NWFP

Northwest Forest Plan Revisions: Protecting Old-Growth in the 21st Century: Guest Post by John Cissel

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The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, 1994) employed concepts from conservation biology in an attempt to protect old-growth habitat and associated species, including aquatic organisms, while providing a sustained level of timber harvest. Protection was to be achieved by severely limiting timber harvest, the major contemporary source of old forest loss, primarily through an extensive network of Late-Successional and Riparian Reserves. A sustained level of timber harvest was planned in the residual Matrix lands, though planned harvest levels never materialized.

Old Douglas-fir (Santiam Wagon Road)

The NWFP successfully protected old-growth forests from logging, perhaps too successfully for those counting on the promised levels of timber harvest. But old forests continue to decline in large portions of the planning area because the plan failed to address the primary disturbance process resulting in loss of old forests in the 21st century: wildfire. Though conditions vary greatly across the region of the NWFP, widespread loss of old forest due to a renewed era of wildfire is significant and undeniable in the Oregon Cascades, the focal subregion of Johnson referenced in a recent TSW post and of particular interest to me. Neither the NWFP nor any of the proposed revisions plan for or respond to wildfire in meaningful ways, particularly for seasonally moist, westside forests.

How do I know wildfires are having significant effects on old forests in the Oregon Cascades? By going out and looking, and by documenting with text, maps and photos. As a spare-time project, I authored a series of old-growth hiking guides from 1991-2003 (out-of-print) showing the location and type of old growth along hiking trails in the Oregon and Washington Cascades. And now, 30 years later (2022-2026), I’ve gone back and revisited over 100 of these hikes in the Oregon Cascades (book in review.)

Many agents of change have been at work over the past 30 years, including those furthering development of complex old-forest habitat, but wildfire has overwhelmingly been the primary phenomenon driving loss of old forests. To put this into context, of the 120 old-growth hikes in the Oregon Cascades I documented 30 years ago, most of the old growth has since severely burned on 31 (26%) of those hikes, and an additional 16 (13%) hikes experienced a significant loss of old growth due to wildfire. Though widely distributed across forest and habitat types, these hikes are not a representative sample of the region. Nevertheless, 39% of the hikes have had significant loss of old growth along trails due to wildfire, over 30 years, most occurring over the last 20 years. A key point to understand is that these losses are occurring in seasonally moist forests on the westside.

Essentially all large fires contain a mix of fire severities, and fire effects in today’s old forests are quite varied. Large areas often burn at high severity though, and even in areas burned at lower severity the post-fire forest will take many decades to fully recover the lush and complex understory communities typical of these forests. Even with surface fires, significant mortality often arises from root and root collar damage due to uncharacteristically high fuel loads and warming summers. Recent fire history and anthropological studies point to an approximate 200-year period of fire exclusion and suppression in these forests.

Duff mound consumption (Lookout Creek)
Moderate-severity fire (Chuckle Springs)
High-severity fire (Multnomah Creek)

Fire is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part of these ecosystems, but old forests have been greatly diminished and fragmented from 50 years of dispersed clearcutting and recent wildfires on national forests. And on nonfederal lands old forests have been essentially eliminated. The result is greatly reduced habitat and vital ecosystem services, e.g., carbon sequestration. There simply isn’t much old forest left to carry the load while burned forests recover.

Wildfire poses many challenges that often defy control, but a NWFP for the 21st century must directly address and integrate wildland fire in all its dimensions. It is hard to imagine a successful conservation plan that doesn’t address the primary disturbance process causing loss of old forests. And wildfire will almost certainly remain the primary source of old-forest loss throughout the Oregon Cascades in the coming decades. Ideally, the full suite of fire prevention, mitigation, fuels treatment, wildfire response and recovery priorities and strategies will be integrated with protection and conservation of old forests.

What would that look like? I have notions, but a key point is that fire operations and management staff must be enlisted to help craft solutions. They are the ones with the practical experience and on-the-ground knowledge, and they are the ones who have a strong vested interest in getting this right. Resource specialists and ecologists working with fire personnel can best articulate how protection and conservation of old forests can be integrated throughout wildland fire operations.

