Good piece on the Buck Rising sale in Oregon, one of the pilot sales designed under the “ecological forestry” pitched by Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson. Having visited the sale and talked with the foresters who implemented the sale, My answer to the question posed by the article’s title is Yes. If timber management with a strong emphasis on creating and maintaining wildlife habitat won’t work (due to opposition from enviro groups), then nothing will. This is a battle that needs to be fought — it’s all or nothing.

Should A Controversial Oregon Timber Harvest Become Regional Model?

Pretty good article about planning on the the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests:

Hashing out habitat: Crowd debates wildlife habitat in forest management plan meeting

Couple of excerpts:

“The overall theme that I feel like from the wildlife habitat perspective is to manage this forest for diversity,” Sheryl Bryan, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist, told the crowd.

…

Depending on your definition of “young,” the acreage of young forest in the Pisgah-Nantahala now hovers around 1 percent, and most stakeholders agree that’s too low. The Forest Service’s preliminary research is exploring what it would take to get early successional habitat to command somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the forest. But that’s a big range.

…

“The reality is that the Forest Service cannot afford to cut all the trees across the forest that some folks want cut,” said D.J. Gerken, managing attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “We’re going to have to make choices about focusing that action on places where it is most appropriate.”

In the “New Topics or Questions from Readers” thread, Bill Keye posted a link to a New York Times op-ed, “Rethinking the Wild” — which might as well have been entitled “Rethinking the Wilderness Act.” The author, Christopher Solomon, suggests that we may need to manage wilderness areas to some degree, to mitigate the effects of climate change. For example:

“A great example is Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, most of which lies within the 595,000-acre Joshua Tree Wilderness. Up to 90 percent of the park’s namesake trees could disappear by century’s end, according to models that factor in expected warming. Should we let that happen as nature’s atonement for our mistake? Or should park managers instead intervene in some way — relocating trees to higher elevations to promote their survival, for instance, or finding or creating a hybrid species that can withstand the hotter temperatures and combating exotic grasses that increase the threat of fires?”

Or cutting lodgepole to prevent their invasion of alpine meadows, or watering giant sequoia to help them survive a drier climate.

However, over in the “Bob Berwyn: Forest health crisis ends with a whimper” thread, Matthew K. posted a link to and an excerpt of an article in which USFS biologist Diana Six says, of cutting “survivor” trees during salvage logging:

“It’s natural selection. The bugs wiped out the trees that are not adapted to current conditions … Underlying genetics will determine future forests,” she said, challenging the conventional wisdom that logging is needed to restore forest health.

Many of alpine meadows previously were alpine lakes and wetlands. Over time, some have already filled in and now support trees rather than water plants and critters. How much of this process was the result of human activity, and how much was “natural”? The same goes for bark beetle infestations and fires that have affected wilderness. At what point, and under what circumstances, is active management of wilderness areas acceptable? Or is it, ever?

Steve Kelly, an artist and volunteer director of Montana Ecosystems Defense Council, defends his group’s lawsuit “against the federal government to stop the clear-cutting and bulldozing of new logging roads in the Ten Mile Watershed.” Says “The assault on public values by the timber industry and Forest Service is relentless.”

Also, “Collaborative groups today are designed to limit political options, undermine public participation and marginalize any group or individual who will not conform to the federal government’s false premise, inaccurate diagnosis and hidden agenda, which is invariably more and more logging.”

Stand up for public forests or lose them

Standing up for public forests is not what Montana Ecosystems Defense Council is doing.

Kelly’s essay is a response to a June 29 editorial by the Independent Record, “Collaboration, not lawsuits needed for Ten Mile project“ which says “This is the kind of lawsuit that lends credence to those who claim environmental organizations, like the ones Kelly and Johnson represent, are simply obstructionists.”

Montana Ecosystems Defense Council didn’t get their way from the collaborative process or via administrative review. Why should they be allowed to sue?

An ad for a “Forest & Conservation Worker” — tree planting and pre-commercial thinning — in this Sunday’s The Oregonian caught my eye, not because I’m looking for work, but because of one line in the ad, after the range of hourly pay:

“Health & Welfare benefits paid at $3.81 when work performed on USFS land.”

