Two months ago we had a discussion about the appropriate, or inappropriate, use of a Categorical Exclusion (CE) relating to the Lewis and Clark National Forest’s “Little Belt Mountain Hazard Tree Removal Project” in central Montana. This followed other debates on this blog about the use of CE’s (here and here).
According to the Alliance for Wild Rockies, the use of a CE for this project – which they contend would result in logging over 17,000 acres of national forest lands, including logging in Inventoried Roadless Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Research Natural Areas, and old-growth forests – was inappropriate, so they sued.
On Thursday, Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor, William Avey, sent out this letter to interested parties, letting the public know he was withdrawing the CE Decision Memo and intending “to prepare an environmental assessment to provide evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an environmental impact statement or a finding of no significant impact for the Little Belt Mountains Hazard Tree Removal Project.”
In my dealings with individual national forests, it seems to me like many of the skier/snowmobiler conflicts are handled locally, which makes a certain amount of sense. And could more forest-wide planning really be the solution (to anything, really, but…)? Because at the end of the day, we will have lots of taxpayer-funded hours generating documents that might come to the same conclusions about the specific areas of conflict.
Reading the paper, it seems like we are in tough budget times. Is this really the highest and best use of taxpayer dollars?
Plus these would have to be funded by scarce recreation funds that could be going to campgrounds, trails, or even managing motorized use on the ground where the conflicts occur (If I’m wrong about this, please enlighten me)?.
What I like about the quotes in this article is that the director of Winter Wildlands Alliance, Mr. Menlove, is direct and honest about using the courts as a tactic to change policy. See the quote “we think that the quiet is a resource that should be managed” below.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Early-season snow just dusts the peaks above Idaho’s capital, but a courtroom battle down in the valley could have a big impact on who gets to ride where on the accumulating white powder.
A backcountry skier advocacy group, the Idaho-based Winter Wildlands Alliance, will ask a federal judge Wednesday to force the U.S. Forest Service to create plans for snowmobiles limiting their travel on public land — a decision that would apply to national forests all over the country.
National forests since 2005 have been required to craft travel management plans restricting wheeled cross-country travel to designated routes. But snowmobiles were exempted, as the agency allowed individual national forests the freedom to decide if such winter travel plans were necessary.
Some forests created them, including the Clearwater National Forest in north central Idaho. Others, such as neighboring Nez Perce National Forest, begged off.
Absent any consistency, alliance director Mark Menlove speaks of tense outings in places like the Boise National Forest, where hordes of powerful motorized sleds unrestrained by a winter travel plan sometimes roar past panting groups of backcountry skiers, disturbing their icy, human-driven idyll.
“One snowmobile can track up an area in an hour that a dozen skiers could use for two weeks,” said Menlove. “It is a competition for a limited resource. Beyond untracked powder, we also think that quiet is a forest resource that should be managed.”
I also thought this was interesting…
That rule, they argue, was clearly meant to target wheeled vehicles that many natural resource managers said were tearing up public land. Snowmobiles are simply different, the lawyers said.
“An over-snow vehicle … results in different and less severe impacts on natural resource values than wheeled motor vehicles traveling over the ground,” wrote assistant U.S. attorney Julie Thrower, asking Bush to reject Menlove’s group’s claims.
From his Boise office, Menlove counters his group — dubbed an advocate for “human-powered snow sport enthusiasts” — filed its federal lawsuit only as a last resort, after the Forest Service rejected its out-of-court bid to have the snowmobile exemption lifted.
So they seem pretty upfront that they want to add snowmobiles to the travel management rule, and so they are using a legal path. Not so much “the FS is breaking the law” although there must be those kinds of claims in the complaint.
“One snowmobile can track up an area in an hour that a dozen skiers could use for two weeks,” said Alliance Director Mark Menlove. “It is a competition for a limited resource. Beyond untracked powder, we also think that quiet is a forest resource that should be managed.”
Note: back to our previous thread, sounds like these folks in Idaho, who know little about say, the White Mountain, will, through litigation, possibly be setting national policy. Having your comments weighed with others is not necessarily the most impactful way to promote your (non-local) point of view. Yes, public comments were taken nationally on the national travel management rule.
