Diversity and species conservation

Forest Service – Friend of the Environment in Oregon

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I thought this piece was interesting as environmentalists are claiming the FS is more environmentally sensitive than the BLM. It’s nice to be liked. Even only relatively.

The environmental groups argue some federal agencies have had a harder time adapting to new forest management goals in the Northwest Forest Plan, specifically noting that the U.S. Forest Service has done a better job transitioning to non-controversial restoration-based timber thinning projects while the BLM “has struggled to modernize.”

That may be why Oregon Wild’s Andy Kerr asked Salazar yesterday to transfer the BLM’s Oregon and California Railroad forestland in western Oregon to the Forest Service. Of course Salazar’s Department of the Interior oversees the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service but not the Forest Service, which is couched under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kerr’s request was met with a quick rap from Salazar: “Don’t go to disagreements,” he said. “Go to agreements.”

I put a call into the Fish and Wildlife Service to get their reaction to this lawsuit and some more information on the Spencer Creek timber sale. I also have some extra sound bites and background from yesterday’s roundtable that I’ll post soon.

Also the photo, by the Oregon BLM, is lovely.

The Spotted Owl Experiment- Lessons Learned?

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I thought this newspaper story was interesting.. it summarizes the history of the major transition in the Northwest around the spotted owl. Of course, many of us were actually there. The story as depicted in the article doesn’t bear much resemblance to my experience.

The logic goes like this. Through ESA litigation, we shut down old growth logging in the Pacific Northwest. It really wasn’t about the spotted owl, it was about old growth.

From that standpoint, Babbitt said, the forest plan has been a success despite the declining owl populations. The plan represented a landmark in conservation planning, with forest managers now looking at entire ecosystems rather than just drawing lines on a map, Babbitt said.

(The second sentence about drawing lines on maps doesn’t make much sense out of context)

The story continues that even though the owl has declined, it’s still OK because the social changes weren’t really that bad for anyone. The people who wanted better wages left the local communities, and tourism provides some relatively low paying jobs.

Do others have some difficulty reconciling these two statements?:

The Northwest Forest Plan resulted in an 80 percent drop in logging in the region’s 24 million acres of federal forests. The Clinton administration hoped that about 1 million board feet could be cut annually, but that hasn’t happened in 20 years.

And :

One 1995 estimate by the Forest Service said that 400 jobs had been lost as a result of the logging restrictions.

“They were hard hit, but much of it occurred in the 1980s, before the owl,” said Annabel Kirschner , a Washington State University professor who’s studied timber industry employment. “It had nothing to do with environmental policies.”

This seems like a very strong assertion. Nothing to do with.. like 0% influence.

In some cases, those who write newspaper articles seem to want to tie things up in neat little story lines. But very few policy conflicts lend themselves to a neat story line. and there are voices that don’t seem to be heard in such articles. Here is another version of the story from 2008.

On this Labor Day, we might ask: could we have gotten protection of old growth without that extensive an impact on workers and communities? Did the costs of the desirable goal of old growth protection fall unfairly on the working class and rural communities? Could that transition have been designed so that that it was less about timber companies versus environmentalists and more about people in communities? Should it have been designed to make that transition more gradual?

What are your ideas of the lessons to be learned from this policy experiment?

9th Circuit Appeal Decision on Forest Service Five Buttes Project

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Reading this opinion makes me want to give a shout-out to the Deschutes for doing some excellent comprehensive NEPA work on their project.

No matter the height of the bar, with sufficient documentation the FS can leap it. The question is whether investment in documentation at that level is the best use of taxpayers funds.

See this story here and this one.

Here’s an AP story.
What was interesting to me about this one is the mention of the judges’ origin

The majority opinion was written by Justice Milan Smith, the brother of former U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and an appointee of President George W. Bush, whose administration tried and failed to scrap the Northwest Forest Plan in order to allow more logging…
Smith had harsh words for the dissent written by Judge Richard Paez, a President Bill Clinton appointee, calling his position “extreme,” and noting that the entire court had decided in 2008 to give deference to the Forest Service on science matters.