$3.81 per hour, I presume.

Apparently the agency requires contractors to pay such benefits. However, there has been some mention on this blog that the agency doesn’t pay its season employees benefits. I’m not clear on the details of what is and isn’t paid. Can you enlighten me?

FYI, the hourly pay is listed at $14.10 to $14.94 per hour “depending on which county the work is performed.”

To broaden our focus to areas and issues outside of the Western US….

Forest plan draws fire in north Georgia mountains

The usual cast of characters and the usual issues: “…a commercial timber harvest, in the Blue Ridge Ranger District of the Gainesville-based Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest have come under fire from some environmental groups.” Including Georgia ForestWatch, Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club.

A variety of treatments would cover about 2,300 acres, or about 10 percent of the Blue Ridge District’s total 300,000 acres. Removing the majority of trees from a particular stand to regenerate an area would take place on 253 acres.

Here’s what the scoping letter says about the 253 acres:

Early Successional Forest Habitat (Goal 2):

Stands proposed for regeneration range from true cove stands consisting primarily of yellow poplar to more xeric stands dominated by oak species. The primary purpose of regenerating these stands is to improve habitat conditions for species such as ruffed grouse, golden-winged warbler and other early successional species. Secondary objectives include restoration of oak on sites where white pine is dominating but not ecologically appropriate and oak maintenance in existing oak stands.

White pine stands will likely require complete overstory removal, after harvest site preparation treatments, planting of native oak species, and subsequent release treatments. Site preparation treatments may include chemical and/or non-chemical methods such as prescribed burning. Stands will be harvested with a two-aged with reserves method, retaining an approximately 20ft2 BA of overstory trees per acre. Stands may require post-harvest chemical release treatments to reduce competition from undesirable species.

This seems quite reasonable, though I have not visited the area. If this didn’t involve commercial harvesting, would it still draw fire?

You knew t his was just a matter of time….

“Conservation groups file first lawsuit against logging designated under Farm Bill“

Two conservation groups made the first legal challenge to a logging operation excluded from environmental analysis and public review under the 2014 Farm Bill.

On Thursday, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Missoula to stop the Rendezvous Trails timber sale near West Yellowstone. The sale calls for logging 250 acres of lodgepole pine on the western boundary of Yellowstone National Park.

…

This lawsuit aims at ESA protection for 9 species, one of which is the San Bernardino flying squirrel, a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel that lives at high elevations in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains of southern California. According to the USFWS, it is “believed that the San Bernardino flying squirrel represents ancestral populations that have been isolated in forested, higher elevation refugia by a warming climate” (since the last ice age). And “The [CBD] petition states that high-elevation species have limited suitable habitat for movement in response to these [more recent] climate-caused shifts in habitat, and may simply run out of suitable habitat to occupy.”

Also involved: “two distinct populations of the black-backed woodpecker.”

However, the IPCC says, “Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 are stopped.” (IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis.) So much for the squirrel. But maybe climate change will bring more fires, and thus more snags, which will benefit the black-backed woodpecker.

Enviro group sues feds over flying squirrel protections

The travel management rule had been highly polarizing on and around some National Forests, not so much on others. See the article I wrote for The Forestry Source back in June 2012. The wen site shown in the sign in the photo, www.keepourfreedom.com, is no longer operating.

Panel to take up bill halting Forest Service rule for off-highway vehicles

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, June 9, 2014

House lawmakers tomorrow will take up a GOP bill to overturn a major Forest Service rule that regulates off-highway vehicle use on 193 million acres of national forests.

A House Natural Resources panel will review H.R. 4272 by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), which would forbid the agency from implementing its 2005 Travel Management Rule. The rule required all national forests and grasslands to designate which trails would be available to OHVs.

Walden’s bill, which is co-sponsored by six other Republicans, would also give county commissioners the power to veto any Forest Service plans to restrict OHV access.

It will be considered along with several other public lands bills by the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation.

“This hearing is the first step in passing my common-sense bill to stop the misguided travel management rule on national forests in the West and promote local control over future proposals that could restrict forest access,” Walden said last week in a statement.

But the bill has drawn heavy criticism from environmental groups that argue the George W. Bush administration rule has been critical to ensuring the increasing use of all-terrain vehicles and motorbikes does not foul waterways and disrupt other forest users.

