Here is some timely recent research on what happens to spotted owls after a fire, in particular the Rim Fire which comes up often on this blog (thank you, Larry). That discussion has often dealt with the effects of post-fire salvage logging, such as the discussion here. This research discusses the effect of the condition of the forest before the fire on its value to owls after the fire.
This is important because of the argument by some that fires are bigger threat to the owls than cutting down trees to reduce fire risk. I’ve only looked at this overview and the linked abstract, but it seemed like enough to generate some discussion. In particular, it contrasts the pre-fire management of Yosemite National Park and the adjacent Stanislaus National Forest.
From the abstract:
Spotted owls persisted and nested within the fire perimeter throughout the four post-fire years of our study at rates similar to what we observed in areas of Yosemite that were unaffected by the fire… Prior to the fire, spotted owls selected for areas of high canopy cover relative to the rest of the landscape; after the fire, even though territory centers shifted substantially from pre-fire locations, pre-fire canopy cover remained a stronger predictor of spotted owl presence than post-fire canopy cover, or any other pre- or post-fire habitat variables we assessed.
So removing canopy cover, which seems to be one of the goals of fuel reduction, would not benefit the owls even if it reduces fire risk, and it would adversely affect them whether there is a fire or not.
From the lead author:
California Spotted Owls can tolerate forest fire, but Schofield cautions that not all fires are created equal. Yosemite’s forests have not been commercially logged since the early 1900s and fire suppression efforts since the 1970s have been kept to a minimum. This results in a forest structure and fire regime that is distinct from what is found outside of the park.
“In Yosemite there is a diversity of forest habitat” explains Schofield, “This means the Rim Fire burned with a diversity of severities creating a range of post-fire habitat for owls to choose from.” The study notes that in portions of the adjacent Stanislaus National Forest that were also burned by the Rim Fire, burn severity was more homogenous likely due to the contrasting logging and fire management regime on the National Forest.
Wyoming Game and Fish Large Carnivore Biologist Zach Turnbull determines the cause of death on a calf in 2014 (provided Mark Gocke, Wyoming Game and Fish).
Another great article by Angus Thuermer of Wyofile. This depicts the daily life of one of those professionals in the middle- and in the details- of a thorny natural resource/environmental conflict. It also shows how important trust is for people involved in making the policy machinations happen in real life and the role of professional judgment based on experience. There’s also a great deal on the nuts and bolts of the Wyoming Animal Damage Compensation Program.
The entire article is well worth reading, but I excerpted the paragraph about Turnbull’s professional credibility
$1.5 million
On this hot July 18, Turnbull isn’t satisfied he has an answer on this cow until he is done skinning. He drags the hide out from the morass of would-be hamburger and lays it out in the sagebrush and grass.
He examines the underside of the skin, looking for puncture holes from the teeth of a bear or wolf, rips from a grizzly’s claws.
“For being as ugly as she is, she’s pretty clean,” he says. “Clean” meaning there’s no sign of attack. “She doesn’t have a hole in her except where she’s [been] fed on.”
Although he will make his report later, at this point he considers the “more likely than not” standard of predation. “I’d say she’s far below that,” he says.
Turnbull’s 16 years’ field experience from his post in Pinedale has earned him credibility. In 2019 the Green River Cowbelles/Cattlewomen honored him as a Friend of Agriculture for his work. Ranchers called him responsive, responsible and fair.
“I’ve been there on those kills,” says Charles Price, one of the ranchers whose stock grazes near Union Pass. “I have a lot of respect for him.”
“He goes through it and looks — there’s maggots crawling, flies, it smells bad,” Price says. “He sits there and does the work. I couldn’t do it myself.”
Price doesn’t always agree with Turnbull’s verdicts and has “bumped heads with him a few times,” he says. But, “most of the time I would bet on his call even when I disagree with him,” Price says. “I support him.”
Fed/State Coordination
Repeat offenders
There’s another aspect to Turnbull’s job. When grizzlies are persistent in killing stock, Game and Fish will move or kill them.
That’s done in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But Turnbull often makes the first call.
Ranchers seek to avoid depredation. The cattle association has altered its grazing sequence to keep smaller animals farther from grizzly haunts and tried other methods.
“After the 2015 grazing season, the Association worked with an organization to sponsor a number of seminars focused on methods to reduce large carnivore depredation of cattle,” Sommers wrote in his declaration. “Out of these discussions, in an effort to reduce depredations, the Association tried cattle bunching techniques in one pasture system for two consecutive years.
