21st Century Problems

The Forestry Source on “Sagebrush Rebellion Renewed”

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The April issue of The Forestry Source, leads off with “The Sagebrush Rebellion Renewed: Bills Aim to Create Trusts to Manage Federal Timber,” by Steve Wilent, Forestry Source editor. The article begins with what I perceive to be a very narrow view of the origins of the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion, blaming it all on “environmentalists”. The article ends with what I perceive to be cheerleading for “forest trusts” as a solution to current problems including the impending drying up of “Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act” funding. It is an opinion-editorial, so Wilent is entitled to his perspective. But I thought I’d share it with you, since my own framing of this matter is much different. I see the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion being just one of many from a West that was always angry over public lands. In my frame, fully funding Payments in Lieu of Taxes is a better solution to the rural schools problem. And I find the “forests trusts” idea a non-starter in dealing with America’s national forests.

Wilent’s article begins:

In his 1993 book, Federal Land, Western Anger R. McGregor Cawley describes the Sagebrush Rebellion as “a protest originating from three interrelated perceptions: first, that environmentalists had succeeded in gaining a dominant position in federal land policy discussions; second that the environmental community’s influence had created an underlying bias in favor of preservation over development in federal land management decisions throughout the 1970s; and third, that the only way to counteract the increasingly restrictive character of federal land management decisions was to precipitate an open confrontation.”

The first shot in that confrontation was fired in 1979, when the Nevada state legislature passed a bill that sought to transfer control of 40 million acres managed by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – about 79% of Nevada – to the state. …

In February, Utah fired a new salvo when its house of representative passed the Transfer of Public Lands Act&#8230.

My own framing, built in part off the Public Land Law Review Commission’s “History of Public Land Law Development”, here, tracks the Sagebrush Rebellions (several of them, with continued skirmishes in between) back to the fights for statehood in the USA. In my state of Utah the fight was nasty and long-standing. Some Utahan’s were mad back then and continue to be mad today, with their anger welling-up periodically. Ron Arnold may have captured the spirit of that 1980s “Rebellion” as well as did the Society of American Foresters (SAF) article, calling it “a temper-tantrum over public lands thrown by a handful of cowboys”. That “temper-tantrum” turned into yet-another bandwagon that powerful rural Western politicians could jump onto—which they ultimately parlayed into substantial gains. Here is what Frank J. Popper had to say about these “gains” in “A Timely End of the Sagebrush Rebellion” (pdf), National Affairs 76, Summer 1984.

The Sagebrush Rebellion did not fail—it ended because it achieved many of its goals. The Reagan administration rapidly found clever, politically appealing ways to start to transfer some public lands without having to ask Congress for new legislation. Watt’s Interior Department undertook a “good neighbor policy” that allowed state and local governments to request the department’s “surplus” lands. The initiative was soon broadened to an Asset Management Program whereby all federal agencies could sell their excess land in the West and elsewhere; the eventual sale of 35 million acres–an area the size of Iowa–was expected. Separately, the Forest Service prepared to sell up to 17 million acres. The federal land agencies sped up the transfers to Alaska’s state government and Native Americans authorized by the 1958 Statehood Act, the 1971 Native Claims Settlement Act, and the 1980 National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The BLM experimentally revived homesteading in the Kuskokwim Mountains in central Alaska. Numerous federal-Western state land exchanges were in exploratory stages, and seemed most advanced in Utah. [p. 68]

Another look at the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion, from “A Brief History of the Anti-conservation Movement” frames the issues as conservatives v. liberals:

At its most basic level the Sagebrush Rebellion was a conservative backlash against the growth of federal power represented by, among other things, such landmark environmental legislation of the late 1960s and ’70s as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. These legislative programs created new roles and concerns for managers of federal land — protection of endangered species, water quality, air quality, etc. This required closer scrutiny of activities on federal lands, including the activities of miners, loggers and ranchers who operated there. Significantly, these businesses usually enjoyed substantial operating subsidies by virtue of longstanding below-market rates for grazing, mineral and timber rights on federal land. This closer scrutiny inevitably led to federally imposed restrictions when mining, grazing and foresting practices damaged the water and air and threatened endangered species. Recognizing that a return to the good old days of less regulation would be good for business, the movement took support and comfort from the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, one of whose campaign planks was reduction of the size and power of government. Certain Reagan cabinet appointees, most notably James Watt as Secretary of the Interior and Anne Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, were selected in part for their willingness to further the de-regulatory agenda of Reagan and the right wing of the Republican Party. …

The Anti-Conservation Movement further benefitted from the attention it received from industries with something to gain. In particular, big agriculture (the American Farm Bureau Federation, The Cattlemen’s Association), the extractive industries (mining, including coal, oil and gas) and timber producers (who thrive on easy access to federal forest lands) saw a reduction of federal regulatory power working to their advantage. This message of the economic benefit of deregulation appealed as well to small businesses. After all, if workplace safety regulations could be reduced or eliminated, the money saved could be plowed back into the business.

During this period anti-regulatory forces sought to define and project an agenda that would be publicly acceptable. Throughout the 1980s the anti-regulatory/anti-environmental sentiment was expressed largely as support for the Reagan Revolution and its promise to deliver the country from the clutches of over-zealous, regulation-happy bureaucrats.

In studying the various Sagebrush Rebellions we would all probably benefit from a good class on the history of the American West. Here is one (pdf, syllabus) from Professor Chris Lewis, from the University of Colorado. Lewis places Cawley’s book in a class lecture on “‘The Lords of Yesterday’ and the Sagebrush Rebellion”. The book is well-placed there, since it is evidently written from the perspective of ‘the rebels’, according to a Great Plains Research book review (pdf). There is nothing wrong with that. One of my favorite books is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is unabashedly written from the perspective of those who lost (and/or who were horrible abused) in the struggles to form the United States. Zinn acknowledges his bias, but is quick to note that no “history” is written without bias. But what is wrong with Wilent’s piece, in my opinion, is to use the book to suggest that one particular perspective is the only perspective that counts. Still, opinion/editorial pieces often do that. So, I’ll just leave it at, “I beg to differ”.

