Place-Based Bills & Agreements

More on monetizing public lands

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The latest on Montana, giving credit where credit is due (i.e. there’s nothing ‘grassroots’ about it):

“The American Lands Council is leading the charge on this. I’m not a member, but I do appreciate that they’re helping elected officials get better educated on this,” Fielder said.

I’m sure that education includes these facts:

ALC bases much of its justification for lands transfer on sections in the Western states’ Enabling Acts that say the federal government “is obligated to extinguish title to additional lands.”

But a University of Utah legal analysis published in October found that phrase applied only to Indian lands, not public lands. The analysis also outlined several laws and Supreme Court decisions that firmly establish federal control of public lands.

“As the owner of public lands, the United States holds the public lands ‘in trust for the people of the whole country,’ not solely for the benefit of adjacent landowners,” the report said.

Someone came up with a new financial twist – give states the land, federal tax dollars keep paying for the upkeep:

Fielder said the state wouldn’t need that much money if the federal government were required to pitch in.  “This catastrophic wildfire condition has grown on their watch. So keeping the federal government on the hook for helping with fire suppression is something we ought to look at,” Fielder said.

And these folks don’t like to collaborate:

But Fielder dismissed collaboratives as ineffective.  “Citizens have very little chance to get their objectives inserted in federal land management plans because paid lobbyists are there at every meeting. They pretty much drown out the local community’s voice,” Fielder said.

I’m sure that’s based on a good set of facts, too.

 

 

Urgent Action Needed to Save Sierra Forests

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This viewpoint shows more of the reasons why the desire to have larger and more intense wildfires, in the Sierra Nevada, is the wrong way to go.

In this picture below, fire crews were run out of this stand, and back into the “safety zone”, on this fire I worked on, back in 1988.

campbell_fire1-web

 

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/28/6737076/viewpoints-urgent-action-needed.html

Air quality the past two weeks has been several times worse than some of the most polluted cities in the world due to smoke from the King fire. Last year’s Rim fire emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 2.3 million vehicles for a year.

Also, the lost habitat and recreational opportunities from major fires like these are significant. It is not an exaggeration to say that virtually all Californians are affected when these “megafires” occur.

The report points out that wildfires are getting larger and burning at higher intensity than ever before. The Rim fire burned at nearly 40 percent high intensity – meaning virtually no living vegetation is left – covering almost 100,000 acres. More acres have burned in the first 4½ years of this decade than in seven decades of the last century.

What can we do about it?

The main bottleneck in treating more acres is in implementation. The Forest Service is unwilling to increase the size of its Region 5 timber management staffs. They use some of the usual excuses, some of which are beyond their control but, not all of those issues are really significant, looking at the big picture. Yes, it is pretty difficult to implement extremely-complex plans when you are constantly training new temporary employees, hired right off the street.

Collaboration: Not Easy for Place Based Bills Either

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When I got back from holiday shopping and reflecting on how national forests could use a little “good will toward folks”, I found that a reader sent me the below link from a press release about environmental groups and Wyden’s Eastern Oregon bill.

It was interesting to me that while we were engaged in all this hypothetical discussion of groups and meetings and Meridian Institute, on the Flathead, these folks are “doin’ it” without costing 400-600K or so a year (planning teams). Sure, they have all the same problems of “collaborating” but it focuses on the difficult issues and will ultimately provide a deal that sticks. Now I acknowledge that “the public” is left out, but so are they (as I’ve pointed out) at settlement meetings. I’d rather have local elected officials deciding than unelected judges and representatives of groups, and agency personnel with a more tenuous link to national elected officials. I would hypothesize that the conflict is not really about the details of collaborative efforts but fundamentally about the outcomes.

Here’s the link and which has a link to the letter.

Conservation groups who have long worked closely with Senator Ron Wyden in the development of his Oregon Eastside Forest Restoration, Old Growth Protection and Jobs Act (S.1301), first introduced in 2009, have announced they cannot support last-minute changes that have been made to the bill. The changes were released on the eve of a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee markup scheduled for Thursday.

In a letter to the Senator today, Oregon Wild, Geos Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, and The Larch Company expressed disappointment in the weakened version of the bill that he plans to offer in the Committee’s markup meeting tomorrow. The groups say that while they could live with some of the changes, Wyden’s decision to abandon key environmental safeguards outweigh these few improvements.

“As amended, the legislation will cause unacceptable and irreparable damage to forests in eastern Oregon, will degrade water quality, harm endangered species, and undermine environmental laws. We cannot support a bill that would allow logging of 200 year old trees,” said Steve Pedery, Conservation Director at Oregon Wild, who was involved in developing the original bill starting in 2008.

