21st Century Problems

Not So Home on the Range

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From the Aspen Times here.

Cattle grazing has plummeted locally with the rise of industrial tourism
December, 19 2011
Scott Condon
The Aspen Times
Aspen, CO Colorado
Editor’s note: Today’s fourth installment of the five-part Aspen Times series, “Land of Opportunity,” focuses on the state of ranching in the Roaring Fork Valley. The final part, scheduled to run Dec. 26, will examine gas companies’ interest in drilling prospects in the valley.

The Old West tradition of using national forest lands for grazing isn’t completely dead in the Roaring Fork Valley, but it could be on its last gasp.

For the first half of the 20th century, the Forest Service’s primary duty in the Roaring Fork River basin was to manage the range for livestock grazing and, to a lesser extent, oversee timber sales.

Now, instead of supervising the grazing of large flocks of sheep on Independence Pass and huge herds of cattle in nearly all the lower-elevation drainages, the Forest Service is focused on protecting natural resources in the wake of an expanding number of recreationalists. (Oil and gas development has emerged in the past decade as a leading issue on the west side of the White River National Forest.)

The decline in the use of forest lands for grazing mirrors the slow decline in the overall health of ranching in the Roaring Fork Valley. As Aspen built its reputation as a world-class resort and land prices soared, many ranchers discovered they could get richer selling their land for real estate development than by spending years wrangling cattle.

Declining number of grazing permits
As a result, the demand for grazing allotments has plummeted in the Aspen and Sopris ranger districts, which combine to total about 720,000 acres.

“At the present time, there are approximately 202,000 acres of the Aspen and Sopris ranger districts open to domestic livestock grazing. In 1985, there were nearly 100,000 more acres open to grazing than there are now,” said Wayne Ives, the range technician on the two districts since the early 1980s.

“The number of permittees has definitely declined,” he added.

Sheep grazing used to be prevalent in the upper Roaring Fork Valley. Aspen native Stirling “Buzz” Cooper, 80, recalls Bleeker Street being used as a route to take sheep from west of town to the railroad depot, which was located near what is now Rio Grande Park.

Cooper also recalled cattle being grazed as far up as the Weller Cut on Independence Pass when he was a kid. His family lived in a cabin east of Aspen. His mother got upset when the cattle were driven down in the fall one year and trampled the family garden and yard.

Even into the mid-1980s, there were two herds of sheep grazing in the Aspen area, one in Grizzly Creek and another in East Snowmass Creek. There were four herds using the Marble area for summer pasture, Ives said.

The number of sheep grazing permits issued by the Forest Service for the Aspen and Sopris districts fell from five in 1987 to one in 2011. The last remaining herd grazes on public lands in the Marble area. A typical herd had about 1,000 head of sheep, Ives said.

The number of cattle grazing permits in the Aspen and Sopris districts fell from 28 in to 16 in 2011.

Conflicts contribute to decline
The grazing allotments range in size from 2,000 acres for 46 cow-calf units permitted to 32,000 acres with nearly 1,000 cows with calves. The fee, set by Congress, varies with beef prices. It cannot be lower than $1.35 per cow and calf per month.

Ives said grazing allotments have historically been held by the same families for generations or have carried over with different owners of a piece of property. When a ranch surrenders an allotment, it often expires these days because there are so few ranches remaining in the valley.

Ranchers face additional challenges. Some national environmental groups oppose grazing on federal lands because of the degradation to streambeds, water quality and natural pastures. Other groups complain that the fee that is charged is too low and amounts to a subsidy for ranchers. In the Roaring Fork Valley, there are conflicts between cows, climbers, cyclists and hikers.

Ives noted that cows and backpackers both are attracted to Capitol Lake, which is a popular base for climbers going up Capitol Peak, one of Colorado’s mountains above 14,0000 feet. Camping spots are highly coveted around the breath-takingly beautiful lake.

“People don’t expect to see cattle there,” Ives said.

Grazing patterns get messed up
Carbondale rancher Tom Turnbull has held grazing permit on federal lands for more than 50 years. Lands administered by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management aren’t really the land of many users any longer, as once billed, he said. Mountain biking has become a dominate use outside of designated Wilderness, where motorized and mechanized uses are prohibited.

“Look at the impact that it’s had in areas like the Crown,” Turnbull said, referring to BLM land between the Roaring Fork River and Mount Sopris in the midvalley. The Crown has become a hot spot for mountain biking in the last decade.

“All the good main cattle trails have turned into bike trails,” Turnbull said.

His beef with biking is the effect it has on grazing patterns. The key to effective grazing is to spread the herd over the entire allotment. When cyclists regularly ride through lands used by cattle, it tends to encourage the animals to congregate.

Rory Cerise has helped move his cattle up from his family’s ranch in Emma to the Crown for more than four decades. His family has held a grazing right up there since 1944. He has witnessed the effects of the recreation boom on his family’s operation. Hikers and bikers on the Crown often leave gates open, forcing Cerise to track straying cows. He’s also witnessed equestrians chasing cattle, considering it harmless sport.

Conflicts became so bad on Basalt Mountain, another popular mountain biking site, that the permit holder asked the Forest Service to allow greater utilization of nearby lands in Cattle Creek. The allotment on Basalt Mountain hasn’t been used for a few years.

“The permittee just didn’t want to fight the battles anymore,” Ives said.

Grazing still big in Rifle, Meeker
White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said the forest used to be “one giant pasture.” While livestock grazing has declined in the Aspen, Vail and Summit county areas, it still thrives in the Rifle Ranger District and Meeker’s Rio Blanco Ranger Districts.

In 2010, Fitzwilliams’ office issued permits for 16,270 cattle and 43,290 sheep on 92 grazing allotments throughout the forest. The White River collected $103,917 for grazing permits.

Fitzwilliams said he believes it is important for the forest to continue to provide summer grazing lands to help keep the ranching industry economically viable. The private lands of the ranches provide the public benefits of open space, wildlife habitat and checks on urban sprawl.

“I see it well into the future. Public land grazing is going to be part of the West,” Fitzwilliams said.

How much it remains a part of the Aspen and Sopris districts after the current generation of ranchers retire remains to be seen.

Note from Sharon:
I don’t know about the use of the term “industrial recreation” in the title; sounds like it’s mountain bikers and others. I wonder what makes recreation “industrial”, just large numbers? /em>

Forest Policy/Management Lessons of the Vasa

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So read Roger Pielke, Jr.’s piece and substitute for “technology” “forest management”. Perhaps the main difference between forest management and technology innovation is that success is in the eye of the beholder with forest management. Or is that equally true for technology?

