The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
Community Sourced, Shared and Supported
Greenwire: “New Interior Department regional boundaries will be in place this year, and the agency’s massive reorganization will begin in Alaska, according to a document obtained by E&E News.”
The article cites a BLM FAQ. — “We expect the boundaries for the thirteen new common regions will take effect in the second half of FY 2018.”
Weaken a key environmental law to help California meet its climate change goals? That’s what a state lawmaker proposes. Except from LA Times article is below.
If this come to be, then why not revise laws that make it harder or more time-consuming for forest managers to conduct fuels treatments and other activities that reduce fire hazards or fire intensity? According to data from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, the roughly 700,000 acres burned by wildfires in Idaho last year resulted in the emission of 12,300,000 tons of carbon dioxide, about 120 percent of the 10,200,000 tons of CO2 emitted by on-road vehicles in Idaho during the same period. Reduce the number of acres burned and you reduce emissions.
LA Times:
Assemblyman Tim Grayson (D-Concord) has introduced legislation that aims to make it harder for lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, to stop construction of roads and public transit.
CEQA requires developers and public agencies to disclose a project’s environmental effects and take steps to reduce or eliminate them. But Grayson says the law can grind to a halt transportation projects that are needed to reduce the amount of cars on the road.
His legislation, Assembly Bill 1905, would make it easier for road or transit projects included in a state-approved regional growth plan to begin construction before any CEQA litigation is resolved.
Since state climate regulators will have already signed off on those road and transit projects when approving a region’s growth plan, the projects shouldn’t face multiple threats of environmental litigation, Grayson argues.
“What I’m looking at is how do we cut down on traffic congestion where we’re just spilling greenhouse gases, creating clouds of greenhouse gases and impacting the environment negatively,” Grayson said.
But Grayson’s approach is already attracting concerns from high-profile environmental organizations. Environmental groups often credit CEQA, which took effect in 1970, with preserving California’s natural beauty, and argue it is complementary — not contrary — to the more recent climate change laws.
This op-ed is nothing new from Chad Hanson, but here goes anyhow….
“The U.S. Forest Service recently proposed a sweeping effort to identify aspects of environmental analysis and public participation to be “reduced” or “eliminated” regarding commercial logging projects in our national forests, with initial public comments due Friday. The Trump administration is attempting to spin this as an effort to promote “increased efficiency” for the expansion of forest “restoration,” but these are just euphemisms for more destructive logging.”
Logging is “destructive” — especially commercial logging. That’s partly, I think, because it is commercial — a profit might be made. This issue came up in a recent discussion I had with friends about the highly controversial plan by Nestle to build a water-bottling plant in Cascade Locks, a small town on the Columbia River. (The plans were nixed last year by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.) Bark, an environmental group that is opposed to commercial logging on the nearby Mt. Hood National Forest, also is opposed to commercial water bottling: It suggested that like-minded people “Please tell [the state regulatory agency] that ‘Giving public water away so that Nestlé can bottle and profit from it is the wrong thing for Oregon! Retain our public water rights!’
I asked one of my well-connected friends who opposed the deal whether other opponents would favor it if, instead of Nestle, a non-profit organization or perhaps the city of Cascade Locks itself opened a bottling plant. His answer: “Of course!” Much of the opposition was apparently not about the water, but about making a profit from it.
Would Hanson would oppose “destructive logging” even if a non-profit were the contractor? Probably. Others do not. The National Wild Turkey Federation hasn’t had much opposition to its work as a stewardship contractor in Arizona, for example:
“Forest thinning offers several benefits, according to Scott Lerich, NWTF senior regional biologist. Among them are: increased biodiversity, watershed quality and amounts of forbs and grasses available for wildlife. It also increases employment opportunities, conservation of wildlife and prevents large-scale forest fires.” And: “Encompassing about 5,000 acres and home to Mount Graham red squirrels and Mexican spotted owls, this area needs commercial logging and prescribed fire to manage several species of pine and firs.”
When I interviewed Lerich for a recent article in The Forestry Source, he told me that the Center for Biological Diversity approved of the project.
If anyone of this blog has a connection with Hanson, I suggest that you invite him to join us in a discussion of the commercial aspects of logging.
Op-ed from the Idaho Stateman by Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited.
“Some members of Congress glee in blaming the Forest Service for declines in timber cutting, and the proliferation of wildfires in the West. Outside the glare of Washington, D.C., however, good things are happening on our national forests — starting in Idaho.”