“The goal was to make cattle less susceptible to predation,” he wrote. “[H]owever, the Association did not see any reduction in depredation and has discontinued that practice.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for when to trap or move a bear, Turnbull said. “One strike, two strikes, three strikes — it’s not really how it happens,” he said. “It’s not a really good description of conflict management.
“There are bears that we have captured and removed the first time we have captured them,” he said. “There are bears we have captured several times before we removed or didn’t remove them.”
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post. Wright Dickinson stops to make lunch after working on his family’s ranch near Cold Springs Mountain on June 30, 2020. Dickinson is hoping Colorado voters will turn down a plan to reintroduce wolves in Colorado. (Dickinson doesn’t look very “corporate” to me).The interesting twist of wolves in Colorado, is that they’re coming back on their own, but mostly urban voters want more to be reintroduced. So the two positions are 1) more or less “natural” wolf migration versus 2) human-managed reintroduction of wolves.
Bruce Finley wrote what I think is a thoughtful, fair, well-balanced article in the Denver Post yesterday, worth reading in its entirety.
State wildlife biologists would be required to install wolves on public land west of the Continental Divide by the end of 2023, enough to ensure wolf survival, with public input and compensation for ranchers who lose livestock. The wording of the ballot measure enshrines proponents’ view that wolves were “an essential part of the wild habitat of Colorado” before extermination and must be restored to bring back “a critical balance in nature.”
The idea of “balance of nature” is an idea without scientific basis, as we have discussed many times. And again, we may think about what used to be niche theory in ecology that says that other species will step in to the niche.. say mountain lions and coyotes. I certainly can’t tell that the Great Plains “need” bison to “restore a critical balance.”
A voter-driven re-introduction of wolves through direct democracy in Colorado would mark an unprecedented assertion of rising urban demands for ecological integrity with a full mix of species inhabiting public land.
The problem is that the arrival of wolves on their own, let alone artificially installing more, complicates human existence because the federal government still protects wolves as an endangered species. Ranchers legally cannot kill or harass a wolf, even if it’s attacking a calf, without risking jail time and a $100,000 fine. Blocking ranchers from fulfilling an ingrained moral duty creates “a helpless feeling,” Dickinson said. “You are powerless to react.”
Beyond operational disruptions, ranchers and local leaders confide they’re bothered most at a deeper level by what they see as an urban attack on agriculture akin to twisting a stick in the eye.
“What have we got left?” former Moffat County Commissioner Ray Beck said. “Tourism and recreation? We can’t hang our hat on that.”
I remember when John Hickenlooper was the Mayor of Denver and we had an early Colorado Roadless public meeting at which he spoke. I remember his speech- the rest of Colorado seemed to him an uninhabited landscape whose highest and best use was providing a backdrop and playground to bring businesses to Denver. It was almost as if the landscape were uninhabited and the proper role of the individuals were as a service industry to people from the metro area. I remarked to Rick Cables, the Regional Forester, that Hick sounded remarkably colonialist to me. Now, Hick changed gracefully (IMHO) when he became Governor, to considering the views of all Coloradans and treating them with respect. But the concept that “we know better than you do what you should do with the land you live in, and we are willing to impose our vision through the force of government” may well feel the same (colonialist) to folks in NW Colorado.
Here are some thoughts of from Senator Kerry Donovan D- Vail:
Colorado state Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, got involved trying to broker a compromise. A Democrat representing people in mountain counties who works as a small-scale rancher raising highland cattle and whose family has refused to sell out to developers, Donovan sees the storm over wolves as destructive.
She introduced legislation that would delay wolf reintroduction until 2025, ensure sufficient funding and better address agricultural community concerns about compensation and provisions for protecting livestock. But amid lawmakers’ focus on dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, she sidelined her measure once it was accepted for mark-up.
Seeking shade as the sun beat down recently at her ranch, Donovan winced at the rankling of ranchers and other rural residents.
“The problem is when everything around you also seems to be shifting, you reach your breaking point. And the wolf is a pretty good villain,” she said.
Ranchers see second homes that mostly sit vacant multiplying across mountain valleys. These bring city folks interested in shopping, dining and organized recreational activities. The newcomers often lack patience for sheep and cattle herding that forces temporary road closures. Land prices spike, increasing temptations to sell out. Then come restrictions on using pesticides and water, and requirements to inspect and monitor monitoring of livestock, she said.