Here’s the link to the piece in the publication Bridges.

On a chilly day in Stockholm last month, I visited the Vasa museum. Situated on the waterfront, the museum holds a sailing ship that sank in the Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage in 1628. The ship had barely made it a kilometer from the dock that fateful August day, when it began to roll, letting water into its open cannon ports and then quickly sinking to the bottom. The Vasa took with it the lives of about 40 people and only the top of its tallest mast was left above water. The ship was raised in 1961, and in 1990 was moved to its current location in a giant building that holds the restored ship in its entirety.

The Vasa was to be a technological marvel of its day, during a period when “international competitiveness” had a familiar meaning. Based on the perception that Sweden was losing ground in the race for naval technology, particularly to neighboring Denmark, Swedish King Gustav II Adolph (better known in English as Gustavus Adolphus) had commissioned the bigger and better-armed Vasa. As I explored the museum that day, I couldn’t help but think that the tragedy of the Vasa and its fate since that day more than 380 years ago hold lessons for how we think about contemporary innovation policies.

1. Politicians have a long history of meddling in technology implementation

According to the lore of the Vasa, the ship’s design had been altered by the King, who had proposed changes such as adding a second gun deck and bigger cannons. Yet the Swedish shipbuilders had little experience building such a vessel. The ship wound up being top-heavy, which contributed to its sinking. The King’s interference in the design and building of the ship was one factor that led to the disaster. 1

This experience reminded me of a story told by Edward David, science advisor to Richard Nixon, when I interviewed him at a public forum in 2005. 2 David recounted how President Nixon wanted to cancel several of the last Apollo moon missions out of concern that an accident might hurt his re-election chances in 1972. The moon mission was moved to December, 1972, a month after the election. No tragedy resulted, but both Vasa and Apollo show that technologies are often subject to the whims of larger political forces.

2. Institutional factors can inhibit effective decision making

Söfring Hansson, the captain of the Vasa, was well aware that the ship was not seaworthy. Prior to the maiden voyage, Captain Hansson had demonstrated to a vice admiral that the ship was unbalanced. He had 30 men run back and forth across the upper deck, causing the ship to roll. The demonstration was stopped after the third pass, out of fear that the Vasa would capsize right there at the dock. Despite this knowledge, the Vasa set sail soon thereafter.

The dynamics here are similar to those that preceded the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. Less than a year earlier, an engineer working for the NASA contractor had written a memo raising concerns about the performance of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters in cold conditions. This information never reached NASA decision makers on the freezing January day that Challenger was launched. Both experiences show that good information does not always lead to good decisions.

3. Performance is the ultimate test of technology

The short voyage of the Vasa showed clearly that the design of the ship was deeply flawed. It was a costly and embarrassing lesson that we are still discussing centuries later. The obvious lesson is that major innovations should be tested carefully before full-scale deployment. We are still learning these lessons today, of course, but there are far more positive lessons to take from Vasa as well.

The salvage and restoration of the ship has provided a fertile laboratory for the science of historical preservation, including advances in chemistry such as the removal of iron from Vasa’s wood. The lessons of the Vasa are thus of broad relevance to historians and museums around the world who seek to preserve perishable historical artifacts. It is one thing to discuss and debate technologies of preservation, it is quite another to practice them. The Vasa has proved to be an unexpected and valuable laboratory for learning while doing.

4. We should celebrate and learn from failure as necessary for success

In the United States, much has been made of the bankruptcy of a solar company, Solyndra, which had received loan guarantees from the Obama Administration. The debate follows a predictable pattern with the failure of a single company used as evidence of a poor approach to innovation policy or even wrongdoing. But Solyndra aside, discrete failures in innovation need not indicate flawed innovation polices, as failures can be significant opportunities for learning and ultimately for success.

Indeed, the Vasa museum is a prominent celebration of a failure, with the experience used to understand why the ship foundered, the lessons of its recovery, and to take advantage of the opportunity to learn about the history of the 17th century. Famous failures often find a home in business school case studies, but they should also find a home in our technology policies. Successful innovation means taking risks, and taking risks means some successes but many failures as well. Innovation policies with the greatest chance for success will build in an expectation for failure, to help avoid the predictable politicization.

5. Life is different today

One fascinating part of the Vasa museum exhibits includes a presentation and discussion of some of the people whose remains were recovered along with the Vasa. All were small people, especially compared to the sturdy Swedes one sees today around Stockholm. Most had poorly healed injuries, bad teeth, and signs of malnutrition. Even King Gustav II Adolf, whose clothing can be seen at the Royal Armory in the basement of the Swedish Royal Palace, was a small fellow, although no doubt better fed than those whose remains were found at the bottom of the harbor. Just a quick glimpse into life in 17th century Stockholm provides revealing insights into how much science, technology, and innovation have transformed our lives.

It is difficult to imagine how people 380 years from now will look back on our time and what they will say about our lives and our technology. What will historical museums of the future reveal about us?

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Roger Pielke, Jr. is the former director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado (2001-2007). He has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 2001 and is a professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Bosworth on Payments to Counties

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Douglas fir trees await processing at the Pacific Lumber Co. plant in Scotia, Calif. (Ben Margot / AP Photo / June 15, 2005) (Note from Sharon-the Times used this photo; I will replace with more recent California mill photo is anyone has one).

From the LA Times here.

By Dale Bosworth

December 18, 2011

During my long career with the U.S. Forest Service, people frequently expressed their concerns about the management of public lands to me when I’d run into them at the grocery store or on a hiking trail. One of the main issues they brought up had to do with the relationship between timber harvests and county budgets.

Here’s the dilemma. Counties traditionally rely on property taxes to fund basic services and education. But local governments cannot tax national forest land, and many Western states have a high percentage of their land in federal ownership. In Idaho, for example, about 63% of the land is owned by the federal government (as compared with, say, New York, where less than 1% of land is in federal hands).

To help compensate local governments for that loss of tax revenue, the Forest Service for decades returned 25% of the money it made from harvesting timber to the county government where the logging occurred. But that was problematic too because revenues were prone to wide swings depending on how much timber was harvested and what price it brought.