Andy Kerr, longtime conservation activist, commented: “We have worked diligently for years, under Senator Wyden’s leadership, to reach agreement with the timber industry on eastside forest legislation. Even after the American Forest Resource Council abandoned the legislation, the conservation community continued to support it and to work with his staff to perfect it. Unfortunately, in the rush to markup this bill, proposed changes have transformed legislation that served Oregon’s eastside forests and watersheds to something that does not.”

“We are disappointed that after years of working together on a true compromise plan, Senator Wyden has chosen to gut the legislation without our input. We still support the original, compromise plan Senator Wyden announced jointly with us back in 2009, but we can’t support these reckless changes that would harm wildlife, streams, and old-growth,” commented Pedery.

The groups’ major objections, aside from the sudden changes without consultation with collaborators, include:

The loss of permanent protection for streams and old-growth trees. Instead, the legislation would now expire 15 years after enactment.
A newly added provision promoting the logging of old-growth trees up to 200 years old, instead of focusing on restoration.
Removing the goal of restoring eastside ecosystems across the landscape.
The loss of language that ensures roads are decommissioned as part of watershed restoration.
Significantly weakened language for stream and riparian area protections.

The groups recommend that the markup for the eastside forest legislation be delayed until it can be fully vetted with groups that have long worked with the Senator on the bill.

“Community-Driven” Management Through Place-Based Bill: Brown’s Canyon

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Senator Mark Udall meets with local officials at the Palace Hotel in Salida, as part of his announcment that he will be introducing his Browns Canyon bill in Congress next week.
Senator Mark Udall meets with local officials at the Palace Hotel in Salida, as part of his announcment that he will be introducing his Browns Canyon bill in Congress next week.

Synchronistically, as we were discussing NFMA planning, I received an email from Senator Udall’s office. My italics.. note two things, it was based on community negotiating, and uses will not change or be revised on a regular (or not so regular) basis. And it’s “All Lands”. I didn’t look at the bill.

After working for nearly two years to develop a collaborative, community-driven plan to create Browns Canyon National Monument, I was pleased to recently announce the introduction of my bill in Nathrop. Watch video.

This proposal would protect some of our most-loved river rafting spots along the iconic Arkansas River between Salida and Buena Vista by designating the area as a national monument and the adjacent Browns Canyon as wilderness. The official designation would literally put the region on the map, drawing more visitors to its world-class outdoor recreation opportunities and supporting the local tourism economy.
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That is why I can say with confidence that when we work hand-in-hand with communities to preserve public lands, we are supporting jobs, our economy and Colorado’s high quality of life. Our world-class natural amenities are one of our greatest economic engines, and preserving public lands helps keep jobs, entrepreneurs, and investment moving to and thriving in our state.

I became engaged in the movement to recognize Browns Canyon because local residents and businesses asked me to. I worked side-by-side over the last 18 months with Chaffee County leaders, residents, businesses, and other stakeholders to hold several public meetings and conduct more than 50 face-to-face meetings. The resulting bill is emblematic of how public lands bills should be done: from the bottom up and based on what the community wants.

My community-driven proposal designates 22,000 acres along the Arkansas River canyon and surrounding backcountry as the Browns Canyon National Monument, including 10,500 acres as Wilderness. This bill preserves visitor access and protects existing legal uses as they are now, so fishing, hunting, livestock grazing, commercial outfitting, mountain biking and motorized use will all continue as they have been. I’d also like to note that this will not be like a National Park Service monument. Instead, this monument will stay under the same management as it has now — the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area.

I believe that we don’t inherit the land and water from our parents — we borrow it from our children. Having visited Browns Canyon and kayaked the Arkansas River many times, I know that Coloradans from all walks of life agree. That’s why I am dedicated to leading the fight — with Coloradans by my side — to ensure that future generations of Coloradans can enjoy the Browns Canyon National Monument and experience this unique mix of exciting whitewater and wilderness backcountry.

Visit my website to learn more about my work to create the Browns Canyon National Monument and Wilderness Area.

The website is worth looking at and points out that more planning will be done..but the agencies are going to do it together and it doesn’t sound like it would have NFMA’s requirements.

Wyden’s Bill Preview (?)

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I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this Preview. I received on an email trail that supposedly starts from Wyden’s office. I am as likely as the next person to be bamboozled. Still, just in case, I thought it worth sharing. As I reformatted this from the email, I had many thoughts, but I will reserve them until I find out for sure that it’s not an elaborate and brilliantly crafted hoax.

For too long, Oregon’s 2.1 million acres of O&C grant lands have been ground zero for the battle between those seeking to halt logging in the Northwest and those seeking to return to the unsustainable logging levels of a bygone era.

