Sharon

Forest Options Report- Meet Here in a Week!

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Andy Stahl, in a comment below on Forest  Planning #2, mentioned the Forest Options Report that he had worked on with others.  A cursory glance suggested to me that it would be good if some of us took the time to read it and came up with what ideas from there we think are still valid today, and why.  They may not strictly have to do with forest planning, but that’s OK in my view. So let’s meet back here in this space next Wednesday or thereabouts-I’ll post what I think and we can talk about it. See you then!

Sharon

Forest Planning #2- The Participation-Shed

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Jim Burchfield
January 18, 2009

If genuine, deliberative collaborative processes become an inviolate principle in the development and implementation of a new generation of National Forest plans, then the geographic scale of planning becomes one of the most important early decisions in the establishment of planning rules. I will argue that a vital, but not singular variable in determining a planning area boundary is the capacity of resident populations to participate in ongoing deliberations, “a participation-shed,” if you will. Even though participation has many styles and flavors, the type upon which meaningful collaboration has depended for some time is the form in which people see, hear, touch, and even smell each other – face-to-face deliberation. There is no more meaningful or creative decision environment, in terms of empathy, compromise, and learning, than the physical confrontation with your adversaries and friends. Technology gives us the ability to supplement these direct interactions, of course, and it will continue to provide enormous advantages in exchanging information and ideas, but the virtual world will always fall short of the goal to make progress. Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.

So how do we design a set of geographic areas that create opportunities for people to get together and confront our very real resource management problems? I would suggest considering a few additional variables that encourage action and the ongoing measurement of consequences. First, watersheds have a logical as well as historical significance in the management of western lands. The availability of clean, fresh water will only accelerate under warming climatic conditions. Second, local government boundaries, such as state and county lines, remain stubbornly stable and administratively unavoidable. We can’t make a specious claims that these “artificial” boundaries don’t count. They do. Finally, we have the administrative boundaries of the National Forests and their dependent Ranger Districts. A planning area requires a leader to convene and guide public discussions. This is often best fulfilled by a trained, responsible federal official, a person who pays attention to the actions emerging from planning and the monitoring and evaluation that follows to adapt to new conditions. The perfect unit for planning on a National Forest would be a place like the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, where the 4th code hydrologic unit happens to coincide nicely with the Ravalli County and National Forest boundary. These cases are rare, so for everywhere else, there will be fudge factors.

What we cannot fudge, however, is the potential for citizens to engage regularly, honestly, and with feeling. Someone has to be able to get in their car after work and attend a well-organized, focused meeting that lasts no longer than two hours, isn’t a lot more frequent than once per month, and gets something done on the ground within a year. This is not too much to ask, and in fact, has been done on many occasions in the past. Yet participation in Forest Service meetings often does not go well, either because of poor meeting design, lack of independent, quality facilitation, a myopia on assessment, and a never-ending ambivalence on the purpose of planning (again, all together now: getting something done to change the future!). Having planning units defined on geographic areas that would encompass recognized, community-centered places would get all of us very far down the path. Just think of all the Ranger Districts that already meet the criteria of being a relatively short driving distance (less than an hour) from the land to be affected. The genius of the National Forest System has always been its administrative decentralization. Let’s use it.

This does not imply that the geographic area is the only unit of analysis in preparing planning documents. Larger scale patterns on regional areas inform more localized decisions and offer critical explanations for potential consequences of actions. Other stochastic, broad-scale disturbances might require rather rapid changes in planning assumptions used on the geographic scale. But then, planning isn’t perfect, which is why it’s an ongoing, learning activity. Allowing people to be able to regularly participate in the decision-making regarding actions, and then to help evaluate whether the future has been changed toward a desirable trajectory allows Forest Service professional to be responsive to the highest quality knowledge and commitment of the most directly affected stakeholders. It will make planning into the political activity that is deserves to be. It will build confidence and capacity among the population. It might even foster a nation of conservationists.

Note: Sharon posted this entry and this was the only photo she could find within the time available. She would appreciate any real “forest planning” photos to use here.

The Dangers of Collaboration: Going Deeper in Understanding the Issue

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The recent discussion on another thread on this blog re concerns about local collaboration reminded me of this op-ed by Erica Rosenberg on the Dangers of Collaboration in the Christian Science Monitor op-ed a while back. I remember because I wrote a letter to the editor that got published (good) but frankly, writing within the number of word limits for letters to the editor does not add much to dialogue, IMHO.

“After years of being tarred as obstructionist ideologues, some environmental groups now have a seat at the negotiating table. Enjoying their newfound popularity, these self-appointed decisionmakers become heavily invested in reaching an accord, regardless of the science, the law, or the long-term effect on the land.”