“Everything just stacks up,” she said. “And then you see we are going to take a ballot initiative where people in the Front Range population centers are going to vote on introducing a predator — an apex predator — into your backyard. Not their backyard.”
Yet Colorado needs cooperation to preserve open natural landscapes, Donovan said. While she was inclined to vote for wolf reintroduction, she’s also planning to lead hard conversations about saving nature, including predators, in the face of development.
Front Range residents increasingly flee their densifying cities seeking solace in mountain valleys. “Maybe Denver shouldn’t be saying, ‘Hey, come to the great outdoors. Live here and go there.’ Denver should be saying, ‘Come to the great outdoors. Live here,’ ” Donovan said.
That would require expanding greenspace inside cities. “Taking back the South Platte River? That’s something we should be really investing in — making the Platte a functioning ecosystem.” And urban planners could convert streets to parks, expand greenbelt trails and plant more gardens.
My thoughts.. everyone agrees (?) that lethal force should be used as a last resort.
everyone agrees that wolves are coming back on their own.
And yet there is still a controversy, part of it sounds like it’s about urban colonialism, and the rest about generalized federal land rancher dislike- just the latest skirmish in trying to drive them out.. cattle-free by 2033?
If voters order more wolves, some ranchers warn, they will jeopardize cooperation to preserve open landscapes that city dwellers increasingly covet with population growth and development jam-packing Denver and transforming mountain valleys.
“This will destroy the very real conservation partnership in Colorado between the thoughtful conservation community and agriculture,” Dickinson said. “Colorado has come a long way in my lifetime, away from the ‘Cattle-Free by ’93’ idea that livestock are not integral and beneficial to public lands. Conservation in Colorado will only be successful with a true partnership with agriculture. Why do we want to risk that relationship?
Photo of female and juvenile California spotted owl courtesy of University of California Cooperative Extension (http://ucanr.org/sites/spottedowl/).
We recently looked at the Biological Assessment of Northwest Forests, and the options for proceeding with revising forest plans currently governed by the Northwest Forest Plan. Some of those options involved amendments to existing plans prior to plan revision. I voiced support for amendments that would provide the ecological conditions needed for at-risk species. I thought this might be an example to look at for how that might go.
The Stanislaus National Forest is not in the area covered by this assessment. Its forest plan was originally completed in 1991, but it was amended by the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment (or Framework) in 2004, which is roughly analogous to the Northwest Forest Plan in that it had its origins in the work done to protect the California spotted owl (it has its own complicated political and legal history). Now the Stanislaus is proposing an amendment for a part of the Forest in conjunction with what it calls the Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape (SERAL) project.
The Forest has identified a need to change the forest plan based on new information about the California spotted owl, as published in 2019 by the Forest Service in the “Conservation Strategy for the California Spotted Owl in the Sierra Nevada.”
In order to fully adopt and implement the management direction described in the Conservation Strategy and increase landscape resiliency as guided by NRV the Stanislaus National Forest’s forest LRMP must be amended. The proposed forest plan amendments would allow the SERAL project’s proposed landscape restoration treatments to best meet the purpose and need of the project and implement the guiding principles of the 2019 California Spotted Owl Conservation Strategy. The proposed amendments include standards and guidelines which will provide some immediate stability for individual owls while allowing forest management the ability to conduct treatments designed to help develop resilient habitat conditions that provide CSO conservation in the long term.
Unfortunately, the CSO Conservation Strategy was apparently written for a narrower purpose than its name implies:
The California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) Conservation Strategy is a strategic framework for active conservation of the California spotted owl on National Forest System lands in the Sierra Nevada.
It appears to be something less than a scientific strategy. By limiting the focus to “active conservation” it has failed to address the central debate about managing spotted owl habitat regarding when active management should even be used. Passive management is one obvious alternative to this amendment that the Forest is going to have to address in its amendment process. But I looked at some of the proposed changes in the forest plan.
The current plan designates spotted owl Protected Activity Centers (PACs) as management areas in the forest plan (which could be changed only by amending the forest plan). This proposed amendment would replace current management areas with guidelines to designate PACs later “in advance of any management activities that would reduce CSO nesting and roosting habitat quality.” The guidelines include criteria for delineating and changing PAC boundaries.