Protection of old forests in the 21st century likely means a different conservation strategy than one based on Late Successional Reserves (LSRs.) LSRs were sized and located based on habitat needs of the northern spotted owl, a species that is functionally extirpated throughout most of the Oregon Cascades. Fire protection and management needs were not integrated into LSR siting, and significant portions of several Oregon Cascade LSRs have already severely burned. Proposed NWFP revisions appropriately include measures to protect all mature and old forests from logging wherever they are found, obviating the primary purpose of LSRs.

Potential fire refugia may provide a sounder basis for protection and conservation of old forests. Refugia, places that stand a higher probability of avoiding or surviving fire, might be locations that have a biophysical basis for protection, such as cirque basins or adjoining wetlands. Operational reasons may also define high-priority refugia, such as places where existing roads or other features delineate a defendable space. Potential fire refugia could usefully inform all aspects of fire prevention, fuels planning, and wildfire response and recovery.

My goal with this post has been to identify a clear need to update the NWFP to account for the actually occurring primary source of old-forest loss in the Oregon Cascades: wildfire. There are many issues important to the conservation of old forests beyond the scope of this post, e.g., post-fire reforestation and salvage, treatment of young stands, the importance of mature forests, and the risks from continued atmospheric warming other than fire. But wildfire can no longer be treated as an inconvenient, exogenous variable to grand plans and theories of conservation. Continued loss of old forest at the current rate will doom these forests well before the end of the century.

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John Cissel is retired from a 35-year professional career, including roles as:

1) Director, Joint Fire Science Program (2007-2016),  2) Research Coordinator, Oregon BLM (2003-2006), 3) HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Research Liaison, US Forest Service and Oregon State University (1990-2002),  4) Planning Analyst and Team Leader, US Forest Service (1981-1989.)

 He has also authored a series of old-growth hiking guides in the 1990s, culminating in the book “Old-Growth Forest Hikes: Washington and Oregon Cascades” published in 2003. A new book “Field Guide to Old-Growth Forests in the Oregon Cascades” is currently in review (PNWOldGrowthHikesPNW.org.)

 

The NWFP: Norm Johnson on the AFRC Podcast on Hits and Misses, And Some Process Riffing by Me

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Nick Smith had an excellent (to my mind) interview with OSU Professor Emeritus Norm Johnson, one of the folks involved in the development of the NW Forest Plan.  At first I was a bit skeptical, as I would be all for a formal review of what worked and what didn’t, perhaps led by OSU, and involving the public.  In the interview, Johnson goes over some of the things that were missed or downplayed (e.g. dry forests, Tribes) and suggests remedies. He and Debbie Johnson have written a report on it. Map is above.

But I would like to back up and ask more structural questions.

It continues to be suboptimal to me that we have parts of the FS who do a formal lessons learned for a vehicle rollover, and at the same time for a grand social, economic, and ecological experiment, we have .. not much.  Yes, researchers have studied what has happened via PNW reports like this or this (25 years) (the latter is a review of the science), or this Northwest Forest Plan- the first 10 years (1994-2003) synthesis of monitoring and research results.

Granted that I wasn’t working in the NW then, but I did hear from people working there, the problems with Adaptive Management Areas not being adaptively managed. One associate told me that there was only one academic who could tell the difference between two species that they had to survey in survey and manage.  Which leads me to two questions that might be relevant to future efforts.  I’m going to assume that there will be future efforts. I’m not criticizing what they did, I think everyone does the best that they can do at the time, but going forward, there are broader questions.

As Johnson says- what worked is that the NWFP reserved a great deal of forest, and that was good for NSO and other old growth species.

How Did They Miss This, and What Changes Should be Made This Time?

1.Tribal Involvement Then- Who is Left Out Now?

Are there other groups being left out currently? I understand that that was then and times have changed, so not criticizing the past, just saying in retrospect, the importance of their view are obvious.  Who or what groups are being left out this time?  When I worked in the FS, for example, I often found that the voices of employees who worked with say.. planning… were not necessarily at the table the same way other interests were.  Implementation is a thing.

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2. East-side and SW Oregon Forests Tend to Burn 

That “dry forests” (what we call them now)  behave differently was absolutely known at the time. I remember going on field trips in which East Side silviculturists said “if we do this, these stands will become tinderboxes and then owl habitat will burn.”  Why were their voices not heard or paid attention to?  Certainly, as we can see from the reports, there was a heavily researcher and heavily west-side based locus of researchers. Perhaps it’s the difference between “the best science” and “the best science produced by people studying west-side forests.”

