplant or Redefine NRV?

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Old growth LPP

First of all, let me say that there are probably people in the Forest Service who have thought all this through.  I’m hoping that they will help out with their explanations in the comments.

If old growth is old growth, and mature forests are on their way to old growth, and young forests are on their way to mature forests.. then it seems like there is no ceiling on the amount of old-growth needed, and no reason to ever have openings other than “natural” ones.  This can be problematic, conceptually, as some groups believe that today’s wildfires and wind events are all unnatural or caused or “supercharged by” the anthropogenic part of climate change.

And if you believe that, then does any ecosystem have “integrity”?   Or is the key thing to promote resilience (including biodiversity) in the face of climate change and protect key values of ecosystems and people from these and other dangers?  To keep diverse living trees alive on the landscape, and to protect water, wildlife and other values?  Perhaps some will say “it’s the same thing” and if it is, then perhaps the use of plain English would save time and misunderstanding.

Let’s go back to the 2012 Planning Rule Handbook:

Assessing the status of ecosystems—their level of ecological integrity—is difficult. There is no guide that provides a comprehensive protocol, and each ecosystem has a unique body of scientific information relevant to the ecological assessment. The planning rule and supporting handbook identify departure from the natural range of variation as a criterion to assess ecological integrity. The natural range of variation refers to the variation in key ecosystem characteristics produced by dominant natural disturbance regimes, usually in a pre-European influenced reference period. This method works well for ecosystems that are relatively well-studied and their natural range of variation can be estimated through ecological modeling or other methodology.

(my bold).  Now, as most readers know, I wasn’t a fan of this approach at the time.  At that time,  my thinking went along these lines… (1) there’s a great deal of pre-European time and yet a certain time has to be selected, humans have been around since glaciation;  (2) animals and plants move around and hybridize- and evolution is part of Nature, after all;  (3)  time’s arrow only goes one way, at least genetically;  and (4)  if climate is changing faster than usual, then there is no reason to think that the past is well adapted to the future. And don’t we want forests that are adapted to the future? As described in the Handbook, it unintentionally downplays the role of Indigenous fire management and the idea “natural= pre-European” only fits if Indigenous folks are part of Nature, which some now consider to be racist. It would perhaps be clearer and more accurate to say “we want to go back to Indigenous ways of managing the landscape,” if that’s really the case, but again we’d need more Indigenous people and give them authority over federal forests plus make them do not what they think best but what they think their ancestors did.  And the importance of Indigenous management and climate have only become clearer or perhaps “supercharged” in more recent discourse.

Many forests have done vegetation modeling and historic research, and came up with desired conditions of say, certain amounts of habitat with certain characteristics.  For example, x acres of early successional habitat, or y acres of  western white pine or oaks, or even the historic densities of some species.  So logically, to recreate these conditions, we may need to thin trees for density reduction and create openings for some pine and oak species to regenerate.  There are different ways of getting openings.  Depending on where you are, openings could occur due to wildfire, wind events, volcanoes, floods, trees dying from old age and/or native or introduced diseases and pests, and so on. With or without attribution to anthropogenic factors of climate change, some of these are more natural than others (fire suppression and non-native species obviously not).

Generally, the only other way is to manage is via prescribed fire or some combo of mechanical treatments (aka “logging” or “tree-cutting”) and prescribed fire.  So do we still want those carefully arrived at NRV distributions or not?  According to some, if the opening-treatments  would occur in currently mature or old-growth forests, then not.  So that leaves “natural” disturbances (affected by AGW, so then unnatural, except for volcanos?) and hoping that they get to the desired ratios; or alternatively, doing openings over and over in younger forests but not mature ones, so that they don’t go through their successional stages, which seems also unnatural.   Look who wrote about the importance of early successional  ecosystems in this 2011 paper (abstract)

Different disturbances contrast markedly in terms of biological legacies, and this will influence the resultant physical and biological conditions, thus affecting successional pathways. Management activities, such as post-disturbance logging and dense tree planting, can reduce the richness within and the duration of early-successional ecosystems . Where maintenance of biodiversity is an objective, the importance and value of these natural early-successional ecosystems are underappreciated.

So will the new OG amendment effectively replace the concept of “pre-European conditions” with “creating as much old growth as possible”?  Because we can imagine quite a possible tension between “maximizing old growth” and “ensuring diversity of tree species”,  and the latter  would be important to fulfill certain requirements of NFMA, specifically.

“provide for diversity of plant and animal communities based on the suitability and capability of the specific land area in order to meet overall multiple-use objectives, and within the multiple-use objectives of a land management plan adopted pursuant to this section, provide, where appropriate, to the degree practicable, for steps to be taken to preserve the diversity of tree species similar to that existing in the region controlled by the plan;”

My bold, Of course, trees and bark beetles, do their own things, unbothered by humans’ desire for shade or carbon credits, or even plan amendments, forest-specific or national. From the Fire Effects website:

The average lifespan of Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine is 150 to 200 years [37,170], though some Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine trees live more than 400 years

WaPo on EPA and PM 2.5: Watch Out for More Disciplinary Encroachment

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(From Aguilara et at. 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21708-0 open source)

 

The WaPo had an interesting article last week on PM2.5 regulations. I wouldn’t be following this if it weren’t for the wildfire/prescribed fire angle on PM 2.5.   There seems to be a discussion that since wildfires and prescribed burning emit particulates, that therefore industrial sources should reduce even more. Then there are studies that say different PM2.5 sources can have different health effects, with wildfire particulates being more harmful. From that study:

PM2.5 in the United States has decreased in past decades due to environmental regulations5,8, with the exception of wildfire-prone areas5. Wildfire PM2.5 in the US is projected to increase with climate change along with the associated burden on human health9. Levels of wildfire PM2.5 can greatly exceed those of ambient PM2.5, spiking episodically within a short period of time (e.g., hours after the onset of a wildfire),

It also seems to me that wildfire and prescribed fire are different than industrial, as exposure is more due to kinds of work than to where a person lives. It is true that industries tend to be in poorer areas. But maybe the solution is to focus on those industries, rather than a broad brush across all sources. Note how quickly the world as we might see it, complex and full of different particles and different effects, becomes framed as good guys versus bad guys. And the paradox that “bad guy” industries also provide living-wage jobs for lower-income people can be transformed into a crude political calculus.  This may give EPA even more authority over wildfire and prescribed fire than it has with fire retardant permitting.  In fact, wildfire and prescribed fire may become wholly owned subsidiaries of EPA decisionmakers.  As would all areas transferred, by a stroke of the regulation pen, into non-attainment.  I see this quite a bit, what we might think are complex issues are reframed as simple  (the less PM 2.5 the better, regardless of other needs and concerns) and then translated into good guys and bad guys.