Interestingly, the third judge Richard Tallman was also appointed by Clinton (albeit he was an R). I just think that it is interesting that the author of the article chose to bring up the political affiliations of the judges, but only two of three.
And the decision here.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes. But the whole opinion is worth a read. I was impressed by the fact that despite the the NW Forest Plan explicitly allowed this treatment, it required this level of judgment to see the allowed activity come to pass.

Our highest deference is owed to the Forest Service’s technical
analyses and judgments within its area of expertise,
Lands Council, 537 F.3d at 993; nonetheless, our dissenting
colleague would have us halt the Forest Service’s Project
because he does not like the Forest Service’s approach to
solving the problems addressed. We went en banc to foreclose
precisely this type of second-guessing of the Forest Service.
See id. at 988 (noting that “in recent years, our environmental
jurisprudence has, at times, shifted away from the appropriate
standard of review and could be read to suggest that this court
should” “act as a panel of scientists that instructs the Forest
Service” how to perform its expert duties). The Forest Service
thoroughly considered various reasonable approaches to “protect
and enhance conditions” of the LRSs, NWFP S. & G. at
C-11, and offered a plan that does not “run[ ] counter to the
evidence before the agency or is so implausible that it could
be not ascribed to a difference in view or the product of
agency expertise,” Earth Island Inst. v. U.S. Forest Serv., 442
F.3d 1147, 1156 (9th Cir. 2006), abrogated on other grounds
11568 LEAGUE OF WILDERNESS v. ALLEN
by Winter v. Natural Re. Def. Council, Inc, 129 S. Ct. 365
(2008). Far from conflicting with the protection of LSRs,
carefully controlled logging is a tool expressly authorized by
the NWFP for long-term LSR maintenance.

On the other hand, here is what the Sierra Club website says about the same project:

Five Buttes Timber Sale

Five Buttes Logging SurveyFive Buttes Logging Survey, Oct 07
Photo by Marilyn Miller Our initial September 2008 legal victory stopping this large old growth timber sale is being contested during 2009 by a USFS appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, so we are again in court to protect this area from severe logging harms. Our legal victory has been essential in helping protect Deschutes National Forest spotted owl Late Successional Reserve (LSR) habitat. The timber sale is currently under court-injunction stopping the sale and logging of the remaining five timber sales. For more pictures of destruction caused by logging the first Bass Sale tract of this timber sale, see the Five Buttes Photos page. Visit the Forest Service Five Buttes Project page for the FS documents related to this project.

Volunteer efforts achieving this legal victory have thus far protected old growth ponderosa pine as well as spotted owl mixed conifer old growth forests. Volunteer efforts in 2009 are needed to ensure our legal victory is not overturned and the area logged. Before our legal win, logging devastated one-sixth of the area forests, with the felling and removal of 200 to 400 year old ponderosa pine trees – that had survived centuries of recurrent fires – under the shameful pretense of “fire risk reduction”. The case has set important precedents that help our ongoing efforts to prevent harmful logging in several other area timber sales also.

Many many thanks to our wonderful team of attorneys, and to all the volunteers, staff, and allies who have helped achieve the initial victory – for the wildlife and natural forests. May we again prevail during this 2009 agency legal appeal! See the joint conservation organizations Five Buttes Press Release for a summary of this victory. The Court’s Summary Judgment Opinion provides the details of the decision. The Five Buttes legal appeal is available on the Comments and Appeals page. (3-09-09)

It’s not really about the documentation, is it?

Fitting Protections to Program Size- A Timber Volume Retrospective

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Here’s a link to FS volume sold from 1905 to 2008. The longer term graph (page 2 of the previous link) is more illustrative than the one above.