Was it simply because of the old Oregon bias based on lack of universities on the East Side at the time- “if a tree burns up in the woods and no one at OSU has observed it, has it really burned?”

Was it because fuels researchers weren’t there at OSU at the time (disciplinary gap), or they weren’t asked to participate?

Was the scale planned at the time simply too big for important distinctions to be made? What about the folks and forests in SW Oregon and Northern California, which isn’t like the west side or the east side?

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3.  Results and Timing Very Bad for Some Communities

As I recall, and tried to find documentation for, there were also some researchers like Bob Lee who warned of negative impacts (leading to some kind of kerfuffle with Charlie Philpot, the then PNW Station Director.

Here we have at 10 years from Haynes et al abstract…

 The Plan anticipated greater timber harvests and more treatments to reduce fuel in fire-prone stands than have actually occurred. Monitoring showed human communities are highly variable, and it is difficult to disentangle overall growth in regional economies from the impacts of reduced timber harvests on federal land.

And from the first 25 years..

 These findings suggest that many rural communities in the NWFP area have experienced socioeconomic decline since 1994 and that changes to forest management and industry are important factors in the decline. However, the types of social and economic changes are contingent on local history and geography, and thus vary widely across the region.

The way Johnson expresses it.. the economic and social costs were too high, especially in some communities. Did we know that at the time? Or was it ultimately a political decision? Which of course is OK, because trade-offs are best handled by those accountable for handling them.

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4. Did it Resolve the Timber Wars?

I just read the current comments on FOFA by the usual suspect organizations (plus some not so usual), and my answer would be.. no. As Johnson says, many folks are just against timber harvesting or non-commercial thinning.

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5. The Quid Pro Nada Problem With Delineating Acres For This or That

This is a structural problem with any plan.. protected areas are protected from whatever, but the areas supposedly released for other uses may not ever see the “other uses” agreed to.  The same folks who did the deal for a certain number of acres tend to litigate the other uses.  This is probably the source of the problem of the “quo” level of timber harvest never happening, plus the lack of adaptive management in AMA’s. Johnson says in the podcast something like “he knows many people who feel this way.” They don’t seem to be going away, so perhaps some consideration of that fact needs to be built in.

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6. The Future is Hard to Predict So You Need to Adapt More Frequently Than Every 30 Years

They didn’t realize that barred owls would be as much of a problem.  Of course, in 30 years, there are many unpredictable things.. say wildfire technology, or climate change or whatever.  If you realize that and put it into practice, you would have a formal set of goals, and a formal set of structures for changing when things are not working. Not just monitoring them, but making changes.  Not just publishing papers, but designing and implementing and monitoring changes.  It seems like, to some extent, these plans get so complicated that inertia makes those kinds of changes and experiments impossible.

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7. Survey and Manage

This is from Johnson and Johnson in their report.

First, the purpose of Survey and Manage was to help protect species associated with old-growth forests. Under the Proposed Action in the DEIS, old-growth forests will be protected; hence, Survey and Manage, which was focused on old-growth species, is no longer indicated. The default assumption should be that these species are protected under the amended NWFP unless sufficient evidence is developed that shows they are still at risk.

Elimination of Survey and Manage was also recommended in Franklin, Johnson and Johnson letter on the NWFP amendment. My question, in keeping with the theme of this, is “did the people implementing this get a chance to give feedback? Was there a formal feedback mechanism for them? When did thought leaders like N and J figure out that it wasn’t helpful? Did they have access to a formal feedback mechanism? ” I still think that implementers (as I did for various planning rules) need to have a separate team and recommendations from the larger interest group committee-otherwise, in my experience, the implementers’ “lived experience” tends to be downplayed or ignored in developing plans and processes.

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So to me that’s the final answer.. 1) identify and listen to all the voices, 2) choose scale carefully, 3) when implementation problems arise or goals are not being met, have a process to change course.. at least every 10 years, but more frequently if possible.  An effort towards continual improvement is better than no improvement or once every thirty years in my view.  Of course, these are management ideas (meeting goals, improving, testing) and perhaps not addressing this directly is an indirect result of choosing to empower researchers preferentially.

