Place-Based Bills & Agreements

Place-based Bills & Agreements: Defining Characteristic #2: Landscape-Scale Restoration and Its Relationship to Rural Communities

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By Martin Nie, University of Montana

(This is another post that tries to make some sense of the following place-based forest bills and agreements)

Nearly every place-based bill and initiative examined thus far focuses on the need for “landscape-scale” restoration.  From a collaboration standpoint, restoration is a common zone of agreement among several of these groups.  The scale is sometimes defined by reference to (sub)watersheds or acreage (e.g., 25,000 to 50,000 acres) for which restoration projects should be planned and implemented. 

Though the term “landscape-scale” is now fashionable, it is often used with some imprecision. (Just how, for example, does this differ from yesterday’s focus on ecosystem management?).  These cases give the term additional meaning, by occasionally making reference to other ownerships and by focusing on restoration goals that are transboundary in nature (e.g., water flow, wildlife, natural disturbances, etc.). 

The place-based bills and initiatives also adopt a more ecologically-centered definition of restoration than has sometimes been used by lawmakers and the agency in the past.  To be sure, all identify a clear need to mechanically treat some forests in order to reduce risks associated with uncharacteristic wildfire effects.  But these initiatives go beyond this limited view and focus on additional restoration needs, such as habitat improvement, water quality, management of exotics, and road decommissioning. 

Sideboards for restoration are also provided in most of these initiatives.  This most often takes the form of prohibitions on new road building and road density standards.  As discussed in an earlier post, these groups have also worked hard to identify areas in which restoration projects should be prioritized and areas that should be more or less left alone in some protected (roadless) status. 

Many of these initiatives also adopt a landscape-level view of restoration because of economics and agency budgets.  Almost all make linkages between restoration and rural economies.  They operate on the principal that  a viable wood products industry is necessary for the attainment and financing of various restoration goals.  This explains why most of them rely so heavily upon stewardship contracting authority.  Some are also premised on the economic use of restoration byproducts.  Take, for example, the interest in biomass and small wood utilization: in some cases “landscape-scale” is defined by accessibility to wood products infrastructure that is at an appropriate scale to use woody biomass. 

So What?

On a more general level, we should recognize that the term “restoration” is obviously open to multiple political interpretations.  And that is certainly one reason why it is so popular.  As a policy professor, my level of suspicion raises in proportion to the amount of agreement about something.  That skepticism is warranted in cases where the agreement centers on rather ill-defined, malleable concepts like “restoration,” “forest health,” “collaboration,” “resilience,” etc.  Like Congress, interest groups and the agency compromise and/or postpone future conflict by using vagueness—the ultimate political lubricant. 

So what I find potentially useful about all these place-based bills and agreements is how they have negotiated the term—they have moved from the abstract and malleable to the concrete and more specific.

Start with the Human Scale- Elinor Ostrom

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Guest Post by Lynn Jungwirth

I asked Fran Korten, who interviewed Elinor Ostrom (2009 Nobel Prize winner in economics) for “Yes Magazine”, about
the difficulties with “large landscape level planning”. This answer came
back:

“Yes, there’s a role for large landscape level planning, but when you get
down to implementation, it’s got to be at smaller levels. As Lin puts it,
you’ve got to have decision making and implementation in nested tiers that
start at the human-scale level and stack up to the larger resource.”

Wow! “Starting at the human-scale level and stack up to the larger
resource.” We do it exactly opposite. Start with the National Level, then
the Forest Level, and then try to make the local level fit in with those
goals and constraints. Maybe we should invite Elinor Ostrom and her team to
work with this planning rule.

Excerpt from the “Yes” interview. Here’s the link.

Elinor Ostrom:
At the Workshop we’ve done experiments where we create an artificial form of
common property-such as an imaginary fishery or pasture, and we bring people
into a lab and have them make decisions about that property. When we don’t
allow any communication among the players, then they overharvest. But when
people can communicate, particularly on a face-to-face basis, and say,
“Well, gee, how about if we do this? How about we do that?” Then they can
come to an agreement.