In my view, the historical table and graph definitely raise the question about whether the analytical and monitoring needs for protection of the environment and species for an 10-12 BBF program should be scaled back for a 2 BBF program. If we stopped “bayoneting the wounded” (in Jack Ward Thomas’ terms) what funding could that potentially free up to pursue other environmental goals?

Here’s a quote from Charles Wilkinson of the University of Colorado Law School (member of 1999 Committee of Scientists) in a July 23rd High Country News article on Vermillion Basin oil and gas leasing that acknowledges that conditions have changed since the old timber days…

Over the last year and a half, the Obama administration has made a variety of commitments to protect sensitive landscapes, cut greenhouse gas emissions and develop renewable energy sources. With that, Wilkinson can imagine a “more sensible onshore policy emerging” from the administration, but he adds, “I don’t know if they’ve reached their moment of decision yet.” He equates the issue to the problems the Forest Service faced over four decades, trying to improve forest management while keeping the timber cut high. It wasn’t until timber harvesting came down that environmental conditions on the ground genuinely improved. “We’ve got to bring the barrels down, too,” Wilkinson says.

Forest Role Reversal- Guest Post from Derek Weidensee

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The much maligned, much despised, and much misunderstood Clearcut is being seen in a new light these days. The driving force behind the new image is wildfire and the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) epidemic that has killed off millions of acres of lodgepole pine primarily in Montana and Colorado. The public never understood the ecology or the silviculture behind a clearcut and thus presumed it only represented the most efficient and therefore greedy method to extract timber. Well, that attitude is changing. Nothing explains the ecology behind a clearcut to the public better than a MPB epidemic or a wildfire. Suddenly they get why foresters did them.
Across millions of acres of MPB killed watersheds, the only “green islands” in a sea of red are the young trees of regenerated clearcuts We know the MPB doesn’t attack these young trees. If you’ll look at my previous “clearcuts don’t burn” posting on the sosf blog, you’ll also see that 80% of regenerated lodgepole clearcuts don’t burn in wildfires. The “green islands” in a sea of black is a striking contrast.
For Google Earth proof of the “green islands”in both settings, type in the following Latitude and Longitudes in the “fly to” box.

(Technical note from Sharon for Google Earth newbies: I think how this works is that you need to download Google Earth to your computer. Then when you click on the Google Earth icon, a screen will come up with a box that says “fly to”. You type the coordinates Derek says into the box and the area will come up. If you are like me and haven’t been paying attention to current technologies, you will be very impressed!)

46 18 56.14N, 112 25 39.47W is a green island in a sea of red north of Butte MT. For a good view of the Green islands in a sea of black type in the following locations:48 25 35.01N, 114 49 44.43W is the Brush Creek fire west of Whitefish MT. 45 41 34.44N, 113 45 13.15W is the Rat creek fire west of Wisdom MT. Perhaps my favorite is 48 48 22.39N, 115 11 12.55W south of Eureka MT. Use the “clockface” on the toolbar to see pre fire photos.

Beware a fickle public. The public’s perception of forest policy is really based upon aesthetics. 20 years ago they say a raw clearcut in a sea of green and decried them. Today they see a green regenerated clearcut in a sea of red or black and they wonder why they didn’t do more of them. The green islands are taking on a “forest role reversal” in the public’s mind. They’re also taking on a role reversal in forest structure that will impact wildlife. I’d like to further discuss this “forest role reversal” as it applies to the public and to wildlife.

Forest role reversal and wildlife: The photo at the top of this post just about sums it up. Last summer I was driving through a 10 year old burn north of Sula Montana when I spooked the herd of Elk in the picture. They were running into a 28 year old regenerated clearcut (so said a nearby sign). The clearing in the foreground they were grazing on was a mature forest that burned and was then salvage logged. It dawned on me that the clearcut that had survived the fire was now the hiding and thermal cover, and the burned old growth is now the forage. 10 years ago the roles were reversed.

