Steve Wilent

Steve Wilent, a forester, is Director, Sustainability Communications, for the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Steve's posts here are not made on behalf of SFI or any other organization. All opinions he expresses on Smokey Wire are his, not necessarily those of anyone else. Steve previously served as Editor, The Forestry Source, the newspaper of The Society of American Foresters (SAF, www.eforester.org). He's been a member of the SAF since 1982. He also teaches forestry at Mt. Hood Community College, Gresham, Oregon.

Silviculture and the Northern Spotted Owl

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For those of you interested in the NSO, there’s a fine article in the new edition of the Western Forester, an SAF newsletter:

“Potential for Silviculture to Contribute to Conservation of Spotted Owls,” by Larry L. Irwin and Jake Verschuyl

Here’s the concluding chapter (spoiler alert!):

Efforts to model forest succession and likely NSO responses in dry forests under several management scenarios suggest a bleak scenario for owl habitat within the <10 yr window described by the 2011 revised recovery plan. In the short-term or at small spatial scales it is argued that forest-health type thinning would likely result in a decrease in available owl habitat even when compared to habitat lost through catastrophic wildfire during the same time period. After several decades, however, the forests treated silviculturally were considered to have more NSOs than those not treated. A majority of federal scientists now caution, despite acute short-term pressures facing NSOs, that successful management and restoration of dry forests will require a long-term, landscape or eco-regional perspective that involves active silviculture.

The entire article is worth a read. So’s the rest of the same edition.

http://www.forestry.org/northwest/westernforester/2013/

Mill Closes: “inability to secure a sufficient supply of logs from the surrounding federal forests”

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From the Grants Pass (Oregon) Daily Courier.

http://www.thedailycourier.com/articles/2013/04/17/breaking_news_free/news1.txt

Anyone know about Rough & Ready Lumber? Is the lack of logs the only factor?

Rough & Ready Lumber closes, lays off 85 workers

 

CAVE JUNCTION — Rough & Ready Lumber Company announced Wednesday the closure of its lumber mill, a major local employer that recently celebrated its 90th year in business in the Illinois Valley. The business will lay off 85 employees.

In a news release issued Wednesday afternoon, company officials said the decision is the result of the mill’s inability to secure a sufficient supply of logs from the surrounding federal forests.

“We deeply regret having to close the family lumber business that my grandparents founded in 1922,” said Jennifer Phillippi, CEO and co-owner of Rough & Ready.

Link and Jennifer Phillippi and Joe Krauss are the third-generation of family members to operate the mill. Many employees are third-generation, too. Rough & Ready is known for producing high-quality wood products that are used in doors, windows and exposed beams.

Over the years the family continued Rough & Ready’s tradition of reinvesting in the community, including a $6 million biomass cogeneration facility in 2007, Forest Stewardship Council green certification for sustainably produced wood products, and an investment in the region’s first small log mill, according to the company’s news release. Rough & Ready was poised to begin a new $2 million sawmill project in 2014.

“But, we can’t justify the cost with an inadequate, unpredictable log supply supporting only one shift,” Phillippi said. “It’s like sitting in a grocery store not being able to eat while the produce rots around you.”

 

Once a thriving wood products region, Josephine and Jackson counties in 1975 were home to 22 sawmills, according to the news release. By 2003 six remained, and for the last several years R & R has been the lone sawmill operating in Josephine County.

The company has worked closely with federal and state policy makers since the early 1990s on solutions to the stalemate over federal timber harvests, and the creative ideas and leadership coming from Gov. Kitzhaber and Oregon congressional Reps. Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader have been encouraging, Phillippi said.

“The outlook seemed especially hopeful,” said Phillippi, “when Senator Wyden was appointed chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, but we are disappointed that little has changed. The status quo just isn’t enough to sustain us, even with an improving economy and our customers begging for more of what our employees are so good at making.”

Rough & Ready announced that it would provide mill employees with severance pay and assistance in finding new jobs.

State Trust Model for Federal Lands?

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An article from the Bose (Idaho) Weekly:

Timber! State Officials Give OK to Significant Lumber Harvest

Posted by on Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:38 AM

The Idaho Land Board, made up of Idaho’s top state officers including Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna, has approved a 2014 plan to harvest nearly 250 million board feet of timber, the largest planned harvest in decades. In contrast, Idaho’s 2002 timber plan volume was 175 million board feet.