We have talked about the Courthouse News Service before here on this blog. It is a handy place for keeping up with litigation news, but like so many outlets, you can’t believe everything you read. At least they are upfront about their bias.
Developers trying to expand a ski resort in the mountain wilderness of Colorado can move forward with their forest-clearing plans, a federal judge ruled.
Hmm. . “forest-clearing” 800 trees? I guess that’s a bit of hype.. well OK.
Of more concern is this statement:
But U.S. District Judge James Boarsberg dismissed the complaint Friday, citing a Colorado law that allows ski resorts to skirt forestry regulations.
Really, a “law” ? The rule actually is a regulation.
In a “roadless” area, “trees may not be cut, sold, or removed” without special permission from the Forest Service, according to the 20-page decision.
I think in non-roadless areas that’s also the case. Oh well.
Central to both parties’ arguments were their respective interpretations of the term “roadless,” a distinction bestowed by the Forest Service upon pristine tracts of land “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man.”
That sounds like wilderness, also it seems like backcountry skiers are already “trammeling” this specific area.
While the federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule establishes criteria through which land can be designated as “roadless,” the court notes that the more-specialized Colorado Roadless Areas Rule supersedes the initial regulation and introduces a key statute.
The most recent legislation precludes “existing permitted or allocated ski areas” from receiving “roadless” designations, according to the court.
Honestly, I couldn’t read the rest of it..I wish they’d had a link to the judge’s decision because I had no clue from this article. Seems to me like legislation and rulemaking are different things. QA/QC, where are you? I know roadlessness is complicated- otherwise it wouldn’t have kept as many roadless geeks like myself gainfully employed, but still…
If you’re interested in better coverage, try this article from the Summit Daily News. Below is an excerpt. Chalk one up for local vs. national news sources.
But Boasberg ruled that the 2011 Colorado Roadless Rule eliminates roadless areas from within ski-area boundaries. The Ark Initiative needed to raise its concerns about roadless lands within ski-area boundaries when Colorado’s roadless rule was being debated, the judge said.
“The Colorado Roadless Rule was not off-the-cuff rulemaking,” Boasberg wrote in his order. “As the Forest Service explained in its letter (to the Ark Initiative), the rule ‘is the result of extensive public involvement. More than 310,000 public comments, over a six-year period, were reviewed and considered in the development of the final rule.’”
The Ark Initiative “chose not to comment on the rule and thus cannot challenge it now. If plaintiffs wanted roadless designations in ski areas, they should have participated in the rulemaking,” the order continued.
White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said he hopes this latest ruling puts an end to the debate over Burnt Mountain. The Forest Service approved a Snowmass Ski Area Master Development Plan in 1994 that paved the way for expansion onto Burnt Mountain. Skico amended the plan in 2003 and applied a year later for specific approvals for the Burnt Mountain work. After three years of review, the Forest Service approved the plan. The Ark Initiative filed an administrative protest, which was denied. The Ark Initiative then filed a lawsuit in federal court that was denied and upheld by an appeals court.
“We’ve been dealing with this long enough,” Fitzwilliams said. “They’ve dragged us into court three times now.”
William Eubanks, an attorney for the Ark Initiative, couldn’t be reached for comment Monday on what, if anything, will be the next step for the environmental group.
The Forest Service is formally notifying Skico that it can move forward with the project, Fitzwilliams said.
“A good portion of the work is done,” he said.
He estimated 60 to 70 percent of the tree thinning and clean-up is finished.
In an earlier interview, Rich Burkley, Skico vice president of operations, estimated the trails crew will remove fewer than 800 living and dead trees from about 6.5 acres within the 230-acre area of Burnt Mountain. The terrain is east of Longshot, the existing inbounds trail on Burnt Mountain. The rest of Burnt Mountain is popular backcountry or sidecountry terrain.
Skico is glading areas between natural parks or breaks in the forest. There won’t be designated trails, Burkley said previously, but rather thin routes through the trees.
The expansion will boost the skiable terrain at Snowmass to 3,362 acres. That makes it the second-largest ski area in Colorado behind Vail Mountain.
The Ark Initiative’s lawsuit was filed in the District of Columbia on Sept. 11. When it was filed, the Forest Service asked Skico to voluntarily halt work while the legal fight was being settled. Skico intervened in the lawsuit on the side of the Forest Service.
