I found this on Thomas Hochman’s TwitX feed , and I’m always interested in bipartisan stuff, so went to Rep. Peters (D) press release.
The D’s all look like Californians.
Original cosponsors include Representatives Tony Cardenas (D-CA-29), John Curtis (R-UT-3), Ami Bera (D-CA-6), Pete Stauber (R-MN-8), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA-19), Tom McClintock (R-CA-5), Jim Costa (D-CA-21), Tom Tiffany (R-WI-7), John Duarte (R-CA-13), and James Moylan (R-GU).
Interesting roundup of folks supporting..
The Fix Our Forests Act is supported by the National Congress of American Indians, Bipartisan Policy Center, the National Association of Counties, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), American Forests, the Evangelical Environmental Network, Edison Electric Institute, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, MegaFire Action, the American Conservation Coalition Action, the National Wild Turkey Federation, the American Forest Resource Council, the American Loggers Council, the Arkansas Forestry Association, Associated California Loggers, the Boone and Crockett Club, the Dallas Safari Club, the Forest Landowners Association, the Forest Resources Association, the Hardwood Federation, Potlach Deltic, and Rayonier.
Not the usual suspects on this list include the Bipartisan Policy Center and Megafire Action.
Simplify and expedite environmental reviews for forest management projects in the highest risk areas
Promote federal, state, tribal and local collaboration on wildfire mitigation while encouraging engagement with landowners and communities
Recognize the role that natural fire plays in healthy ecosystems – which is backed by the best available scientific information – while acknowledging Tribal sovereignty in providing for practices like cultural burning
Support wildfire resiliency for local communities by focusing on the built environment, innovative technologies and modernized standards
Deter frivolous litigation that delay essential forest management projects
Create a framework for interagency collaboration to advance wildfire and land management R&D, provide technical and financial assistance to communities, and support efforts by tribes and other governments to address the effects of wildland fire on communities, including property damages, air, and water quality
Create a federal-state-tribal framework for prioritizing projects in the forests at highest risk of catastrophic wildfire
Encourage the adoption of state-of-the-art science and techniques for federal land managers, including innovative methods to sequester carbon dioxide
Ensure that utilities are able to better work with federal partners harden their rights-of-way while mitigating hazards
Strengthen tools like Good Neighbor Authority – which presently excludes Tribal Nations – and Stewardship Contracting
The bill may not be going anywhere but we can still discuss the ideas in it.. which might be cannibalized and used elsewhere. I don’t have time to go through it today but Hochman’s TwitX piqued my interest. Maybe someone has an analysis they would like to share and discuss?
I’d just like to focus on the Fireshed Center for now.. (sorry about the formatting)
SEC. 102. FIRESHED CENTER.
6 (a) ESTABLISHMENT.—
7 (1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, acting
8 through the Chief of the Forest Service and the Sec9 retary of the Interior, acting through the Director of
10 the U.S. Geological Survey, shall jointly establish a
11 Fireshed Center (hereinafter referred to as the
12 ‘‘Center’’) comprised of at least one career rep13 resentative from each of the following:
14 (A) The Forest Service.
15 (B) The Bureau of Land Management.
16 (C) The National Park Service.
17 (D) The Bureau of Indian Affairs.
18 (E) The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
19 (F) The U.S. Geological Survey.
20 (G) The Department of Defense.
21 (H) The Department of Homeland Secu22 rity.
23 (I) The Department of Energy.
24 (J) The Federal Emergency Management Agency
1 (K) The National Science Foundation.
2 (L) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
4 (M) The National Aeronautics and Space
5 Administration.
6 (N) The National Institute of Standards
7 and Technology.
8 (2) DIRECTOR.—The Secretary, acting through
9 the Chief of the Forest Service and the Secretary of
10 the Interior, acting through the Director of the U.S.
11 Geological Survey, shall jointly appoint a Director of
12 the Center, who—
13 (A) shall be an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey or the Forest Service;
15 (B) shall serve an initial term of not more
16 than 7 years; and
17 (C) may serve one additional term of not
18 more than 7 years after the initial term de19 scribed in subparagraph (B).
20 (3) ADDITIONAL REPRESENTATION.—The Sec21 retary, acting through the Chief of the Forest Serv22 ice and the Secretary of the Interior, acting through
23 the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, may
24 jointly appoint additional representatives of Federal
1 agencies to the Center, as the Secretaries determine
2 necessary.
3 (b) PURPOSES.—The purposes of the Center are to—
4 (1) comprehensively assess and predict fire in
5 the wildland and built environment interface through
6 data aggregation and science-based decision support
7 services;
8 (2) reduce fragmentation and duplication across
9 Federal land management agencies with respect to
10 predictive service and decision support functions re11 lated to wildland fire;
12 (3) promote interorganizational coordination
13 and sharing of data regarding wildland fire decision 14 making;
15 (4) streamline procurement processes and cybersecurity systems related to addressing wildland
17 fire;
18 (5) provide publicly accessible data, models,
19 technologies, assessments, and fire weather forecasts
20 to support short- and long-term planning regarding
21 wildland fire and post-fire recovery; and
22 (6) maintain the Fireshed Registry established
23 under section 103.
No one can be against “interagency coordination” but I can’t help but wonder if some of this will distance the modelers from the people on the ground. I also note that procurement processes and cybersecurity systems will be streamlined, but why not streamline… hiring? Maybe some or all of this comes from the Commission Report? How can the agencies make this more effective than what we have currently and not a cluster? Perhaps this is just the beginning of the discussion that needs to happen.
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been talking with some folks in the “permitting reform” space. Which is where the larger world, those interested in renewable and transmission build-outs, seek policy changes to honor environmental and public review, but also speed things up, in the interests of dealing with climate crises and emissions reduction timelines. We have plenty of real-world experience, which may or may not be relevant, since vegetation management projects are different in many ways than infrastructure projects.
Here’s the question:
“Do you know of any example where a federal agency chose an action they knew was suboptimal because they wanted to avoid litigation? It seems apparent that they do this frequently but it’s very difficult to find documented examples. Is there an example of a forest treatment project getting pared down to avoid litigation even though the agency believed a larger project would be more effective?”
