Planning Rule Development Process

How to do Assessments Under the Proposed Forest Service Planning Rule – Part 1

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Lynx and coyote tracks, Superior National Forest, Minnesota, photo by Larry Weber

An assessment is the gathering and integrating of information relevant to the planning area from many sources and the analysis of that information to identify a need to change a plan or to inform how a new plan should be proposed. – section 219.5(a)(1) of the proposed Forest Service planning rule

It is a synthesis of information in support of land management planning to determine whether a change to the plan is needed.  Assessments are not decisionmaking documents but provide current information on select issue. – section 219.19 of the proposed Forest Service planning rule

 

This is the first of a series of posts about possible approaches to preparing an assessment for a National Forest/Grassland Plan revision under the proposed Forest Service planning rule.  (It is based on some informal conversations that Peter Williams and I have had with folks inside and outside the Forest Service, but nothing here reflects official Forest Service policy or the deliberations of the team working on the planning rule.)

The proposed rule expects a process that integrates both science and collaboration: “the objective of this part is to guide the collaborative and science-based development, amendment, and revision of land management plans.” (219.1(c)).  Under the rule, an assessment must be collaborative and science-based, just as the overall plan revision process, because it brings together many sources of information, including social, economic, and ecological, whether qualitative or quantitative.  Moreover, the subsequent process must rely on information from an assessment if the process is to be collaborative and science-based.

Although one immediate purpose of an assessment is to identify whether a need for change exists, the second, equally important purpose of an assessment is to inform design of the subsequent forest planning process that will propose specific changes to the plan if a determination is made that a need for change does exist.

Under this definition, an assessment is both a product and a process. 

The product is a report similar to an “Analysis of the Management Situation” or other scoping documents under the 1982 planning rule.   It documents “existing and potential future conditions and stressors” that subsequently will be the foundation for the revision’s Environmental Impact Statement.  It describes the Forest in the context of the broader ecosystem, and what’s going on in the States and counties within and surrounding the Forest.

The process involves convening multiple parties at multiple scales to determine if the current Forest Plan is working by answering a set of assessment questions derived from the rule. 

This rather long list of questions has the potential to be quite lengthy, so they need to first be screened to determine if they are relevant to the particular forest.  Screening questions would include:

Assessment Goal

Coarse Screening Question

Need for change in plan components or monitoring program

Is the information needed to inform and develop plan components (i.e., Is this a Forest Plan issue, not a program planning issue or a project issue)?  219.6(b)(1)
Is the resource present?  219.7(b)(2)(ii)
Is the resource important?  219.7(b)(2)(ii)
Is addressing the resource within the authority of the Forest Service?  219.8, 219.9, 219.10, 219.11
Is addressing the resource within the capability of the plan area?  219.8, 219.9, 219.10, 219.11
Is addressing the resource within the fiscal capability of the unit?  219.10
Is there an emerging public issue that needs be addressed?  219.6

Design of process for revising a plan or monitoring program

Is the information needed to understand the discrete roles, jurisdictions, responsibilities, and skills of interested and affected parties?  219.4(a)
Is the information needed to understand the expectations regarding the accessibility of the process, opportunities, and information?  219.4(a)
Is the information needed to determine the scope, methods, forum, and timing of public participation opportunities?  219.4(a)(1)
Is the information needed to develop required plan components (219.6(b)(1)), including information needed to inform design of the public notification and participation process?  219.7(c)(1)

In answering the questions, technical information is essential, but an assessment under the rule should not merely be a technical process – it is fundamentally participatory, drawing on information and knowledge from multiple sources and multiple participants.  During an assessment, the most accurate, reliable, and relevant scientific information is synthesized from governmental and non-governmental sources. But the process is also about clarifying values, because an important step is to identify why a particular National Forest/Grassland is important to the participants.  One reason for clarifying values is that the knowledge being sought includes how a new plan should be proposed.  That is a process-oriented goal.  To meet such a goal in a way that is appropriate for the local situation, the assessment must seek to understand procedural preferences—values—of stakeholders, including but not limited to those of Forest Service personnel. The second specific assessment purpose is worth highlighting again: the goal of an assessment under the proposed planning rule is to gather and integrate information that informs design of a participatory and collaborative process should one be needed to change the plan.

Part 2 will describe how an assessment might be conducted.

Three Pathways to Adaptive Governance

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Adaptive governance—an adaptive management approach to public lands management—is well underway, and will replace planning, the Forest Service’s chosen management strategy for the 20th century. This may be seen as a bold assertion. But the ideas and actions embedded in adaptive governance have been emerging for quite some time as more and more people realize that 20th century notions cannot guide the Forest Service or any other government agency into the 21st century. Adaptive Governance framing is very different from scientific management/planning framing.

Gifford Pinchot’s “planned forests” guided Forest Service thought, policy, and action for the 20th century. (See, e.g.: here, here (pdf)). It was a model where humans sought to recreate and control Nature’s forests for utilitarian purposes. This model no longer serves. For the 21st century, we are better served with Aldo Leopold’s notion that humans humbly serve as plain members of a broader ecological community, and are not masters of the community. Still, humans must derive sustenance from the land and also re-create the human spirit via interrelationship with the land. To facilitate this transformation, a broad educational campaign in ecological literacy is needed. Part of that educational process can be effected via deliberative democracy in development of adaptive management strategies and actions, with its emphasis on learning not only to incrementally design and implement ever-better management actions, but also to design and implement ever-better management and science theory.

