Fire and Fuels

Rim Fire Logging Lawsuit

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Yes, we all knew it was coming but there is one surprise. (See the 3rd plaintiff)

Again, owls will “occupy” almost ANY landscape, as long as there is prey there. If the nest stands were cooked, then they will have to find, and build, new nests. Owls are notoriously lazy in building nests, and often will use abandoned goshawk nests (and vice versa). One question I’ve wondered about for a long time is; Why do PACs retain their “protected” status when nesting habitats (the reason the land is protected) are destroyed? The loss of spotted owl (AND goshawk) nests is merely another part of the “whatever happens” strategy, so loved by the plaintiffs.

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“The complaint issued by the Earth Island Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the California Chaparral Institute seeks an injunction to halt logging within the 37 occupied California spotted owl territories within the burned area. That would prevent logging in about 40% of the Rim Fire areas already approved by the decision for tree removal.”

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/221678/rim-fire-logging-lawsuit.html

Preparing For Rim Fire Logging Litigation

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The battle has begun!

The picture below was taken in April, within the Rim Fire, and shows how quickly the bearclover returns, after a fire. Even the manzanita and deer brush have difficulty when the bearclover is so entrenched. California Indians knew that old growth pine and bearclover were the best of their available land management outcomes. Those landscapes had great advantages for humans living in the mid elevations of the Sierra Nevada.

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/221325/preparing-rim-fire-logging-litigation.html

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Deputy Stanislaus National Forest Supervisor Scott Tangenberg spoke before the Tuolumne County Supervisors this morning, and said the Forest Service has been contacted by several individuals, or groups, that will likely file litigation later this week.

Well, we all knew that was coming and who was opposing the project. While on the Rim Fire tour, and at the SAF meeting, it was funny to see the Forest Service tiptoeing their way around “those who shall not be named”. *smirk*

BP makes the FS look bad

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An interesting story of “all lands” planning (or not).  BP has filed a lawsuit against a large residential development adjacent to its forested property, and also adjacent to a national forest.

“Along two miles of Cainhoy Road, the plantation’s eastern border is shared by the 250,000-acre Francis Marion National Forest, which is home to numerous threatened and endangered species as well as miles of hiking, biking, and canoeing trails. Perhaps the single most important forest management tool that BP and the Forest Service have is prescribed burning.”

“There is still time for everyone – the developers, the city, BP, the Forest Service, and the local community – to agree on an outcome that benefits the region for decades to come.”

The Francis Marion is revising its forest plan by the way.  Should it write off ecological integrity in this area?

It will be interesting to see what BP’s arguments are in court.  Perhaps the Forest Service will at least submit an amicus brief explaining how its national resources will be affected by this development.

The Rim Fire: Landscape View

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Here is a view of the Granite Creek watershed, and a peek at the Tuolumne River canyon, too. The Rim Fire burned all the way to those most-distant ridgetops. For scale, you can see a vehicle in the middle of the picture. That road is the Cherry Oil Road, which connects Cherry Lake with Highway 120. That greenish tint is the vast growth of bearclover, easily reclaiming their “territory”. Bearclover is one of the reasons why clearcutting has been banned in Sierra Nevada National Forests since 1993.

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Rim Fire Salvage Logging, by SPI

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Bob Zybach and I went on a field trip to the Rim Fire. The first stop on the tour showed us the Sierra Pacific Industries’ salvage logging results. I’m posting a medium resolution panorama so, if you click on the picture, you can view it in its full size. You can see the planted surviving giant sequoias on their land which were left in place. You can also see some smaller diameter trees, bundled up on the hill, which turned out to be not mechantable as sawlogs. You might also notice the subsoiler ripping, meant to break up the hydrophobic layer. They appear to have done their homework on this practice, and it is surprising to see them spending money to do this. SPI says that their salvage logging is nearly complete, and that they will replant most of their 20,000 acre chunk next spring. They have to order and grow more stock to finish in 2016.

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In Idaho, Tracing What Remains After the Flames

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Dick Boyd sent me this article featuring the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The Stanley area is one of my favorite spots, with hot springs, jagged peaks, pristine lakes, spacious meadows and abundant wildlife.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/travel/in-idaho-tracing-what-remains-after-the-flames.html?emc=edit_th_20140816&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=66809837

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As we neared Stanley, Idaho, a hamlet carved by creeks and framed by mountains with spiky peaks that reminded me of a punk rocker’s hair, the landscape surrounding the winding highway on which we’d climbed 7,000 feet gave way from rugged canyon to flat expanse of grass speckled by lodgepole pine and aspen. We were on the northern edges of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, three hours from Boise, when scars from an old fire came into view.

My daughter, Flora, and I had been playing a makeshift game in which we pointed out the nature surrounding us, the sort of mindless thing you do to entertain a 5-year-old on a road trip. I see a deer, I see a birdie, I see snow, I see a purple flower, we called out.

“I see trees,” I said, pointing to a cluster of an unrecognizable species to our left, their crooked branches denuded by flames that had torched them.