I told the questioner that suboptimality is in the eye of the beholder. He was interested in “examples where informed officials have to make a choice they believe is suboptimal to avoid litigation.” I remember that Don Yasuda mentioned something like that about controversial-ness causing units to be dropped in the Sierra (sadly his powerpoint is no longer) in this 2017 post. For those of you following our managed fire discussion, one bullet was “we’ll use more prescribed fire and managed wildfire” because.. mechanical fuel treatments (for a number of reasons he outlined) are too difficult.
The key thing here is “suboptimal.” Certainly groups with litigation arms and histories can propose considerations and changes that make projects better.
The Indios Fire in the Jemez Mountains of the Santa Fe National Forest Photo: US Forest Service
At midday on May 19th, Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF) fire managers were notified of a new wildfire start within the Chama River Canyon Wilderness on the Coyote Ranger District, northwest of the traditional rural village of Coyote. The cause of the fire ignition was a lightning strike.
By the next day, the fire had grown to approximately 150-200 acres and was named the Indios Fire. It spread primarily to the northeast over the next three days, burning along the boundary of the wilderness, with no imminent threats to people or property. The fire was burning in dry forest, and in the midst of a strong wind pattern.
A May 20th SFNF press release about the fire quoted Forest Supervisor Shaun Sanchez as stating, “Wildfires have the potential to decrease fuels and increase the health and resilience of forests. Fire is a natural and frequent component of the ecosystem in the area, and our team will look for opportunities to restore forest health when conditions permit.”
It seems apparent that the Forest Service took the opportunity to ignite much of the Indios Fire themselves for “resource management objectives,” based on #firemappers satellite thermal hotspot maps, along with some cloudy language in Forest Service press releases and fire briefings. The Forest Service provided very little information to the public about what actually caused the majority of the Indios Fire to burn. That was the secret fire. The secret was that most of the fire wasn’t caused by the lightning strike; it was from intentional aerial and ground ignitions by the Forest Service called firing operations. Anyone simply reading the Forest Service’s fire news releases and listening to the fire briefings would not have understood this, and in fact most of the public still does not realize what actually happened.
The fire grew slowly for the first few days, as it burned to the northeast up and across a canyon slope. Then it suddenly turned downhill and quickly burned two miles east through the canyon bottom and up to the mesa on the other side. A few days later, the fire burned at high speed four miles to the south, although the prevailing winds were to the east and north. It appears from the aerial hot spot maps that firing operations largely caused these movements, but more information from the Forest Service would be necessary in order to confirm.
Although it was stated in the daily Indios Fire updates that the fire was being allowed to burn for ecosystem benefit and that firing operations were being used at times in support of this strategy, these explanations were extremely understated relative to what can be seen from the aerial hot spot maps. In the fire briefings available on the SFNF Facebook page, the briefing officer would wave his hand around the fire map with such comments as “we did add a little bit of fire yesterday,” and “we did put a little bit of heat in here with the helicopter.” It generally sounded as if they were implementing fairly localized back burns to contain the fire.
The May 22 Indios Fire press release stated “The Northern NM Type 3 IMT is currently moving forward with a strategy to contain the wildfire. The containment strategy means using tactical actions to manage the fire within a predetermined area.” The predetermined area was never shown on a map in press releases or fire briefings, nor was the approximate acreage of the predetermined fire containment perimeter provided. The “containment strategy” often involves greatly expanding a wildfire, while attempting to contain the expanded fire within a predetermined perimeter. That is very different from the conservation strategy of simply allowing naturally-ignited wildfires to burn in a relatively natural way for ecosystem benefit, which is highly supported by conservation scientists and conservation organizations. The agency was igniting fire far beyond back burns and burn outs, and was essentially implementing a large-scale prescribed burn without the required NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) analysis or public inclusion. Planning was being done on-the-spot.
Since the size and location of the predetermined area was not publicly available in Forest Service media, I personally attempted to find out the size of the predetermined area, and to obtain a map of the potential perimeter. I also wanted to find out why the Forest Service believed this kind of wildfire expansion operation was safe to implement in such windy and dry weather conditions. I was provided with only unhelpful and non-specific information and advice from Forest Service personnel such as – “The incident objectives you see on Inciweb [interagency incident information management system] are used to determine the specific firing operations which, like wildfire, are dynamic. Since Forest Plan direction is listed on the Inciweb objectives, I would suggest looking at the Forest Plan for insight into what those are.”
There was just one sentence on Inciweb regarding the Indios Fire management objectives – “Incident objectives include protecting values at risk and meeting Santa Fe National Forest Plan objectives by reintroducing fire into a fire dependent ecosystem.“ The Santa Fe National Forest Plan states, “When conditions facilitate safe progress toward desired conditions, consider managing naturally ignited fires to meet multiple resource objectives concurrently (i.e., protection and resource enhancement), which can change as the fire spreads across the landscape.” Nowhere does the Forest Plan state that the Forest Service can intentionally greatly expand wildfires utilizing aerial and ground firing operations.
None of this addressed my questions regarding the specific objectives and plans for managing the Indios FIre. Since the Forest Service was creating fire lines to contain the expanded fire, it
was clear that they must have had an approximate plan for the containment perimeter that they intended that the fire could potentially expand out to. Yes, fires are dynamic situations, but still there had to be a potential perimeter before deploying bulldozers and cutting and burning fire lines.
Jonathan Glass of Public Journal eventually located a federal interagency repository map from May 21, the third day of the fire, containing an 18,218 acre “Indios Fire Potential Perimeter.” The fire was 688 acres on May 21st, so apparently the Forest Service planned that the fire would be expanded and contained in an area up to 26 times its size at the time. However, the agency chose to not make the size and map of this containment area reasonably publicly available, even when specifically requested. Also, the Forest Service must have believed they had justifications for expanding a wildfire during such risky fire conditions, but they did not publicly reveal them in any substantive way.
During the 2023 Pass Fire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest and Wilderness, the Forest Service published a map on their Facebook page of the planned fire perimeter. The fire eventually filled that perimeter with a high level of precision, with the assistance of Forest Service firing operations. That the Forest Service actually made public to what extent they wanted to expand the fire, even if they were not clear about the extent to which they were causing the landscape within the fire perimeter to burn, was possibly due to publicity by a few fire management watchdogs about the huge expansion of the 2022 Black Fire. During management of the Black Fire, the Forest Service carried out aerial and ground firing operations that more than doubled the size of the fire and burned most of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, including important natural resources, and Sierra County infrastructure.