So look how the reporter frames the issue:

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to significantly strengthen limits on fine particle matter, one of the nation’s most widespread deadly air pollutants, even as industry groups warn that the standard could erase manufacturing jobs across the country.

So it’s industry folks (bad) vs. the EPA (good):

Several major companies, trade associations and some Democratic lobbyists are trying to preempt the rule by suggesting it could harm President Biden’s reelection chances in key swing states. They say the tougher standard for soot and other pollutants could destroy factory jobs and investments in the Midwest and elsewhere, undermining Biden’s pitch that he has revitalized these areas more than Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner.

Public health advocates strongly disagree with the industry’s assertions. They say strengthening the soot standard would yield significant medical and economic benefits by preventing thousands of hospitalizations, lost workdays and lost lives, particularly in communities of color that are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air.

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EPA lawyers have said in court filings that the soot rule could be finalized by the end of this month. As soon as next week, the agencyis expected to lower the annual soot standard to 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the current standard of 12 micrograms, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

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We are reassured by EPA that there are no trade-offs.  Maybe EPA needs more economists? As Thomas Sowell said, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Anyway, our own forest folks show up in this article.

A limit of 9 micrograms could sharply increase the number of counties that are in violation of the soot standard or just below the threshold, according to a map produced by the American Forest & Paper Association, a trade group. Companies would then have a harder time getting permits to build or expand their industrial plants, potentially prompting them to move to other countries with weaker environmental rules, the group says.

“Our average ambient level of PM2.5 in this country is 8; in China and India, it’s about 5 to 6 times that level,” said Heidi Brock, the American Forest & Paper Association’s president and chief executive. “What sense does it make to offshore jobs from this country, where we have some of the cleanest air on the planet?”

So the Post analyzes it from a political point of view… is this the time to stop building manufacturing in the red areas?

“Detroit is red. Philadelphia is red,” he added. “Why would the White House effectively redline new manufacturing facilities in urban Democratic strongholds where young workers need high-paying, frequently unionized manufacturing jobs?”

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“Lowering the standard to 8 micrograms per cubic meter, in terms of long-term exposure, would benefit vulnerable communities the most,” said Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author of the study.

Research has also found that wildfire smoke, a major nonindustrial source of soot, has slowed or reversed air quality improvements in much of the country. Industry groups have seized on these findings to argue that their soot emissions are a small part of the problem. But public health experts counter that wildfires are exacerbated by climate change, which in turn is exacerbated by industrial pollution.

“We know that these wildfires are getting worse and more intense due to climate change,” said Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “And it’s the same industries that emit PM2.5 that also emit a lot of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.”

It’s great to be against industrial pollution. It’s great to be in public health.  But this is kind of a weird conflation (and the expert neither an expert in climate nor wildfires) kind of statement, unless the point is to export 2.5-emitting manufacturing to countries likely to be poorer (with lower wages) where they would be emitting the same or more greenhouse gases.

NACs Are Knackered: At Least For Now

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Apologies for this long post, but it took awhile to research this proposal. We don’t even have a category in TSW for “financial instruments.”

Well, as most of us can’t help but know, this year is a Presidential election year. For our friends currently in the federal government, we are well in to the “silly season,” characterized by random  flounderings of the current Administration seeking to placate or enthuse various groups whom they consider to be Important, and to avoid doing anything that they might be upset about, or that the Opposition might highlight.  It’s hard to thread that needle and actually accomplish anything, and when in doubt.. don’t is the word of the season.

The image that comes to mind is of a loose hose. As a career fed, my goal was to stay out of the way and not get blasted.

It seems to me that the “natural asset companies” idea of the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) exhibits some silly season attributes. Just when I felt I had done enough research to come to an opinion on it, the proposal was cancelled. I try to stay away from partisan politics, but perhaps the best thing we can do this year is to show that many policy issues in our area of forests and federal lands do not fit neatly into the R/D divide. It seems like some folks are trying to shoehorn complex political views and ideologies into the “us or them” box prior to the election.  This shoehorning can cut off consideration of obvious policy choices that people of various views agree on, obfuscates honest rendering of within-party disagreements, and makes people seem more divided than we really are.  Yes, we disagree, but not neatly along party lines. After all, political parties are somewhat artificial constructs.

Anyway, back to an E&E News article on the effort being cancelled.

The NYSE withdrew a proposal pending before the Securities and Exchange Commission that would have allowed it to offer the new kind of investment known as “natural asset companies,” or NACs. The investment concept centered on the creation of companies geared toward improving ecosystems, including those on state or federal public lands, in the United States or abroad, as well as privately owned acreage. The companies would then put a dollar figure on the resulting improvements, such as clean air, wildlife habitat and even “sensory benefits” like a nice view.

But the idea, first unveiled in 2021 by the financial services firm Intrinsic Exchange Group and supported by the NYSE and groups like the Rockefeller Foundation, has faced significant opposition from Republican officials and property rights advocates since the SEC began reviewing it last fall. Critics asserted the companies could become a backdoor for stricter management of public lands and waters by limiting extractive industry, as well as uses like grazing. They also asserted it could create an avenue for foreign governments to gain operational control of U.S. public lands. In a statement, the NYSE pointed to “feedback from regulators, market participants and others” for its decision to withdraw the proposal but did not address any specific criticisms.

To be fair, critics included recreationists who were concerned about access. We can also wonder about how Tribes might be involved.

Earlier this month, a coalition of 25 Republican state attorneys general inked a letter opposing the investment scheme, and the House Natural Resources Committee’s Republican members opened an inquiry on the development of the proposal.

“Innovation is the lifeblood of our economy and we are always open to ideas in the area of sustainable finance and elsewhere that have the potential to further strengthen our U.S. capital markets,” an NYSE spokesperson said. IEG Chair Douglas Eger said the firm does not intend to abandon its idea, noting the investments could still be pursued through private equity or another public exchange.

“We’re moving ahead. This is just too important for conservation, sustainability, for the farm economy,” Eger said. “These are fundamental things that need to be addressed at a capital market scale. IEG is committed to bringing this to the markets, private and eventually public.”

Ah.. private equity.  They did so well with nursing homes.. not.