Greenwire reports that a poll by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project found that 64 percent of respondents said they would “prefer the administration place more emphasis” on protecting natural resources. And only 23 percent said they support placing a greater emphasis on domestic energy production “by maximizing the amount of national public lands available for responsible oil and gas drilling and mining.
When I saw that headline, I had a hunch that Chad Hanson would be involved. The paper is here.
The USFS aimed to salvage timber from 11K acres, about 11% of the 97K acres burned by the King Fire. One of the new paper’s authors, Monica Bond, wrote a commentary arguing against the salvage. El Dorado forest supervisor Laurence Crabtree’s response is here.
That’s the issue at the heart of competing studies in California, the most recent of which suggests post-fire logging — not severe fire — is the real threat to the spotted owl.
In a study published this week in the scientific journal Nature Conservation, research ecologists said they found that owl populations suffered after the so-called King Fire in 2014 in the Eldorado National Forest because of post-fire logging.
Furthermore, the authors said, previous research by scientists missed that point and blamed a loss of owls in some areas on the fire itself, even though those areas hadn’t been occupied by owls in the first place.
“Most studies of spotted owls and fires in California found little to no effect of fires on owl site occupancy, but the King Fire study results contradicted these. Now we have a better idea where the King Fire results came from — it was post-fire logging and pre-fire abandonment,” said Monica Bond, a wildlife biologist with the Wild Nature Institute and co-author of the study.
The researchers said they found that in fire-damaged sites that had owls prior to the fire, where less than 5 percent of the area was logged, 12 of 15 spotted owl sites were occupied after the fire.
In sites where 5 percent or more of the area was logged, two out of six owl sites were occupied, they said.
The most recent study, conducted by researchers critical of logging, adds to a debate with policy implications; Congress is weighing legislation to change forest management activities and speed the approval of logging operations in areas damaged by wildfire, which some lawmakers say will reduce chances of subsequent fire.
The owl, too, is under federal review, as the Forest Service pursues a conservation strategy to protect the population. California spotted owl numbers have declined in the past 20 years, according to the agency, due to threats to habitat and competition from the barred owl, which has invaded the spotted owl’s territory.
California spotted owl isn’t listed as endangered, but the authors of the study are leading an effort to have it listed by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The study’s lead author, Chad Hanson, is a research ecologist with the John Muir Project of the Earth Island Institute, which opposes such legislation and is critical of logging on federal lands generally.
Recently burned forests — called snags for the dead trees left standing — are beneficial to spotted owls as hunting territory, Hanson said. Owls nest in deep woods and hunt in more open areas.
“We call this the bed-and-breakfast effect,” Hanson told E&E News.
In a news release, Hanson said of the study, “This is good news for declining California spotted owls because this is something that we can control — we can make policy decisions to stop post-fire logging operations in spotted owl habitat.”
A researcher whose work was questioned in the new study, Gavin Jones, took issue with some of the findings.
Jones, a graduate research assistant at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told E&E News that his studies showed without a doubt that high-severity fire negatively affected spotted owls.
Those findings from the King Fire were “entirely unambiguous,” Jones said.
Jones said he doesn’t rule out that post-fire logging could be detrimental to spotted owls and that research in that area has been limited.
And while Jones said he’s more of a scientist than a policy advocate, he added that campaigners for less logging sometimes take the view that all wildfire is good and all logging is bad — when the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Even severe wildfire is good in patches, Jones said.
“Is all severe fire good? We’ve found it’s not good,” Jones said. “I think there’s this basic problem of missing the nuance.”
Fellow NCFP Bloggers,
As you may know, I am editing a book to be published by the Society of American Foresters, 193 Million Acres: Toward a Healthier and More Resilient US Forest Service. It’s a collection of essays by a wide range of observers that examine the state of the agency from a variety of viewpoints and propose solutions that would address challenges the agency faces.
Clearly, one of those challenges is discrimination and sexual harassment within the agency, the topic of much discussion on this blog over the last few weeks. I have two questions for you:
Should one or more chapters of the book be devoted to this complex and difficult topic?
And who might write such a chapter? It would take someone who can be dispassionate in describing the situation and proposing realistic actions the agency might take to address the issues. It would also take someone who can complete such an essay in the near future: the book is scheduled to be published in August, and I would need a draft in the next month or perhaps six weeks.
Feedback welcome!
If you like, contact me directly at [email protected]. All communications will be held in confidence. — Steve Wilent
Subtitle to this Jan. 18 New York Times article: “Two years after the standoff at the Malheur Refuge, many people in the region remain convinced that their way of life is being trampled.”