My opinion: This is not a coarse filter management strategy based on vegetation because it depends on actual owl presence based on surveys, or one might call it “condition-based.” If owl presence is the kind of thing that changes frequently, this may be a reason to not designate permanent management areas at the plan level. However, this creates the risk of cutting the public out of the part of the process that actually determines the locations for management. The plan is no longer saying, “here is where we’ll manage for owls,” but instead, “we’ll manage for owls where we think we need to manage for owls, trust us.” The criteria must be explicit and objective enough to fully evaluate at the plan level, and the decisions about whether and how to apply them at the project level must include the public. Given the importance that surveying would take on, there is no excuse for these being guidelines rather than standards. It seems to me that the certainty of owl protection, and therefore the viability of the species, is going to be reduced.
There are a lot of new plan components in the amendment, and the CSO Conservation Strategy is page-referenced for most of them. That’s how any conservation strategy should be used, so maybe this is a good example of that. Except that it strikes me that this “conservation strategy” may have actually been written as a “drop-in” amendment to be used this way (which makes that kind of cross-referencing a lot easier). This is similar to what would happen if plan amendments were developed that could be later “dropped in” to forest plan revisions. The problem is that if the “conservation strategy” is already a management-influenced document and not a science document, there would still need to be a reference to the actual scientific basis for these conservation recommendations that are being adopted.
Anyway, this project/amendment will be worth watching as it applies the 2012 Planning Rule diversity requirements to California spotted owls. And it may be setting some precedents for what could happen regarding how to plan for management of spotted owl habitat on other national forests.
At one of the WGA (Western Governors’s Assocation) Working Lands meetings, I remember a speaker saying “some people think of ranchers as the enemy, what if we thought of them as partners?”. A number of years ago, I worked with environmental lawyers and others on the regulations around releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment. It seemed like people who have worked in the polluting chemicals kinds of environmental issues wouldn’t think of Monsanto as a partner. The act of regulating industries should be more or less arms-length (you have to understand their processes, or you can’t be good regulators). But maybe natural resources-related environmental conflicts call for a different, more inclusive, and less adversarial approach. We see that with fisheries management, the sage grouse initiative, and so on.
I was thinking of #EnvironmentWithoutEnemies when I read this summary of a report by PERC. The whole summary and report can be found here. I bolder a few of my favorite statements.
The governor’s letter demonstrates the difficulty of managing the political pressures associated with wolf recovery. Wolf populations have been steadily increasing and are not dispersing across the state as initially expected, creating a high-conflict zone where wolves and ranchers are both heavily concentrated. The weaknesses in the state’s approach to managing this conflict are being magnified, and there is a need to adjust the existing management strategy.
Additionally, as WDFW begins planning for post-recovery, there is an opportunity to examine the current strategy and determine what changes should be made to protect the livelihood of ranchers while ensuring that wolves continue on their path to full recovery and delisting throughout the state.
Ensuring there continues to be a healthy ranching economy is a matter of fairness, economic strength, and environmental sustainability. The counties most affected by the return of wolves have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state, nearly double the state average. Ranchers, range riders, and hunters are also good partners in caring for the land and in funding wildlife stewardship. Successful wolf management that protects the livelihoods of ranchers and farmers while helping wolf populations grow is economically, morally and environmentally responsible.
Based on the history of wolf recovery in Washington and other western states, the best path would combine (1) improved non-lethal management approaches, (2) more rapid lethal removal of problem packs, and (3) expanded compensation programs designed by ranchers and others in the community where conflict is occurring. Some of these tactics are already being used but are not as effective as they could be for a variety of reasons. Additionally, since wolves have not dispersed across the state, the state should delist the species in Eastern Washington, as the federal government has, and focus its recovery efforts on other regions where wolf recovery is proceeding more slowly. The state can also pilot post-recovery strategies in Northeast Washington where the density of the wolf population is at a level that justifies delisting. Those pilot strategies should be developed primarily by the interested parties representing ranchers, conservation groups, and others in the affected communities. The state will always act as a backstop to any agreement, but it should encourage and be guided by a collaborative solution. Doing so would encourage groups to engage cooperatively rather than appealing primarily to the agency or to judges to intervene, which would increase conflict, mistrust and animosity. There is no quick solution, but as the experiences of other western states demonstrate, wolf recovery can be successful while providing ranchers with fairness and adequate levels of protection.
