Meetings of Interest

Range of variation webinar (and more)

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This is a topic that at least Sharon and I like to debate (though for some reason she didn’t weigh in here).  The Western Environmental Law Center is offering this hour and half webinar on July 17.  As far as I know, it’s open to the public.

PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 3: Historical Range of Variability (HRV): Uses and Various Approaches
 
Range of Variability (ROV) concepts – including Natural (NRV), Historic (HRV), Current (CRV), and Future (FRV) – are frequently used by the US Forest Service to help define land management goals. Nathan Poage, Forest Service Ecologist, joins us to provide an introduction to ROV terminology and examples of how the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests in the Blue Mountains have applied ROV concepts during project planning when addressing key requirements of the Eastside Screens. The discussion will include overviews of tools commonly used to conduct ROV analyses. Q&A will follow the presentation.
This webinar will be on Friday, July 17 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Registration is required for this event. Register today by clicking this link.
Note that it also involves the Eastside Screens.  I don’t think I can make it, but I’d be interested in hearing about it.  I also wanted to point out that this is about how to apply these concepts to projects developed under antiquated forest plans that don’t include the concepts.  It was this kind of thinking that drove development of the requirement to do this instead as part of revising forest plans under the 2012 Planning Rule.  Natural Range of Variation (NRV) embraced by the Planning Rule is a required desired condition for ecosystems, which should not change over time, and therefore should not be redecided for each project.  I’d be interested in knowing how, once ROV is determined for a particular project here, it is then documented and used for future projects in the same ecosystem.
But maybe there would be more interest in this one:
PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 2: Collaborative Administrative and Judicial Review Opportunities
In this follow-up webinar to NEPA 101, WELC attorney Susan Jane Brown will give a presentation on and answer your questions about collaborative administrative and judicial review opportunities, and dig deeper into the administrative review process for the Forest Service, judicial review of agency decisions, and how collaborative groups can engage in these processes.
This webinar will be on Thursday, July 9 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Registration is required for this event. Register today by clicking this link.

WGA Webinar on Partnering with Tribes on Shared Land Management Goals

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The Western Governors’ Association will host the webinar, “Partnering with Tribes on Shared Land Management Goals” on May 30 from 11 a.m.—1 p.m. (MT) as part of the Western Governors’ National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative.

The webinar will examine innovative ways for federal land managers to form collaborative, cross-boundary partnerships with local tribes. A case study will highlight work done with the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe on the Fort Pierre National Grasslands.

The webinar will be moderated by Susan Johnson, Regional Tribal Relations Program Manager, U.S. Forest Service, with remarks by Governor J. Michael Chavarria of Santa Clara Pueblo. Panelists include: Dan Svingen, District Ranger, Ft. Pierre National Grasslands; Dr. Shaun Grassel, Wildlife Biologist, Fish and Wildlife Department, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe; and Jim Durglo, Intertribal Timber Council, Fire Technical Specialist.

Sounds interesting.. here’s the link for registration

Anyone is invited to attend and give any impressions. Please send me your observations in a file for posting as a guest post.

Putting the Public in Public Lands .. Center for the American West Meeting.. Volunteer Wanted!

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This meeting sounds right up our alley. Unfortunately I only found out a few days ago via their email, and have a conflict. Here’s a description:

About the “Putting ‘the Public’ in Public Lands” Summit – Americans often take for granted that the term “public lands” presumes that all citizens should have claims to the benefits of lands held by governments, and an inherent right to play a role in their use and management. In reality, the mechanisms through which constituents and interest groups can feed into public lands decisions are not often well understood, are not static, and are not consistent across jurisdictions. In some ways, Colorado is at the forefront in valuing and attending to a variety public land uses: a “multiple use ethic” is a core part of the state’s identity, which land managers, citizens, and public officials strive to reflect.

