The Western Environmental Law Center recently sent this letter to the USFS, regarding a study in the Journal of Forestry on agency NEPA processes. The letter stats that “The conclusions of Fleischman et al. support the analysis and conclusions in our comments on the Forest Service’s proposed rule. The root causes of “delays” with NEPA analysis and completion are not due to the regulations or the law itself, but rather the way in which the Forest Service staffs, trains, and retains (or not) its employees, as well as declining congressional funding levels for mission-critical work.”

Greenwire has an article on this topic today:

A new study takes aim at the idea that environmental reviews take too long for timber and other projects in national forests.

Forrest Fleischman, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Forest Resources, said his research largely shows the opposite: that the Forest Service completes environmental reviews faster than other federal agencies and that the vast majority of projects on land the service oversees proceed without a major hitch.

The real problem, Fleischman told E&E News, is staffing or funding shortages or both, and the difficulties seem to vary from Forest Service region to region.

“I think the main story is budgeting,” said Fleischman, who added that he had long accepted that the National Environmental Policy Act is a roadblock to forest management — a narrative popular with many Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration. “That really doesn’t seem to be the case.”

The USFS Northern Research Station has a new report, “Greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest land, woodlands, and urban trees in the United States, 1990-2018,” that offers national and state-level data.”Forest land, harvested wood products (HWPs), and urban trees within the land sector collectively represent the largest net carbon (C) sink in the United States, offsetting more than 11 percent of total GHG emissions annually.”

Here’s a summary national table:

We’ve discussed C stocks in Oregon forests here. In the report’s appendix, Table 370: C Stocks in Forest Land Remaining Forest Land (MMT C), Oregon, the C stocks are shown increasing slowly and steadily, from 2,860 MMT in 1990 to 3,186 MMT in 2019.

Three letters in the Helena Independent Record, presented in order of publication. Thanks to Nick Smith for pointing them out.

In Garrity’s letter, he says, “Last year the Forest Service [Region 1] received no bids on 17.5% of the timber offered, up from 15.6% that received no bids in 2018. That’s 615 million board feet that weren’t cut in 2019 because the timber industry did not bid on it.”

Altemus replies that “This is a gross distortion of the facts.”

Anyone know the facts?

Also, timber sales may get zero bids for many reasons — too far from a mill, poor or undesirable species, unfavorable terms, and so on — that have little to do with a region’s overall timber supply.

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Public loses on federal timber sales

MIKE GARRITY, Feb. 14, 2020

When Idaho billionaire Ron Yanke purchased the timber mills in Townsend and Livingston years ago to form RY Timber, he also bought lots of former Anaconda Company timberland. But just like Champion International and Plum Creek Timber who, according to a University of Montana study, cut trees three times faster than they could grow back, RY has already overcut their private land.

Both Champion and Plum Creek are gone from Montana, but at least Champion was honest about why it left, stating in the Wall Street Journal in the early 1990s that trees simply grow too slowly in Montana. Champion then clearcut its timberlands and reinvested the money in the Southeast, where tree farms can be harvested a decade after planting rather than the century or more it takes to reach harvestable size in Montana.

Plum Creek did the same thing, thanks to a board decision to “liquidate” its forest assets in the late ’80s and turn itself into a real estate investment trust to sell its marketable Montana lands for subdivision and development as Weyerhauser acquired its mills.

In spite of this sad but well-documented history of timber operations in Montana, RY is blaming environmentalists for what they claim is an insufficient supply of timber from national forests. The basic economic principles of over-supply and over-production in the timber industry are the real problems.

As Julia Altemus, logging lobbyist and director of the Montana Wood Products Association, told the Missoulian’s Rob Chaney: “There’s been a lot of over-production across the board. We have too much wood in the system and people weren’t building. That will make it tougher for us. What would help is if we could find new markets.”

When Stoltze Land and Lumber Co. cut back its mill production cycle from 80 to 50 hours weekly, manager Paul McKenzie told the Hungry Horse News: “It’s purely market driven… demand for lumber across the country is down… supply has actually been good.”

In fact, the “supply” from national forests is more than just good. Last year the Forest Service received no bids on 17.5% of the timber it offered, up from 15.6% that received no bids in 2018. That’s 615 million board feet that weren’t cut in 2019 because the timber industry did not bid on it. The truth is that Region 1 of the Forest Service, which includes Montana, has increased the amount of timber offered by 141% in the last 10 years and the cost to taxpayers continues to climb to staggering heights.