In this week’s Boise Weekly, which hit the stands this morning, we report on Boise State Public Radio’s recent “Community Conversation” on public land management where state officials champion Idaho’s management of 3.6 million acres of endowment lands.

“About 1 million acres of that land is forested, and that generates about $50 million in income,” said Dave Groeschl, state forester and deputy director of forestry and fire at the Idaho Department of Lands, referring to the financial returns of timber sales and commercial interests that are generated for Idaho public schools.

Idaho House Speaker Scott Bedke, a cattle rancher from Oakley when he’s not wrangling lawmakers at the Statehouse, took it one step further, suggesting that Idaho’s endowment land management should serve as a role model for a Gem State takeover of federal land management.

“I think we can all agree that we do a very good job at managing the [endowment lands]. We should do the same thing, if given the chance, with federal lands,” said Bedke. “Now think about this for a moment,” he said, offering another hypothetical: “Imagine 400,000 acres set aside with proceeds dedicated to public education. Think about another 500,000 acres to help us with funding for roads. Another 500,000 acres could go for health and welfare. And we’re talking about 37 million acres of that land in Idaho.”

But Jonathan Oppenheimer, senior conservation associate with the Idaho Conservation League, vehemently disagreed.

“Look, we all want to have the best public education for our children, but selling off our public land is no way to achieve that,” he said. “These lands are the legacy of all Americans, they’re not just owned by Idaho. This is a radical idea.”

A couple of comments:No one seriously expects the federal government to turn National Forests over to states. And “selling off our public land“? Ain’t gonna happen. However, placing some USFS land into a trust to be managed in the same manner as Idaho’s endowment lands has merit. For example, in the Northwest Forest Plan area, I can see placing all Matrix lands into trusts, one for each NF, for example, where the board of directors guide the harvesting that, collectively, equals the 1 BBF annual harvest that the Northwest Forest Plan was supposed to provide for, but never has. The trusts also would oversee the management of other resources – recreation, water quality, etc. — multiple use, but with a minimum allowable (sustainable) cut. The management of LSRs and other land allocations would continue as is.

Wyden slams agency for ‘staggering’ reduction in timber program

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That’s the title of an Environment & Energy Daily article from today. Here’s a PDF:

Wyden slams agency for ‘staggering’ reduction in timber program

“The budget’s timber harvest goal is 2.38 billion board feet in 2014, down from a goal of 2.8 billion board feet in fiscal 2013 and down also from the 2.64 billion board feet that was actually harvested in 2012. The agency had previously set a goal of harvesting 3 billion board feet by 2014.”

The article notes that the agency’s budget request for fiscal 2014 is $4.9 billion, a figure I think is little changed from the past few years, but is less is real terms, as it does not keep up with inflation.

A companion article stated that Wyden “is concerned about proposals to place federal lands into private management.”

http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/wyden-splits-with-ore-delegation-over-putting-federal-lands-in-private-hands.pdf

“What is most likely to produce an increase in the harvests in a sustained way?” Wdyen asked. “Is it the collaborative approach, the way they’re doing in John Day [Ore.] … or is it more likely that the harvest will get up in a sustained way by in effect taking federal lands and putting them in private ownership? You know, there’s talk of a reserve or something of that nature. Which of those two approaches, in your view, is most likely to get the harvest up in a sustained way?”

John Day, where the last remaining mill is hanging by a thread.

Not private ownership, but federal lands managed by a trust via a board of directors. The O&C Trust, Conservation, and Jobs Act (discussion draft, Oct. 2012) states that:

 (2) actions on the O&C Trust lands shall be deemed to involve no Federal agency action or Federal discretionary involvement or control and the laws of the State shall apply to the surface estate of the O&C Trust lands in the manner applicable to privately owned timberlands in the State;

Thus, the Oregon Forest Practices Act would be in force. And:

“(b) TRUST PURPOSE.—The purpose of the O&C Trust is to produce annual maximum sustained revenues in perpetuity for O&C Trust counties by managing the timber resources on O&C Trust lands on a sustained-yield basis…”

Forestry bills: ‘Trojan horses’

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From Environment & Energy News today in below. The letter mentioned is here:

Enviro Groups Letter on Forestry Bills

 

Enviro groups call GOP forestry bills ‘Trojan horses’

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, April 11, 2013

A handful of Republican bills aiming to reduce the threat of wildfire and provide new revenues to rural counties would thwart collaborative efforts to manage the nation’s forests and could harm wildlife habitats, said a coalition of 27 environmental groups.

