Budget

Help Wanted!: FS Recreation Funding

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Hwy. 2 sunset facing south in the Angeles National Forest.

What I like about this post is that it acknowledges that there’s a problem if the FS can’t charge fees and doesn’t get funding from Congress.

Our ire at the Forest Service has nothing to do with whether or not the government agency is properly funded. For decades now, in fact, it has been severely underfunded. We don’t object to creative ways to get it more money to protect our wildlands. In fact, we would wager that many if not most avid hikers, backpackers, car campers, fishers, hunters and other forest users would be more than glad to pitch in with their charitable donations to keep their mountain, desert and other wild lands clean and safe – perhaps to a nonprofit organization specifically set up for that purpose.
Put a donation booth at every trail head with a smiling volunteer and watch the money roll in – voluntarily.

I think the FS already has many donation booths at trailheads.. does anyone know of studies or data ata on how much money people donate?

The idea of a not for profit is interesting.. what are people thinking the not-for-profit would do that the FS couldn’t do..keep the funds for local improvements? General mistrust of the FS? I’m hoping people can point NCFP readers to what is known about this topic. Everyplace I know recreation is important and faces shortfalls; don’t we communally need to work on some solutions?

Or could the partners like the REI or the OIA (discussed under “roadless” in a previous post) to donate 5% of all of certain kinds of outdoor equipment to go to a recreation not-for-profit to benefit FS recreation? it seems like we have a) creative and brilliant minds around who recreate on the national forests and 2) lots of people using the forests, including 3) corporate entities and their associations; somehow that seems like it ought to translate into enough money to take care of our recreation sites.

Does anyone know of ideas that have been successful or that might be worth trying?

Here’s the whole piece:

Our View: Good riddance, Adventure Pass
Posted: 02/18/2012 06:15:20 AM PST

http://www.sgvtribune.com/opinions/ci_19994719

WE’VE known it all along, and have been saying so since 1998. But sometimes it takes literally making a federal case out of an injustice in order to make common sense into law.
Speaking for a unanimous panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a ruling this month in favor of four hikers who objected to paying a fee to visit an Arizona forest, Judge Robert Gettleman wrote: “Everyone is entitled to enter national forests without paying a cent.”
Of course we are. These federal lands are paid for by our tax dollars. (For that matter, we welcome into them foreign hiking and sightseeing buffs who don’t pay American taxes at all. Good PR for America’s great outdoors.) The absurdly concocted Adventure Passes all but a few protesting conscientious objectors have been forced to pay these past 14 years are nothing more than a case of double taxation that never should have been cooked up in the first place.
Technically, if you even pulled your vehicle over to the side of the road on Highway 2 through our Angeles National Forest and took a stroll to a lookout point, you had to fork over $5 for the privilege – or $30 for an annual “pass.”
We already have that right. It’s not something you can extort money from us to do. This ruling clearly marks the end of the Adventure Pass once and for all.
Even so, the curmudgeonly local Forest Service isn’t ready to, as it were, buy in.
“I don’t have anything officially on that at this time,” said Sherry Rollman, spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service in Arcadia.
“It happened in another state and we haven’t assessed it yet.”
What planet is the USFS living on? This isn’t a state matter. It’s not the California Forest Service. Its workers are federal employees, and this ruling was made by a federal judge. We’re one big country, and a happier one for the ruling that we have a right to walk on our own land without being nickled and dimed in order to do so.
Our ire at the Forest Service has nothing to do with whether or not the government agency is properly funded. For decades now, in fact, it has been severely underfunded. We don’t object to creative ways to get it more money to protect our wildlands. In fact, we would wager that many if not most avid hikers, backpackers, car campers, fishers, hunters and other forest users would be more than glad to pitch in with their charitable donations to keep their mountain, desert and other wild lands clean and safe – perhaps to a nonprofit organization specifically set up for that purpose.
Put a donation booth at every trail head with a smiling volunteer and watch the money roll in – voluntarily.
The 9th Circuit ruling hedges a bit. Those who go to a place in the forest with “a majority of the nine amenities” offered in developed areas such as picnic tables, permanent toilets, garbage cans and running water, may be charged, the court said.
We’re not sure about that logic, and not sure how such uses can be quantified. But we’ll take the present ruling and run with it – and perambulate, cycle, swim and more through the lands that are owned by us all together.

2013 President’s Budget

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Budget would see slight increase under 2013 request

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Monday, February 13, 2012

The Obama administration requested a slight bump in Forest Service funding in fiscal 2013, including an increase for wildfire fighting.

The agency’s $4.861 billion request would be a $15.5 million increase compared to current funding levels.

