21st Century Problems

Evolutionary Theory and the Practice of Policy For the 21st Century (2))

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Dr. Bill Libby and I at Unifying Perspectives of Evolution, Conservation and Breeding: A symposium in honour of Dr. Gene Namkoong
Dr. Bill Libby and I at Unifying Perspectives of Evolution, Conservation and Breeding: A symposium in honour of Dr. Gene Namkoong

In this section, I address different framings of the larger issue around forests, and explore how different framings privilege different scientific and other disciplines. This can occur whether a framing is helpful or not to decision makers, or accepted or not by stakeholders, simply due to how research is prioritized and funded (most often, by groups of scientists).

Below is a sample of some ways of looking at the important issues for forests, intended to show the breadth and diversity of approaches that different disciplines can take. As stated above, this tends to be done implicitly, with relatively little debate or discussion among disciplines. It seems likely that discussion across disciplines and with stakeholders and the public about the important issues might serve to focus research to provide better information for future decisions.

Is the basic problem in forestry how to allocate forests to different uses in a wise, just, and environmentally sensitive manner- “how should we manage a given area of land or landscape?” This is traditionally the area of planners, local governments, and landowners. These groups then use scientific information as available to help make decisions. Other valuable information they use in decision-making includes their own experience, experience of practitioners and indigenous people, history, the law, and the mixture of their own preferences and values.

The role of place is specifically linked to this framing of the question. In an era of globalization, land is the ultimate thing that cannot be moved or shipped. Carey (1998) describes the process of becoming located in a place in these words “over time our perceptions, thoughts and feelings undergo a process of integration with that place. We achieve an intimacy with climate and landforms. Adaptation gives way to coevolution. The place changes us even as we change the place.” He goes on to compare “space” and “place”, “space is defined by numerical coordinates, squares on a grid, longitude and latitude. By contrast place is defined by “human experience, by stories and a sense of connection that is born of years spent observing and interacting with a particular ecosystem.” The poet Gary Snyder (1995) calls bioregionalism and watershed consciousness “ a move toward resolving both nature and society with the practice of profound citizenship in both the natural and social worlds. If the ground can be our common ground, we can begin to talk to each other (human and nonhuman) again.” One of the key tensions in land allocation is between local, regional, national and international rights and responsibilities, and a tension between academic, scientific and local knowledge. Yet, framing the issue as helping local decision makers allocate land leaves a different center and clientele for research than some of the other way of asking the question.

From the forestry or landscape architecture point of view, is the question “how should we design landscapes?” McQuillan (1993) mentions both the aesthetic of architecture and aesthetic of participation in the urban or rural environment. McQuillan also points out that forestry is an art as well as a science, as acknowledged by the Society of American Foresters since 1971. Once again, in forests there is science, but what is its proper role- like that of engineering in architecture? Perhaps forestry and conservation biology have this in common, as Soule’ (1985) states in describing conservation biology “in crisis disciplines, one must act before knowing all the facts; crisis disciplines are thus a mixture of science and art, and their pursuit requires intuition as well as information.” Once again real world applications require some mix of intuition, art, and science. Still, looking at the issue as one of design rather than allocation brings art to bear, and a different lens than simply allocation. Framing the question this way leaves science, art, and intuition as partners in design, and on real landscapes, citizens and their political structures.

Is the key question for forests “what practices and technologies should be used?” Certain practices, such as home and road development, logging, and using automobiles, using or not using fire, have effects on water, soil, air, and organisms of all kinds. Can humans decrease our needs, substitute other products, or decrease the negative impacts of these practices? The difficulty with framing the question this way is that in many cases the critical question about practices for a policy maker is not whether it impacts the environment, but what the impacts compared to available alternatives. Often in scientific research, alternatives are not part of the study, which leaves the policy maker to potentially compare apples and oranges, or, more often, kiwifruit and ball bearings. This can lead to the plaintive cry of the scientist to the policy maker along the lines of “if you don’t use my ball bearing in your cake, you are not using the best science.”

Is the question “how can we change human culture to be more sensitive to the environment?” Again, this would be the province of the humanities. Is the problem too many people? Is the problem how to conserve biodiversity? If the question is seen as “how best to protect the environment from people?” or “how can we develop new technologies that provide for people’s needs?” the first group is not realistic because it does not consider that people have needs, while the second group does not consider the social or environmental impacts of its technology. While feeling smug and comfortable within disciplines, reducing the problem into these discrete units is ultimately a political and not scientific action, and leaves us bereft of potential solutions to the problem of harmonizing the needs of humans and other organisms.

Each way of describing the problem has several parameters: different mixes of humanities and sciences to be purveyors of information, different systems of stakeholders and decision makers, paradigms of preservation and use, and different focus on the local compared to general concepts and principles. The paradox is that to some extent each is the problem, the whole problem is each of these and larger than each of these. The paradox is that the answer is a function of the question and who picks the question is a function of values, not science. And we need to base our design of the future on what we know about people and the environment, but also on what resonates with the human soul, a world designed to be a place we would all want to live.

Together We Can Reduce Pest Invasions: Guest Post from Faith Campbell

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faith Faith Campbell has given her time and effort (prodigiously, is the word that comes to my mind) for many years to protecting our forests from introduced pests and diseases, most recently for The Nature Conservancy. As she is retiring, I asked her for a retrospective on her work, and she generously provided one below. Faith- thanks for all you’ve done, and all you continue to do for our forests!

When I was a child, the streets of Washington, D.C. were still shaded by towering elms with sinuous, interlocking branches. When as a 20-something I hiked in Shenandoah National Park, dark hemlock groves were favorite spots. I have many photographs of limber pines silhouetted against Hallet’s Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. I love Hawai`i’s `ohi`a trees growing out of cracks in the lava.

I know I am not alone in mourning the loss – past, current, threatened – of these and other trees. To me, these losses are severely damaging to the environment and represent an ethical failure: we are wantonly squandering species and species assemblages that have evolved over 10,000 or more years.

Many people have devoted their careers to tackling the threats posed by non-native arthropods and pathogens. I have spent 20 years trying to help them get the resources they need – both funding and political support. The longer I have been engaged, the more clearly I see that those of us who want to defend America’s trees from non-native pests need to change the political dynamic. We need to persuade the “political class” of three facts: that the threat to our trees is real, that protecting trees matters, and that solutions are possible.
In short, we can choose different actions and policies to minimize the risk that new damaging pests will invade and spread.