A report by the Center for a Sustainable Economy found “taxpayer losses of nearly $2 billion a year associated with the federal logging program carried out on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. Despite these losses, the Trump administration plans to significantly increase logging on these lands in the years ahead, a move that would plunge taxpayers into even greater debt.”

Adding to that debt are significant “externalized” costs to the public when new logging roads are bulldozed into unroaded areas. Runoff fills streams with sediment that smothers fish eggs and aquatic insects. More logging also reduces forested habitat for elk, which then seek safety on private lands, resulting in problems from “game damage.”

The Montana timber industry once again wants to rape and run. Just as environmentalists were not to blame for its overcut private lands (which are now filled with stumps, knapweed, and degraded streams) environmentalists should now be lauded, not blamed, for trying to stop such destruction on our public lands.

Mike Garrity is the executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

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Timber-dependent communities deserve better than what some environmentalists dish out

JULIA ALTEMUS, Feb 27, 2020

Michael Garrity’s Feb. 14 opinion letter was certainly no “Be Mine” valentine. It was dripping of desperation and distorted quotes. Again, the author is either grossly misinformed of the facts or intentionally misleading the public. The author stated that “Last year the Forest Service received no bids on 17.5% of the timber offered, up from 15.6% that received no bids in 2018. That’s 615 million board feet that weren’t cut in 2019 because the timber industry did not bid on it.” This is a gross distortion of the facts. Region One works very hard to not have sales go no bid. Rarely is there carryover timber volume in our Region to the next fiscal year. Other Regions may struggle with “no bid” sales, Region One does not. Michael would have the public believe that Montana’s timber industry is leaving valuable timber volume on the table. Not so!

Michael goes on to assert that, “The truth is that Region 1 of the Forest Service, which includes Montana, has increased the amount of timber offered by 141% in the last 10 years and the cost to the taxpayers continues to climb to staggering heights.” The graph, provided below by the U of M Bureau of Business and Economic Research, illustrates that up until the last couple of years, there was a steady decline in federal timber supply, not a 141% increase. [tinyurl.com/ycg53w9j]

At the heart of the decline in harvest and forest health is the fact that Montana is ground zero for litigation. Since the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) was amended in 1988, to allow nonprofits to sue the federal government, Montana has lost 30 mill manufacturers, resulting in the loss of over 3500 jobs.

Region One has paid out $1,204,636.90 in litigation payments under the EAJA to environmental groups in Montana in the past five years alone. No wonder the Alliance for the Wild Rockies has had R-Y Timber in its crosshairs for well over a decade. Dating back to 2007, the Alliance litigated or threatened to litigate 24 of R-Y’s timber contracts equaling over 100mmbf. It’s hard to run a business with a dark litigation cloud hanging over head.

Let’s look at the facts. Currently, Montana’s timberlands are over 63% federal, 23% non-industrial timberlands, 8% industrial timberlands, 5% state, and 1% tribal. Montana’s wood manufacturers must rely on a sustainable and steady supply of raw wood fiber from the federal estate. On average, federal forests in Montana grow 567 million cubic feet annually. At the same time, we lose 510 million cubic feet to mortality, netting 51 million cubic feet of annual growth. We are losing a jaw-dropping 89.9% of our federal forests annually to insects, disease and fire.

Timber harvest is about more than just cutting down trees. There are numerous ancillary benefits. The value of the timber pays for restoration work, brings roads to best management practice standards, improves wildlife habitat, reduces the risk of catastrophic wildfires, provides employment and products that we all use daily.

While environmental groups, like AWR, continue to be engaged in litigation larceny, families, rural timber-dependent communities and the forests they depend upon are suffering.

Julia Altemus is the executive director of the Montana Wood Products Association.

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Forest management works best when parties collaborate

CHRIS MARCHION, May 3, 2020

My experiences with Ron Yanke and RY Timber over the past 30 years are substantially different from those characterizations implied by Mike Garrity’s recent letter. I dealt with RY in the 1990s when they purchased former Anaconda Company lands for the purpose of timber harvest.

While I did not agree with all of RY’s harvest decisions, their activities left the land in a condition desirable for public ownership. All of the streams still contain cutthroat and bull trout. The mountain lakes offer quality experiences and much of the landscape is still viable for wilderness consideration and provide critical wildlife habitat. In the late 1990s I worked successfully with Mr. Yanke and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to put 35,000 acres of these lands into public ownership.

