21st Century Problems

FS Klamath Timber Sale Threatens Old-Growth Forest

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I just ran across this action alert from the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center:

Sometimes the Forest Service just can’t let go of a bad idea. For years timber planners on the Salmon/Scott River District of the Klamath National Forest in California have wanted to log the native forests at the “Little Cronan” timber sale.

This is about the worst place possible for a timber sale- Currently these old-growth forests provide spotted owl habitat and riparian reserves near the Wild and Scenic eligible North Fork Salmon River. Further, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed the area as “critical” for the protection and recovery of spotted owls.

The Forest Service is proposing to build log landings and designate bulldozer skid trails in this Key Watershed for salmon recovery and even hopes to open-up “riparian reserves” for logging.

At a time when many communities are coming together to embrace restoration forestry, why return to the dark ages of riparian old-growth logging in a Key Watershed for at-risk species?

Take action here and let the Forest Service know how you feel.

Are FS Timber Sale Contracts Working For Restoration?

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A guest post from Felice Pace. You may have read his posts on the Range Blog of High Country News.

It does not appear that there has been discussion on this site about whether the main tool being used to implement forest restoration/fire risk reduction projects on public lands – the timber sale contract – is a good tool or even adequate for the task of forest restoration/fire risk reduction.

From my perspective (30 years of looking at timber sales), the timber sale contract is a good tool if the task is getting logs out of the woods and to the mill but a poor tool if the task is forest restoration (including fire risk reduction).

The problem is that when a timber sale is used to implement restoration – including when the timber sale is embedded within a stewardship contract – timber economics rules. Because public forests are remote and because production and transportation costs in the western US (where most US public lands are located) are high, economics dictates removing too many trees per acre and too many large (dominant) trees. This almost always frustrates the restoration objective.

For example, FS in the Klamath Mountains typically “thins” down to 40% or less canopy closure for restoration/fire risk reduction. But reducing moisture competition and opening the stands to sunlight to this extent results in accelerated sprouting of trees and brush. This in turn results in more fire danger – and a dense, highly flammable understory 8-30 years after the “treatment”.

If we really want to restore western forests we need a different, more appropriate tool. Restoration work should be funded up front and accomplished via straight up service contracts. Any commercial product which results can/should be sold separately from the log-sort yard.

Would it be possible during this new round of forest plans to try such an approach on at least one forest per region?

Felice Pace has lived in the Klamath River Basin since 1975. For 15 years, he worked for and led the Klamath Forest Alliance as Program Coordinator, Executive Director and Program Director. He remains part of the Alliance’s Core Group, and now consults with environmental and indigenous organizations on fund raising and program development. He currently resides at Klamath Glen, near the mouth of the Klamath River.

Note from Sharon: Many service contracts are out there.. some forests have mostly service contracts. I wonder if any forests have 0 timber sale contracts, I bet many districts, even in Colorado, do. I wonder if there is a table somewhere of mechanical treatment acres by service contract or timber sale contract by forest? Anyone?

Patty Limerick on Depolarization

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This is an op-ed in the Denver Post by Dr.Patty Limerick of the Center of the American West. Note: you can order T-shirts with Gifford Pinchot’s quote here. I am posting because some of the research she cites may be just as true of positions and debates over land management. (I feel the same as she about being “civilian casualties” in a “battleground” state.)

Here’s the link, and below are some excerpts.

CU psychology professor Leaf Van Boven has been doing extraordinary research challenging the popular perception that polarization is the operating mode preferred by the American citizenry, and revealing, instead, the existence of a majority of moderates.

Van Boven’s work makes a close match to the findings of CU business professor Philip M. Fernbach. People asked to “justify” their political position become more entrenched and less moderate, Fernbach reports in a New York Times essay co-authored with Steven Sloman, a professor at Brown University. But ask people to “explain how [their] policy ideas work,” and “they become more moderate in their political views.” When people “explain, not just assert” they come to recognize the limits of their knowledge and become correspondingly more flexible and tolerant.

Thus, Sloman and Fernbach argue, if we are tired of extremism, “we can start to fix it by acknowledging that we know a lot less than we think.”

In a campaign season in which advertisements, speeches, and debate performances consisted almost entirely of assertion, the idea of “explaining” comes forward as a wonderfully appealing and restorative alternative.

And..

