Condition-based project in Georgia

We’ve discussed “condition-based” NEPA analysis and its legal implications – mostly thinking about timber management.  Here’s the Foothills Landscape Project, affecting 157,000 acres on the Chatahoochee-Oconee National Forest.  It raises the usual concerns about  NEPA sufficiency (it’s an EA, which was a key factor in the Tongass case injunction).  Here’s how it works, according to the EA:

The locations and timing of treatments would continue to be selected and prioritized using a systematic process that evaluates restoration needs, determines appropriate treatments to address those needs (through use of decision matrices) and balances implementation of those activities with operational feasibility, agency capacity, and social considerations, to the extent possible.

But apparently no further consideration of environmental impacts.  Here’s a statement that caught my eye, because the whole point of NEPA (as stated in many court opinions) is to analyze effects before you take action, whereas it sure looks like their intent is to act and then see what the effects are:

If, as a result of monitoring, the effects of activities require management or maintenance treatments that fall outside of the treatment toolbox options assessed within this EA and the forthcoming decision, additional analyses could be warranted.

I’ve also got NFMA concerns if what they are doing is establishing new long-term management direction (which should be in a forest plan) without going through the forest planning process.  How are “project design” requirements different from forest plan standards?

But what was new to me was the application to developed recreation sites, as described here:

On the recreation side, the project looks to make strides to improve the visitors’ experiences by enhancing existing trails and campsites that are used heavily while closing those that are not rarely used and no longer sustainable.
“We don’t have any specific proposals in any specific campground, but we are going to look at the conditions in areas that make sense … “We don’t have a lot of hard proposals, but basically we just want to make investments in areas that have high resource protection and high visitors’ satisfaction,” Grambley said. “We’re proposing reroutes to properly layout trails because we realize that a lot of our trails go straight up a ridgeline and we don’t want that because it causes erosion and it’s not fun to hike quite honestly. So we want to make the trails more sustainable and more-friendly layouts.”

These sound like the kinds of priorities that a forest plan should establish.  But when we want to implement them?  Just trust us to know what “makes sense.”

 

150,000 acre “project” on the Bitterroot

Well, not exactly, maybe.  This could be a good example of how to get the public involved early enough in the process for timber harvest decisions that the locations have not been determined yet.  But consider that the decision-maker is the same one who applied “condition-based” NEPA analysis to the Prince of Wales area of the Tongass, which has ended up in court.

Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Matt Anderson has added a new “pre-pre-scoping” stage to the process, not part of the traditional process in which a set of options is presented to the public for review and analysis.

The new approach is meant to get the public involved prior to coming up with any specific actions being planned for any specific location.

That much I like the sound of.

“There is confusion,” said Anderson. “It’s hard for the public to get involved. We are asking ‘What do you want to see? What’s your vision?’” He said the agency was “starting at the foundational level, not any particular location.” He said it was important to get to those particulars but the way there was to first describe the “desired future condition that we want and then look at the various ways we can achieve it.”

Asked about the fact that the current Forest Plan describes a desired future condition for the Bitterroot Front that involves returning it to primarily a Ponderosa pine habitat with little understory, Anderson said that is in the current plan, but that the plan is about 30 years old. He said a lot has changed in that time on the ground. There have been lots of fires and areas where no fires have occurred, and the fuel load has gotten extremely high. He said current conditions need to be assessed and they were currently compiling all the maps and other information they need to get an accurate picture of what is on the ground today in the project area.

This should raise a concern about how this process relates to forest planning, since forest plans are where decisions about desired conditions are made.  However, old forest plans typically didn’t provide desired conditions that are specific enough for projects, so that step has occurred at the project level.  Under the 2012 planning rule, specific desired conditions are a requirement for forest plans, but the Bitterroot National Forest is not yet revising its plan. Whatever desired conditions they come up with should be intended as part of the forest plan, and the public should be made aware of this.  If the new decision is not consistent with “Ponderosa pine habitat with little understory,” they’ll need an amendment to be consistent with the current plan.  (I’d add that changes in the on-the-ground conditions over the last 30 years shouldn’t necessarily influence the long-term desired condition.)

“The Tongass is so different than the Bitterroot,” said Anderson. “There is not much similarity. I’m not trying to replicate that process here. It was a conditioned-based process up there. It’s like comparing apples to oranges.” In reference to conditioned-based projects, he said, “One difference with this project is that some of that will be pre-decision and some of that will be in implementation. We are trying to shift some of the workload to the implementation stage.”

