NEPA

Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act- Groundhog Day Stew with a Dash of Trump

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Apologies, I couldn’t get the color explanations to print out.  Dark green is new wilderness and orange “wilderness recovery areas.”

I looked this Act up on Wikipedia and it turns out that the same (?) bill seems to have been introduced in 2011 (and dates back to 1993?) by the same folks with testimony by Carole King starting in 1994. Nevertheless, we are assured the New York Times writers, Mike Garrity of Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Carole King, of singing fame, of this op-ed that it’s particularly important to do it now because:

To be fair, the Obama administration also pursued some of those actions. But the current administration’s zealotry threatens the region’s wild landscape and rich biodiversity…

Of course, when the Times writes about the interior West, we can assume that we are dealing with the imperial gaze. There are a couple of interesting points I’d like to draw out, but would like to hear from people who know more about the bill and about the history (and the other Rocky Mountain Front Wilderness additions and how they fit together), and to link to our recent discussions, what are “Wilderness Recovery Areas?”

Big Gulps Mean Big Targets.  There is a reason that the FS and partners aren’t usually thrilled about “big gulp” projects or “landscape scale restoration via large projects”.  They mean big total numbers that can be used in media campaigns, and attract big attention from folks who are of a litigious bent.

In August, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted unanimously to halt a planned 125-square-mile logging and burning project in the Payette National Forest in western Idaho. The court concluded that parts of the project ran counter to the forest’s management plan.

Under that project, so many trees would have been cut that the forest would have no longer provided elk or deer with the cover they need. Forest streams would have been filled with sediment from bulldozers building miles of new logging roads — further damaging the native fisheries for which the Northern Rockies are internationally famous.

Without looking at the EIS, I think “the forest no longer providing elk and deer the cover they need” is probably an overstatement.

Forest streams “full of sediment”? Doesn’t the State of Idaho have water quality requirements? Yes, they do, in fact they have audits and a continuous improvement program. I did not get the “full of sediment” feeling from reading the 2016 audit found here.

All Roadless to Wilderness
Under the 2001 Rule, the only things you would be kicking out to change to Wilderness are pre-existing oil and gas leases (before 2001 RR or possibly gap when 2001 RR was enjoined), OHV’s and bikes. But that’s based on reading the Maloney summary linked in the op-ed here and not the whole bill.

  • Designate all of the inventoried roadless areas in the Northern Rockies as wilderness, protecting 23 million acres of land that is home to vital ecosystems and watersheds

  • Establish a system to connect biological corridors, ensuring the continued existence of native plants and animals

  • Keep water available for ranchers and farmers downstream until later in the season when it is most needed

  • Allow for historic uses such as hunting, fishing and firewood gathering

  • Protect forest canopies that absorb greenhouse gases

I don’t know many folks who gather firewood in wilderness, nor in roadless areas… because they gather firewood near roads to get it home.

Et tu Wikipedia?
The entry in Wikipedia says under Opposition to the Legislation here:

Opponents to the NREPA state that there will be a loss of extraction jobs in the northern Rockies; mining, logging, and oil/gas production as a whole account for many of the jobs in the five affected states. [5

But if they’re already Roadless, then how much mining, oil and gas, and logging is going on? This is all very confusing. It would be great if every Wilderness bill or RWA or any special designation, for that matter, would simply have a table of “what’s currently allowed in terms of plans/rules/designations currently” “what will not be allowed under the new designation” “what existing users (actually on site, not potential) will not be allowed to continue their uses” and “what do we know about where those people will go.” IMHO,so much drama and needless carbon -impacting electrons could be saved by a standard Change Of Use Table for every potential change in designations!It also directly would acknowledge that the kicked out folks will go somewhere else and perhaps introduce opportunities and resources for helping them transition as part of the designation process.

Forest Plan Participation 101

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Adam Romanowitz, Photographer

Some tips from a participant in the Manti-LaSal forest plan revision process, which includes developing a “conservation alternative” that “will emphasize the long term health of the forest.”

I’m afraid I’m pretty cynical about the payoff from this approach, but I’d be interested in stories from anyone who feels they had some success.  Part of the problem comes from the fact that the Forest Service creates its own structure for the alternatives it develops (such as the choice of management areas, what the different kinds of plan components should look like, how the plan document will be organized), and an outside alternative that doesn’t line up with this would be difficult for the planning team to document and evaluate.  Then of course there is the, “I am the professional” bias that resists outside ideas, the “don’t take away my power” bias that resists any actual obligations (standards) in the plan, and the “no-change” inertia bias that defines “reasonable alternatives” as those that aren’t much different from the current plan.  At best, it seems like there might be a few surprises that the Forest Service actually likes and tries to use.  Tell me I’m wrong.