Fellow citizens, public officials, and aspiring candidates, join me in starting this Wednesday in this manner: contemplate what Adams wrote to Jefferson on July 15, 1813, and then imagine a world in which we took to heart the example that these two old men bequeathed to us:

“You and I ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.”

We do a great deal of this on this blog, and hope that we continue to do so.

ReWild(life)ing of the US…

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This is not the incident described below in the Bend Bulletin, but the internet is full of related photos and stories.

While researching a future post yesterday, I came across this in the Bend Bulletin

Bend Dog Attacked by Deer in Backyard.

Steven George, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Bend, said humans aren’t really in danger of an attack — but if there’s a reason, they can go after dogs.

“The deer don’t differentiate between whether it’s a domestic dog or coyote,” George said. “They see a dog as a predator to them. It’s something that wants to hurt them, or even kill them. And so they’re going to be fairly defensive, and they can be defensive to the point of being aggressive toward that animal.”

George said attacks like this aren’t an everyday occurrence, and happen maybe once a month. And, in in the fall, deer are less likely to be aggressive compared to the spring.

“This time of the year, it’s usually a buck that’s associated with any kind of attack, but not always,” George said. “In the spring, it’s more normal, typically, a doe or a doe with a fawn associated with it.”

George said the most important thing people can do is keep their dogs on a leash.

“Typically, 99 percent of the time, when a dog gets injured, it’s because it’s not leashed — and it takes off after the deer,” George said.

Then, serendipitously, Terry Seyden sent this article “America Gone Wild” from the Wall Street Journal. The article is by Jim Sterba and adapted from his book “Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds” to be published Nov. 13.

There’s a great photo in the article.

Below are some excerpts.

This year, Princeton, N.J., has hired sharpshooters to cull 250 deer from the town’s herd of 550 over the winter. The cost: $58,700. Columbia, S.C., is spending $1 million to rid its drainage systems of beavers and their dams. The 2009 “miracle on the Hudson,” when US Airways LCC -0.16% flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing after its engines ingested Canada geese, saved 155 passengers and crew, but the $60 million A320 Airbus was a complete loss. In the U.S., the total cost of wildlife damage to crops, landscaping and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year ($1.5 billion from deer-vehicle crashes alone), according to Michael Conover of Utah State University, who monitors conflicts between people and wildlife.

There are several paragraphs about how trees have come back to the East.

The founders of the conservation movement would have been astonished to learn that by the 2000 Census, a majority of Americans lived not in cities or on working farms but in that vast doughnut of sprawl in between. They envisioned neither sprawl nor today’s conflicts between people and wildlife. The assertion by animal protectionists that these conflicts are our fault because we encroached on wildlife habitat is only half the story. As our population multiplies and spreads, many wild creatures encroach right back—even species thought to be people-shy, such as wild turkeys and coyotes. (In Chicago alone, there are an estimated 2,000 coyotes.)

Why? Our habitat is better than theirs. We offer plenty of food, water, shelter and protection. We plant grass, trees, shrubs and gardens, put out birdseed, mulch and garbage.

Sprawl supports a lot more critters than a people-free forest does. For many species, sprawl’s biological carrying capacity—the population limit the food and habitat can sustain—is far greater than a forest’s. Its ecological carrying capacity (the point at which a species adversely affects the habitat and the other animals and plants in it) isn’t necessarily greater. The rub for many species is what’s called social carrying capacity, which is subjective. It means the point at which the damage a creature does outweighs its benefits in the public mind. And that’s where many battles in today’s wildlife wars start.

What to do? Learn to live with them? Move them? Fool them into going away? Sterilize them? Kill them? For every option and every creature there is a constituency. We have bird lovers against cat lovers; people who would save beavers from cruel traps and people who would save yards and roads from beaver flooding; Bambi saviors versus forest and garden protectors.

Wildlife biologists say that we should be managing our ecosystems for the good of all inhabitants, including people. Many people don’t want to and don’t know how. We have forsaken not only our ancestors’ destructive ways but much of their hands-on nature know-how as well. Our knowledge of nature arrives on screens, where wild animals are often packaged to act like cuddly little people that our Earth Day instincts tell us to protect. Animal rights people say killing, culling, lethal management, “human-directed mortality” or whatever euphemism you choose is inhumane and simply creates a vacuum that more critters refill. By that logic, why pull garden weeds or trap basement rats

Forest Service Tries to Blend Strategies Of Forest Restoration, Fire Risk Reduction

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Thanks to Bob Zybach for finding this from the Bloomberg BNA Daily Environment Report.