The Putting ‘the Public’ in Public Lands Summit will provide an occasion to take stock of current frameworks that guide public involvement in decisions, including:

What is the current landscape of laws and regulations, and how could recent developments alter opportunities for consideration of stakeholder input in decisions?
How are various interests or values “weighted” in decisions, and is this prioritization transparent?
Where can we uncover intersecting interests and balance between public lands uses, such as grazing, timber production, mineral development, recreation, and conservation?
How can decisions incorporate tribal interests and perspectives to result in more defensible and just outcomes for places that we now call “public lands” and impacted communities?

Participants will include state, federal, and tribal land managers; state, local, and tribal officials and leaders; representatives from agriculture, mining, energy, ranching and forestry industries; outdoor recreation business and user groups; hunters and anglers; economic development organizations; and conservation groups, in addition to experts in related fields drawn from CU and other institutions. Space will be reserved for the interested general public and students to attend.

Here’s the agenda, you’ll note many interesting and knowledgeable people. I would like to hear what they have to say. My count, sorry to say, is .21 female to male ratio of speakers. I would greatly appreciate it if someone (or more than one) would attend, and write up their observations (and try to get powerpoints, if available) for us.

Webinars This Week

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In addition to the one on IRR tomorrow, previously posted here.

There is also a webinar on Wednesday 11-12:30 MT with the NFF and Montana Forest Restoration Committee. Here is the link.

Please join us in this peer learning session on leveraging resources. Listen in to learn how log values can help offset the costs of treatment on restoration projects. Topics will include stream restoration, weeds, road obliteration and harvesting. The goal of this webinar is to increase the understanding of project costs and offsets to improve the odds of a successful project.

IdeaFest in Boulder CO This Week

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I would like to attend all these but may not be able to.. if anyone else on the blog would like to attend and submit a post, let me know. The below seminar sounds interesting, especially for us bloggers, but conflicts with a vet appointment for my dog.

CSTPR Noontime Seminar: The Contrarian Discourse in the Blogosphere – What are blogs good for anyway?
CSTPR Noontime Seminar
Fall 2012 Series
Thursdays 12:00 – 1:00 PM
The Communications-Policy Nexus
Media, messages, and decision making

* Tuesday September 11, 2012

THE CONTRARIAN DISCOURSE IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: WHAT ARE BLOGS GOOD FOR ANYWAY?

by Franziska Hollender, Institute for Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna

CSTPR Conference Room, 1333 Grandview Avenue

Free and open to the public

The media serve to inform, entertain, educate and provide a basis for discussion among people. While traditional media such as print newspapers are facing a slow decline, they are being outpaced by new media that add new dimensions to public communication with interactivity being the most striking one. In the context of climate change, one question has arisen from recent events: what to do with the contrarians? Some propose that the contrarian discourse is merely an annoying sideshow, while others think that it is science’s responsibility to fight them. Blogs, being fairly unrestricted and highly interactive, serve as an important platform for contrarian viewpoints, and they are increasingly permeating multiple media spheres.

Using the highly ranked blog ‘Watts up with that’ as a case study, discourse analysis of seven posts including almost 1600 user comments reveals that blogs are able to unveil components and purposes of the contrarian discourse that traditional media are not. They serve as extended peer communities as put forth by post-normal science, however, blog users themselves do not see post-normal science as a desirable goal. Furthermore, avowals of distrust can be seen as linguistic perfomances of accountability, forcing science to prove its reliability and integrity over and over again. Finally, it is concluded that the climate change discourse has been stifled by the obsession of discussing the science basis and that in order to advance the discourse, there needs to be a change in how science as an ideology is communicated and enacted.
Tuesday, 11 September, 2012
12:00 PM – 01:00 PM

Then there is the Culture Politics and Climate Change International Conference from Sept. 13-15
the program is here. Even if you can’t attend the titles sound interesting and you could, more than likely, find a written paper on a related topic by the same authors that would be of interest.

Finally there is the The Nation Possessed conference I mentioned previously on this blog. Here is the link. It is the 12th to the 14th.

If you want to be stimulated by new ideas about the same old topics, head to Boulder this week!