Throughout millions of acres of MPB mortality in Montana and Colorado, the only hiding and thermal cover will be the regenerated clearcuts. I know there’s still spruce up high and fir down low, but many watersheds are almost pure stands of lodgepole. Furthermore, and contrary to public perception, very little of the “forested acreage”(I didn’t use total) was logged on National Forests in the impacted forests. Only 3% of the White River forest in Colorado was logged in 50 years. Only 7% of the helena, 5% of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, and 7% of the Gallatin in Montana were logged in 50 years. Even in watersheds with a “timber emphasis”, seldom was more than 20% logged. The green islands are sprinkled about in “not to exceed 40 acre”(thankyou Mr. Bolle) lifeboats in a sea of red, black, and soon to be gray deadfall.

Furthermore, what will the “quality” of the forage be? I know the burned forests will have good quality forage. I know the forage will be heavy in the MPB deadfall but how “accessible” will it be? I read a tidbit in a USFS EIS for a Colorado salvage sale which says the deadfall will “restrict access to” and “make unavailable” the forage. Are there studies that show how much the deadfall will inhibit use? Perhaps salvage logging next to a “green island” would be very beneficial to Elk. Perhaps I could convince Judge Molloy of this. Nevertheless, habitat effectiveness tables will have to be redrawn across the west.

Forest role reversal and the public: Considering the disdain the public has for clearcuts-the following may be a reach. As crazy as it sounds, I think in the next 20 years the public will be choosing the green islands over the gray deadfall for more of their outdoor recreation. Case in point is Breckenridge Colorado. The USFS is proposing to salvage log 5000 acres around the town in a 600′ firebreak.. Because of deadfall, in 10 years the citizens won’t even want to try and walk past that firebreak. When I MPB salvage logged in the late 70’s, we literally had to cut our way in. It was easier to walk across the sale balancing on deadfall without ever touching the ground.

However, just west of town is a row of nice 25 year old “green islands” from the last MPB salvage effort in the 80’s. They were much derided then. I mentioned to the Mayor that he should urge the USFS to “pre-commercially”thin the regenerated lodgepole. This elevates the fire hazard for ten years of course, but then we know the MPB fire hazard isn’t gonna be really bad for 10-15 years until all the deadfall hits the ground. Too bad the USFS has prohibited pre-commercial thinning because of the Lynx Amendment. With thinning, those clearcuts could look like this area.

It’s a 35 year old clearcut thinned 15 years ago. Looks like a park doesn’t it. The below area is a 46 year old clearcut. You wouldn’t even know it if you were driving by would you.

Perhaps the biggest role reversal of all is that it’s starting to look like all that clearcutting was a good idea after all. The biggest missing ecosystem component for these forests wasn’t the old growth, it was the early seral. It was missing age diversity.

Derek Weidensee has been a licensed land surveyor for the last 20 years in Rapid City, South Dakota. Before that he spent 10 years as a logger, five of those in Montana and Idaho.

The Precautionary Principle and Forest Planning

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“Better to be safe than sorry.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“First do no harm.”

“Fences are made for those who cannot fly.”

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Caution or boldness?  What happens if doing nothing is worse?  This is one of the debates emerging from the Forest Service planning rule development.

In the 1970s, the Black Forest in Germany was obviously deteriorating.   Acid rain associated with sulfur and nitrogen emissions from industrial, commercial, and transportation sources was the suspected culprit, but science could not provide firm evidence of cause and effect. Despite this scientific uncertainty, the German government instituted regulations to reduce power plant emissions.  The policy became known as “Vorsorgeprinzip”, which translates into the “principle of advanced caring.”  After evolving into a key component of German environmental law, the concept of precautionary action gradually gained wider acceptance across Europe and was incorporated into various international treaties, conventions, and declarations.  The concept grew into what is known today as the precautionary principle.

The precautionary principle states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absense of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those who advocate taking the action.  This principle allows policy makers to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is evidence of potential harm in the absence of complete scientific proof. The principle implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk. These protections can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result.