Many people are hurt by the death of trees caused by pests:
• homeowners who must pay to cut down beloved trees, and whose homes are diminished aesthetically and often financially when the tree is gone
• tax-payers in towns which must spend millions to cut down and replace city trees
• people whose livelihoods and cultures are tied to specific types of trees, for example, maple syrup producers, Native American basketweavers or acorn collectors, owners of walnut groves who planned on proceeds from selling the timber to finance retirement or grandchildren’s college educations
• people who enjoy hiking, camping, hunting, or other forms of recreation in the woods,

On a larger scale, about 60 million Americans depend on streams flowing from National Forests for their drinking water. Many cities are planting trees to save energy, trap pollutants, and slow climate change.

The question is, how do we engage the people who care about these issues in ways that will help to change the perception of invasive species, especially forest pests, among the political class? Can we channel their anger, frustration, even despair, into political clout to pressure the Congress and Administrative agencies to adopt more effective regulations and fund programs adequately?

I think one key player that we must somehow engage more effectively is the media. Can we persuade the regional and national media to cover the “why & how” of pest invasions, and what can be done to prevent new invasions? At present they tend to describe only the devastating impacts – which leaves people feeling helpless.

I hope to devote the next several years to trying to change this political dynamic. I welcome your thoughts, opinions, and – most of all – help!

Faith Campbell

The Transformation of Timberland Ownership and Markets in North America

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sorry about the darkness of the slide
sawlog prices
beetle china
bcs timber

Thanks to Craig Rawlings of the Forest Business Network for posting this here.

It’s not every day I get to hear one of America’s top forest industry CEOs speak on the global state of our industry. Mike Covey, CEO of Potlatch Corporation, recently spent the day in Missoula meeting with University of Montana College of Forestry and business students, faculty, and community members, then concluded his day with an hour-long lecture to over 200 folks on “The Transformation of Timberland Ownership and Markets in North America.”

In his presentation, Mike addresses why timber companies are becoming real estate investment trusts and how a global economy affects the U.S. lumber, timber, and log markets. While the U.S. will probably build some 5-7 million homes over the next five years, China has mandated close to 35 million. Where will they get their building products? A lot of it will come from North America. (By the way, companies looking to diversify their markets through exports will certainly benefit from presentations at the SmallWood Conference this June.)

The University of Montana’s video staff did a great job of filming Mike’s speech and I think you will enjoy watching his one-hour presentation and Q&A from the audience.

Here’s a link to the presentation.. thanks to U of M for posting the video and the slides! Interesting info and slides on China.

Amazingly Different Coverage of Wildfire Funding: Denver Post

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Now, in the previous post here I was critical of what I thought was the Administration’s focus on climate change as the source of wildfires.. only to find out that perhaps it was the New York Times’ spin and not entirely the Administration at all! So let’s compare coverage in the Denver Post and the NY Times…

Here’s the story today from the Post.. more useful details, no climate change ..

The Obama administration wants to fundamentally shift how it pays for firefighting in the United States — something Western lawmakers and governors have been agitating to change for years.

The proposal, which doesn’t increase overall spending and is part of President Barack Obama’s budget this year, essentially allows for separate funds to fight fires so the federal government doesn’t have to take money away from prevention.

Amid a number of the most destructive wildfire seasons ever recorded, the Obama administration has been cribbing cash to fight fires from the same pot used for suppression and prevention.

In a classic robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scenario, the departments of Agriculture and Interior had to transfer $463 million in 2012 and $636 million in 2013 to fight fires. Those dollars came from programs that removed brush, managed forests and grasslands, and focused on forest health.

“We can’t keep putting our thumb in the dike,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper, following a White House meeting on the issue. “At some point, we’ve got to make the kind of investments that begin to solve the problem.”

Under the proposal unveiled Monday, the costs to fight severe wildfires — those that require emergency response or are near urban areas — would be funded through a new “wildfire suppression cap adjustment.” This funding mechanism removes firefighting cash from regular discretionary budget caps, thus protecting prevention funds.

This budget cap adjustment would be used only to fund the most severe 1 percent of catastrophic fires, and Congress would need to fund costs for the other 99 percent of fires before the cap funds become available.

In an interview, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called the previous funding method “a vicious cycle.”

“It would also allow us to do a better job to work on the 70,000 communities who are now … surrounded by forest,” he said. “They want the benefit of beautiful scenery. This would give us the resources to better prepare those communities.”

Wildfire destruction has become a worsening problem. Six of the most destructive fire seasons in the past 50 years have been since 2000.

Hickenlooper said White House officials on Monday brought Western governors to the Situation Room to view drought, rain and water table conditions nationwide. White House officials said one-third of American families live within the wildland-urban interface.

“It was very sobering,” Hickenlooper said.

In November, El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark told a Senate panel her community needed the federal government’s help to clear dead, dangerous brush adjacent to urban neighborhoods.

On Capitol Hill, where the president’s plan would need approval, bipartisan bills are pending in both the House and the Senate that support the new funding scheme. Both Democratic Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet support the Senate plan.

“This strategy will ensure we fight today’s fires without undermining efforts to get ahead of tomorrow’s blazes,” Udall said in a statement.

Bennet, who held a hearing last fall on the issue, agreed. “Today’s announcement addresses this issue by promoting a smarter, more sensible approach to dealing with wildfires that will save us money in the future,” he said in a statement.

It’s fascinating to me how stories are reported in different regional and national newspapers. And what newspapers are more likely to “blink out.”

Anyway, here’s my question for this story…”one-third of families live within the wildland-urban interface.” That seems like a lot to me. Does anyone know where this figure came from?

Pinchot Institute Outlook Forum 2014 Webinar Feb. 20

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pinchot_logoHere’s the link for registration. It’s this Thursday.

Outlook Forum 2014 – Natural Resource Management and Accelerating Environmental Change: Challenges, Opportunities, and Questions
Moderator: Al Sample, President, Pinchot Institute

Presenters will include:
David Cleaves, Climate Change Advisor, US Forest Service

Meeting environmental with institutional change – unfolding new and more resilient arrangements for sustainability – President’s Climate Action Plan and Nov 2013 Executive Order
From actionable science to science in action – regional science coordination systems and science/management partnerships
Connected risks – stressors intensified and connected by climate and social change – risk management at the landscape scale
Ecosystem service values in management decisions – integrating carbon sequestration (mitigation) with other services in flux (adaptation).
Realigning institutions – Implementing a new land management planning rule and supporting restoration for resilience.