“It would be absolute insanity” to repeal the rule, said Bethanie Walder, public lands director at WildEarth Guardians, which was among 61 environmental groups last week to sign a letter to the panel opposing the bill. “It does more than stop the rule in its tracks. It stops the Forest Service from managing off-road vehicles.”

Walder said the majority of the agency’s 155 forests and 20 grasslands have implemented final travel management plans.

According to the letter from environmentalists, the bill “also endangers protections for drinking water resources, wildlife, and other key forest resources by returning our national forests to a state of lawless motorized cross country travel and by preventing the Forest Service from timely mitigation and restoration of road impacts.”

The 2005 rule by then-Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth was crafted after OHV use had more than doubled between 1982 and 2000 and the machines had become more adept at travelling off established trails.

“Soil erosion, water quality, and wildlife habitat are affected,” the rule said. “Some national forest visitors report that their ability to enjoy quiet recreational experiences is affected by visitors using motor vehicles.”

The rule requires forests to publish maps specifying what trails are open to which vehicles and when.

Walden’s bill, which is backed by the Bend Bulletin, was crafted in response to an outcry in parts of Oregon to the Forest Service’s travel management plan for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in 2012, which would have closed 4,000 miles of roads to vehicles, leaving 3,000 of them open, according to the Oregonian.

The agency within months abruptly withdrew the plan following criticism from the Oregon delegation, local officials and OHV groups.

“My bill will bring management decisions about public lands back to rural communities and force the Forest Service to listen to Oregonians,” Walden said.

Walden spokesman Andrew Malcolm said the congressman also has heard complaints about travel management planning on the Malheur and Ochoco national forests, which suggests a blanket fix to the rule is needed.

The Wallowa-Whitman now has a new supervisor and is taking its time to understand exactly how many roads and trails the forest has and who is using them, said Jodi Kramer, a Forest Service spokeswoman.

There’s no timeline for when the forest will release a new travel plan. Most of its focus is currently on revising land-use plans for the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur forests, she said.

“People feel like we’re trying to lock up the forest,” she said. “But what we’re trying to do is provide access while maintaining the resources for future generations.”

But the 2005 rule, which implements an executive order by President Nixon, required the agency to ban off-trail or improvised travel, Kramer said.

“These plans were developed to reduce harm to public lands when vehicles created their own routes — often in sensitive or unstable areas,” said the letter from environmentalists. “Stopping implementation of these management plans means road signs will not be installed, maps showing the public where the roads and trails are located will not be printed, and roads that are eroding and causing drinking water pollution and harming fish populations will not be fixed.”

Forest supervisors say travel management plans — which often involve closing some areas to OHV recreation — are among the most difficult decisions they have to make.

Have we discussed climate change enough yet? <grin> Here’s something worth a look: Daniel Botkin’s May 29 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Technology. I agree with much of what he says. Here’s a excerpt from the 29-page transcript:

1. I want to state up front that we have been living through a warming trend driven by a
variety of influences. However, it is my view that this is not unusual, and contrary to the
characterizations by the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment, these environmental
changes are not apocalyptic nor irreversible.

2. My biggest concern is that both the reports present a number of speculative, and sometimes
incomplete, conclusions embedded in language that gives them more scientific heft than they
deserve. The reports are “scientific-sounding” rather than based on clearly settled facts or admitting
their lack. Established facts about the global environment exist less often in science than laymen
usually think.

3. HAS IT BEEN WARMING? Yes, we have been living through a warming trend, no doubt about
that. The rate of change we are experiencing is also not unprecedented, and the “mystery” of the
warming “plateau” simply indicates the inherent complexity of our global biosphere. Change is
normal, life on Earth is inherently risky; it always has been. The two reports, however, makes it
seem that environmental change is apocalyptic and irreversible. It is not.

…

9. What I sought to learn was the overall take-away that the reports leave with a
reader. I regret to say that I was left with the impression that the reports
overestimate the danger from human-induced climate change and do not
contribute to our ability to solve major environmental problems. I am afraid that
an “agenda” permeates the reports, an implication that humans and our activity
are necessarily bad and ought to be curtailed.