It looks like Mary is already encountering some bias:

For instance, the Moab Sun News’ article on the public meeting reported that forest service grazing manager Tina Marian said people won’t see a lot of grazing changes in the new plan that aren’t already being implemented on the ground. She shouldn’t predetermine that outcome. The conservation alternative will recommend changes to how grazing is implemented in the forest (which is a part of Moab’s watershed), like reducing the rate of cattle grazing.

It’s not possible to tell where exactly the Manti-LaSal is in the revision process from their website, but there was a comment period on the “Draft Assessment Report” in June of 2017.  I think the best time to influence alternatives is probably when the Forest must “Review relevant information from the assessment and monitoring to identify a preliminary need to change the existing plan and to inform the development  of plan components and other plan content” (36 CFR §219.7(c)(2)(i)).  Any reasonable alternative would have to be traced back to that information, and if there are disagreements at that point it’s not likely that later suggestions would be well received.

In the example above, what did the assessment say about the effects of cattle grazing? The Forest seems to take the position that “historic” grazing was a problem, but “… (C)urrent grazing practices are not having as large an effect on stream stability, as evidenced by the many greenline transects rated as stable in 2016.”  But then there’s this proof of bias in the Assessment (I’m not familiar with these “directives,” and unfortunately, “Shamo” isn’t in the “Literature Cited”):

Livestock grazing has occurred on the Forest for over 150 years and will continue as part of the Forest’s directives to provide a sustained yield and support local communities (Shamo 2014, USFS 2014).

They’ve got some other interesting issues on the Manti-LaSal:

The alternative will ensure that pinyon and juniper communities are not removed on thousands of acres for the purposes of growing grass for cattle and artificial populations of elk.

It will require the forest to remove the non-native mountain goats that are tearing up the rare alpine area above 11,000 feet in the Manti-La Sal Mountains. It will not allow honeybee apiaries, which would devastate native bees.

And that’s where part of the Bears Ears National Monument is/was.  There was a lawsuit on the goats, and there are several on Bears Ears. 

 

 

Mining by the Ouachita National Recreation Trail

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I found three things interesting about this situation.  Legally, I think there is a problem if the environmental analysis for a mine fails to say anything about the proximity to or the effects on a national trail and its users.

Bo Lea, president of FoOT, told The Sentinel-Record Jan. 15 that the Ouachita National Recreation Trail is a 223.5-mile premiere hiking and biking trail, and FoOT’s concern was that project’s environmental assessment made “no mention of the Ouachita Trail except for one map that shows a 150-foot buffer between the trail and the mining area. That’s only 50 yards.”

The Forest seems to be assuming that the buffer will fully mitigate any effects, but that has to be disclosed and supported by some analysis.

Politically, this area is in the Congressional district of Bruce Westerman, who has become renowned for proposing anti-environmental riders to Forest Service legislation.  At least he is consistent:

“I’ve long supported sustainable mining in the 4th District, provided it benefits local communities and stewards natural resources well,” Westerman said Tuesday in an email. “I look forward to the results of the Quartz Mine’s environmental review, and hope to see it progress in the upcoming year.”

Lastly, this is an area that is promoted for mountain bike use by the Forest Service and organizations that appear to support both hiking and biking.  It’s an “epic” biking trail, and it doesn’t go through any wilderness areas.

Nantahala-Pisgah forest plan comments

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The third of three articles on the results of a Carolina Public Press Freedom of Information Act request for the more than 6,000 comments focuses on governmental emails.

Hmmm … maybe this is one of those articles where we should debate the author’s approach, especially his choice of who to interview (somewhat tongue-in-cheek).  Here is one thing a “retired Forest Service bureaucrat” had to say …

Mostly absent from the collaborative groups are elected officials. While elected officials represent residents, Friedman said, they are seldom effective members of stakeholders groups that strive for collaborative solutions.

“They may not share the level of passion and knowledge of individuals, experts and special interest groups that participate in stakeholders groups,” she said.