To address the uncertainty, Congress in 2000 passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which guaranteed revenues to counties based on past timber receipts. The act also introduced new goals of funding restoration and stewardship projects on public lands to help communities improve forest health and diversify their economies. In 2008, funding was extended through 2011 and some revisions were made to the law.

Next year, unless the program is renewed, the payment system will revert to the old method, in which counties receive 25% of timber revenues. This formula would return uncertainty and drastically reduce payments to counties at a time when rural America is already struggling.

A working paper put out last month by the Oregon State University Rural Studies program estimated that Oregon (with about half of its land owned by the federal government) stands to lose about 4,000 jobs and would have to make deep cuts in school funding unless the bill is reauthorized. And Oregon is just one of many states affected.

Instead of allowing the program to end, the act should be renewed, and Congress should take the opportunity to better align payment incentives with current economic realities and forest health goals.

Unfortunately, current proposals from the Obama administration, the House and the Senate all fall short. The president’s 2012 budget, for example, proposes to phase out the payments over two to five years, with no clarity for how the federal government will assist counties with large amounts of public land going forward.

In addition, the administration proposal would, for the first time, fund the payments directly from the Forest Service budget, a budget already stressed by deep cuts. Subjecting the county reimbursements to the annual appropriations process rather than setting up a multiyear reauthorization would make it difficult for many counties to provide basic services.

In the House, a draft bill proposes a timber-only approach in which logging would pay for all future federal payments to counties. This would be accomplished largely by rolling back environmental laws and abandoning collaborative efforts. Even if this bill could pass, it would require unsustainable logging levels to maintain payment levels, and it would require more federal spending than current appropriations.

In the Senate, a draft bill proposes continuing the current payment system at a reduced level for five years, but that only kicks long-term reform down the road.

There is still time before the payments end in mid-2012 to pass legislation that ties future county payments to achievable forest management goals and provides real economic options for counties.

One promising idea would be to deliver payments to counties based on economic need, so that payments are targeted to ensure the best use of taxpayer dollars. Another would be to link funding to efforts by counties to improve ecosystems and recreation opportunities on federal lands.

Although logging alone cannot lift rural economies, logging combined with forest and watershed restoration work — a timber-plus jobs bill — could be the basis for both funding and job growth in counties.

Dale Bosworth worked for the U.S. Forest Service for 41 years, and served as its chief from 2001 to 2007.

Needed: BLM and FS Lobbying Organization? “National Reserve Conservation Association”

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Last week I was in DC and got a chance to ask some knowledgeable folks about the spate of “forests to parks” that have been proposed recently and discussed on this blog.

My personal opinion: I’d like all public land managers to have the funding to protect resources and to manage public use as appropriate. It would be fine with me if all the feds were all one agency and shared zoning of what’s OK and not OK to do in a certain place (say “blue” meant OHV’s OK, but no oil and gas). I just think time and funds spent switching agency ownerships on individual chunks of land could probably be spent better clarifying the issues of concern, and looking for areas where the land management agencies are inefficient or duplicate each others’ actions. I know that there are many obstacles to some kind of major change (one agency for all public lands), but even an effort to harmonize regulations would be a step in the right direction. See, for example, this piece in HCN (assuming that the statements are accurate). Here’sthe entire piece from HCN.

According to putatively knowledgeable sources, there were some efforts in the past, which led to an agreement between the Secretaries of Interior and Ag about “no poaching.” I’d appreciate more information on this history from readers if any of you are familiar with it.

Meanwhile the existence of the National Parks Conservation Association (website here) perhaps in and of itself, leads to the concept that “parks are better.”

Here is the information from their website on how and why that group was founded.

NPCA was established in 1919, just three years after the National Park Service. Stephen Mather, the first director of the Park Service, was one of our founders. He felt very strongly that the national parks would need an independent voice—outside the political system—to ensure these places remained unimpaired for future generations. Now, nearly one hundred years later, NPCA has more than 600,000 members and supporters.

Now, my current hypothesis is that if Parks has an independent group that lobbies for Parks, and if FS and BLM don’t have independent groups that lobby for them (we’ll call a new hypothetical group the National Reserve Conservation Association for now (other titles invited)), we would expect that Parks would get more money and attention to change land from BLM and FS to Parks. I like the term “Reserves” because it implies that the land has been reserved for some purpose. This is true of what NPS calls “reserves,” whose management sometimes allows a variety of preexisting uses, including OHV’s (see photo above).

Perhaps the solution is simply to start a lobbying group to balance the effects of NCPA, and to make sure that the taxpayer gets the best deal from the overall portfolio of public lands.

Last week, when news broke that much of West Virginia’s northern Allegheny Highlands might be considered for national park and preserve status, sportsmen raised a ton of questions:

How big would the park be? Would hunting be outlawed? Would trout stockings be curtailed? Who would manage the fish and wildlife? And what would become of trapping, ramp digging and ginseng hunting?

We have answers now for at least some of those questions. Earlier this week, I spoke with Judy Rodd, a spokeswoman for Friends of High Allegheny National Park and Preserve, who clarified some of the murkier points.

The preserve, as currently envisioned, would be pretty darned big – roughly 750,000 acres.

Rodd said it would start at Cathedral State Park in Preston County and extend southward to Cass in Pocahontas County. Its western boundary would start at Shavers Mountain near Elkins and would extend eastward to include current units of the George Washington National Forest in Hardy and Hampshire counties.

“All the lands that would be included in the preserve would be lands that are current state parks or are part of the Monongahela and George Washington national forests,” Rodd explained. “No private lands would need to be purchased.”

She added that only a portion of the land would be considered a full-fledged national park.

“The main units of the national park portion would include Cathedral, Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley state parks, and some portion of the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area,” she said.

“The Park Service folks have said units of the park could be spread apart like that. The rest of the land in the Allegheny Highlands – the vast majority of the land under consideration – would be in preserve status, where hunting and fishing would be encouraged.”

Rodd said she wasn’t sure if the Park Service would allow trapping on the preserve. However, a subsequent Internet search of several preserves’ websites showed that trapping is allowed on most of them.

The question of ginseng hunting caught Rodd by surprise; she said she “would have to talk the Park Service about that.” As to ramp digging, she harbored a rather strong opinion: “I dig them too, so naturally I would want [that] to be allowed.”

One of the more ticklish questions surrounding the preserve concept would be whether the state Division of Natural Resources or the National Park Service would have primary control of fishing-related issues.