The SFNF seems to have reversed that recent trend towards more openness, and contradicted its many recent statements about wanting better public communication, by largely obscuring their intentions to complete widespread intentional burns while managing the Indios Fire. Even after the Indios Fire operation is complete, we will almost certainly still not have any official estimate of how much of the fire the Forest Service ignited, versus how much burned due to the original ignition combined with the elements. There will simply be one number given for the size of the fire – the total acres that burned during the fire and fire expansion. We need to know what the Forest Service is doing during fire management operations so the potential risks and consequences of the agency’s wildfire management strategies can be effectively evaluated.
Language concerning fire management operations has become increasingly obscure and confusing. At first the Forest Service described progress on managing the Indios Fire as the percent of the fire contained, but after May 28 the term ”completed” was used. According to the agency, percent completion comprises a broad mix of Forest Service objectives – it’s “an indication of the total amount of work being accomplished on the ground relative to how much they intend to accomplish.” But since they never told us how much they intended to accomplish during the Indios Fire, providing the percent completed did not clarify to what extent the agency had completed expanding the fire to burn landscape within the predetermined perimeter. Below an Indios Fire briefing on the SFNF Facebook page, a bewildered local commented – “I just wish someone would tell us [how] much of the fire is being contained, how many acres are still burning? Or is the fire continuing to expand because of the completion goals?” Another asked, “What is the percentage of containment within the percentage of completion, please, since you mentioned it as a component of completion?”
All of this was occurring at the start of the New Mexico fire season, when fire risk is at its highest. There were strong winds throughout the wildfire and fire expansion operation, and a red flag warning at one point. This was very reminiscent of the conditions under which the Forest Service ignited the Las Dispensas prescribed burn, which erupted into the 2022 Hermits Peak Fire. Due to hazards from the expanded Indios Fire, the local Sheriff’s Department put a nearby ranch on “Set” status for potential evacuation.
One might hope that after the three major wildfires of 2022, ignited due to three separate SFNF escaped prescribed burns which burned a total of 387,000 acres and burned out entire communities, the Forest Service would become much more careful about putting forest and communities at risk. They do not seem to have become substantially more careful. Firing operations planned and implemented essentially on-the-spot to expand wildfires are likely much more risky than prescribed burns which are planned in advance within a NEPA-analyzed project, and also more risky than allowing a wildfire to burn without adding substantially more fire. Add in dry conditions and high winds, and this strategy just seems reckless. Given the trajectory on which the Forest Service is continuing to manage fire, it seems extremely likely that we will have more escapes of intentional fire that will over-burn forests and burn communities.
Currently, the Indios Fire operation appears to be in its final phase, at 11,500 acres. Some rain has fallen since June 8th. At least so far, the fire has burned largely at low severity, and fuels were consumed which may reduce future fire risk in the area. In terms of Forest Service objectives, it was a very successful operation. But the Forest Service is playing Russian roulette with our forests and communities by implementing large-scale intentional fires under the wildfire management umbrella, without advanced planning and in risky conditions. And, this is done without clearly informing the public of what they are doing – or even answering legitimate questions. They are sowing the seeds of even more public confusion, fear, mistrust, and anger, but most of all they are putting what we value so deeply at risk.
The Forest Service seems to be taking the viewpoint that if the rules do not say they cannot utilize a fire management strategy, such as greatly expanding wildfires with firing operations, then they can do so. In addition to a coherent and transparent national wildfire policy, there needs to be much clearer guidelines in forest plans about how fire can be “managed,” including direction that the agency cannot implement categories of actions that it is not specifically allowed to implement. It is necessary to revise forest plans so risky fire expansion operations cannot be carried out, and so there are reasonable parameters for managing naturally-ignited wildfires for resource benefit. And the agency must be required to be genuinely transparent about how fires are being managed.
Indios Fire on Firemappers – 2024-05-27 232334 May 27, 2024 Observe firing operation hot spots, carrying the fire to the south towards highway 96. Not all hot spots are firing operations; some are simply heat from the fire, but the more or less semi-straight lines of hot spots generally represent aerial ignitions.
I’ve been talking to folks about this.. many people are curious as to what’s going on with these agreements. I want to say straight out that if an agency gets infused with lots of cash, clearly they are not staffed to spend it. And the idea was to spend it quickly, so Republicans could not claw it back. Well, I’m a little wary of different ideas of narrowing choices for future legislators, but the FS couldn’t help that. I appreciate that the Keystone Partners come from a wide array of histories and relationships with various political entities, to avoid seeming like a pass-through for this Admin’s buddies, so I agree with their choices there. At the same time, I have questions, and many other folks do too and have contacted me.
1. Congress- I don’t have the patience to watch these hearings, though it might be more fun if we could have some kind of chat going on at the same time, making fun of some of the elected representatives (completely unnecessary partisan diatribe, can we get back to the subject, please?). My observations are that they have been curious about 10 year strategy/BIL/IRA results but not so much about the Keystone Agreements. Maybe someone has been paying attention and there is more information available?
2. Maybe there is a report on what’s happening with the funding, it seems like with all that funding they should be able to provide regular updates? I know good things are happening, but I haven’t found them to be collected by anyone (yet). In the absence of information, some people are going to think the worst.. why not head that off at the pass?
3. I ran across this job ad for a seed orchard coordinator at Forest Hill Seed Orchard. Which is a temporary job with no experience required. Of course, in the old days I remember permanent employees doing that work. Which made me think (1) “what about all those hiring requirements that the FS traditionally has?” What about qualifications and series.. and all that, and diversity and so on. Again, I’m not blaming the FS for working through partners, but I think at some point maybe this is telling us that the regular system is too broken to do what needs to be done to get qualified candidates on board for temporary and permanent hires. I believe that they probably have to follow OSHA and other rules, perhaps same as contractors, but maybe not.
(2) having permanent people do things like reforestation and seed orchard management meant that there was year to year learning, with knowledge accumulated by human beings, and them adding value and knowledge about the work and how best to do it successfully.
I hope the Forest Service has worked through which skills and knowledge are most important to improve when they decide which jobs to give to partners. It seems to me that for reforestation at least, there is a scale-up factor and a base level knowledge that should be continued by permanent employees.
