ESA

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

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Massive Adams River Sockeye Salmon Migration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are three interesting subtopics to me in this paper.

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

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

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

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

Here’s a a quote from the Dalai Lama:

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

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

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

Note that he talks about natural resources being inadequate.

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

Largest “Dealbreaker” Ever?!?

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This may shock some readers but, I am actually against HR 3188. I don’t support any logging in Yosemite National Park, or in the Emigrant Wilderness, other than hazard tree projects. What is also pretty amazing is that others in the House have signed on to this bill. It seems like political “suicide” to go on record, being in favor of this bill. However, I am in favor of exempting regular Forest Service lands, within the Rim Fire, from legal actions, as long as they display “due diligence” in addressing endangered species, and other environmental issues. Did McClintock not think that expedited Yosemite National Park logging would be, maybe, the largest “dealbreaker” in history?

Here is McClintock’s presentation:

 HR 3188 – Timber Fire Salvage

October 3, 2013
Mr. Chairman:
I want to thank you for holding this hearing today and for the speedy consideration of HR 3188.
It is estimated that up to one billion board feet of fire-killed timber can still be salvaged out of the forests devastated by the Yosemite Rim fire, but it requires immediate action.  As time passes, the value of this dead timber declines until after a year or so it becomes unsalvageable.
The Reading Fire in Lassen occurred more than one year ago.  The Forest Service has just gotten around to selling salvage rights last month.  In the year the Forest Service has taken to plow through endless environmental reviews, all of the trees under 18” in diameter – which is most of them – have become worthless.
After a year’s delay for bureaucratic paperwork, extreme environmental groups will often file suits to run out the clock, and the 9th Circuit Court of appeals has become infamous for blocking salvage operations.
We have no time to waste in the aftermath of the Yosemite Rim Fire, which destroyed more than 400 square miles of forest in the Stanislaus National Forest and the Yosemite National Park — the largest fire ever recorded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The situation is particularly urgent because of the early infestation of bark beetles which have already been observed attacking the dead trees.  As they do so, the commercial value of those trees drops by half.
Four hundred miles of roads are now in jeopardy.  If nearby trees are not removed before winter, we can expect dead trees to begin toppling, risking lives and closing access.  Although the Forest Service has expedited a salvage sale on road and utility rights of way as part of the immediate emergency measures, current law otherwise only allows a categorical exemption for just 250 acres – enough to protect just 10 miles of road.
By the time the normal environmental review of salvage operations has been completed in a year, what was once forest land will have already begun converting to brush land, and by the following year reforestation will become infinitely more difficult and expensive – especially if access has been lost due to impassibility of roads.  By that time, only trees over 30 inches in diameter will be salvageable.
Within two years, five to eight feet of brush will have built up and the big trees will begin toppling on this tinder.  You could not possibly build a more perfect fire than that.
If we want to stop the conversion of this forestland to brush land, the dead timber has to come out.  If we take it out now, we can actually sell salvage rights, providing revenue to the treasury that could then be used for reforestation.  If we go through the normal environmental reviews and litigation, the timber will be worthless, and instead of someone paying US to remove the timber, WE will have to pay someone else to do so.  The price tag for that will be breathtaking.   We will then have to remove the accumulated brush to give seedlings a chance to survive – another very expensive proposition.
This legislation simply waives the environmental review process for salvage operations on land where the environment has already been incinerated, and allows the government to be paid for the removal of already dead timber, rather than having the government pay someone else.
There is a radical body of opinion that says, just leave it alone and the forest will grow back.
Indeed, it will, but not in our lifetimes.  Nature gives brush first claim to the land – and it will be decades before the forest is able to fight its way back to reclaim that land.
This measure has bi-partisan precedent.  It is the same approach as offered by Democratic Senator Tom Daschle a few years ago to allow salvage of beetle-killed timber in the Black Hills National Forest.
Finally, salvaging this timber would also throw an economic lifeline to communities already devastated by this fire as local mills can be brought to full employment for the first time in many years.
Time is not our friend.  We can act now and restore the forest, or we can dawdle until restoration will become cost prohibitive.