Anyway, this got my political spidey sense tingling.. a NY financial fellow proclaiming what is important to the “farm economy.” Farmers are often Republicans. Republicans, by and large, were not fans of this proposal. Maybe farmers are not fans of novel capital markets; maybe they’re happy with the current USDA structure that has been built and working for over one hundred years. The old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  IMHO, it takes some hubris for people in one sector to simply claim we need them involved in our sectors.  Perhaps this is the sectoral equivalent (sectoral encroachment) of scientific disciplinary encroachment that I posted about on Monday.

Then there are a few issues around trust and the Wall Street folks. Not that long ago, it was a progressive thing to mistrust Wall Street. Remember Matt Taibbi’s reporting in Rolling Stone.. not on Fox News?  It wasn’t that long ago that our financial friends and their regulators caused the Great Recession. In fact, many progressive Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, have questioned various things about Wall Street’s behavior patterns.

Since irritating Republicans seems a feature, not a bug, of many current Admin policies (think Monumentizing in R States), my hypothesis is that this was ultimately a D vs. D decision; that the former Bernie-ites were not thrilled by handing conservation and food over to a sector which notably screwed up the entire world not that long ago. And who can blame them? Maybe that’s something we can agree on.  Perhaps this switcheroo is due to the flailing firehose effect.

On the other hand, at least some of our libertarian friends, usually considered to be right-wing and Republican-adjacent, see this as another example of “willing buyer and willing seller.” So I don’t see people lining up in any traditional R/D lines here.

Then there’s your average citizen who reads newspapers, who may have internalize the lesson “if a financial instrument is developed that is really difficult to understand, the people involved probably doesn’t have your best interests at heart.” If only.. we had a Good Governance Party, one of the principles would be: “we don’t give regulatory agencies any more responsibilities until they have proven accountable for the regulations they already enforce.” And..SEC would not be on that list.

If I were in the business of building trust for new ideas, I’d be really clear on what  the needs is and why current solutions aren’t working. Also, I’d give  people time to understand it, including public meetings and so on.  From Federal Newswire

After SEC issued their proposed rule to approve NACs, they initially allowed only 21 days for comment and 45 days for review. After major concerns were raised by ASL and its partners, the decision-making time was extended to January 2.

To paraphrase the expression “great claims require great evidence’, I’d say “novel interventions require great explanation and public involvement.”

What this reminds me of is the “conservation lease” idea in the proposed BLM Rule- retirees and common sense tell us we can already restore degraded landscapes and we don’t need new financial arrangements.  If there were policy referees, they might give a penalty for “inadequate need for change.”

As always, in the absence of rational arguments, we must consider- partisan politics. From CNBC:

“Year in and year out, this torrent of money gives Wall Street an outsized role in how we are governed, while driving and protecting policies that help this industry’s super wealthy amass even greater fortunes at the expense of the rest of us,” Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, told CNBC in a statement.

The report says that individuals and campaign entities linked to the financial sector contributed just more than $1.9 billion toward backing candidates running for federal office, including over $74 million that went to supporting President Joe Biden’s run for president.

Of the $1.9 billion, 47% went to Republicans and 53% went to Democrats. In fact, this report notes that more than $250 million from those working in the FIRE sector went toward supporting Biden, the most out of all the contenders for president. Those contributions were a mix of donations to his campaign and outside groups supporting him.

But back to the proposal from the E&E news story:

Eger also emphasized that the decision to withdraw the rule change pending before the SEC came from the NYSE and not his firm. “They made the decision that they wanted to pull the filing because of the opposition,” Eger said. “They felt there were a number of concerns that had been raised, and they felt it was better to pull it. We were disappointed in that.” Eger also lamented “misinformation” that targeted the proposal, pointing to arguments that the NACs would allow foreign governments to control federal or state lands, and allegations that the firm collaborated with the Biden proposal to further its own conservation agenda.

“It got tied up with a lot of other political agendas,” Eger said. “And unfortunately that got a lot of people upset, and they never were willing to dig down or even have conversations with us about what NACs are intended to do, what they can do, what they can’t do.”

Now even the humble career civil servants at the FS and BLM know that presenting new ideas to the public is their responsibility, and it is the work of the proposer to start the conversations. Transparency and accountability build trust in institutions.

But what is the link between the NACs and the BLM conservation rule? The Center for Western Priorities tells us that there is no connection, and gives some history of the idea. People who are legitimately concerned about access.. like RV folks and others, are accused of being “conservation opponents,” or are concerned about Wall Street taking over more of our lives are now “conspiracy theorists.” For those of you not familar with CWP, it is a project of the Resources Legacy Fund funded by the usual philanthropic suspects, who have ties to D politics.

The BLM’s proposed conservation rule has nothing to do with this theoretical accounting future. It just happens to be moving through the regulatory process at the same time that Wall Street is considering letting some companies voluntarily account for the value of nature. But that alone is enough of a threat to the status quo that conservation opponents are willing to invent new conspiracy theories to try to stop it.

In my experience, “conspiracy theory” has been used by some to discourage people from doing more research and analysis (think Covid origins).

Here’s a link to the SEC proposed rule:

NACs will be corporations that hold the rights to the ecological performance ( i.e., the value of natural assets and production of ecosystem services) produced by natural or working areas, such as national reserves or large-scale farmlands, and have the authority to manage the areas for conservation, restoration, or sustainable management. These rights can be licensed like other rights, including “run with the land” rights (such as mineral rights, water rights, or air rights), and NACs are expected to license these rights from sovereign nations or private landowners.

So the proposal includes “national reserves,” and the BLM proposed rule says conservation leases, and yet from CWP we are to believe that for there to be a connection it must be a conspiracy theory.  So I guess the answer is that agencies are going in random directions that, through happenstance, line up. Not sure that that’s a better argument for the managerial excellence of this Admin.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like a lot of money will be changing hands.. but the more direct method would be “funder or group of funders to willing landowner to manage for specific values.”  Maybe we need a “poor people’s instrument to combine to pay for ecosystem services” that is not publicly traded, without all the regulatory (transaction) costs on both the landowner and SEC sides. More money for conservation, less for counting and watching and paying counters and watchers and possibly investors.

The Exchange and IEG have entered into an agreement pursuant to which IEG has granted the Exchange an exclusive license in the United States to use the Reporting Framework in connection with the listing of NACs on the Exchange (although the Reporting Framework will remain proprietary to IEG). Under the terms of the agreement, the Exchange has acquired a small minority interest in IEG and one seat on IEG’s board of directors. IEG has agreed to seek to identify and develop NACs for listing on the Exchange, in addition to marketing the listing and trading of NACs on the Exchange and providing training with respect to the NAC structure and the Reporting Framework to NYSE personnel and currently listed and potential listed NACs. IEG will be entitled to a share of the revenues generated by the Exchange from the listing and trading of NACs on the NYSE.