Franklin and Johnson wrote a commentary on implementation in 2014 and this is from the abstract:

While old growth harvest has largely ceased, some key species are still in decline and forest management has been restricted more than intended. Creation of openings, even those based on disturbance processes, has been especially difficult. Some lessons from this experience include the difficulty of adaptive management, the importance of ecological foundations for management, and the need for stakeholder collaboration.

I’m sure those are all accurate observations. My question is, again,  “if these challenges were identified early (as I think they were), how did implementation change to reflect those challenges? Or did the structure permit that kind of feedback and adaptive management? Or didn’t implementers such as agency employees have the political clout to implement changes?

It would be interesting to compare the stated goals and achievements of the NSO effort (if that’s what it was, or was it mostly about “not logging” or “old growth protection”  with an NSO veneer? ), with CASPO and forest plans in California.

 

New Study Shows That Management For Static Conditions Doesn’t Work in NW Forests

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University of Washington environmental and forest scientists evaluate fire effects from the 2017 Jolly M

 

Thanks to Nick Smith for this one! It’s an interview with U Washington scientist Gina Cova, published in Phys.org.

File this under  “I think we knew this based on observations.” I was on a field trip on the Wenatchee when the same observations and predictions were made about owls, owl habitat and wildfire.. oh.. twenty or more years ago  (I think it was a field trip associated with the 1999 SAF Convention in Portland, Oregon).  Looking back, we can ask a meta-question- why does it take so long for practitioner knowledge to be incorporated into policy? What is the role of academic, government and political institutions in making sure that that pipeline is working in both directions.. scientist to practitioner and practitioner to scientist?

At the same time, better late than never.

The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994, helped quell mounting tensions between timber companies and environmentalists. It protected large swaths of old-growth forest in Washington, Oregon and California to preserve habitat for endangered species, including the Northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.

While the plan is largely considered a success, researchers and land managers have begun to question whether it adequately protects forests threatened by climate change. Wildfires of increasing strength and severity sweep through Northwest forests every year, both on the east side of the mountains where conditions are drier and in wet mossy western forests.

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What were some of the key takeaways from the study?

A broad theme is that these are dynamic landscapes and they need to be managed as such. We looked at the environmental factors driving burn severity for 2,200 different wildfires and studied the forest patterns resulting from those events. The effects of wildfire in some areas were surprising. For example, we found that high severity fire affected around 60% of pine-oak woodlands in federally protected reserves throughout the eastern Cascades and Klamath regions. These forests are adapted to frequent, low intensity fires. We know that they need fire, but the severity of these fires reflects a long history of fire exclusion—or lack of fire—across the landscape.

What do you mean by a lack of fire? Aren’t we supposed to stop wildfires?

Because enacting changes to management strategies has been difficult to do in practice, parts of the Northwest Forest Plan inadvertently reinforced the idea of preserving a static forest condition. This approach is analogous to drawing a boundary around a forest to prevent disturbance. It is rooted in conservation ideas from the early and mid-20th century, but we know that disturbances—especially fire—are important for forests. So, you get this kind of fire paradox where many of these forests need fire, but the longer they go without it the more devastating it ultimately becomes.

We wonder what it becomes.. but maybe that was edited out?

These frequent-fire forests—like pine-oak woodlands and dry mixed conifer forests—can ultimately fare better in a warmer climate, so it is really alarming to see how much dry forest cover we are losing to fire under current management strategies.

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When you manage land with a focus on a single issue, or a limited set of issues, you’re going to run into problems. The plan accounted for the effects of wildfire as it was in 1994, but did not anticipate how wildfire would shift with climate change. We don’t necessarily need to know exactly what the landscape will look like in the future, but we need policies and management strategies that will allow us to adapt to changing and novel conditions.

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Actually people were saying that at the time, with those wildfire conditions, but if climate change gives us a reason to switch, so be it.  Better late than never.

AP Story: “More logging is proposed to help curb wildfires in the US Pacific Northwest”: Draft Amendment to NWFP?

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If we can make it through the next month or so of “bad Forest Service and BLM” we can make it to “bad Trump,” and breath a sigh of relief. After all federal employees are wonderful, unless they do things (important people we don’t know) don’t like. I haven’t been following all the ins and outs of the NWFP amendment, but know readers are involved.

The U.S. Forest Service proposal, released Friday, would overhaul the Northwest Forest Plan that governs about 38,000 square miles (99,000 square kilometers) in Oregon, Washington and California.