The groups yesterday sent a letter to leaders on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation calling the bills “Trojan horses” that would mandate unsustainable levels of logging.

“We should be looking forward, seeking collaborative solutions with broad bipartisan support, not reverting back to decades-old ideas that are destined to fail,” said the coalition, which included the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the Geos Institute and Defenders of Wildlife, among many others.

The panel this morning is meeting to discuss a handful or forestry bills, including a pair of legislative proposals seeking to wean counties off Secure Rural Schools payments by increasing timber harvests on federal forests.

The schools program for the past decade has provided billions of dollars to compensate counties whose economies suffered from the decline in federal timber sales. Now that the program has expired, lawmakers are considering ways to extend it or revive logging levels on public lands.

A draft bill by Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to be considered today would require the Forest Service to designate areas where it would harvest at least half of the timber that is grown each year, a proposal that would presumably significantly increase logging on public lands.

“We strongly oppose legislative proposals that mandate intensive logging or place our public forest lands in a ‘trust,’ so that federal agencies or an appointed board are required to generate mandated revenues for local counties through intensive commodity extraction and other industrialized development that are likely unsustainable and damaging over the long run,” the groups said.

Hastings’ bill, which would seek to replace Secure Rural Schools through the establishment of “Forest Reserve Revenue Areas,” would permit logging, including clear-cutting, by relaxing laws including the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act, said Anne Merwin, director of wilderness policy at the Wilderness Society.

“Even though the new Hastings bill might technically keep NEPA and ESA ‘intact,’ it creates such huge loopholes and such biased requirements that in practice they would almost never meaningfully apply,” she said.

The coalition said it would support the continued use of resource advisory committees under Secure Rural Schools and the Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program, which brings diverse stakeholders to the table.

Hastings has said his bill is necessary to loosen the federal restrictions that have led to significant reduction in timber harvests on federal lands, leading counties to rely on ever-diminishing revenues from Secure Rural Schools. The Forest Service from 2011 to 2014 plans to increase annual harvests by 25 percent, to 3 billion board feet, but that is still far less than the 12.7 billion board feet it harvested in the mid-1980s.

“The federal government’s inability to uphold this promise and tie our forest lands up in bureaucratic red tape has left counties without sufficient funds to pay for teachers, police officers and emergency services; devastated local economies and cost thousands of jobs throughout rural America; and left our forests susceptible to deadly wildfires,” Hastings said in a statement last week. “This draft proposal would simply cut through red tape to allow responsible timber production to occur in those areas and make the federal government uphold its commitment to rural schools and counties.”

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) yesterday said he had a chance to meet with Hastings recently in Pasco, Wash., to discuss Secure Rural Schools, among other issues, but that he has yet to review Hastings’ bill.

Wyden last Congress said he opposed Hastings’ previous bill, H.R. 4019, to transition away from Secure Rural Schools, which set similar mandates for forest management.

“Chairman Hastings is to be commended for recognizing the problems faced by rural, resource-dependent communities,” said Wyden spokesman Keith Chu. “Senator Wyden enjoyed meeting with him recently and looks forward to working with him on legislation that will address these problems and can earn majority support in both houses of Congress.”

Wyden is working with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to extend Secure Rural Schools for at least one year, though the proposal will be a tough political sell to Republicans who feel the program is fiscally unsustainable and fails to provide adequate jobs in the woods.

The environmental groups today said they also oppose H.R. 818 and H.R. 1345, which seek to reduce wildfire risks by thinning overstocked forests.

The bills by Reps. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), respectively, “fly in the face of best science and evidence about effective solutions to protecting communities and forests from wildfire,” the groups wrote. “While these bills purport to protect public lands from wildfire and disease, in reality they fast-track a huge range of projects with limited-to-no public review, federal oversight, scientific support for efficacy of wildfire or disease suppression tactics, prioritization of public safety, or protections for our most sensitive places.”