So NYSE makes money from NACs, IEG makes money (from license) to NYSE. It all sounds very cozy.

Who is IEG? Here’s some information I could find.

The company’s asset’s primary purpose is to maximize ecological performance and the production of ecosystem services and provide a platform to list these companies for trading, enabling companies to convert natural assets into financial capital.

This sounds very free-market-y indeed to me.

Random News Roundup II. Keeping Jaguars From Killing Livestock, Wildfire Evac App, and Adding Fungal Mixes on Loblolly Pine Sites

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Related news I just saw thanks to PERCs TwitX feed: More jaguars coming back to Arizona.

1. Giving jaguars ‘food poisoning’ may stop them from killing livestock
Jaguar attacks on pets and farm animals are a common problem, but after developing a drug-induced stomach ache, the big cats seem to learn not to kill certain animals.

Here’s a link to the study.

By treating meat with high doses of deworming medication and wrapping it in the skin of domestic animals, scientists may have successfully thwarted attacks on livestock and pets – and hence lethal repercussions on the wild cats, says Ivonne Cassaigne at Primero Conservation in Mexico City.

In 1974, researchers reported trying to prevent coyote attacks on sheep by taking advantage of the “food poisoning” effect that occurs in people when we experience nausea and abdominal pains after a bad meal and then find the same food disgusting later. This reaction, called conditioned taste aversion, evolved in most animals as a way to avoid toxic food, says Cassaigne. Unfortunately, early taste-aversion studies in wild predators generally failed because the animals could smell the poison in the meat, she says.

In 2009, Ron Thompson at Primero Conservation in Pinetop, Arizona, found that thiabendazole – an odourless, tasteless deworming medication – gave two captive pumas a safe but serious stomach ache when injected into the skin-wrapped meat of desert bighorn sheep. The cats later refused to eat any desert bighorn sheep meat, he says.

Hoping to put jaguars off hunting domestic animals, Cassaigne, Thompson and their colleagues recently added high but non-lethal doses of powdered thiabendazole into 2 kilograms of mutton or pork wrapped in the animals’ own skin. They fed this meat to six captive jaguars in three Mexican wildlife refuges.

Within 3 hours, the cats became lethargic and sometimes howled, says Cassaigne. Some later vomited and had diarrhoea for a few hours.

The next day, the jaguars had good appetites and eagerly ate beef. But none of them ate the pork or mutton offered to them. “[One female] grabbed it and had it in her mouth, but then she spit it away,” says Cassaigne. “She was like, ‘Oh wow, yeah, I remember now!’” Their aversion to those specific meats lasted at least a month, when the experiment ended.

Later, Cassaigne and her colleagues injected thiabendazole into the carcasses of a calf and a feral dog that had been killed and then left by two wild jaguars in Mexico. Villagers were contemplating targeting the cats due to their killing sprees. “We spoke with the locals and said, ‘Please just let us try this instead of killing them,’” she says.

In both cases, the wild males came back to continue eating the spoils. One never attacked another calf over the next seven months. The other killed one dog – but didn’t eat it – and never attacked again over the following year of monitoring, says Cassaigne. This jaguar might have been attacking dogs for years already and was used to hunting them, making it harder to stop the habit, she adds.

Jorge Tobajas at the University of Córdoba in Spain says he is relieved that researchers are finally exploring the use of conditioned taste aversion in endangered felines due to their conflicts with humans over livestock. While the tests in the wild were inconclusive, those in captive jaguars showed great promise, he says.

“It is crucial to conduct further field experiments in a more controlled manner, focusing on areas with recurring attacks that allow for before-and-after treatment comparisons,” says Tobajas. An important next step would be to follow tagged jaguars with GPS transmitters to better understand their reaction to treatment, he adds.

Training predators to learn a taste aversion before releasing them into the wild – such as in rewilding programmes – is the ideal scenario, says Cassaigne. “You don’t want to start with a problem.”

2. Wildfire Evacuation App

I wonder whether similar apps are being developed in the US?

“It’s a very serious problem,” says Andreas Kamilaris at the CYENS Center of Excellence in Cyprus. “The statistics show that casualties, as well as the area of land burned, around the world are increasing year by year.”

That prompted Kamilaris and his colleagues to build a mobile app that provides personalised evacuation routes to anyone caught in the path of a wildfire. The app connects over mobile networks to a web server running a fire simulation program, which uses publicly available data on geography, weather and vegetation type to predict the spread of fires at 15-minute intervals.

A fire management tool similar to those already in use lets local fire departments quickly tag when and where a fire starts, which is then used to generate real-time simulations. The app then uses the GPS location of each user to work out potential routes, selecting the best by weighing up how quickly each route gets them to safety against how close it takes them to the fire’s path. The best option is then displayed either as turn-by-turn directions or as a route overlaid on a map of the area.

In a small pilot at the Athalassa National Forest Park in Cyprus, all 17 people who took part successfully escaped a simulated fire. In questionnaires afterwards, they said the app was easy to use and that they would use it in a real wildfire.

But Ed Galea, a fire safety expert at the University of Greenwich in the UK, worries the route-planning algorithm the researchers use is too simple to deal with the complexities of a real-world evacuation, such as varying travel speeds or congestion on escape routes.

And while fire and evacuation models can help experts plan or respond to emergencies, he thinks even state-of-the-art systems have limitations that currently make them unsafe in the hands of untrained people. “That is not to say that the goal of having a personalised wildfire evacuation guidance system is not achievable,” he says. “Just not today.”

Kamilaris admits the app still needs work and says the researchers plan to add features, like the ability to tailor travel speed and monitor users to prevent congestion, before testing again in more challenging scenarios.

3.  Adding wild fungi to soil could make trees store more carbon

This story is interesting because there are two ideas here that seem a little different. First is the “intact forests” idea:

With Funga, Averill is using soil from intact forests to inoculate newly planted trees to make them grow bigger and faster, generating carbon credits the company can sell. The concept is similar to faecal transplants for gut microbiome disorders, says Averill. “But we apply it to the forest.”

In mid-February, planters started inoculating soil on 40 hectares of a commercial loblolly pine plantation near Lexington, Georgia. The planting itself is straightforward: a scoop of soil from an area of intact forest is added to a hole where a sapling is planted. Identifying precisely which soil to scoop is more complicated.

But this sounds like they figured out the best ones (like selecting trees, only microbes) and collected them from the test site (not “intact” forests).