My assertion that adaptive governance is well underway stems from many conversations with planners, NEPA coordinators, and planning directors. It also stems from extensive reading in adaptive governance. [See, e.g. Adaptive Governance: Integrating Science, Policy, Decision Making (Brunner et al, 2005), Finding Common Ground: Governance and Natural Resources in the American West (Brunner et al, 2002), The Politics of Ecosystem Management (Cortner and Moote, 1999)]

At this time when we are discussing the recent Draft NFMA rule, I see three paths forward for the Forest Service: Leave the NFMA rule anchored in by-gone-era planning, while continuing to move toward adaptive governance in all other aspects of forest service thought/action. Develop a very simple NFMA rule that frees the Forest Service of much of the baggage of past NFMA rules, thereby allowing the agency to move forward into the adaptive governance era. Embrace adaptive governance in the NFMA rule.

If as expected the Forest Service chooses to embrace a slightly tweaked Final NFMA rule, which it now calls a “planning rule,” the major problem is that it will further erode trust—a much-discussed casualty of the highly controlled central planning methodology with its “jack in the box” public involvement strategies. [Yes, I’m aware that the Draft rule champions collaborative engagement, but we all know that the Forest Service has little intention to alter its current behavior of giving little more than lip-service to collaboration in forest planning, let alone in higher policy arenas. Besides, if as I’ve argued forest-level planning has little to offer re: adaptive governance, even extensive well-intentioned collaboration in that arena will yield little more than frustration and discontent.]

If the Forest Service chooses to develop a very simple NFMA rule, public interest groups may go along, recognizing that the US Congress is not likely to repeal, amend, or revise RPA/NFMA anytime soon, and that the Forest Service is already engaging stakeholders in adaptive governance discussions/policy actions. On the other hand public interest groups may not go along, if only beause the wicked problems surrounding “species viability” will not be quickly tamed. If the species viability questions can be addressed in (or around) a “simple rule,” public interest groups may move their attention to other arenas. There is a long-standing tradition in American government of leaving laws on the books long after enforcement of these laws makes sense. Think about how long city governments kept laws like “a hitching post will be provided every X feet along Main Street” on their books.

Finally, if the Forest Service chooses to embed adaptive governance in the NFMA rule, it can serve at once as a wake-up call to the Congress to revise RPA/NFMA and simultaneously relieve forest-level burdens now imposed by an anachronistic planning rule—currently the 1982 planning rule. It can also serve as a means to rebuild trust!

I’m betting on a simple tweak of the Draft rule, but hoping for one of the other two paths.

It’s Complicated: Forest Management’s Wicked Problems

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Most people view the problems of forest management from the narrow perspective of their own interests. They understand that there are “many great interests on the National Forests which sometimes conflict a little,” as Gifford Pinchot described the situation a century ago. While we must honor specific interests, the Forest Service’s charge under Organic Act of 1897 stewardship framing, then broadened and altered by subsequent law is more complex. It is never as easy as getting folks together to sit across a table and working out a “forest plan.”

The Forest Service came into being at the end of a very rapacious period in American history. Hence the emphasis on “reserves” in the Organic Act , and later in the Weeks Act of 1911. The public lands had been attacked by many as the so-called settlement of the American West proceeded after the Civil War. It was perceived and used as a “commons” and plundered and burned in too many places. That caused the public outrage that led to the forest reserves.

After successfully bringing the reserves into the national forest system, Gifford Pinchot wanted to regulate all forest practices in the US. Pinchot could not achieve his dream, and the private lands were over-cut for a long time. Even Weyerhauser, where I worked for a summer in the late 1970s—and deemed the “Best of the SOBs” by Forbes magazine, knew but were reluctant to admit in public that their “fee lands” were being cut faster than their “High Yield Forestry” tree farms could replace the volume being cut and milled during that late period of the US housing boom. There would be a “gap.” And sure enough, just as soon as their and other private land owners “gaps” appeared the pressure mounted to cut the national forests. And cut they did, until the environmentalists, working public attitudes/pressures/law shut it down, amid great angst for locals particularly in the Northwest.

As the timber wars raged, more people with new-found affluence were using the national forests and more conflicts emerged between recreationists and cattle and sheep grazers on the national forests. And there were two emergent back-country recreationist movements that were destined to clash one with another: the “primitive back-packers” and the “ATV/OHV users”. In addition, primitive canoe, kayak, float boat enthusiasts were clashing ever-more with commercial outfitters and motorboat enthusiasts, not to mention personal watercraft. And then there were Wilderness advocates clashing against motorheads of all ilks. The wars were on.

Amid this upwelling of controversy, the US Congress penned the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974. But before the ink dried on that law, timber cutting on the national forests, clearcutting to be precise slammed to an immediate legal halt via a lawsuit on the Izaak Walton League. Then under a panic to reopen clearcutting on the national forests, the National Forest Management Act of 1976 was born, and so was forest-level planning. But there was little in either the RPA nor its amendment the NFMA that was destined to settle the controversies. The controversies were the stuff of wicked problems in public forests as noted first by Allen and Gould in 1986.

So here we are more than 30 years after NFMA, with the same controversies raging, overlaid by more people wanting more (and different) things from the national forests, more people living much closer to the national forests, global climate change controversy, species loss controversies that stem from more people (and roads/dams/power lines/energy corridors/etc.) across the landscape and from more stress on both “sources” (resources) and “sinks” (particularly air and water sheds where pollution is dumped)added in, etc..

And all the while the Forest Service continues to pretend that forest planning, pretty much as designed in the late 1970s, but having dropped economic rationality in favor of ecological rationality, will somehow save the day. Or at least that’s how I read the Draft Planning Rule (pdf)

It is my feeling that the only path forward that will afford any chance to allow forest users to sit across tables and talk seriously about prudent use of individual forests, watersheds, or mountain ranges, is for their to be some means to continue to discuss, debate, and develop policy for “broader scale” issues that will set boundaries on discussions of use and conservation at “local scales,” including but not limited to the national forest-scale.

