Planning Rule Development Process

Update on Planning Rule Blog and Other Links of Interest

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Thanks to Peter Williams for this update and roundup of interesting links:

“We are updating our electronic resources with completely new blog technology and new material on the planning rule website: http://fs.usda.gov/planningrule
The “History of Forest Planning” webpage has been updated to include the 1990 Critique of Forest Planning, Volumes 1 — 11
The new blog, when stood up, will demonstrate a variety of new features that may have value during subsequent planning efforts throughout the agency; we are coordinating closely with CIO regarding security related to those features; exact features that get stood up will depend on the outcome of that coordination.

Several other agency, Departmental, or administration initiatives are worth knowing about too:
State Assessment and Resource Strategies (Part of the State and Private Forestry Redesign effort)
LINK: http://www.fs.fed.us/spf/redesign/resourcecenter.shtml
Addressing “all lands” and a broad set of relevant issues identified by each State Forester; some States are pushing hard for these assessments to “guide” or play a significant role in Forest Plan revisions & amendments; Helps set context state-by-state

Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program/Projects
LINK: http://www.fs.fed.us/restoration/CFLR/index.shtml
Proposals just submitted by Forests and Grasslands to each relevant RO for forwarding to WO; multiparty monitoring and collaboration are highlighted

State Climate Adaptation Plans
LINK: http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_states/adaptation_map.cfm
May become part of Congressional climate change legislation; could set context for Forest Planning

Cohesive WildFire Management Strategy
LINK: Homepage — http://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/leadership/index.shtml
Strategy — http://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/leadership/strategy/index.shtml
Public meetings conclude at the end of May; a draft cohesive fire strategy is due in November and will be updated every 5 years after that.

America’s Great Outdoors Initiative
LINK: Presidential Memo http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-americas-great-outdoors
Initiative Homepage: http://www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors/
On April 16, 2010, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum establishing the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative to be led by the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ); this initiative carries forward elements of the ‘all lands’ vision of Secretary Vilsack. ”

Forest Service Planning Rule Meeting Notes Now Available

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Notes are now available  on the Forest Service planning rule website for the third national roundtable meeting on a new Forest Service planning rule.  The May 11-12 meeting in Rockville, Maryland was designed to focus on six topics that the rule writing team “identified as needing additional public input”.  In the summary notes, there are no consensus viewpoints on issues including species viability; the inclusion of forest restoration as a rule requirement; balancing local, regional, and national interests; making findings about “best available science”; and writing flexible, adaptable plans vs. plans with strong consistent standards.  An appendix to the report contains some specific recommendations for the rule writing team that were submitted during the meeting from the 111 participants.

A fourth national roundtable has tentatively been set for July 29 and 30 in Washington D.C. to review specific rule language that is now being developed.  More details will be posted on the planning rule website.

Comments on the Planning Rule Process from Mark Squillace

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Mark Squillace, Director of the Natural Resources Law Center at University of Colorado Law School, wrote a piece on the Red Lodge Clearing House blog..here. Some quotes.

First, the Forest Service deserves substantial credit for initiating this remarkable process. The agency wisely chose to hire an outside professional consultant (Meridian Institute) to organize and facilitate public involvement and the consultant performed admirably. Moreover, recognizing that not everyone has the time, inclination, or interest to participate in workshops, the Forest Service has supplemented this more conventional process, with a web page, blog, live web casts of the workshops, and other electronic resources, in an effort to engage a broader audience.

Second, if the first step to addressing a problem is admitting you have one, then the Forest Service seems well on its way to addressing its problem with planning. While the workshops certainly did not dwell directly on past failures, the unspoken premise for much of the discussion was that forest planning is broken. Agency officials seem to get that. Despite several substantial efforts to develop a workable planning process, going back to at least the early 1980’s, land and resource management plans, as they are called, take far too long to prepare and are too often the subject of appeals and litigation. Moreover, they tend to suck most of the energy (and financial resources) out of the agency, with the result that not much is left to adequately assess project level decisions and to engage in post planning monitoring of forest conditions.

Third, the Forest Service seems genuinely committed to engaging the public and hearing how they might improve the planning process. Numerous agency officials at all levels actively participated in both the regional and national workshops and they genuinely seemed grateful for the public’s sometimes disparate ideas for designing a smarter approach to forest planning.

Fourth, the level of dialogue among participants was, on the whole, quite sophisticated, but it was also welcoming toward the views of those with less direct experience in forest planning. Kudos once again to the facilitator, Meridian Institute, for attracting and convening a diverse group, and for structuring an efficient and effective program for engaging participants with varied backgrounds in the task at hand.

I have to say that Meridian did our regional roundtable in Denver as well and were equally excellent.

Two other things: First, on the Red Lodge blog piece it is mentioned that Mark has a piece on the FS blog called “Rethinking Forest Planning”. I tried to find it but couldn’t; the search on his name didn’t work for me.. if someone else can find it please let me know and I will post the link.

Second, in the Red House blog piece a comment referred to “Hidden Gems.” For the non-Coloradans, that is a wilderness proposal.