The judge’s 20-page ruling said even if the Ark Initiative was correct and lands on Burnt Mountain were removed by the Forest Service by mistake from the roadless inventory, the mistake was made moot when the Colorado Roadless Rule was created.
“In other words, it does not matter whether the Burnt Mountain parcel has the characteristics of a roadless area; the parcel is inside Snowmass Ski Area, so the Colorado Roadless Rule precludes designating it roadless,” the ruling said. “Effectively, the Forest Service is saying that any error in earlier inventories is harmless because the Burnt Mountain parcel cannot qualify as roadless now anyway.”
But the point that seems to be missed here (I think Sloan Shoemaker pointed it out in a previous article) is that it would be OK- even under the 2001 Rule, to do this work in a roadless area, as the action is “incidental to activities not otherwise prohibited.”
The U.S. Supreme Court left intact a rule issued in the waning days of Bill Clinton’s presidency to protect 58.5 million acres of forest lands, as the justices turned away arguments from states and industry groups.
The justices today refused to question a federal appeals court’s conclusion that the U.S. Forest Service was within its authority when it issued the so-called Roadless Rule in January 2001, eight days before Clinton left office.
National Park Service Long’s Peak Trailhead, just up the road from concessionaire managed Brainerd Lakes.
I looked for Forest Service “presence” at Brainerd that day (several years ago) and this is all I found, in not the most scenic spot..At least Hooty made it to this site.
Oh, but this is why people actually go there.. some might argue that a site this beautiful should be acquired by the Park Service, who would end up charging..it’s all very complex. So this is a fairly unique post in that I don’t know as much about this topic as I do others.. so hoping others from the recreation world can help. If you are in the Forest Service and you know something that you think would help the discussion, please do, you can make up an alias in yahoo or google if you don’t want to use your name.
Off one of the trails from Brainerd Lakes.
Several years ago, I was intending to write a post for this blog, called “A Tale of Two Trailheads” comparing the management of Brainerd Lakes (concessionaire) and Long’s Peak (Park Service); never did, but here are the photos and the below article reminded me of it. Let’s just reflect on the two trailheads while we read the article.
The Denver Post had this article in the business section today, but I found it fairly confusing. Maybe some readers can help.
The first sentence is:
“A U.S. Forest Service push to privatize management of campgrounds is prompting a backlash from critics who oppose concessionaires charging day-use fees to access federal lands.”
Because before I retired we had the Mt. Evans case, which was about what I’ll call the “what for” question (WhatFor) “what services can you charge for?”, I thought that that was a separate question from “should concessionaires be allowed to run campgrounds?”, the concessionaire campgrounds (or ConCamp) question.
Why do we have to pay to go into public lands? The land belongs to the people, and the people should be able to use the land for free,” said 64-year-old Wimert, who began decrying day-access fees when he was charged entrance to pedal into Brainard Lake Recreation Area two years ago.
Somehow the Forest Service has lost its way. They are no longer caring for the land and serving the people. They are serving themselves,” he said.
Let’s compare Brainerd to Longs. Do we say if the Park Service charges to access Long’s, they have “lost their way” and are “serving themselves?”. No we’d probably say we are paying for the quality facilities they have there.
I don’t think the Forest Service is “serving themselves”. They didn’t have enough money to run these places, so partnerships seemed like 1) a way to provide public service 2) within the budget. Like everything, this had the unintended consequence of empowering a small vocal group to become active politically to get more goodies.
Now. one of my previous bosses would say something like “campgrounds are a chance for us to touch the public, to be there in uniform, to help members of the public be outdoors. Nothing can be more important than us to be there for them. The Park Service “gets it”, we need to “get it” also.” Even though he had a lot of passion and desire, and about as much power as someone is likely to get in the Forest Service, in my opinion, he couldn’t do anything because the bucks aren’t there (and now there is an entrenched political group supporting it). If you, as I do, think that this is important, I wish we could all work together to do something.. agitate for a separate budget line item for campgrounds, or ???
“The Forest Service is allowed under current federal law to keep all the money they bring in from a campground, so there are no efficiencies gained by contracting a private company,” she said.