The distribution of 200 sampling units for the Mexican Spotted Owl occupancy monitoring project in Arizona and New Mexico. The spatially balanced, random sample of sites to be included in the acoustic monitoring program are marked by purple pentagons. Symbols are not to scale.(from monitoring project https://birdconservancy.org/mso2017/)
Many thanks to Jon for finding and linking to this interesting document that describes the Mexican Spotted Owl Leadership Forum notes. First.. who’s at the table. Looks like CBD, the FS, the USFWS, representatives of Eastern Arizona counties, timber industry, and I’m not sure of the affiliation of the others. Maybe this is “the room where it happens,” in terms of decisions being made, in the words of the Hamilton musical. The group identified some “systemic issues.” I picked the first 13 to post here. Some of them sound very familiar from other NEPA and collaborative discussions. It’s not clear how much of that is due to the use of CBM (or condition-based management). My comments and questions are in bold.
The “Systemic Issues” section identifies issues to be addressed to prevent future projects from being challenged. Critical among others:
1. There is a disconnect between the broader scope public documents readily available for review and what actually happens on the ground during implementation. (<em>I’m not sure whether this is a contracting/marking kind of problem, or related to CBM, or ???).
2. Site specific MSO field data necessary to select Recovery Plan recommended treatments is generally not available prior to NEPA analyses. This is likely due to cost constraints, workforce limitations and slow pace of technology deployment (e.g. LiDAR) at a time of accelerated landscape scale restoration. (I wonder whether this matters if the field data is developed prior to design of projects?)
3. Consistent/standardized templates across projects are not used for data analysis and presentation. (The idea of templates has been popular with NEPA improvement efforts for years, but has met with resistance from (some) practitioners. This group has a good point IMHO, that individuality and creativity by each unit works for many things, but perhaps not when folks are trying to implement projects across ownerships at the landscape scale.)
4. Data requirement interpretation varies across project (e.g. post treatment data inclusive or not of post treatment fire).
5. Generally, the NEPA process does not analyze actual stand treatments for the MSO projects but broad ranges of allowable treatments. Actual treatments are decided during field trips prior to project implementation. NEPA analyzes actions at a broad scale and in some cases (e.g. Hassayampa) appears insufficient.
6. Project level documents such as BA, BO, stand inventories, etc. are difficult for the public to access; and data that should be readily available such as project shapefiles are near impossible to obtain. Further, interagency documentations of changes are generally not accessible to the public. Such documents are, with very few exceptions, public documents that must be made available to the public. There is no ‘one-stop-shop’ location for documentation of specific projects. (This seems relatively easy to do on the FS site for the project..at the same time for many projects in many parts of the country, there is not this level of interest (e.g. shapefiles) by most of “the public”).
7. Documents tiering across agencies (from USFS to USFWS) and processes (from NEPA to consultation to implementation), combined with difficult documents access complicates
public understanding of treatments and monitoring that are implemented. For example, one project referring to another project’s monitoring plan is confusing to those not familiar with the other project.
8. Monitoring as a reasonable and prudent measure often lacks clarity and specificity at the NEPA stage and the final plan is not always appended to the BO.
9. There is no clear tool or method in place to account for the cumulative effect across various projects’ actual treatments, and to reconcile the distribution of treatments along the spectrum of intensities (including no treatment) within the landscape, as recommended in the Recovery Plan, to establish an environmental baseline among neighboring projects. (I don’t really understand what this would look like “reconcile the distribution of treatments”? but it’s probably clear in the Recovery Plan).
10. The current management practice of relying on post NEPA field trips by a few select individuals to decide upon actual treatments is not scalable to landscape scale restoration.(This probably is also relevant to other CBM protocols, we’ve discussed this about programmatic kinds of CE’s).
11. Current MSO management appears to be a precursor of the proposed general “Condition Based Management” (CBM) in the on-going NEPA Revision. Lessons learned in the MSO Workshop are likely applicable to CBM at-large, as relates to communicating to the public the treatments and monitoring that are actually implemented.
12. The lack of succession plans and depth of bench for critical resource personnel with unique projects knowledge, compromises the robustness of the USFS and USFWS processes. (I just ran across an old NEPA review in my files that said access to specialists was a problem (at least for one forest, about 20 years ago).
13. A workshop or series of workshops is needed to address the systemic issues.
This is a topic that at least Sharon and I like to debate (though for some reason she didn’t weigh in here). The Western Environmental Law Center is offering this hour and half webinar on July 17. As far as I know, it’s open to the public.
PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 3: Historical Range of Variability (HRV): Uses and Various Approaches
Range of Variability (ROV) concepts – including Natural (NRV), Historic (HRV), Current (CRV), and Future (FRV) – are frequently used by the US Forest Service to help define land management goals. Nathan Poage, Forest Service Ecologist, joins us to provide an introduction to ROV terminology and examples of how the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman NationalForests in the Blue Mountains have applied ROV concepts during project planning when addressing key requirements of the Eastside Screens. The discussion will include overviews of tools commonly used to conduct ROV analyses. Q&A will follow the presentation.
This webinar will be on Friday, July 17 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Note that it also involves the Eastside Screens. I don’t think I can make it, but I’d be interested in hearing about it. I also wanted to point out that this is about how to apply these concepts to projects developed under antiquated forest plans that don’t include the concepts. It was this kind of thinking that drove development of the requirement to do this instead as part of revising forest plans under the 2012 Planning Rule. Natural Range of Variation (NRV) embraced by the Planning Rule is a required desired condition for ecosystems, which should not change over time, and therefore should not be redecided for each project. I’d be interested in knowing how, once ROV is determined for a particular project here, it is then documented and used for future projects in the same ecosystem.
But maybe there would be more interest in this one:
PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 2: Collaborative Administrative and Judicial Review Opportunities
In this follow-up webinar to NEPA 101, WELC attorney Susan Jane Brown will give a presentation on and answer your questions about collaborative administrative and judicial review opportunities, and dig deeper into the administrative review process for the Forest Service, judicial review of agency decisions, and how collaborative groups can engage in these processes.
This webinar will be on Thursday, July 9 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
I often point out how the Forest Service is shirking its responsibility to adopt forest plans that provide ecological conditions needed for diversity and viability of at-risk species. Most recently, I listed some examples from the recently released Rio Grande revised forest plan. Here is one guideline (there weren’t really any relevant standards):
EPC-G-1: To avoid or minimize adverse effects to listed species and their habitat, management actions should be designed with attention to threatened, endangered, proposed, or candidate species and their habitats.
This says essentially nothing.
An important purpose of identifying and planning for at-risk species is to reduce the chance that they would need to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. If this were a private landowner, conservation measures for at-risk (but not yet listed) species would be discretionary. However, they could choose to sign a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) with the listing agency to adopt conservation measures that would reduce the likelihood of listing in exchange for a commitment that the listing agency would not require anything more if the species did become listed.
Here is an example of one such enhancement of survival permit for Chinook Forest Partners, LLC Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances for Fisher in Oregon (until recently, a candidate for listing). From the NEPA document (CE):
Activities that are covered by this CCAA and the associated section 10(a)(1)(A) permit are on-going and commonly practiced forest land management activities. These include timber harvest and hauling, site preparation and reforestation, and road maintenance and construction. Additionally, there may be some collection of minor forest products, fire suppression, and recreation (including legal hunting and trapping).
Goals and objectives for fisher include: improving our understanding of fisher distribution, densities, and habitat use, especially on non-federal lands where information is more lacking; conserving active fisher den sites to increase the survival of young; increasing public participation and support for fisher recovery and reintroduction by providing long-term assurances; and, monitoring potential future reintroduced fishers as they disperse from their release sites to determine success rates and provide information for improving success rates.
And here is what the private landowner committed to do in the CCAA to achieve those objectives for fisher (note: some are saying that this still isn’t good enough). Given that the Forest Service is obligated by NFMA to provided ecological conditions for a viable population of at-risk species on national forests, why shouldn’t they be making at least this kind of commitment in their forest plans for public lands? (This could make them adequate regulatory mechanisms to reduce the likelihood of listing under the ESA criteria.)
Specifically, CFP/CFM shall not conduct or authorize any of the activities described in the forest management activities in Section 4 (including but not limited to timber felling, pre-commercial thinning, reforestation, salvage of trees, prescribed burning, and brush control) within 0.25 miles of a den site, because those activities could result in disturbance or harm to denning fishers. CFM shall not authorize helicopter or fixed wing application of herbicide or fertilizer within 0.25 miles of an occupied den site between 15 March and 30 September until CFM is informed by USFWS or its agent the denning female has vacated the den site.
Provide protection of denning female fishers by restricting trapping and nuisance animal control activities on enrolled lands within 2.5 miles of den sites.