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Much has changed in society and science since the Northwest Forest Plan was created,” Jacque Buchanan, regional forester for the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Region, said in a statement. He said the proposal would help the agency adapt to shifting conditions, as global warming increases the frequency of droughts and other extreme weather events.

FWIW, I think Jacque uses she/her pronouns. Oh well.

Cutting more trees would help reduce wildfire risk and make communities safer, the study concluded. That would be accomplished in part by allowing cuts in some areas with stands of trees up to 120 years old — up from the current age threshold of 80 years.

The change could help foster conditions conducive to growing larger, old growth trees that are more resistant to fire, by removing younger trees, officials said.

A separate pending proposal from President Joe Biden’s administration aims to increase protections nationwide for old growth trees, which play a significant role in storing climate change-inducing carbon dioxide.

“Much has changed in society and science since the Northwest Forest Plan was created,” Jacque Buchanan, regional forester for the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Region, said in a statement. He said the proposal would help the agency adapt to shifting conditions, as global warming increases the frequency of droughts and other extreme weather events.

The proposed plan also calls for closer cooperation between the Forest Service and Native American tribes to tap into tribal knowledge about forest management. Tribes were excluded when the 1994 plan was crafted.

Environmentalists greeted the proposal with skepticism. The group Oregon Wild said it was “deeply troubling” that the Forest Service would release the proposal just ahead of a change in presidential administrations.

“It appears that the Forest Service wants to abandon the fundamental purpose of the Northwest Forest Plan–protecting fish and wildlife and the mature and old-growth forests they need to survive,” John Persell, an attorney for the group, said in a statement.

It almost sounds like the FS is a separate entity.. the old “rogue agency” idea. Logically, there are a small number of possibilities.
1. The Biden Admin supports this decision.
2. The Biden Admin doesn’t care either way, everyone’s too busy looking for their next job.
3. Different entities in the Biden Admin disagree, but there is no conflict resolution system.
4. The Biden Admin doesn’t like the decision but is too disorganized to transmit that info to the FS.
5. The Biden Admin told the FS what to do, but the FS is blowing them off. (I consider this one least likely)

I disagree a bit with John P. (as quoted), I think it makes sense to cement in (insofar as possible) the work of the group they brought together (the FACA committee) before the next Admin kicks in.

The AP story does quote Travis Joseph of AFRC:

A timber industry representative who co-chaired an advisory committee on the Northwest Forest Plan said the proposed plan resulted from discussions involving committee members, the Forest Service and others.

“We want to see a modern approach to federal forest stewardship that protects us from catastrophic wildfires, reduces toxic smoke, meaningfully engages tribes, and delivers for our rural communities and workers,” said Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council.

Has the NWFP Ever Had a Program Evaluation? What Other Programs Could Use One?

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SJ and I were having a discussion which I will reproduce here, because it brings up questions beyond the NWFP.

First, I asked these questions.

I would still like to see an independent group examine how well it did on:
1. The social and economic aspects as per principle “ever forget the human and the economic dimensions of these problems,” we know that there were economists involved (with differing opinions) and I wonder how many social scientists were involved. As I recall, Bob Lee, a sociologist, was not a proponent of the approach and it led to a kerfuffle with Charlie Philpot, but I haven’t been able to find copies of the letter exchange, which I think would be useful to future historians.
2. How well did the “government working together” work? The REO.. was it another level of bureaucracy or did it provide value? Has it naturally died out? What happened?
3. Survey and manage pros, cons, was it a good investment, did it add value?
4. Adaptive management areas..the story I heard that was for litigators, cutting trees experimentally was not on the table either.. is that true? What happened that they didn’t apparently work as intended?
5. However many years later, thanks to the NWFP FAC, (even though there are few people from the NWFP terrain on the E side) it is officially recognized that dry forests are different and require different management, and yet many FS people were saying that at the time. Why did it take so long to figure this out? What about SW Oregon? Were regional differences and knowledge adequately considered? To what extent was “the science” Corvallis-centered and has this monopoly been adequately broken up?

Why isn’t the FS or BLM or OSU figuring out how to do an independent review of the NWFP?
After all, one of Clinton’s principles was the government should work for us.. the same government that can do an after action review on a vehicle rollover, can’t initiate a review of a much more extensive and expensive process?
It doesn’t make sense, unless powerful entities don’t want to hear what might come up. But all the entities, OSU, FS BLM have a potential COI, so it would be interesting to design a truly independent review.