Planning Rule Meetings Concluded – Tentative Future Meeting Announced

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The initial phase of public involvement for a new Forest Service planning rule ended this week with a final national roundtable in Rockville, Maryland.  Notes from the meeting will be published on the Forest Service’s planning rule website.  The Forest Service has now hosted three national meetings and nearly 40 regional and local meetings across the country.  Essentially, these meetings were listening sessions.  Now all the ideas will be compiled and screened into specific proposals and alternatives.  

For some issues, there is no clear consensus. There are significant differences in opinion between national and local participants, so further dialogue will be necessary.  Also, while Forest Service employees were well represented at all the roundtable meetings, they were largely in a listening mode, and didn’t always present their point of view.  There may be differences in opinion between the Forest Service and public participants, and there always seems to be differences of opinions within the Forest Service.

At this week’s meeting, a tentative future meeting was announced for the last week of July, to allow the public to discuss possible specific rule text.  The rule writing team is open to suggestions on the next steps.  Hopefully, there will be opportunties to increase understanding among groups across the country, and between Forest Service employees and the public.

Roundtable in Juneau

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Here’s a link to a story on the Juneau roundtable.

Community leaders given a chance to comment on forest planning Tuesday during a regional roundtable in Juneau said they want more control over decisions made on public lands surrounding their towns.

The inability of the U.S. Forest Service to get projects through its system, or even make a plan to change the system, is hurting Alaska’s rural communities that depend on the forest for livelihoods and sustenance, roundtable attendees said.

“The Forest Service has an obligation to see that it helps keep local communities alive,” Petersburg Community Development Director Leo Luczak said, adding that timber revenues have fallen to such lows that “communities are dying.”

Missoulian on Rule Roundtable

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Here is the link.  Some interesting observations.

One tension point was how to balance a national rule with local authority. For Montana Mountain Bike Alliance member Greg Beardslee, local forest officials had too much leeway to allow or prohibit activities. That meant bicyclists can find open trails in one national forest but closures on another, with no regard for economic impact or sustainable activity.

At the heart of many conversations in the roundtable talks was the need to absorb all the changes the passing years have brought. From loggers seeking different kinds of trees, to the arrival of snowmobiles and four-wheelers that can penetrate much farther into the backcountry, to new constituencies for river-running and rock-climbing and caving, the national rule has lots of stretching to do before it can reflect the world it tries to constrain.

Northern Region Forest Service staff member Leslie Vaculik added some internal concerns of the agency. For example, the old rule gives little attention to existing private inholdings within public land, or the value of Forest Service maintenance for things like watersheds that neighboring communities depend on for drinking water.

Blue Ribbon Coalition Wonders About Mix of Scientific Disciplines

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In this piece, the BRC talks about the process of rulemaking thus far:

At the same time, after attending both the National Science Forums and participating in the first National Roundtable in Washington, DC, Mumm did have concerns that some segments of science may be missing from the analysis.

“I came away from the Science Forums feeling it was top-heavy with biological/ecological science and lacking data from the social/economic science side of the issue.”

Mumm concluded,

“In the end, this Planning Rule will have a dramatic affect on a great many communities across this country and I would encourage the Forest Service to broaden the science they are looking to ‘underpin’ the making of it with. ‘Science’ is a method of inquiry-not a static body of knowledge. Human communities are an undeniable part of the natural environment and more than just narrow perspectives on ‘hard’ science need to be part of this equation.”

This piece  reminds us that individual disciplines have their own scientific procedures that they determine to be “the best science,”  and there is no scientific way of determining which disciplines to include,  nor how many, nor a metascientific discipline with agreed upon rules of inquiry.  And of course, there is scientist to scientist variation within discipline. And interpersonal dynamics in committees of scientists. It’s a bountiful, diverse and wonderful community of scientific communities out there.

K.I.S.S. in Rule Form, Part 8

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The proposed K.I.S.S. rules are based on the premise that the Forest Service is revising forest plans, not promulgating new plans from scratch. This premise implies a rebuttable presumption that the existing plan’s provisions are satisfactory. NFMA supports this approach to plan revision.

For example, NFMA requires the Forest Service review timberland suitability decisions “at least every 10 years” and “return lands to timber production” when the Forest Service finds that “conditions have changed.” Thus, only if “conditions have changed” does the FS review its previously-made timberland suitability decisions. This mandate appears best met by adding to K.I.S.S.’s “new information or changed circumstances” assessment a new provision, as follows (addition is in italics):

36 CFR 219.3: Assessment of New Information and Changed Circumstances

(a) The revision shall assess (the “assessment”) new information and changed circumstances and conditions in the unit that are relevant to the decisions made in the land management plan. If the new information or changed circumstances and conditions warrant amendments to the land management plan, the land management plan amendments shall be assessed as a part of the vegetation management and timber harvest program’s NEPA document. If the land management plan amendments, singly or in combination with the vegetation management and timber harvest program, require an environmental impact statement pursuant to Section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et seq., an environmental impact statement shall be prepared.

(b) The assessment shall determine whether new information or changed circumstances warrant a review of lands the Forest Service has classified as suitable or unsuitable for timber production. The review shall focus on, but is not limited to, lands proposed for timber harvest in the plan revision’s vegetation management and timber harvest program.