Wilent’s article goes on to highlight various ongoing problems including the impending falldown in Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act funding—problems which are clearly still with us. These problems don’t necessarily cry out for the solutions that are being proffered in the various bills currently working their way through Congress. But you wouldn’t arrive at that particular conclusion from Wilent’s article, which concludes by essentially cheerleading attempts to put federal land management into “land trusts.” “Cheerleading” is how I see it. What Wilent actually said was this: “Management by a trust dedicated to maintaining revenues to schools and other beneficiaries may offer a solution. …”

Wilent didn’t bother to daylight any other “solutions.” So cheerleading is where I’ll leave it. When dealing with ‘trusts’ my question is, as has been for a long time, “Land trusts provide a solution to what?” Yes land trusts are a good way to generate revenue if that is all you are interested in. But I thought that the ‘public trust doctrine’, under which the national forests were carved out and managed, is much broader than ‘revenue generation’. And we are not living in 1900, when income taxes and other revenue generation means now available to the federal government were not established.

In the middle of Wilent’s article, John Freemuth is quoted on both the complexity of federal lands management and his desire to reconvene a Public Lands Law Review Commission. I support Freemuth’s desire. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that just about no one who is ranting and raving in this (or the last) Sagebrush Rebellion has ever read the last Public Lands Law Review Commission Report. Why should we expect a new one to add value to this debacle? Still, I would like to see a new one, if only to force the Administration and the Congress to delve deeper into the issues (and the history) surrounding our “Angry West”. But I’m not sure that a re-reading of the original Public Lands Law Review Commission Report wouldn’t suffice to dispel myths surrounding each seemingly-novel episode when the American West, particularly the “rural West” explodes anew in yet-another “temper-tantrum.” I guess we all get to pick our frames, and our scapegoats.

Related NCFP Posts:
Free America From Her Public Lands?
Utah’s Sagebrush Rebellion Awakens
The Frame Game
The Blame Game

Collaborative Forest Management: What the FACA?

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Recently, one of the main the topic of conversation here at NCFP has been about collaborative forest management. We have wandered though several posts and many comments into the controversy surrounding, in particular the Montana Forest Restoration Committee in Montana and the Tongass Futures Roundtable in Alaska. In these discussions, there have been those sitting just beyond the perimeter of a collaboration who feel that something is amiss. Concerns often expressed by local environmental groups include, “Who is at the table, collaborating, and who is absent?” That is, Is the committee biased? If so, what type bias? On the other side of this divide are those who champion collaboration, particularly some National environmental groups who seem tired of litigation battles and stalemate, and to prefer more direct forms of engagement. These would-be collaborators don’t seem too uncomfortable with the make-up of collaboration committees. Because they are well-represented?. Sometimes they look askance at those who challenge the validity of specific collaborations, even accusing local environmental groups of being obstructionists. Local environmental groups counter, and accuse the Nationals of “selling out,” becoming part of the problem that is often labeled “Washington D.C.”

As I’ve watched and participated in surrounding discussion, I’ve wondered: Whither FACA? The Federal Advisory Committee Act FACA) was passed in 1972 in an effort to reign in federal agency ‘capture’ by special interest groups, particularly corporate interests. By the late 1990s there was substantial interest in collaboration in natural resource policy, but FACA was seen by many as a barrier to effective collaboration: Too bureaucratic, too heavily-laden with process requirements. But collaborators seem to have forgotten, else never understood a little facet of the law: an advisory committee doesn’t need to be declared to be a FACA Committee to be held accountable to at least some aspects of FACA law.

A good overview of this FACA problem/opportunity can be found in “The Federal Advisory Committee Act and Public Participation”, 1999 (pdf) publication by Resources for the Future. The act itself can be found here. Another useful reference is “The Federal Advisory Committee Act and Its Failure to Work Effectively in the Environmental Context”, (pdf) 1995, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review. After reading the latter, I was about to give up on FACA, in part because the courts had failed pretty much to allow people to challenge federal agencies under FACA. And the prevalence of closed-to-the-public advisory committees was still substantial in 1993:

FACA has … failed to fulfill Congress’s goal of opening all advisory committee meetings to the public. Closed-door advisory committee meetings still prevail, despite FACA’s mandates that meetings be open to public participation.218 The GSA, which monitors advisory committee activity throughout the government, reported that, in fiscal year 1993, there were more closed and partially closed advisory committee meetings (2,225) than open meetings (2,162).219 It is clear from these statistics that a substantial amount of advisory committee work is still done in private, away from the public scrutiny and participation that would help limit the influence private interest groups have on the agencies they are advising.

In short it looked like those finding themselves on the outside of collaboratives couldn’t find much recourse via the courts. Then I found an interesting little decision (pdf) rendered after the Idaho Wool Growers Association successfully challenged the Forest Service in Idaho, 2009. In Judge Winmill’s decision I saw a ray of hope that indeed FACA challenges might still reign-in committees that bias agency decision-making. In particular I found this interesting:

Memorandum Decision and Order – Page 18
FACA defines an “advisory committee” as “any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group, or any subcommittee or other subgroup thereof . . . which is . . . established or utilized by one or more agencies in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President or one or more agencies or officers of the Federal Government . . . .”

Memorandum Decision and Order – Page 19-20
“When a committee is established to provide expert summaries or interpretation of technical data, their reports can be ‘in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for . . . one or more agencies.’” . . .
“Even though [the committee] provided the USFS with only narrative summaries of scientific information, and made no policy recommendations, the [committee] drafts and the final assessment provide the framework, context and information that the USFS will rely on in making policy decisions.”

Memorandum Decision and Order – Page 20
FACA imposes a number of requirements on advisory committees. See, e.g., 5 U.S.C. App. II, §§ 2, 5, 9-14 (records must be made available for public inspection; charter must be filed; upcoming meetings must be announced; meetings must be held in a public place; minutes must be kept; attendance must “be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented” and may “not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest”). Typically, a close examination of each requirement, contrasted against the circumstances in a particular case, is warranted when determining whether a FACA violation occurred.

So FACA may indeed be ‘in play’ in broader contexts than have heretofore been considered by many. That is, it matters not so much that FACA committees be chartered by agencies. What matters is what the players do, how they deal with the public interest and how they vet various interests/positions. Post Judge Winmill’s decision, it looks like the courts may finally be listening. Or not! If the courts are listening, we may be in for more FACA lawsuits to test these waters.