Report to USFWS, and ODFW or mutually agreed upon designated agents, within 48 hours upon finding any potentially occupied den sites or any dead, sick, or captured fishers on enrolled lands.
Cover all man-made structures on enrolled lands that pose an entrapment risk to fishers (e.g. large water troughs, old rail cars, or other containers from which fishers cannot escape) or place a device within the structure (e.g., wooden pole to allow fishers to climb out) to prevent mortality of fishers from drowning, starvation or dehydration
Where suitable habitat exists and where agreed upon by CFP and USFWS, allow the release of translocated fishers on enrolled lands
CFP will seek to have all of its timberlands third party certified to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI),
CFP will take fisher habitat characteristics into consideration when assessing parcels for transfer or sale into permanent or semi-permanent conservation status.
Subject to safety, operability, fire hazard considerations, and salvage of timber following fire, windthrow or other natural or man-caused casualty, CFM will conserve existing and future standing deadwood, and, where available, focus leave tree retention on damaged, decayed, or deformed trees that are likely to provide or promote decay processes and structures beneficial to fisher or their prey.
CFM meets or exceeds the Forest Practices Act (FPA) live tree and snag retention, and down woody debris. For clearcut harvests greater than 25 acres, FPA requires that at least 2 snags or 2 green trees 30 feet tall and at least 11 inches DBH, at least 50% are conifer, plus at least 2 down logs or down trees at least 50% of which must be conifers that are at 6 least 6 feet long with a total volume of 10 cubic feet must be retained. CFM commits to retaining a minimum of 3 snags or green trees per acre on clearcuts larger than 25 acres, and these trees/snags will be retained for the life of the CCAA.
Trees >32” DBH will be retained the greatest extent possible, provided they do not pose safety hazards
CFM will instruct logging contractor to avoid whenever possible, driving machinery over, or otherwise damaging large down woody debris, thereby maintaining the integrity of stumps and logs that may be used by fishers and their prey.
CFM will seek to leave down woody debris and other structures important to fishers and their prey distributed throughout the unit instead of piling them into slash piles, will attempt to avoid mechanical damage or disturbance, and will locate skid trails around them where safety and operability considerations permit.
For slash piles documented as being used by fishers for denning on the enrolled lands, CFM shall not burn or otherwise mechanically alter such slash piles for a period of 5 years after the last year of known occupancy and use by a denning fisher.
CFM will avoid the use of rodenticides on lands enrolled in the permit area.
CFM will prohibit lessees from recreational trapping.
In 2009, the owner of a golf course in Georgia donated a conservation easement to a non-profit land trust. The easement included roughly 57 acres of primarily bottomland forests and wetlands along the Savannah River that would not be developed. That land is directly across the river from the Sumter National Forest, 700 feet away.
To obtain a tax deduction for the conservation easement, it has to be “exclusively for conservation purposes” based on one or more of the criteria in the Internal Revenue Code. They include:
(ii) the protection of a relatively natural habitat of fish, wildlife, or plants, or similar ecosystem,
(iii) the preservation of open space (including farmland and forest land) where such preservation is–
(I) for the scenic enjoyment of the general public, or
(II) pursuant to a clearly delineated Federal, State, or local governmental conservation policy,
and will yield a significant public benefit,
These issues were recently litigated by the IRS for this easement in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the donation to be eligible as both habitat (ii) and scenic open space (iii)(I). IRS Treasury Regulations elaborate on these requirements with regard to habitat by including “natural areas which are included in, or which contribute to, the ecological viability of a local, state, or national park, nature preserve, wildlife refuge, wilderness area, or other similar conservation area.” However, the court accepted expert testimony from the IRS that the easement did not support the forest’s ecological viability.
There is no mention of testimony from the Forest Service. The 2012 Planning Rule stresses that, planning for ecological integrity must take into account “conditions in the broader landscape that may influence the sustainability of resources and ecosystems within the plan area” (36 CFR §219.8(a)(1)(iii)). In addition, where a national forest plan area can not maintain a viable population of a species of conservation concern, “the responsible official shall coordinate to the extent practicable with other Federal, State, Tribal, and private land managers having management authority over lands relevant to that population” (36 CFR §219.9(b)(2)(ii))).
The also court determined, regarding open space (iii)(II), that, “There is no qualifying federal, state, or local government conservation policy that applies to this land…” In fact, the Forest Service Open Space Conservation Strategy includes this vision: “Private and public open spaces will complement each other across the landscape to provide ecosystem services, wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, and sustainable products.”