An interesting theory.  Friedman had quite a few things to say.  (Maybe she can explain why the locals insist on calling this the Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest.)

(The article includes links to a number of articles on this Forest’s plan revision process.)

Another gas pipeline down the tubes?

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Since the NFS litigation reporter is apparently furloughed, here is something you might not want to miss …

In July the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Jefferson National Forest for improperly amending its forest plan to create an exception to forest plan standards to allow the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (reported here and discussed here).   On December 13, the same court ruled against the George Washington and Monongahela National Forests for improperly amending their plans to create exceptions to 13 forest plan standards to allow the construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.  Cowpasture River Preservation Association v. Forest Service again involved interpreting a 2016 amendment to the Planning Rule that governs the application of the 2012 Rule to forest plan amendments. It also again involved circumstances where the Forest Service reversed itself regarding its concerns about the effects of a pipeline without justification.

Forest plan amendments to existing plans (that were not prepared pursuant to the 2012 Planning Rule) are subject to the substantive requirements of the 2012 Planning Rule when those requirements are directly related to the amendment. This may occur when the requirements are related to either the purpose or effects of the amendment(in a “substantial” way). The Forest Service found that relevant effects on soil, water, riparian, threatened and endangered species, and recreational and visual resources were mitigated, but ignored the purpose of the amendment, which was (as stated in the NEPA documents) to reduce the protection of those resources so the Pipeline could proceed. As stated by the court, “To say that a 2012 Planning Rule requirement protecting water resources (as one example) is not “directly related” to a Forest Plan amendment specifically relaxing protection for water resources is nonsense.”

The court rejected the argument that it is the purpose of the project that should be considered rather than the purpose of the amendment, and rejected the idea that these requirements do not apply to amendments limited to an individual project. It found, “If the Forest Service could circumvent the requirements of the 2012 Planning Rule simply by passing project-specific amendments on an ad hoc basis, both the substantive requirements in the 2012 Planning Rule and the NFMA’s Forest Plan consistency requirement would be meaningless.” The court also suggested that there would be “substantial” adverse effects of this project that should lead to a conclusion that the amendments are “directly related,” and the 2012 Planning Rule requirements would apply. The court held: “The lengths to which the Forest Service apparently went to avoid applying the substantive protections of the 2012 Planning Rule — its own regulation intended to protect national forests — in order to accommodate the ACP project through national forest land on Atlantic’s timeline are striking, and inexplicable.”

The court also found a violation of forest plan goals, “because it failed to demonstrate that the ACP project’s needs could not be reasonably met on non-national forest lands.”   The FEIS did not address this question, but instead found that no national forest avoidance alternative “confers a significant environmental advantage over the proposed route.”   The court held that consistency with plan goals is required by the 2012 Planning Rule (even though the goals were not written when that Rule was in effect). The Forest had included the goals (which are also found in the Forest Service Manual) in its scoping material for the Pipeline project. The court held that the Forest Service “is not free to disregard the goal entirely — as the Forest Service apparently wishes to do here.”

The court also found violations of NEPA. The EIS was prepared by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but the Forest Service had duty to independently review it. The Forest Service never explained why it was satisfied with the lack of off-forest alternative routes after it had said they were required. The Forest Service also failed to explain why it lost interest in landslide risks, erosion control and aquatic species that it had previously expressed concerns about. The court found, “the record before us readily leads to the conclusion that the Forest Service’s approval of the project “was a preordained decision” and the Forest Service “‘reverse engineered’ the [ROD] to justify this outcome.”

The court remanded the Forest Service decisions to grant the right of way to address these legal shortcomings. However, the court also found a potentially bigger problem: the Forest Service does not have the authority to grant a right of way across the Appalachian National Scenic Trail (necessary for the routes considered) because it is administered by the National Park Service, and the Park Service does not have authority to grant such a right of way at all. Thus this part of the Trump Administration’s “energy dominance” program could now be in the hands of a divided Congress.

Here is the line from the court that got the most media attention (includes a link to the opinion):

“We trust the United States Forest Service to “speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” Dr. Seuss, The Lorax (1971). A thorough review of the record leads to the necessary conclusion that the Forest Service abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources.”

Black Hills ghost trails come alive

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Two existing but unauthorized recreational trails will be considered for inclusion in the Black Hills National Forest’s official non-motorized trail system. But the trails were apparently blazed by users rather than Forest Service officials, and neither trail is considered part of the forest’s official trail system.