The linked article is reproduced with permission from Daily Environment Report, 203 DEN B-1 (Oct. 22, 2012). Copyright 2012 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033)

Here it is. below are some excerpts.

The Chief also spoke of some of these efforts at the Chief’s Breakfast at the SAF Convention.

Currently, prices for lumber are down, a consequence of depressed housing markets. Weak markets complicate efforts to plan cost-effective timber sales.

Tidwell said the lumber market problems and the shortage of profitable markets for woody debris have led the Forest Service into increased joint efforts with the forest products industry to develop biomass energy markets and cellulose product markets.

Those efforts are needed to help logging companies and sawmills survive, because they can take care of
much of the work within the concept of forest restoration, he said. ‘‘It’s just essential that we continue to have the people who can go out and do the work in the woods,’’ Tidwell said.

It’s interesting that Tidwell is quoted about people working in the woods, just as that has become a topic of interest on our blog. Maybe some funding for studies will follow?

Another note: at the SAF Convention, I heard much about “restoration”, which I think is not a particularly clear concept (other than for specific purposes, such as longleaf restoration). I have made peace with hearing this by just substituting “improving resilience” in my mind whenever I hear it.It worked for me.. although the unnecessary term “resiliency” also kept cropping up.

It may not seem as compelling to budgeteers (in Congress and at OMB), but it is clearer in the context of climate change..even to budgeteers it can’t make much sense to 1) claim that climate change is unprecedented and 2) ask for much in the way of bucks to make things on the land the same as they used to be.

Brinda Sarathy’s Pinero Presentation

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Thanks to Brinda Sarathy for this presentation, and also to Char Miller for sending. It is interesting and possibly serendipitous that we are discussing our future workforce- what happens when the FS either doesn’t have enough money to, or is forced into the ideological trap of, contracting.

If “the problem” is “federal employees take too long to get and cost too much (to paraphrase critiquest of planning), we have different solutions. Solutions include contracting, volunteers, concessionaires, and just reducing management (say dispersed recreation).

Even within contracting, though, there are contractors who follow federal laws (labor and immigration) and those who don’t. And it appears that the law-abiding are disadvantaged.. not IMHO a particularly desirable public policy.

I watched Brinda’s entire lecture and reflected on the time period I remember, when we were gradually changing from force account work to contracted work, for tree planting and cone collecting. I know many of the blog readers were also involved in this work in the same time period. I’m hoping that you will add your own views and historic perspectives.

There are so many interesting questions that her work raises; here are some of mine, feel free to add yours in the comments:

1) What agency’s responsibility is it to ensure that immigration and labor laws are being followed? Why or why not are those agencies doing their job?

2)Which laws that the FS must follow do contractors have to follow? For example, do they have to do diverse hiring? Is anyone checking on that? Presumably contractors are more “efficient”; how exactly do they get to be more “efficient”, by paying their workers below minimum wage, not having the same requirements as federal employees or ? (this is really the same question as about concessionaires, isn’t it?)

3) The spatial scale of benefits and 8A set-asides: if, as Brinda’s graph seems to show MOST contractors in southern Oregon in the ecosystem services business are Hispanic..so should they still qualify for a set-aside? Should set asides be more flexible based on the specific kind of contract and the spatial scale?

Brinda mentions as a recommendation using “best value” contracting. Previously on the blog here, we cited this FS letter (Ron Hooper, 2007) on best value contracting that used the language from the 2006 Approps Bill on local workers:

n evaluating bids and proposals, give consideration to
local contractors who are from, and who provide employment and training for, dislocated and displaced workers in an economically disadvantaged rural community, including those historically timber-dependent areas that have been affected by reduced timber harvesting on Federal lands and other forest-dependent rural communities isolated from significant alternative employment opportunities:

4) Has this letter made a difference? Why or why not?

One thing I wanted to mention about her point on Paul Bunyan (apologies for my X treme-pedantic observation)- actually some people (based on this note from Wikipedia) think the character originated as a French-Canadian, I guess which would make him a “white” male but not a US citizen.

Here’s the link to Brinda’s presentation.

Note: I started a new category called “Workforce” for this multifaceted topic of “how the work is to be done.”