4. Some thoughts about grants. The theory of federal grants seems to be “we give money to people whom we trust to do the work and don’t guide them and check on them very much.. because we trust them to do the work.” At least that’s been my experience. When it works it works.. when it doesn’t work, there isn’t much recourse. That’s why I think it’s good to pick the organizations that were picked. At the same time, especially if you are experienced with various silvicultural contracts and results, it might make you wonder “why contract anything? It’s a lot more work to have CORs and inspectors than to just give the money to trusted NGOs.” But if you recall one of the least popular FS efforts to do continuous improvement, you might remember that contractors sometimes were more successful than force account (government employees) at reforestation apparently because their work was formally checked on. So perhaps the Keystone folks will be doing the same kind of oversight to their subs, but we don’t know. Then there’s the concept of the “lowest bidder”; when and why is it important sometimes and not others? Now it is for feeding firefighters (last I heard) but now not, say, cone collection. Will we even know the costs at the end of this experiment (to be compared to contracting the same work, for example)? And how much will go to various forms of overhead?
5. For whatever reason, the FS does not appear to have been sharing much about all this, and my entreaties and those of others seem not have had an effect. Still there is no reason that the Keystoners themselves couldn’t get together and report in similar formats. From the folks I’ve spoken with about their curiosity, it’s fairly simple. It could be updated continuously or published quarterly.
Of the federal funds in these agreements, what has been spent? On what? For what purpose or project? Who else contributed how much (other FS $ other partners)? What are the outcomes or outputs of the effort? When is the target date for completion, or has the project been completed?
Every Keystone grantee obviously keeps track of all this.. so conceivably it wouldn’t be hard to figure out a reporting format and report.
6. I think that the Keystone Agreements are a great experiment in how federal agencies can move more quickly to address emerging issues via partners. Hopefully the FS is laying the groundwork now for a formal set of lessons learned that could be presented to Congress, OMB and others, for reforms to federal hiring, contracting and grants and agreements procedures. Maybe that’s pie in the sky, but it seems to me we would all want Good Government at the end of the day, with some efficiency and effectiveness as best we know how.
What thoughts, questions and suggestions do you have?
Interesting story from E&E News, and no paywall on this one (perhaps because it came as a link from Center for Western Priorities). When groups disagree about a project, it seems like once again the BLM is darned if it does and darned if it doesn’t..in the interests of fair use, I can’t post the whole thing, but there are good parts I am leaving out.
A senior Bureau of Land Management official warned the federal government might be rushing the review of a controversial lithium mine in Nevada that’s at the center of a raging fight over an endangered wildflower, according to an internal email.
“This is a very aggressive schedule that deviates from other project schedules on similar projects completed recently and concurrently at the District and State,” said Scott Distel, a supervisory project manager, in a Dec. 21, 2023, email.
Distel told Douglas Furtado, a BLM district manager in central Nevada, the review of Ioneer’s Rhyolite Ridge project was poised to move forward with limited input. “The groundwater model is approved on 12/26/2023, without any edits or comments that need to be addressed,” he wrote in the email, which was also sent to officials at Ioneer.
Check out the email yourself. I don’t know what the right way to go about it is, but in my experience agreement about processes, analysis and documents is difficult to get. There are naturally forces to “move it along” versus forces to analyze more. Sometime different specialists disagree about the same topic (e.g. fish bios and hydrologists). Someone has to make a call at some point. Or maybe agencies will just give up on trying to do things.
The email illuminates the challenges federal regulators face in complying with legally required deadlines for completing environmental reviews of complicated projects under the National Environmental Policy Act. BLM and its parent, the Interior Department, declined to comment on the email, which the Center for Biological Diversity obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with E&E News.
BLM’s ongoing environmental review of Ioneer’s proposed Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine has drawn national attention because of the sprawling mine’s potential impact on the habitat for an endangered desert flower, Tiehm’s buckwheat. The project is in the Silver Peak Range, about 40 miles southwest of Tonopah.
The CBD cited Distel’s email in an unsuccessful request asking BLM to extend the comment period on a draft environmental impact statement the agency released in April. That draft review concluded the mine — through fencing, locked gates and dust-tampering measures — would not drive the endangered wildflower to extinction.
Currently, BLM appears poised to make a decision on the mine in October. Once a record of decision (ROD) is issued, the project is expected to receive a conditional loan of up to $700 million from the Department of Energy.
According to Distel’s email, the revised schedule under NEPA shows BLM approving a “camera ready” final EIS in August along with a briefing at the agency’s headquarters, followed by a final ROD in October.
************
The timing, duration and intensity of environmental reviews have become an issue both within agencies and on Capitol Hill, as regulators review projects needed to produce minerals like lithium while protecting pristine areas and critical habitat.
Distel’s email illuminates the tensions.
Kevin Minoli, a partner at the law firm Alston & Bird and a former career EPA lawyer who served during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, said the language Distel used about the “very aggressive” schedule is not incredibly unusual for federal officials. But Minoli said it does appear to reflect a federal employee’s concern with the time frame.
“What appears to be the case is the person expressing that they wish they had more time … to do something like this,” said Minoli, who also advises clients on complying with NEPA.
Minoli said the email appears to show BLM complying with revisions to NEPA that came into effect fairly recently through amendments that set two-year time frames for agencies to complete EISs. BLM confirmed the agency is complying with the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) amendment to NEPA, which includes a two-year timeline for EISs.
“What I expect is happening is you’re seeing an agency midaction having to comply with that deadline and some concern about that being expressed,” said Minoli.
But Minoli cautioned against equating longer NEPA reviews with better work, noting that regulators can do good work quickly. He also noted that while some have been pushing for deeper reviews, especially for contentious projects, others have been long fighting to reach a final decision more quickly.
“People are probably unhappy on both sides, it’s a timing question,” he said.
******************
Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor and senior fellow for climate policy at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said amendments in the FRA don’t change the legal requirements for NEPA reviews. Any issues raised in the email will need to be addressed, said Parenteau, including those tied to the groundwater model, which was highlighted in Distel’s email.
“If this is, in fact, someone within BLM in a position to know, who’s raising questions about the process … if these are not corrected by the time the ROD is issued, it’ll be grounds for a lawsuit,” said Parenteau.
There is language in the law, Parenteau noted, that allows agencies to take more time to conduct reviews and EISs, but that will ultimately be up to BLM. He also emphasized that BLM isn’t alone in facing the pressure caused by artificial deadlines.