In the New River Gorge National River, for example, DNR officials manage fisheries as they see fit. One sticking point has arisen, though. Park Service officials several years ago asked that non-native fish – rainbow and brown trout, specifically – not be stocked within the park’s boundaries. Stockings continue to this day.

In the state’s mountain highlands, trout fishing is a big issue. Most of the state’s most popular stocked-trout streams and rivers are in the preserve area, and most of the fish stocked are rainbows and browns. Rodd said she didn’t know whether DNR or Park Service policies would prevail.

“That’s too technical an issue for me,” she said.

Rodd said provisions to address any or all of sportsmen’s concerns could be written into legislation that would establish the park.

“That’s a long way off, though,” she said. “The [upcoming] study is called a reconnaissance study. If it finds that the area is unique enough to be included in the national park system, a resource study would follow. And then there would be a period of time to write the legislation and get it passed. Park and preserve status is still years away.”

Loving the land to death? A 21st Century Problem

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Summertime visitors dot the shores of Maroon Lake

Pressure mounts on forests as recreation groups demand their piece of the woods
From the Aspen Times here.

Editor’s note: Today’s third installment of the five-part Aspen Times series, “Land of Opportunity,” focuses on how the U.S. Forest Service manages the White River National Forest which, in many ways, serves as the area’s economic driver. The fourth part, set for Monday, Dec. 19, takes a look at the state of ranching and logging in the Roaring Fork Valley.

When it comes to recreation in the White River National Forest, everybody wants a piece of the woods.

There were 144 outfitters and guides operating in the forest in 2010. They did everything from leading hunters into the backcountry by horseback to hauling bicyclists by van to Maroon Lake so they could coast down the paved road.

Skiers and snowboard riders use public lands at 11 ski areas forest-wide.

Hikers and backpackers have 2,500 miles of trails at their disposal and there are 751,900 acres of wilderness, where motorized and mechanized uses are prohibited.

Mountain bikers are always looking for new opportunities, occasionally building bandit trails then trying to legalize them later.

Dirt bikers and other off-road vehicle enthusiasts clamor for more terrain where they can operate machines capable of covering more than 100 miles on a good day of trail riding.

Snowmobilers, rock climbers, big peak baggers, paragliders, anglers, trail runners, backcountry skiers, picnickers, sightseers, nature lovers — everybody wants to spend time in the forest.

The result is about 9.2 million visits annually from people pursuing recreation in the White River National Forest — more than Grand Canyon and Yosemite national parks combined. Throw skiing out of the mix and you still get more than 2 million visits to the White River. Many of those visitors want to go to the same spectacular places at the same time of the summer.

“We’ve reached a point of saturation in some areas,” acknowledged Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams. “There are times you go to the Maroon Bells wilderness and you run into hundreds and hundreds of people.”

The age of industrial tourism
Valley native Tony Vagneur has witnessed the surge in tourism in the forests surrounding the Roaring Fork Valley over the last five decades. When he was a kid growing up in Woody Creek his family would run 1,200 cows and calves onto 30,000 acres in the Kobey Park area above Lenado. The cows had the place nearly to themselves — no off-road vehicles, no mountain bikes, only occasional hikers and hunters.

It was even possible to find solitude on visits to scenic backcountry lakes.

“I clearly remember in 1965 or ‘66, my great uncle Tom Stapleton and I went deer hunting at Maroon Lake,” Vagneur recalled. It was October and the fall colors were in full splendor. Nevertheless, they were the only people there, he said. They actually hunted right around the lake.

Visit Maroon Lake on a sunny October day these days and you will be sharing the views with hundreds of other sightseers. Maroon Lake has fallen victim to what the late Edward Abbey labeled industrial tourism. Like many national parks, the Maroon Bells Recreation Area is so popular that access is restricted during the heart of summer and bus service is required to move the masses.

Vagneur also hiked one recent summer to Capitol Lake, a place he had visited several times before and often found a fair degree of solitude. On the latest trip, he found 13 occupied campsites around the stunning, high-altitude lake.

“You might as well be camping out in Paepcke Park,” he said.

The lake is a popular destination for climbers tackling Capitol Peak, which looms over the lake. As bagging 14ers — the peaks in Colorado that exceed 14,000 feet in elevation — has grown more popular, so has the pressure on the backcountry surrounding those peaks.

Changing trends
Martha Moran, recreation staff officer for the Aspen and Sopris Districts, has watched backcountry and wilderness use patterns evolve for more than a decade since she joined the office. Among her observations: Hunting in the Aspen area has declined significantly; forest visitors are taking shorter-duration trips; and people are willing to sacrifice solitude to visit the most scenic areas.

It seems that travelers stick around more for long weekends rather than week-long trips, Moran said, so they are determined to see hotspots like the Maroon Bells on their brief outing, regardless of crowds. That concentrates more visitors into fewer sites.

“People are attached to special areas,” Moran said. “They aren’t going to the deep, dark woods.”

When they do venture further into the backcountry, it tends to be concentrated on routes made popular by coverage in magazines like Backpacker, Outside and National Geographic Traveler, Moran noted. The Four Pass Loop — which makes an incredible 26-mile journey over Buckskin, Trail Rider, Frigid Air and West Maroon passes — offers unparalleled beauty, but it’s tough to avoid crowds in July and August.

To some degree, the cash-starved Forest Service is addicted to industrial tourism. While most areas in the forest can be visited without paying a fee, the agency still capitalizes on payments for recreational uses. It collected $372,840 in 2010 from fees charged to outfitters and guides, educational institutions and organizers of special events, such as a backcountry marathon.

In addition, the fees charged at Maroon Bells, Vail Pass Winter Recreation Area, Green Mountain Reservoir and the handful of campgrounds that it still operates totaled $607,611 last year.

The agency also reaps fees from the 11 ski areas with special-use permits. Aspen Skiing Co., for example, paid nearly $1.4 million last season to lease public lands for its four ski areas.

The greater the number of outfitters and guides, the greater the number of visitors to the Maroon Bells and the greater number of skier and snowboard riders, the more money the Forest Service collects.

Many of those funds are plowed back into forest projects or are used to hire staff such as backcountry rangers, but some of the funds simply vanish into the U.S. Treasury.

Feds use management tools
The Forest Service is adapting to the recreation explosion. Researchers for the agency have found little public support for limiting the number of hikers on trails or visitors to certain areas to ease the crush of crowds. But forest lovers will support limits designed to protect the ecosystem, according to the agency’s research.