That is why I continually suggest that an Adaptive Governance approach be developed in the NFMA rule. It could as well be developed apart from the NFMA rulemaking process. But until and unless it is developed, there is little or no chance that national interest groups will allow for the type across-the-table “use discussions” that more local interest groups advocate. This conclusion is not mine alone. Consider this from 1999, subtitled Making Sense of Wicked Problems:

What is the answer then, to these complex (wicked) problems? How do we organize ourselves to deal with diverse values and expectations about sustainable forest management? Shannon (1992) asserted that the answer lies in the notion of informed governance. That is, we need places where people can learn, question, debate, and come to an informed judgment of what choices are best (FEMAT 1993). In Coming to Public Judgment , Yankelovich (1991) determined that the most critical barrier to making effective and informed choices in a complex world is the lack of forums in which the process of “working through” value differences and preferences can occur. There is growing support among natural resource professionals that a public dialogue must be an integral part of achieving social and political acceptance of forest practices (e.g., Bengston 1994, Clark and Stankey 1991, Shepard 1992). Regardless of value differences, if people are to come to an understanding of, if not agreement on, the problems and choices that confront public lands management, it is likely to be in public forums where open and honest discussion can occur. Unfortunately, from their research on adaptive approaches to forest management, Stankey and Shindler (1997) conclude that such forums are most notable by their scarcity. (emphasis added)

Anybody want to explain to me where I (we) have got it wrong?
[Note this post was precipitated by this comment. Thanks Brian]

The Art and Promise of Adaptive Governance

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Adaptive Governance is art and science, blended with management and politics. It is art since political decision-making is an art. One face of adaptive governance is a dance wherein public land managers engage with particularly ecological and social scientists in learning from experience about transformations in ecosystems and institutions. The dance is broadened further, since both managers and scientists dance with the public, both as interested individuals and communities of interest alongside communities of place.

The promise of adaptive governance for the US Forest Service and other public lands agencies is that it might heal the wounds from many of the forest and rangeland wars that have only festered during thirty years of failed rational planning games. The promise too is that if properly framed and practiced, adaptive governance could free up talent at the national forest level to do the many worthwhile jobs that need attending to at that level, like road, trail, and campground and other recreation-related maintenance, like permit administration, and program and project management (fire, timber, recreation, minerals, grazing, etc.), like attending to trespass and encroachment problems, fragmentation of land ownership patterns/problems, and so on. Forest-level people would not have to attend to many tasks now burdening them under the current “planning” frame—framed as rational planning with public input.

One problem I’ve been harping about for years is that “wicked problems” can not be tamed via rational planning. They have to be attended to through the art of political decision-making. Take a look at the Fishlake National Forest in central Utah, for example. It is widely known for its ATV experiences, jamborees, etc. It is also a relatively easily-accessible place for big game hunting, via various sorts of Off Highway Vehicles. [In younger years I used to wander the roads there, and wander off the roads, looking for big mule deer.] The decisions, or political/social happenstance, that took the Fishlake in this direction, are the stuff of politics, not science.

Some of the tasks that now appear to be the responsibility of forest-level managers and practitioners would be handled closer to the center or the Forest Service (and at the center, the USFS Washington Office). These are the tasks of landscape and broader-scaled assessments, monitoring efforts, and related problem staging/resolution/learning as adaptive management policy-setting. In addition, the center of the organization would be held accountable to steer and monitor deeper “double-loop” learning that comes from thoughtful examination, reflection upon, and learning from “Transformations in Human and Natural systems,” the subtitle of Lance Gunderson and CS Holling’s Panarchy. Finally the center of the Forest Service would be the keeper of the Vision/Mission of the agency, reconciled appropriately with the Congress and the Administration. [Note: Mission/vision stuff should not be framed as “NFMA planning,” but still might be part of broader strategy setting and contained-in-part by a FS Strategic Plan.]

Critiquing Adaptive Governance
I have spent the last week or two trying to better understand applied adaptive governance, to see whether the time to try it formally on American public lands is at hand. I ran across several interesting investigations [which I’ll not link to today, but may detail further later], looking into the art and practice of adaptive governance or what we might call adaptive management in its public form. In almost every case the authors were reluctant to embrace adaptive governance fully since the track record is not very good, for various and sundry reasons. Once problem frequently noted was that the practice was too technical, too much engaged in “scientific rationality.” On the other extreme, some authors noted a tendency for unwarranted devolution; wherein the process was captured by too narrowly framed interests, often dominated by “locals.” In almost every case, US authors failed to investigate the influence of “political backlash” by the Bush/Cheney Administration as they waged war on the Clinton Administration’s initial strides at adaptive governance under banners of “Ecosystem Management” and “Collaborative Stewardship.” This backlash began earlier with the so-called “Gingrich Revolution”— remember the “Contract On With America”? [Want some fun? Google up: “contract with america” “public lands”] Why was the backlash missed? I don’t see how you can separate adaptive governance efforts from the politics that enfold them.

As mentioned earlier, critical review authors cite the fact that adaptive management in its public form is too technical, too much centered in technocratic rationality. But adaptive governance need not be so burdened. Adaptive governance can operate in policy-development spaces far apart from those where “adaptive management experiments” are structured, tested, and rationalized. But it can embrace those too, where they make most sense. This is the direction some of us tried to take the Forest Service in the early 1990s, under the banner “A Shared Approach to Ecosystem Management,” outlined in part here. It lives today under the banner “adaptive governance.”

Embracing Adaptive Governance
An important aspect of the emergence of adaptive governance is that it is about humans and their institutional settings—that these often fall into the same rigidity traps (problems of overly-tight coupling) and poverty traps that we talk about in so-called natural systems. This is easily seen through the lenses of Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (1993), Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions (1995), and Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002).