In Colorado, seven national forests covering 14.5 million acres include 1,268 non-fee sites and 540 fee areas with 469 recreation sites operated by concessionaires. Nationally, half of all Forest Service camping sites — 82 percent of the reservable camping sites available under the National Recreation Reservation Service — are managed by concessionaires. Thirty years ago, the Forest Service primarily operated its own lands.
Concessionaire operations are a big money business. According to the Forest Service, a small campground concession with one to three developed sites can produce revenue ranging from $50,000 to $105,000. A larger campground with 10 to 12 sites can generate more than $1 million in annual revenue.
Total campground concessionaire revenue nationally is estimated at $35 million.
My understanding is something along the lines of “there is no money to hire someone to empty the toilets and do maintenance, and campground fees alone can’t pay for those people.”
Therefore, concessionaires seem like a good idea because it’s that or shutting them down. And of course concessionaires only want the best ones, so that leaves the Forest Service with the less popular ones that have fewer visitors. And of course, the FS has lots of rules and regulations and hiring and pay requirements, which maybe the concessionaires don’t have to follow, which I assume (???) is how they can make a profit.
The funds going back to the Forest don’t help if it’s a net loss.
The increasing use of private concessionaires is riling some users just as a national program aimed at boosting private investment in federal recreation sites gains momentum. The Washington D.C.-based American Recreation Coalition soon will unveil a dozen pilot programs — at least one of which is in Colorado — that would forge public-private partnerships allowing for-profit concessionaires to invest in upgrades like on-site storage of boats at marinas and improved facilities at campgrounds.
I think all of us really need to look at this cautiously, but this is about ConCamp, it seems like, not what the lawsuit was about which is about WhatFor. It seems to me that NEPA provides for good discussion of projects, but not so much programs like this. I wonder what sort of public involvement has been done with broader topics like the role of concessionaires?
The lawsuit argues that the Forest Service’s permitted concessionaires charge fees “even when visitors do not use any facilities or services of the area, but simply wish to enter Forest Service lands to engage in undeveloped recreation.” The lawsuit also contends that issuing special permits without public involvement to concessionaires who charge fees does not meet the federal requirement for public notice of pricing changes.
In 2009, the Forest Service proposed cutting the camping fee discount for interagency passes like the Golden Age and Senior passes from 50 percent to 10 percent, citing concessionaire concerns over lost revenue. In 2010, the agency scuttled the reduced discount proposal. Still, concessionaires don’t have to accept the passes.
The first paragraph seems to me like it’s about the WhatFor question but whether concessionaires need to follow the same rules the FS does? The second paragraph seems to be about ConCamp- I don’t see why concessionaires wouldn’t have to follow the rules. After all, following the rules is one part of why it’s expensive for the FS to run them in the first place.
Finally, Derrick Crandall is quoted as saying:
“We are trying to broaden the use of public lands,” said coalition president Derrick Crandall, pointing to stagnant visitation to Forest Service campgrounds when compared to private campgrounds. “We are looking at ways to bring these worn-out, outmoded facilities up to levels we expect at ski areas. We really see this initiative as a win-win for everyone.
Now the other thing I’ve noticed about say, parts of the Med-bow and the Bighorn, is that few people are camped at the campgrounds, but many, many people are dispersed camping throughout the forest. First, you have to pay money, second you have to follow rules, third you are right next door to your neighbors, fourth you can’t make up configurations of RV’s, horse trailers and tents that fit your friends and family. I have been on different parts of both of these forests at times when all the likely dispersed camping spots have been filled and the campground is relatively empty. It seems that in spots (at least where I’ve seen a lot of dispersed camping), people don’t want FS campgrounds not because they’re not nice enough (State Parks, Park Service and KOA) but because they are too “nice.”
If the FS charged $10 a head for dispersed camping per season during deer and elk season (livestock and people) there might be enough that we wouldn’t need concessionaires. I wonder if we need a recreation policy FACA committee in DC?
Anyway, this is all very confusing to me, and I know we’ve had good discussion about this on this blog in the past, hoping we can do so again.
According to Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, all of the trees in this picture that are not painted orange would be cut down as part of the Bozeman Watershed logging project. Photo by Cottonwood Environmental Law Center.