In this case, private land adjacent to a national forest was conserved, but there is no evidence that the Forest Service was even paying attention. The Forest Service needs to be more alert to these opportunities that would benefit national forest resources as well as contribute to greater national conservation needs. Maybe if the Forest Service promoted its conservation policies better, they would facilitate more donated easements and protect more habitat for wildlife species that also use national forests.
Along somewhat the same lines, conservationists in Florida are striving to conserve the Ocala to Osceola Wildlife Conservation Corridor, which would connect the two national forests of those names across 50 miles of multiple other ownerships (including a military base). Here is a presentation by the U. S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, which uses funding from the federal Farm Bill Resource Conservation Partnership Program to purchase conservation easements and create wildlife habitat on private lands within the corridor. (This is the kind of “governmental conservation policy” that should also support federal tax deductions for donated conservation easements.)
The federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker is an excellent example of a species that the Forest Service needs to coordinate management with others for, and here’s a bit of the success story about that in the O2O Corridor.
A red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) captured at Camp Blanding in Clay County is evidence that a project led by North Florida Land Trust to preserve land within the Ocala to Osceola (O2O) wildlife corridor is working. The bird captured at Camp Blanding was the first time this endangered species had moved between one of the national forests and the military installation since they began banding and recording the birds over 25 years ago.
“USDA Forest Service” is listed as a “partner” by NRCS, and the “National Forest Service” by the North Florida Land Trust. The latter gives me a sense of how deeply the Forest Service has not been involved, and I sure can’t find anything about this effort on either national forest website or using a national search. It’s too bad the Forest Service isn’t providing more leadership (and getting more of the credit) for conserving its important wildlife resources.
In the past couple of months the Forest Service has increased its family of forest plans revised under the 2012 Planning Rule to six. The Chugach and Rio Grande national forests have joined the Francis Marion, Flathead, El Yunque, and Inyo. The Forest Service revision schedule is over six months old, but the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest may be next.
Here’s what looks like a news release from the Rio Grande.
The plan prioritizes the use of active management to foster sustainable and productive use of the forest. Compared to the 1996 plan, this new plan is less prescriptive and emphasizes flexibility and commitments to working with the public. Management direction has been updated for all plant and wildlife species.
This seems to capture the mood of the Forest Service these days. The only commitments it has ever liked are those they have to do any way, especially if they are check-the-box kinds of procedural commitments like “working with the public.” In their “update” for wildlife, rather than commit to protecting wildlife as required by NFMA and the Planning Rule, they infuse the plan with discretion. Here’s some examples of what the Rio Grande seems to feel (based on the best available scientific information) would “provide the ecological conditions necessary to: contribute to the recovery of federally listed threatened and endangered species, conserve proposed and candidate species, and maintain a viable population of each species of conservation concern within the plan area” – which plan components “must” do (36 CFR §219.9(b)).
DC-SCC-2: Structure, composition, and function of coniferous forests, including late seral forests, meet the needs of associated species, including species of conservation concern. (Forestwide)
There is a series of these desired conditions for different ecosystems that all say the same thing, which is “we’ll figure out what these species need later.” The Planning Rule requirement is for “plan components” to meet the forest plan requirement, not for project-by-project decisions about how to protect at-risk species. Let’s see if the standards and guidelines add anything …
G-SCC-3: To maintain viability of species of conservation concern, reduce habitat fragmentation and maintain structural conditions of sagebrush ecosystems through design of management activities. Patch sizes should not be less than 5 acres. (Forestwide)
TEPC-G-1: To avoid or minimize adverse effects to listed species and their habitat, management actions should be designed with attention to threatened, endangered, proposed, or candidate species and their habitats. (Forestwide)
Wow. Apparently any “structural conditions” will do, but they at least appear to concede that there is a minimum patch size needed for some species in sagebrush ecosystems (this is actually the kind of “specific” desired condition the Planning Rule envisioned), but conversely there is not enough science to tell them what is needed for anywhere else. If the courts say this is good enough, then the Forest Service has essentially excised the diversity requirement for forest plans from NFMA. (Never mind the question of “how much did the Forest Service spend on forest planning to get THIS?”) (This is a continuation of a pattern discussed here, and may lead to some of the same kinds of problems under ESA.)