What does it all mean? How does and agency, say the US Forest Service, go about getting workable committees (defacto FACA committees) that can come to any agreement or give advice that is not all over the map?

I think that the answer lies in an area that the Forest Service is so far loathe to go. That area is the area of multi-scale adaptive governance that includes policy development as well as program and project management. The Forest Service seems to want to hold policy development to itself, yet to collaborate on site-specific watershed projects. That type arrangement gives no space to deliberate upon and enact the type preservation sought by John Muir naturalists, who want intact ecosystems for say, wildlife—big home ranges for large carnivores, protected corridors for migration, etc. So the whole idea of local-only collaboration is a nonstarter to many environmentalists.They want to deal with matters of broader scale and scope. But there is no such forum available in the 2012 NFMA rule. At least that’s the way I see it. No wonder environmentalists cry fowl. When will the Forest Service warm up to adaptive governance, with its emphasis on collaboration and adaptive management? Not likely anytime soon. So, for this and other reasons, we’ll just see what shakes out in FACA court room battles. When dealing with extant collaboratives, we are left to wonder: What the FACA? Or maybe just WTF?

Perhaps the answer, or part of it, has already been offered up in a NCFP comment from Terry Seyden, if only ALL would/could operate in good faith and keep the public interest in mind:

In my view, there is just no substitute for ongoing substantive dialogue to help the agency truly understand what the real underlying interests of various constituents are. Having a rich two way dialogue also assists the agency in creatively exploring all available options for meeting agency goals while trying to meet sometimes competing interests. … [T]o be legitimate and effective, any collaborative effort has to be well grounded within a larger public involvement strategy that gives the larger community of interests substantive opportunity to comment on and influence collaborative recommendations BEFORE decisions are reached.
Of course for any of this to work, the process has to be seen as credible and fair, both in terms of who directly participates in a collaborative group and how those “not at the table” have meaningful opportunities to contribute before decisions are made. While good faith among all interests is not a requirement for this approach to be successful, good faith on the part of the Forest Service or other third party convening any collaborative effort is absolutely essential.

This is echoed by An Optimist:

A good process… will seek to represent the ideas or interests of even non-participating groups. The challenge, however, is that a collaborative process is a learning process ….

In a Michigan Law Review article, Daniel Walters (pdf) seems to agree with both. He advocates for a “deliberative approach” to FACA. It all sounds right to me.

The challenge, for all of us is to be ever-vigilant to ensure that ‘collaboratives’ are indeed operating in good faith, and in the public interest. But if the many of the comments in the posts linked just below are an indicator, many such collaboratives in the past may not have been acting in good faith and in the public interest. Also the Forest Service needs to make sure that collaborative fora are available at appropriate scale to deal with relevant issues—not just at the local level. So let’s keep talking, keep challenging emergent collaboratives and broader policy both in terms of resource-related policy, programs and projects and in terms of collaboration design and operation. And let’s talk here about what I missed, what I messed up, and so on re: FACA, collaboration, and US Forest Service policy and planning.

Some related NCFP collaboration posts of interest:
Odd bedfellows try collaborating to resolve conflicts- from E&E News, March 15, 2012
“Collaboration on natural resource management is divide and conquer” The Wildlife News, March 11, 2012
New Research: Who Litigates, Who Collaborates and Why?, March 7, 2012
Two Views of the Tester Bill, December 22, 2011
Collaboration Can’t Fix What Ails Public Forest Management, October 6, 2011
Colt Summit- Garrity EditorialOctober 6, 2011

Sequoia National Forest Plan Set for Updating

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The Sequoia suffers from many blockades to sensible forest management and protection. With the only mill within more than 100 miles away, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and being hamstrung by unreasonable diameters limits for harvestable timber, as well as having the Giant Sequoia National Monument to manage, they face a very long uphill battle to update their 24 year old Forest Plan.

http://www.recorderonline.com/news/usda-52174-plan-vilsack.html

Also opposing them is the Sierra Club, who continue to portray the Forest Service as loggers of ancient Giant Sequoias. They wish that all 300,000+ acres of the Giant Sequoia National Monument be free of all logging projects, despite there being only about 10,000 acres of already protected Giant Sequoia groves within the Monument. The McNally Fire nearly killed the world’s second largest tree, when it was allowed to burn for weeks. The Sierra Club is quite happy to let their followers think that the Forest Service will cut the sequoias down, and that clearcuts and the cutting  of big trees will happen. The Sierra Club wants the Monument to be “un-managed”, just like the adjacent Sequoia National Park. They also don’t realize that the Park Service doesn’t follow the same rules on prescribed fires that the Forest Service does. You cannot solely use prescribed fires to manage the fuels build-ups of 80 years, on hundreds of thousands of acres. Besides, the California Board of Air Resources don’t have enough burn days, when prescribed fires would be “in prescription”. The Park Service is well known for losing their management fires, which can be set during high temperatures and dry conditions.

This may be one of the most contentious new Forest Plans under the new Planning Rule. I wonder how much it will change when the only lumber mill in southern California goes bankrupt.

Trust Management: Another Run at This?

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Mac McConnell send a link to this in a comment to Derek; thought it might be worth a post of its own.

Trust Management: A New Approach

Triggered by the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools Act on September 30, the public land management problems discussed earlier on this website have reached critical mass.

The House Natural Resources Committee and several member of Congress are drafting legislation that could radically change the way the Nation manages its public lands and fulfills its obligation to local governments and schools whose welfare depends on these lands. A number of alternatives are being considered: too many and too rapidly changing to be discussed individually here. The linked PowerPoint on Trust Management – A New Approach is an amalgam of these ideas, modified and with added new ones, that presents one alternative for the future management for Forest Service and possibly other federally managed lands.

To view the PowerPoint, right click and open this link in a new window (first you need to go to this site).
Sharon’s note: It seems to me that this idea has been around several times in the past 40 years or so I’ve been in this business. That’s one of the things I like about our bizniz, you learn something once (say, Earth Island and CE’s for bike races) and you get to apply that knowledge again (Sequoia Forestkeepers).