Why We Need to Salvage and Replant the Rim Fire

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Greg asked why we should bother with salvage logging on the Rim Fire, and I tried to explain how bear clover would dominate landscapes. He also seemed confused about modern salvage projects, here in California. Everything, here in California, is fuels-driven, as wildfires happen up to 13 times per century, in some places in the Sierra Nevada.

This picture shows how dense the bear clover can be, blocking some of the germination and growth of conifer species. Additionally, bear clover is extremely flammable and oily, leading to re-burns. This project also included removing unmerchantable fuels, including leaving branches attached. Yes, it was truly a “fuels reduction project”. You might also notice how many trees died, from bark beetles, after this salvage sale was completed. Certainly, blackbacked woodpeckers can live here, despite the salvage logging. Hanson and the Ninth Circuit Court stopped other salvage sales in this project, in favor of the BBW.

P9256073-web

When you combine this bear clover with a lack of fire salvage and chaparral brush, you end up with everything you need for a catastrophic, soils-damaging re-burn and enhanced erosion, which will impact long term recovery and the re-establishment of large tree forests. Actually, there has already been a re-burn within this project since salvage operations in 2006. Salvage logging greatly reduced that fire’s intensity, as it slicked-off the bear clover, but stayed on the ground. Certainly, if the area hadn’t been salvaged, those large amounts of fuels would have led to a much different outcome.

Now, if we apply these lessons to the Rim Fire, we can see how a lack of salvage in some areas within the Rim Fire will lead to enhanced future fires, and more soils damages and brushfields. When the Granite Fire was salvaged in the early 70’s, large areas were left “to recover on their own”, in favor of wildlife and other supposed “values”. When I worked on plantation thinning units there, those areas were 30 year old brushfields, with manzanita and ceanothus up to eight feet high. Those brushfields burned at moderate intensity, according to the burn severity map. Certainly, there were remnant logs left covered by those brushfields, leading to the higher burn severity. It was the exact same situation in my Yosemite Meadow Fire example, which as you could see by the pictures, did massive damage to the landscape, greatly affecting long term recovery. Here is the link to a view of one of those Rim Fire brushfields, surrounded by thinned plantations.

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=37.999904,-119.948199&spn=0.003792,0.008256&t=h&z=18

I’ve been waiting to get into this area but, I expect the fire area will remain closed until next year. The plantations were thinned and I hear that some of them did have some survival, despite drought conditions and high winds, during the wildfire. In this part of California, fuels are the critical factor in wildfire severity. Indians knew this, after thousands of years of experience. They knew how to “grow” old growth forests, dedicating substantial amounts of time and energy to “manage” their fuels for their own survival, safety and prosperity. Their preferred forest included old growth pines, large oak trees, very little other understory trees, and thick bear clover. Since wildfires in our modern world are a given, burning about every 20 to 40 years, we cannot be “preserving” fuels for the next inevitable wildfire.

We need to be able to burn these forests, without causing the overstory pines to die from cambium kill, or bark beetles. That simply cannot be done when unsalvaged fuels choke the landscape. We MUST intervene in the Rim Fire, to reduce the fuels for the next inevitable wildfire that WILL come, whether it is “natural”, or human-caused. “Protected” old growth endangered species habitats may now become “protected” fuels-choked brushfields, ready for the next catastrophic wildfire, without some “snag thinning”.  We cannot just let “whatever happens”, happen, and the Rim Fire is a perfect example of “whatever happens”. Shouldn’t we be planning and acting to reduce those impacts, including the extreme costs of putting the Rim Fire out, and other significant human costs? Re-burns are a reality we cannot ignore, and doing nothing is unacceptable. Yes, much of the fire doesn’t have worthwhile salvage volumes, and that is OK but, there are less controversial salvage efforts we can and should be accomplishing.

Here is an example of salvage and bear clover, six months after logging with ground-based equipment. This looks like it will survive future wildfires. You can barely even see the stumps, today! The bear clover has covered them.

clean_salvage-06

Wolves in Europe and “The Landscape of Fear”

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The European gray wolf is steadily returning to much of its former range in western Europe. Photograph: Alamy
The European gray wolf is steadily returning to much of its former range in western Europe. Photograph: Alamy

I had been saving these two New Scientist articles and since we’ve been discussing wolves..Here’s the link to how gray wolves are faring in Europe..and one on how prey react based on Yellowstone.