“We’re going to see a lot of these cases, a lot of these issues,” he said. “Any time you put artificial deadlines in the law, you run into this problem because it denies the reality of the way the world works.”
****************
Bernard Rowe, managing director of Ioneer, said in a statement last week as the public comment period for the draft EIS closed, that the company has engaged with federal, state and tribal officials, as well as community members, for more than five years, and sought a “new standard for domestic lithium project development.” Added Rowe: “Listening has made our project stronger, and we look forward to addressing feedback to the Bureau of Land Management from the public comment period.”
Conservation groups and tribes disagree and are warning the draft EIS doesn’t give a full picture of just how much water the mine will use. The critics contend the mine could drive the Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction. The plant was listed as endangered in December 2022.
Currently, eight subpopulations of the plant have been mapped and extensively studied within the mine’s project area. The most recent population census was conducted last May and June and counted 24,916 plants.
In the draft EIS, BLM concluded that while the plant’s desert habitat would be disturbed by construction of the Rhyolite Ridge project, the agency also pointed to steps that Ioneer would take to minimize and mitigate the potential damage. The company also modified its original plan to reduce the environmental impact.
A coalition of groups including the CBD, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, the Sierra Club and Earthworks argued in comments to BLM that the draft EIS is insufficient and fails to fully consider the effect on groundwater and cultural resources
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I have much sympathy for the BLM, and wonder whether the FRA timelines are retroactive for ongoing projects. The BLM is definitely “darned if they do and darned if they don’t”. Also, I wonder what the weight of one employee’s concern should be, when the complete array of tedious details of substance and process will no doubt be part of future litigation.
The Hotshot Wakeup seems to be one of the few folks out there (not in the affected Colorado area) writing about a new trend called the Public Safety Power Shutoff Program. I’m with him in not liking the trend, but so far being agnostic about solutions. From his Substack post:
We saw this in action in Colorado not too long ago. This spring, Red Flag warnings were forecast for the area, and high winds were predicted for multiple days. Xcel Energy decided this would be the first time they would run the protocols for the Public Safety Power Shutoff Program. An important thing to remember, Xcel had just been sued for allegedly causing the 1M acre Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas from a downed rotten power pole. They were not about to be blamed for another.
So they sent out a warning and flipped the switch.
In a great article by Kate Ruder, she explains that a large 20 acre nursing home facility only had a 75-minute warning before the power went out:
In Boulder, Frasier staff and residents heard about the planned outage from news reports. A Frasier official called the utility to confirm and was initially told the home’s power would not be affected. The utility then called back to say the home’s power would be cut, after all, said Tomas Mendez, Frasier’s vice president of operations. The home had just 75 minutes before Xcel Energy shut off the lights on April 6.
Staff rushed to prepare the 20-acre campus home to nearly 500 residents. Generators kept running the oxygen machines, most refrigerators and freezers, hallway lights, and Wi-Fi for phones and computers. But the heating system and some lights stayed off as the overnight temperature dipped into the 30s.
Power was restored to Frasier after 28 hours.
By law, these types of facilities must own some sort of backup system; Florida mandated it, saying these facilities need 92 hours of backup power. However, it seems the fairly new Public Safety Power Shutoff Programs have not been planned for, especially for extended periods of time during Red Flag Days.
275,000 customers in Colorado had their power shut off that week; some people I’ve spoken to said it was for 3+ days in some areas where lines needed to be checked before the power came back on. A large portion of these communities are very rural and lower-income areas.
At the same time, Xcel in Colorado is spending lotsa bucks to electrify heat (as this Colorado Sun story says: “some worry the utility could make windfall profits from fighting the climate crisis”). Now if you’re from around here, you might know that we get many high winds during winter, when it’s cold. The day after the Marshall Fire, for example, it snowed. What could go wrong with going to electric heat, in the winter, when electricity will be shut off? I’m thinking fireplaces (for those who have them) and generators (for those who can afford them).
I’m seeing some potential problems here..
For example, a $4.5 million pilot project is looking to electrify about 65 mainly commercial customers along the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder rather than replace a gas main. This could serve as a model for removing areas from the gas system and reduce the need for new infrastructure.
….
The challenges, however, are big. Xcel Energy estimates that between 200,000 and 400,000 heat pumps must be installed through 2030. Direct air heat pumps either heat or cool a home by removing the ambient heat in the air — even on very cold days. They are much more efficient than gas furnaces.
This would require an average of 28,000 to 57,000 installations a year — or 14 to 28 times the number that were installed in 2022.
Blank, the PUC chairman, said that he was concerned that all the costs of the Clean Heat Plan are falling only on the utility’s customers. “So far there is no shareholder skin in the game,” he said at a May hearing. “The company is making money off this stuff. They may make windfall profits off fighting the climate crisis.”
This is one of those situations where no one is really to blame, but the system and the incentives are not working out for ordinary people. Then there’s the whole question of being ready, and how and how far ahead to notify people about losing power.
Somehow I hadn’t been following sage grouse, but apparently there’s another plan in the works. Pew sent out this notification…
Dear Wilderness Supporter,
Populations of the iconic greater sage-grouse have fallen significantly over the past six decades, with an 80% decline across their range since 1965—and half of that drop occurring since 2002. These disturbing findings, together with the Biden administration’s focus on combating climate change, compelled the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—the largest federal land manager of sage-grouse habitat—to reexamine its management of the 67 million acres of habitat in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North and South Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming.
The public comment period closes June 13th! Act now to ensure your voice is heard.
The sagebrush steppe of the interior American West covers tens of millions of acres and is one of the nation’s most imperiled ecosystems. Sagebrush landscapes—which are home not only to greater sage-grouse but also to mule deer, pronghorn, pygmy rabbits, and more than 350 other species—continue to shrink rapidly because of a host of growing threats, including wildfire, energy development, and the spread of invasive plant species.
While the draft plan is a step in the right direction, science points to the need for even stronger management so that the greater sage-grouse population can recover. The BLM is requesting public input on its draft plan. Please take a moment to submit your comments so that the BLM hears a resounding message from the public urging it to:
Provide strong and consistent management action that takes into account changing climatic conditions to stem the ongoing population declines.
Protect and expand intact landscapes that support sage-grouse and the 350 other species that depend on the sagebrush steppe through designations of Priority Habitat Management Areas and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern.
Mitigate against any impacts across this vulnerable habitat to ensure the long-term viability of the species.