Stephen Pyne, Professor, Arizona State University; author of Fire in America

Historic wildfire policy/management and evolution as it relates to climate change
What we can learn from the past in a no-analogue future

Carlos Carroll, Science Advisor to Wilburforce Foundation; Klamath Conservation Research Center

Resilient sites as strategy for conserving biodiversity resources in western US and Canada
Characterization→identification/mapping→planning

Chris Topik, Director, Restore America’s Forests, The Nature Conservancy

Collaborative, science-based forestry to accelerate forest restoration and enhance resiliency
Enhancing community and agency capacity to work with fire and changing environments
Broadening coalitions to increase the federal and non-federal funding base for active forestry

Steve Hamburg, Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund

Role of forests in climate change mitigation (emissions reduction, sequestration)
Forest land conservation on private lands; maintaining forest carbon stocks
Optimal role of wood bioenergy within broader sustainability/climate strategy

Carlton Owen, President, US Endowment for Forestry & Communities

“Moving the needle”; big-picture, long-term strategies to make meaningful progress in sustaining forests for water, wildlife, wood, biodiversity, renewable energy
Active management of public and private forests; stable community economic development based on sustainable use of natural resources

Sally Collins, Co-Chair, MegaFlorestais; Rights & Resources Initiative

This century will bring unprecedented changes to the world’s forests. Public forest agencies can positively influence this future or be casualties of it
Regardless of the differences in public forest agencies around the world—institutional age, organizational structure and even the political system in which they operate—some principles are emerging that can help guide the future of effective forest governance in the twenty-first century

Peter Pinchot, President, EcoMadera; Director, Milford Experimental Forest

Community forestry in the agricultural frontier: Rural development and reducing emissions
Industry and government role in reforming commodity supply chains to conserve tropical forests

Small Woody Biomass Plants in Colorado

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In Gypsum, located 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity. A wall board plant is at left, the biomass plant is to the right. Bill Heicher photo.
In Gypsum, located 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity. A wall board plant is at left, the biomass plant is to the right. Bill Heicher photo.

Most of the discussion in Colorado these weeks have been about the green (Cannabis) and the blue and orange (Broncos). Of course, the winter sky is blue, living trees are green and dead trees are orange, at least for a while. Here’s an article in the Sunday Denver Post Perspective, by Allen Best, about some new biomass plants in Colorado.

For most of the last decade, Coloradans have been talking about how to make good use of their mountain forests, dying and gray. Something is finally happening.

In Gypsum, 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity.

In Colorado Springs, the city utility began mixing biomass with coal in January to produce 4.5 megawatts of power.

In Pagosa Springs, a 5-megawatt biomass plant may be launched next year, producing one-sixth of the baseload demand in Archuleta County.

And at Xcel Energy’s headquarters in Denver, environmental officials are sorting through proposals for a 2-megawatt biomass demonstration plant. The utility wants to understand the technology, the problems and promises.

This isn’t much electricity compared to the 1,426 megawatts generated by the Comanche coal-fired complex at Pueblo and the 1,139 megawatts at Craig. But biomass plants can and should be part of the electrical mix. In providing a market for woody material, they can make forests less vulnerable to fires like the ones that have killed nine people and destroyed 1,164 homes along the Front Range over the last two years.

Biomass also displaces burning of fossil fuels, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. That’s worth something, maybe a lot to Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy, which is paying extra for the electricity produced at Gypsum to help reduce its carbon footprint. It expects to be at 23 percent renewables later this year.

Colorado environmental groups, however, are skeptical that biomass plants will actually lower carbon dioxide emissions. “We’re saying we want to see the analysis of greenhouse gas impacts,” says Gwen Farnsworth of Western Resource Advocates.

Biomass clearly can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by displacing fossil fuels, says Keith Paustian, a professor of soil ecology at Colorado State University. “There are questions as to what degree you do that, and obviously, you want as low a carbon footprint as possible,” he says.

Paustian hopes a more detailed accounting of carbon impacts will be a byproduct of the $10 million research project he is leading. The project, the Bioenergy Alliance Network of the Rockies, seeks to examine the potential for conversion of the 22 million acres of beetle-impacted wood in the Rocky Mountains into bioenergy.

An even broader fear among some environmental groups is that public lands will be managed to feed the hunger of biomass plants, instead of the bieomass plants being a useful tool for curbing fire risk. “We don’t want the tail wagging the dog,” says Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop.

If Eagle Valley Clean Energy, developer of the plant at Gypsum, sticks to its projections, that won’t be a problem. It insists that at least 30 percent of wood will come from landfills, another 20 percent or more from private lands, and a minimum of 40 percent from state or federal lands.

As far as I know if the question is “environmental impacts of burning wood that is dead and would give off greenhouse gases anyway, compared to coal and natural gas, it seems like it has been studied, in fact, quite a bit.

What the big biomass controversies I’ve seen are about “if people convert lands to grow biomass energy” or other “ifs” about biomass sources that are not considered to be “residues.”

Western Resource Advocates works against coal and natural gas, which are our current main sources of energy here.

I also appreciated Sloan’s comment. It seems to me you can work with “fear of getting too large” pretty easily by only using small sized units and putting a cap on the total. But if it’s about trust, maybe not. I have to note that back when I worked on bark beetle residues, DOE was supposed to help the FS with this, but focused their work on giant-sized solutions, not small or mobile technologies.

Best’s last paragraph..

In other words, biomass plants aren’t the answer to everything that ails us. They won’t immediately turn our forests green, nor will they alone replace the fossil-fuel plants that are fouling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

But biomass has another attribute. Think of it as the energy equivalent of community agriculture. The 20th century was all about bigger and more centralized production of everything. This creates huge supply lines, mile-long coal trains going to plants, and high-voltage power lines leaving them.

It’s easy to think of water originating in the tap, electricity in the outlet, without broader consequences. Smaller sources of power generation, close to their locations of use, keep us in touch with the spider’s web of our relationship to the energy we use.

You could probably say that about local wood products as well..