Over the past year, Funga researchers analysed tree growth rates and sequenced the DNA of soil microbes in 500 loblolly pine forests around the south-eastern US to determine which composition of microbes is associated with the most growth. They then collected these candidate microbes from the test site in Lexington and inoculated new saplings.

Averill says they also planted trees without the added soil to establish a baseline against which to compare any additional carbon stored by the inoculated trees.

Results won’t be available until the end of 2023, but Averill says similar methods increased forest productivity between 30 and 70 per cent at a research plot where he works in Wales.

He and his colleagues also analysed 81 experiments that examined how inoculating soil with wild microbiomes affected various types of plants in different ecosystems. They found a range of effects, from a small reduction of biomass to a more than 700 per cent increase. On average, plant biomass increased 64 per cent.

“It’s going to do something,” says Jennifer Bhatnagar at Boston University, though she says how much depends on a lot of factors, such as how degraded the soil is to begin with. She also says the effects of soil restoration are better understood with saplings than with older trees. “When they get older, will that initial inoculant be enough?”

Sourcing the soil poses another challenge, says Prescott. Many species of fungi can’t be cultured, and at larger scales, soil extraction could degrade the collection sites.

Here’s an interesting article from Forbes about the company, and here is a link to their website.

Random News Roundup I: From Woodstoves to Airbnbs

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Hope you and your friends are staying warm!

Yesterday was way below zero here with a wind chill,  so I was cleaning my office and thought I’d share some totally random pieces I thought were interesting.  Most timely and relevant:

1. Wood Stoves Are Bad For You

FOR MANY AIR QUALITY regulators and advocates, tweaking wood stove emissions is missing the point. Though reducing emissions in the short term can be beneficial, a longer-term solution would phase out wood stoves altogether, said Laura Kate Bender, the national assistant vice president for healthy air at the American Lung Association.

“Right now, what the science shows us is that there’s actually no safe level of particle pollution exposure,” Bender said. “There’s no amount that’s healthy to breathe.”

It’s interesting.. in some cases it’s a trade-off so people have multiple heating sources; diversity is good for economic and survival resilience.  And certainly there have to be restrictions in populated areas.  But people do other unhealthy things.. most notably, perhaps, food and beverage choices.  Say sugar or alcohol or marijuana?

But for most of them, the more immediate issue is getting rid of uncertified wood stoves and discouraging people from burning for recreation — an uphill battle for many who are unaware of the health impacts of woodsmoke.

“People are just sort of like, well, yeah, it stinks,” said Traviss, the Keene air pollution researcher. “But, it’s wood. How bad can it be?”

Maybe they aren’t unaware, maybe they are making different choices than some would prefer.

There’s also an interesting question of EPA’s analysis of wood stoves.   In this article (titled “10 blue states are planning to sue the EPA”- and includes Alaska as a blue state), it goes into some detail, but if the author seems confused about what people use wood stoves for (and the partisan feelings of Alaska) there are probably better stories out there.

 According to public health experts in the UK, a wood-burning stove is 450 times more polluting than a gas one. An electric stove is the least polluting option and often the most efficient, too.

2. Can ecosystems be intact if they are under solar panels?

Can massive solar power expansion regenerate the US’s iconic prairies?
Renewable energy development is transforming the US countryside. It could be a chance to restore the iconic prairies if rural opposition can be overcome

This is from New Scientist, last September.

Rapid development of renewable energy facilities, such as solar farms and wind turbines, is necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change. But the industry’s demand for rural land – what Shannon Eddy, director of the Large-scale Solar Association, calls “the biggest shift in land-use patterns in modern history” – has generated intense opposition among local communities across the US. Amid this, researchers and some developers, including Ørsted, are looking for ways to make facilities that bring benefits not only to rural populations but landscapes too.

The one that has perhaps gained most traction is the idea that solar development can restore lost habitat if native flora is planted beneath panels, supporting birds and insects and improving the soil on potentially millions of hectares. This, the argument goes, could finally herald the return of the iconic prairie.

They’re kidding, right?

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Prairie rewilding

Then there are decisions about the maintenance needed to ensure seeds grow and outcompete invasive plants. Mowing is better than herbicides for pollinators. Some sites use goats or sheep to control vegetation through grazing. Prescribed burning would be ideal, says Walston: native prairie plants have deep roots adapted to withstand fire. Indeed, fire suppression by European settlers is a major reason for the loss of prairie to encroaching woody plants. However, burning hasn’t yet been tried at a solar facility to his knowledge. Beneath solar panels or not, “prairie restoration is not going to be easy”, says Harms.

Restoring habitat isn’t all expense, though. Once established, a solar prairie might actually require less maintenance than close-cut turfgrass and it may be less prone to erosion than gravel, says Walston. Prairie locks up carbon in the soil, so restoration projects could be marketed as carbon credits. Research has also found that having vegetation beneath panels improves their efficiency on hot days by cooling them. The scale of these benefits is potentially vast. In California alone, Hernandez envisions solar developments that incorporate prairie restoration happening on the hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland set to be taken out of production to prevent overuse of groundwater.

The rest of  the article is also interesting albeit paywalled.

3. Those Darn Humans Department: Destroying Ecosystems Since 13K BCE

Extreme fires caused by ancient humans wiped out Californian megafauna

A series of catastrophic fires killed off many large mammals in southern California by 13,000 years ago, and they were largely due to the arrival of humans

A series of catastrophic fires was the immediate cause of the extinction of many large mammals in southern California 13,000 years ago, according to a study of fossils from the La Brea tar pits. The findings suggest these extreme fires were probably a result of humans abruptly changing the ecosystem by killing off herbivores – meaning there was more vegetation to burn – and deliberately starting fires.

“It’s a synergy of the drying climate and the humans, and the fact that they are killing herbivores and increasing fuel loads, and all of those things go together to make a feedback loop that takes the ecosystem to a chaotic state,” says Robin O’Keefe at Marshall University in West Virginia. “The fire event is really catastrophic.”

4.  Airbnb and Florence.  From the Wall Street Journal. It’s not just resort communities in the US…

The spread of short-term rentals has pushed up rents and priced out residents. Shops that once served locals have become rarities. Lockboxes for keys sit next to the doorbells at many buildings’ entrances. On some streets in central Florence, most of the buildings have at least one lockbox, which allows visitors to access their short-term apartment without having to meet the owner. Some buildings have four or five.The telltale lockboxes have also proliferated along the canals of Venice, the small alleys of the Cinque Terre and the chaotic streets of Rome.