Odd bedfellows try collaborating to resolve conflicts- from E&E News

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Thanks to a friend from Montana for this one from E&E News. Here’s a link to the principles agreed to by the Montana Forest Restoration Committee. This photo is from the Monitoring tab on the MFRC website.

This quote below is interesting:

“The groups said the project — the first CFLRP-funded project to come under legal fire — is in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The four challengers — the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, the Montana Ecosystem Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council — say the proposal does not consider the potential effects on lynx and other threatened and endangered species.”

IMHO, there’s a difference between “not considering” and “not coming to the same conclusions we did after consideration.” Perhaps they were misquoted. Check out this post for the details of the latest legal exchange, or check out the EA and the letters from FWS, and you be the judge of whether those were “considered”. You can also use the search box on the sidebar to the right and type in “Colt Summit” and find many posts on the subject.

In addition, for some time I’ve been puzzling over understanding the “collaboration backlash.” To me, we must go deeper than the statements about going “against the law.” I have worked with and talked to collaborative groups and they all seem very law-abiding folks, upright citizens volunteering for the good of the land and the community.

So I found this quote from Horning perhaps yielding a clue to a deeper understanding.

Frankly, I feel progressives are frightened of conflict, and therefore we’re suckers for consensus and collaboration as a process, and we’re sometimes willing to completely abandon any measurable outcomes, because it’s consensus. Sometimes you end up appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Of course, I wondered what a “progressive” is in this day and age (having read my history of the Progessive era). I looked at this website and found this quote from John Podesta:

Under a progressive vision of the common good, government must pursue policies that benefit everyone equally. It must ensure that opportunities are abundant and that even those who have been left out and left behind can get the help they need to succeed. Common good progressivism does not meant that everybody will be the same, think the same, or get the same material benefits. Rather, it simply means that people should start from a level playing field and have a reasonable chance to improve their stations in life.

Internationally, common good progressivism focuses on new and revitalized global leadership through the just use of force; multi-lateral engagement; and the creation of new institutions and networks to deal with difficult problems. As in past battles against fascism and totalitarianism, common-good progressives today seek to fight global extremism by using a comprehensive national-security strategy that employs all our strengths for strategic and moral advantage.

To pursue the common good, though, we as Americans owe something to our country in return. People must assume responsibility for their actions, treat others with respect and decency, and serve their families and communities.

Seems like progressives tend to “fight extremism” and treat others with respect and decency, create new institutions to deal with difficult problems.. they sound like…likely volunteers for collaborative groups. Maybe progessives, by definition, can’t be ideologues? What do you think?

FOREST SERVICE:
Odd bedfellows try collaborating to resolve conflicts

April Reese, E&E reporter

Amid a tangle of lawsuits over controversial logging projects 10 years ago, federal officials in western Montana tried a new approach to forest management that involved gathering input from a range of interests.

First came the Blackfoot Challenge, a group of local residents, timber interests, conservationists and others that came together to address issues in the Blackfoot National Forest. Then, buoyed by the success of that effort, the Forest Service and its collaborators expanded the initiative in 2007 to include districts in the Lolo and Helena national forests.

The resulting Montana Forest Restoration Committee brought together representatives of the forest-products industry, conservation groups, recreation interests and private property owners who were determined to blaze a trail around gridlock that had blocked efforts to thin forests, reduce wildfire risks, stanch a beetle epidemic and restore habitat.

“We were involved in a lot of lawsuits,” recalls Lolo National Forest Superintendent Debbie Austin. “So we made a concerted effort to understand where people’s concerns were, and find places where we could agree and move forward together. We had a lot of meetings with the people who were opposed to what we were doing — mostly conservation groups.”

The project signifies a recent shift within federal natural resource agencies toward collaborative decisionmaking to resolve thorny issues on public lands. The more buy-in there is from those interested in natural resource management, from environmental groups to foresters to recreationists, the easier those projects are to get done, collaboration advocates say.

“A lot of agencies are looking at collaboration, I think because there are so many of the issues out there — water, forest management, climate change, you name it — and collaboration is a good way to do decisionmaking,” said Kimberly Skyelander, associate director of the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. “It’s not so much top-down driven, but bottom-up.”

The Obama administration aims to direct more money at the approach. In a March 2 letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Coalition thanked the administration for proposing to fully fund the agency’s collaborative forest restoration program in its fiscal 2013 budget request at $40 million. The group called collaboration a “win-win solution that provides jobs, restores forests, protects water supplies, and engages people in management of the public lands.”

But collaborative efforts still can hit snags. Four environmental groups last fall challenged in federal court a project on the Lolo National Forest developed through a Forest Service collaborative program, claiming the proposal would log critical habitat for lynx and bull trout as well as prime grizzly habitat, violating multiple federal laws.

And some critics say collaborative efforts run the risk of undermining key environmental laws and can be a recipe for inaction.

Last month, however, a broad alliance of environmental and timber groups defended the Forest Service’s plan for the Lolo, arguing the project must stand up in court in order to prove that the collaborative management process can work (E&ENews PM, Feb. 28).
The Mont. example

After its initial success, the Montana Forest Restoration Committee came up with a set of principles that are used to determine which projects the group will support.

The committee has helped dozens of restoration projects move forward without facing administrative or legal challenges, allowing thousands of acres to be restored.

A couple of years ago, after the Forest Service announced its Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the Montana group submitted a proposal to create the Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. The Forest Service selected it as one of a handful of pilot CFLRP to receive funding in 2010. The Southwest Crown collaborative aims to restore 1.5 million acres of national forestland in the Blackfoot, Clearwater and Swan River valleys.

In 2011, contractors hired by the Forest Service restored 11,000 acres of wildlife habitat, 14 miles of streams and decommissioned 10 miles of old roads, according to agency.

“I think [the Montana Forest Restoration Committee and the Southwest Crown of the Continent CFLRP] have been very effective,” Austin said. “The reason is because we agreed up front on what we agreed with. For example, we set restoration principles we could work from, and we know each other, so we really have the social license to move forward with certain kinds of activities. As we go along, we’re building trust with each other, and that’s key.”