“Those are not trees,” Flora retorted. “Trees have leaves!”

This article reminded me of the time I spent working on the Boise National Forest, after the massive 1994 Rabbit Creek Fire took 2 months to burn before the Sawtooths and fall rains finally extinguished it. The public rarely sees any of the 150,000 burned acres, as it isn’t visible from the highways. I stumbled upon this vintage video that shows how devastating such fires can be, as storms deposit moderate rains upon highly hydrophobic soils.

It is not always easy to display the damages that occur when soils cannot absorb even moderate rainfall. As the storms and high winds came in, that day, Forest Service employees were called in, due to the danger. Oddly enough, they forgot about me. I weathered the storm, not knowing what was happening. The next day, I patrolled the roads, finding a plugged culvert, with excessive soil movement. I pulled out my trusty shovel and diverted all the water into the roadside ditch, getting it to flow down and through the next downhill culvert.

Repeat Photography: Part Deux

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It’s kind of a challenge to assemble pictures shot in different years, from different spots, and from different cameras. This is an excellent way to view and monitor trends, showing the public what happens over time to our National Forests. Sometimes, you have to look hard to see the differences. In any future repeat photography projects, I will be using very high resolution, to be able to zoom in really far.

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One of the reasons why you don’t see much “recovery” is that the Eldorado National Forest has finally completed their EIS for using herbicides in selected spots, almost 10 years since the fire burned. This is part of the East Bay’s water supply. Sierra Pacific replanted their ground in less than 2 years. So, the blackbacked woodpeckers should be long gone, as their preferred habitat only lasts for an average of 6 years. As these snags fall over, the risk of intense soil damages from re-burn rises dramatically. Somewhere, I have some earlier pictures of this area which may, or may not line up well with this angle. I’ll keep searching through my files to find more views to practice with.

 

Repeat Photography and Salvage Logging Recovery

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My first attempt at assembling pictures, showing how quickly salvage impacts can “heal”. Here is the current aerial view of this specific area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4831284,-120.3639833,223m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Here is a view of a re-burn that has already occurred, in the same area. Notice the lack of significant mortality, due to having salvaged the area, reducing the fuels of the inevitable future fires.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4770266,-120.3464336,892m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

One of the biggest “purpose and needs” in the Sierra Nevada is fuels reduction after a wildfire. Otherwise, re-burns, like the Rim Fire will dominate the landscapes for an indefinite amount of decades.

Thinning Contract is Monumental Task (4FRI!)

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Forest Service photo of 4FRI
Forest Service photo of 4FRI

Thanks to Craig Rawlings and Forest Business Network for this one..Also thanks to Apache Sitgreaves for easy access to photos on Flickr.
Check out their site here .. the albums are interestin, including a couple on fires and post-fire flooding.

Here’s the link and below are some quotes.

However, Horner said, “It’s a really monumental task to build an infrastructure to cover the acres we need to do. Rather than saying, ‘Let’s get out there and start moving a few acres,’ we’re trying to build the infrastructure so we can do 40,000 acres a year in the next two or three years. We’ll need 300 trucks a day. You don’t snap your fingers and have trucks show up. It’s the chicken and the egg thing. What we’re striving for is to build that infrastructure for us to leap off and hit those acres at a level that if we achieve it, is going to snap a lot of people’s necks.”

But that means not only marshaling 80,000 truck-trips annually on forest roads, but financing a network of mills and biofuel operations to handle the huge quantities of wood from small trees growing in thickets four to 20 times the natural densities.

In the short term, Good Earth will rely heavily on selling saw timber, processed through existing mills. That means selling the wood from trees 14 to 18 inches in diameter will generate the profits needed to remove the massive amount of even smaller trees and brush.

“Ultimately, there needs to be a big processing facility to deal with a low value product. A lot of the basic elements are in place — there are some existing logging companies and a lot of trucking resources, also markets that do exist.”

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The revelation that most of the initial contracts will depend on finding existing mills and the profits from the larger trees touches on one of the most controversial elements of the Forest Service’s effort to implement the 4FRI approach, originally developed by a coalition of loggers, environmentalists, forest researchers and local officials. That stakeholder group broke decades of deadlock and finger-pointing by agreeing to focus on trees smaller than 16 inches in diameter. The group wanted the Forest Service to accept a flat diameter cap, but the Forest Service decided it needed more flexibility — including an ability to take larger trees. While agreeing the 4FRI approach should leave as many large trees as possible, the environmental assessment will consider the impact of taking larger trees both to achieve certain goals like creating more meadows and to help the contractor turn a profit on the contract.

“There hasn’t been any analysis that says were going to cut any old trees,” said Fleishman, having earlier suggested 18 inches would represent the upper size limit of trees cut under the contract. “This is the largest environmental impact statement in the history of the Forest Service, and we should have it out in September” which is nearly a year behind earlier schedules. “The focus is going to be in the middle size tree — and the 15-18 inch diameters are the bulk of that. If we start cutting large, old trees — we’ll be in court so fast” as a result of legal challenges by environmental groups that supported the original concept with a 16-inch diameter cap. “This is a social issue,” he concluded.