It sounds like the author is saying 1) if local environmentalists negotiate with others in local collaborative groups they can be “wrong” (which raises the question in my mind “if national groups negotiate nationally with the Executive Branch, can they be “wrong” also?”), 2) the local groups would know less or care less about the “science”, 3) local people know less or care less about the long-term effect on the land. Caring less about the land seems difficult to understand; isn’t NIMBY a real phenomenon we’ve all experienced? This seems to be a paradox; thus, perhaps, we need to dig deeper.

I would also observe that the unpleasant consequences of the uncertainty related to protracted court decision-making tend to fall entirely on the local people, so that they have a stronger interest in making a decision and moving on. These costs are not borne by national groups, who simply tend to move on to other things, and then show up in the next act of the glacially-paced courtroom drama.

In my experience, local environmental groups usually know more and care more about a particular piece of land and what is being done. Let’s go to Dan Kemmis on this as he is infinitely more articulate than I, in this article Science’s Role in Natural Resource Decisions in the journal “Issues of Science and Technology.”

To add to what Kemmis says, in my experience, local knowledge is valuable in resolving natural resource disputes- because you are arguing about facts, not broad philosophies. I once spoke on a panel (a Festschrift for Gene Namkoong at UBC) with a medical ethicist. He said that while people had strongly held philosophies about what to do with patients and what was right or wrong, when it came to specific cases in the hospital, there was much more agreement. When I taught Environmental Ethics, my text was by Joseph DesJardins Environmental Ethics: an introduction to environmental philosophy.

In the epilogue, (in the third edition) DesJardins talks about his real world experience in dealing with a community environmental problem.
P. 269

No one got what they wanted and neither side “won.” Yet, as one member pointed out, the real winner was democratic citizenship. People came together, argued, debated and eventually found common ground. The compromise “worked” in the sense that most everyone concluded that they could live with it. In a democracy- indeed, in any situation in which diverse perspectives conflict- it is unrealistic, unreasonable and perhaps unfair to expect or desire one side completely to triumph over others. This is, in many ways, the “pragmatic” solution.

DesJardins goes on to discuss the arguments of supporters and critics of “environmental pragmatism.”

So, we could ask, is this ultimately a deep philosophical divide between pragmatists and others?

Is there a feeling that locals (westerners, in the case above, or rural people or ?), can’t quite be trusted to arrive at the “right” conclusions?

When people negotiate to end wars, or for trade agreements, we never talk about there being a “right answer” and a “wrong answer.” We would just like to have the disputes settled and move on. Why are natural resource conflicts on the public lands different, or are they?

Lots of places to go with this one, but I think it is fundamental to our forest planning world and worth exploring.

Comments on Freemuth’s piece in HCN

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Some of these comments sounded worthy of discussion. I was intrigued by the concept that somehow collaboration avoids NEPA and other legal requirements. I guess I was having trouble imagining collaborating at any level on anything  that ultimately results in decisions that violate legal requirements- because the legal nexus is the decision.  Can someone help me understand this concern further?

Monitoring- Solving the Puzzle

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Alex Dunn raises another question that is definitely a piece of the planning rule discussion. What about monitoring?  People do a lot of monitoring; at the same time, there is never enough money for monitoring. Once I spent some time attempting to frame the “monitoring problem,” and even remember doing some interviews, but  could not even achieve consensus on the  framing of the problem. That’s when you know you have a serious problem.

Here are a couple of pieces to the puzzle:

A. Who decides what at what scale? Conundrum.

1. Logically each forest would develop an integrated monitoring plan from broadscale to project level.  Yet a variety of handbooks have different required monitoring, so it seems like it’s a patchwork. One unit told me once “we don’t know what we’re going to monitor because it depends on what the new wildlife biologist is interested in.” So it seems to be a constantly shifting patchwork.

2. But some very important things don’t make sense to be monitored separately by forests,  and have regionwide or species-wide plans for monitoring. Like a species, why would monitoring plans vary by forest?

3. Monitoring should be done across all lands, so how does that fit? Should the FS work with other agencies, the States, landscape scale collaboratives?

4. Watershed monitoring makes sense down a drainage/river. This scale would then be larger than the landscape scale collaboratives.

It’s almost like we should distinguish some basic things to monitor, say air and water quality, and basically do them the same nationwide and across all lands, and then the other important things to monitor each deserve consideration of what scale is appropriate.  Yet, we expect “forest plan monitoring” to be some kind of anchor. Why? What’s that about?