Gordy Sanders, resource manager for Pyramid Lumber and co-chairman of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee, struck a similar note.

“Collaborative efforts are definitely successful,” Sanders said. “For a long, long time I’ve said, ‘We can’t do this by ourselves.’ We need to establish relationships and develop long-term relationships with other folks who are interested in working together. In a collaborative approach, you can get more done. So we’re providing multiple benefits for a wide variety of interests, so all the different folks in the collaborative can see good work done on the ground.”

And while some in the industry have been slow to warm to the idea, that skepticism is waning, he added. “There’s growing support amongst the industry for this approach,” he said. “I think there’s a solid basis for collaborative efforts, and it’s building over time.”
Wider efforts

The Montana group is a prime example of a larger trend that’s been growing over the past few decades.

Collaborative groups began forming in kitchens and conference rooms in the 1990s, taking on controversial issues ranging from endangered species conservation to logging to watershed protection. The concept has gained favor over the years, drawing support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Under George W. Bush’s administration, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton made collaborative conservation a central tenet of her reign, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have been strong advocates of collaboration under the Obama administration.

The Forest Service has also partnered with other entities to achieve management goals, such as the “Forests to Faucets” collaboration between the agency and Denver Water to restore national forestland scorched by the 2002 Hayman fire. The fire stripped much of the land of vegetation and sent 1 million cubic yards of sentiment into the main reservoir that provides drinking water for the city, clogging water treatment systems and affecting water quality. Denver Water had to spend $10 million to scour the reservoir and repair infrastructure.

“We enter into different types of agreements in order to be able to prioritize projects, to ensure that the source of the water is taken care of, and make sure we’re doing what we can on the land to improve water quality and water quantity,” said Janelle Smith, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region.

Participants often find a collaborative, local approach preferable to a solution imposed from the outside.

And while the collaborative process may take longer than the usual National Environmental Policy Act review process, the benefits of having all interests on the same page and avoiding expensive and even more time-consuming lawsuits is well worth that prolonged effort, Austin said.
Lawsuit over Mont. project

But the collaborative approach has its critics — and occasionally the projects it helps shape do end up embattled, despite the concerted effort to keep such projects out of the courtroom.

Four environmental groups filed suit against the Forest Service over the 4,330-acre Colt Summit restoration project, which was designed with input from the Montana Restoration Committee and funded in part by the Southwest Crown CFLRP. It was intended to thin overly dense forest stands and decommission roads to benefit bull trout, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The groups said the project — the first CFLRP-funded project to come under legal fire — is in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The four challengers — the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, the Montana Ecosystem Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council — say the proposal does not consider the potential effects on lynx and other threatened and endangered species.

Austin said she could not comment on an ongoing lawsuit but added that generally speaking, collaboration is not intended to replace the legal avenues for challenging projects.

“It’s difficult to have absolutely everyone agree with absolutely everything,” Austin said. “The collaborative groups are trying to help people be involved and allow them to be involved. But all those options — administrative challenge and litigation — are still available to people. In general, I just would hope people do come to the table.”

The conservation groups fighting the project were invited to join the Southwest Crown of the Continent CFLRP early in the process, Austin said.

Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, one of the groups challenging the Colt Summit project, said he was asked to join the group but not until the environmental assessment for the project was already done.

And it is important to hold the federal government accountable when it violates the law, as the alliance says the Forest Service did in crafting the Colt Summit project, he said.

“Federal agencies still must comply with the law, regardless of how a management decision was made,” Garrity said.
Broader objections

With a few rare exceptions, collaboration is “a way to undermine good environmental laws, including NEPA,” Garrity said. “The goal is to try to get some resource out rather than improve the environment.”

John Horning, executive director of the Santa Fe, N.M.-based group Wild Earth Guardians, which also has seen considerable success using litigation to advance its conservation goals, is more equivocal.

“I’m of mixed minds on it,” Horning said. “Consensus and collaboration have been the term du jour for over a decade now. Frankly, I feel progressives are frightened of conflict, and therefore we’re suckers for consensus and collaboration as a process, and we’re sometimes willing to completely abandon any measurable outcomes, because it’s consensus. Sometimes you end up appealing to the lowest common denominator. It could be a hardening of the status quo, at worst.”

Wild Earth Guardians does support some of the Forest Service’s CFLRPs: “We’re comfortable with experimentation within some bounds,” he said. But it takes issue with the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, intended to unify and expand restoration efforts across a large swath of northern and eastern Arizona, because it focuses too heavily on logging, Horning added.

But he reserves his harshest criticism for the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Collaborative Program in New Mexico, designed to assuage conflicts over how to balance water supplies and habitat for the endangered silvery minnow and the Southwestern willow flycatcher.

“You have people who have widely conflicting views … it’s a recipe for getting absolutely nothing done,” Horning said.

“Unless there’s a commitment to a new vision or that the current framework is really really dysfunctional and not serving any interest, then collaboration models don’t really work,” Horning added. “If the status quo is serving some interest, they’ll participate as a means of preventing further change.”

Skyelander of Colorado State University said that generally speaking, there are two main problems that can undermine a collaborative effort: trying to impose a particular point of view on the group and turnover within the group over time.

“If they can come to the table without an agenda, of course that’s ideal,” she said. “The best collaboration is when people come with an open mind. They want their voices heard, of course, but they’re also open to hearing other people’s opinions.”

Lingering Recreation Fee Issues

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With the recent Ninth Circuit Decision, suggesting that the Recreation Enhancement Act of 2004 disallows “parking fees” on the national forests, I think it time to begin to think through some issues that surround the Forest Service recreation fee debacle. ‘Area access’ fees have been highly controversial since at least the late 1990s (See, e.g. my To Fee or Not to Fee?)

I think that many would agree that right now we have too many users for some of our public places, e.g. some National Forests, some National Parks, etc. And many would agree that there are too few dollars to oversee recreation programs on public lands. There are law enforcement problems, garbage collection issues, rest-room facilities issues, environmental damage problems, and more. It seems that there are always, everywhere, too few dollars chasing too many initiatives. Or maybe the federal government just doesn’t prune initiatives or programs back to fit the realities of budgets. In any case there is always plenty to fight over when it comes to money.