GOODNESS, what big teeth you have, and what close ties to humans you have! And what negative attitudes you elicit from rural people all over the world!

Behind their cultural baggage, grey wolves are an evolutionary success story, giving rise to the domestic dog 10,000 years ago and, more recently, rebounding from centuries of persecution.

“There are wild wolves galore in Europe,” says Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at the University of Oxford. “They have recolonised vast areas of their former range and live almost unnoticed in populated areas.”

A wolf was recently spotted in the Netherlands, after an absence of over a century. There are ongoing calls from ecologists for them to be reintroduced to Scotland, where they’ve been extinct since the 1700s. In the US, arguments rage over whether their numbers are high enough to sustain hunting.

These wolves were photographed playing in the Black Mountain Wildlife Park, south of Hamburg in Germany, which has more than a thousand animals in an area of 50 hectares.

“While we think of wolves as masters of the wilderness in Europe, they thrive in human-dominated landscapes,” says Sillero. “Over 3000 wolves live in heavily populated areas of northern Spain and Portugal, and wolves from Italy have steadily colonised southern France.”

French farmers may not share Sillero’s enthusiasm, but with less persecution than in the past, wolf numbers are growing. For those of us in Europe, the howl of a wolf could one day become as familiar as the cries of foxes.

And “Scared to death: How intimidation changes ecosystems

IN JANUARY 1995, grey wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park, almost 70 years after they had been exterminated by an overenthusiastic predator-control programme. Over the next two winters, 31 animals captured in Canada were released into the park, fitted with radio collars so that rangers could track their whereabouts. But not all eyes were on the wolves; John Laundre was more interested in their main prey, elk. The large deer had run amok in the wolf-free decades, causing serious damage to the park’s trees. He wanted to know how they would fare now that their old nemesis was back.

By the second year, the answer was obvious. In the parts of Yellowstone that the wolves hadn’t yet reached, female elk grazed peacefully while their calves gambolled around them. “It was a scene out of a Disney film,” says Laundre, an ecologist at the State University of New York at Oswego. But in areas the wolves had colonised, things were very different. The calves were pinned to the sides of their ever-wary mothers. “It was like looking at two different countries, one at war and one at peace,” he says.

For Laundre, it was a light-bulb moment. He realised that wolves don’t just kill elk, they also change the deer’s behaviour without even lifting a claw. Their mere presence – perhaps their scent on the wind and tracks in the dirt – creates a perpetual state of apprehension in their prey. Seen through the eyes of an elk, the physical terrain is overlaid with a mental map of risk, complete with “mountains” where the odds of being eaten are high and they must be constantly vigilant, and “valleys” of relative safety where they can lower their guard. To describe this psychological environment, Laundre coined the term “landscape of fear”.

The concept seems simple but it subverts the dominant view in ecology – that predators only affect their prey by killing them. It also challenges the belief that most animals feel fear only in short bursts, like the sharp panic of a chase, while long-term psychological stress is something that only humans and other primates experience. With such emotions pushed aside, traditional ecological models have reduced predators and prey to little more than rolling marbles. “If one bumped into another, the second ball was dead,” says Laundre. The idea of adding psychology to the mix, especially a seemingly anthropomorphic emotion like fear, was anathema.

But times are changing. Ecologists are studying landscapes of fear in animals as diverse as wolves and elk, sharks and dugongs, spiders and grasshoppers. Time and again it has emerged that the greatest effect predators have upon their prey is not through slaughter, but intimidation. They can influence how successfully their potential victims feed, breed and raise their young, all without a single kill. And it doesn’t end there: these effects trickle through entire ecosystems, shaping the make-up of the local flora and even influencing the flow of nutrients through the soil. The implications are huge. Through the landscape of fear, predators can unwittingly remodel the physical landscape – just by being scary.

Laundre wasn’t the first to recognise the role of fear in ecology. Since the 1970s, studies had shown that predators can force prey to mount costly defences, such as moving into poorer habitats and being so relentlessly vigilant that they do not have the time to eat enough. But most of these experiments were small in scale and duration, and few looked at the lasting consequences of the choices made by prey. It was the advent of big, long-term studies in natural settings that addressed these failings and brought the importance of fear into sharp relief.