Please act today to help slow the alarming decline of the sage-grouse and its habitat. The deadline to submit comments is June 13th. Act now!
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Note: were it not for the last-minute twist I described in this post. the Obama Admin could have had a sage grouse deal that stuck. Here is what my source said:
Folks from Garfield County, CO did a FOIA and found out that the changes were associated in time with meetings with various environmental organizations, including Pew. One particular idea added during these last changes was the idea of “focal areas”. The States went ballistic.
If the Obama Admin had not listened to these groups, it’s likely that we would have spared the sage grouse workers, BLM folks of all stripes, (and the public) two more goes at this planning effort (one Trump and one Biden).
I’m always interested in lessons learned from various efforts and it turns out that there was a paper written about Wyoming’s lessons learned. Since 2003, Local Sage-Grouse Working Groups worked together (LWGs) , Wyoming also had an SGIT:
In 2007, a statewide SageGrouse Implementation Team (SGIT) was appointed to advise the governor of Wyoming on all matters related to the Wyoming Greater Sage-Grouse Core Area Protection Policy. The Core Area Policy was established by a governors’ executive order and provided mechanisms for limiting human disturbance in the most important sage-grouse habitats. Federal land management agencies have incorporated most aspects of the Core Area Policy into their land use planning decisions
Process and project implementation.
Successes at the statewide scale appeared to be largely the product of sound science used to inform policy making and effective leadership by Governors Freudenthal and Mead as well as the SGIT chairman, Bob Budd. While the potential for ESA listing certainly provided economic motivation for individuals and interests not otherwise dedicated to wildlife and habitat conservation to earnestly participate in the process, charismatic leadership should not be underestimated as a compelling force guiding diverse interests to work cooperatively toward a mutually acceptable outcome. Even so, challenges remain at both the local and state scale. These include:
• Increasingly infrequent LWG meetings impact group dynamics, as LWG members need to refresh their memories and reestablish working relationships.
• LWG project outcomes are often unquantified and undocumented, so their effectiveness is uncertain.
• The consensus decision-making model often results in more discussion and deliberation on an issue than would have occurred under a simple majority vote model. In the Wyoming LWGs, this appears to have led to better decisions being made. However, the resulting decisions can alternatively be a compromise that insufficiently addresses an important issue, but stands nonetheless as parties to the decision prioritize cooperation over outcome.
• Some individual LWG members harbor modest resentment of the SGIT, which has greater policy-making influence. Including more LWG representation on the SGIT could improve these relationships.
• Although adaptive management is an operative concept in the CAP, the reality is that people, and especially business, prefer stability and certainty. Consequently, resistance to change can be a difficult challenge to overcome, even in the face of compelling science.
• Overriding of advisory group recommendations by decision-makers may threaten the success of the group process. Examples of this include the federal designation of “Sagebrush Focal Areas” in the federal land-use planning process completed prior to the 2015 listing decision, the Department of Interior Secretarial Order 3353 directing review of all planning decisions made by the previous administration relative to sage-grouse, and 2016 legislation in Wyoming allowing private bird farms to collect eggs from wild sage-grouse and develop captive flocks. Each of these decisions was made with no or minimal consideration of established advisory group processes, resulting in concern from various participants that might
undermine their interest in continuing to be involved.
Paramount to all is the fact that both the local and state processes are reliant on the ability of diverse participants, who often hold adversarial viewpoints, to develop and maintain positive working relationships in seeking to achieve mutually agreeable goals. We believe the Wyoming model has potential to succeed in an era of political polarization.
I think there’s probably a better way to go than Partisan Policy Ping-Pong on western lands. Hopefully the Biden Admin will ultimately pick something of a more peace-keeping and likely to be permanent nature, and not a pre-election sharp stick in the eye that would lead us into another round of (potentially pointlessly provocative) planning..
This table is from Reilly, et al. I think this way of divvying up causes is helpful. I wonder if this is standardized anywhere?
I’ve often asked “how can we afford to fund studies that model wildfires in 2100 under different climate scenarios, but can’t afford the social science to help reduce human ignitions?”
On pages 2, 3 and 4, they have a roundup of other studies on the topic around the world, with links. I think it will be fairly interesting to Oregonians, especially how they talk about how different areas have different relationships between socioeconomic and physical factors and human-caused (as well as natural) ignitions.
Maps of ignitions density (Figure 7) suggest that specific ignition causes exhibit unique spatial patterns. Higher densities of recreation caused ignitions were found along the west-side of Cascade mountain range and outside of urban centers such as Portland, Oregon,and Seattle, Washington, where recreation use is high (Figure 7a), and concentrations of ignitions attributable to debris and open burning were clustered in more rural areas immediately surrounding major cities and in the northeast region of Washington (Figure 7b).Ignitions caused by equipment and vehicle use (Figure 7c) were concentrated in the south-west of Oregon, where forestry and agriculture activity intersected with the areas of higher wildfire hazard potential. These patterns were further explored with spatial hotspot analysis, which indicated that these clusters of county subdivisions with high human ignition density were statistically significant (Appendix B, Figures A1 and A2).From a policy and management perspective, it may be useful to consider how interventions might be designed and deployed to address behaviors that lead to ignitions of unintended human-caused wildfires (Table 6). Given that discretionary direct behaviors(recreation and open burning) generated over half of the known causes of human ignitions(56 percent) in Oregon and Washington over the past quarter century, it may be prudent to develop more tailored information and outreach programs that guide risk assessment of these activities under high risk fire weather conditions geared towards recreationists or for those applying for burn permits and to target interventions to the most relevant areas. Similarly, the development of tailored information regarding wildfire risk of common discretionary indirect activities could help reduce the number of ignitions resulting from activities such as vehicle and equipment use, the third largest known cause of human ignitions in the region
By the numbers: About 86% of wildfires in California between 1992 and 2020 were spurred by human activity, burning 63 acres on average, U.S. Forest Service analysis of wildfire data found.
Meanwhile, Cal Fire officials say 95% of fires are human-caused currently.
Of note: Lightning strikes accounted for the other fires with known causes, mostly in the northeastern and mountainous parts of the state that border Nevada.
Lightning strikes were behind California’s largest fires, which took place in August 2020, burning more than 2 million acres combined — that’s about three-quarters of the size of San Diego County.