This legislation would end the gridlock by using science to guide management of the O&C lands, roughly doubling timber harvests over the next 10 years compared to the last 10 years and providing certainty for local communities. At the same time, this bill will permanently protect old growth trees, ensure habitat for sensitive species, and put in place strong safeguards for drinking water and fish.

This bill amends the Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield
Management Act of 1937, so the O&C Grant Lands in 18 Oregon counties are
managed to foster long-term forest and environmental health while producing
sustainable levels of timber.

It achieves these goals and resolves longstanding land management disputes by separating the Oregon and California Grant Lands into roughly equal “forestry emphasis” and “conservation emphasis” areas.

Ensuring Predictable and Sustainable Timber Harvests
The legislation requires the Secretary of the Interior to provide a long-term sustained yield of timber in forestry emphasis areas, using forestry principles developed by Drs. Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin, two highly respected Northwest scientists. It includes specific directions for managing dry and moist forests. In forestry emphasis areas, sustainable timber production is a clear management priority, eliminating the uncertainty and conflicting direction that have contributed to the decline in forest management on O&C lands.

Over the past decade, harvests have averaged 149.5 million board feet per year, and were at just 167 million board feet in 2012, according to the BLM. Even that low level is likely to fall off by more than 30% in about a decade, according to the agency’s projections. The status quo, thinning only approach leads to only about 115 million board feet of harvests in about 10 years, unless the agency can move forward with a new strategy for the O&C forests. This bill represents a new strategy that works and can become law.

This strategy takes the most controversial harvests off the table. It ensures that:
● Old growth stands over 120 years old and trees over 150 years old cannot be harvested.

● Timber harvests and thinning projects cannot significantly impact stream
quality, fish, highly erodible land, wetlands, endangered or threatened
species, or tribal cultural sites.

● Spotted owl nest trees are protected and harvests that may impact endangered species require coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.

Moist Forests

● Harvests must retain 30 percent of the original trees in a stand. Trees along streams can count toward this 30 percent, but any old growth trees protected are above and beyond this threshold. The remaining trees are to be no uniformly spaced throughout a stand, ensuring more natural distribution of trees.

● Stands in the moist forests will be harvested when the average age of the
trees in the stand reach 80 to 120 years of age.

● Continues thinning projects that leave more than 50 percent of trees in stands.

Dry Forests

● Resiliency to fire is the management emphasis for dry forest stands.

● Harvesting to reduce the density of trees in dry forests is promoted;
however, one third of all of the dry forests must be selected to remain as
denser landscape scale patches for endangered species.

● Harvesting must ensure the oldest 35 percent of the trees in an area remain after the operation.

● Provides new flexibility for county governments to reduce fire danger within half a mile of homes, and private landowners to within 100 feet of their own homes.

Streamlining Environmental Reviews

This bill would cut environmental and court reviews of proposed timber sales nearly in half, taking commonsense steps to streamline review procedures, while maintaining environmental laws.

While federal Environmental Impact Statements take an average of 3.6 years,
according to one study, this bill would require the BLM to finalize its O&C
environmental impact statements within 18 months after the bill becomes law.

First, it streamlines the timelines for environmental and judicial reviews;

Second, it eliminates the individual environmental impact statements for each timber sale, and replaces them with two large-scale environmental impact statements – one each for dry and moist forests – that examine 10years’ worth of timber sales on O&C lands;

Third, it requires frontloaded coordination between federal agencies during
environmental reviews; and Fourth, it requires upfront studies of areas to prioritize treatments.

● The streamlined EIS procedures continue to allow for judicial review, but
eliminate unnecessary delays by setting strict, but achievable deadlines. For example, the draft Environmental Impact Statements must be released within a year of enactment, and finalized within 18 months of enactment.

● Lawsuits must be filed no later than 30 days after a final decision is made by the BLM. In addition, only those who participated in the BLM comment
process and raised their objections are eligible to file suit. An expedited court procedure requires trials to begin within 180 days, to ensure lawsuits are heard in a timely manner.

● Once the 10year EIS is finalized, the BLM must simply document that a
proposed project meets the criteria analyzed in the EIS, rather than
conducting a project specific environmental review. Projects may only be challenged on the grounds that they failed to conform with the EIS.

● Eliminates the time consuming “survey and manage” requirements of the
Northwest Forest Plan on the forestry emphasis areas of the O&C lands.

● The US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service will conduct a five year check in, to ensure operations and impacts to species follow the original EIS.

● This bill leaves the Endangered Species Act untouched, and the habitat for
the plants and animals that the Endangered Species Act protects are managed
to help try to recover these species.

Protecting Streams, Drinking Water and Fish

The bill creates the first specific legislative protections for aquatic areas and watersheds on O&C lands, by requiring the BLM to protect and restore water quality for drinking water and aquatic species in streams and lakes.