“The Yellowstone example is the first one that really smacked us in the face,” says Laundre. Before the wolves were reintroduced, ecologists correctly predicted how big their populations would become and how many elk they would kill. However, they greatly underestimated the effect on elk numbers. “They really just assumed that wolves would impact the elk by eating them,” says Scott Creel from Montana State University in Bozeman, whose findings in another corner of Yellowstone showed how wrong that idea was.

While hunting for a photo, I found this by Garry Marvin on the return of wolves to the UK.

The solution is not imposition but dialogue. Conservation projects, however soundly based on science, can never succeed without taking account of the human dimension. Wildlife has to co-exist with humans. Put crudely, scientists often seem frustrated that local people do not understand what they tell them about the realities of wolves; shepherds and other livestock farmers feel resentful that outsiders do not want to listen to their traditional knowledge; and agricultural agencies seem to think that compensation for animals killed is payment enough for wolf predation.

Hmm.. sound familiar?

Wolf Scientists Howl About Wolf Delisting

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map-historic

Given our recent discussions about ESA, I thought this article here by Bob Berwyn was very interesting.

Federal wildlife agencies are under intense pressure from states to turn over wolf management. Congress has already set the stage for political interference in the wolf recovery process, and that step has put the the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service at the edge of a very slippery slope. Any proposal to de-list wolves is likely to face significant opposition and legal challenges from conservation advocates.

Congress has “set the stage” for “political interference”? But isn’t when and where species should be managed open for public (“political”) discussion? Didn’t Congress, in fact, determine what is in ESA?

Here’s a quote from the scientists’ letter..

“The gray wolf has barely begun to recover or is absent from significant portions of its former range where substantial suitable habitat remains. The Service’s draft rule fails to consider science identifying extensive suitable habitat in the Pacific Northwest, California, the southern Rocky Mountains and the Northeast. It also fails to consider the importance of these areas to the long-term survival and recovery of wolves, or the importance of wolves to the ecosystems of these regions.”

So it sounds like the scientists (which I’m not sure tracks with the ESA legislation) think recovery means they need to go back everywhere there’s “suitable habitat”. I would argue that the “ecosystem” I live in seems to be doing OK without wolves.. and who would judge that? Since ecosystems are a human idea imposed on the planet, I guess it’s up to anyone to argue one way or another and I would think wolf biologists might not be the folks to ask about how an “ecosystem” is doing. And it also seems like they if they are not everywhere, in the long-term wolves cannot survive. I don’t know what the rationale is for that but if they are doing fine, and expanding their ranges now… I just don’t get why designating suitable habitat everywhere is necessary..

Here’s a quote from a previous post here:

With Endangered Species Act protection, states like Oregon and Washington could decide they don’t want any wolves at all. Utah, Colorado, and California and Northeastern states could decide never to pursue wolf restoration, foreclosing the possibility of recovery in large parts of gray wolves’ historic range.

“The Obama administration is giving up on gray wolf recovery before the job is done. How can they declare ‘Mission Accomplished’ when gray wolves still face significant threats throughout their range,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife and a former Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Wolves in the Pacific Northwest have only just begun to recover, and there are no wolf populations in Utah and Colorado. Places like the Olympic peninsula in Washington state and the Colorado Rockies would benefit both ecologically and economically from the return of wolves. We shouldn’t be closing the door on an incredible opportunity to revitalize some of America’s best remaining suitable wolf habitat by bringing back these important iconic animals,” she said.

“Gray wolves once ranged in a continuous population from Canada all the way down to Mexico, and we shouldn’t give up on this vision until they are restored … But now, politics has been allowed to trump sound science, and the future recovery of America’s wolves is being tossed up in the air once again. It is truly sad that the Obama administration has chosen this path and short-circuited what could and should have been a tremendous conservation success for our nation,” she concluded.

Wow! “Science” tells us that wolves and grizzlies have to be reintroduced everywhere they used to be? Doesn’t sound like a science question to me..sounds to me like plain old preference and values, which generally tends to be mediated through.. our elected officials.