This acquisition took several years of negotiations and payments. Although Mr. Yanke had better offers during the negotiations, he honored his original intent for a public acquisition. Although he was a successful industrialist he had conservation values. I learned he valued his employees, the communities where he operated, and the landscapes he affected. He was an interesting man because he was as comfortable sitting in negotiations involving millions of dollars as he was sitting in a pickup visiting with a logger.

Tragically, Ron died shortly after this acquisition but his company has kept his conservation engagement. In 2019, RY sold an additional 120 acres to be added to the original Watershed purchase.

RY’s recent closure of the Townsend mill which generated comments about environmental obstruction are understandable. Mr. Garrity’s comments as they relate to RY are not. For more than a decade I have been involved in the development of the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge Working Group which is a collaborative of interested forest users contributing to management issues on the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge Forest.

The most urgent forest issue is dealing with over mature lodge pole on forest lands. A major problem has been the inability of the forest to successfully execute sufficient commercial harvest on these lands. Due to a number of factors, including collaboration, timber harvest is up in recent years but still lower than the need dictated by landscape conditions.

We need to do more. The more interest groups involved in the development of these projects, the better the result. The healthier the forest. Obstructing at the end of project development as is Mr. Garrity’s method of legal intervention has not produced a better result. In the 1960s and 70’s international forest corporations were the extreme group promoting timber harvest as the only goal. Those international corporations are gone but Mr. Garrity has replaced their destructive harvests with equally destructive litigation.

Forest management is an evolving science that produces the best results when the interested parties engage constructively in the development of decisions. If Mr. Garrity’s constituents are sincere in their concern for forest health then start by engaging from the beginning of projects. Litigation should be the last resort, not the preferred choice.

Chris Marchion of Anaconda is a member of the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge Working Group and an inaugural member of the Montana Conservation Hall of Fame.

From a new study published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change — online and free. A complete life-cycle analysis would account for harvests in the effects area as well as in areas where normal harvests change as more (or less) is harvested in the disturbed forest. Markets matter. If landowners in one area harvest more than their average annual volumes, landowners in other areas might harvest less: the overall demand for timber hasn’t been changed.

Forest Carbon Resilience of Eastern Spruce Budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) Salvage Harvesting in the Northeastern United States

Abstract:

The next major eastern spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) outbreak is likely to begin impacting the forests of the northeastern US over the next few years. More than 4.7 million ha of forest and 94.8 million Mg of carbon in spruce (Picea spp.) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea) are at risk. Vegetation shifts in at-risk forest stands are likely to occur as a direct result of mortality caused by spruce budworm and through post-outbreak salvage harvest operations designed to minimize economic impact. Management interventions have short-term and long-term consequences for the terrestrial carbon budget and have significant implications for the role of the region’s forests as a natural climate solution. We used regional forest inventory data and 40 years growth and harvest simulations from the USDA Forest Service Forest Vegetation Simulator to quantify a range of forest carbon outcomes for alternative silvicultural interventions in the northeastern US. We performed a life cycle assessment of harvested wood products, including bioenergy, to evaluate the full greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions consequences of salvage and business as usual silvicultural scenarios across a range of stand risk profiles in the presence and absence of spruce budworm attack. Salvaging dead trees in the most at-risk stands tends to produce net emissions of carbon dioxide for at least 10 years compared to a baseline where dead trees are left standing. In most scenarios, GHG emissions reached parity with the baseline by year 20. Changes in forest carbon stocks were the biggest driver of net emission differences between salvage and no salvage scenarios. A benchmark scenario without timber harvesting or the occurrence of a spruce budworm outbreak had the greatest net carbon sequestration profile after 40 years compared to all other scenarios. Salvaging trees killed by a severe and widespread insect infestation has potential negative short-term implications for GHG emissions, but long-term resilience of these climate benefits is possible in the absence of future outbreaks or subsequent harvest activities. The results provide guidance on silvicultural interventions to minimize the impact of spruce budworm on forest carbon.

Discussion excerpt:

We found that forest management actions such as salvage harvesting designed to mitigate pest impacts over time can have positive impacts on overall C balances by reducing the risk of catastrophic loss in susceptible stands and landscapes and by shifting C from at-risk or dying trees to wood used as building materials or displacing fossil-fuel intensive energy sources. However, this C resilience comes at a short-term cost to the atmosphere that can last up to 20 years. Therefore, the resilience is dependent upon the recovery of the forest C stocks in the absence of subsequent natural or anthropogenic disturbances. If forest management interventions or large-scale mortality interrupt the growth response of the post salvage forest, then there is likely to be a longer period of time required to reach parity with the baseline scenarios.