He said they have a slew of options, from traditional NEPA, to programmatic NEPA to condition-based NEPA “and we are trying to figure it out.”

He insists that the NEPA process will be followed with the same chance for public comment and involvement on every specific project that is proposed in the area.

There’s some ambiguous and possibly inconsistent statements there.  Condition-based NEPA seeks to avoid a NEPA process “on every specific project.”  I could also interpret shifting workload to “pre-decision” and  “the implementation stage” is a way to take things out of the NEPA realm.

And then there’s this:

In response to the notion that the huge project is being driven by timber targets and not health prescriptions, Anderson said that the Regional Office had set some timber targets for different areas of the region, but that those targets were not driving the analysis.This project has nothing to do with meeting any target,” said Anderson.

This feels a little like “There was no quid pro quo.”  Would timber harvested from this project not count towards the targets?  (I’d like to see  targets for achieving desired conditions.) All in all this project would be worth keeping an eye on.

(By the way, here’s the latest on Prince of Wales.)

Trump issues orders to the Forest Service

In case you missed it, on December 21, President Trump issued an executive order: “EO on Promoting Active Management of America’s Forests, Rangelands, and other Federal Lands to Improve Conditions and Reduce Wildfire Risk.”  This should answer all of our questions about what the agency’s priorities are for the duration of his administration.  It’s a short read, but here’s my take.

The problem: ” For decades, dense trees and undergrowth have amassed in these lands, fueling catastrophic wildfires.”   (No mention of climate change of course.)

The cause:  “Active management of vegetation is needed to treat these dangerous conditions on Federal lands but is often delayed due to challenges associated with regulatory analysis and current consultation requirements. In addition, land designations and policies can reduce emergency responder access to Federal land and restrict management practices that can promote wildfire-resistant landscapes.”  (In other words, the laws and the public.)

The solution:  “Post-fire assessments show that reducing vegetation through hazardous fuel management and strategic forest health treatments is effective in reducing wildfire severity and loss.” “To protect communities and watersheds, to better prevent catastrophic wildfires, and to improve the health of America’s forests, rangelands, and other Federal lands, the Secretaries shall each develop goals and implementation plans for wildfire prevention activities and programs in their respective departments.”  This includes, “Reducing vegetation giving rise to wildfire conditions through forest health treatments by increasing health treatments as part of USDA’s offering for sale at least 3.8 billion board feet of timber from USDA FS lands…,” and, “the Secretaries shall identify salvage and log recovery options from lands damaged by fire during the 2017 and 2018 fire seasons, insects, or disease.”  (I’m looking forward to a definition of “health treatments” so that we can tell if they are increasing that share of the volume targets.)

The EO “promotes” this solution by calling for the kind of coordination, streamlining and speeding up the legally required processes that has been ongoing in the agency, and for a new “wildfire strategy” by the end of the Trump Administration.  For the most part it sounds to me like the traditional charge of “cut corners to get the cut out” “consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.” That last part usually doesn’t seem to get the same priority, which typically leads to more litigation.  Interesting that there is no mention of the wildland urban interface (which is where pretty much everyone agrees should be the priority).

Producing the wildfire strategy does include a requirement to “Review land designations and policies that may limit active forest management and increase the risk of catastrophic wildfires…”  That seems to implicate forest plans, but it doesn’t suggest changing them, and if there are such limits they are probably there for a good, publicly supported reason.

Oh, and no mention of science.

National EADM Report Out!!!

I was planning to post each region’s findings and compare them, and I apologize as one of my other volunteer gigs took a time-consuming turn (Aside, HOA, need I say more? I’m going to submit an idea for a reality show “HOA Rescue” like “Bar Rescue”. Anyone know anyone in the entertainment industry?)

So NFF got ahead of me and here’s a link to their findings. I haven’t had time to review them myself, so please take a look and add your thoughts below. Based on my experience at the Region 2 workshop and my looks at Region 8 and Region 9 reports, NFF did a great job of summarizing the themes. Here is their own summary:

Embrace learning and accept risk – Partners want to engage in collaborative settings with the Forest Service earlier in project development, desire more transparency in Agency processes, and are interested in and willing to share the risk around EADM processes.