The request would fund the collaborative forest landscape restoration program at $40 million, the maximum authorized amount and on par with current funding levels. The program enjoys widespread support from conservation groups, the timber industry and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“The president’s budget continues to emphasize the Forest Service’s ability to restore our nation’s forests through landscape scale efforts,” says the administration’s Agriculture Department budget summary.

“These efforts include targeting scarce resources to on the ground activities, implementing a comprehensive approach to restoration and maintenance of sustainable landscapes, streamlining programs to improve forest management efficiency [and] reducing wildfire risk.”

The budget requests $1.97 billion for wildland fire management, an increase of $236 million above current levels. The budget also calls for $315 million for the FLAME wildfire suppression reserve fund, which is roughly even with the 2012 level.

But the budget requests $346 million for capital improvement and maintenance, a dip of $48 million below current funding levels.

Click here to read the Forest Service’s 2013 budget overview.

Here’s an article about putting payments to counties in the President’s budget

Obama puts NW timber funds in budget
Making the five-year extension a mandatory spending item is ‘solid step,’ says Sen. Wyden

February 14, 2012
Paul Fattig
By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120214/NEWS/202140321

President Barack Obama’s extension of the safety net payments for counties dependent on timber dollars in his new federal budget proposal is a good start, says U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
“It is a solid step in the right direction,” Wyden said Monday in a telephone interview with the Mail Tribune.
The proposal amounts by year
Total amounts that would be allocated each year under the plan
First year $328 million
Second year $294 million
Third year $195 million
Fourth year $145 million
Fifth year $113 million
“It has three things that are very important: mandatory spending, a five-year budget for the counties and a specific funding amount.”
In his $3.8 trillion plan announced Monday for the federal budget year that begins Oct. 1, Obama calls for mandatory funding for the “timber” counties in the West for the next five federal fiscal years.
For the first year, the counties would receive about $328 million, followed by $294 million the second year, $195 million the third, $145 million the fourth and $113 million the final fiscal year, Wyden said.
In the past, county payment extensions were designated in the federal budget as discretionary spending, meaning they could be cut.
However, mandatory spending is controlled by laws other than the annual appropriations acts, with funding provided without requiring further action by Congress, according to Wyden’s staff.
While noting that including the payments in the president’s budget doesn’t guarantee its extension in the long budgetary process, having the presidential backing is significant, Wyden said.
The extension would help budget-strapped counties bridge the gap until a final solution is found, said Wyden, who has been calling for a temporary extension of the timber payments while a long-term solution is worked out.
“The proposal isn’t perfect, but it gives us something to work with while making it clear that abandoning rural communities is not an option,” he said, adding the Oregon delegation prefers more generous funding levels.
The Secure Rural Schools Act of 2000, co-authored by Wyden, provided timber payments to counties but it is expiring, leaving many rural counties in Western Oregon without adequate funding. Since it became law, it has produced some $3 billion for 700 counties in 41 states, with Oregon receiving the lion’s share.
“I feel very strongly that this is a historic obligation,” Wyden said of counties receiving a share of revenues from federal timberlands within their borders in lieu of taxes.
“This came about because more than 100 years ago, the country said we needed a national forest system,” he added. “If you live in Cleveland or Atlanta, you can come to Oregon to visit our federal forests. In recognition, the federal government said it would be there for help with schools and roads. There is a historic obligation.”

Forest Wars: From Multiple Use to Sustained Conflict

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When we sometimes tire of our “word wars” here, we need to remember that they are just one manifestation of broader holy wars being waged in and around our public lands.

Long Road to War

Utilitarian ideology has been a mainstay in forest policy development since the early 1900s when Gifford Pinchot and Bernhard Fernow introduced forestry into American government. Samuel Hays’ Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, alongside David Clary’s Timber and the Forest Service both build on self-righteousness to the point of religious fervor among many who chose to work on the land, notably foresters and engineers, and their evangelists (pundits, professors, etc). Similar books could be written — likely have been — talking about the religious-like fervor of the environmental community. [See, e.g. Environmentalism as Religion, Wall Street Journal, 4/22/2010.]

For many years, what later emerged as forest wars were never more than disagreements between mainstream forestry practitioners and malcontents like John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall. Such “disagreements” were deep-seated ideological splits, but contrarians of that era didn’t have the political/legal muscle to make for war. Later, however, the very same disagreements intensified into ideological war with the dawn of the environmental movement.

Environmentalists gained traction in forest debates, appeals, litigation, etc. after people began to wake up to environmental concerns in the late 1960s. The first of a series of Wilderness Acts became law in 1964. The Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 predated and set a stage for the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Earth Day began in 1970. In 1969 the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became law. In 1976 The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the Federal Lands Policy Management Act added to the mix. The environmental battles gained legal footing. But it is not clear that the legal footing was ever recognized, or at least accepted by the US Forest Service. At least if actions speak louder than words, we must question whether the Forest Service and its USDA overlords ever accepted these legislative mandates.