Fran: But what about the “free-rider” problem-where some people abide by the
rules and some people don’t? Won’t the whole thing fall apart?

Elinor: Well if the people don’t communicate and get some shared norms and
rules, that’s right, you’ll have that problem. But if they get together and
say, “Hey folks, this is a project that we’re all going to have to
contribute to. Now, let’s figure it out,” they can make it work. For
example, if it’s a community garden, they might say, “Do we agree every
Saturday morning we’re all going to go down to the community garden, and
we’re going to take roll and we’re going to put the roll up on a bulletin
board?” A lot of communities have figured out subtle ways of making everyone
contribute, because if they don’t, those people are noticeable.

Place-based Bills & Agreements: Defining Characteristic #1: The Search for More Certainty in Forest Management

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By Martin Nie, University of Montana

A defining characteristic of these initiatives is their shared goal of securing greater certainty and predictability in national forest management.  This manifests itself in numerous ways. 

First, it explains why some groups have chosen to pursue national forest-specific legislation, and in other cases, why some groups have formalized their relationships with the USFS through MOUs and decision making protocols. 

Second, most initiatives I reviewed are seeking more permanent types of land designations than that provided by forest planning processes or roadless rules that are viewed as being more tenuous.  Consider the following for example:

  • Senator Tester’s S. 1470, the Forest Jobs & Recreation Act (FJRA):  It seeks not only to designate wilderness and special management areas, but to also codify defined “stewardship areas” where timber harvesting and restoration goals are given priority.  (These stewardship areas are defined by making reference to the relevant Forest Plans and those areas designated as suitable for timber production).  Tester’s Bill also provides greater certainty regarding management of ORVs.  In some places, access is permanently restricted, and in others, long-term access is guaranteed. 

 

  • The proposed Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act:  It would designate more than 300,000 acres as the “Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Management Area” with a set of customized purposes and restrictions.  Chief among these are restrictions placed on motorized usage, as the proposed bill would codify decisions made in the area’s travel plan. 

 

  • The Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition Blueprint:  It divides the Colville National Forest into three management zones:  responsible management areas, restoration areas, and wilderness areas. 

 

Third, these groups hope to take some intractable issues off the table with some finality.  Finding permanent protections for inventoried roadless areas is the most common example.  But in some cases, this applies to old growth as well.  Senator Wyden’s Bill (S. 2895) is most direct in this regard, as it prohibits the cutting of live trees exceeding 21 inches in diameter (with some exceptions).  Old growth is also addressed in the Colville and Fremont-Winema MOUs, as both seek to protect and restore old forests.  And in Arizona, debate over a diameter cap is front-and-center in the Four Forests Restoration Initiative. 

Fourth, several of these initiatives are seeking ways to generate a more certain and predictable flow of timber. 

  • The most controversial example is provided by Senator Tester’s FJRA.  The bill mandates that 70,000 acres on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and 30,000 acres on the Kootenai are to be “mechanically treated” by the USFS over the next ten years. 

 

  • Senator Wyden’s Eastside Oregon Bill also seeks “to create an immediate, predictable, and increased timber flow to support locally based restoration economies.”  To kick-start this goal, Wyden’s bill requires interim mechanical treatments that produce an average of 100,000 acres a year for three years.  Wyden’s bill is different than Tester’s in that mechanical treatments are to “emphasize saw timber as a byproduct.”

 

  • The two MOUs also share the goal of creating more certainty for the timber industry, but they go about things a bit differently.  On the Colville, for example, the Coalition’s designation of a responsible management area, along with its MOU, provides a more predictable land base from which timber may be harvested.  The Lakeview Federal Sustained Yield Unit also “promote[s] the stability of forest industries, of employment, of communities, and of taxable forest wealth, through continuous supplies of timber.”  The Unit does so through its MOU with the USFS, as it commits the Fremont-Winema “to the extent permitted by and consistent with all applicable laws and land use plans, offer a minimum of 3,000 treatment acres per year” outside the Stewardship Unit, and a minimum of 3,000 acres per year within it. 