The White River National Forest uses various management tools to ease the human impact:

• Permits used to be issued to outfitter and guide with few questions asked. Now the agency performs a capacity analysis on every proposal to determine if there is a need for additional permits. Special event requests using forest lands also get thorough scrutiny.

• The Travel Management Plan released last summer closed 692 miles of bandit trails, constructed or used illegally, and decommissioned another 519 miles of routes from the White River National Forest’s official inventory. In many cases, the agency couldn’t afford to maintain all those routes, Fitzwilliams said.

• Wilderness designation prohibits motorized uses, such as Jeeps and dirt bikes, as well as mechanized uses, such as mountain bikes. Trails outside of wilderness often have restrictions.

• Other rules have been in place for decades to prevent us from loving our special places to death. Camps must be a certain distance away from high-country lakes. Wilderness rangers vigorously enforce the rules at the most heavily visited areas such as Snowmass Lake, Fryingpan Lakes and Crater Lake. The Aspen Ranger District recently beefed up restrictions at Conundrum Hot Spring, placing limits on the camps near the springs and prohibiting dogs from the upper valley.

Nevertheless, the special places still get overwhelmed. West Maroon Pass on a weekend in July and August resembles the pilgrimage route to Mecca.

In other, less pristine areas, the experience is different. It remains much as it was decades ago. Vagneur likes visiting the Hunter-Fryingpan wilderness, north of Aspen and up the Fryingpan Valley. “If you go in there a day [of travel on foot or horseback], you can be the only person there,” he said.

Vagneur is a volunteer with the Forest Service. During big game hunting seasons, he often roams the hills above Lenado on horseback to visit hunters’ camps. He answers a lot of questions and tactfully offers advice, like urging hunters to haul out trash. He had made the rounds for 15 straight years until taking a break this year.

“The numbers have gone down since ‘08, the recession year,” he said. Even before that, the numbers of hunters were in decline.

Part of the problem is user conflicts, as Vagneur sees it. Dirt bikers have turned the Kobey Park and Sloan’s Peak area into a near exclusive playground. Their sheer numbers overwhelm hikers and equestrians. The result is all the trails have been rutted down about three feet, forcing dirt bikers to make new trails alongside the old ones.

“The dirt bikes have just totally trashed the area,” Vagneur said. “You can’t walk on any of the trails up there.”

Conflicts can’t be helped
But dirt bikers are also feeling squeezed in the White River. The Forest Service is funneling them into fewer areas even though it is a growing endeavor. That creates high concentrations that can lead to trail damage.

Dirt biker Traci Schalow of Carbondale understands the frustration some users feel while about having the share the forest, but feels most people are understanding and cooperative with one another.

“I am the multi-user,” she said. “I like backcountry skiing. That is my thing.”

The explosion of extreme sports has lead to more people in the backcountry, Schalow said. She no longer ventures to Marble Peak, a popular backcountry ski area. “You can’t even find parking anymore,” she said.

Schalow feels that dirt bikers get a bad rap as people who don’t care about the environment. She is trying to do something about that (see related story). She said many riders enjoy the outdoors for the same reasons as mountain bikers and hikers.

“I find joy in the backcountry whether it’s skiing in the winter or dirt riding in the other seasons,” Schalow said. “Dirt bikes are a great mode for accessing wild places, especially areas that have distances prohibitive on foot or bicycle, unless you have several days to access it.”

She said there is a camaraderie in dirt biking that she hasn’t experienced in her other pursuits — mountain biking, trail running and backcountry skiing. “It’s a ‘we’ sport, more than any other sport I have participated in,” Schalow said.

Aspen Ranger District’s Moran said the White River National Forest probably experiences more users conflicts than forests closer to urban areas. The reason — so many passionate forest users. Dirt bikers want single-track trails while families want gentle backcountry roads to tour with their families. There are “flamboyant huckers” who use snowmobiles to get at powder-filled backcountry cliffs and there are cross-country skiers seeking solitude, according to Moran.

“It’s conflicts over access, really,” she said.

And that creates management headaches. Moran noted the “conundrum at Conundrum.” An environmental group called Wilderness Watch says the Aspen Ranger District’s recent limits on camping at Conundrum Hot Springs don’t go far enough to protect the area while some hot springs enthusiasts blast the agency for overreacting to alleged problems.

“There’s a lot of passion on how we manage our public lands,” Moran said.

The Forest Service has gone increasingly toward a “capacity limit” style of management. It examines the effects of human waste, user conflicts and quality of experience while contemplating rules.

“We’re trying to prepare for the next 70 years,” Moran said.

She personally feels that will force the Forest Service to sets limits on access to popular areas, at some point.

“I can visualize that’s where we’ll have to go eventually,” she said.

UM Biomass on Hold as Natural Gas Prices Dip

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this one..

UM biomass project on hold as natural gas prices dipBy CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian | December 2, 2011
http://missoulian.com/news/local/um-biomass-project-on-hold-as-natural-gas-prices-dip/article_d266a47c-1ca1-11e1-9c21-0019bb2963f4.html

For the first time since natural gas prices began to dip, the fate of the University of Montana’s proposed woody-biomass gasification plant is clear: the project is on hold.

“It’s not financially viable at this time,” said Rosi Keller, UM associate vice president for administration and finance. “We won’t move forward until it is.”

Keller’s comments came during an open forum on campus Thursday directed at educating UM students on the $16 million industrial-sized heating plant project that UM proposed to reduce its carbon footprint.

About 45 people showed up to listen to presentations by Keller and Ben Schmidt, an environmental health specialist at the Missoula City-County Health Department. The forum, hosted by the ASUM Sustainability Center, was aimed at informing students so they could make up their minds about the project.

Recent media reports of UM’s request for an air quality permit in order to build the project have sparked increased student interest, said Stacy Boman, ASUM sustainability coordinator.

“Students have come into the center wanting to know more about it,” she said. “We hope that they understand the issue and can join the discourse surrounding the biomass project and can offer up their own thoughts and opinions.”

Most of the students in attendance at Thursday’s panel discussions were environmental studies majors or members of the UM Climate Action Now! Many support UM switching from natural gas to woody biomass.

“It’s much less controversial among the student body than with the community,” said Zach Brown, a 21-year-old environmental studies major.