● It protects water quality for all O&C lands. In forestry emphasis areas,
riparian reserves would encompass an area 150 feet from streams containing fish, and 75 feet from other streams. The modified reserves allow for greater timber harvests, while maintaining habitat and water quality protections.

● Within those reserves, thinning is allowed to improve forest and stream
health. Thinning is allowed for trees under 80 years old in moist forests,
and for trees under 150 years in dry forests. An additional buffer of 75
feet on streams without fish can be used for sustainable harvests in stands
less than 80 years of age.

● In conservation emphasis areas, riparian reserves are permanently protected under the same approach currently used under the Northwest
Forest Plan.

● Watershed assessments will be conducted to identify streams most in
need of protection. Riparian reserves can be adjusted based on those
assessments.

● Permanent road construction is prohibited in key watersheds, and the
BLM is directed to generally decrease the quantity of roads on its lands.

● Sets aside $1 million per year for transporting and placing large trees in
streams to improve water quality and fish habitat.

● To speed up restoration accomplishments, the following clearly beneficial
restoration activities are excluded from analysis typically required by
NEPA: Placing trees in streams to benefit fish species, planting of native
trees along streams, replacing culverts that prevent fish from migrating,
and removal of user created roads.

● The removal of excess roads on BLM lands is a priority. A new “Legacy
Roads and Trails” program is created for these lands and is authorized to
spend $5 million annually.

Management in the Conservation Areas

Conservation areas will be managed for general conservation benefits, including old growth protection, watershed health, native wildlife, climate management, recreation, and tourism.

● In the conservation areas, road building with limited exceptions and
mineral development is prohibited. Timber harvests are allowed, but are
limited to those that improve habitat and forest health. This is achieved by
thinning and retaining older and larger trees.

Portions of the conservation areas will be designated for more specific management and additional protections:

● Oregon Treasures: Wild Rogue Wilderness expansion (56,400 acres),
Rogue River Wild and Scenic Rivers expansion (93 miles), Molalla
Recreational River designation (15.1 miles), Table Rock Fork Recreational
River designation (6.2 miles), Chetco Wild and Scenic River update

● Devil’s Staircase Wilderness: 30,540 acres

● Cascade Siskiyou National Monument Expansion: 5,700 acres

● Illinois Valley Salmon and Botanical Area: 16,300 acres

● Recreation and Backcountry Areas: Rogue National Recreation Area
(nearly 95,000 acres); Molalla National Recreation Area (24,000 acres);
Pacific Crest Trail Protection Corridor (8,200 acres); Primitive
Backcountry Areas: Grizzly Peak (3,000 acres), Dakubetede (27,700
acres), Wellington Wildlands (5,700 acres), Mungers Butte (9,800 acres),
Brummitt Fir (1,500 acres), Crabtree Valley (2,000 acres)

● Drinking Water Special Management Units (total acres: 47,000):
McKenzie, Hillsboro, Clackamas, and Springfield Drinking Water Special
Management Units.

● Special Environmental Zones: 95,600 acres of current or proposed
BLM Areas of Critical Environmental Concern

● Wild and Scenic Rivers (total miles: 47): Nestucca River, Walker Creek,
North Fork Silver Creek, Lobster Creek, Jenny Creek, Spring Creek,
Franklin Creek and Wasson Creek

Increasing Revenues for Counties

The revenues generated from the sale of timber from these lands will be shared with the counties and pay for the cost of managing the lands, without increasing the federal deficit.

● Every county is guaranteed at least as much funding as it would have
received under the O&C Act of 1937, if it had elected to receive those funds
in Fiscal Year 2013.

● The BLM will receive 25 percent of revenues – up to $20 million – to fund
management of the O&C lands.

● Each year, $4 million of the revenue generated from timber harvests will go to the U.S. Treasury, to prevent an increase in the federal deficit.

● The remaining revenue shall be paid annually to the O&C counties.

● If there is insufficient revenue to meet the county’s minimum payment,
money will be taken from the U.S. Treasury payment and then the BLM
administrative repayment to cover the balance.

Consolidating the Checkerboard of Land Ownership

The bill provides new ways to consolidate land ownership and reduce the
checkerboard of public and private lands. Within six months of the date of
enactment, BLM will identify lands suitable for sale or exchange with private or state owned lands. BLM is authorized to sell or exchange Federal land in order to consolidate land in an effort to improve management efficiency and productivity or to improve the ecological value of conservation areas.

● BLM will sell a portion of the acres it identifies or has previously identified for disposal and use the revenue from the sales to purchase land near to BLM holdings.

● If land in forest emphasis areas is sold, the land purchased with these funds will be managed as a forest emphasis area. Sales of conservation emphasis area lands shall be used to purchase lands for conservation emphasis.

