Steve Wilent

If you’re weary of debating USFS policy, here’s a look at National Park Service policy, in a document released yesterday:

DIRECTOR’S ORDER #100: RESOURCE STEWARDSHIP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

The document states that “To achieve the stewardship goal, the NPS will adopt the precautionary principle and adaptive management as guiding strategies for resource management subject to all existing authorities. These strategies will promote science-based decisions, help deal with uncertainty, and promote a culture of learning. Management decisions based on the precautionary principle may often require adaptive management.”

Also, it adds “sound” to “best available science”:

“To fulfill the stewardship goal, the NPS will use a decision-making framework that is explicitly based upon three criteria: (1) best available sound science and scholarship, (2) accurate fidelity to the law, and (3) long-term public interest.”

Does adding “sound” — “best available sound science and scholarship” — make it easier for managers to disregard science that doesn’t support agency goals?

The group described in this article sounds like the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership.

This essay in High Country News on the 40th anniversaries of NFMA and FLPMA is worth a look. It’s written by Martin Nie, director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests in the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana.

“The National Forest Management Act emerged as a response to the clear-cutting and timber harvest controversies of the 1960s and ’70s. To this day, people differ as to whether it provided much-needed course correction for the Forest Service or instead was a solution to a “nonexistent” problem. What the law does, essentially, is require the agency to prepare management plans for every forest. It also places significant environmental constraints on the Forest Service and gives it a mandate to manage for wildlife diversity.”

Wildlife diversity, yes, but also other resources and values. It is worth noting that the text of the NFMA cites the Multiple-Use, Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 a dozen times or so.

Comments, anyone?

This article from the Yakima (Wash.) Herald, “Future full of doubt for Central Washington timber industry,” highlights a familiar theme: A “small mill is the only one remaining in the Eastern Cascades from Yakima County to the Canadian border. That means while more than a million acres need thinning, there’s no place else buying the wood.”

And, “Experts say the solution is to rebuild the timber industry, but by focusing on small logs now in abundance and encouraging innovative companies that use waste wood for manufactured products or biomass energy to invest here.”

How to do that? The first step is to provide long-term supply agreements, the articles says. IMHO, not just 10 years, but 20, at least.

This topic has been discussed in numerous posts. This report is worth a look: Forest fires in Sierra Nevada driven by past land use. It will not come as a surprise to people who have traced the Indian use of fire in the Sierras and more recent actions/policies.

“We were expecting to find climatic drivers,” said lead co-author Valerie Trouet, a UA associate professor of dendrochronology. “We didn’t find them.”

Instead, the team found the fire regimes corresponded to different types of human occupation and use of the land: the pre-settlement period to the Spanish colonial period; the colonial period to the California Gold Rush; the Gold Rush to the Smokey Bear/ fire suppression period; and the Smokey Bear/fire suppression era to present.

That said, drought is certainly a factor in the current and expanding die-off of pines in the Sierras, but that may not be a climatic change.

This article, “Study Finds Protected Forests on Public Land Burn Less Than Severely Logged Areas,” discusses a study on Ecosphere (full text – open access).

Note that the study was performed by three activists who are strongly opposed to logging: Curtis M. Bradley (Center for Biological Diversity), Chad T. Hanson (John Muir Project), Dominick A. DellaSala (Geos Institute).

From their paper’s conclusion: “In general, our findings—that forests with the highest levels of protection from logging tend to burn least severely—suggest a need for managers and policymakers to rethink current forest and fire management direction, particularly proposals that seek to weaken forest protections or suspend environmental laws ostensibly to facilitate a more extensive and industrial forest–fire management regime.”

“Clean water tops wish list in Northwest as feds revise plan,” according to an article on Greenwire about a poll of 600 registered voters in counties in Washington, Oregon and California, commissioned by the Wilderness Society.

The results of the poll are here. As with most polls, the wording of the questions can have a strong influence on the responses. In this case, the questions seem framed to mirror the activities and outcomes desired by the Wilderness Society. For example, to this question:

“Let me read you some specific components of ways that have been suggested to revise the Northwest Forest Plan and get your reaction. For each, please tell me if you would favor or oppose that component.”

These are the components given to respondents:

Improve trails and campgrounds to enhance recreation opportunities.

Prioritize restoring forests to their natural conditions.

Limit logging and road building within 300 feet of rivers, lakes, and streams.

Limit logging and road building in old-growth forests.

Limit the use of clear cut logging operations.

Designate certain areas to be managed primarily for carbon storage, which will minimize impacts of climate change.

Restrict road building in areas where roads can interfere with the movement of wildlife.

What do you think? Is is a fair and balanced poll?

Excerpt from this article:

The Supreme Court let stand a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that allowed anyone to sue the Forest Service for Endangered Species Act consultations not just over specific actions such as timber harvests but over programmatic decisions, including decisions that already have been the focus of species consultations (U.S. Forest Serv. v. Cottonwood Envtl. Law Ct., U.S., No. 15-1387, 10/11/16).

The Forest Service argued the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, concerned about the threatened Canada lynx, lacked standing to sue over programmatic policies rather than specific actions. The service also argued against being forced to reinitiate consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over completed forest plans — a precedent that could impose significant burdens on the agency in terms of multiple rounds of program consultations.

The Cottonwood Environmental Law Center sued for additional consultations after critical habitat was designated for the Canada lynx.

An Idaho Stateman/AP article, “Northern Idaho lumber mill closes, laying off 40“:

OROFINO, IDAHO – A lumber mill in northern Idaho has closed down, leaving about 40 people without work.

An AP article of note: “Team studies fires this year in ’88 Yellowstone burn areas.”

Could the answer be that there is plenty of fuel?