Just two years ago, the then-ranger of the Forest’s Mystic District, Ruth Esperance, threatened to criminally prosecute builders of unauthorized trails. The threat provoked a backlash among trail users, especially in the mountain-biking community, who accused forest officials of longstanding inaction on proposals for new trails.

In other words, they got tired of waiting and just decided to do it themselves, and the Forest Service is about to sanction that.  Meanwhile, four other proposed trails were set aside for now by Forest Service officials, who considered a total of six proposed trails as part of a new trail-proposal process that was created in August.  They were not approved because of unacceptable impacts.

Van Every identified numerous problems with the Storm Mountain and Victoria Lake trails. “Issues include routes through documented cultural sites, crossing private property, permitting bicycles on the historic Flume Trail where they are currently not authorized, crossing a major highway, fence crossings in the Foster Gulch area, lack of parking, and potential conflict with big game winter range,” Van Every wrote…  Furthermore, Van Every wrote, the Paha Sapa trail goes through the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, where trail miles are limited by the Black Hills National Forest’s management plan.

For the two trails that were advanced for further review, several more steps in the process remain, including environmental reviews in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act.

Well, this kind of points out the problem with this approach – these trails are already there and impacts have already occurred.  The reason the Forest Service doesn’t “just do it” is because there are resources they are charged with protecting that they are required by law to consider BEFORE they decide to do it.  But here is a great way to shortcut the process, and ignore legal requirements; just look the other way. The users could have funded the environmental analysis needed to proceed, but instead extra-legal “self-help” is apparently being rewarded.

Maybe this new process of “build it, then ask for it” will become the model for other places where the Forest Service doesn’t act fast enough on trails or other developments (or maybe even where they’ve already said “no”).  Maybe national forest neighbors (or their governments) will start using this approach to cut down trees on public lands that they consider a fire risk, or maybe they’ll burn them.  (This actually reminds me of the “shovel brigade” that rebuilt a Forest Service road in Nevada after a flood, which damaged bull trout habitat, but there the Forest Service at least resisted it.)

 

Increasing the Scope and Scale of Treatments- WaPo Story on the Medicine Bow Landscape Project- II of II

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From Google Maps. You can look around the town of Encampment, WY at different scales and scan areas in the mountains to the E and W. You can also click on this photo for more detail on a small area.

This is the second of two posts on the Washington Post story here about the Medicine Bow Landscape Vegetation Analysis LAVa project. All project information available here.

As to environmental groups, there’s a quote from Chris Topik, at The Nature Conservancy:

“If we are going to have a chance at combating climate change, forests are one of our best tools for mitigation because they sequester carbon,” said Chris Topik, director of the Nature Conservancy’s Restoring America’s Forests initiative. “So it’s vital that we help them to adapt.”

And then there’s the “science” angle. The story says “some biologists,” but only one is quoted.

Not everyone considers the plan a good idea. Some biologists say science does not back up the efficacy of the treatments proposed, particularly logging and the prescribed burns that the Forest Service calls necessary for lodgepole pine to reproduce and more diverse species to take root.

“They say they are going to reduce fuel loads to limit wildfires, and the literature doesn’t support that,” said Daniel B. Tinker, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming, who has studied the region for 23 years. “We’ve had fires this summer that burned through areas that were clear-cut 15 years ago. Those stands weren’t supposed to burn for 100 years.”

Reducing fuel loads, as we have seen, to change fire behavior and to provide opportunities for suppression forces to operate, are indeed supported by massive amounts of literature and the relatively humble fuels treatment effectiveness reports, as we have shown on this blog. Taking a look at Tinker’s recent pubs on the U of Wyo website here, doesn’t convince me that he’s an expert on wildfires nor fuels. But good one to the WaPo for interviewing someone local.

We can read this and instead think that conservation groups are divided on this.. first we have TNC, and then we have WEG.

Conservation groups also say that the Forest Service truncated scientific review in a rush to meet congressional demands for increased timber production on public lands. For now, the proposal does not specify which parcels would be targeted and where those hundreds of miles of road would be built.