Black Hills and Region 1 Comparison : Appeals and Litigation

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Black Hills FACA Committee
Black Hills FACA Committee

This is from Barry Wynsma in Evergreen. Thanks to Jim Petersen for permission to repost. We have discussed the Black Hills success story in terms of litigation and appeals before. here and here. There are several other posts about the Hills you can find by searching in the search box.

There are many notable things about the Hills, including the fact that they have a formal FACA committee (photo above).

It’s fairly long and worth reading in its entirety, but I focused on this section that talks about litigation. Feel free to comment on any of the other parts as well.

The Alliance for The Wild Rockies, The Wild West Institute, The Lands Council, The Native Ecosystems Council, Friends of the Clearwater, Etcetera…

Another reason – maybe the reason – why comparing the Northern Region with the Black Hills National forest may not be equitable is that the sheer number of species that have to be dealt with in Region 1 makes its national forests huge and easy targets for environmentalists who oppose active forest management.

During fiscal year 2012, there were 140 appeals filed in the Northern Region5. As of August of 2013, 44 more appeals were filed in the Northern Region. Of those, 16 were against projects that included commercial sales of forest products [personal communication with FS]. Also as of August 2012, personnel in the R1 regional office told me the appeals/objections were holding up about 225 million board feet of commercial timber sales.

By comparison, the Black Hills National Forest received 3 appeals [actually objections under the “218” rules] in 2012 and none in 2013.

In referencing the Forest Service Appeals and Litigation website6 I can see that in the Northern Region, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, The Land’s Council, Friends of the Clearwater and the Native Ecosystems Council seem to like to appeal all projects that involve the commercial sale of forest products. Readers that check out this website will also see other groups and individuals that have made it their agenda to appeal commercial timber sale projects.

In comparison and referencing the same Forest Service website, Friends of the Norbeck, Prairie Hills Audubon Society and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance appears to be the only environmental groups that occasionally appeal projects on the Black Hills National Forest.

The Government Accountability Office [GAO] provided data on Forest Service appeals and litigation for the period 2006-20087 for fuels reduction projects, not necessarily including all projects that involve commercial sale of forest products.

Excerpted from the GAO report are the following findings:

“In fiscal years 2006 through 2008, the Forest Service issued 1,415 decisions involving fuel reduction activities, covering 10.5 million acres.

Of this total, 1,191 decisions, covering about 9 million acres, were subject to appeal and 217-about 18 percent-were appealed. Another 121 decisions, covering about 1.2 million acres, were subject to objection and 49-about 40 percent-were objected to. The remaining 103 decisions were exempt from both objection and appeal. Finally, 29 decisions-about 2 percent of all decisions-were litigated, involving about 124,000 acres.

For 54 percent of the appeals filed, the Forest Service allowed the project to proceed without changes; 7 percent required some changes before being implemented; and 8 percent were not allowed to be implemented. The remaining appeals were generally dismissed for procedural reasons or withdrawn before they could be resolved. Regarding objections, 37 percent of objections resulted in no change to a final decision; 35 percent resulted in a change to a final decision or additional analysis on the part of the Forest Service; and the remaining 28 percent were set aside from review for procedural reasons or addressed in some other way. And finally, of the 29 decisions that were litigated, lawsuits on 21 decisions have been resolved, and 8 are ongoing. Of the lawsuits that have been resolved, the parties settled 3 decisions, 8 were decided in favor of the plaintiffs, and 10 were decided in favor of the Forest Service. All appeals and objections were processed within prescribed time frames-generally, within 90 days of a decision (for appeals), or within 60 days of the legal notice of a proposed decision (for objections).”

Note that this report found that of the projects involved in this report, 18 percent were appealed, 40 percent were objected to and “only” about two percent were litigated. Some environmentalists like to use this two percent figure to downplay the significance of their commercial timber sale appeals.

While this may be true on its face, it reminds me of the Forest Service claim that more than 90 percent of all wildfires in the U.S. each year are put out before they become catastrophic. Whether it’s a big fire or a big lawsuit, the two percent we are discussing is causing significant damage to the environment, to the ability for the Forest Service to manage timber stands that are suitable for commercial timber harvests and to the economic stability of the communities surrounded by national forests.

Looking at the GAO report again, Tables 7 and 8 show that the top five “serial” appellants [to coin Jim Petersen’s phrase] in the Northern Region for the period 2006-2008 includes the Alliance for the Wild Rockies with 35 appeals/objections, the Wild West Institute with 26 appeals/objections, The Land’s Council with 25 appeals/objections, Native Ecosystems Council with 13 appeals/objections and Friends of the Clearwater with 8 appeals/objections. The Northern Region had a total of 187 appeals/objections during this period from the above mentioned and other groups and individuals.

Tables 7 and 8 also provide comparative data for the Rocky Mountain Region, but not the Black Hills National Forest specifically. Even so, the entire region – which includes the BHNF – saw only 44 appeals/objections during the same time frame. The appeals were filed by the following environmental groups: Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, 13 appeals/objections; Colorado Wild, 5 appeals/objections; Prairie Hills Audubon Society, 4 appeals; Western Watersheds Project, 1 appeal; Great Old Broads for Wilderness, 1 objection, Sierra Club, 1 objection, Sinapu, 1 objection, Wilderness Workshop, 1 objection and; Wild Connections, 1 appeal.

All these appeals, objections and a small percentage of litigation has a catastrophic affect not just on those projects that have been directly targeted, but more often than not, they indirectly effect most if not all projects nationally that are undergoing environmental analysis and the NEPA process. This is especially true for those projects that entail commercial timber harvests. There is a ripple effect on the recommended level of analysis needed to satisfy the latest court case decisions in order to head off the future threat of litigation.

Because appeals and litigation often involve the issues of threatened, endangered and sensitive species (based on my personal experience for the past 23 years as a project leader and 33 years as a Forest Service employee), you can plainly see that those forests and regions that have more listed species will have a correspondingly higher level of difficulty navigating the appeals/objection/litigation process.

Barry was a 33 year employee of the Forest Service, the last 23 as a small sales and special forest products project leader on the Bonners Ferry Ranger District, Idaho Panhandle NF. I specialized in small tree and biomass utilization projects and was also a co-author of the Forest Service’s Woody Biomass Utilization Desk Guide.

Lackey’s Salmon Policy Paper II: A Science Excerpt

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CHIN_FallLC

Considering that blog readers might not want to read all of Lackey’s paper, that I posted in the previous post here, I am posting another couple of excerpts.