 

Securing a more predictable flow of timber is often explained by making linkages between local economies/sawmills and forest restoration goals.  Several of these initiatives define the problem similarly:  landscape-level forest restoration requires the harvesting of small diameter trees, and that means the necessity of some sustainably-scaled, locally-rooted forest products industry.  And for that industry to survive, or to make the requisite capital investments (in say, small diameter processing equipment), it needs greater assurances about timber supply. 

Also relevant to this theme is the widespread interest in stewardship contracting.  In most of the initiatives I examined, stewardship contracting is a central part of restoration strategies.  The tool is seen by some people as a means to secure more predictable dollars for restoration work, money that stays on a particular national forest and is not sent back to Washington, D.C., and thus not subject to the highly uncertain congressional appropriations process.  (Stewardship contracting will be discussed again in the context of restoration and funding).

Next Post:  What to make of this search for certainty and stability? What does it have to do with forest planning?

Place-Based Forest Bills & Agreements

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Senator Wyden of Oregon

This is my introductory post related to an important emerging trend: the increasing interest in “place-based” (national forest-specific) legislation and the use of formalized agreements/MOUs between the USFS and various collaborative groups.  We’ve had some discussion of Senator Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act already (here’s my perspective on it).  Another controversial bill is Senator Wyden’s S. 2895, the Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection, and Jobs Act of 2009. 

While these bills receive national attention, there are place-based initiatives happening on other national forests as well, including the Lewis and Clark, Colville, Clearwater and Nez Perce, Fremont-Winema, Tongass, and federal forests in Arizona, among others.  Each initiative is different in significant ways.  But all are searching for more durable, bottom-up, and pro-active solutions to national forest management.  Some negotiations, like that on Idaho’s Clearwater and Nez Perce, may result in proposed legislation.  But others, including arrangements on the Colville and Fremont-Winema, aren’t based on forest specific laws but instead operate through formalized agreements and protocols with the USFS.

Here is a list of such initiatives that I’ve been looking at lately:

Bills and Legislation
S. 1470 Forest Jobs & Recreation Act (Senator Tester/Montana Bill)
S. 2895 Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection, and Jobs Act of 2009 (Senator Wyden Bill)
Pub. L. No. 111-11, Forest Landscape Restoration Act
Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act (unsponsored proposal) (Lewis & Clark National Forest, Montana)
Agreements
Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition Blueprint (Colville National Forest)
Lakeview Stewardship Group (Fremont-Winema National Forest, Oregon)
Misc/In Development
Clearwater Basin Collaborative (Clearwater and Nez Perce National Forests, Idaho)
Others at various stages of development (e.g., Arizona’s Four Forests Restoration Initiative, Tongass Futures Roundtable, etc.)

I’ve chosen this sample because it includes two controversial bills and two well-established MOUs that share some similar goals and purposes, but go about things differently.  I’ve also included the proposed Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act because it provides a specific proposal focused on travel management and other resource management issues, like weeds.  My analysis also includes the Forest Landscape Restoration Act (Pub. L. No. 111-11).  I included this Act because it shares some similar goals and purposes as found in the aforementioned bills and MOUs, and because some initiatives hope to use funds already authorized in the law.   Also included in parts of the analysis are some proposals that are still in the drafting stage.  In these cases, no final agreements have been made, but in some situations there are preliminary areas of agreement that are of relevance.  This list is not exhaustive, and there are others I hope to learn from as well, like the restoration efforts in Alabama, the Four Forests Restoration Initiative in Arizona, and the tumultuous life of the Tongass Futures Roundtable. 

What I hope to do in this series of posts is to make some initial observations that are of general relevance to national forest management, and in some cases of particular relevance to the new forest planning rule.   I believe these cases offer a lot of lessons, from the bottom-up.  I also hope that our sophisticated cast of contributors and readers can help raise questions, and in so doing help sharpen my analysis of this issue. 

Martin Nie