In this little note and follow-ups we will begin to sort out what is ‘at issue’ regarding recreation programs and dollars, and to see whether we few bloggers and commentators can find any common ground on issues and resolutions. Here are my preliminary issues: congestion (How do we disperse and/or discourage use where resource damage or experience degradation results from congestion?), ease of fee collection and participation, distribution of moneys, government agency culture transformation.

Congestion/Dispersion of Use
Let’s begin with congestion. Some would propose that fees be used to help disperse users from over-used areas to other areas. But in this day it might be that other measures could be used to disperse use. For example, federal land managers could require passes for over-used areas—passes that could be allocated via computer-based lottery and waiting lines at places of entry (e.g. a FS Ranger Station). These could be administered and allocated for free. So, perhaps too easily we can take ‘congestion’ off the table when discussing recreation fees.

Fee Collection—ease of collection, ease of participation
With congestion issues off the table at least for now, maybe we can look directly at fees to used to defray government costs. If the Congress wants to charge access fees, in addition to specific facility fees that are allowed in the 2004 Recreation Enhancement Act, then it would seem prudent to have people buy an ‘all federal lands’ pass, that could be used anywhere on federal lands for specific periods of time. This is not my recommendation, but rather a least impact means to an end. [Here is my plea for free primitive recreation on the National Forests.] At minimum the Congress ought to disallow the piecemeal, nightmarish type fees now common on federal lands. An annual pass comes to mind, that would be available at all federal public lands facilities and also on the Internet. It might be an interesting twist to allow users with scant means a free pass, if they were to pass an income/asset test—although I don’t really see an easy way to administer a test like that.

Distribution of Fee Money
There are problems associated with allowing local units to keep the monies they collect from fees. I would like to see local units keep none of it, except as filtered through governmental funding mechanisms. First, there are equity problems that accrue to, say, national forests that don’t have the attraction points (focal points) that other forests have. Second, there is the incentive to pump up prices to cover costs, a phenomenon known to some as ‘budget conservation and enhancement,’ or simply ‘budget maximization.’ I’m sure there are other issues, but let’s move on. Of course the forests flush with cash from a ‘keep it local’ advantage, will argue the flip side of this argument.

Government Agency Culture Transformation
Finally, there is the problem of creeping commercialization—the problem of government forest managers perceiving themselves to be business people rather than government administrators. This problem has to do with government administrators and their attitude and behaviors toward outfitters and guides and concessionaires (including big-ticket items like ski resorts). Do we really want the US Forest Service to move further into the marketization/commercialization world? If not, how might the Congress work to ensure that government agencies act like government agencies and not perceive themselves to be in business?

Endnote
So. Take your best shot at me, both as to the issues I put on the table and those I left off. Also, what might we do to help the Congress, as well as the Forest Service and other agencies, as they continue to grapple with recreation fee issues?

Fee Simple: Why We Should Pay to Hike, Boat, Fish, Camp and Just Plain Visit Our National Forests

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From Char Miller here:

John McKinney means well, and his sentiments scan nicely: “I don’t think a nature hike is a forest product and that hikers are forest consumers. We’re out there for something that you can’t put a price on.”

That’s what he told the Los Angeles Times following the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in February that the Forest Service had overstepped its bounds when charging for access to the national forests in the American west. According to the court, the agency’s Adventure Pass system, which sold one-day passes for $5 (and an annual one for $30), violated provisions of the 2004 Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (REA). That legal finding cheered McKinney no end, but he’ll discover that we’ll pay a steep price for the court’s elimination of user fees.

The author of such standards as Southern California: A Day Hiker’s Guide, John McKinney’s Wild LA, and The Hiker’s Way: Hike Smart. Live Well. Go Green, McKinney knows how to navigate in the woods, revel in the joys of a dusty tramp, and find bliss in exertion.
He is incorrect, however, about his aesthetic claims for the non-economic character of a high-country ramble. Wrong too is his implication that spending a day trekking through the Angeles or the Los Padres national forests, or camping out in the San Gorgonio Wilderness Area of the San Bernardino National Forest, is an apolitical, non-consumptive act.

Let me address the second point first.

These rough-and-ready terrain are the creature of politics. Each of the four national forests of Southern California – including the Cleveland, located north and east of San Diego – was established shortly after the passage of the passage of 1891 Forest Reserve Act. This legislative initiative gave presidents the power to establish reserves on federally owned public land in the west. Yet as a matter of course no forest was ever the result of a top-down directive from the chief executive. Instead, local conservationists, civic leaders, business interests, and an array of citizens demanded from the bottom up that these public lands secure increased federal presence and regulation that in time a national forest would bring.

In this region, that protection had much more to do with the maintenance of watersheds, as timber cutting was not nearly as important as it was in the well-wooded Sierra, Cascade, or Mendocino ranges. Without downstream interests articulating the essential contribution of clean and plentiful water for community development, then, these national forests would not exist. And the recreational opportunities these mountainous landscapes offer today are a direct result of those earlier advocates’ social convictions and political maneuvers.

Think about that enduring gift the next time you lace up, stretch out, and head into the Sheep Mountain Wilderness Area. When you do, recall as well that this landscape exists within another political context: all public lands that bear the wilderness designation, exist because of the1964 Wilderness Act; its passage took nearly thirty years of wrangling in and out of Congress, and the most passionate and persistent lobbying emanated from the Wilderness Society, founded in 1935.
Benton MacKaye | Photo: Appalachian Trail Conservancy/Wikipedia/Creative Commons License
“All we desire to save from invasion,” asserted the society’s founders Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, and Robert Marshall, “is that extremely minor fraction of outdoor America which yet remains free from mechanical sights and sounds and smell.” Their words have had special meaning in car-crazed Los Angeles.

Paying for that silence, or as much quiet as is possible in this hyper-industrialized world, is part of the civic obligation built into the 1905 creation of the national-forest system. From the start, Congress demanded that the forests (and thus their users) operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, and the optimistic first Chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, promised to fulfill that charge.

His was a tough promise to fulfill. While fees for grazing, later timber harvests, and later still recreation may have bolstered the agency’s efforts to research and regulate resource use; protect critical watersheds and endangered species; and enhance recreational infrastructure, they never have fully balanced the budget.