The principle has become very popular, embraced by governments around the globe.  In the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement. It has been incorporated into many treaties and resolutions, including the Rio Declaration, the Montreal Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the 1992 Climate Change Convention, the Treaty on European Union, the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic, and the Helsinki Convention on Marine Protection in the Baltic.  In 2005, the city of San Francisco, adopted a precautionary principle purchasing ordinance. 

At a 1998 conference convened by the Science and Environmental Health Network at the Wingspread House in Racine, Wisconsin, a group of scientists, philosophers, lawyers, and activitists developed a widely-cited consensus statement about the precautionary principle:  

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

The precautionary principle has been proposed by various environmental groups as a central theme of a new Forest Service planning rule.  It became one of the discussion questions during the third planning rule national roundtable last week.  But there are questions about the appropriateness of the principle in a typically value-laden forest planning process lacking agreement on goals, and when inaction could be as risky as action. 

Although it was only briefly mentioned at the planning rule science forum in the question and answer period for the first panel, it was highlighted in Booz Allen’s summary report of that meeting.  Tom Sisk from Northern Arizona University observed that when we lack information we still need to make tough decisions.  In order to protect the environment, management should be appled according to the ecosystem capabilities.  Sisk said that a lack of uncertainty should not be used to adopt environmental protections.  Later, there was a follow-up question from the audience about whether we should be using adaptive management instead of the Precautionary Principle.  Sisk reminded everyone that the Precautionary Principle cuts both ways: both taking and not taking action.  We should not let uncertainty stop us in our tracks.

Alston Chase has argued that the precautionary principle does not always benefit society, could produce more ecological and social harm than good, with consequences not known until it’s too late.  He explains that in “game theory” there is no such thing as a “correct decision” under conditions of uncertainty, and that all choices are subjective, reflecting the values of the decision-maker.  When applied to natural resource planning, he argues that it presupposes the idea of a self-regulated ecosystem, seeking to protect conditions that never existed, never will exist, or never could exist. 

In the middle of the debate over the use of the precautionary principle in Forest Service planning is the set of Forest Plan amendments comprising the Sierra Nevada Framework.  The principle played an important role in the 2001 amendments.  However, risk and uncertainty assessment teams in 2003 observed the dangers of applying the principle, and a new decision was made in early 2004.  (On separate issues the decision was litigated and a Federal Register notice to supplement the analysis was issued earlier this year).

In 2004, Hal Salwasser, School of Forestry Dean at Oregon State, and former director of the Pacific Southwest Experiment Station, wrote about his experiences with the complex and messy forest planning in the Sierra Nevadas, and the problems he saw with the application of the precautionary principle in these types of “wicked problems” .

The precautionary principle has several flaws that make it questionable as a guide to decision making (Beckerman 2000). First, if the future is really all that uncertain, then we cannot be confident that action taken or not taken today will not make the future better rather than worse. Second, what constitutes harm is not always clear and could vary over time and space. When the precautionary principle is applied to dynamic ecosystems to constrain actions, such as fuels thinning needed to restore the system’s resilience to fire, it sets up the potential for major long-term harm: harm from inaction could be greater than harm from proposed action. Inaction creates “opportunity benefits,” that is, benefits foregone because action was not taken (Wildavsky 1995).

It is not possible to have full certainty regarding most of the important things in life, and ecosystems are certainly no exception. The standard for burden of proof about certainty in the precautionary principle is infinitely high. And taking no action precludes the opportunity to learn from trial and error. The upshot of applying the precautionary principle is either nothing will ever get done or the preconditions for action are so time consuming and burdensome that action is excessively costly, too timid, or too late. The consequence will be countless unintended harms as a result of inaction. Care, thoughtfulness, and testing of ideas make sense, but extreme precaution is hardly prudent in a dynamic ecosystem, especially one that is vulnerable to uncharacteristic disturbance events. Thus, in situations such as those that confront Sierra Nevada ecosystems, stakeholders, and managers, the precautionary principle sheds no light on prudent choices.