Additional provisions

● This Act sets aside 50,000 acres for special joint management and research
by the BLM and Oregon State University and other institutions of higher
education. The Secretary will choose lands near Oregon State University
from both the timber emphasis areas and the conservation areas. The lands
will be managed to conduct ecological forestry demonstration projects,
research and monitor suspected impacts, and produce timber. If the land fails to be actively managed, it will revert back to management by the BLM.

● Land is restored to two Oregon tribes: the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua
Tribe of Indians, and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and
nds may not be used for gaming, and commercial forestry activities on these lands must follow applicable federal laws, and there will be no net loss of O&C lands.

● Management restrictions on the Coquille Tribe’s lands are lifted to make their treatment equal to other tribal” (sorry that’s the way the email ended).

Quid Pro Nada: Be Wary of Trading Wilderness for Managed Acres

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olympic plantation

Now some people don’t agree with the concept of Place-Based Bills (or PBB’s as I call them). I am not an ideologue about that. But I do think that if you have one that trades more wilderness for more management, then you should get what you trade. I apologize to those offended by my mixing of Latin and Spanish in the title..

Check out this op-ed that a group of us had in the Oregonian last Sunday.
Here’s the link.

Timber production deserves equal treatment on public lands: Guest opinion
(I didn’t like this title as it sounds like we think harvesting and wilderness have equal value; our point was that if you do a deal, there should be ways to make sure that each side actually gets what’s in the deal. Oh, well. I do appreciate the Oregonian printing it, though!)

By Robert Malmsheimer, Sharon Friedman, Jay O’Laughlin and Paul Adams

As Oregonians consider ways to promote the sustainable use of the O&C lands and other publicly owned forests and provide communities with sources of jobs and income, we ask you to critically consider an important problem and a new idea to address it. Negotiated, place-based bargains, such as Rep. Peter DeFazio’s O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs Act, legislatively designate some lands as wilderness or similar “set-asides” (e.g., old-growth, stream buffers), while requiring timber harvesting on other lands. Although this may seem like a reasonable “trade,” in reality it is not equitable.

The problem is in the legal protections of the bargains themselves. The lands designated by Congress as wilderness and other set-asides will have little or no management, and we have nearly 50 years of judicial decisions interpreting the Wilderness Act of 1964 to safeguard this expectation. However, the same is not true for the agreed-upon timber harvesting. While the language in most of these place-based proposals limits, or makes more difficult, some types of legal challenges, it does not prevent them. Nor does it ensure that judges will enforce the bargain that forest management proponents faithfully negotiated.

Is there a solution? Yes. In order to guarantee that the lands designated for the management and production of forest products are not subject to appeals and litigation, these legislative proposals must include language that explicitly states that actions authorized in these bargains are not subject to judicial review. Such language would prevent litigation.

How would it do so? This concept has a precedent in section 706 of Public Law 107-206, which authorized the Forest Service to respond to a severe beetle outbreak, including requiring timber sales in the Black Hills National Forest, while simultaneously expanding the Forest’s Black Elk Wilderness area by 3,600 acres. This exchange was upheld in Biodiversity Associates v. Cables (2004), thereby safeguarding an equitable bargain in the Black Hills.

Some may criticize this proposal, arguing that using such legislation will lead to “logging without laws.” But that is not so. By requiring the public land managers to comply with all current environmental laws (e.g., National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act), the agency still must undertake relevant environmental analyses and follow all relevant resource protection directives. While the judicial system would not be available to address agency failures, the political system, through Congress and the administration, would do so. More important, such failures are unlikely because the resource professionals who manage our public forests have extensive expertise and experience incorporating environmental protection into land management.

Lacking such a guarantee for timber production, the two sides to a place-based bargain have agreed to inequitable deals. One has guaranteed that some lands will be managed as wilderness and the other has provided no comparable safeguard. There is simply no assurance that the lands designated for forest management will actually produce anything but continued legal conflict; conflict that keeps public land managers from sustainably delivering community, social and economic benefits for Oregonians.

•

Robert Malmsheimer is a professor of forest policy and Law at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, N.Y.

Sharon Friedman retired from the Forest Service as director of planning in the Rocky Mountain Region and currently runs the “A New Century of Forest Planning” blog (forestpolicypub.com).

Jay O’Laughlin is a professor of forestry and policy sciences at the University of Idaho.

Paul Adams is a professor and extension specialist in the OSU College of Forestry.

Planning in HR 1526 – Guest Post by Jon Haber

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This recent article on the ‘Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act’ got me to look at the actual bill.

Neither the Administration nor the previous discussion on this blog really addressed the ‘forest planning’ implications of this bill.