Disdain for legislative mandates runs deep, but there is an alternative path — a road not taken. Sally Fairfax set a stage for continued disgust for NEPA among forest practitioners with her 1978 Science article titled A Disaster in the Environmental Movement. Countrast Fairfax’s view with that from Jim Kennedy’s NEPA note: Legislative Confrontation of Groupthink.

Environmental Wars

Beginning in the 1970s, environmentalists waged war on timbering, grazing, road building, mining and oil & gas development, developed recreation, and more. Warriors on the “enviro” side typically vilify corporations, else government “lackeys” for the corporations. Warriors on the practitioner side vilify the enviros. In war there is little room for thoughtful discussion or dialogue. The rift between the two camps will likely remain very deep for a long time.

It is not clear that the Forest Service ever gave much heed to the “legislative confrontation of groupthink” ideas in NEPA. It seems that the Forest Service has been evading/avoiding NEPA responsibilities from the get-go. They continued “go-go timbering” up to the point of shutdown following the Monongahela and Bitterroot controversies. After things were sort-of opened up again via NFMA, the Forest Service wanted “once and for all NEPA”, i.e. the forest plan would be a catch-all NEPA container, allowing all projects to flow without any further NEPA review. When that didn’t work, the Forest Service played various shell-games pointing either upward (e.g. forest plans, regional plans) for NEPA compliance, else downward toward projects depending on what was being challenged. Finally, during the Bush/Cheney period, they sought to “categorically exclude” as much as possible from NEPA review.

In 1999 I wrote up a little thing titled Use of the National Forests. I noted four distinct periods of Forest Service history: Conservation and “Wise Use” — 1900-1950, Multiple Use — 1950-1970, Sustained Conflict — 1970-2000, and Collaborative Stewardship — 2000+. Although we might quibble over the dates as well as the categories, I now realize that I was over-optimistic as to the dawn of the Collaborative Stewardship era. At minimum there was a dramatic backlash — not necessarly against collabortion but clearly against environmetalism — commencing with Bush/Cheney Administration and their ABC (“anything but Clinton”) campaigns. The Bush/Cheney war on the environment was a reenactment of an earlier war waged by the Ronald Reagan Administration.

Bob Keiter (Univ. of Utah Law School) chronicled the emergence of both ecological awareness and collaborative stewardship in Keeping Faith with Nature. Keiter later chronicled the Bush/Cheney reactionary footnote in a 2007 article, Breaking Faith with Nature. Taken together, the two trace certain aspects of emergent gospels that were part of the ideological wars. The former traces what I’ll call the “ecosystem awareness” movement in the Clinton era of government, and the second the Healthy Forests Initiative and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act reactions during the Bush/Cheney era.

An era of “collaborative stewardship” may yet be emerging, albeit slowly and as already seen, with pushbacks. Enviros are still quite leery of “collaborations” and high-sounding agency rhetoric. They are warriors, after all. So the wars are not yet over, and may not be for a very long time. Timbering continues, albeit a a much lower volume than in the go-go days, and reframed as “ecological restoration” or “forest restoration”. New forest evangelists appear on the stage. Now we have both Wally Covington and Jerry Franklin preaching the gospel of forest restoration. I’ll leave it for further discussion as to how the two brands compare, and as to who buys into one, the other, both, or neither.

Other Wars

Even if wars between environmentalists and industrial and government practitioners were to ever end, these are just the tip of an iceberg of forest wars. We must add in the budget and staffing wars (hereafter budget wars) that have been ongoing in the Forest Service for a long time. Timber and Engineering reigned supreme in budget wars for many years, particularly after World War Two and the housing boom that fed rapid increases in timbering and associated road-building after WWII. Recreation, Wildlife, Soil and Water, even Fire, Personnel (later, “Human Resources”), Planning, Budget, Fiscal, State and Private Forestry, etc. were always struggling for funds. After go-go timbering days were a thing of the past — i.e. Environmentalists effectively shut down “go-go timbering”, Recreation and Fire gained an upper hand in budget wars. Somehow Engineering always seemed to keep its share of the money. [Note: Someday, maybe I’ll get these budget categories approximately right. For now, they are “good enough for government work”]

Finally — not trivially — Public Lands Wars have raged more of less continuously for many years. Remember the “Sagebrush Rebellion” and the so-called “County Supremacy Movement”? Now those have transformed into more of a “States’ Rights” movement. In all cases, part of the action has been an assault on federal lands.