The Gallatin National Forest’s Bozeman Watershed Logging Project has been the subject of much debate and commenting here at the blog. Well, it appears as if the next chapter of the story has been written, as the Bozeman Daily Chronicle took another look at the issue in this morning’s paper. Excerpts from the article are highlighted below [emphasis added]:
This summer’s Millie fire prompted renewed calls for thinning the forests south of Bozeman to protect the city’s water supply from fire. However, upgrades to the water plant are nullifying the argument that the water supply needs protection. The Bozeman water plant’s antiquated filtration system, built in 1984, couldn’t filter much more sediment than what is carried by the streams on a normal day. Any increase in the amount of sediment in Bozeman or Hyalite creeks was a source of concern.
But that will change when a new $43 million system comes online in a little more than a year, said water treatment supervisor Rick Moroney. Construction started a year ago. “It adds an important extra step – sedimentation – which makes it vastly superior,” Moroney said. “I can’t guarantee it could handle everything, but it will be able to handle the sediment from a fire.”
The new facility removes the urgency from one side’s argument in what is now a 2-year-old battle over a forest-thinning project.
In March 2010, the Gallatin National Forest published its Bozeman Municipal Watershed Project, a plan devised with the city to harvest, thin and burn 4,800 acres in the Hyalite and Bozeman creek watersheds.
The $2 million project had the stated objective of protecting the watersheds that provide 80 percent of the city’s summer water supply from being polluted after a severe fire. But wildfire doesn’t pose the only risk to water quality.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Montana Ecosystems Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council opposed the project because more than seven miles of new logging roads would be required, and such roads can add as much sediment to area streams as a fire….
Hydrologist Mark Story said decades of research show roads are responsible for 90 percent of the sediment produced during logging. The groups argued thinning wouldn’t prevent a wildfire, which would add still more sediment. “There’s no science that will fireproof a watershed,” said Michael Garrity of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “We have no problem with thinning as long as they can do it without building roads that are just as bad for the watershed.”
Below is an analysis of the Angora Opinion, and here is a link to the opinion. For those of you who think that litigation is about making the FS follow the law when it egregiously oversteps, check out what the judges had to say about the plaintiff’s points.. it’s not a long read but does show you the complexity of the legal framework (check out the discussion of MIS monitoring) and the nature of the plaintiffs’ arguments in general.
This is from the AFRC newsletter by Scott Horngren.
In a significant opinion issued on September 20, the Ninth Circuit emphasized that an environmental assessment (EA) is not subject to the same requirements as an environmental impact statement (EIS). The case, Earth Island Institute v. Forest Service, involved a challenge to the EA prepared to salvage and rehabilitate the area damaged by the Angora Fire near Lake Tahoe.
Previous Ninth Circuit opinions have indicated that the requirements for an EA are not similar to the requirements for an EIS. The Angora opinion builds on those cases and makes a definitive statement that where the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations impose an analytical requirement for an EIS, that requirement does not apply by implication to an EA. The Ninth Circuit explained that “a court should not impose upon the agency its own notion of which procedures are ‘best’ or most likely to further some vague, undefined public good.” Plaintiffs complained that the Forest Service had not responded to comments discussing black-backed woodpecker studies submitted by Dr. Chad Hansen. But the court held that “the duty to disclose and respond to responsible opposing viewpoints imposed by [the CEQ regulations] applies only to [EISs], not [EAs].”
The court also held that “an agency’s obligation to consider alternatives under an EA is a lesser one than under an EIS” and that an EA need only consider a no action alternative and a preferred alternative. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy (NEPA) by not considering an alternative that would limit removal of all snags greater than 16 inches in diameter. The court held that leaving these snags “weighing more than 1 ton per tree, would not achieve the Project objective of reducing the risk of severe wildfire.” When the purpose of the project is to reduce fire risk, “the Forest Service need not consider alternatives that would increase fire risk.”
Finally, the court explained that, under the 1982 viability planning rule as amended by the 2000 interpretative rule, the species viability requirements apply only to the extent that they are incorporated into the relevant forest plan. The court found that the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) Forest Plan did not incorporate any species monitoring requirements for viability at the project level. Therefore, population monitoring was only required at the forest level under the LTBMU plan. Significantly, the court also held that, at the project level, the Forest Service need not assess the habitat quality and quantity for species if there is no population monitoring requirement at the project level. Additionally, the court held that since the Forest Service was not required to monitor populations at the project level, it also did not have to determine the quantity and quality of habitat needed for viability at the project level, given that the analysis of habitat quality and quantity for a species is in effect a proxy for population monitoring. Therefore, an absence of detailed information about the habitat quality and quantity to “maintain viability” of the blacked-backed woodpecker at the project level did not violate the National Forest Management Act (NFMA).