Section 505 is titled ‘Clarification of National Forest Management Act of 1976 Authority,’ and it addresses tree marking. Actually, this bill could exempt the entire tree-growing portion of National Forest System completely from NFMA, except for designated wilderness, national monuments and where there are statutory prohibitions.

In Section 103, the Forest Service is required to identify at least one Forest Reserve Revenue Area on each national forest, and such areas must include at least half of the commercial forest lands (there is no upper limit). This is to be done ‘notwithstanding any other provision of law.’ The acreage may never be reduced. This designation must be completed in 60 days, and there is no requirement for public participation.

These areas must then be managed to achieve an ‘annual volume requirement’ of 50% of their sustained yield, which is to be determined as the ‘maximum annual growth potential of the forest.’ This sustained yield does not reflect the needs of any other resources. In comparison, the ASQ in current plans is based on a long-term sustained-yield capacity that reflects many other resource needs, and very few national forests are harvesting anywhere near their ASQ. The 50% figure seems arbitrary and very likely unobtainable (and/or unsustainable) most places without the kind of impacts that NFMA was intended to mitigate.

The bill specifically exempts management of these areas from the NFMA prohibition against choosing clearcutting primarily for economic reasons. It also states, “The Secretary may modify the standards and guidelines contained in the land and resource management plan for the unit of the National Forest System in which the covered forest reserve project will be carried out as necessary to achieve the requirements of this Act.” The management of potentially the majority of the National Forest System would thus effectively be exempt from the direction in existing land management plans, the requirements of the 2012 planning regulations (including collaboration), and NFMA itself (and presumably the Roadless Area Conservation Rule if it interferes with achieving the volume requirement).

For any lands not designated under Section 103 (and over 200,000 acres), Section 402 requires the Forest Service to establish Community Forest Demonstration Areas if requested by an advisory committee appointed by state governors (with only requirements to represent governmental, commercial and recreational interests). “The administration and management of a community forest demonstration area, including implementing actions, shall not be considered Federal action.” Again, NFMA and forest plans would be irrelevant to the selection and management of these areas.

Section 205 allows a state governor to designate ‘high risk areas.’ “Designation of high-risk areas shall be consistent with standards and guidelines contained in the land and resource management plan or land use plan for the unit of Federal land for which the designation is being made, except that the Secretary concerned may modify such standards and guidelines to correspond with a specific high-risk area designation.” The exception swallows the NFMA requirement for consistency with a land management plan.

In sum, this would return national forest planning and management on probably the majority of national forest lands to dominant timber use for economic gain– which is what triggered the National Forest Management Act in 1976. I can see why this rearview mirror approach can’t be taken very seriously.

Jon retired from the Forest Service at the end of 2012 after 32 years as a forest and regional planner in Regions 6 and 1. His background is in forestry and natural resource management and includes a law degree. The last half of his career focused on rewriting the NFMA planning rule, planning for threatened/endangered/sensitive species, and large landscape conservation planning efforts.

Wyden to tackle forestry issues early in 113th Congress

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This is from E&E news and posted here.

Below is an excerpt:

Wyden to tackle forestry issues early in 113th Congress

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said forestry issues will be among his top priorities when he becomes chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee next Congress, including bills to accelerate restoration logging in Oregon and other parts of the West.

Wyden, who once described the Beaver State as the “Saudi Arabia of biomass,” is seen as more supportive of “place-based” forestry bills than current committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who is retiring at the end of this month after 30 years in the Senate.

Wyden said he will push hard for bills such as his S. 220, which would promote active management on 8.3 million acres of forests east of the Cascades, and that he would consider similar bills such as a proposal by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to accelerate forest restoration and designate wilderness in western Montana.

Wyden said he discussed forestry issues with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the committee’s ranking member, during a recent trip to Alaska, which, like Oregon, saw timber harvests plummet over the past decades as a result of protections for old-growth trees and the species they support.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities to find common ground on forestry,” Wyden said in a brief interview last week. “I think there is a chance to possibly build a coalition between these hard-hit rural communities that are worried about becoming ghost towns and get them off what I really call their own version of a fiscal cliff.”

As chairman, Wyden will have a full slate of forestry issues to tackle, including the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools program, which provides financial aid for timber-dependent counties, a continuing bark-beetle epidemic and increasingly severe wildfires as a result of dry, overstocked forests.

Trust-y Federal Land Management- O&C Version

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When I started reading the news stories about this, I felt like I’d come into the middle of a novel.
First, I’d like to start with some thinking by Bob Malmsheimer of SUNY ESF, who said something along the lines of “we can never have a meaningful discussion about “trust management” until we clarify exactly what we mean. The term is used in so many different ways.” I think he raises an excellent point, so here on this blog we will try to be clear about these concepts and language.