SJ added links to more information.

The monitoring reports (available here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r6/reo/monitoring/) and the Science Synthesis (available here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr966.pdf) answer many if not most of your questions.

Another source – perhaps the Cliff Notes version – is the law review article I wrote with Professor Mike Blumm (available here: https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/faculty_articles/146/).

A longer form source is The Making of the Northwest Forest Plan by Franklin, Johnson, and Reeves (available from booksellers).

After examining and reflecting,  I thought that perhaps we were talking past each other.  I was talking about “how well it worked and what was learned about how we could have done it better  (more efficiently, effectively and with fewer negative impacts.”  I was basically thinking from the management or public administration perspective.

So I looked up Program Evaluation and it turns out that GAO (the Government Accountability Office)  had this interesting report. Check out (3) continuous learning. But as I reviewed this, I thought the NWFP was not alone, there are probably many FS programs that have not had formal program evaluations. Suggestions?

So far it doesn’t appear that the NWFP has had a formal program evaluation, let alone independent external review. It would be a great deal of work but so was (is) the NWFP. Characteristics might include independence, transparency to the public, opportunities for listening to stakeholders. Yes, a program evaluation could become a bureaucratic morass if not carefully designed and implemented, but that could equally be true of the NWFP itself, and how would we know? Finally, I think it was interesting that Colorado and Idaho State Roadless Rules had a national FACA committee to ensure that the national perspective was taken into consideration, apparently this wasn’t thought necessary for NWFP, which covers three states.

Jim Petersen on NWFPs Past and Present

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Jim Petersen of Evergreen had an interesting post today.  I’d like to draw your attention to three things.

1. NWFP argument for an amendment rather than a revision.

     “Why is the Northwest Forest Plan being amended instead of revised?

And the answer to Question 3:

·     A plan amendment is required to add, modify, or remove plan components or to change how and where plan components apply to all or part of the plan area. A plan revision would create an entirely new plan.

·     The amendment approach allows us to keep what is working about the Plan and update those critical plan components most urgently needed to meet modern management challenges within the plan area.

While I think the NWFP FAC folks thought that a revision of the NWFP might be better, but the FS was told the Department preferred a more compact timeline (or so I’ve heard), I take the opposite view of the same FAQ.  The second bullet seems to me a perfect argument for why revisions should be exceptions, rather than a scheduled requirement.   I think you could make the same argument about almost any plan, including our local 1984 plan.

I’m a plan minimalist.  What is in the plan that keeps the FS from responding adequately to important challenges? In fact, that goes back to our ideas (in the 80’s) of a plan as a loose-leaf notebook, readily updated.  Opening up every decision or line of print in a 300 page document, for no compelling reason, leading to more litigation and stirring up bad feelings, and spending lots of money on analysis.. I’m not for it.

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2. Role of Experienced Forest Service People in Giving Advice, or Not

But why in heaven’s name was only one ex-Forest Service person named to the advisory committee and why were no agency retirees selected? Collectively, these men and women represent hundreds of years of first-hand, on-the-ground experience. They know what works and what doesn’t.

One retiree I know well said, “From a technical and managerial standpoint, this is a major failure. Execution is a critical part of reviewing a strategy or plan, and yet there was only one person on the advisory committee who had any experience at all to execute the 1990 plan which covered over three states, involving many field and management people from all the Forests over the past 30 years. This makes no sense at all.”

He’s correct. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s 1990 all over again – and it stinks.

Actually I believe Jose Linares is retired, and did work for the Forest Service.  Here’s the nomination letter that NAFSR (retirees) wrote for him. At the same time, the “seat” he is filling is due to his membership in “underserved communities outreach organizations.” I doubt that the FS  meant NAFSR ;).

But Jim has a more general point. I recall when the “Committee of Scientists” (or as I called them “the Committee of Scientists Plus One Law Prof”)  discussed and made recommendations on planning.. no actual planners were involved on the panel, but they could “give input.”