This case is a significant victory for common sense in NEPA and NFMA compliance by the Forest Service in the Ninth Circuit. Its implementation by the agency should free up resources that can be better used to improve the health of our federal forests and the infrastructure that depends upon them.
In a published opinion issued Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Lake Tahoe Forest Plan did not require the Forest Service to demonstrate that the Angora project would maintain viable population levels of certain species, including the black-backed woodpecker.
The panel concluded that the Forest Service ensured the scientific integrity of the final environmental assessment, properly responded to dissenting scientific opinion, properly considered proposed alternatives to the environmental assessment, and took the requisite “hard look” at the impacts of the project.
Thus, the panel found, the Forest Service’s analysis of the environmental effects “was not arbitrary and capricious,” as that phrase is defined in federal law.
The opinion was authored by Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith, with the concurrences of Circuit Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Richard R. Clifton.
The Angora fire, determined to be human-caused, destroyed 254 homes and scorched more than 3,100 acres, including approximately 2,700 acres of national forest land.
In 2010, the Forest Service approved the restoration project to “reduce the amount of dead and downed trees” in order “to reduce long-term fuel (accumulation) to reduce future fire severity.”
The thinning project called for the removal of both live and dead trees. Twelve zones were “retained as habitat for a diverse set of species,” including the black-backed woodpecker. Most of the trees “will be hauled … for disposal at … biomass energy facilities.”
The Forest Service was free to proceed with the project once Burrell ruled. Both he and the circuit panel denied the environmentalists’ requests for an injunction halting implementation of the project pending appeal.
We have had numerous posts on this appeal and litigation. You can search on “Angora” in the search box to review the history.
We started with this post which I called “Much Ado about relatively little”. Check the comments out for a conversation between Dave Iverson and me on different aspects of the project and the assertions made.
So here we are, years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later. I wonder about the quantity of taxpayer funds have been spent on the original litigation and the appeal of the original decision, by the unit, the regional office, the OGC and by DOJ? It might be interesting to take a few cases at the beginning of litigation and just keep track of the tasks involved and who gets paid what, just so the public has a better idea of the investments they are making. Hopefully this is the end of the story for this 1411 acre project..
Here are the details as I found several documents ago.. those knowledgeable please let me know if this has changed.
Alternative 2, as modified, includes the following activities:
Fuel removal of standing dead and downed wood and thinning of live trees on
approximately 1,411 acres.
Within the 1,411 acres:
o 6 acres of conifer removal for aspen stand enhancement;
o approximately 77 acres of treatment proposed in wildlife snag zones (39 acres in
SEZ; 38 ac Subdivision);
o 13 acres of conifer removal for meadow restoration/aspen enhancement in the
Gardner Mountain meadow.
A ground-based logging system on up to 964 acres (including 13 acres of Cut-to-Length
mechanical thinning in Gardner Mountain Meadow) located in areas with slopes under
30%.
New construction of new roads (up to 7.7 miles) and landings to facilitate fuel removal.
Reconstruction or opening of existing roads, trails, and landings to facilitate fuel removal.
Decommissioning/restoring 1.9 miles of road and 16.7 miles of trail.
Existing and new landings and staging areas would be utilized to facilitate removal of
fuels for ground-based operations.
Reconstruction of 1,200 feet of Angora Creek.
Treatment of the following noxious weeds: bull thistle, field bindweed, St. John‘s wort,
tall whitetop, and oxeye daisy.
Various folks, from former Chief of the Forest Service and elk biologist Jack Ward Thomas, have questioned the idea of making land management decisions in the courtroom. This is apparently also apparent to members of the Denver Post editorial board. In Colorado, we have commissions, task forces and a variety of other mechanisms of interested and knowledgeable parties getting together to solve tough issues (e.g. oil and gas regulation). So perhaps it seems more obvious here that an appeals court is suboptimal. Given our discussion of “nit-picking” this week, I also italicized a relevant sentence. Another note: it’s obviously not just the Forest Service who deals with this.