Work collaboratively to build understanding and trust – Partners recommend holding joint trainings with Forest Service staff on laws, agency process and collaboration. Partners want clarification on common characteristics of both excellent collaborative processes managed by the Forest Service and community-based collaborative groups to ensure consistency and quality, while enabling flexibility for local innovation.


Seek out partnerships to leverage opportunity, knowledge, and resource
s – Partners want to play a larger role in sharing technical resources, expertise, volunteers, and data. In a resource-scarce environment, the Forest Service needs better systems to leverage the resources partners offer.

Manage transitions like they matter – The high frequency of staff transitions, and the way transitions are currently managed by the Forest Service, are major barriers to EADM and to community relationships.

FS vs. BLM Workload..One Worker’s Point of View

As I’ve been reviewing the EADM workshop summaries, I’ve noticed that one commonality of most of the regional workshops is what you might call “team management”. Things like people leaving, balls being dropped, lengthy efforts that change direction with new additions to the team, even retirements, pose a problem to getting projects accomplished. Yesterday a comment came in on the BLM comparison to FS topic from “Circus Employee”. Here’s a link to her/his comment. Looking even deeper, I wonder if some of these team and management problems are from too high and too many targets, or from activities that draw FS employees away from their work somehow. Both agencies must deal with the hassles endemic to federal land management bureaucracy. It might be helpful to get a team of folks who’ve worked in both agencies to give some recommendations as part of the EADM effort (how can NEPA teams be managed better?). Also perhaps some position classification reviews and workflow analyses comparing the agencies. Perhaps fund some public administration schools to take a look? Perhaps problems with the management of EADM are reflective of overall difficulties in management.

These workload comparisons probably depend, to some extent, on the particulars of location (if a unit doesn’t have timber, or minerals, or has a big recreation program), but but it might be possible and worth it to compare workloads and work processes with similar conditions-perhaps neighboring units. Anyway, here’s one person’s point of view..

“I just switched from the BLM to the Forest Circus, Department of Aggravation. I took a lateral position, GS-0486-11, and I assure you 100% that my job with the FS circus is like doing 5 jobs with the BLM. While working for the BLM I was “a” wildlife biologist (terrestrial). With the FS as a wildlife biologist I also do the duties for a fish biologist, botanist, and a weeds specialist, and in addition, I am also a supervisor, which I did not supervise anyone with BLM. My supervisor, a GS-12 at BLM, supervised ALL the technicians and specialists and did not do NEPA. My current job duties with the FS would be equivalent to a GS-12 with the BLM, at a minimum.

I have to write many more BA/BEs and NEPA for all four of those resources for the FS. While working in an interagency (BLM/FS) office, I learned it is a well known fact that the BLM is much better, with reasonable workloads per person. I just didn’t realize how much of a difference it is. My boss at the BLM came from the FS, and she loves the BLM much more than the FS. She’s a GS-12 and I currently have more duties than she does!

Everything in the FS is way more complicated; budgeting, timekeeping, FACTS, WIT, NRM, the O drive troubles, and now Pinyon, on and on! Literally, I can’t be efficient at any one thing because I have to shift gears daily and re-learn it all because it’s so complicated.

Comparing the two agencies by acres is not a good formula, at all. I managed 10 times more acres for BLM than I do with FS, and my job with BLM was way easier to do quality work and to keep up.

Another thing, BLM HR is far better structured than FS HR!
….
Bottom line, the BLM treats their employees better because they can, they are funded better, and probably hire better supervisors too because of that. Good people don’t want to stay with the FS when they know things are better elsewhere, like the BLM or BOR where they pay better for the duties performed.

Mediation, Arbitration and Collaboration in Natural Resource Decisions: Guest Post by Peter Williams

Many of you may know Peter Williams from his work in the Forest Service on collaboration. Here is a link to what he is currently doing at the Partnership and Community Collaboration Academy. Thanks to him for writing this for our blog (at my request)! Quite a bit to think about here.. thanks again, Peter!

“As the USFS pursues changes in environmental analysis and decision making, matters of decision process are receiving attention, including dispute resolution. There are numerous schools of thought about decision making, dispute resolution, and decision processes. Some of the thinking is very divergent; most people have a limited understanding of the complexity of that thinking, at least outside of academics and lawyers, despite the fact that making decisions is one of the more basic human actions.