I’ve probably missed some of the “wars” here. But if I’ve captured any of this even partially correctly, the landscapes, biophysical and political, have been transformed in the process. Some argue, as did Fairfax way back when, that the legal-administrative gridlock that has been a reality in federal lands management during the last 30-40 years, has done significant harm to the environment, and only resulted in wasted paper (EISs and dollars/time spent on forest planning, project planning, related NEPA work, appeals and litigation). Others like me argue that sometimes it is necessary to grapple with vexing social issues, even wicked problems in a very public way. Such “civic discovery” is a necessary part of a working democracy. Would that we could move from “war talk” to “fierce conversations“.

Related:
NEPA is Not the Problem, Forest Policy – Forest Practice, Oct 2007
The Blame Game

County Payments, Jobs, & Forest Health

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I thought some of our readers might be interested in a recent paper by Headwaters Economics examining ideas for reforming the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS) and Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT). 

Here is the PDF Reform_County_Payments_WhitePaper_LowRes

and the link http://www.headwaterseconomics.org/tools/reforming-federal-land-payments-to-counties/

This outfit does some really neat work and this paper is no exception.  Both programs are about to expire and the paper explores eight options in how to possibly move forward.  Some of the most interesting ideas are to change the distribution formula to give proportionately higher payments to counties based on various things, such as:

A) giving preferential assistance to counties with the greatest need

B) Linking payments to a County’s willingness to control federal costs by reducing development in wildfire-prone areas

C) Linking payments to the value of ecosystem services provided by federal public lands

D) Distibute higher payments to counties with protected public lands

Also included in the paper is an interactive mapping tool with which you can mess around and see how the various options would impact a particular county, and in some cases a Congressional District.

FS ARRA Project Success- from New West

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A portion of the proposed Route of the Olympian along Rainy Creek and one of the two tunnels along the route. Courtesy U.S. Forest Service

Here’s a link to the story.

Some quotes:

Still, Charnley and her fellow researchers concluded that in terms of jobs, effects were meaningful but short-term. Longer term community benefits, like a new trail or an improved road, rarely get calculated into the equation. A 30-mile Rails-to-Trails project in western Montana, for instance, didn’t necessarily press the “jobs, jobs” button, but local communities highly dependent upon recreation tourism are excited about the new people the “Route of the Olympian” will bring to town.

Rural Voices participants had mixed reactions to Charnley’s presentation.

Tracy McIntyre is the executive director of the Eureka Rural Development Partners. Eureka, Montana is near the border with Canada, and McIntyre worked hard to help secure ARRA funding for Forest Service projects in her area. “I think it’s neat to see the Forest Service realize that seeking out partners helps them get their work done,” she said.

But concentrating only on the agency’s Recovery Act success stories might be a mistake, in McIntyre’s opinion. “I would have liked to see eight examples that worked, and eight that didn’t,” she offered.

Moseley knows that Congress and taxpayers want to talk about creating jobs, but she wondered aloud if the review of how the Forest Service responded to the urgent directives of the Recovery Act might reveal more than employment numbers. “I would say they rose to the challenge,” she said, noting that the Forest Service was able to get all of its allotted money on the ground, while plenty of federal agencies floundered at the task.

And that fast-paced, high-stakes exercise may have resulted in a shift in the agency that Moseley and her Rural Voices counterparts have spent a decade working for. “With ARRA, the Forest Service finally got it – this is not about acres treated, it’s about jobs, and that’s not something this agency has always understood.”

Contributor to New West Gina Knudson is filing daily updates from this week’s Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition annual policy gathering.

Does Anyone Read the Errata Sheets?

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A 46-page 2nd “errata” sheet accompanies the Forest Service’s FY 2011 budget. All but one of the corrections are of no particular consequence.

The eye-popper is almost at the end (where else?). The Forest Service proposes to increase stewardship contracting targets by six to eight-fold compared to previous years. Timber volume from stewardship contracts will increase from 413 mmbf (2010 target) to 2 billion b.f. Biomass energy fuel will increase from 376,000 to 2.6 million tons. “Acres of wildlife habitat improved” (I’ve never understood what that means) go from 8,630 to 100,000 and noxious weed-treated acres (I’ve got a better handle on that notion) sky-rocket from 1,292 to 180,000.

Somehow these Herculean feats will be pulled off by reducing stewardship contracting spending from $6.5 to $6.0 million. And with zero employees, too (huh?).

So I thought, “Maybe the errata sheet itself is one big typo?” I called the Washington Office. The helpful lady said that these numbers reflect the Chief’s commitment to the stewardship contracting program. When I pressed her on how the FY 2011 numbers compared to previous years, she said “someone from upstairs will have to get back to you tomorrow.” No one did.