Yet not everyone is happy. Some environmentalists objected to the plan from the outset because it rejected the option of introducing wolves to reduce the number of elk. And just this week, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard an appeal from WildEarth Guardians of a lower-court decision that upheld the Park Service’s plan.
We hope the appeals court supports the lower-court decision. It would be a shame — indeed a travesty — if the professional judgment of the Park Service on behalf of the health of the park was second-guessed in this fashion.
It’s not that we have anything against wolves. The reintroduction of gray wolves in the mid-1990s from Canada to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming must be judged a conservation triumph. They reproduced and thrived — so much so that the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded they could even be removed from the endangered species list.
Moreover, in Yellowstone the wolves scattered elk herds just as predicted, thereby allowing the recovery of willow and other battered species.
But reintroducing wolves is not something to be undertaken lightly or in haste. While Rocky Mountain National Park, at 415 square miles, is huge, wolf packs can range even farther. Wolves would inevitably encroach onto private property and even into lightly populated areas.
As we noted back in 2006, any plan to import wolves into the park would therefore provoke a lengthy political and legal battle — even if wolves might turn out to be part of the long-term solution for elk control.
The Park Service didn’t have the luxury of years to wait for a solution to its elk problem — not if it wanted to be a responsible steward of Rocky Mountain park.
Like so many environmental court cases, this one is based upon claims that federal officials failed to dot every “i” and cross every “t” of the law in reaching their decision.
For example, WildEarth Guardians maintains that culling the herd with trained volunteers is tantamount to hunting, which is banned in the park. But this is legal word play. No one considers killing elk for ecological reasons to be a form of sport — and hunters do not benefit from it.
The future of the wolf in Colorado is a fascinating topic worthy of serious debate. But it shouldn’t be decided by an appeals court.
A while back on this blog here, I wondered about Ark Initiative’s ongoing interest in Burnt Mountain (800 trees 6.5 acres, and mass extinctions).
Fortunately, a reporter for the Aspen Times had the time and the skills to investigate more. Here’s a link and below is an excerpt.
“What exactly is the Ark Initiative, and why is it interested in Burnt Mountain? It’s largely a one-person operation run by environmental consultant Donald “D.J.” Duerr, who helped found the organization and serves as its president and director. Duerr is a veteran of the conservation movement who has a reputation of being very capable but also very difficult to work with. One source, who asked not to be quoted by name, said Duerr isn’t a team player and often thinks his approach is the only approach to an issue.
Duerr created the Ark Initiative in the late 1990s. The organization’s website, http://ark.savelifenow.org, says it is “dedicated to protecting life, including human life. Our highest priority is halting the global mass extinction.”
The website says the Ark Initiative works on a “wide variety of life preservation issues,” but none are cited. The organization’s finances are also closely guarded — more so than many other environmental nonprofits. Nonprofits are required by the Internal Revenue Service to fill out a Form 990 on their finances. The website Guide Star posts the forms, with the cooperation of the nonprofits, so it provides reporters, prospective donors and interested members of the public with a glimpse at an organization’s operations. The Ark Initiative’s financial forms aren’t available through Guide Star. Duerr didn’t respond to a request by The Aspen Times on Monday to provide Ark Initiative’s latest annual report, nor did he respond to repeated requests for an interview.
So far, it’s been impossible to tell from public records where the Ark Initiative’s money is coming from for the Burnt Mountain fight.
A limited amount of information is available about Ark Initiative at the Wyoming secretary of state’s website. In addition to listing Duerr as president and director, Leila Bruno, of Laramie, Wyo., is the treasurer and director. Sylvia Callaway, whose mailing address is in care of an Austin, Texas, residence, is listed as vice president and director.
The extent of the Ark Initiative’s environmental activism is difficult to gauge. Public records indicate Duerr submitted comments to the Forest Service to oppose two timber sales: one in Wyoming in 2009 and the other in South Dakota in 2010.”
Interesting. I had heard through the rumor mill that it was a neighbor who didn’t want more people skiing around.. it’s possible that “keeping out the riff-raff” will be hard to distinguish from legitimate environmental concerns. Again, thanks to the Aspen Times for investigating.