When a dispute occurs, arbitration and mediation are often mentioned as tools or techniques to reach agreement with the assistance of a third-party, either a mediator or arbitrator, also called an arbiter. Generally, the basic difference between arbitration and mediation is the decision maker: under arbitration, the arbitrator has the decision authority if the parties fail to reach agreement; under mediation, the parties make the decision and the mediator guides the process. There are exceptions, like with non-binding arbitration, where there is no enforcement of the arbiter’s decision on the parties. With non-binding arbitration, the arbiter still has the decision authority, but the parties are not bound by the decision, which obviously limits the arbiter’s authority.

Both arbitration and mediation are considered “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) skills or techniques, with the other ADR techniques including collaboration and negotiation. The 1996 Alternative Dispute Resolution Act (ADRA) authorizes federal agencies to use ADR techniques to supplement other dispute resolution methods when the parties agree; yet, it specifically prohibits use of ADR techniques if, among things, other parties not involved in the proceeding may be significantly affected. For this reason, arbitration under ADRA fits poorly with natural resource management planning and public land management planning. Other ADR approaches, however, do fit well.

A collaborative approach is typically consistent with ADR concepts, for example, while also addressing public land management process issues. Public land management decisions are often a particular type of decisions because the scale of the interests can be so large, well beyond the narrower scope of a typical business dispute or administrative dispute involving a relatively small number of parties. For these reasons, a collaborative approach can be a good choice if the process is designed well. For example, a good process design will address the public engagement required under NEPA, the information collection constraints under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the sunshine requirements under FACA, as well as any other procedural requirements identified during the process design phase.

In addition, a collaborative approach is fundamentally learning-oriented because it is about jointly coming to understand the issue, context, history, and implementation-oriented options. It is a “diagnostic” approach, as opposed to a prescriptive or predictive approach, because a shared understanding emerges from the broader group. Part of the understanding that emerges is about interests, as opposed to positions. In more traditional planning or decision processes, positions stated at the beginning of the process are treated as fixed, with little learning encouraged to reframe positions or to understand the interests underlying those stated positions.

A collaborative approach to a decision can extend into a collaborative approach to implementation as well as to monitoring, evaluation, and other forms of feed-back, all because of the continuous learning aspects of a good collaborative process. Arbitration and mediation, in contrast, tend to be one-off processes during which a narrow set of disputed issues are addressed. In this sense, arbitration and mediation generally remain in the category of adversarial dispute resolution approaches. Collaborative approaches are in a separate category and it can take careful work to move from an adversarial relationship to a more collaborative one, recognizing that even most collaborative efforts still allow for adversarial disputes to be addressed. In other words, one can work in a collaborative way while also recognizing that adversarial disputes can occur. When those happen, though, the foundation of collaboration often allows those disputes to be worked out more quickly and more constructively, often in a way that allows a return to the more generally collaborative approach.

Returning to the larger category of collaborative approaches, there is collaborative planning and collaborative decision making, as well as collaborative learning and collaborative evaluation or assessment. All of these are related and readily integrated.

Rio Grande Water Fund- Landscape Scale Success Story

As part of thinking about the EADM effort, here’s another (the Rio Grande Water Fund) in the series of landscape-scale success stories. We’ve discussed it before, but now we have this excellent powerpoint from Laura McCarthy of the Nature Conservancy, presented at our 40th class reunion at Yale last fall. She received the Distinguished Alumna award from the school for this and her other work.

Some notable elements of the powerpoint are some photos of the damage caused by fires in terms of flooding and sedimentation.

And the amazing array of partners:

Based on the successes of the Flagstaff project, the Denver Water projects, we might see a pattern in which large scale projects over multiple jurisdictions are easier when 1) there has been a fire with negative effects in someone’s backyard or watershed, 2) leadership from NGOs come forward to do something, and 3) water providers or communities or other NGOs put $ on the table. Placing a bet on fires not happening (the argument that only x % is going to burn, so why spend $ to establish and maintain vegetation) may not be as appealing when the impacts hit you and your neighbors, directly, and within your own experience.

So here’s one hypothesis for why these areas perhaps have greater success in landscape scale efforts, and not, say, California. Because timber was never a big industry in the SW, perhaps the organized opposition to cutting trees (for commercial reasons) has not had an opportunity to develop. So perhaps people, and groups don’t have those issues to work through, at least not to the same degree- you could call this infrastructure established during the Timber Wars. Certainly folks like the Center for Biological Diversity and Wild Earth Guardians are headquartered in the SW, but apparently choose not to go after these projects (or they do, and that aspect has not been highlighted in the write-ups I’ve seen).

