Improving public access to public lands

We have discussed “corner crossings” and other barriers to public land access resulting from land ownership patterns.  Overlaying this is another barrier – availability of information about the extent of public access that does exist.  It turns out there is a lot more existing public access than meets the eye, and some technology and legislation is making more information about it available to public land users.

… the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership teamed up with onX to quantify the scope of the landlocked public lands problem and offer solutions that would open access to these acres. Since 2018, the team has found a staggering 16.43 million acres of inaccessible public land across 22 states. …  With $27 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund dedicated to increasing public land access each year, there is an incredible opportunity to address the landlocked public lands problem through strategic land acquisitions and access easements.

We soon learned that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service held roughly 90,000 such access easements—where permanent access to public land has already been secured—but 50,000 were only recorded on paper, stored away in the dusty filing cabinets of local agency offices.  Neither the agencies, nor the public, have ever had a complete digital picture of where there is legal access to our public land. Seeing a clear need for a solution, TRCP experts began talking with lawmakers, which led to introduction of federal legislation called the Modernizing Access to Our Public Land Act.

The MAPLand Act requires federal land management agencies to digitize their paper easements, information about roads and trails and vehicle type on federal land, and the boundaries of areas with federal rules concerning weapon type and shooting. The ultimate goal is to make all of this information readily available to the public.  In April 2022, the MAPLand Act was signed into law.  This means that complete and consistent mapping data about road, trail, and shooting access will be digitally available to hunters and anglers wanting to use their public lands.

Of course funding this in a deficit-reducing environment may not happen as fast as we’d like.

Sierra At Tahoe Ski Area Re-opens

After the Caldor Fire seriously impacted the ski area, Sierra At Tahoe is open again. As you can see, it was a high intensity portion of the fire, with the previous forest being highly flammable and loaded with decades of heavy dead fuels. After several droughts, the area did not have any salvage operations. The area is also known to have nesting pairs of goshawks around.

As you can see, snow sports people will be enjoying a new experience of skiing and boarding, without so many trees ‘hindering their personal snow freedoms’. *smirk*

Possible Salvage Strategy for Dixie and Caldor Fires

Since a battle for salvage projects is brewing, I think the Forest Service and the timber industry should consider my idea to get the work done, as soon as possible, under the rules, laws and policies, currently in force. It would be a good thing to ‘preempt’ the expected litigation before it goes to Appeals Court.

 

The Forest Service should quickly get their plans together, making sure that the project will survive the lower court battles. It is likely that such plans that were upheld by lower courts, in the past, would survive the inevitable lower court battles. Once the lower court allows the project(s), the timber industry should get all the fallers they can find, and get every snag designated for harvest on the ground. Don’t worry too much about skidding until the felling gets done. That way, when the case is appealed, most of Chad Hanson’s issues would now be rendered ‘moot’. It sure seems like the Hanson folks’ entire case is dependent on having standing snags. If this idea is successful, I’m sure that Hanson will try to block the skidding and transport of logs to the mill. The Appeals Court would have to decide if skidding operations and log hauling are harmful to spotted owls and black-backed woodpeckers.

 

It seems worth a try, to thin out snags over HUGE areas, while minimizing the legal wranglings.

Thanksgiving Gratitude in 2020

Wyoming Turkeys:
It all started in 1935, when the Wyoming Game and Fish Department swapped sage grouse with New Mexico for 15 Merriam’s turkeys – nine hens and six toms. Photo by Kirk Thornton

 

I missed posting this on Thanksgiving, but here are some TSW related people and things I’m thankful for..

  • Forest Service employees and partners, especially those  who have been dealing with the massive influx of recreators since Covid hit. Actually, I’m grateful for all Forest Service and BLM employees, even those doing the most tedious and mind-numbing tasks.
  • Wildland firefighters and folks who support them- both at work and their families.
  • The passage of the GAOA and the many infrastructure and conservation projects that are being funded.

I’m thankful for the people who contribute to The Smokey Wire, whether time, treasure or talent; who make it a safe place to learn and to disagree.

I’m thankful for the people who make The Smokey Wire possible.   Hillary, our web guru, and the folks at WordPress.  And behind the scenes, the people who produce, manufacture or build, and transport computers and other devices, internet connections, electricity, buildings, heat and food.

Please add your own if you feel inclined.

Good news for wildlife on two national forests

Here are two different kinds of success stories about restoring wildlife species that have been missing from national forests.

 

 

Grizzly bears – Lolo National Forest.

Current efforts on the Lolo National Forest demonstrate one way that forest plans can improve conditions for at-risk species; in this case the plan is contributing to conservation of the federally threatened grizzly bear. Grizzly bears have been sighted in recent years in this part of the Forest, but none are females or considered to be residents.