The billions spent on salmon recovery might be considered “guilt money” — modern-day indulgences — a tax society and individuals willingly bear to alleviate their collective and individual remorse. It is money spent on activities not likely to achieve recovery of wild salmon, but it helps people feel better as they continue the behaviors and choices that preclude the recovery of wild salmon.

and

Salmon Policy Lesson 2 — Fisheries scientists, managers, and analysts are systemically encouraged to avoid explicitly conveying unpleasant facts or trade-offs to the public, senior bureaucrats, or elected officials.

…Such a message to “lighten up” is also reflected in the comments of some colleagues in reviewing salmon recovery manuscripts. For example, a common sentiment is captured by one reviewer’s comment on a manuscript: “You have to give those of us trying to restore wild salmon some hope of success.”
In contrast, some colleagues, especially veterans of the unending political conflict over salmon policy, confessed their regret over the “optimistic” approach that they had taken during their careers in fisheries, and they now endorse the “tell it like it is” tactic. They felt that they had given false hope about the effectiveness of fishways, hatcheries, and the ability of their agencies to manage mixed stock fishing. Many professional fisheries scientists have been pressured by employers, funding organizations, and colleagues to “spin” fisheries science and policy realism to accentuate optimism. Sometimes the pressure on scientists to cheerlead is blunt; other times it is subtle. For example, consider the coercion of scientists by other scientists (often through nongovernmental professional societies) to avoid highlighting the importance of U.S. population policy on sustaining natural resources (Hurlbert 2013). The existence of such institutional and organizational pressure is rarely discussed except among trusted colleagues; nevertheless it is real.

Other colleagues took professional refuge in the reality that senior managers or policy bureaucrats select and define the policy or science question to be addressed, thus constraining research. Consequently, the resulting scientific information and assessments are often scientifically rigorous, but so narrowly focused that the information is only marginally relevant to decision makers. Rarely are fisheries scientists encouraged to provide “big picture” assessments of the future of salmon. Whether inadvertent or not, such constrained
information often misleads the public into endorsing false expectations of the likelihood of the recovery of wild salmon (Lackey 2001a, Hurlbert 2011).

If there are 50 things you could do, and not-logging is one of them (like not-farming, not-developing, not-fishing, not-damming, etc.), wouldn’t we want to know 1) how effective each intervention would be and 2) and who specifically would win and lose under each scenario, so that appropriate policy remedies for their pain might be considered? (Of course, scientists wouldn’t agree…) Otherwise we might target the most politically easy (say logging on public lands…), cause difficulties to communities that we don’t openly examine,
and never really fix the problem.

Saving Wild Salmon: A 165 Year Policy Conundrum: Bob Lackey

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Massive Adams River Sockeye Salmon Migration

Here’s a paper that in which Bob Lackey talks about salmon policy 165 Year Salmon Policy Conundrum – R T Lackey, which Bob asked me to review before it was published (full disclosure).

Scientists tend to depict the policy debate as a scientific or ecological challenge and the “solutions” they offer are usually focused on aspects of salmon ecology (Naiman et al 2012). There is an extensive scientific literature about salmon (Quinn 2005, Lackey et al 2006a), but the reality is that the future of wild salmon largely will be determined by factors outside the scope of science (Montgomery 2003, Lackey et al 2006b). More specifically, to effect a long-term reversal of the downward trajectory of wild salmon, a broad suite of related public policy issues must be considered:

 Hydroelectric energy — how costly and reliable does society want energy to be given that wild salmon ultimately will be affected by providing the relatively cheap, carbon-free, and reliable energy produced by hydropower?

 Land use — where will people be able to live, how much living space will they be permitted, what activities will they be able to do on their own land, and what personal choices will they have in deciding how land is used?

 Property rights — will the acceptable use of private land be altered and who or what institutions will decide what constitutes acceptable use?

 Food cost and choice — will food continue to be subsidized by taxpayers (e.g., publicly funded irrigation, crop subsidies) or will the price of food be solely determined by a free market?

 Economic opportunities — how will high-paying jobs be created and sustained for this and subsequent generations?

 Individual freedoms — which, if any, personal rights or behavioral choices will be compromised or sacrificed if society is genuinely committed to restoring wild salmon?

 Evolving priorities — is society willing to substitute hatchery-produced salmon for wild salmon and, if so, will the ESA permit this?

 Political realities — will society support modifying the ESA such that salmon recovery expenditures can be shifted to those watersheds offering the best chance of success?

 Cultural legacies — which individuals and groups, if any, will be granted the right to fish and who or what institutions will decide?

 Indian treaties — will treaties between the United States and various tribes, negotiated over 150+ years ago, be modified to reflect today’s dramatically different biological, economic, and demographic realities?

 Population policy — what, if anything, will society do to influence or control the level of the human population in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho or indeed the U.S. as a whole?

 Ecological realties — given likely future conditions (i.e., an apparently warming climate), what wild salmon recovery goals are biologically realistic?

 Budgetary realities — will the fact that the annual cost of sustaining both hatchery and wild salmon runs in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho exceeds the overall market value of the harvest eventually mean that such a level of budgetary expenditure will become less politically viable?

These are a few of the key policy questions that are germane to the public debate over wild salmon policy. Scientific information, while at some level relevant and necessary, is clearly not at the crux of the wild salmon policy debate. Scientists can provide useful technical insight and ecological reality checks to help the public and decision makers answer these policy questions, but science

There are three interesting subtopics to me in this paper.

First, he tackles how ESA is not working for salmon in his view.. worth looking at.

Second, he describes the dynamics that keep scientists working and funded yet not producing information that leads to the desired outcome.. because..

(Third,) the desired outcome is very very hard or impossible to achieve politically when it goes toward a kind of a political “undiscussable” (I first heard this term used by folks from Dialogos, but they probably did not coin it); population growth. Now those of us old enough to be retired may remember when population stabilizing and reduction was an important part of the environmental NGO agenda. Perhaps Andy’s post about the Old Times started me thinking about this aspect of the environmental movement of the past.

I think we’ve discussed enough topics on this blog so that we can even tackle this one without name-calling.

Here’s a a quote from the Dalai Lama:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 14th leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

One of the great challenges today is the population explosion. Unless we area able to tackle this issue effectively we will be confronted with the problem of the natural resources being inadequate for all the human beings on this earth.