Florence’s historic center—a Unesco World Heritage site—has more beds listed on Airbnb than it has residents, according to the study. “Even if you have a lot of money, you can’t find a place to rent in Florence because all the apartments are on Airbnb,” said Linda Sanesi, who lives outside the city’s central area and runs a hair salon with her husband on a small street next to Florence’s cathedral.

Up until the 1990s, stores serving locals populated the downtown area. Few have survived. About 60% of Sanesi’s clients are tourists looking for a haircut.

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Florentine property owners and professional managers of short-term rentals are promising to fight the city’s restrictions in court.

Italy’s government has debated what to do about short-term rentals, but has yet to make any significant intervention. Its draft budget for 2024 would raise the tax rate on rental profits to 26% from 21%, starting with the second apartment an owner rents out. The first rental would still be taxed at 21%. Critics say it will make little difference.

Other European tourist destinations have restricted short-term rentals. Amsterdam introduced its first regulations in 2014, under which apartments generally can’t be rented out on platforms such as Airbnb for more than 30 days a year. Owners can rent out only one property, and a permit is needed for offering an entire apartment. Barcelona, Paris and Berlin have also aggressively reined in short-term rentals.

New York City began enforcing new rules in September that Airbnb called “a de facto ban on short-term rentals.” Hosts must register with the city, can’t rent out an entire property and must be present when they have paying guests.

 

Four Questions Journalists Should Always Ask About Research Studies; and Saved From Disciplinary Encroachment by Western Watersheds

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Thanks to Wyoming Public Media

 

These days, in several studies we’ve reviewed on The Smokey Wire, it appears that exploring mechanisms is an afterthought, perhaps left to unnamed parties.  What was a basic scientific principle- that correlation is not causation,  seems to be on the verge of being thrown out.   A wide variety of variables.. social and others.. are not found or explored, and thinks which are unlike are lumped together.  In fact, new research has emerged without direct connection to the traditionally involved disciplines.  I think that this is definitely a science “Situation That Shouts Watch Out”.   And I think what we have to be very aware of.. since most journalists are not (this post will helpfully encourage them to be more aware).. is what I call “disciplinary encroachment.”

Anyway, I think this is a great column to illustrate some of my concerns.

1) Framing.  First, look at the proposal and how it’s framed.  Does it seem like it would inform any decisions?  If not, read no further.

2) Data.  Does the data collected (or used without collecting) relate to the question directly? Is this relationship explained clearly? Do they discuss the weaknesses of using these data?

3) Disciplines.  If the study is touching on, say, economics or birds, are economists or bird scientists involved? If wildfire, are wildfire scientists involved?

4) Correlation is Not Causation. For the same reasons this has always been true. Correlations can be tested by designed experiments.  But those would tend to be carried out by experts in the field (see number 3).

Not to be an Old Person, but these were values upheld by fields in forest science at one time.  If we are changing those scientific community values, I think we should announce the fact, so the public can be clued in.

Sammy Roth of the LA Times, one of my favorite reporter,  didn’t seem to notice that it might be odd for a post-doc economist at the University of Geneva to study birds in the US. Note that Sammy wrote this article as a “column” which I think might mean “opinion piece” and not an ordinary article.  My view is that when reporters write both op-eds and news articles on the same subjects, it does not lead to confidence in the objectivity of the products.  See the James Bennet piece on how this has become murky in some outlets.

Erik Katovich, an environmental economist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva, had been following all the news coverage of wind power and bird deaths, and he feared it was being “weaponized by those opposed to renewable energy.” A longtime birder himself — he grew up in Minnesota bird-watching with his dad — he wanted to know if the harm to avian life from wind energy development in California, Iowa and other states was getting blown out of proportion.

*************

As even those of us non-ornithologist know who follow this, different species respond differently.  Avoiding sites and getting killed are different things..eagles, sage grouse are all different.

So like any good scholar, he ran the numbers.

Katovich turned to data from the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, an annual effort dating back to 1900 during which tens of thousands of volunteers methodically record bird sightings at consistent locations around the world. Last winter’s count produced more than 36 million sightings of 671 bird species in the United States alone.

In a clever bit of science, Katovich compared the Christmas Bird Count numbers with data showing where wind turbines were built in America’s lower 48 states between 2000 and 2020. He did the same comparison for bird counts and new oil and gas extraction in shale fields — a process defined by the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

His peer-reviewed study was published last month. The conclusions are fascinating.

Katovich found that wind energy development had no statistically significant effect on bird counts, or on the diversity of avian species within five kilometers of a Christmas Bird Count site. Fracking, on the other hand, did have an impact. The drilling of shale oil and gas wells “reduces the total number of birds counted in subsequent years by 15%,” Katovich wrote in the study.

But no one, as far as I know,  was concerned about bird counts, they were concerned about critters like eagles and sage grouse.  See how that works when the framing is not clear at the outset? Sleight of science. And get this conclusion:

In other words: Oil and gas drilling is worse for birds than wind power.

That’s a pretty grandiose conclusion from one study.  So let’s back up and go back to framing, which was apparently “is oil and gas drilling “worse” for birds than wind power?”.  I don’t think anyone has this as a choice, and in fact I’ve seen both turbines and oil and gas facilities in the same general area.  I don’t recall a single BLM EIS that compares those two alternatives.  Then.. there are a lot of bird species.  I don’t know of any eagles that have been shredded by oil and gas facilities, so which species count more? And what if wind needs new transmission lines?

Can you imagine a study that amalgamates.. say.. mammals?  A more useful question perhaps would be “how can O&G or wind have fewer impacts on different bird species?” Which, of course, bird scientists are “avi”dly studying..

Here’s what Sammy has to say:

But to my mind, his results are a sign that we pay too much attention to bird-related criticisms of wind energy — probably in part because those criticisms are trumpeted by right-wing provocateurs, including some funded by fossil fuel industry money.

This is where it gets kind of funny.  Fortunately, Roth checked with various National Audubon people.

They told me Katovich probably underestimated the harm to birds from wind energy, in part because he included all turbines within five kilometers of Audubon bird count locations. Prior research has found that wind farms are much more likely to kill or injure birds that spend time right near the turbines.

I don’t think anyone can argue that birds need to be close to turbines to be injured or killed by them.

Fortunately, Sammy happened to also ask Erik Molvar of Western Watersheds. If he hadn’t met Erik.. I guess we wouldn’t have gotten this (more accurate) side of the story.

Molvar, who leads a conservation group called the Western Watersheds Project, offered several criticisms of the new study.