I believe that the time it right to more-fully embrace adaptive governance—to replace what has been forest planning. But a big barrier is that the Forest Service remains a technocracy, a big-believer in science and management, with little or no formal emphasis on the art of “forestry,” the art of “political decision-making,” etc. I remember all too well the many Forest Service social science meetings where I complained that two words (and practices) were forbidden in both voice and action: politics and psychology.

In a future post I will lay out a roadmap to begin that journey as a rewrite to the administrative “rule” that is being batted around in Draft form, improperly framed as a “planning rule.” Here, I’ll just leave one definition of adaptive governance. Maybe someone here can come up with a better one.

Adaptive Governance: linking a broad range of actors at multiple scales to deal with the interrelated dynamics of resources and ecosystems, management systems and social systems, as well as uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise. Adaptive governance focuses on experimentation and learning, and it brings together research on institutions and organizations for collaboration, collective action, and conflict resolution in relation to natural resource and ecosystem management. The essential role of individuals needs to be recognized in this context (e.g., leadership, trust building, vision, and meaning); their social relations (e.g., actor groups, knowledge systems, social memory) and social networks serve as the web that tie together the adaptive governance system. It has cross-level and cross-scale activities and includes governmental policies that frame creativity.

From “Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems”, Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2005. 30:441-473 (pdf)

Related:
Adaptive Governance and Forest Planning, John Rupe, NCFP, Feb. 2010
Book review of Adaptive Governance: Integrating Science, Policy, and Decision Making, by Ronald D. Brunner, Toddi A. Steelman, Lindy Coe-Juell, Christina M. Crowley, Christine M. Edwards, Donna W. Tucker, 2005
Collaboration Reading for Thoughtful Practitioners, Dave Iverson 2006
Taking Uncertainty Seriously: Adaptive Governance and International Trade (pdf), Rosie Cooney and Andrew T.F. Lang, The European Journal of International Law 18(3), 2007

Missoulian Story on Planning Rule Public Meeting

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Somehow I missed this one earlier.

Here’s the introduction:

It’s a little like changing the shape of the strike zone in baseball, or the allowable deductions on your income tax form. A proposed planning rule for all U.S. Forest Service activity is both deeply wonky and game-changing.

The draft rule spreads fine print from page 8,480 to page 8,528 in the Federal Register. In there is something that may affect every trail walker, tree cutter, mushroom picker, snowmobile rider, hunter, angler, small-plane pilot, outfitter, gold miner, folf player and who-knows-what other national forest user.

About 80 such interested parties gathered on Tuesday in Missoula to hear Forest Service planning specialist Regis Terney answer questions about the draft rule. For all its complexity, the rule is the simplest part of a process that guides the writing of huge plans for 125 national forests and grasslands across the nation. The Missoula audience was ready to scrutinize it down to individual word choices

Public Meetings on Planning Rule: What Did You Hear?

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Photo of bear at Golden Colorado forum on planning rule by Kirk Siegler

I didn’t see too much in the press about the meetings so far. There is this one from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Forest Service Updating Framework For Long-Term Planning

Rob Manning | March 25, 2011 | Portland, OR

Top federal forest officials visited Portland Friday. And a new constitution for the country’s national forests was on the table, as Rob Manning reports.

The Forest Service is updating a federal framework that local forest managers have to use to draft long-term plans, whether for grasslands in the Southeast or the Mount Hood National Forest.

Assistant director, Ric Rine is on a national tour explaining the draft rule – and why it should change.

Ric Rine: “The 1982 regulation reflected the science and the planning processes of the ’70s, when timber management was a dominant use. The science has changed, public values have changed, the rule hasn’t changed.”

Environmentalists, loggers, and snowmobilers asked Rine skeptical questions – mostly asking for details. They wanted to know how science would be used.

Several people suggested that a proposal for a narrow-window to file objections would marginalize the public.

Rine said the intent is to rely on a more collaborative process to better include the public, and avoid objections in the first place.

And this one from KUNC, Greeley Colorado.

Like any bureaucratic planning document, the proposed rule isn’t exactly bedtime reading. But there are several clear themes; such as directives that the Forest Service consider the best possible peer-reviewed science before issuing local management decisions and a push for more forest restoration and habitat protection jobs.

“The proposed forest rule has some promising ambitions,” says Caitlin Balch-Burnett, Colorado outreach representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “However, we feel like these ambitions really do not translate into meaningful and binding standards.”

Defenders of Wildlife is one of the groups that sued the Bush Administration during its attempt to revise the 1982 planning rule. Courts threw that out twice in 2005 and 2008. Balch-Burnett says the Obama Administration’s plan gives too much discretion to the Forest Service and its local forest managers when making decisions on watershed or wildlife habitat protection.

“Our concern is with so much flexibility and not enough guidance given, that’s when you know, critters can fall through the cracks in terms of management and protection,” she says.

But by giving more flexibility to local forest managers in its proposed rule, the Forest Service also seems to be trying to address complaints from critics of litigious-minded conservation groups who argue current planning gets too bogged down in administrative appeals.

Tom Troxel, executive director of the Intermountain Forest Association which represents timber companies in Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota, says in this era of budget deficits, the planning process is too long and costly.

“I live in Rapid City,” Troxel says. “The Black Hills National Forest I think has the world record for forest plan revision, it took them 16 years to finish a 10-15 year plan.”

In other words, Troxel says, forest plans are supposed to get updated every 10-15 years. On average, local forests take about six years just to revise a plan.