So now the question is…the population of the human being…So the only choice…limited number…happy life…meaningful life. Too many population…miserable life and always
bullying one another, exploiting one another…there’s no use.

Note that he talks about natural resources being inadequate.

Well, back to Bob Lackey. Actually, he hits on three pretty- much undiscussables (not that you can’t discuss them, but in many fora you will be called names if you do); problems with ESA, how science really works, and population. I think it’s worth bringing these to the attention of folks on the blog; one of the things I hope to do is share views of people who aren’t heard from through the standard media or academic channels. Possibly because their worldview does not fit their paradigms or structures.

In-Depth: How Tester’s mandated logging bill has divided conservationists

by
“If there’s any reason that the Tester bill has not moved along better than it has, it’s because of its mandates that there not only be logging, but that certain amounts of timber be extracted.  Conservation-minded Senators are very hesitant to vote for that, even though they recognize the Montana wilderness dilemma. They don’t want to set a precedent for other bills to do the same thing….I do worry about the mandate of it.  If I was in the Congress, and all this time had gone by without success on designating new wilderness, I would try to amend the Tester bill in one way or other.” 
– Former Montana Congressman Pat Williams 

Collaboration conundrum – Wilderness advocates sharply divided on ‘consensus’ proposals
By John S. Adams, Great Falls Tribune

At a June 8, 1997, gathering in Kalispell, former U.S. Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas foretold a vision of the future for national forest management in Montana.

According to a newspaper account of Thomas’ address to the Montana Logging Association, President Bill Clinton’s former forest chief predicted a “golden decade of conservation” in which environmental groups and timber interests would work side by side to reach “consensus” on the future of management of federal forest land.

Thomas predicted those collaborative projects on the national forests would break down the barriers to logging on public lands and “marginalize extremists.”

“I don’t see any other game in town,” Thomas said in a report in the Daily Inter Lake.

More than 16 years later, Thomas’ prediction has partly come to pass, but with as-yet-undetermined results.

If Thomas’ “golden decade of conservation” relies on the success of consensus and collaboration, then there may be no better test of that theory than Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

FJRA is the first major piece of federal land management legislation in Montana to spring from the well of “collaboration,” and it is by far the most ambitious and controversial. Many wilderness advocates have fiercely opposed the measure since its introduction in 2009. Their primary criticism of the bill, though they have many, is that it mandates the Forest Service log tens of thousands of acres in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai national forests.

Sen. Max Baucus followed Tester’s bill with a proposal of his own in 2011. The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act has many of the same detractors who say it designates a paltry amount of wilderness while locking-in grazing, logging and motorized recreation. However, with its lack of logging mandates and fewer carve outs for permanent motorized recreation, the opposition from the environmental community is less severe.

Both bills rely on the idea of bringing the timber industry groups, conservationists and other stakeholders together to hammer out consensus proposals for public land management. That concept, particularly when it comes to Wilderness proposals, has fierce detractors in the environmental movement.

Count 88-year-old Stewart “Brandy” Brandborg among them.

Brandborg was director of Wilderness Society from 1964 to 1977. His grass-roots organizing and advocacy were pivotal in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act.

Brandborg, the son of former Bitterroot National Forest supervisor and early Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness advocate G.M. Brandborg, spent much of his youth traipsing around in the places that would much later be designated as federal wilderness thanks in large part to his efforts.

Collaboration, as demonstrated by the process that created FJRA and the Heritage Act, is antithetical to the original concept of the 1964 Wilderness Act and threatens to undermine the bedrock administrative laws that demand public involvement and transparency in land management decisions, Brandborg said.

“Good management of land prescribed by public land agencies, and good protective measures for water and our environment in general, are being subjected to a rash of proposals and policies that defy every rule and every restriction we’ve placed on resource management,” Brandborg says. “I take gross exception to the go-along policies of those state and local organizations who say we can embrace collaboration.”

Four-and-a-half years since Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act was first introduced, the bill continues to languish in the Senate, and wilderness advocates remained locked in a bitter internecine battle that some say could undermine the entire future of wilderness in Montana.

On the one side are the fiery wilderness conservationists whose work and advocacy centers on the prevention of new roads and industrial resource extraction on Montana’s remaining roadless landscapes.

On the other side are the pragmatic conservationists who say collaborative proposals built on consensus and compromise among various stakeholders are the only realistic approach to the larger goal of adding more wilderness in Montana. Large-scale “wilderness-on-its-own” legislation that doesn’t include “place-based solutions” that appeal to local community interests — including the timber industry — don’t stand a chance of passing, they say.

Poster child

First introduced in 2009, the core of the FJRA proposal sprang from a series of private meetings that began in 2005 between Sun Mountain Lumber, Roseburg Forest Products, Pryamid Mountain Lumber, RY Timber, Smurfit Stone, Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation and Montana Trout Unlimited.

In its current form, it calls for approximately 666,000 acres of new wilderness while mandating a minimum of 5,000 acres of logging per year on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest until at least 70,000 acres have been logged.

Another 30,000 acres would be mandated for logging on the Kootenai National Forest.

Conservation groups who support the measure, including the logging mandates, point to the trade-offs in the FJRA as the key to breaking the gridlock that has left Montana without a new “Big W” wilderness designation for more than 30 years.

“To me, personally, I can’t accept the idea that wilderness is something that other states get to enjoy the benefits of and protect — 29 other states in the last 30 years — but not Montana. Because we have lands that are superbly qualified to be in the wilderness system,” said John Gatchell, conservation director for the Montana Wilderness Association.

Only Idaho, with 9.3 million acres, has more roadless land in the lower 48 than Montana, with 6.3 million acres. Idaho and Montana are the only states with vast tracts of roadless wildlands that have not passed large-scale statewide wilderness designation bills in the past three decades.

MWA’s supporters say it’s high time to make new wilderness happen, even if that means turning over some of Montana’s roadless land to logging, mechanized recreation and other activities that are nonconforming to wilderness characteristics, as part of the deal.

Gatchell says the alternative is to continue to wait and watch as wildland currently suitable for wilderness designation are degraded by activities and uses that would forever exempt them from future designation.

A pure, large-scale wilderness bill, such as the 20-year-old Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act has no chance of passing Congress, Gatchell says. NREPA has been introduced five times since 1993, and though it has drawn many congressional co-sponsors over the years, it has failed to make it to the floor for a vote.