B. Another piece to the puzzle is that there are units that have monitoring programs that seem fairly successful; that annually stakeholders go out and review the results; and the stakeholders and the unit talk about potential causes of the results, and future research questions and potential changes in management practices.

These two pieces don’t really fit. Difficulty, challenges, and yet perceived success.

I’m sure there are more pieces to the monitoring puzzle; perhaps by carefully examining all the pieces we could attempt to solve the puzzle.   If we could decide, and explain how we would be accountable, it might be a convincing approach to appropriators, which would then possibly get around the funding problem.

Strategic Planning- The Literature- Mintzberg

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Here is a book review of a book that was important in the development of my own thinking on the utility of strategic planning, by Henry Mintzberg, entitled The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Recommended to all in this discussion. Some of Jim Burchfield’s observations reminded me of this book.

Book overview
In this definitive and revealing history, Henry Mintzberg, the iconoclastic former president of the Strategic Management Society, unmasks the press that has mesmerized so many organizations since 1965: strategic planning. One of our most brilliant and original management thinkers, Mintzberg concludes that the term is an oxymoron — that strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis. That is why, he asserts, the process has failed so often and so dramatically. Mintzberg traces the origins and history of strategic planning through its prominence and subsequent fall. He argues that we must reconceive the process by which strategies are created — by emphasizing informal learning and personal vision — and the roles that can be played by planners. Mintzberg proposes new and unusual definitions of planning and strategy, and examines in novel and insightful ways the various models of strategic planning and the evidence of why they failed. Reviewing the so-called “pitfalls” of planning, he shows how the process itself can destroy commitment, narrow a company’s vision, discourage change, and breed an atmosphere of politics. In a harsh critique of many sacred cows, he describes three basic fallacies of the process — that discontinuities can be predicted, that strategists can be detached from the operations of the organization, and that the process of strategy-making itself can be formalized. Mintzberg devotes a substantial section to the new role for planning, plans, and planners, not inside the strategy-making process, but in support of it, providing some of its inputs and sometimes programming its outputs as well as encouraging strategic thinking in general. This book is required reading for anyone in an organization who is influenced by the planning or the strategy-making processes.

Also there are some interesting  user reviews at the link.

Analysis Paralysis-Gridlock Redux- Who’s Responsible?

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“Forest planning has been hijacked by a generation of planners who turned what should have been a narrowly-focused effort to constrain an out-of-control Forest Service logging program and turned it into a wasteful, endless, bureaucratic exercise with little merit. “ Andy Stahl (my bolding)

My memory was the that FS had identified overanalysis as a more general problem and had looked internally and externally to describe the sources and some solutions. NOTE: that this was more focused around project planning than forest planning, but one might hypothesize that some of the causes and cures would be the same.

I do remember some thinking going along the lines of : if people don’t want projects or plans to happen, and they appeal and litigate on procedural grounds (NEPA and NFMA processes), then the FS needs to develop “bullet proof ” documents.  This is a dynamic  which inexorably leads to over-analysis.

Some empirical evidence might be looking at other agencies and seeing how much they over-analyze (given that the right level of analysis is in the eye of the beholder) and attempting to correlate that with amount of litigation. I did have some experience with some APHIS NEPA that would suggest that since at the time they faced  little litigation, they did not over-analyze.

I was looking for the original FS report on gridlock, and ran across a couple of interesting things in my internet search.

One is a discussion between Neal Sampson and Andy Stahl about gridlock in 1995.

I also found the original report on Process Predicament from 2002. From the Executive Summary on page 5 :

Unfortunately, the Forest Service operates within a statutory, regulatory, and administrative framework that has kept the agency from effectively addressing rapid declines in forest health. This same framework impedes nearly every other aspect of multiple-use management as well. Three problem areas stand out:

1. Excessive analysis—confusion, delays, costs, and risk management associated with the required consultations and studies;

2. Ineffective public involvement—procedural requirements that create disincentives to collaboration in national forest management; and

3. Management inefficiencies—poor planning and decision-making, a deteriorating skills base, and inflexible funding rules, problems that are compounded by the sheer volume of the required paperwork and the associated proliferation of opportunities to misinterpret or misapply required procedures.
            These factors frequently place line officers in a costly procedural quagmire, where a single project can take years to move forward and where planning costs alone can exceed $1 million. Even noncontroversial projects often proceed at a snail’s pace

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Finally I found a news report in which both Chris Wood and Mark Rey panned the above report. Now, usually Chris Wood and Mark Rey tend not to be on the same side, at least on things that are politically charged,  so the fact that they neither thought much of the Process Predicament report is somewhat intriguing.