“They are trying to fast-track this,” said Marla Fox, an attorney for WildEarth Guardians. “This is in line with the agency’s shift and approach under the Trump administration to ‘get out the cut,’ which means ‘let’s do some logging in the name of restoration.’ ”

NEPA-ites may chuckle at the use of “rush” when talking about an EIS. The article also says “Some pushback is internal. A group of Forest Service employees is skeptical that the agency can pull off an undertaking of this size.” Now I don’t doubt that many FS employees think different things, but this makes it sound like current employees are “pushing back” whatever that means. It sounds as if Andy polls a bunch of employees before he says anything, which I don’t think is the case (Andy?).

One more thing on this topic. Andy’s quote was that there is not enough money, which is of course probably true- but they’re setting the table, not guaranteeing a specific menu at a specific time. To my mind, the Med-Bow is not like the 4FRI at all. When I was working, I heard much about the ups and downs of industry in that area, and I admit that I don’t know what the story is currently. Still, I did see log trucks last summer there, so the industry is currently working. I might have interviewed someone from the industry on their situation, or Bill Crapser, the State Forester, if I had written the article or even NAFSR, the retiree organization. I suspect NAFSR would say something like:

“The U.S. Forest Service has been trying to move this direction for several years but has not yet been successful due to the novelty and technical complexity involved,” Andrew Larson, associate professor at the University of Montana, noted in an email. “If this project moves forward to implementation, it will become a case study in how to approach truly large-scale landscape planning and management.”

And what kind of professor is Dr. Larson, we might ask? Here’s some info. He’s also a forest ecologist. Which would mean that scientists (even within a sub-field) may not exactly agree with each other. Just like conservation groups and everyone else..

From last summer. My photo.

Increasing the Scope and Scale of Treatments- WaPo Story on the Medicine Bow Landscape Project- I of II

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Photo from the MedBow Landscape EIS

You don’t expect the Washington Post to take an interest in what’s going on in Wyoming, so this story was something of a surprise.

The take-home message is that forests are trying landscape-scale NEPA. We’ve heard from many scientists and others that we need to “increase the pace and scale of treatments to get fire back on the landscape.” So different sets of folks are trying that. People who don’t like CEs(categorical exclusions) should love these, one would think, because that’s exactly where projects and their interactions analyzed through space and time with a full EIS and all the appurtenances. In the somewhat, similar Black Hills Resilient Landscape Project, they added a multiparty monitoring effort so that findings toward the beginning could inform projects toward the end- that sounds great to me. Theoretically, this could be the perfect form of NEPA for ongoing vegetation management and prescribed burning programs.

This WaPo story is interesting for many reasons, and worthy of our attention because it reflects the intersection of concerns about how NEPA is done nd about doing land management actions. The story kind of shifts between the idea of “doing NEPA” and “whether treatments work” and “whether you can afford them.” I look at “doing big NEPA” as setting the NEPA table. You don’t know if the chef (Congress (not the President), the WO and your region) is going to give you one french fry, or a five-course gourmet meal with wine. You don’t know if the State or TNC or other partners will pop into the kitchen and fix a nice dessert. Now, if you are the chef, would you want to serve a dining room where tables were set or not?

The ­15-year project, a marked departure from the agency’s historical approach to restoration, is moving forward as President Trump blames the deadliest wildfire in California’s history on “gross mismanagement of the forests” — a widely disputed allegation.

(It seems to be a WaPo standard along with the ever-present Democracy Dies in Darkness banner, that each story must somehow involve the narrative that Trump is bad. Of course, Trump’s statement might have been a reason to look into this topic for them, so maybe his tweets are having some positive benefits! My italics.)

The Trump administration’s shift to decades-long management plans encompassing vast stretches is in stark contrast to the Forest Service’s historical practice of grooming parcels of 3,000 to 10,000 acres over a period of months. In New Mexico, the agency is preparing an environmental report for the 185,586-acre Luna Restoration Project in the Gila National Forest. Work on the 179,054-acre La Garita Hills Restoration Project in Colorado’s Rio Grande National Forest is underway.

NEPA folks have been talking about “big gulp” project for many years. One concern was strategic.. bigger projects make bigger targets for folks who want to litigate them. In planning, we used to talk about the “flotilla of small boats” compared to the Queen Mary. If litigators want to be efficient with their time and energy, they would tend to go after big projects. I’m not sure if that is the reason, but many of these larger projects have been successful in areas where litigation is not so frequent. The Black Hills, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming. There’s also the Blue Mountains Resiliency Project, started in 2015 with a link here. The sweet spot might be “where infrastructure still exists and litigation is not so frequent.”