In 2011, the forest plan was amended to include what is commonly referred to as the Access Amendment (similar amendments also applied to the Kootenai and Idaho Panhandle national forests, prior to the revision of their forest plans).  The amendment established “standards” for motorized road and trail density in grizzly bear management units (BMUs, there is one on the Lolo).  In many cases, the current conditions did not meet these standards, so in the terminology of the 2012 Planning Rule, these would be desired conditions or objectives to be achieved.  In addition, their achievement was assumed in the biological opinion on the effects of the forest plan on grizzly bears prepared by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and failure to achieve them would likely trigger the need to reinitiate consultation on the forest plan (which had happened on the Flathead National Forest).  So there is a little added incentive, but here is what they are doing now.

The Forest has completed the “BMU 22 Compliance Environmental Assessment.”  In it they have proposed to formally close some roads that are effectively closed already and 21 trail miles currently open to motorized use.  In response to public comments, they are also considering an alternative that would close fewer trails, and instead close some roads currently open to motorized use.  In addition to other closures included with some prior vegetation management projects both alternatives “would bring the Forest into compliance with the Forest Plan motorized access management standards for the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear recovery zone.”

Brown-headed nuthatch – Mark Twain National Forest

The nuthatch is not at-risk range-wide, but they have not been found in Missouri for at least a century.  The species requires shortleaf pine and oak woodland forests, which have been greatly reduced from historic levels.  The loss of these forests has prompted an ecosystem restoration effort across Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma (notably using the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program).  Restoration of such forests is a desired outcome of the Mark Twain forest plan.  Curiously, there is no mention of the brown-headed nuthatch in the 2005 forest plan, although it does address other species using the same habitat:

Objective 1.4a Improve open woodland conditions on at least 10,500 acres to provide habitat for summer tanager, northern bobwhite, Bachman’s sparrow, and eastern red bat.

The EIS states that the nuthatch is a Management Indicator Species for forest plan monitoring, but that doesn’t seem to be in the plan itself.  Of course, a species that is absent from a national forest would not make a good MIS.  In any case, it looks like there was no interest by the Mark Twain in reestablishing a species that was not present on the forest under that rules applicable to forest planning in 2005.

However, Forest Service, state and university researchers came to the rescue of the species, determining that sufficient woodlands now exist in Missouri to support a population of Brown-headed Nuthatches, that populations in Arkansas were robust enough to supply birds to Missouri, but that nuthatches are not likely to make the return on their own because of the distance and habitat fragmentation.  The Mark Twain National Forest site was chosen for the release of 100 birds because it is the largest area of open pine woodlands in the state.

Under the 2012 Planning Rule, the Forest Service would probably argue that this species is not “known to occur” in the plan area, so the requirement to provide ecological conditions for it (as a species of conservation concern) would not apply.  However, the separate requirement for ecological integrity requires “species composition and diversity” to occur within the natural range of variation.  That should make the Forest Service more proactive in reestablishing species that historically occurred there.  (The forest plan also omits the listed red-cockaded woodpecker, which also uses these habitats, is also absent, but must be conserved and recovered.)

(For a look at how the natural range of variation might work under the 2012 Planning Rule see Table A-2, “Desired conditions for natural community types.”)

Happy Earth Day, Everyone!

Many folks are celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, and many of us remember it. Based on my own experiences (watching a Louisiana Pacific logging show in the Roaring River drainage on the Mt. Hood) it seems that we (in our neck of the proverbial woods, that is National Forests) have come a long way in the last 50 years.

Somewhere along the line, in the last 50 years, “The Environment” became a thing. In some organizations, it found a separate home from those engaged in otherwise doing stuff, that is, stuff that might hurt the environment. In the 90’s there was an effort to yard up all research on “environmental problems” from different agencies and create a new National Institute of the Environment. But does it make sense to divorce “environmental” concerns from research on the human activities that produce environmental problems? Could that lead to talking past each other, “othering”, and so on?

The human activities include producing food, buildings, energy, products and so on. Certainly there are people in each group who work on and are concerned about the environment. For example, when I worked at USDA in research, there were the “Sustainable Agriculture” folks (which is not to say that the other research areas were “unsustainable agriculture.”) In our own humble world, we can look within departments and see people who have different views and perspectives on environmental choices.

It’s hard to imagine a human activity that doesn’t impact the environment. It seems to me that the effort is to work together to minimize the impacts by considering the social, economic and ecological consequences of alternatives, not just “no, don’t do that.” And environmental issues are complex and reasonable people and groups can disagree. For example, EDF is working on reducing methane from oil and gas, while other environmental groups think we should just get rid of oil and gas. It seems to me that somehow concern for the environment has gotten spliced into partisan rancor and hate. People are always explaining to me that that’s the fault of the Republicans, but it might be the fault of the internet (needs to provoke people to click for ad revenue, anger promotes clicking), or the demise of classified ads making the media more partisan and less interested in seeing both sides. I honestly don’t care who started it. I just don’t think we need it, and it’s not helping.