“In 1955, Joe’s dad took a job at the Edward Hines sawmill, which purchased a 67,400-acre tract of timber in the Malheur National Forest. Burns was a vibrant timber town until around 1973 when the mill started laying off workers, and the unemployment rate in Harney County reached 30 percent. The mill closed after the Forest Service restricted the cutting of old-growth forest in the mid-1990s. For-sale signs went up and people moved away. Cronin graduated from high school in 1968 with about 120 people in his class, and his grandson’s class will graduate with about half that many. The biggest employers in the region are now the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and other government agencies.”
The USFS is still the biggest employer in my area, just west of the Cascades, but there is ambivalence, if anything, over its place here. Or ignorance. The USFS owns half the county, and recreation on those lands is a big part of the local economy, but the agency is a quiet presence.
This Wall Street Journal article ($) adds a knotty twist to recent greenhouse gas proposals in Washington State. The first article is disturbing, regardless of the aims of the parties involved. Two other recent articles show how forest management (though not USFS lands, I think, at least directly) comes into play….
Climate of Unaccountability
Are foundations running state energy policy without transparency?
“An environmental nonprofit, the World Resources Institute, actually hired Washington’s state government as a contractor last July.
“Under this remarkable arrangement, the state agreed to perform a “scope of work” for the nonprofit that includes “activities and deliverables” to advance a green agenda. The special-interest tail is officially wagging the democratic dog, given that the contract provides the job framework for Mr. Inslee’s senior policy adviser for climate and sustainability, Reed Schuler.
…
“In other words, he holds an influential policy position. And it’s funded through a grant from the World Resources Institute, which reimburses Washington for Mr. Schuler’s salary, benefits and expenses. Under its contract, Washington State sends progress reports alongside its $33,210 quarterly invoices to the nonprofit.
“Tara Lee, the Governor’s spokeswoman, says Mr. Schuler is “a Washington state employee with the same scope of work, review process and accountability as any other state employee. The only difference is the funding source.” She adds the World Resources Institute’s largesse amounts to “general support for expanding the Inslee Administration’s work to combat climate exchange,” but that “they do not decide or dictate the details of this work, nor do they have input on any employee’s work plan.” And she says such arrangements are “not unusual.” “
The only difference is the funding source? The WSJ notes that, “Substitute the Koch brothers for the World Resources Institute, and the outrage would be predictable.”
Dots to connect:
Seattle Times, Jan. 9: “Gov. Jay Inslee Tuesday urged Washington lawmakers to embrace his ambitious plan to tax fossil-fuel emissions in Washington state.”
“Inslee’s proposal would levy a $20-a-ton price on carbon emissions, said Reed Schuler, an Inslee policy adviser. That price would rise over time.
“The billions of dollars raised would support clean-energy projects, work to improve floodwater management and reduce risks of wildfires, and assistance to offset the tax’s impact on low-income communities.
“The state would start collecting the revenue in the 2020 budget year, with $726 million generated that year. The tax would raise a total of $3.3 billion over four years.
On Jan. 5, also in the Times:
Washington state lands commissioner urges legislators to target carbon pollution
“That could put her at odds with fellow Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, who next week is expected to unveil a carbon tax or fee that could be used partially to replenish a state reserve account he would like to tap to meet a state Supreme Court mandate on paying for public-schools improvements. Franz’s proposal wouldn’t allow carbon money to be used that way.”
…
“Smart carbon policy would focus on several areas, including reductions in wildfire danger and improving forest health, she said. The department and Legislature have committed to treating 1 million acres of forest with thinning and prescribed burning over the next 20 years.”
January 10 Washington Post story: “Interior plans to move thousands of workers in the biggest reorganization in its history.” In contrast to the OneUSDA initiative, this move would be consequential. The plan may require approval from Congress.
“The proposal would divide the United States into 13 regions and centralize authority for different parts of Interior within those boundaries. The regions would be defined by watersheds and geographic basins, rather than individual states and the current boundaries that now guide Interior’s operations. This new structure would be accompanied by a dramatic shift in location of the headquarters of major bureaus within Interior, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Reclamation.”
…
“If you look at the way we’re presently organized, all the bureaus under Interior have different regions . . . and are not aligned geographically,” Zinke said. For example, a single stream with trout and salmon can fall under the view of five separate agencies, one for each fish, another for a dam downstream and yet another to manage the water, and each generate reports that often conflict.”