Details: The top three human activities known to have led to these blazes were from equipment and vehicles, arson and debris burning, the data shows.
That includes accidental incidents and neglect, such as leaving a campfire unattended or a malfunctioning catalytic converter spitting a molten substance out of an exhaust pipe.
Between the lines: While firearms and explosives caused 0.2% of wildfires, they led to the largest human-caused blazes, at 380 acres on average.
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The Hotshot Wakeup reported that Arizona folks are beginning to investigate and address human-caused wildfire ignitions. The ones in Pinal County seem to be focused on using equipment in the wildland-urban interface in areas with greater fuel loadings than people are used to.
“Our last seven starts have been human-caused and they have actually been construction companies starting these,” Scottsdale Fire Capt. Dave Folio said.
The department is asking those construction crews to create a 10 to 15-foot defensible space around their work areas.
Folio says we have seen how dangerous not taking these precautions can be.
Last June, the Diamond Fire, which was caused by a construction crew cutting rebar, forced 1,000 people to leave their north Scottsdale homes as the flames got within feet of properties.
“Construction crews choose a place to cut the rebar that isn’t in the middle of the desert,” Folio said. “Move the combustibles off your construction site. Help us eliminate one spark and that’s all we’re asking for.”
In many cases, human-caused fires could originate from target shooting, fireworks, Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) use or other vehicle fire, escaped campfire, accidentally or intentionally set. Human-caused fires outnumber natural starts by 3 to 1 on the Tonto, with several already this season such as the Spring Fire, related to target shooting, and Wildcat fire, related to OHV use.
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For many areas, it’s the beginning of the fire season, but please add links where you find local concerns about human-caused fires and what the locality is doing to reduce them. Smokey’s back!
We’ve been following the federal land preservation vs. renewable energy build-out debate for some time. Right now this seems to have caught some media attention as the Joshua Trees vs. solar panels debate. According to K.T. Lynn, who writes the Substack “The Joule Thief”,
Last week, a little-known conservation group called Basin and Range Watch went viral in energy and environmental circles on Twitter (now X), drawing attention to the imminent plight of the Joshua trees in the following post:
4,200 Joshua trees are scheduled to be removed are [sic.] replaced by solar panels for the Aratina Solar Project near Boron, CA in June of this year. They will not be salvaged but funds based on the size of the tree will be placed in a mitigation bank
According to its Draft Environmental Impact Report, The Aratina site sits on 2,317 acres of privately owned land in the high desert of eastern unincorporated Kern County. Project plans include the installation of 530 MW of solar PV modules, and an energy storage facility providing capacity of up to 600 MWh for the electrical grid. Located in the Antelope Valley on the western edge of the Mojave, the topography is elevated and mostly flat, and therefore highly suitable for utility-scale solar.
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The L.A. Times’ environment columnist Sammy Roth mentioned Avantus in an ode to building renewables on public lands , praising the company’s habitat restoration projects — a classic PR deflection technique that should have raised skepticism and prodded further investigation. As Mr. Roth accurately reported, Avantus purchased 215,000 acres of grazing rights in Kern County from the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in order to retire those rights and restore the natural Mojave ecosystem, including desert tortoises, burrowing owls, ground squirrels, and…Joshua trees. What the Times apparently did not bother to find out was that this land acquisition serves (at least in part) as the mitigation bank that will be used to offset the destruction of the 4,200 Joshua trees on the Aratina solar site. For those unfamiliar with the mitigation bank concept, it is a variation on the carbon offset program, where, according to Investopedia “ecological loss…is compensated by the preservation and restoration of wetlands, natural habitats, and streams in other areas.” These plans are blatantly stated on Arantina’s website:
One novel mitigation approach is the Onyx Conservation Project, which Avantus created in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). In Eastern Kern County, Onyx permanently protects 215,000 acres of critical California habitat – home to 20 sensitive wildlife species, including the Mojave desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel, as well as an estimated 80,000 acres of western Joshua Tree habitat.
The story of Joshua Tree protection is fairly interesting. KT goes on to say:
It is likewise noteworthy that supposed environmental NGOs are fully onboard the bandwagon to build utility solar on virgin desert, without so much as acknowledging the apparent contradiction to their original missions of conservation. In a letter to BLM submitted by a coalition of advocacy groups (NRDC, Audubon, The Wilderness Society) and for-profit energy companies (EDF Renewables, Intersect Power, Longroad Energy), the unholy alliance of signatories urged the agency to hasten the construction of solar projects on federal lands (which inevitably comes at the cost of performing due diligence and thorough environmental impact studies).
What was most interesting to me, though, is the Onyx Conservation Project which “permanently protects” 215K acres of critical habitat. It sounds like the company bought out a grazing allotment and has done some kind of deal with the State of California for that to count for mitigation for their industrial facility on private land. From Power magazine:
The resulting Onyx Conservation Project (Onyx), in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, reflects Avantus’ creative and concerted approach to building clean energy responsibly while preserving precious land and delivering on President Biden’s America the Beautiful campaign. Onyx conserves and reallocates more than 215,000 acres — roughly seven times larger than San Francisco — from an active grazing allotment to an area permanently dedicated to wildlife forage in Kern County.
Going beyond the requests of local residents and requirements of the WJTJCA, Avantus purchased the grazing rights on 215,000 acres of federal land in Kern County and created the Onyx Conservation Project. The contiguous land area is seven times larger than the city of San Francisco and considered among the largest mitigation projects in the nation.
The habitat is home to 20 sensitive wildlife species including the California condor, Mojave Desert tortoise, American badger, Mohave ground squirrel and golden eagles. It is also estimated to include more than 80,000 acres of western Joshua tree habitat, including 3,000 acres of dense woodland. This conservation effort will help sustain the health and diversity of the desert ecosystem, which is underlaid by designated Wilderness Areas, Desert National Conservation Lands, and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. All 215,000 acres will also be open for public recreational use, including hiking and camping.
Avantus will also invest millions of additional dollars for habitat enhancements across Onyx to jumpstart restoration for desert plants and wildlife species.
I’m glad that Avantus buying the grazing leases didn’t enable them to kick off the public.
My Questions:
1. Should federal land (possible removed from current uses) be used to mitigate private development? Since most federal land is more or less conserved, wouldn’t it be better for the environment to buy and mitigate private land?