The precautionary principle appears to have greatly influenced how risk or uncertainty about forest management impacts on certain fish and wildlife entered the decision rationale in the 2001 Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment. It appears that uncertainty was assumed to have only negative potential outcomes; however, uncertainty means outcomes or future events are uncertain in both directions. The rationale for how tradeoffs were made warrants open critical thinking and review of what uncertainty implies, what harm is, and how it is judged vis-à-vis other objectives. The 2004 revised Record of Decision handles risk with more boldness, yet even it is insufficient to address the magnitude of risk to late successional forests and their ecological values posed by uncharacteristically intense fires”.

Salwasser adovates decision analysis and adaptive management learning processes used in other disciplines for complex problems (things that have been discussed on this blog).

In the planning rule roundtable meetings, some participants have suggested that the Forest Service develop a framework using experimental approaches with a precautionary underpinning to address forest challenges.  But others have noted that forest restoration is expensive and suggested that caution (whether enacted actively or passively) is the appropriate framework to reduce costs in the national forests.   Both risks and benefits are apparent in the multiple-use mission of the Forest Service, so this is an important debate.

Environmental lawyer Carolyn Raffensberger, one of the leading advocates of the precautionary principle, has said that it’s about setting goals, reversing the burden of proof, looking for the safest alternative, and emphasizing public health and the environment over economics.  But she also concludes that the final element of the precautionary principle is democracy:

If we’re faced with scientific uncertainty, we need to set goals, and choose the safest alternative to achieve these goals. These processes involve values and ethics; it is not something that scientists or government bureaucrats can decide alone. We need to bring affected parties to the table. This gives us a chance as a public to set the goals that we want to drive toward; it helps get on the table a much wider array of options for solving problems and looking for alternatives. So democracy is also an essential component of the Precautionary Principle.”

Perhaps a conversation is a good place to start.

9th Circuit, Monitoring, and Viability…Again

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Given all the talk on this blog about monitoring, NFMA diversity, and viability, etc., this recent 9th Circuit Case is another must read (file here: Native ecosystems v_ Tidwell(2)

I found it particularly interesting in light of the presentations focused on wildlife and monitoring at the planning science forum.  See e.g., presentations by Sam Cushman and Kevin McKelvey.

Here is a short summary of the case.  And here is a quote from it, sure to rabble the rousers:

“We do not share our dissenting colleague’s perception that the Forest Service can meet its obligations to the environment by naming a virtually non-existent species to serve as a proxy for critical habitat in the targeted area.  Far from usurping the agency’s role, our opinion holds the agency to its statutory responsibility to fully study the effects of the planned agency action, and ‘to maintain viable populations of existing species.’  It is unfathomable how the FS could meet its responsibility to maintain existing species by selected as a proxy a species that is virtually non-existent in the targeted area.

I also find the case interesting because it shows an unwillingness of the Court to defer to the USFS on these matters, despite all the ruckus created by Lands Council v. McNair, 2008).

Talking Across the Concrete- Abstract Divide

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Words are essential to communication, whether in blogdom or in person.  One  reason it’s important to discuss topics with others is that you can find out through discussion that words can  mean different things to different people.  You might be in agreement about concepts and simply word them differently.  

 I am a more literal and concrete kind of person, and many people in planning are more visionary- a kind of Myers-Briggs sensing compared to intuitive kind of thing.

Concrete and Abstract

  • A concrete word or image is specific and sensual: it evokes a material reality.
  • An abstract word or image is general, and communicates an idea; it expresses a connection that is mental rather than sensuous, sometimes one that is not immediately obvious.

 

First, Martin and I have always disagreed about the need for “thresholds” in NEPA documents, and specifically for forest plans which incorporate adaptive management. I have always thought that that was too vague, and there are too many possibilities with no particular reason for choosing a target level of a given thing.