Anyway, this Earth Day, I’d like to give a shout out to our some folks that seem mostly unsung and unseen, and invisible in many forums this Earth Day. Natural resource professionals – fisheries, wildlife, forestry, watershed, and all the rest. Folks who work for the feds, the states, other governments and the private sector. We depend on your professionalism and care for much of what happens on our land, at the earthiest of the Earth level. Thank you all!

Ain’t That Good News?: Colorado Adds 19,200 Acre State Park for 55 1/2 Square Miles of Connected Public Lands

Fisher’s Peak

In all our discussions of the controversies of federal forest planning, protection and recreation (carving up the federal public land pie), it’s nice to see people who are making the pie bigger.  I see so many large foundations (e.g. Pew) funding communications efforts to get people to “vote to protect” or “public comment to protect” federal public lands.  What would happen if they used that same funding to buy out ranchers and go directly to  “protect?”

Kudos to The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, as well as the State of Colorado. Here’s the most recent Colorado Springs Gazette story.

Hopes have been high since the start of the year, soon after the massive acquisition was announced: Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Great Outdoors Colorado put down $14.5 million for the 19,200 acres, with nonprofits the Nature Conservancy and Trust for Public Land pledging the rest of the $25 million cost.

“Here at Fisher’s Peak,” the governor said before the thronelike monolith, “this is going to be one of the crown gems of our state park system.”

Only State Forest outsizes the yet-to-be-named park. And with Crazy French Ranch, stewards have achieved an even greater mosaic: Nearby is Trinidad Lake, and over Fisher’s ridge are two state wildlife areas, and beyond that is New Mexico’s Sugarite Canyon State Park. That’s 55 1/2 square miles of preservation.

From TNC here:

The plan is to permanently protect the outstanding wildlife habitat while supporting the local economy by creating a publicly owned recreation and education area.

“We hope to raise the bar for combining conservation and recreation,” says Matt Moorhead, conservation partnerships director for TNC in Colorado.

The Fisher’s Peak Project partners will now work together with community members and stakeholders on a planning process for the land that includes conservation of the landscape’s wondrous natural resources, well-managed recreational access and educational use. After the planning process is complete, the partners plan to transfer the property to public ownership.

Moorhead says, “By planning for both ecological and recreational goals from the ground floor, we’ll strive to show how solid conservation outcomes contribute to an economically thriving community, all while connecting future generations to nature.”

Might be interesting to observe how these partners work their planning process.

Forest Service monetizes endangered species

This just seemed noteworthy.  Maybe it could be replicated for other species …

Kirtland’s warbler tours will be offered daily from May 15 through May 31, 7 days a week at the Mio Ranger District of the Huron National Forest. The Kirtland’s warbler tour costs $10 per adult and is free for children. Funds from the tours help cover costs associated with the tours.

Cindy Chojnacky Publishes Novel: Return to the Wilds

Do you or a young teen in your circle need a hopeful reminder of why we go to wild places and fight over their care? Or a gentle warning about the dark side of the human project to civilize the whole world?

Our own Cindy C. Chojnacky (Forest Service retiree and contributor to The Smokey Wire) has just published a novel under the moniker “CindyC,” Return to the Wilds, on impact of wild places with a bit of satire on various forces that threaten them. Bright young students are charged to save the planet, commune with wildlings and ethereal beings and face down dark forces of opposition. The book is pitched as a youth novel but Cindy says friends in her age group—especially those who have worked for government—have enjoyed it too, especially satirical aspects.

If fiction and fantasy are not your forte, you may still think (as I do) that Cindy has done an amazing and difficult thing.  Congratulations, CindyC!

Her description:
Two youths from a sprawling Southwestern metropolis, Babel II, are called to lead a daring conspiracy to rescue the Wilds—parks, reserves, wilderness areas worldwide that are the only undeveloped islands in an increasingly urbanized world. Guided by a mysterious Keeper and helped by Wildlings, the pair and friends use wit and geek skills to outwit Minions of the ominous Dominion, and make a powerful pitch for a change in
the story of human progress.

And here are sample reviews:

.“This strange and wonderful novel seems to follow imaginary threads from where we are today to reach the place created in the book. For me, it evokes bits of the worlds of Narnia and the Hunger Games, with a little Jetsons imagery thrown in….”— children and youth librarian, Sun Valley, Idaho.

“Part Madeline L’Engle, part C.S. Lewis, all adventure and spiritual awakening, Return to the Wilds offers a rip-roaring dystopian-toppling spiritual adventure. A must read for tweens and anyone needing a spiritual uplift in bleak times…”—H.G. McKinnis, author of A Justified Bitch mystery novel.

Return to the Wilds made its e-book debut January 1, 2019 and will emerge as a paperback April 23, 2019—the day after Earth Day. It’s available now at these online retailers:
Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Powells

Chapters Indigo

Indie Bound

Again, congratulations, Cindy!