More Info on ARC’s Modernization Initiative

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Thanks to Kitty Benzar forARC_Privatization_Plan_2012_FPR_Coverage helpful information from the Parks and Recreation newsletter.
Kitty also pointed to this link in her comments on the previous post.

I noticed this…

Our efforts coincide with a transition in Forest Service recreation program leadership. Jim Bedwell, who has served as National Director of Recreation, Heritage and Volunteer Resources for many years, will relocate in early October to Denver, where he will assume regional recreation program responsibilities. Department officials have told us that they see this transition as an opportunity to strategically realign the Forest Service recreation program.

and this from the ARC site:

The reaction to the presentation by the Under Secretary was enthusiastic and positive. He explained that innovative agreements were happening within other Forest Service programs, but that the progress had been slow in recreation – until the meeting. He praised the thoughts presented and proposed immediate work by a team led by Leslie Weldon and Derrick Crandall aimed at planning a “three-hour-plus meeting within a month to make decisions and proceed.”

Planning for this follow-up session is already underway and a search is on for suitable pilot-effort locations for investments, in-season storage and more.

I hope the public gets a chance to be engaged in the “strategic realignment” as well as these other discussions!

Among the eight planks that industry presented to Under Secretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman and Forest Service officials one received an immediate veto – in-season storage of recreational vehicles on national forest land.

But the other seven elements did receive a better reception, with qualifications:

1. Campground “makeovers” and service expansion
2. Marina “makeovers” and service expansion
3. In-season boat storage on national forests
4. In-season OHV storage on national forests
5. Partnerships with key DMOs on outreach, in-forest services including
apps and more
6. Expansion of use of conservation corps by FS, partners, and
7. National Forest Recreation Centers: consolidation and expansion of
recreation at key recreation “gateways” to national forests.

I have to say I am concerned about the lack of a public forum to talk about this..it seems to me that just given the discussions we have had here, a national Recreation FACA committee would be helpful. With some dedicated research funds to answer the questions they determine they need. Just because there’s no NEPA doesn’t mean there should be no public involvement…

ARC “Modernization of Recreation Sites” Plan? RV Storage?

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Thanks to a reader for this contribution.. Here is the link (to the Camping with Suzi blog), and below are excerpts:

Any help finding the organization and the report she refers to in her blog post would be appreciated. I did find this, which appears to be a powerpoint from June of this year.

Once again, I have to point out that from personal observation, people camping IN FOREST SERVICE CAMPGROUNDS are a subset of people camping ON FOREST SERVICE LAND. This being elk season, I wish someone would fly a sample of forests and estimate people per acre camping and interview those folks and ask them about their experiences. Another topic for the People’s Research Agenda.

A facility-o-centric view of FS camping, or recreation, for that matter, does not tell the whole story. IMHO.

“In season on-site RV storage” is one of the suggested proposals in the American Recreation Association (ARC) “Modernization of Recreation Sites” plan. The concept is that the U.S. Forest Service would give concessionaires operating Forest Service campgrounds the authority to permit, for a fee, the parking of unoccupied recreational vehicles on an active campsite for an extended period of time. According to industry sources, this would allow campers, especially from urban areas, to travel back and forth without having to haul their rigs each time they want to spent time in the forest. This, according to an ARC representative, would be easier on the environment and reduce fuel consumption. The assumption is both would be a good thing. And getting more people enjoying time in the out-of-doors would be good, too.

According to ARC, the number of people enjoying the out-of-doors, specifically in national forests and grasslands, is steadily declining. Although this representative admits obtaining accurate and comprehensive numbers for the number of people who are enjoying national forests and grasslands is nearly impossible, he suggests the decline is more a function of “working mothers” not having the time or energy to perform the logistics necessary for a family to spend time in the out-of-doors. My response is that’s nonsense!

There are many factors likely influencing the possible decline of people using national forest campgrounds. Deteriorating infrastructure in campgrounds and the ever increasing influence of concessionaires could be reasons. An infrastructure where the vaults are not maintained or there is an absence of drinking water would discourage many potential campers. Fees for having pets in a campground, restrictions on collecting dead and down wood so campers must purchase firewood from the concessionaire, and closing of campgrounds as soon as schools are back in session, voiding the possibility of camping in the less crowded “shoulder” season, are likely to contribute to the reduction in people camping at concessionaire-operated campgrounds. Perhaps ARC and others in the outdoor recreation industry should look at other factors contributing to the alleged decline in national forest and grassland campground occupancy before pointing their finger at the “working mother” or suggesting “in season on-site RV storage” would miraculously improve campground occupancy.