“A bill that doesn’t get voted on cannot protect, will not protect and has not protected a single acre of Montana,” Gatchell said. “I just think that what’s important here is we need legislation and we need the Montana delegation, or some members of the delegation, to champion that legislation for it to pass Congress.”

New precedent

Other wilderness advocates see the collaborative process behind FJRA as monumental threat to the future of America’s public lands legacy.

With its mandated logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, release of wilderness study areas and carve-outs for motorized recreation and mountain biking, the precedents set by FJRA would make it too tempting for members of Congress in other states to follow its lead, some detractors say.

The possibility of new era of congressionally mandated levels of public lands resource extraction is not worth the tradeoff for a few hundred thousand acres of wilderness, say environmental critics of the bill.

Matthew Koehler, executive director for the Missoula-based WildWest Institute, testified against FJRA during a 2009 Senate committee hearing on the bill. Koehler has been highly critical of the substance of FJRA since it was first introduced. Koehler’s main critique of the measure, though he has many, is the precedent it could set for future lawmakers.

“At a time when the approval rating of politicians in Congress is at 10 or 15 percent, these groups want to take management authority away from the Forest Service and the public and they want to put it in the hands of politicians to mandate resource extraction levels on public lands,” Koehler said. “If Tester’s bill passes, it will open up the door in years to come for politicians all around the country to say, ‘You know what? In my state we’re going to tell the Forest Service that we want this amount of grazing, or this amount of fracking, or this amount of coal mining.’

“I don’t feel like getting a few more acres of wilderness in Montana is worth forsaking America’s entire public lands legacy,” Koehler said. “That’s not a fair trade in any way shape or form.”

Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, says critics such as Koehler are lone voices in the wilderness who don’t represent the viewpoint of the majority of Montanans.

Farling says “individual environmentalists” such as Koehler are sour grapes detractors who refuse to offer up proactive solutions to the “gridlock” that exists in public land management, and instead choose to appeal and litigate timber sales.

“They’re hypocrites,” Farling says. “They cut deals all the time. They appeal, sue the Forest Service, sit down and negotiate behind closed doors and say ‘OK, you guys stay out of here, we’re OK with you going over here.’”

Farling said the public knows what the collaborators are doing and the process is open and transparent, a point to which Koehler takes exception.

“Some of the worse examples of collaboration in Montana are nothing more than invite-only, self-selective groups that are dominated by politically connected and well-funded organizations and the timber industry,” Koehler said.

“If the litmus test for participating in their invite-only processes is that you must agree that politicians, through legislative riders, mandate the amount of logging or resource extraction on public lands, well we’re not going to participate, nor are many other people going to participate in such a tainted process,” Koehler said.

Internecine conflict

Brandborg, the octogenarian wilderness organizer, takes a harsh view of the collaborators who are at the heart of the FJRA. Brandborg believes moneyed interest closely tied to Democratic Party politics are to blame for the conservation movement’s willingness to “cut the baby in half” on wilderness protection.

“We’ve had an evolution in the strategies of our opponents, who have said, ‘Let’s go find these weak elements in Montana. Let’s go cultivate them and get them money so they can go about this job of … bringing down their forceful campaigns to protect wild- lands,” Brandborg said.

Larry Campbell, a longtime grass-roots wilderness advocate with Friends of the Bitterroot and close friend of Brandborg’s, said there’s always been a rub within the environmental community between those groups that appeal and litigate and the larger, better-funded, membership-based groups that take a more mainstream approach to conservation advocacy.

Campbell maintains wilderness advocates lost very few wilderness-eligible acres to development and other non-conforming activities since 1988, when President Ronald Reagan pocket-vetoed the last Montana wilderness bill to pass Congress.

That measure was supported by all three Democratic members of Montana’s federal delegation at the time, Sens. John Melcher and Max Baucus and Rep. Pat Williams. Republican Rep. Ron Marlenee opposed the measure, which would have designated 1.4 million acres of Forest Service land into wilderness and released approximately 4 million acres of protected wildlands to development. With Reagan’s veto most of those lands remained under protected status until Congress acted to change it. So far that hasn’t happened.

Campbell says most of Montana’s wildlands have remained undeveloped since then thanks to grass-roots wilderness advocates who actively organized and participated in federal administrative appeals processes and litigation.

Campbell said the new wave of collaboration threatens to undermine years of work by groups like Friends of the Bitterroot, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, WildWest Institute and other grassroots organizations who fought hard to keep those lands protected.

“We did not lose very many wilderness acres between 1988, when Pat Williams’ wilderness bill went down, and when this thing (FJRA) was hammered out,” Campbell said. “We were protecting all of them — the wilderness study areas, the inventoried roadless areas as well as the small ‘r’ roadless areas — from projects, timber sales, whatever, and we won.”

Campbell said the smaller, grass-roots activist groups were content to maintain that track of protection until the political conditions were ripe for another shot at a large-scale wilderness proposal. When President Bill Clinton in 2001 implemented the Roadless Area Conservation Policy directive, known as the “roadless rule,” it gave groups like Friends of the Bitterroot even more tools to protect Montana’s wildlands.

“We had going for us the appeals and litigation administrative process, the roadless rule protections, and also some court decisions that were adding to our toolbox all the time,” Campbell said.

Campbell said at the time MWA, TU and others began sitting down with the timber industry, wilderness conservation advocates “had more tools” to protect wildlands than ever.

“They started cutting up our babies,” Campbell said. “The true grass-roots activists who had been fighting for these wildlands in force on the ground, were not invited to be a part of the process. Those grass-roots groups are the groups who appealed and litigated and actually protected those wildlands that went on the table and started getting diced up by the junior politicians.”

Peter Aengst, senior regional director for the Wilderness Society, says Montana’s wilderness advocates shouldn’t be airing their differences and disagreements in the public sphere. The Wilderness Society, which Brandborg once helmed, supports FJRA and other collaborative conservation projects including the Heritage Act.

“We’ll have disagreements, I think that’s fine, I think hopefully we can all learn from each other,” Aengst said. “The idea of labeling, the idea of in the media attacking one another, that doesn’t help anyone.”

Aengst said it’s unrealistic for groups such as Friends of the Bitterroot or WildWest Institute or the Helena-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies to expect the entire wilderness conservation movement to follow the beat of their drum.