That was about how long it took Colorado’s most visited forest, the White River N.F., to issue its latest version in 2002, according to a forest spokesman. And much has changed there since then. Just think about all those beetle-killed trees dotting the hillsides of Summit County, for instance.

Troxel says the current national proposal does little to address the costs and complexity embedded in the existing rule which he says has made it difficult for timber businesses to operate under.

“Whatever your interest in the national forest is, it’s better to have them managing forests and maintaining trails and improving wildlife habitat than it is in this endless planning process,” Troxel says.

At a public meeting earlier this month in Golden, Forest Service officials fielded criticisms similar to those of Troxel and conservationists. The agency’s Ric Rine says that’s why the proposed national rule is a draft, not a done deal.

I attended four public meetings, and one with state government folks and elected officials. As with the story above, “best available science” and objections were also topics in our area. I plan to post more on those later this week. What did you all hear? Did you hear anything that surprised you? If so, what?

From Forest Planning to Adaptive Governance

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“If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing.” Aaron Wildavsky

[Author’s note: This is a lengthy (for a blog), partisan, historical view rant on the road from NFMA “forest planning” to “adaptive governance.”]

Let’s face it, the “forest land and resource management plan” is an anachronism—an artifact of a bygone era. That era was in its heyday when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reigned supreme after President Richard M. Nixon consolidated rule-making and other powers in the OMB via executive order in 1970. Economics-based, comprehensive rational planning was the rage. It is no surprise that The Renewable Resources Planning Act was passed in 1974, just after Nixon consolidated power under the banner of rationally planned and carefully audited governmental process. Twenty years later Henry Mintzberg penned The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994). Mintzerberg’s classic pretty much laid a tombstone atop rational planning exercises. Or at least it should have.

The Forest Planning Era
Following passage of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 as an amendment to the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, it was thought that forest program management decisions could be adequately fit into a forest plan “decision container”—that somehow each forest could develop a forest-wide plan that would integrate programs now and into the future in a such a way as to allow disclosure of environmental consequences that might flow from said decisions. Project level National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) disclosure would disappear with proper forest planning and environmental disclosure at the forest level.

Allowance was made for FS administrative region plans, and for a national RPA Program plan. Given the upper two tiers, it was believed that decisions would be integrated vertically, and cumulative effects—according to NEPA standards—could be adequately disclosed.

It was a relatively innocent era, when viewed through the “green-eyeshaded accounting lenses” of OMB over-see-ers. The innocence collapsed relative soon in the forest arena as litigation proved that the three-level administratively-bounded review was not going to pass muster in the courts. Not only were projects not going to be shielded from NEPA review by a forest plan, there was increasing evidence that at least one level of planning/disclosure might be needed between project and forest.

An initial remedy to the seemingly endless process gridlock brought about by too many levels of planning was to eliminate regional plans. I referred to this then as the Texas two-step solution (forests/projects), since at that time the Forest Service’s National Planning Director was from Texas. But that was a solution looking for a problem, or better still a “non solution” not looking for anything but an easy way out. The problem between forest and project remained. Another problem was to be found elsewhere, framed larger than forest plans but not fitting into regional plan containers.

Spotted Owls, Roadless, and more
Much time and effort was now spent in the 1970s, 80s, 90s on above-forest policy making, brought about by actors and actions taken either against the Forest Service or from within the Forest Service responding to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. They were, “Spotted Owl Management Plans,” “The Roadless Rule,” “The Northwest Forest Plan,” and more. These decision containers were bounded as regions, not FS administrative regions but geographical regions more appropriately suited to the issues and the actors petitioning for problem resolution. Note that the policy-level decision making was largely about curtailing timbering and roading, but the Forest Service chose to name the efforts after the initiating issues, not the federal actions being considered.

Forest Planning Proves Resilient, if not useful
The forest planning paradigm still captured much attention, but the three-level planning process swirling around the forest plan—projects/mid-scale/forest—was felt by forest planners and the Forest Service generally to be too cumbersome. Something else needed to be done. While the rest of the world was waking up to complex systems, wicked problems, and adaptive management, as was part of the Forest Service via the Northwest Forest Plan, the Forest Service via the NFMA rule was still stuck in the wonderful, if overly complex and somewhat bizarre world of capital P “Planning.” And the Forest Service was always trying to force-fit things into forest-level and project-level decision containers. But times were changing by 1990 and at least for a time, the Forest Service seemed to be ready to catch up to the rest of the world.

Adaptive Governance: Emergence in the Clinton Era
Adaptive management seems to be evolving in name to Adaptive Governance, following a path laid down early on by Kai Lee in Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (1993). For a time the Forest Service seemed inclined to follow. [Note: Today, the “adaptive governance” path seems already well-discussed, if not well traveled. That is if my “adaptive governance” Google search is an indication. But my Wikipedia search didn’t give me much. Recognizing that the only viable adaptive management for dealing with public lands management has to deal with both Kai Lee’s Adaptive management compass and his civic-engagement gyroscope. I’ll go ahead and use the term “adaptive governance” hereafter.]

In what we might call Clinton era management, Chief Michael Dombeck sought to bring about a Leopoldian awakening (see, e.g. here, here) to Forest Service thinking. That “awakening,” as per Leopold’s earlier thinking, was about adaptive governance. But the largely Republican-dominated Forest Service resisted. Chief Dombeck was never accepted by Forest Service managers since he was from the BLM and appointed by an environmentally left-leaning Clinton administration. Things didn’t get better under Chief Jack Ward Thomas, himself a huge fan of Leopold. The road from Pinchot to Leopold was not going to be an easy one. Adaptive governance thinking was soon on the chopping block along with pretty much all else from “new forestry” to “new perspectives,” etc. following the election of George W. Bush as a new Administration came to Washington.