OIG Report: A Snapshot into ESA and Science

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Andy posted this link yesterday in our discussion of the lynx and how ESA works.. I thought it was fascinating as a glimpse into the agendas- scientific information- personality combinations and permutations involved in some of these decisions.

It’s also interesting that it was pointed out that Ms. Macdonald released “private information to public sources.” This seems to happen as a daily occurrence within the FS and EPA, at least. Sometimes employees use this tactics to promote their agendas on both sides. I like that this gives a glimpse into the real world of trying to base decisions on “science”.. your science or my sciences or the “best” science?

Another reason, as Bob Z. suggested, that all the scientific arguments used should be published with an opportunity for the public to review and comment.

Well worth a read and you can learn something about the ESA process.

I wonder if this is available somewhere as a text document so that we could quote from it.

If you read this, what was your impression?

Wolverine – Case Study in ESA

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The USFWS takes another step toward finalizing a wolverine recovery effort. Photo courtesy USFWS/Steve Kroschel.
The USFWS takes another step toward finalizing a wolverine recovery effort. Photo courtesy USFWS/Steve Kroschel.

Maybe we could follow this story and learn about the ins and outs of ESA as this goes through the process. When I worked for the FS, we had experts so I didn’t really need to understand all the ins and outs (I was involved with the S Rockies lynx amendment, but more in terms of trying to move it along procedurally). Bob Berwyn posted this on his blog here. It’s interesting that states currently with wolverines don’t seem to be as enthused as Colorado, which currently does not have them. Correlation or causation?

Here’s an excerpt from Bob’s story:

Just in the past few weeks, the state agency rekindled those talks to update stakeholders on the federal listing process, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton.

“We’re trying give everybody an understanding of how some of the things that are proposed would work … The way they’re doing it is kind of new,” Hampton said, referring to the proposed simultaneous listing and nonessential population proposal.

“Overall it was a productive meeting. There were concerns that came up, many related to lynx and the history of that,” he said.

The lynx listing resulted in more stringent reviews for certain types of projects on national forest lands, including logging, ski area operations and expansions, and other recreational uses.

Colorado won’t consider a wolverine reintroduction program until the federal listing is finalized. Then, the State Legislature would have have to give its approval, but Hampton said that state biologists are keen to explore the idea.

“There’s still a great deal of interest in this … Maybe to temper that, there’s biological excitement. There aren’t that many species that you can look at and say, they’re native, were extirpated, and there is general agreement that bringing them back would be a good thing,” he said.

Here’s my question: they aren’t here in Colorado. We bring them in (reintroduction) and then we have yet another creature to analyze on each federal proposal, and it seems that we need to analyze even when they are nowhere around because it could become habitat for them were their populations to grow (is this true?).

Would it be a “good thing”? Based on the same logic (native and extirpated) we would be reintroducing grizzlies to California.. I don’t know.. what is “biological excitement”? People get “biologically excited” for a variety of reasons, not all of which can be discussed on a family blog, but are not usually set into public policy…

I’m interested in a) whose opinion rules at the end of the day as this process goes forward (biologists who work for CDOW? USFWS?)
b) how and when the scientific information gets arrayed and how it is structured for the public to comment on the scientific information and its use.

In the case of the wolverine, the USFWS posits that snowmobiling, backcountry skiing, and land management activities like timber harvest and infrastructure development, don’t pose a serious threat, but nongovernmental conservation groups counter that there’s not enough good science to draw that conclusion. Intentional killing of wolverines would be banned in any case.

Did we move somehow from scientific information about impacts to needing to prove that there are no impacts..isn’t it impossible to prove a negative?

c) what happened with lynx.. at first it sounded like there was a deal with ski areas to support it, now every ski proposal needs to be examined for its impacts on lynx and I believe there’s been litigation that cited lynx.. how does that all work? Was there really a deal? How did it hold up?

d) How about people on private lands.. do they have the same restrictions as public lands?

e) If wolverine is up north and having trouble, is a choice to be more careful up north to protect it instead of moving it somewhere it isn’t? Which under climate change may get less hospitable for the species anyway? Is that a good use of public biologist time and federal planning and analysis funding?