Another idea would be that this is tied to water and where water is at a premium people are going to be more careful. Our Regional Forester in 2, at the time, Rick Cables was thinking maybe California should donate to Colorado fuel treatment projects because they use Colorado River water. I don’t think that that worked out..

So please take a look at the powerpoint and share your thoughts. Also, I’m still looking for successful landscape scale projects outside of Regions 2 and 3. I’m sure they’re there, but I can’t as easily find out about them.

Forest Service EADM Workshop: Region 9 Summary

I’m going to start going through the write-ups for each Regional EADM Workshop and see what we can find in terms of issues and ideas for improvement.

I started with Region 9, linked here, and noticed that our own Tony Erba was involved. Hopefully, he will weigh in with his own thoughts. For the purpose of this discussion, I have taken the summaries produced by NFF and selected some points. Others are welcome to add their own from the report, or from their own experience. After we go through all the Regions’ reports, we can talk about the FS has done to deal with these issues. I don’t have the whole picture of what the FS tried and how it worked, but we can piece it together from my own memories and those of others.

Here’s what I’d like to see from commenters: 1) questions or additional description and your own experiences of what I summarized, 2) interesting things I left out from the report (it’s a detailed report, so I confess that I probably missed many ideas), 3) suggestions for different categories.

Here are the current categories:

I. Same as Previous NEPA Improvement Efforts:

FS is risk averse and overdoes documents.
Lack of consistency among units.
Use of jargon
Turnover- no steady hand to guide process, time lags to find new people
Lack of staff
Staff not motivated
Not using contracting
Underfunded
Not good and early collaboration
FS has bad writers forest plans not decipherable
Make it easier to find projects on web

II. Potentially New:

Poor quality of, and need to share data and maps
Disconnected decisionmaking from communities
Excessive use of EAs when NRCS doesn’t need to for the same kind of work.
Partner resources underutilized
Small non-controversial projects not getting done.
Special Use (SUP) authorizations are slow
Inaccurate and inconsistent data in databases and analyses

III. Not Related to EADM but Still Concerns:
Stop closing roads and trails
Broken web links
Lack of signage at picnic tables and trailheads website difficult to navigate

IV. Improvement Suggestions:
Annual Meeting for better communication on project planning and status
Make better use of partners to do work.
Sustainable Forest Certification to reduce litigation.

Forest Service EADM – Workshop Introductory Powerpoint

One of my favorite professors at Iliff is a historian named Eric Smith. When we approach the past, he said, “we should neither be naive nor cynical.” This is a message, in my view, that applies to many things in life. With regard to EADM, you could think (the Cynical Partisan View) that this is a plot by the evil Trump Administration and Western Congressional R’s to destroy ESA, leave the public out, and lay waste to western landscapes in the name of money-grubbing corporate elites. Or you might think, (the Cynical NEPA Person View) this is the same old stuff, it comes up every decade or so, since the FS talked about Process Predicament and nothing much changed, what’s the point? But I think that there are many good ideas out there, and that this is an opportunity for us to explore them and see if there are any that we can agree on. It’s a chance to move past being stuck in the partisan swamp, and actually getting to higher ground and a better place.

Absolutely, the FS may not use our ideas. I am not naive. But I am not sure that they won’t, either, so I am not cynical. And who knows, ideas take on their own kind of life and may be adopted by Congress or other groups. And I think us discussing them outside the partisan vitriolic context has its own value to show internet world that more meaningful and less mean-spirited dialogue can take place on these platforms.

The FS says that the next opportunity to give input will be when the Draft Rule comes out in June or thereabouts. Part of the conversation is (1) what is working? (2) what is not working? (3) why do we think so? (4) what might work better? and (5) what would have to change to make that happen?

Here is the powerpoint presentation given by Glenn Casamassa. Note that Glenn’s history involved him being himself a NEPA expert, plus he is a veteran of previous NEPA improvement efforts.

Please feel free to comment on anything in the Powerpoint. I don’t know any more than the rest of you all about the process, but if we have questions we can try to find the answers. I think the NFF was supposed to generate a report based on the workshops. It would be great if that were made available and we could post and discuss. I could FOIA it but why harass FOIA people unnecessarily? Really- public comments, including syntheses thereof, should be made public IMHO.