IRR Program a Success, Says USFS

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Received this press release this morning. I’m not familiar with the “Integrated Resource Restoration Program.” Has the agency “exceeded or met its goals in almost every performance category”?

http://www.fs.fed.us/restoration/IRR/index.shtml

Forest Service pilot restoration program improved 800,000 acres of forest in 2012
WASHINGTON, April 8, 2013 — A major U.S. Forest Service pilot program treated some 800,000 acres of federal forestland to help protect them from catastrophic wildfire in 2012, and improved the condition of three major watersheds in the interior West.
The Integrated Resource Restoration program exceeded or met its goals in almost every performance category, decommissioning 738 miles of roads, enhancing 933 miles of stream habitat and resulting in the sale of more than 850,000 cubic board feet of timber.
“Integrated Resource Restoration allows us to be more efficient and strategic in how we manage our forests and grasslands,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.  “We see this program as a model for good management.”
Under the program, landscape-level projects that would otherwise be piecemealed together over many years were funded in a single year with a single budget, providing program managers the flexibility to prioritize restoration projects.
This prioritization simplified budget planning and eased the identification of goals and priorities. Program managers, instead of competing for individual program funds to pay for specific projects, are now looking for opportunities to integrate multiple restoration projects and priorities. The Integrated Resource Restoration program fits into the larger nation-wide restoration work of the U.S. Forest Service, which led the restoration of more than 4 million acres of forestland in 2012.
The improvement of watersheds will continue to be a priority for the agency. In a report issued in January, Forest Service researchers predicted that water resources will grow scarcer in coming decades – especially in the western states – as pressures such as climate change, encroachment and increased demand continue to impact the nation’s forests.
The Integrated Resource Restoration program improved the condition of the Pass Creek watershed on the Gallatin National Forest in Montana, the Waw’ aalamnime Creek watershed on the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho, and the Bull Creek watershed on the Boise National Forest, also in Idaho.

Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement Survives Greenpeace Misinformation Campaign

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Interesting post from Forest2Market’s blog about Greenpeace’s activities after the 2010 Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. Suz-Anne Kinney includes a few excerpts from Patrick Moore’s book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout:

http://www.forest2market.com/blog/canadian-boreal-forest-agreement-survives-greenpeace-misinformation-campaig

“Ironically, [Greenpeace’s] retreat from science and logic was partly a response to society’s growing acceptance of environmental values. Some activists simply couldn’t make the transition from confrontation to consensus; it was as if they needed a common enemy. When a majority of people decide they agree with all your reasonable ideas the only way you can remain confrontational and antiestablishment is to adopt ever more extreme positions, eventually abandoning science and logic altogether in favor of zero-tolerance policies.”

IMHO, this applies to some, but not all, “ENGOs” in the US, such as the Center for Biological Diversity.

Wallowa-Whitman road closures still on hold one year later

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Actually, more than 6 years. Excerpt from an article in The Oregonian today:

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/03/wallowa-whitman_road_closures.html

LA GRANDE — The U.S. Forest Service was on the verge of banning vehicles from 4,000 miles of road in Oregon’s largest national forest last April when fierce opposition from locals ground the plan to a halt.
A year later, there’s been little progress replacing the controversial “Travel Management Plan” for Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, which took six years to prepare. Jodi Kramer, a spokeswoman, said federal foresters want to head back to the drawing board but have set no timeline.

The folks in eastern Oregon who don’t want any roads or “roads” closed are probably thinking that they have at least another 6 years of open access. Makes one wonder about why the planning process took so long, and why the agency scrapped all that work in the face of complaints that were heard loud and clear during that planning process.

I wrote about “travel management planning” on the Wallowa-Whitman and other forests around the nation in the June 2012 edition of The Forestry Source, here:

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/saf/forestrysource_201206/index.php

The photo is courtesy of Richard Cockle/The Oregonian.

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“We’ve always done travel management, so it’s not something new,” said Forest Service associate deputy chief James M. Peña. “But we’re putting more focus on travel management to be more comprehensive and certainly to be more inclusive in how we make these decisions.”

 The agency felt some urgency to tackle Subpart B [of the travel-management planning rule] before taking on the other subparts, not only to slow an epidemic of unauthorized cross-country travel, but also to identify which existing roads and trails are open to travel and to specify which type of vehicles may use them and when they may do so.

 “One of the important things we’re trying to do with Subpart B—showing where it’s okay to go with off-highway vehicles—was to stop the proliferation of unauthorized roads,” Peña said. “In many areas the terrain is such that anybody can just drive cross country, and if people follow that route enough times, then you have a rough road. It’s not designed or established for the purpose—it just happens to be there because folks could go there.”

 Once the designations are completed, the forests have a basis for identify a minimum road system and roads that were unneeded or too expensive to maintain.

FWIW, I was mighty disappointed when the Mt. Hood NF closed and ripped a road I and many others used for camping, hunting, etc. It didn’t seem to be causing, of the cause of, any environmental damage, except for the trash some campers left.