Forest Service Future: Mike’s Big-Picture Questions

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We diverged from Mike’s original question in the post here:

It could very well be that we are seeing the end of FS employees actually implementing management plans and, instead, moving into a time where the agency puts together management plans in conjunction with public and then contracts out all implementation (we’re practically there in most cases anyhow). These wold be longer-term contracts with multiple-year objectives. The benefit in doing business this way is that if the FS is legally bound by contract, the funding to fulfill the contract is much more likely to be included within future FS budgets. Another place where this kind of thing might fit well would be in fulfilling the FS mandate to perform adequate monitoring, following project implementation (e.g. forest thinning projects). In this scenario, the FS would still need funding for enforcement of contract terms for whatever the concessionaire (or contractor) is doing, but it could still pencil out as a costs savings to the public. personally think this is a really interesting topic and would enjoy exploring this further… I’m interested in a couple of things… first, do you agree with “we’re practically there?” Second, the idea of legally binding contracts – how could we make them flexible enough to respond to changing needs and also yet solid enough to be meaningful? Other’s thoughts and comments would be appreciated.

into the world of contracting for ecosystem services.. related and worthy of its own discussion, which I hope will continue.

I am posting this to bring us back to Mike’s questions; I am thinking that stewardship contracts may be a preview of this new world, and I wonder what people with experience in stewardship contracting have to say. It seems like it could be easy to build monitoring into a stewardship contract and I assume that it has been done? Here are Mike’s later questions:

That is, whether moving further toward contracted implementation of FS management plans would allow for longer-term management plan implementation on NF, something most everyone agrees is desperately needed instead of the often piece-meal approach that happens today. Sharon raised an interesting question that pertains to whether contracting would/could allow for adaptive management (i.e How would contract terms be written to allow for adaptation but still hold the contractor and FS accountable?). This seems like a really interesting topic for discussion. Personally, I’m just not sure, but would be really interested in hearing of examples where this has been tried before, especially pertaining to National Forest management. As I think about this, though, one example may be found in the recently let 4-FRI contract in the southwest, which is a multiple-year contract to thin tens of thousands of acres of P-pine forest in just the first phase of the project. It seems like there would have to be clauses that account for adaptive management in the there. I’ll check and see.

My other thought on this topic pertained to post-project monitoring required by law on NFs. Here, I think most people agree that the FS has a dismal track record when it comes to longer-term monitoring, and the reason often cited for this is that long-term monitoring requires consistent federal funding, long after a project is completed, and the reality is that the money often just doesn’t come through. I may be wrong here, but my sense is that if post-project monitoring funding was legally obligated through a multi-year contracts tied directly to on-the-ground projects, this could be an effective way of ensuring the motoring actually happens, which would then inform the adaptive management. I’m sure my take is overly simplistic and I welcome other responses. I would guess this has been done already at least on an ad hoc basis, but would like learn more about where and what kind of things resulted. What am I missing?

Future of the Forest Service: Management Plans and Implementation Contracts?

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Mike articulated the below thoughts on a thread on privatization of campgrounds… I think this is worthy of discussing more broadly, both in the context of Char’s piece on land management needs and budget realities here and as a piece of the whole “privatization” question (discussed here and previously).

so here is what Mike said in this comment:

It could very well be that we are seeing the end of FS employees actually implementing management plans and, instead, moving into a time where the agency puts together management plans in conjunction with public and then contracts out all implementation (we’re practically there in most cases anyhow). These wold be longer-term contracts with multiple-year objectives. The benefit in doing business this way is that if the FS is legally bound by contract, the funding to fulfill the contract is much more likely to be included within future FS budgets.

Another place where this kind of thing might fit well would be in fulfilling the FS mandate to perform adequate monitoring, following project implementation (e.g. forest thinning projects). In this scenario, the FS would still need funding for enforcement of contract terms for whatever the concessionaire (or contractor) is doing, but it could still pencil out as a costs savings to the public. personally think this is a really interesting topic and would enjoy exploring this further…

I’m interested in a couple of things… first, do you agree with “we’re practically there?”
Second, the idea of legally binding contracts – how could we make them flexible enough to respond to changing needs and also yet solid enough to be meaningful?

Other’s thoughts and comments would be appreciated.