For one thing, the Audubon bird counts are done by volunteers, meaning the data aren’t perfect. Also, Katovich didn’t analyze the number of birds of each species recorded at each location — a crucial measure of biodiversity, Molvar said via email.

“A bird count that records one cardinal gets exactly the same weight as a count that records 250 cardinals,” he wrote.

Molvar also pointed out that wind farms and fossil fuel extraction can affect birds in different ways. Wind farms are more likely to kill birds than displace them. And some birds are more sensitive to wind farms than others. “Extreme habitat specialists” such as sage grouse — the focus of my first meeting with Molvar — could suffer greatly even as other species get by fine.

************

When I ran those criticisms past Katovich, he responded gracefully, describing them as “thoughtful and informed” and agreeing that several issues he examined could use further research. He also noted that in the same way his study could be missing some of the damage to bird populations from wind energy, it could be underestimating the harm from oil and gas, too.

But why wouldn’t you ask bird scientists.. about birds and how to measure their populations and so on, what we know about how they respond to O&G and wind installations?  Certainly wind folks collect monitoring data.

As we shall see with other studies, disciplinary encroachment is not unusual.

Oh, but the funny part. If you circle back to “But to my mind, his results are a sign that we pay too much attention to bird-related criticisms of wind energy — probably in part because those criticisms are trumpeted by right-wing provocateurs, including some funded by fossil fuel industry money.”  And we have to wonder whether anyone thinks Western Watersheds are closet “right-wing provocateurs”  or closet right-wingers (just kidding!).

BLM Stories: Cassia County (Idaho) Flood of 1984 by Steve Ellis

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Steve Ellis (middle back row) at the time.

Timeline: The 1984 drama at Lower Goose Creek Reservoir

Cassia County (Idaho) Flood of 1984

by Steve Ellis

As many of you know, I worked part of my career with the US Forest Service and part with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It is much less uncommon these days for Forest Service
employees to have worked in other federal agencies during their careers. This water related story relates to one of my early career BLM Idaho duty assignments.

In the spring of 1984, I was working as forester/watershed specialist for the BLM in Burley Idaho, a town of maybe 8,000 people at the time. I spent much of my field seasons setting up
and administering timber sales in beetle infested lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir and going on occasional wildfire assignments. My winter work at that time primarily fell in the land use
planning and NEPA arenas. Cassia County had a usually wet winter and spring in 1984 which, along with warmer than normal April/May temperatures contributed to a heavier than normal
mountain snowpack and substantial runoff. The Oakley Dam (Lower Goose Creek Reservoir) south of Burley provided water storage for a canal system that fed potato and sugar beet fields in
the fertile Oakley Valley farmlands of the Snake River plain. The reservoir also served as a popular local recreation spot, especially for angling. Prior to the earth and concrete dam’s 1915
construction, Goose Creek freely carried water from the South Hills, northward into the Snake River. In the years following the dam’s construction, farm fields and development filled in the
more than 20-mile-long Goose Creek channel.

I recall getting called, along with my supervisor Marv Bagley to the county emergency services office one day in May and asked if we (BLM) could help in determining a route to get water
from Oakley dam northward to the Snake River. Time was of the essence. Due to the heavy runoff, the dam was at risk of topping out and action needed to be taken to manage the expected
spillway overflow. Otherwise, the most likely path for uncontrolled water to take would be across farm fields and quite possibly some residential neighborhoods of Burley, essentially the
historic course of Goose Creek. We agreed to help by surveying and flagging the centerline of a large portion of an approximately 17-mile channel across private land between Oakley and
Burley. As I recall, we had less than a week to get this accomplished. A State Office (Boise) survey engineer by the name of Russell Huskey and I were tasked with getting our portion of the
survey work done. Russ and I gathered up some current and old air photos, topographic maps, stakes, flagging, survey rod & level, and off we went!

After studying the topo maps and air photos we, in coordination with Cassia County officials decided to follow the old stream channel as much as practical, even though it looked like we
could occasionally be staking a path between people’s houses and outbuildings. I remember penciling our proposed route on the topo maps and using a stereoscope to look at the air photos
laid out on the hood of our vehicle. There were no iPads, laptops, cell phones, drones, or other such current day technology back then.

Russ worked the level and I the survey rod. We flagged the center line through farm fields, right over roads and in a few instances next to houses. As I remember, the US Army Corps of
Engineers had the lead on canal construction and essentially ran the heavy equipment show. I also remember the Idaho National Guard placing temporary bridges over select road crossings
once the waterway was dug.

One of the things that amazed me is that the heavy construction equipment started digging the emergency canal maybe a day after we initiated our surveying and flagging. They were
excavating out a waterway perhaps 35 feet either side of our marked center line. I could sometimes see the big yellow caterpillar earthmovers hastily working further back in our wake,
so to speak. I recall having the discussion with Russ that wow…guess we better get this correct! We did recognize that we were staking the centerline essentially downhill which is where the
reservoir water would flow.

In reflection, this was a successful community-wide effort. The dam did not breach, and water did not flood uncontrollably over farmlands and Burley proper. As I remember, the hastily made
canal to the Snake River was surveyed and built in perhaps a week. Many dozens of local volunteers worked to keep the raw canal banks from caving in as water traveled rapidly through
it from the spillway gates. By early June the ordeal was over, the canal was filled in, and I moved on to a new position in Boise. No public lands were involved and to my knowledge, no lawsuits
were ever filed. We (BLM) felt good about helping the Cassia County community as good neighbors in a time of need.

For me, an early federal career “take away” from this experience was that there are opinion leaders in communities, not necessarily elected to public office, who can be very helpful in
getting good things accomplished. Identifying and developing a suitable working relationships with such people is important to successful public lands management.  I also learned the value of
having a knowledge of local culture. During this event, I observed the helpful influence of local Mormon church leaders and noticed the effective role they played in getting volunteers, and
landowner cooperation as we surveyed the most practicable course for the waterway. During the remainder of my career whether the duty station was a small, rural western community or more
urban in nature, I remembered the importance of learning local culture, and building relationships with various influencers before problematic situations came about.  Maintaining Forest Service and BLM field office footprints in more rural communities is invaluable in this regard.

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At the time of the Cassia County flood, Steve was working as a Forester/Soil, Water & Air Specialist in Burley Idaho. During his 38-year BLM and Forest Service career, he worked duty stations in southern Illinois, Idaho, Alaska, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, DC. He holds a B.S. in Forestry and M.S. in Geographic and Atmospheric Science. He is a very experienced and skilled equestrian, and for many years, was a licensed private pilot. Currently he is the Chair of NAFSR, the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.