Horner said Good Earth ultimately wants to use the millions of tons of biomass from the forest to produce energy — including jet fuel. But it won’t have the technology of the plants to do that for some years. “Their core business is creating energy from waste. But this will take years. The technology is not yet perfected for commercial production levels. So it comes back in the short term to saw lumber — solid wood products like poles and posts, really common things that have established markets. On the biomass side, it means grinding up trees and brush to create products that are really common — mulch, compost” and things like decorative bark for landscaping.

Arizona remains well positioned to feed such wood materials into many regional markets. “We’re optimistic we’re going to break the code. One of the most important things is to add as much value (to the wood products) as close to home as possible. Pine lumber continues to be a very valuable resource, so we’re looking at that as well. How do we make good quality wood out of what would otherwise be low quality.”

Time for a Change: Firefighter Fairness

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Here is the letter sent to all FS employees:

Subject: Time for a Change

Hello my forest service coworkers. Please give me five minutes of your day. I know that this email is going to make me an unpopular employee by speaking out. My apologies to my forest supervisor for the phone calls you will most assuredly receive. My intent is not to embarrass you or infuriate you.

My name is Scott Mayner. I have been an employee of the USFS for 20 years. I have been a forestry technician my entire career and I have been heavily involved in timber and fire for two decades.

Recently I applied for a job as a supervisory fire engine operator. It was advertised as a primary fire position. That designation comes with an age restriction requiring the applicant to be no more than 36 years old unless sufficient time has been served in a primary or secondary fire position which can be subtracted from your current age to qualify you as less than 37.

This clause apparently has no provision for time dedicated to fire training, fire details, or prescribed fire or wildfire suppression work on your own unit/forest.

Despite the fact that I have served for many cumulative years in fire related duties and am highly qualified for many positions in our ICS system, I was deemed too old to qualify. I am 38 years old and only a short 14 months ago, I would have been considered for this position. My time working in fire related duties isn’t being considered at all. My years of training, years of service, and level of qualifications mean nothing.

It actually has little to do with a person’s age however. If I was 45 and had been a fire tech for 10 years, I could qualify. It is all because of the firefighter retirement system.

This system is completely screwed up however. A forestry technician who is arduous fire fighter qualified, assists with every prescribed burn, every wildfire, attends numerous trainings, attains numerous qualifications, and travels on details will never be considered for fire fighter retirement benefits. The fire tech from the same district who does no more fire related work than the forestry tech gets a 20 year retirement with additional financial benefits!

I feel this is wrong. Any employee who dedicates 20 years assisting this nation with fire suppression should be given consideration for fire fighter retirement, regardless of whether they are a forestry tech, recreation tech, wildlife tech, or professional series.

Some of you are reading this and saying, oh this is just “sour grapes” and that is fine if you believe that. But any system we have that discounts experience and discriminates based on age, regardless of the reason, is a system that has no place in our agency.

I may not be the most qualified person for the job, and if I am not then so be it, I can accept being beaten by a higher qualified person, that is the nature of competitive placement and the nature of life. What I cannot accept is not being considered because our agency will not allow anyone over 36 to apply for a job who isn’t already in a fire position. Regardless of the reasoning, it is wrong.

I know you fire fighter retirement designers and personnel managers will be saying that I don’t understand the intent of the 20 year retirement, mandatory retirement age, etc. Well I do, and I believe it to be a system that is heavily flawed. It favors younger, less experienced employees over those who have dedicated many more years and have much more experience. We are doing away with experience on the fireline and discriminating against the older employees with such requirements. The Forest Service should be ashamed of themselves.

I understand the taboo of sending a message All FS. Yet I have hit block after block by people above me who don’t care, aren’t interested, or have a fear of breaking a rule. I have said nothing in this message that is offensive, rude, or out of line. I am merely speaking about part of our agency that I feel is wrong. I expect that I am not the only victim of this discriminatory practice and I feel that this agency needs to change the rules regarding fire fighter positions and fire fighter retirement. I have heard the lousy excuse “rules are rules” way more than I can stand. The rules are stupid, discriminatory, disregard experience, and need to be immediately changed. Rangers, Forest Supervisors, Regional Foresters, Chief….this is wrong, let’s fix it.

Thank you,

Scott Mayner
USDA Forest Service

My take:This would be a good example of somethings that either 1) has good reasons for existing, not yet explained clearly or 2) no one feels that they can change it (do not know how fixing it could be done) Just a clear explanation of why this is the way it is would be helpful. With any decision, especially personnel, some win and some lose.

Here is my take on the way this works:

I think being clear about what you are doing and why makes some people unhappy with the choice. These are real people who can and do fight back in various direct and indirect ways.

Being unclear makes everyone unhappy and powerless because it looks bad and there is no apparent reason and no perceived way to fix- plus no one cares enough to give you a reason. Yet, no one decision maker can be accountable.. it happens in the HR ether somewhere.

And from the ether, sometimes you get a pellet and sometimes you get a shock.