This piece will be about O&C efforts, and, as we will see “trusts” are only one of the ideas involved once we look more closely.

So with the help of Steve Wilent, I managed to find enough pieces of the O&C puzzle so that perhaps we can begin to understand what’s going on. Since it seems fairly complicated, we will probably have a number of posts. Clearly, looking through the news “clippings,” there has been a great deal going on so I’m hoping readers from Oregon will help us catch up.

The most recent piece of news was Enviro Groups Letter to Wyden Dec. 2012-2 letter of some environmental groups to Senator Wyden.

That letter referred to something called ““Principles for an O&C Solution: A Roadmap for Federal Legislation to Navigate both the House and Senate”.

So I went looking for them, and the only place I could locate them was on Andy Kerr’s website here. Obviously I can’t vouch for their accuracy, but thankfully he posted the Governor’s and the Senator’s principles in one place. Now for those of you who aren’t following this, Andy Kerr is the same person who “bolted” from the Governor’s county payments panel based on clearcutting as in this news story. There appears to be another proposal for the O&C lands from environmental groups based on this piece by Jim Petersen in Evergreen, but I couldn’t find that either. So here is what Andy Kerr posted:

The Governor’s O&C Principles and the Senator’s O&C Principles

Though the attention for the present is on Governor John Kitzhaber’s attempt to resolve the O&C lands management crisis by convening a group of stakeholders from the O&C counties, timber industry and conservation community (as many of you know, I am of the view that the Governor’s choices to represent the conservation community are not representative of the conservation community as a whole), given that controversy involves federal public forestlands, it will be the forthcoming effort led by Senator Ron Wyden that will be controlling on the issue.

Here are the Governor’s O&C Principles:

• Stable County Funding – Recognize O&C Act’s unique community stability mandate and provide adequate and stable county revenues sufficient to meet needs for basic public services.
• Stable Timber Supply – Provide adequate and stable timber supply that will provide for employment opportunities, forest products and renewable energy.
• Protect Unique Places – Permanently protect ecologically unique places.
• Durable & Adaptive Conservation Standards – Maintain Northwest Forest Plan forest management standards – Late Successional/Old Growth Reserves & Aquatic Conservation Strategy – in an adaptive manner where and when required to comply with environmental laws.
• Conservation Opportunities – Promote conservation advances on private “checkerboard” lands through voluntary, non-regulatory incentives – financial, technical, regulatory relief, etc.
• Federal Budget Neutral – Recognize that O&C solution will need to be budget neutral or positive at the Federal level.
·• Achieve Certainty – Develop a policy framework that will provide for certainty in achieving all of these principles.

Here are the Senator’s O&C Principles:

Principles for an O&C Solution

A Roadmap for Federal Legislation to Navigate Both the House and the Senate

1. STABLE FUNDING FOR COUNTIES: Oregon rural counties must be assured a stable level of funding from the Federal government due to the large extend of public lands they contain. Those funds can come through public lands receipts of through another mechanism created by this, or other, legislation. In the current fiscal climate that funding will not be able to replace historical levels of receipts, nor will timber receipts be able to fully provide for all funding needs. Recognizing that Oregon’s rural communities are suffering with high unemployment and unique economic challenges, they also need to do their part in reducing disparities in tax rates and developing a reasonable level of revenue from local activities. However, the Federal government must do its share to compensate counties for the impact of federal lands and the policies governing those lands.

2. SUSTAINABILITY: Timber harvest must be economically and environmentally sustainable. Timber harvests must produce more commercial product from O&C lands than is currently being produced and harvest should be guided by a scientifically-based, sustainable management regime that will meet or exceed the stated goals of the relevant federal and state environmental laws. Opportunities for active and adaptive management could included a variety of examples, such as the ecological forestry principles promoted by Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin, as well as the pilot projects being currently promoted by various collaborative groups in Southern Oregon.

3. CONSERVATION: In addition to increasing timber harvesting, this legislation must result in wilderness and other permanently conserved lands proportional to the lands designated for harvest. These should include protection of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, including large blocks of Bureau of Land Management lands and old-growth forests.

4. MANAGING LANDS MORE EFFICIENTLY: The legislation should seek opportunities to consolidate O&C and non-O&C lands. This will include addressing the checkerboard pattern of the O&C ownership and exchanging lands according to their best use whenever possible. It must develop an approach to rationalize land management between the O&C lands and adjoining private and public lands, both for timber and conservation values. The legislation should consider setting in motion a process to seek greater consolidation and management efficiencies on federal lands going forward.

Any consolidation or exchange should take into account concerns of neighboring private landowners, including access, rights of way and wildfire. The discussion should also address opportunities to finally honor unrealized treaty obligations to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, understanding that some lands considered for their reservations may not be O&C lands. Both tribes have treaties pre-dating the O&C Lands Act.