Adaptive Governance: Bush/Cheney Backlash
The Bush/Cheney public lands legacy can be viewed as a legacy of war—war on the environment and war on anything the previous Clinton Administration had built under the rubric of “ecosystem management” (See generally Bob Keiter’s Breaking Faith with Nature: The Bush Administration and Public Land Policy). Under Mark Rey as Undersecretary of Agriculture, the Forest Service moved into its “Healthy Forests Initiative,” followed soon thereafter by the “Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003.” As Bob Keiter notes, the names could be viewed as cynical, as part of a well-orchestrated backlash against Clinton era reforms. To Keiter:

By using the Healthy Forests Initiative to expand the scope of NEPA categorical exclusions and to alter the ESA consultation process, the Forest Service has further enhanced its authority and reduced the potential for judicial review of its decisions, which is also what the [Aquatic Conservation Strategy] and species inventory revisions to the Northwest Forest Plan would have done. Congress has abetted this de-legalization effort by including NEPA provisions in the HFRA and the Energy Policy Act that either eliminate or reduce environmental analysis requirements for timber thinning and energy exploration projects.279 Add to this the Bush administration’s approach to its ESA responsibilities—which include an overt hostility to new listings, a rush to delist species, and contemplated revisions to the section 7 consultation process and critical habitat designation and critical habitat designation criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield the agencies from any meaningful accountability. It is a return to an era when discretion reigned supreme. [Footnote in original]

All good things come to an end. So do all bad things. The Bush/Cheney regime and its war on the environment ended in January 2009, although effects (and federal judges) linger. [Personal aside: My friend from the early “planning days,” Dale Bosworth served as Forest Service Chief early in the Bush/Cheney Administration. I believe Dale did what he could to curb the worst of the what might have been done to the Forest Service during that era, but didn’t take my advice the be take a firm stand and be the first Chief since Gifford Pinchot to be fired for standing up against the powers that be. Had I been in his shoes I might not have taken that advice either. Who knows? But it wasn’t in Dale’s nature to work that way. I don’t find fault with Bosworth’s leadership/management during that era.]

Adaptive Governance: Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’
Unfortunately for Leopoldian dreamers, incoming President Barrack Obama’s audacious plans have not yet been focused on matters environmental, other than green energy. Nor will they likely anytime soon, even if Obama or anyone in his Administration were prone to do so—which itself is in question. Obama is too distracted with two wars, emergent unrest in the Mideast and Middle America following Tea Party elections in statehouses and the US Congress. Not to mention continued after-shocks from the near-disaster of the financial meltdown that arrived coincidentally (or not) right as Obama was entering the White House.

Obama cut his political teeth on community organizing, and that is in a sense Kai Lee’s gyroscope to accompany his adaptive management compass. So we can at least hope for endorsement from Obama if planning is replaced with adaptive governance. Whether or not it will be a good thing depends largely on whether or not untoward devolution happens—or is perceived to likely happen—under adaptive governance schemes. Time will tell. But I get ahead of our story. The Forest Service hasn’t yet embraced adaptive governance, although I hear they are flirting with it. Instead they are still wedded to capital P “Planning.” As Andy Stahl noted, the recent Draft NFMA “planning rule” (pdf) (as the Forest Service likes to call it), stages up a rational planning exercise. The difference is that this time it is driven by ecological rationality instead of the earlier economic rationality from the OMB era.

Adaptive Governance: Absent in the NFMA Draft Planning Rule
I suspect it was because the Bush/Cheney era NFMA rule was thrown away by the courts, but for whatever reason the Obama Administration chose to rewrite the “NFMA rule.” There has been a flurry of commentary on this blog and elsewhere about the rule and associated planning. But does anyone really care about this type planning anymore? What decisions are really contained by a forest-level plan? Despite the language of the draft rule, I find no “ecological resilience” decisions, neither “ecological or social sustainability” decisions, nor any “species viability” decisions, nor … that can be contained in a forest-level plan. All such considerations will well-up at scales different from forest boundaries.

As I’ve argued before, these are wicked problems. Wicked problems are not amenable to rational planning resolutions. Part of the “wicked problem” problem is that they are shape-shifters, they vary in problem identification and resolution across both time and space. They just won’t stand still, and will not be force-fit into predetermined “decision containers.”

In addressing wicked problems, I believe that scale-dependent futuring, and/or puzzle solving, is in order alongside scale-dependent assessments and monitoring. We ought to add in scale-dependent standard setting. They all fit under a header “puzzle solving.” Where scale-dependent is really the stuff of framing decisions/actions according to a “Garbage Can Model” wherein issues, actors, and arenas self-organize across the landscape into various and sundry decision containers. We all need to think hard about wicked problems and, e.g. Cohen, March, and Olsen’s garbage can decision model. Here’s a pdf of CMO’s 1972 article: “A Garbage Can Theory of Organizational Choice.”

See too Pritchard and Sanderson’s chapter in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002), “The Dynamics of Political Discourse in Seeking Sustainability.” After setting stage for adaptive governance, complete with “wicked problem identification” and “garbage can” resolution mechanisms, Pritchard and Sanderson conclude:

[Testing hypotheses and applying lessons learned] to the thorny puzzles of environmental management and governance are [noble] goals. The greatest promise lies in addressing political issues directly, rather than in avoiding or submerging them. The fondest hope might be that individuals, communities, and formal organizations engage the spirit of adaptation and experimentation, by allowing a set of contingent ideas to shape “the gamble” of democratic resource management, and citizen experts to report on the results. Of course, for such a profoundly disorganized and multiscale approach to thrive, government, market, and citizen must share a common vision—that all must address these puzzles in order that they might be engaged and worked on—not solved forever; that “expertise,” popular voice, and power are separable, and none holds the dice [from a “floating crap game” model of politics] for more than a pass.