 But as we were talking today in our small groups at the Roundtable, we were talking about area occupied by species and talking about establishing a target of acres of habitat occupied (collaboratively) – and if the species would go below that – a chosen number of those acres based on monitoring- , the Rule could require the collaborative group to get back together, and figure out some different approach to species protection as  an amendment. To me, the inhabited acres would be called a target and lower limits, lower limits. But looking back on it,  I think I might, by lower limit,  mean the same thing as a threshold. But without going through an example with Martin, I didn’t get it. Assuming that is what he meant. But he can weigh in here.

Second, the idea of ecological sustainability being pre-eminent never appealed to me. Strictly pragmatically, I thought we can’t always make the most protective decisions (like fencing all the people out of the Angeles National Forest if they have too many environmental impacts). But talking to Professor Wilkinson, he meant it in a visionary, righ-brained way, as a goal which people could figure out through collaborative efforts and reinvent their interpretation through time and with learning. My original thought was “ecological sustainability” was an analytical idea, and the problem was that you could do all kinds of analyses of everything and never prove something was sustainable.

Something like forest planning, and planning rules involve people from a wide array of backgrounds with different meanings for the same words. That is why it is so important to have conversations with others across different views,  including the concrete/abstract divide.

Monitoring Paper from Lindemayer and Likens- Practitioner Stamp of Approval

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When I read an academic paper that describes the world as we practitioners know it and propose practical situations, it’s an award-worthy thing.

Here is a great (in my opinion) review paper Lindenmayer&Likens2010.Science&ApplicationEcologicalMonitoring that resonates with some of my simplistic comments about how we approach viability in the post below.

Here’s some of my favorite quotes from the paper- what are yours?

5.4. Squabbles about what to monitor
An alternative response by some workers to the ‘‘laundry-list” approach has been to argue that ‘‘indicator species” or ‘‘indicator groups” should be the targets of monitoring programs (Andersen and Majer, 2004; Cantarello and Newton, 2008; Dung and Webb, 2008; McLaren et al., 1998; Sparrow et al., 1994; Spellerberg, 1994; Woodward et al., 1999). Many would argue that the group of organisms they study is special and any valid monitoring program cannot proceed without including them. We have found that over 55 major taxonomic groups have been proposed as indicators for monitoring programs, ranging from viruses and fungi and bryophytes to invertebrates and virtually all major vertebrate groups.
We found that only very rarely was it explicitly stated: (1) what these species or groups were actually indicative of, particularly at the ecosystem level and (2) the circumstances where these species or groups were or were not appropriate indicators. We believe that the problems of ‘‘laundry lists” and indicator species can be avoided by carefully crafting questions at the onset of a monitoring program, using a well-conceived model to help conceptualize a particular ecosystem and make predictions about ecosystem behaviour and response (see below). These key steps will help identify those entities most appropriate for monitoring.

I have sat through some very painful laundry list and “you should monitor them because I who have studied them for thirty years say that they are critical to the ecosystem” kinds of discussions. Here’s to clarity about why you want to monitor things, and why you think they are more important than other things you could be monitoring!

True collaborative partnerships are also essential because policy-makers and resource managers will often not know how to
frame questions in ways that can be resolved by well-executed monitoring, or may initially pose too many questions without prioritizing them. They also may have unreasonable expectations about what questions or problems can and cannot be solved by scientific projects and how much effective monitoring can cost. Thus, policy-makers need to understand better the scientific approach and the importance of posing the right questions in the correct way. Conversely, scientists need to articulate better what kinds of questions they can and cannot answer. They also need to understand
better the complexity of the policy process (Clark, 2002;Pielke, 2007). Scientists will often not fully comprehend the kinds
of key problems faced by policy-makers and resource managers that need to be addressed by long-term monitoring (Russell-Smith et al., 2003). Nor will scientists necessarily be fully aware of the policy options and the range of on-ground, management interventions available for testing and monitoring in a particular ecosystem (Walters, 1986).