5. LEGAL REQUIREMENT FOR TIMBER MANAGEMENT: Management of these lands must comply with all applicable Federal laws. Development of the plan should include open discussions on how to better implement the National Environmental Policy Act. There should be particular focus on streamlining the objection processes (for example, as included in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and Senator Wyden’s Eastside Forestry legislation), and categorical exclusions for timber projects and other defined situations.

6. CHANGING RESPONSIBILITIES FOR LAND MANAGEMENT: Due consideration should be given to proposals for non-Federal entities managing lands designated for conservation or active management as long as their is broad support for the proposal among stakeholders. Negotiations must take into account the failures of other private management efforts and the general opposition to private management of federal lands in Congress.

7. SAFEGUARDING OLD GROWTH: Oregon’s old growth must be protected. Old growth should generally be defined as 120 years of age or older, with exceptions made for significant ecological reasons.

O&C Trust Draft the draft bill that perhaps the environmental groups were responding to…

This is the beginning of the dialogue, and I am trying to catch up. Others can add links to documents and their opinions..

Parts of The Corporate Recreation Industry vs. Utah Elected Officials

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adv_OIAPAC_logo

We have had much discussion about “corporations” when it comes to oil and gas and timber. The situation with the Outdoor Industry Association is an another industry association lobbying, and with its own PAC. They seem to be lobbying, in this case, to get rid of the messy and seemingly interminable place-by-place public processes in land management planning for public lands. It seems to this observer that if the idea of place-based bills in Congress is bad, then the idea of unilateral “monumenting” is possibly just as or more bad. Seems to me like you should be consistent about which public process you prefer.

Here is a link to a news article.
Here is a link to the Blue Ribbon Coalition side of the story. and an excerpt below. The whole section on this by BRC is worth reading to those interested in both sides of the story. Thanks to BRC for doing a quality job on explaining their point of view.

Thanks to them for the SUWA link which says..

To protect these scenic landscapes, in March of 2011 SUWA –along with members of the Greater Canyonlands Coalition including Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and Coloradans for Utah Wilderness — made a formal request to the Secretary of the Interior requesting that Secretary Salazar bar off-road vehicle (“ORV”) use on 1,050 miles of ORV route in sensitive habitat, streams, wetlands, riparian areas, archaeological sites and other vulnerable areas until it can conduct further studies on the impacts of the activity and determine whether it is, in fact, a sustainable use. The petition would leave open 1,400 miles of ORV route within the petition area, and about 13,000 miles of routes open in the four BLM field offices surrounding Greater Canyonlands.

Unfortunately, in August 2011 the Obama administration refused to host a public discussion on protecting the Greater Canyonlands region. Even worse, it claims the management plans written by the Bush administration already provide adequate protection. These are the same Bush plans that designated more than 3,000 miles of off-road vehicle trails in proposed redrock wilderness.

It seems to me that “designating trails” is different from “off trail abuse.> This could lead to fruitful dialogue, I bet, between SUWA or OIA and BRC. Now I am not a particular aficionado of OHVs myself, but it seems to be you could get a lot more off trail abuse stopped if you collaborated with folks out there, instead of trying to kick them out. But maybe that’s me, because I figure most people are reasonable. And we want our kids in the woods, and family recreation, and I see a lot of that happening with OHV’s.

Again, I wonder what wonderful things we all could do for outdoor recreation if groups weren’t going around spending energies stabbing other recreationists in the back? If a ranger can do it on a district (as described here), why can’t someone do it at the national level?

A spokesperson for Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said the state does not want to see a reprise of the 1996 designation of a 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by President Clinton. Said Ally Isom, deputy chief of staff and spokesperson for Herbert, in a statement provided to PLN, “No one has formally approached the Governor or his office about a proposed monument in Utah. We certainly hope we don’t have another Bill Clinton approach to creating a monument. Canyonlands National Park was established by statute and any expansion ought to be rightly created by statute involving all interested parties, including Utah stakeholders.”

Utah’s Congressional Delegation was also kept in the dark regarding OIA’s proposal. They learned about it only after local media called requesting comments on OIA’s letter.

Utah’s Senator’s Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, joined with Utah’s Congressmen Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz in a letter urging President Obama not to establish a new National Monument.
“We are opposed to efforts to create national monuments within the state of Utah by presidential decree. Federal land-use decisions must be cultivated in a collaborative process that balances various stakeholder uses and priorities.”…. “We are opposed to this petition because it flies in the face of the collaborative process outlined above. Federal land-use designations affect a wide-range of stakeholders and each group should have a seat at the table.” … “Again, we strongly urge the rejection of the most recent — and all future — petitions for national monument designations by presidential decree.”

More on this tomorrow.