It sounds like we (the combination of externals and internals) never really worked through this issue, and it remains unresolved.   Re-investigating the causes and cures for this phenomenon, or at least how it applies to forest planning,  may be important to design plans with appropriate levels of analysis and planning rules to require an appropriate level.

NFMA, the Timber Wars Filter and the 21st Century

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I agree with Jack Ward Thomas when he talked about “walking around the field of battle bayoneting the wounded” in, I think,  this still relevant testimony from 2000. There are also some other relevant observations from this testimony for this planning rule discussion.

21st century planning is obviously tied to NFMA, but a challenge is to divorce ourselves from the timber -o-centric nature of the statute and the “timber wars filter” that affects the way we see and frame issues . Sometimes I wonder if those of us who remember that time have some kind of filter that we can’t see beyond- and I am speaking of both those outside and inside the agency.

My wake-up call to see my own filter was moving to the Rocky Mountain Region where day to day questions include skiing, oil and gas, travel management, grazing, fuels treatments- and the supply of wood far exceeds the demand. We have little-talked about (nationally) issues of urban forests everywhere dumping, shooting ranges, crime; we also have encroachment, trespass, the need to keep our water rights and deal with water developers, we have the important but often overlooked national grasslands with prairie dogs and energy development issues.

It is only by spending time outside the larger forest policy discussion that I came to see how the old timber filter can get in the way of seeing the future clearly, including the future of the timber industry.

One idea would be to take the Southern Cal forest plans (which are relatively timber free), and see what issues they have and how they were framed, both by the forests and the plantiffs in the lawsuit.

Another idea would be to take a group of 20-35 year olds, a combination of externals and internals  – some of our most creative  thinkers and soome  experienced with current procedures, and ask them to design a  planning rule alternative. After all, they will probably be implementing, appealing and litigating the plans while we are sitting on porches sipping iced beverages and playing with grandkids.

Finally, I think that if there were a broadly supported, surgical amendment to NFMA to get rid of requirement that were clearly outdated (or relieve low-timber production forests from dealing with them) it is within the realm of possibility to pursue it.

K.I.S.S.

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Contributed by Andy Stahl

Forest planning has been hijacked by a generation of planners who turned what should have been a narrowly-focused effort to constrain an out-of-control Forest Service logging program and turned it into a wasteful, endless, bureaucratic exercise with little merit.  Let’s review what the National Forest Management Act actually requires of plans and the planning regulations.  The reader can follow along here:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/16/usc_sec_16_00001604—-000-.html

Here’s what a NFMA plan must contain:

1) the “planned timber sale program” including the “proportion of probable methods of timber harvest.”

That’s it.  There is no second item.

Now look at what NFMA requires of the planning regulations.  First, there must be guidelines

1) to identify the suitability of land for resource management;

2) for obtaining inventory data; and,

3) for identifying special conditions or situations involving hazards.

Second, the planning rules must

1) insure that economic and environmental matters are considered in the forest plan;

2) insure that plans provide for diversity of plant and animal communities;

3) insure plans address research and evaluation of management systems to prevent substantial and permanent impairment of land productivity;

4) permit increases in harvest levels based on growing trees faster;

5) ensure that timber will be harvested only where soil, slope or watershed conditions will not be irreversibly damaged, land is restocked within 5 years, protection is provided to water from detrimental changes, and harvest methods are not chosen based on greatest dollar return or unit output; and, finally,

6) ensure that even-aged cutting is used only where it is appropriate, natural appearing, not too big, and protective of other resources.

That’s it.  When read in the context of the times, i.e., the clearcutting scandals of the mid-1970s, it makes perfect sense that what Congress sought were timber sale programs for each national forest that ensured logging levels and methods were light-on-the-land and protected other resources.

In the 1980s, with national forest logging beyond 10 billion and up 12 billion board feet annually, that was no mean feat.  Today, with logging at or below 3 billion board feet, forest planning ought to be a snap.  But only if the Forest Service sets its cross-hairs only on the target Congress demanded.  Otherwise, it will continue to take 15 or more years to write 15-year plans that will make no decisions and be irrelevant in the real world the day they are signed.

Andy Stahl is the Executive Director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics

Development, Forest Planning and an All Lands Approach

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In the news over the weekend,  we have seen stories on the the move toward community forests in the Oregonian, and an article in the New York Times entitled “Housing Boom Near Preserves Hamstrings Conservation” on a study of the housing boom near forests and other conservation areas.

Given the pressure of development, and the desire for forest planning to take an “all lands” approach, what kinds of things should a planning rule or a forest plan contain?

Should a precursor to a forest plan be a mapping of wildlife corridors and linkages?