Brown wants to see power generated locally, which is why he supports UM’s proposal to burn upward of 16,000 tons of biomass trucked in from local forests. UM currently imports natural gas, which means the side effects of drilling and hydraulic fracturing are left for others to clean up.

While switching to biomass in some cases would increase emissions in Missoula’s air shed above the level of natural gas, Brown thinks forcing consumers to have to deal with these issues may change their habits.

“If those side effects were in our faces, we may question our level of energy consumption,” he said.

If anything, students had concerns about the kinds of biomass that would be used and where it would come from. It’s important that the fuel is collected from areas within 100 miles of Missoula, said Alison Wren, a 21-year-old environmental studies student. And Brian Nickerson, 21, hopes UM ensures that it only uses biomass that is sustainably harvested.

However, none of this will matter if the price of natural gas continues to decrease.

The state of Montana negotiates a two-year contract for natural gas, which includes UM. Currently, UM pays $7.10 per dekatherm for natural gas. Only if the price reaches $8 a dekatherm would the university’s biomass project become financially viable, Keller said.

Since the beginning of the project, natural gas prices have decreased 15 percent, said Tom Javins, UM biomass project manager. And it’s possible that once the state renegotiates a contract for natural gas a year from now, UM may be paying a price for natural gas that biomass can’t beat.

Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at Chelsi.moy @missoulian.com.

Another Eastern National Forest Celebrates 75 Years

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Given the discussion about the possible Maine National Park, I thought this- sent by Terry Seyden- might be relevant.

Francis Marion forest marks 75 years
By BO PETERSEN – [email protected]

http://www.thestate.com/2011/12/05/2069175/francis-marion-forest-marks-75.html

WAMBAW — The wild calls. Under dangling live oak limbs, 19-year-old Thomas Grimsley yanks on a riding outfit that looks like it’s been paintballed, and he straps on a helmet. He pulls the motorbike down from the pickup bed, an ’07 Yamaha YZ250, a powerful, competition-grade motocross burner, and cranks up the two-stroke motor.
“Fast. Scary fast,” Grimsley says. The Charleston retail worker and Grand National Cross Country rider is ready to rumble — off on a remote cycle trail through the Francis Marion National Forest.
Yep, those “empty” miles of pines in Berkeley and Charleston counties aren’t quite naturalist John Muir’s backcountry anymore. The Francis Marion celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, and a few hundred thousand people will hike, bike, hunt, fish, paddle, camp, horseback ride, birdwatch, even target shoot in it. That’s more people than lived in the three counties around Charleston when the forest opened in 1936.

The swampy environs once described as “unwanted land” have become a destination and its popularity has brought new troubles.
More people wanting to do more things have to be accommodated while $6 million per year of timber is harvested, acres of native longleaf pines planted, and thousands of species of plants and animals managed from hooded pitcher plants to black bear. The forest spreads across a quarter million acres and operates on tight budget with a cut-back staff of 42, who face a wide range of emerging issues.
“Twenty years ago we weren’t dealing with meth labs,” said regional U.S. Forest Service supervisor Paul Bradley.
But the Francis Marion remains “a tremendous public natural resource, and one of the cornerstones of conservation on the East Coast,” in the words of Michael Prevost, White Oak Forestry Corp. president, who formerly worked with the Nature Conservancy conserving tracts in the forest.
Maybe the best way to describe the public value of this place is to talk turkey, wild turkey, and longleaf pine. A generation ago, wild turkey were rarely seen, hunted almost to extinction in South Carolina. Today, more than 100,000 of them are out there, in all 46 counties. They have reclaimed their status as a sought-after game bird.
Every one of those wild turkeys came from a few hundred trapped in the forest a half-century ago for a captive breeding program run by the foresters and S.C. Natural Resources. The birds were what was left of the native Francis Marion flocks, a strain considered to be one of the purest strains of wild turkey anywhere in the world.
Thousands of animal species live in the Francis Marion along with more than 1,600 plant species, in some 30 distinct natural environs. That makes the place one of the most ecologically diverse forests in the Southeast. Its heart is the longleaf pine savannah — home to 300 varieties of native plants, birds including the wild turkey, 170 species of reptiles or amphibians, and 36 mammals.
At one time, 90 million acres of the cathedral-like savannahs of tall, straight trunks and tufted needle crowns spread across the Southeast.
Timbering and other farming chopped it up. Timber companies replaced it quicker-growing loblolly pine.
Today only four million acres of longleaf stand. About 40,000 of those acres are in the Francis Marion. In contrast, the forest has 120,000 acres of mostly loblolly pine. The forest service, working with other groups, is replacing the loblolly tracts one-by-one with longleaf, in an effort to completely restore its savannahs.
Longleaf is more valuable timber and the slender needles a sought-after ground cover. It stands up better to hurricanes. It’s fire-resistant. In fact, it’s the mainstay of the savannah “fire ecosystem,” habitat that depends on periodic burning to nurture all those species.
“Fire ecosystem is one of the most diverse plant communities we have in North America,” said Bill Twomey, forest service silvaculturist.
That pine ecosystem, though, and its “urban interface,” might be the biggest problem the forest faces today. With more people living nearby and commuting through the Francis Marion, foresters have to wait for just the right winds and weather to do controlled burns. Twomey estimates the forest service only burns half the acres it needs to each year.
Meanwhile, partly because of the backlog of unburned undergrowth, wildfires crop up frequently, often because of human carelessness. People bring invasive species, littering, illegal dumping and poaching everything from deer to bamboo.
“Any time you have more people in a constrained area you have more conflict,” Bradley, the forest supervisor, said.
Policing creates its own problems. In 2010, a father camping with his daughter was outraged to find a hidden surveillance camera at the campsite.
Earlier this year, two Boy Scout leaders were ticketed $225 each for “illegal parking” after putting trucks in the wrong place when they arrived at a camp at night. The fines were thrown out in court.
Francis Marion workers still pick up phone calls from people asking when the national park opens for the day. The distinction often gets lost. A park is more of a preserve with set hours and controlled access. This is a working forest, balancing preservation with recreation and industry, like timbering, that helps pay its way.
Jannah DuPre, Sewee Visitors Center co-director, puts it succinctly: In a national park you camp in a designated campground; in a national forest, you can camp almost anywhere with a permit.
The Francis Marion has a slew of historic sites — its namesake’s grave and the Revolutionary War-era Battery One along the Santee River, for examples.
It has wilderness areas like Wambaw Swamp, even a Cape Romain boat landing.
But there’s no one focal point. It remains the place for the Lowcountry to roam.
“The beauty here is a more subtle, discovery experience,” DuPre said.