A Few Questions Linger
Is an ecologically framed rational planning rule what we need to resolve controversy?
Or is it time to embrace adaptive management, even adaptive governance in an attempt to tame wicked problems? Yes, I know that the preamble to the Draft NFMA rule claims that forest planning will be driven by adaptive management. But, really? Read the rule and explain to me how the draft rule stages for more than rational planning.

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Related:
The Forest Service as a Learning Challenged Organization, Iverson, 1999
US Forest Service Deeply Flawed Planning Culture, Iverson, 2004

Standards in Planning

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The question of standards in forest planning has emerged as a central issue in the proposed NFMA regulations.  It seems that a common narrative by the press in covering the story thus far is the amount of discretion afforded in the proposed rule versus its lack of “musts and shalls.”

Here is the definition of standards in the proposed regulations: “A standard is a mandatory constraint on project and activity decisionmaking, established to help achieve or maintain the desired condition or conditions, to avoid or mitigate undesirable effects, or to meet applicable legal requirements.” (76 Fed. Reg. 8517).

I have made my pro-standards case in various places, hitting on the usual theme of accountability, while others like Professor Mark Squillace have thoughtfully criticized their use at the forest plan level.  I hear similar complaints about standards from others participating in the draft regulations as well. 

This is an important debate.  But my sense is that we might not all be that clear about the variety of ways in which standards are used in planning.  Maybe we all have different conceptions based on our interactions with forest planning in various parts of the country.  So before making an argument for standards, allow me to first explain what I mean by the term.

Types of Standards Used in Forest Planning 

Different types of standards are used in forest planning.  They can differ in scale, specificity, and complexity.  Some administrative regions of the USFS, for example, use standards cutting across multiple National Forests (this being very relevant to Melissa’s point about standards and scale–many of us agreeing that some standards might best be applied at larger spatial scales).

National Forest plans have also used forest-wide standards that vary in detail and complexity.  Take, for example, the forest-wide range standard in the 1986 Lolo National Forest Plan:

Conflicts between livestock and big game will be resolved so big game are allocated the forage required to meet their needs.  Domestic livestock will be allowed to utilize any forage surplus not conflicting with the planned expansion of big-game populations.  Reductions in livestock numbers will be avoided if possible, but will be acceptable to meet management goals. (II.9). 

To me, this seems more like a nudge than a clear unequivocal standard, but it still provides some direction. 

Forest-wide standards can also be more complicated, such as the Lolo’s forest-wide “snag standard.” This standard requires sufficient snags and dead material to be provided in order to maintain 80 percent of the population of snag-using species.  More detailed prescriptions are provided in this forest-wide standard, such as specifying the number of big snags needed per acre on different forest types on the Lolo.  (I get the sense that critics of standards are thinking about this sort of example). 

Standards are also used for particular management areas or zones as identified in a forest plan.  These sorts of standards can be very straightforward and basically state what is allowed to happen in a particular area. They specify allowed uses, prohibitions, and constraints.  The Lolo Plan, for example, divides the forest into 28 management areas, each with a different set of standards.  Consider the following examples:

Standards used for a municipal watershed area state that “livestock grazing permits will not be issued” and that “chemical herbicides and pesticides will not be used within the Ashley Creek Watershed.” 

A management area including significant historical, archeological, paleontological, and cultural sites uses a timber standard stating that “timber removal will be limited to that necessary to enhance historic values and provide for public safety” and that “timber removal will be under administrative use rather than commercial sale authority.”

A management area consisting of large roadless blocks of land contains standards that disallow most types of motorized access, the construction of developed recreation facilities, and commercial logging. 

These are straightforward, meaningful standards playing an important role in forest planning.  They are not hyper-complex nor do they require super-human analytical abilities to write and implement them.  Nor is there any evidence, that I’m aware of at least, showing that the writing of such standards is what bogs down the forest planning process. 

Why Standards?

The use of standards in a forest plan should be required under the NFMA regulations for several reasons.  We have discussed a few of these already on the blog, often in the context of what is required by NFMA and the importance of accountability.  I’d like to discuss a few issues that have not received as much attention but are very relevant to the proposed rule:

1.  Standards help differentiate one management (planning/zone) area from another.  The above example from the Lolo demonstrates the important relationship between standards and the designation of management areas/zones.  The former gives meaning to the latter.  Why would the Lolo National Forest designate a management area if that area had no different allowed uses or prohibitions than some other area? Or why would the proposed rule require the identification of priority watersheds for maintenance or restoration if those areas had no meaningful prohibitions?  If the agency is going to draw lines on a map, then those lines should mean something. 

2.  Standards facilitate the effective use of adaptive management—one of the principles of the proposed rule.  Standards help define the purpose and boundaries of adaptive management and planning.  After all, adaptive management is a means to an end, and that end needs to be clearly articulated.  Without standards, adaptive management is too susceptible to political exploitation and the dodging of tough political choices. 

A commonalty found in most adaptive management literature is the need for a structured decision making process and the identification of clear and measurable management objectives.  The Interior Department’s Technical Guide (as discussed at the Science Panel) emphasizes both as crucial to the success of adaptive management:

If the objectives are not clear and measurable, the adaptive framework is undermined…Objectives need to be measurable for two purposes: first, so progress toward their achievement can be assessed; second, so performance that deviates from objectives may trigger a change in management direction.  Explicit articulation of measurable objectives helps to separate adaptive management from trial and error, because the exploration of management options over time is directed and justified by the use of objectives.  U.S. Department of the Interior, Adaptive Management: The U.S. Department of the Interior Technical Guide (2009), at 11. 