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Here is a link to a Washington Post story on this. There are also many stories and photos on the Magic Valley website which is paywalled.

Governor’s Task Force Arrives at Recommendations on Rock Springs RMP

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In a breakout task force group to discuss the Rock Springs Area Resource Management Plan Revision, stockmen John Hay III, president of the Rock Springs Grazing Association, and T. Wright Dickinson of the Vermillion Ranch work on the Wyoming alternative. (Angus M. Thuermer Jr./WyoFile)

This is an interesting story from Wyofile on the Rock Springs RMP.  Turns out that the Governor got together a panel to review the draft.

Despite representing disparate interests, the 11 members of a governor-appointed task force reached consensus on more than 100 recommendations for the Bureau of Land Management’s controversial draft plan for managing some 3.6 million acres in southwestern Wyoming.

The guidance, released in a report late Wednesday, represents a cool-headed note in a public process defined by furor at the federal agency. Many of the packed meetings convened last fall to discuss the plan unfolded with anger and misinformation — including misinformation the BLM itself disseminated by mistake.

Gov. Mark Gordon held the recommendations up as an example of how Wyoming knowledge can inform a better Rock Springs land management plan.

“This particular effort was initiated out of necessity,” he said in a statement. “It was critical we amplified the public’s involvement in this important BLM planning document, and shared with BLM how Wyoming, through collaboration, creates durable and quality land management policy.”

The final recommendations include conserving landscapes around the prized hunting grounds of the Greater Little Mountain Area, protecting development of the trona assets contained within the Known Sodium Leasing Area as well as proposals for managing the “checkerboard” area of the field office that recognize access needs and wildlife migration. They support continued motorized use and continued grazing. They also urge protections for key cultural features and natural resources, but advise special designations in just a few limited areas.

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Though many Wyoming denizens came out forcefully against the agency’s preferred alternative, which prioritizes conservation and gives large zones new designations of “areas of critical environmental concern,” Stone-Manning stands by the draft.

“The BLM believes there are a lot of shared values and goals in this plan that strike a balance with conservation and multiple uses,” Stone-Manning said.

*********

“We look forward to carefully considering [the task force’s] thoughts and the public’s comments as we finalize the plan,” Stone-Manning said.

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Critics decried the closure of large acreage to energy leasing, the roughly 2.5 million acres that would be excluded for new right-of-way consideration and the transference of lands into “areas of critical environmental concern,” a designation used to protect important historic, cultural and scenic values. Designated ACECs would swell from current acreage of 286,000 to more than 1.5 million acres under B.

Conservationists, however, have championed the vision outlined in the preferred alternative, saying the area is ecologically valuable enough to warrant a conservation-forward approach.

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One major source of consternation spawned from a typo. The BLM mistakenly left in a provision saying it would close 4,505 miles of routes and eliminate another 10,006 miles of undesignated, illegal routes under Alternative B. BLM officials assured that mistake would be fixed.

But claims of the agency shutting down traditional activities like hunting, camping and recreating were unfounded, agency officials maintain.

“For whatever reason, people latched on very quickly that any ACEC designation was going to automatically restrict public use,” Rock Springs Field Office Manager Kimberlee Foster told WyoFile during a September open house. “And none of that is true.”

*********

The agency has battled misinformation through the process, Stone-Manning said. “One significant area of misinformation has revolved around access to our public lands,” she said in the email. “For example, there have been rumors about no longer being able to walk your dog on public lands, roads closing, and hunting no longer being allowed. None of this is true and we are taking every opportunity to separate fact from fiction. Public lands are open to the public and there are no decisions to open or close roads being made as part of updating this resource management plan.”

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Not to be unnecessarily skeptical (not being a BLM expert), but is this a case of carefully worded “sleight of planning”?  Decisions to restrict access would  not be in the plan itself, but the plan would set the context for follow-on decisions.  I note the qualifiers “automatically” restrict public use, “no decisions.. being made as part of updating.”

I also wonder if Director Stone-Manning meant this:

The BLM’s approach to defusing the hot situation, Stone-Manning said, is to start with what’s universally important about the land. “One starting place for us is always that clean water, abundant wildlife and the sustainable use of natural resources on our public lands is something that everyone cares about,” Stone-Manning said. “From this place, we are working to engage in grounded conversations and dialogue on how alternatives and details in the plan support and balance that.”

Perhaps they could have not developed the “hot situation” in the first place by talking to local folks and elected officials; or rather talking to them and following through on what they said.  If the Biden Admin is carefully watching its two land management agencies (which I don’t think it is.. but still) it might notice that many forest plan revisions have stakeholder groups that work together to develop recommendations.  Why does this RMP effort seem so relatively top-down in comparison? My BLM retiree friends would probably tell me its because FLPMA has political appointees as leading the agency.  Whether this is good governance or unnecessarily drama and ill-will-provoking is another question.

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Here’s a note I received from Pew today: (Take Action Now!). The RMP has the potential to “chart a new course for public lands management here and across the country.” Why Rock Springs though, of all places?  And the “best possible policy for the region’s wildlife and people.” Because those people..who live there.. don’t actually know what’s best for them, I guess.

Dear Wilderness Supporter,

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is deciding how to conserve migration corridors and habitat for more than 350 wildlife species while preserving cultural sites and sacred landscapes across a wide swath of public land in Wyoming. When finalized, the Resource Management Plan (RMP) will dictate conservation and management of this breathtaking landscape for the next 20 years or more, and the BLM needs to hear from you in order to make the best possible policy for the region’s wildlife and people.

The Wyoming Red Desert, at the heart of this management plan, is a wild place. It is one of only a handful of vast landscapes that host such an intact assemblage of wildlife, ranging from a one-of-a-kind resident population of desert elk, the world’s longest migration corridor for mule deer, and pronghorn antelope and prairie dog colonies as far as the eye can see. Further, significant Indigenous petroglyph sites and ancient trails crisscross the landscape. At the same time, oil and gas rigs encroach on the important habitat here, as do other proposals for developing the land.

Help shape the future of our public lands by lending your voice for wildlife and wild places.

The BLM issued a draft management plan that favors a strong conservation approach, proposing to limit additional energy development while ensuring that many of the undeveloped areas and cultural resource sites remain undisturbed. With several important changes, especially for migration corridors, the Rock Springs management plan has the potential to chart a new course for public lands management here and across the country. Don’t miss your opportunity to weigh in on this critical plan and help ensure that its final version is the best it can be for wildlife and wild places!