To make something better, it seems to me that you need to understand the nuts and bolts of how it works.  Privileging outsiders’ views seems a bit disrespectful of  workers.   We wouldn’t enlist academics, for example, to do wildfire lessons learned.  At the same time, these are ultimately political decisions so you need people to support them that have political power of some kind.  I’d try two separate committees- one of employees, and one of outsiders, like houses of Congress only friendlier;  give the committees a chance to reconcile the versions and then, for the parts not agreed upon, the Department makes the call.  If they weren’t in a hurry they could still try this.  Or maybe just a list from the employees of  thteir druthers before the process is initiated and a review afterwards with employee comments. By the time it’s an EIS, the idea horses are too far out of the barn IMHO.

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3.   Spotted Own/NWFP History Story

I think we need to collect these stories before they are lost in case future historians are interested in the NWFP.  So if you have others..

Early in the owl war the long gone National Forest Products Association [NFPA] went looking for a statistician who could review the government’s owl data.

I know this because the late Con Schallau, a brilliant PhD forest economist and member of the Evergreen Board of Directors, called the late Ben Stout, with whom I was well acquainted, to ask who Ben might recommend for the job.

Stout earned forestry degrees from West Virginia, Harvard, and Rutgers Universities. He taught and held administrative positions at Harvard University, Rutgers and the University of Montana, where he was also forestry school dean until 1985.

He was then hired as National Program Manager, Air Quality and Forest Health by the science-heavy National Council of the Paper Industry for Air and Stream Improvement [NCASI] based in Corvallis, Oregon.

Suffice it to stay, Stout was well traveled and well respected in academic circles. Hence, the call from Con. Although Stout did not know him personally, he told Con that NFPA ought to consider Ed Green, a young statistician teaching at Rutgers.

Con hired Green to do the review because, among other things, he hadn’t heard much about the owl wars in the West. Thus, not much risk of bias.

The day before Green was scheduled to fly to Washington D.C. to present his findings at an NFPA press conference, he called Con to say he couldn’t go through with it.

When Con asked why, Green explained that Forest Service Chief, Jack Ward Thomas, had walked into his office unannounced the day before and threatened his untenured career if he released his findings in D.C.

“You’re in the big leagues now, boy,” Thomas had said. “Be careful.”How did Thomas know what Green was doing? It turned out that Green’s boss and Thomas were elk hunting buddies.

About 20 years ago, I flew to Rutgers in Camden, New Jersey to interview Green.

I wanted to know if Thomas had threatened him. He had.

I left Green’s office that day with a copy of his statistical review. It blew the statistical validity of many owl plan assumptions to smithereens.

After Thomas quit the Forest Service, he taught graduate level wildlife biology classes at the University of Montana.

I was living in Bigfork, Montana at the time, so I drove to Missoula to interview him, not once but several times.

I confronted him with what Green had told me. At first Thomas denied it, but he ultimately grumbled that “something like that” had happened.Jack [we were now on a first-name basis] also admitted the daily working notes from the scientists who worked on the Spotted Owl Plan – had been shredded every night – then packed in large black plastic garbage bags and trucked to an incinerator at Boardman, Oregon.

“Why Jack,” I asked. “You were working behind locked doors with guards on the top floors of the 54-story US Bancorp Tower in Portland. Did you think burglars might steal the paperwork in the middle of the night?

“No, I was worried the press might go through the garbage bags on the first floor,” he explained. “Those were very tense times – with a lot at stake.”

 

 

DEIS for Northwest Forest Plan Delayed

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Thanks to Steve Wilent for this one…

Maybe my math is off, but it sounds like 90 days after sometime in October will be close to Inauguration(Jan 20) so they are not in a hurry, because analysis of the comments will clearly take time. I think that’s a good thing for employees, the public, and good policy.

This reminds me of when we were working on Colorado Roadless right before an election; Mark Rey (the Undersec at the time) told us something like “a good process will hold up across Admins, so just take your time.” The end result decision in our case was ultimately signed by Hickenlooper and Obama.. and still litigated for a substantial period of time by the usual suspects. And so it goes…

Update on the Release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan

Portland, Ore. (August 27, 2024) – The USDA Forest Service is informing partners, collaborators, and the public that the release of the draft Environmental Impact Statement for the amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan, initially anticipated at the end of August, is now expected in October.

When released, the draft EIS will be published in the Federal Register which will start a 90-day public comment period allowing all interested parties to provide input on the proposed amendment.