Standards can be used to help define these objectives while providing a relevant metric in determining their achievement.  More basic is the fact that adaptive management projects will take place in particular management areas of a National Forest, as identified in a forest plan, and these zones/standards will guide the questions and purpose of any adaptive management project. 

3. Standards can help the USFS, and other federal agencies, meet the goals and mandates of other environmental laws. There are important interconnections between NFMA and other laws like NEPA and the ESA and CWA.  NFMA regulations should thus be considered as part of a larger regulatory framework.  And these environmental laws and regulations should be viewed as goals, not constraints. 

Consider, for example, the role standards play vis-à-vis the ESA.  The proposed planning regulations properly emphasize the agency’s obligation to conserve endangered and threatened species.  The proposed rule “would require the responsible official to explicitly recognize the recovery of T&E species as an important part of land management plans…” (76 Fed. Reg. 8494). 

Standards can play an important role in this regard.  Consider, for example, the unsuccessful delisting of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone region.  At issue in this case was the Grizzly Bear’s Conservation Strategy, which included the amending of multiple national forest plans.  The Court found the Conservation Strategy short of being an “adequate regulatory mechanism,” as required by the ESA, partly because the forest plan amendments included few meaningful standards and too many discretionary and unenforceable guidelines.  Cases like these demonstrate how meaningful standards can help the USFS meet all of its legal obligations, not just NFMA.(see Greater Yellowstone Coalition v. Servheen, 672 F. Supp. 2d. 1105, (D. Mont. 2009).

Time for a Bold Statement?

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It’s starting to look like “A New Century of Forest Planning” may ultimately come to refer to the hundred years or so it takes to get a new planning rule implemented. Will the “Hundred Years War” come to signify the length of the timber wars?

Way back in the 1900’s, Chief Dale Robertson was convinced that a bold policy statement was necessary to address the big concern of the day– clearcutting of national forests.  In a policy letter (not the best way to make policy, but a lot quicker than rule-making), Dale established that clearcuttting would no longer be the primary means of regeneration on national forest lands. There were howls of protest from silviculturists and tree-improvement specialists. There were exceptions for species like Jack Pine and Sand Pine.   There certainly was no end to the timber wars, but it was a start down a path towards armistice.

Getting a new planning rule implemented will take more than just agreement about the wording of the rule.  It’s going to require an environment that will insure the intent of that wording can be carried out. Perhaps now is an appropriate time for the current Chief to make some bold statements.

My suggestions are:

1.       Declare that restoration of ecosystem resiliency is not just an important part of the mission; it’s the most important part.

Management actions would be all about producing desired ecological conditions in order to restore and maintain resilient ecosystems and help protect human communities from undesirable things like intense wildfires in the wrong places or downstream impacts from deteriorating road systems.  There would be no need to calculate ASQ or argue about “lands unsuitable for timber production”. (There may still be a need to “zone” for other uses.) “Below-cost” timber sales would no longer be a meaningful calculation.  And, if the South is any indication, a lot more timber would become available for local mills.

2.       Declare that planning at all levels will be a truly open and collaborative process.

All phases of planning would be “open source” with draft documents and supporting information easily accessible on-line.  Raw data from inventories and monitoring as well as interpreted data, maps, and models would be open to all. I can’t think of any other policy change that would do more to improve the level of trust among stakeholders.  A side benefit would be a tremendous savings in responding to FOIA requests.

3.       Declare that the Forest Service will commit to a process of establishing a shared vision for the entire agency.

With the National Forest System, Research, and State and Private Forestry all working towards shared goals, using an “all lands” approach, imagine what might be accomplished at landscape scales?  This is the sort of partnership between managers and scientists that will be needed to truly ensure that “best science” is incorporated into decisions at all levels.

Are these declarations really all that bold?  Not really, The Forest Service has been moving in these directions since before Dale Robertson penned his letter.  A clear commitment to these principles might be what’s needed to finally move the National Forest System into the New Century.

Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees

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If I were a visitor from another planet, who having read some of the recent posts to this blog, wanted to understand what all the fuss about things like “viability” is about, I might look to the Forest Service homepage for guidance.  There I would learn that “The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.” Pretty straightforward so far.  Looking for more of what these things called “national forests” are all about, I would learn that the agency’s “Motto” “Caring for the Land and Serving People” means, among other things, “Protecting and managing the National Forests and Grasslands so they best demonstrate the sustainable multiple-use management concept.” I would get confused though because I read that the mission also includes things like “Listening to people and responding to their diverse needs in making decisions.” And although I would agree that that is an absolutely essential thing to do, I wouldn’t be able to find anything in any law that says that is part of the agency’s mission.  You might say that I was nit-picking, but fortunately we don’t have nits on my home planet.

Reading on through the Forest Service “Vision” wouldn’t help either.  I might find lots of nice statements about “a caring and nurturing environment” where “employees are respected, accepted, and appreciated”, but I wouldn’t find anything about how the agency thinks the national forests should look in the future if it did a good job at carrying out its mission.

If I did a bit of Googling, I could learn that some pretty smart scientists have been thinking about new and better ways to plan and monitor and that they presented some of these ideas at the Forest Service Science Forum. [Full disclosure– I wouldn’t actually have to Google it since I was the principle author of the final report for the forum]. Some of these scientists pointed out, however, that “. . . while science can help inform decision-making processes, it is most appropriately applied first in a context of shared agreement on the agency goals that will drive management decisions.”

In the absence of shared agreement in the form of a clearly articulated and widely shared vision for the future of the national forests, even an alien can see why a number of conservation organizations insist that the proposed rule doesn’t go far enough to require actions to ensure important things like species viability.

Despite the trees, that forest is evident even to a visitor from outer space.