(Note: links to this and other recent news stories about the US Forest Service can be found at http://www.seyden.net. )

Is Biocoal the Answer?

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biocoalA recent Bangor Daily News article (here) discusses how the new owners of two paper mills in Millinocket, Maine plan to use this technology to convert wood waste into torrefied wood also known as biocoal. Proponents tout the technology as carbon neutral if waste material is used as the source for the process.

Nick Sambides Jr., BDN Staff
Posted Dec. 01, 2011, at 12:56 p.m.

MILLINOCKET, Maine — Cate Street Capital has purchased for more than $20 million the North American rights to the technology to manufacture biocoal, a huge step toward adding the production of treated wood at its Katahdin Avenue paper mill and creating several hundred jobs, officials said Thursday.
Cate Street subsidiary Thermogen Industries LLC secured exclusive rights from Scotland-based Rotawave Biocoal to manufacture a type of machine — called Targeted Intelligent Energy System, or TIES — that makes biocoal, or torrefied wood, which would replace coal burned at electricity plants, Cate Street spokesman Scott Tranchemontagne said.

“It is the most tangible sign of our commitment to moving this project forward,” Tranchemontagne said Thursday of the $20 million deal. “We have the technology. We have a wonderful site at the end of the Golden Road and we have a labor force that is ready and willing to work. Those are some key pieces to any business looking to start up.”

If Thermogen’s plans reach fruition, Cate Street senior vice president Richard Cyr said, Thermogen’s production of biocoal would help transform the state forest products industry.
Thermogen and Cate Street subsidiary Great Northern Paper Co., which operates the East Millinocket and Millinocket paper mills, would also benefit from several independent and ongoing governmental and private business initiatives.

Those initiatives include the $10.5 million reconstruction of 233 miles of northern Maine railroad tracks, the expansion of the shipping port in Searsport, Gov. Paul LePage’s proposal to extend a natural gas line to the Katahdin region by 2013, and Cate Street’s own revitalization of the mills.

By acquiring the rights to TIES, Rotawave Biocoal’s microwave-based biocoal production system, Thermogen has solidified plans to install five or six TIES machines in Millinocket starting in November 2012. Creating jobs for 22 to 25 workers directly and dozens of truckers, loggers and other support providers indirectly, the first $35 million TIES machine would supply United Kingdom utilities with biocoal, Cyr said.

Millinocket would be the site of the first of four or five biocoal mills eventually nationwide, Cyr said. Rotawave’s attempt to sell its technology rights to a Vancouver company that would have built a biocoal factory in British Columbia last year fell through, he said.

“We have been looking for a home for Thermogen for two years. Over that time we have been studying a lot of technologies,” Cyr said, calling Rotawave’s “the one that created the best end product.”

Engineers are developing plans now to site the machines at the Millinocket mill as Cate Street assembles its financing and seeks engineers to build the Rotawave machines, Cyr said. Cate Street hopes to have the design and financing ready within four months, with mill site work possibly beginning then as well, Tranchemontagne said.

Speaking up for America’s Forests

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orest trail at Dolly Sods Wilderness South. The Dolly Sods Wilderness is a U.S. Wilderness Area in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia and part of the Monongahela National Forest The Nature Conservancy has acquired and protected thousands of acres in the Monongahela forest. The northeast end of the Federal land at Dolly Sods is bordered by the Bear Rocks Nature Preserve, owned by The Nature Conservancy. Dolly Sods and Bear Rocks Preserve are adjoining areas of incomparable beauty that are comprised of high plateaus above 4000 ft. and steep-walled stream valleys. The area was originally covered with a thick spruce forest but was aggressively logged in the early 20th century. Today the area is dominated by broad plains covered with heath and grasses, with many bogs. Hardwoods dominate the lower elevations but the spruce forest is coming back at higher elevations. PHOTO CREDIT: © Kent Mason
This is from the TNC blog here.

The following is a guest post written by Chris Topik. Chris has spent his entire career working to restore America’s forests. Today he serves as director of The Nature Conservancy’s Restoring America’s Forests program. Previously he worked as staff for the House Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, and also as a 16-year-employee for the Forest Service in Oregon, Washington and Washington, DC.

“A people without children would face a hopeless future;
a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

The stock market has plunged to half its value. Unemployment has doubled. And the President struggles to rebuild the economy of a politically divided country.

The scene may feel familiar to us today, but this was the world of President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt in 1907.

Yet by the end of his presidency President Roosevelt could reflect back on a recovered economy, an assertive global presence, markets freed from monopolies and more lands and waters conserved than any President before or since.

Of those herculean accomplishments won during tough economic times, none has forwarded greater benefits to us today than Roosevelt’s attention to the nation’s outdoors. Through the creation of the U.S. Forest Service and other conservation initiatives, Roosevelt established a natural framework that continues to provide life-giving benefits to America.

For example, this year we celebrate the centennial of one of Roosevelt’s signature outdoor legacies, the Weeks Act of 1911. This Act, sponsored by Representative John Wingate Weeks of Massachusetts, created 52 National Forests east of the Mississippi and set a precedent for collaboration on all Forest Service lands throughout the nation.

The greatest gift of the Weeks Act, however, may be it proved we can accomplish epic improvements to the health of our lands for generations to come — if the will still exists to realize them.

With an estimated 120 million acres of American forests in need of immediate restoration today (the size of California and Maine combined), a stalling economy and perhaps an even more stagnant political environment — the question is, do we still own that epic will?

Thankfully, a new report released today (pdf) suggests the answer is “yes!” This first-year analysis of the new Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) further offers tangible results backing up that sentiment.

In just one year, from just 10 National Forest projects, CFLRP achieved the following:

Created and maintained 1,550 jobs;
Produced 107 million board feet of timber;
Generated nearly $59 million of labor income;
Removed fuel for destructive mega-fires on 90,000 acres near communities;
Reduced mega-fire on an additional 64,000 acres;
Improved 66,000 acres of wildlife habitat;
Restored 28 miles of fish habitat;
Enhanced clean water supplies by remediating 163 miles of eroding roads.