As Andy mentions in his quote, 4FRI was also large-scale and started long before Trump. During the Obama Administration, I remember calls with CEQ in which CEQ asked EPA to stand down from their concerns about a large project on the Black Hills. Their point was that no changes to CEQ regs are needed, it is possible to do large projects with existing regs. In this case, it was indeed possible with high level support and inter-agency strong-arming when necessary. My point is that the pattern of going toward landscape-scale NEPA has been going on longer than the current Administration.

Greater sage-grouse amendment amendment

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Three years ago the Forest Service had this to say about the greater sage-grouse:

Two US Forest Service Records of Decision and associated land management plan amendments are the culmination of an unprecedented planning effort in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management to conserve greater sage-grouse and its habitat on National Forest System lands and Bureau of Land Management-administered lands.

Last week it was this (and they initiated a public comment period):

Since approving the plan amendments in 2015, the Forest Service has gathered information and determined that the conservation benefits of Forest Service plans in Nevada and other states can be improved. That is, through repeated scoping, close collaboration with state and other federal agencies, and internal review, the Forest Service has identified proposed changes in the text of the greater sage-grouse plan amendments which would improve their clarity and efficiency and better align them with the Bureau of Land Management and state plans.

Specifically, the Preferred Alternative makes modifications to land management plans within the issue areas of: Habitat management area designation, including designating sagebrush focal areas as Priority Habitat Management Areas compensatory mitigation and net conservation gain; minerals plan components and waivers; exceptions and modifications; desired conditions; livestock grazing guidelines; adaptive management; treatment of invasive species; and changes to clarify text and eliminate errors and redundancies.

Oddly, it sounds like all of the new information must say that sage-grouse are doing better than we thought three years ago and/or they are less vulnerable to oil and gas drilling than we thought three years ago. The most important change in forest plans is probably this one (from an AP article):

The Obama administration created three protection levels for sage grouse. Most protective were Sagebrush Focal Areas, followed by Primary Habitat Management Areas and then General Habitat Management Areas. The Forest Service plan reclassifies the 1,400 square miles (3,600 kilometers) of Sagebrush Focal Areas as primary habitat.

The focal areas allowed no exceptions for surface development, while primary habitat allowed for limited exceptions with the agreed consent of various federal and state agencies. Under the new plan, the cooperation of states and some federal agencies to exceptions in primary habitat will no longer be needed for some activities but can be made unilaterally by an “authorized officer,” likely an Interior Department worker. That appears to be an avenue for opening focal areas to natural gas and oil drilling.

This amendment decision will be subject to the 2012 Planning Rule requirements for species viability and species of conservation concern (SCC) (from the DEIS):

… the FS is considering the effect on the greater sage-grouse as a potential SCC for each LMP that would be amended by this decision. The analysis in this DEIS shows that the amendments maintain ecological conditions necessary for a viable population of greater sage-grouse in the plan area for each LMP to which the amendments would apply.

Recall that the current conservation strategy was “generally viewed as keeping the bird from being listed for federal protections under the Endangered Species Act.”  What will the Zinke that is charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service have to say to the Zinke that is in charge of the BLM (and apparently the Forest Service)? Why does this remind me of political appointee Julie McDonald’s interference with decisions about lynx? Is it more about a new boss than about new science?  “A federal lawsuit is likely.”

Some more background is provided here.

NFS Litigation Weekly October 12, 2018

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Forest Service summary:  Litigation Weekly Oct 12

The court upheld the North Fork Mill Creek A to Z Project on the Colville National Forest (E. D. Wa.)

 

Blogger’s note:

The 9th Circuit had previously refused to enjoin the project and that decision was explained here.  This is important because the district court held that most of the issues involving fisher and pine marten had been finally determined by the 9th Circuit.  Even though preliminary injunctions don’t normally do that, on this issue the facts had not changed and the arguments were the same.

On the other hand, whereas the 9th Circuit did not get much into the question of contracting out the NEPA process (apparently subcontracted as part of a stewardship contract), this district court did.  The issue was treated as a challenge to the bidding process, which non-bidders have a hard time doing.  I thought there would be a NEPA issue about awarding a timber sale contract before the NEPA process was completed (there can no commitment to actions that would have environmental impacts prior to completion of NEPA requirements).  Maybe someone could enlighten me about what “stewardship contracts” actually commit the parties to do.

Here is an article also summarizing the court decision.