And, eerily similar to the earmark idea:

Access to funding is an obvious factor influencing the success of monitoring programs. Many aspects of funding are not well suited to the establishment and maintenance of such programs. Monitoring programs are often seen as a luxury and not core for many resource management organizations. They are therefore usually the last initiatives to be funded and the first ones to be cut during budget shortfalls. In addition, budget cycles emphasize short-term projects
with rapid achievement of milestones. Funding initiatives of 1–3 years are rarely congruent with the timeframes appropriate
for effective monitoring. Thus, there often is a fundamental mismatch between long-term environmental management aspirations and short-term financial realities. We believe funding models based on endowments may be useful to circumvent problems associated with short-term funding problems. An outstanding example is the 175-year research program at Rothamsted in England (Rothamsted Research, 2006).

Circling on the Diversity Rotary

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A while back, I obtained a copy of Wilkinson and Anderson’s book ” Land and Resource Planning in the National Forests” (1987) from the library. It had to go back today, which caused me to write about stuckness, rather than any conclusions.

So I’ll describe where I keep circling, and a possible exit off the rotary.

The rotary. In this post, Andy quoted Judge Dwyer:

Here’s what Judge Dwyer had to say on the subject:

When the [NFMA’s diversity] section is read in light of the historical context and overall purposes of the NFMA, as well as the legislative history of the section, it is evident that section 6(g)(3)(B) requires Forest Service planners to treat the wildlife resource as a controlling, co-equal factor in forest management and, in particular, as a substantive limitation on timber production.

The Ninth Circuit sustained Judge Dwyer on appeal.

Reading and rereading that part of the Wilkinson and Anderson book, I couldn’t get there from here. John tells me Judge Dwyer actually quoted the book. However, I don’t necessarily see that, with all due respect to both Judge Dwyer and the Ninth Circuit.

I was stuck. Finally I saw a footnote on page 170- a quote from Chief Max Peterson.

“If one thought emerges from reading this diversity paragraph over and over again, is that it is not very specific , and therefore leaves much room for judgment. The law does not provide detailed direction ; certainly it contains no definition of diversity, nor an indication of how much diversity is required,, it does not say that whatever diversity is there now must be kept . With proper justification, and to meet multiple use objectives, diversity could be altered or even reduced.”

That is exactly the conclusion I came to. It is interesting that these points of view could be so different- and one became enshrined in law and not the other.

Here’s another quote from the book from page 173:

To summarize, section 6(g)(3)(B) has three complementary meanings in the context of timber planning. First it is a general mandate to bring timber production into balance with wildlife and ecological values. Second it limits the use of forest conversion to cases where the conversion can be justified by its benefit to non-timber resources. Third, it prohibits monoculture. These three elements, when taken together, require the Forest Service to look at the forest as an ecological whole an to ensure that, over time, the forest is not converted to a tree farm.”

This suggests some kind of balance between timber production and other values. Is this different from “to treat the wildlife resource as a controlling, co-equal factor in forest management and, in particular, as a substantive limitation on timber production?” It seems to me that balance and “controlling co-equal” are a bit different. Anyway, my meditation on these concepts and rereading this section reminded me of how much the world was different then; of how, as Andy says, it was really all about timber. It is so unlike the world of today. I wonder if NFMA itself has value anymore or it was ultimately a creature of its time. Should it be put gently to rest?

A possible exit from the rotary.. what can we do pragmatically?

Like Max (as I recall, the first Chief who was an engineer), I am ultimately pragmatic. People, and more importantly regulatory agencies, seem to like standards. If the 2005 Rule experience proved anything, it proved that. One of my colleagues told me that in his view the utility of forest plan standards is that interdisciplinary teams don’t have to re-open all the same issues for every project. This does seems useful; but I have to wonder if this couldn’t be more flexible..say a GIS layer of what standards apply and they are developed across forests- so that the old plans don’t have old-fangled standards and newer ones newer-fangled standards, and none of them kept up-to-date with current information. We have a Watershed Conservation Practice Handbook that attempts to deal with that, but some people miss the legal NFMA hook.