From a Colorado TV station (emphasis added):

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Firefighters are getting closer to full containment on an 83-acre fire burning on the Hayman Fire burn scar in Jefferson County.

The fire was reported early Saturday afternoon 3 miles northwest of the Cheesman Reservoir. Named the 560 Fire after nearby Forest Service Road 560, the fire is burning in an area thick with dead and fallen trees.

“These trees not only create a tripping hazard for firefighters but they also put firefighters at risk from falling trees. The fire is burning in very steep and rugged terrain,” the U.S. Forest Service said Sunday.

Despite the hazards, firefighters made significant progress Sunday into Monday, bringing containment up to 80 percent. They have also been able to keep the fire from growing; USFS says the new reported size — 83 acres, up from a reported 68 on Sunday — was due to better mapping.

“Firefighters were able to map the entire fire today and that mapping increased the acreage to 83 acres. The 560 fire has not grown but some hot spots still remain in the interior of the fire as dead trees from the old Hayman burn scar continue to burn,” Forest Service said Monday.

A PR from Washington State University. The paper ($) is here.

Response to fire impacts water levels 40 years into future

Excerpt from the Herald and News, Klamath Falls, Oregon….

Federal Government agrees to reevaluate Northern Spotted Owl habitat after Supreme Court ruling

A coalition representing counties, business and labor has reached an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that will initiate a public regulatory rulemaking process for reevaluating critical habitat designated for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to a news release.

The agreement was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and is subject to court approval.

The agreement is related to a unanimous 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding the ESA does not authorize the government to designate lands as critical habitat unless it is in fact habitat for the species. The Supreme Court also ruled that courts can review government evaluations of the impact of designating critical habitat, which the lower courts had refused to allow for over 30 years.

The coalition brought legal action after the Fish and Wildlife Service designated 9.5 million acres of mostly federal lands as NSO critical habitat across Washington, Oregon and Northern California in 2012. This was 38 percent more than was set aside in 1992 following the listing of the NSO. The coalition’s legal action focused on the inclusion of millions of acres of forests not occupied by the species, including over 1.1 million acres of federal lands designated for active forest management activities and where no owls are present.

More….

We’ve discussed this issue in several threads, such as here. A new study by a large group of researchers, recently published in Nature, looks at the ability of mature trees to absorb CO2. The conclusion is that “additional carbon uptake did not lead to increased carbon sequestration at the ecosystem level. Instead, the majority of the extra carbon was emitted back into the atmosphere via several respiratory fluxes, with increased soil respiration alone accounting for half of the total uptake surplus.”

An open-access companion article, “Mature forest shows little increase in carbon uptake in a CO2-enriched atmosphere,” adds perspective and discusses the need to additional research.

From Greenwire:

Agency plans ‘very unusual’ staff shuffle

Forest Service employees who expected to work on one of the biggest recent timber projects in Alaska have been told to pack for South Dakota instead, once travel restrictions tied to the coronavirus ease.

About a dozen employees in the Tongass National Forest — including foresters, engineers and wildlife biologists — have been told they’ll be transferred temporarily to a forest management project in the Black Hills National Forest, said Ken Dinsmore, president of Local 251 of the National Federation of Federal Employees, representing Tongass employees.

While employees understand they can be transferred to other areas at the discretion of the Forest Service — as with other federal agencies — the move is unusual, Dinsmore said. It came suddenly, and workers were told clearly that they don’t have the option to decline.

“Management has the right to assign work. That can include work from Fairbanks to Florida,” Dinsmore said. “This is very unusual. It’s the first time I’ve seen employees told to go outside the region to do their daily work.”

Employees were told to prepare to stay in South Dakota until August, he said.

The sudden announcement seems to coincide with the holdup of the Prince of Wales landscape level analysis project in the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest, the biggest national forest in the nation. That project, which also includes stream restoration and improvements to recreation areas, involves up to 125,529 acres of potential timber harvest, according to the Forest Service.

<<more….>>

Here’s an article on a topic I’ve been thinking about:

How will COVID-19 impact wildfire response?

“This presents a host of problems for wildfire response, said Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) commissioner Hilary Franz. The state will have to figure out how to keep firefighters from getting infected, how to secure enough incident management teams and rethink the way it attacks fires.”

I’d like to hear from folks with fire experience about how this might play out.