The USDA Forest Service is amending the Northwest Forest Plan to address changed conditions with a focus on five key areas: wildfire resilience, climate change adaptation, tribal inclusion, sustainable communities, and conservation of old growth ecosystems and related biodiversity. The Forest Service is committed to preserving the elements of the plan that are working well while incorporating the latest science to help forests adapt to social, economic, cultural, and ecological changes.

The Northwest Forest Plan covers 24.5 million acres of federally managed lands in California, Oregon, and Washington. It was established in 1994 to address threats to threatened and endangered species while also contributing to social and economic sustainability in the region. After nearly 30 years, the Northwest Forest Plan needs to be updated to accommodate changed ecological and social conditions.  

For more information visit the Northwest Forest Plan webpage at: www.fs.usda.gov/goto/r6/nwfp

Northwest Forest Plan Amendment- FACA Committee Discussion Draft Plan of Components

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Susan Jane Brown was kind enough to provide links to the draft plan components and draft recommendations. She pointed out, importantly (!) that “THESE ARE DRAFT AND UNDER ACTIVE DISCUSSION AND NEGOTIATION. The USFS hasn’t made any decisions yet, nor has the FAC reached consensus.” Here’s a link to their meeting archive page, and here’s one to the recommendations.

As with many things in forest planning there are many words here,  the Tribal recommendations are too long to post, 15 pages and change.

So I hope readers will take a look and give us your thoughts on any section. Maybe our thoughts will help inform the FACA committee and the Forest Service? I’d like it if they would not use “resiliency” and always use “resilience” but that’s just me.

Here are plan components for those not familiar with the planning process:

Here are the different sections for you to look at.

Here’s a section some might be interested in (I picked it because it is relatively short):

Andy Kerr on Remaking the NWFP For the Next Quarter Century

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Speaking of the Timber Wars, I received this in the mail from Andy Kerr this morning.

It’s part 2 of what he thinks needs to be changed in the NWFP.  Kerr talks about his views and looks at the recommendations of The Making of a Northwest Forest Plan and The World’s Largest Ecosystem Management Plan: The Northwest Forest Plan After a Quarter-Century.  I’m sure you NW-ers will find something to discuss.

1.  I was kind of surprised that Westsiders felt like they knew what was best for dry forests.  I’m not sure about this..

It’s still stand-density reduction, whether the trees being removed are dead or alive. As Jerry and Norm have told me many times, if a dry-forest stand burns before it is treated (thinned), the best course is to leave the larger trees that would have been left and take the smaller trees that would have been removed in a restoration treatment had the stand not burned.

2. The NWFP was just the beginning, folks want the same thing on private lands (now why wouldn’t people invest in private timberlands?)

The NWFP should call for terrestrial habitat restoration on nonfederal lands as well—better yet,  to reconvert private timberlands to public forestlands.

3. At least the recommendations cited here, seem related to past views of ecological stability vs. dynamism, and only incorporate climate change in ways that support what they thought 30 years ago.

(NJG) UTILIZE TREATMENTS, INCLUDING THINNING AND BURNING, TO RESTORE OLD DRY FORESTS TO APPROXIMATIONS OF THEIR HISTORICAL STATES

(AK) Amen, with a however. Burning must always occur, either as the only treatment or the follow-up treatment after scientifically sound thinning.

Some folks here are concerned that burning can be more dangerous due to climate change-induced factors of heat and drought. Others model and say the trees are all going to die in the next 50 years.  When and how do we consider climate change impacts?

4. If AGW is real then lots of species will move around and may be more successful than the natives.  If that happens should we/can we afford to kill them all off? Is the NSO in some kind of sacred category or how many species will we do this for?

CONSERVING THE NORTHERN SPOTTED OWL

(NJG) • KILL BARRED OWLS TO PROTECT NORTHERN SPOTTED OWLS ON AT LEAST A PORTION OF THE SPOTTED OWL’S RANGE.

(AK) Amen and hallelujah. See my Public Lands Blog post entitled “B. Owl v. N. S. Owl.” ”[A]t least a portion should, praise be, “all” of the spotted owl’s range.

5. And always, wolves are moving back so…end livestock grazing and reduce road densities. And yet somehow their ranges are expanding without ending livestock grazing, or timber harvesting, or  reducing road densities.

 Gray wolves are returning to the NWFP area and need to be made more welcome. Wolf-friendly measures include equitably ending livestock grazing and reducing road densities.

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With the FACA committee, I suppose that this is only the beginning of these discussions.