2. If industries are using taxpayer land for mitigation (remember conservation now counts as a use, at least according to BLM PR) how much should they be paying the taxpayer? Should this be consistent? What should it be based on?
3. Is the concept of “permanent” as in “permanently dedicated” a journalistic error, or is there something going on outside the RMP process, or were they already permanently protected by their existing RMP based status and this is just marketing for the company to claim credit?
4. If the BLM can do this kind of thing already, why did it need a new rule to do “conservation leasing”?
5. Could this increased desire for mitigation on federal lands have anything to do with political donations?
In some areas, if you take off cows, you end up with large amounts of dry grasses that are fire hazards. Hopefully that is not the case in this area.
Here’s a link to the story. Note that it is part of the Climate Desk collaboration, described here.
The reporter starts out with the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, who did not want a wind turbine project in a specific place.
That’s what happened earlier this month when the Biden administration expanded a national monument to include Molok Luyuk, joining the mountain ridge to the nearby Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, nearly 350,000 acres of coastal range in Northern California. Tribes are now working on a co-stewardship agreement for the Molok Luyuk area, but not for the whole national monument.
But the tribes that have a relationship with Molok Luyuk aren’t done with their advocacy. They’ve protected the area from energy development, but they still have little say in how the land is managed. While the federal government has pushed co-stewardship agreements over the years, national monuments are still considered property of the federal government.
Melissa Hovey is the manager at Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and she said that co-management happens between BLM and the Forest Service. These federal agencies can enter into co-stewardship agreements with tribes, but they can’t delegate management without congressional approval.
“Co-management means decision-making authority,” she said. “Co-stewardship means one entity still has the decision-making authority.”
You would think that “co-stewardship” and “co-management” would be simple terms to define, but there are numerous federal documents that have used the two terms interchangeably over the years. Co-stewardship is a broad term that describes agreements made between federal agencies and tribal nations to hash out shared interests in the management of federal lands. Co-management refers to a stronger tribal presence and decision-making power.
Congressional action is not the only way to gain co-management powers. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition in Utah has one of the most successful stories of tribes gaining co-management status—they were given “true co-management” by an Intergovernmental Cooperative Agreement.
In 2022, the federal government agreed to co-manage Bears Ears National Monument with the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni. For the first time ever, tribal nations worked with federal agencies to draft a resource-management plan that would dictate how a national monument should be run.
I’m still a little confused, if Hovey says “co-management means decision-making authority” and Bears Ears has co-management (without Congressional action?) .. meanwhile we see this from E&E News yesterday..
Native Americans and conservation advocates on Monday rolled out a campaign urging the Biden administration to adopt a strategy that emphasizes tribal management of the Bears Ears National Monument.
The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition — composed of leaders of the Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Zuni Tribe, Hopi Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe — and outdoor retailer Patagonia pledge to press for adoption of a management plan that stresses resource protection along with the use of Indigenous knowledge to steward the 1.35 million-acre monument in southeastern Utah.
“Bears Ears holds deep spiritual and cultural significance, and is rich in ancestral history,” said Craig Andrews, who serves as co-chair of Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and vice chair of the Hopi Tribe. “Protecting Bears Ears ensures that future generations can continue to connect with our history and cultural identity.”
The group is urging the Biden administration to adopt a version of the management plan known as Alternative E, one of five options being weighed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service. In a draft of the plans published in March, both agencies identified that version of the management plan as their “preferred option,” although a final selection has yet to be made.
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So if Tribes have decision-making authority, why do they need a campaign to adopt the strategy? In fact, why did they need five alternatives? They could have had “current conditions” and “preferred by Tribes” and save much money and time of agency employees and the public. Also I’m a little leery of Patagonia having a strong presence in this.. getting rid of OHVs opens up more country for those who buy their stuff. That is, the folks who can afford to buy their stuff. It looks like the spinoff charitable organization from Patagonia helps fund many groups we are familiar with.
Anyway, back to the Grist article.
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Patrick Gonzales-Rogers is a professor at the Yale School of Environment where he specializes in tribal sovereignty and natural resources. He is also the former director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.
Co-management allows tribes to exercise sovereignty, according to Gonzales-Rogers. “It allows them to be more assertive,” he added. And when that happens, tribes can bring in religious and spiritual practices to utilize traditional knowledge, wisdom that had been minimized by federal agencies in the past.
Gonzales-Rogers is hopeful that, exponentially, these choices will compound, “and may even have a nexus to say something like landback,” a reference to a movement that is not only rooted in a mass return of land to Indigenous nations and peoples, but also tribes having sovereignty to steward the land that was taken from them.
Gonzales-Rogers thinks the two terms have not been very well-defined over the years, but said co-stewardship agreements might be a good way to start building to co-management.
This is confusing, because the FS and BLM are already required, as far as I know, to use traditional knowledge in decision-making on all lands, and maybe co-stewardship as well. Is sovereignty like being pregnant, you either are or you aren’t? Or are there degrees of sovereignty? It seems to me that we won’t know what “sovereignty” really means for a place that’s co-managed until an Admin disagrees with a Tribe about management.
The reporter asserts that based on an international study. Some international studies say the same thing about local people.. Not to be unduly skeptical, but the study involved lots of different places and the authors’ own view of what is more autonomy and what is more conservation. And I just think about the Izembeck Road, the Utah oil train and so on, as Wuerthner described in a previous post:
What I call an Indian Iron Curtain exists among the media and conservation organizations. Like the old Soviet Union Iron Curtain, which attempted to promote Communism and censored anything contradicting the notion that Communism was anything but a perfect social and political system. The Indian Iron Curtain exists to promote tribal people as somehow exemplary conservationists.
Who is doing this in the media? For example, who funds the Climate Desk Collaboration? Here’s a story about how it started from Yale Climate Connections. Since I’m an alum, I thought they might let me know who funds YCC. No such luck, donor privacy invoked. But back to the Climate Desk.
To help fund The Climate Desk, including hiring freelance writers, the partners have so far secured a $100,000 grant from the Park Foundation. Other money has come from the Surdna Foundation, which has supported Mother Jones in the past.
Grant money has come without any expectations of control over editorial content, the partners said.
I’m sure that’s true, but it seems to me that funding reporters at Grist is likely to produce different copy than for example, funding reporters at the National Review.
I found this on Thomas Hochman’s TwitX feed , and I’m always interested in bipartisan stuff, so went to Rep. Peters (D) press release.