Nor could they: the rates have been kept artificially low to stimulate economic development, so that until the 1980s the deficits were offset through additional public spending. Caring for the Land and Serving the People – the Forest Service’s longstanding motto and commitment – always has cost money.

These expenses spiked in the late 1980s as timber harvests in the Pacific Northwest were scaled back rapidly in response to the Spotted Owl controversy; to protect the endangered bird’s habitat, clear-cutting of old-growth forests, which once generated considerable income for the Forest Service, was largely shut down. By the mid-1990s, the agency faced declining budgets, and began laying off staff and reducing services.

In hopes of stabilizing these budgetary shortfalls, in 1996 Congress authorized the establishment of a recreational fee pilot project, in which hikers, boaters, campers, and other visitors to the forests would pay a minimal amount to access specific services (a boating ramp, say, a picnic area). The funding collected on an individual forest would remain there, enhancing its ability to rebuild trails, staff visitor centers, or insure a steady supply of the all-important toilet paper at trailhead bathrooms.
A waterfall in the Cleveland National Forest | Photo: Chazz Layne/Flickr/Creative Commons License
Despite these and other assorted benefits, user fees kicked off a heated debate. Hiking guru John McKinney was among those who refused to buy an Adventure Pass, a protest and pushback that in 2004 led Congress to rewrite the conditions of the fee-demo program through the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. It prohibits the Forest Service (as well as the Bureau of Land Management) from charging for these site-specific activities:

• General access to national forests and grasslands and Bureau of Land Management areas; • Horseback riding, walking through, driving through, or boating through areas where no facilities or services are used; • Access to overlooks or scenic pullouts; • Undesignated parking areas where no facilities are provided for • Picnicking along roads or trails; and • In addition individuals under 16 will not be charged an entrance or standard amenity fee.

These provisions would become the basis for a lawsuit filed against Arizona’s Coronado National Forest for levying fees on day hiking from and picnicking along Catalina Highway as it rises up the flanks of Mount Lemmon near Tucson. A lower court dismissed the original suit that alleged the Forest Service was in violation of REA. But in February, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that earlier decision and supported the plaintiffs’ claims, concluding:

REA unambiguously prohibits the Forest Service from charging fees…for recreational visitors who park a car, then camp at undeveloped sites, picnic along roads or trailsides, or hike through the area without using the facilities and services.

While McKinney and other opponents of the Adventure Pass celebrated this legal win, yodeling for unfettered access to all public lands, their victory will prove Pyrrhic.

Because federal land-management agencies such as the Forest Service do not have substantial-enough budgets to cover their real costs. Because the 9th Circuit’s decision has stripped forests raise badly needed dollars to clean up such trash-littered, high-impact areas as Lytle Creek in the San Bernardino National Forest and the San Gabriel River Ranger District of the Angeles. And because the American people persist in their stubborn refusal to pay taxes without curbing their insatiable demand for “free” governmental services, these great scenic assets and essential recreational spaces have and will continue to collapse under the weight of our inaction.

Until we can legislate more robust and consistent financial support for the agencies that steward our public lands, no one – not even hikers – should get a free pass.

Char Miller is the Director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, author of “Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy” (Oregon State University Press), and editor of “Cities and Nature in the American West.” He comments every week on environmental issues. Read more of his columns here

Note from Sharon: There are other photos in the web version of this story, I just reposted one.

So what do you think; develop better legislation for rec fees, have free will offerings to a non-profit, start a lobbying group for rec funds or ????.

Tree-Free Fuels Treatments

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Here’s the story..there’s even a video of brush piles burning there somewhere. My point being that this seems like strong evidence that fuel treatments are not excuses for “industrial logging” as sometimes portrayed. At least not all of them.

Forest crews may begin burning brush and debris piles next week when weather permits north of Banning, Beaumont, and near Oak Glen, a spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest announced Friday.

The pile burning locations are:

Cal Fire Oak Glen Conservation Camp
Cherry Canyon Truck trail between Oak Glen camp and Mile High Ranch
West of Pisgah Peak along the 1S07 Pisgah Peak Road
Above Pilgrim Pines near the old helispot
Banning Bench at the top of Bluff Street

“The Forest Service has been working closely with the community, the Oak Glen Fire Safe Council and local agencies developing and implementing the Oak Glen/Banning Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project,” John Miller of the Forest Service in San Bernardino said in a statement.

“Over the spring and summer months, crews have been thinning and stacking piles of dense brush as part of the fuels reduction project,” Miller said. “Pile burning is now one of the tools planned for use as part of the project work underway in the community.”

Firefighters are planning to burn about 200 brush piles in the national forest near the Oak Glen community this spring as weather and conditions permit, Miller said.

“Burning of these brush piles needs to occur in order to further reduce the threat of wildfire to mountain communities,” Miller said. “Firefighters will remain on scene of burning piles as long as the piles have the potential to be active. If conditions change to make burning unfavorable or dangerous, burning will cease.”

The Oak Glen-Banning Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project will reduce fire risk to communities and improve forest health on national forest lands surrounding the communities of Yucaipa, Oak Glen, Banning, Forest Falls, and Mountain Home Village, forest officials said.

Fuel reduction and pile burning help decrease potential for high intensity, stand-replacing wildfires and the threat to nearby communities.

The project also increases firefighter safety in the area, and helps improve forest health, Miller said.

Creation of a system of fuel breaks are underway on the approximately 511-acre project area.

“This project began with the community based Fireshed meeting in April 2005 and is a great example of a collaborative partnership CALFIRE, the Oak Glen Fire Safe Council, Urban Conservation Corps and AmeriCorps and the community,” District Ranger Gabe Garcia said. “I want to thank everyone that has supported the project, and their understanding of the necessity to burn the slash and debris piles.”

If citizens see smoke in the air in the general vicinity of Oak Glen and would like to find out what is happening, they are asked to call the San Bernardino National Forest at (909) 382-2851 or visit the forest’s “alerts” page on the web at: www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/sbnf/alerts-notices.

Oak Glen/Banning Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project documents are available on-line at: data.ecosystem-management.org/nepaweb.