“It’s not realistic to expect that we’re all going to agree on everything, but that doesn’t have to stop us from moving forward and exploring collaborative place-based solutions,” Aengst said. “I think generally we all share the same end goals. I don’t think that’s where the disagreement is.”

Williams has been contemplating the rift between the two main camps in Montana’s wilderness advocacy community.

“Interestingly enough, both sides are right and both sides know it,” Williams said. “On the one hand, the people who want one large, intact, statewide bill are ecologically correct. In other words, that side understands that grizzly bears don’t know where the county lines are.

“However, the place-based people, while sometimes setting aside ecological importance, are more correct in their political strategy,” Williams said. “That is, a huge bill, would likely not pass the congress, whereas a series of smaller place-based bills might.”

Unknown outcomes

So far Tester’s bill has not made it out of committee, but the collaborative process that led to the first wilderness proposal in the state in more than 20 years has managed to drive a deep wedge in the state’s wilderness conservation community.

Williams said he believes the only wilderness bill that has a strong change of passing in Montana anytime in the near future is Baucus’ Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act. Williams said if the measure makes it to the floors of Congress for a vote, “voting against it would be akin to voting against protecting the Statue of Liberty.”

Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, with is controversial logging mandates, faces a much tougher row to hoe.

“The Tester bill, with its protections of place combined with logging mandates, should long ago have appealed to both sides, and yet it sits unpassed in the U.S. Senate,” Williams said. “That surprises me and says to me that Montana may have some very rough legislative patches ahead in trying to protect its landscape.”

Williams, an FJRA supporter, said no other wilderness bill before Congress has ever taken the approach FJRA has.

“If there’s any reason that the Tester bill has not moved along better than it has, it’s because of its mandates that there not only be logging, but that certain amounts of timber be extracted,” Williams said. “Conservation-minded Senators are very hesitant to vote for that, even though they recognize the Montana wilderness dilemma. They don’t want to set a precedent for other bills to do the same thing.”

Williams said if he were still in Congress, he would try to amend FJRA, but if the only way to pass it was to keep it intact as written, he would vote for it.

“In some ways it would be an environmental improvement, but I do worry about the mandate of it,” Williams said. “If I was in the Congress, and all this time had gone by without success on designating new wilderness, I would try to amend the Tester bill in one way or other. Success or not, in the end I would vote for it.”

According to GovTrack.us the prognosis for the FJRA is not good.

The congressional bill tracking website gives it just a 4 percent chance of getting out of committee and only a one percent chance of being enacted.

Last session the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed 11 percent of the bills brought to it, and of those only three percent were enacted.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., has signed on as co-sponsor of a public lands bill Montana conservationists are united in their opposition to.

Washington Republican Rep. Doc Hastings’ “Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act,” would result in an estimated six-fold increase in logging on Montana’s national forest land. The bill also prohibits litigation on certain types of timber sales and exempts certain timber sales of up to 15.6 square miles in size from environmental review.

Farling, Gatchell and Aengst said the Daines-Hastings proposal is a “top-down” “bad bill” that was “developed in Washington, D.C.,” as opposed to “on the ground in Montana.”

“It’s not going to go anywhere,” Farling said. “It’s really kind of a really radical departure from what the public wants and what is appropriate.”

Brandborg, Koehler and Campbell point out that many of the same timber partners who publicly supported FJRA are also backing the Hastings-Daines bill. They say participation by groups such as MWA, TU and the Wildernss Society in the FJRA collaborative has hamstrung those groups from publicly speaking out against the logging mandates in the Daines-Hastings bill.

“They went off the slippery slope and into the crevasse with this Daines bill,” Campbell said. “It wasn’t hard to predict.”

Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act

H.R. 1526
Sponsor: Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
Co-Sponsors: Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Rob Bishop, R-Utah; Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Morgan Griffith, R-Va.; Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash.; Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif.; Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.; Tom McClintock, R-Calif.; Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.; Steve Pearce, R-N.M.; Reid Ribble, R-Wis.; Steve Southerland, R-Fla.; Glenn Thompson, R-Pa.; Don Young, R-Alaska; Dan Benishek, R-Mich.; Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Tom Cotton, R-Ariz.; Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.; Mike Coffman, R-Colo.; Spencer Bachus, R-Ala; and Steven Palazzo, R-Miss.

First introduced: April 2013

Status: Passed the House

Key provisions of the bill:

Would direct the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish at least one “Forest Reserve Revenue Area” within each unit of the National Forest System designated for logging and forest reserve revenues. The purpose of an area is to “provide a dependable source of 25 percent payments” and economic activity for each beneficiary county containing System land that was eligible to receive payments through its state under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000.

• Creates a legally binding public lands logging mandate with no environmental or fiscal feasibility limits and reestablishes the 25 percent logging revenue sharing system with counties that was eliminated over a decade ago;

• Within the areas covered under the measure public participation under the National Environmental Policy Act would be limited and Endangered Species Act protections would be greatly reduced;

• Would bar federal courts from issuing injunctions against Forest Service-logging projects based on alleged violations of procedural requirements in selecting, planning, or analyzing the project;

• Lawsuits over National Forest timber sales resulting from the 2013 wildfires would be barred from federal court.

Forest Jobs and Recreation Act

S. 37
Sponsor: Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.
Co-Sponsor: Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

First introduced: June 2009

Status: Assigned to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee January, 2013

Key provisions in the bill:

• Designates about 666,000 acres of wilderness on Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Kootenai, and Lolo National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands in southwestern Montana.

• Designates 1.9 million acres of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, including Inventoried Roadless Areas, as “timber suitable or open to harvest;”

• Mandates that the Forest Service log a minimum of 70,000 acres on Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and 30,000 acres on the Kootenai National Forest;

• Releases seven Wilderness Study Areas, covering 76,000 acres, and opens them up to other uses, such as timber harvest and motorized recreation.

Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act

S. 364
Sponsor: Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
Co-Sponsor: Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

First introduced: October 2011

Status: Passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee

Key provisions of the bill:

• Adds 67,000 acres of designated wilderness to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex;

• Designates 208,000 acres as a conservation management area that allows motorized recreation and access, logging, grazing mountain biking and other existing uses;

• Supports noxious weed prevention programs for agricultural and public lands across the Rocky Mountain Front.