Perhaps even more encouraging is that all of this was achieved in a collaborative, bipartisan manner with just an initial $10 million of federal investment. Folks who were once at loggerheads over the management of our forests — industries, environmentalists, recreationists, sportsmen — have put those conflicts aside and worked collaboratively to achieve real, everyday benefits in their own communities with CFLRP.

In fact, CFLRP is seemingly one of the few programs Congress can agree on, with a bipartisan “Dear Colleague” letter now circulating in the Senate that supports increasing that seed money to $40 million in the 2012 budget, so even more communities can share in the jobs, forest, water, and wildlife successes of CFLRP. The sponsors of that letter are Senators Bingaman (D-NM), Crapo (R-ID), and Risch (R-ID).

Yet, by itself, CFLRP cannot solve the problems our American forests face: overgrown forests, a plague of pests, sprawl, climate change and the record mega-fires that result from this “perfect storm” of threats. But CFLRP is a step in the right direction that deserves more support, so that the lessons learned on these landscapes can spread further in our nation’s forests.

As a child, Theodore Roosevelt was notoriously sickly and myopic. In the belief he could heal his body through physical exertions, he prescribed himself a childhood spent outdoors and in the boxing ring. The prescription worked, and that sickly boy grew into a pugnacious collegiate boxing champion, a rugged cowboy, a leader of Rough Riders and ultimately, a farsighted president.

In doing so he made a lifetime out of answering the bell. Now it’s our turn.

Please ask your Congressional representatives now to help spread the success of CFLRP by sending them a message today. With 26 applicants to this program in 2011, you may be supporting a project in your own community!

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Top 10 Weeks Act States by Acres:
Virginia 1,609,489
Arkansas 1,502,571
Michigan 1,491,673
Missouri 1,435,445
Wisconsin 1,187,062
Minnesota 1,146,664
North Carolina 1,091,377
West Virginia 1,023,768
Mississippi 878,218
Georgia 850,928

Top 10 Weeks Act National Forests by State:
Virginia George Washington and Jefferson National Forest 1,609,489
Missouri Mark Twain National Forest 1,435,445
Wisconsin Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest 1,187,062
North Carolina National Forests in North Carolina 1,091,057
West Virginia Monongahela National Forest 900,105
Mississippi National Forests In Mississippi 878,218
Georgia Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests 850,928
Minnesota Superior National Forest 830,130
Arkansas Ozark-St. Francis National Forest 823,770
Michigan Ottawa National Forest 741,080

Bugs, fire, politics threaten western Montana forests: from the Missoulian

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Here’s the link.

Three things will combine to radically transform Montana forests in the next 50 years: bugs, fire and politics.
Mountain pine beetles have killed millions of acres of lodgepole pine trees. Those dead stands, combined with a progressively drier climate, will likely burn in wilder, more intense fashion. The biological aftermath should bring a wider mix of tree species, open areas and wildlife habitat, according to new computer models.
How humans tinker with that progression remains a wildcard. During this month’s Society for Conservation Biology research symposium at the University of Montana, several scientists demonstrated a technique called landscape simulation modeling. They’ve built software that juggles invasive weeds, weather patterns, logging plans, road removal and a lot of other factors to see how a forest will change over time.
“We see more of a natural sequence of events that could result in a more normal habitat distribution,” Michael Hillis of Missoula’s Ecosystem Research Group said of his model for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. “But the forest will look much different.”
The “B-bar-D” forest covers 3.4 million acres of southwest Montana, bigger than Glacier and Yellowstone national parks combined. Hillis said most of its spruce and Douglas fir stands were logged a century ago for the state’s mining industry. The resulting lodgepole stands grew up and matured at the same time, producing what Hillis called the “forest demographics of a rest home” at the perfect age for a beetle epidemic.
Many of those dead trees will then fuel forest fires. While the research is mixed whether a beetle-killed stand burns more dangerously than a green canopy, Hillis said the certain result is more fire scars on the landscape. Those scars in turn will eventually hobble later fires with a matrix of burned and unburned patches. Burned areas may return as new lodgepole stands, which regenerate best after a fire. But the unburned zones could see a return of fir, spruce and other tree species that get a chance to grow without the lodgepoles’ choking shade.
Assuming that model is correct, what do humans do with the information? Hillis, a Forest Service researcher before he moved to private practice, said his analysis helped inspire the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, a coalition of conservationists and loggers who proposed a new way of managing the national forest. Their plan eventually became a cornerstone of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.
That legislation has also drawn critics who warn that tinkering with the forest’s natural process could produce bad results.
“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”
***
Tester’s bill would designate about 1 million acres of new wilderness and recreation areas in Montana. It would also require the Forest Service to open at least 100,000 acres of timber over 15 years to logging, thinning or other mechanical treatment in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Lolo and Kootenai national forests. Last month, the senator successfully got it inserted in the Interior Department’s spending bill, which is awaiting congressional action.
Nikas and other opponents have objected to the bill’s mixing of land protections and land management orders. The forest treatment requirements “devolve public lands into local fiefdoms, allowing individual senators to write management plans into law for national forests,” he said.
But Nikas further argued actions like thinning hazardous fuels around the edges of communities is a waste of taxpayer dollars at the forest’s expense.
“If the problem is a risk of fire on the wildland-urban interface, then we need to put zoning restrictions on building, or adopt policies that say if you want to do it, good luck,” Nikas said. “You can’t manipulate forests because of decisions people are making to build in the forest. It’s just like not encouraging people to build in the floodplain.”
John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association is one of Nikas’ regular debating partners. His organization was one of the founding members of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. He said the Forest Service’s inability to get either logging or habitat work done helped form the compromise.
“There were 106 watershed projects backlogged on the B-D that were not happening,” Gatchell said. “When you look at the landscapes and the condition they should be in, you start seeing all the work that needs to be done.”

Hillis’ research looked into some of the treatments, such as fuels thinning and prescribed burns. His conclusion was that where work took place, the result was better habitat connectivity, a more varied mix of trees and a 50 percent reduction in fire incidence and severity.

“Opponents who don’t like selling trees say this is wrong,” Hillis said. “But the objective research shows thinning provides long-term benefits for forest health.”

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at [email protected]

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Note from Sharon: I thought this paragraph was particularly interesting..there are different ways of dealing with uncertainty. Some are arguing for managing based on down-scaled model results (the “best available science”?), and some admitting we just don’t know. Admitting we don’t know can also lead us down a number of different paths, though, at least partially depending on our previous predilictions.

“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”