LA Times Editorial on Recreation Fees

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one.

National forest fees work
The U.S. Forest Service should work to change the law regarding fees in national forests to reflect the realities of modern recreational use.

Here’s the link.

March 1, 2012
Does a hiker go to the bathroom in the woods? It might matter, under a recent federal court ruling.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled correctly last month that parking fees were being wrongly levied in many areas of America’s national forests. A 2004 law is quite specific that it is impermissible to charge fees for parking or for “general use” of the forests. But while the court’s ruling was perfectly in line with the law, the real problem is with the law itself. Under its provisions, if you use the bathroom while hiking in the forest, you can be charged, but not if you use nature itself as the bathroom. Picnicking on the ground has to be free under the law, but eating at a picnic table could, at least theoretically, cost you, as could using a trash can.
The way the law was drafted, it’s all about whether forest visitors are using “developed” facilities. But as the examples above show, that’s a ludicrous distinction that is impossible to enforce, out of line with the procedures at most wilderness parks and ultimately harmful to the forests and their visitors.
Most national and state parks and many regional parks charge an entry fee for vehicles whether they’re headed to the trail or the interpretive center, understanding full well that hikers’ and bikers’ activities come with costs even if they don’t use the “developed” facilities. Most hikers require trail markers to guide them on their way. The heavily used trails themselves must be maintained. Anyone might need emergency rescue or medical help from rangers. And for that matter, why shouldn’t a parking lot be considered a developed facility?
One argument against fees is that they keep poor people from enjoying the forests. But at $30 a year, a forest Adventure Pass is one of the best bargains in Southern California. It’s less than a fourth the price of an annual pass to state parks and is good for unlimited day use of four forests — the Angeles, Cleveland, San Bernardino and Los Padres. A single-day pass to the forests costs $5 for a carload of visitors, less than half the price of most movie tickets for a single person. The gasoline to drive to the forest would generally cost more.
Most of the money is used in the local forests where it is collected. In 2006 alone, the fees paid for, among many items, adding 74 new portable bathrooms, refurbishing 123 picnic areas and removing 8,752 cubic yards of trash in the Southern California forests. But as a result of the law and the recent court ruling, the U.S. Forest Service is now planning to drop fees in many areas of the forests. Instead, the law should be changed to reflect the realities of modern recreational use.

Conservationists oppose logging lawsuit in Lolo National Forest- More on Colt Summit

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We have discussed the Colt Summit project here before, here and the Cone of Silence post here. There may be more, you can just use the search box to the right and type in “Colt Summit.”
It might be interesting to imagine that we were using objections instead of appeals and see whether you think this would have changed the dynamics at all.

Here’s a link to all the documents, which I got by typing in “colt summit project” into Google.

.. we have ringside seats to see how this litigation process goes. At this step, some conservation organizations are filing supporting briefs. Here’s a link to the news story.

Conservationists oppose logging lawsuit in Lolo National Forest

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By EVE BYRON Independent Record

HELENA – A proposed project that includes logging, roadwork and weed spraying on national forest land north of Seeley Lake is pitting a wide-ranging array of organizations against four environmental groups that filed a lawsuit opposing the work.

On Monday, organizations including the Seeley Lake fire department, the National Wildlife Federation, the Montana Wilderness Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Lewis and Clark, Missoula and Powell counties all filed legal briefs supporting the five-year project on 4,330 acres of the Lolo National Forest.

Representatives of those groups said that the “unprecedented interest in the case marks the first time such a large and diverse number of groups and individuals have ever assembled to defend a forest restoration project in the court of law.”

“We decided to get involved because this is a science-based decision and we had our staff truth-test it,” said Jean Curtiss, a Missoula County commissioner. “This area is such a unique, intact ecosystem, with all the plants and animals there that were there when Lewis and Clark came through.”

During a news conference Tuesday, representatives from some of those groups said the logging, burning and road treatments are direly needed to restore forest health and create a better habitat for wild animals that include endangered lynx, bull trout and grizzly bear, while at the same time lessening the threat of wildfires near communities.

“In the summer of 2007, we had the Jocko Lakes fire that covered 31,000 acres and cost $40 million,” said Frank Maradeo, the Seeley Lake fire chief. “We evacuated 85 percent of the community during that fire. This project, the Colt Summit, is at the north end of our fire district.”

They also pointed out that the project is a collaborative effort among a wide range of interests, including loggers, timber mills, environmental groups, community members and local, state and federal officials.

“What we are focused on doing is what’s best for the ground,” said Megan Birzell with the Wilderness Society. “There may be some cases where the best thing to do is to try to stop a project, but we think a better approach and one that’s more successful, rewarding and fulfilling is to seek positive solutions on the ground, recognizing there are places where active management is needed and is appropriate.”

But Michael Garrity, executive director of the Helena-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies, disagrees. That’s why his organization, along with the Friends of the Wild Swan, Montana Ecosystems Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in federal court in November to try to stop the work.

“It’s not the right place for a timber sale,” Garrity said. “It’s critical lynx habitat. And if the whole idea is to protect the wildland-urban interface – it’s 10 miles north of Seeley Lake and there’s no community there. There are plenty of places around Seeley Lake where they could do logging, but this is just the wrong location.”

He added that they believe the environmental assessment done on the project violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act.

The project calls for logging and burning on about 2,038 acres; decommissioning or storing 25 miles of road; restoring four miles of streamside road and rerouting the access; reconstructing five miles of road; and conducting noxious weed herbicide treatments along 34 miles of national forest roads and on six acres of existing infestations.

In a brief filed by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the state agency said the project will have clear benefits for fish and wildlife.

“The Colt Summit Project will significantly increase the amount of secure lynx and grizzly habitat within an important riparian corridor, will remove roads that are sending sediment into a native trout stream, and will maintain sufficient cover to allow a variety of wildlife species to continue to move through the area,” said Jay Kolbe, an FWP wildlife biologist. “This project is thoughtfully planned out, grounded in good science and long overdue.”

Reporter Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or [email protected].

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/conservationists-oppose-logging-lawsuit-in-lolo-national-forest/article_378a11e8-6254-11e1-ae6c-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1nmbl5a3P