Planning Rule Development Process

K.I.S.S. in Rule Form, Part 6

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No NFMA provision has transformed (and bedeviled) national forest management more than the law’s mandate to “provide for diversity of plant and animal communities based on the suitability and capability of the specific land area.” 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(3)(B). The consensus view of the federal courts (citations upon request) is that NFMA’s diversity language is a substantive limit on the Forest Service’s discretion – procedural analysis and models alone are insufficient to meet the law.

In its 1982 (and original 1979) rules, the Forest Service met the diversity mandate by requiring that plans ensure the viability of animal species, which is accomplished by identifying and protecting management indicator species. This approach to meeting the diversity requirement was never challenged in court. Those courts that have commented upon the viability/management indicator species approach have done so favorably. Regulatory efforts to eliminate the viability/MIS rule were defeated in 1982 (by Congressional pressure) and in 2000, 2005, and 2008 (in the courts).

It is with this history in mind that I suggest the following diversity rule language. This provision relies upon the 1979/1982 rules, but with fewer words and more discretion in the methodologies individual national forests can use to meet the law’s substantive mandate.

36 CFR 219.7: Plant and Animal Community Diversity

(a) Plan revisions and the vegetation management and timber harvest program shall ensure habitat sufficient to support viable populations of existing native and desired non-native species in the planning area. Methodologies for assessing and ensuring species viability shall consider and be appropriate to 1) the scope and scale of the plan revision and program decisions made; 2) the ecology of the plan area; and, 3) the biology of the species.

(b) Plan revisions and the vegetation management and timber harvest program shall, to the degree practicable, preserve the diversity of tree species similar to that existing in the plan region.

Interim Report of the Science Forum Now Available

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An interim report of the Science Forum is now available on the Forest Service planning rule website.  The 12 pages of bullet statements were prepared by the consultant Booz Allen Hamilton.  The planning rule website also says that powerpoint presentations of panelists will soon be posted, and an official full summary report from the consultant will be posted in the coming weeks.  Video clips of the forum will also be available.

A Great Big Shout-Out for the Science Forum

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Here’s a great big thank you to all the people who helped organize the Science Forum. We know that there was a great deal of work, planning, effort and all that. Seems to me that it went very smoothly and we got what we wanted- a knowledge of the science underpinnings on which a rule can be based. Thanks to the people who were there plus the people who work behind the scenes to make it all happen. You are, indeed, teaching the elephant to dance.

Also I wanted to thank Dave Iverson, who has been pushing the Forest Service for some time to consider some of the same ideas that were laid out by the scientists. I can’t count the number of times I said to the person next to me “hey, that book was in Dave’s post.” I know it can be frustrating when people don’t listen to you (happens to me all the time too) but a wise policy wonk told me in my policy OJT that getting your ideas into policy is all about continuing to be there until the stars line up and there’s an opening for them. Thanks for encouraging the elephant to dance, and your persistence.

Finally, thanks to John Rupe who took the time to write excellent summaries and put up the panelists’ biographies and is, in some respects, our interpreter so that people not at the meeting or on the webcast can better appreciate the elephant dancing.

Thanks also to the folks in the Deparment (at the risk of being seen to be brown-nosing) for removing some of the elephant’s chains and for being there to listen to all this great discussion.

And thanks to all the scientists and others who spoke and listened and reflected. I learned a lot, I’m sure as did others. You have greatly contributed to the management of our national forests.

Stickin’ to the Science- Models and More

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John has done a fantastic job of summarizing the panelists’ presentations at the Science Forum. However, I think we need to carefully watch what is claimed as scientific information, especially when that information tends to be uniquely privileged and thus can remove debate from the democratic, public sphere if it becomes a “science” issue. “Science” at its extreme, can become an ever-broadening mantle that can run to personal experiences of scientists, pontification by scientists, and so on.

But what is scientific information, given the variety of fields involved in a complicated field like natural resource management? “Science” can be models, field measurements, interviews with people, GIS exercises, and so on.
Scientific information gets its privileged status from claims of objectivity and physical and biological reality.

So here are some of my impressions, as a scientist and an observer of the science enterprise. First of all, I think modelers cannot be objective about models. No more than botanists can be objective about plants, or wildlife biologists about wildlife. There is an inherent connection between love of a thing and choosing it as a vocation. A good scientist, like a good manager, has a fire in her/his belly for the work. One ecologist notably said “ecosystems are more complex than we think, they are more complex than we can think.” I actually think that that is a paraphrase of J.B.S. Haldane, who said “the universe is queerer than we think, it is queerer than we can think.” How can we believe that they are more complex than we can think, and yet expect managers and the public to put energy into consideration of model outputs without independent empirical evidence that predictions are somewhat accurate?

Role of modeling in forest planning

Nevertheless, the scientists involved in modeling focused on models. Dr. Williams, who runs monitoring programs but is probably not one of the modeling community, focused on monitoring and real world observations, due to uncertainty and the complexity and potential unmodelability of complex systems. I agree with his emphasis on observations. Is that related to the fact we don’t work in models? Does the fire in the belly come as a precursor, or an effect, of working on something like models?

It is the essential conundrum of science – those who know the most have the most inherent conflict of interest in the importance and utility of their work. As the expression goes, if all you have is a hammer…everything looks like a nail.

I think we need to have more serious discussions about the appropriate role of models when there is as much uncertainty as there is about the future. From the science perspective, no doubt, models can synthesize existing information and they are useful to inform scientific understanding. But to then say that they need to be used in planning is a leap. Are they good enough to be better than talking to the public about “we don’t really know, this could happen or that, let’s think through some scenarios?” Are quantitative computer models necessarily better than explaining to the public what scientists currently think about interactions?

If interactions are too complex to predict, then they are too complex to predict- and let’s admit it and use adaptive management. Or use simple, explainable heuristic models. If we are going to use them, then we should wait for 10 years and select the ones with the most predictive value. Weather models were discussed at the Science Forum as a potential approach for the use of models. The problem seems to be that no one in natural resources wants to wait to get the data points. I think we can honor the role of models in increasing scientific understanding without determining that they are predictive enough to be useful in planning.

Sticking to Science

When we invite scientists to speak, we have to be careful about their knowledge claims. Telling stories about their experiences with collaboration isn’t scientific knowledge, it is practitioner experience. In another example, the Precautionary Principle is a human value about how to make decisions under uncertainty. Decision science is, need I say, a separate discipline from biology and ecology. When scientists or scientific organizations advocate for a position like that, in my view, they should separate their science claims from their personal values. Roger Pielke in his book “The Honest Broker” calls these “stealth advocates.” It takes just a minute to add “this isn’t a scientific point of view, it is a value judgment” when you make such a statement , but the power of trust in science and scientists is, indeed, priceless. Ask the climate scientists.

Synchronistically, Roger Pielkei recirculated a quote today in his blog
from the book Breakthrough by Norhaus and Shellenberger which may be as relevant to the planning rule as to climate policy.

The questions before us are centrally about how we will survive, who will survive, and how we will live. These are questions that climatologists and other scientists can inform but not decide. For their important work, scientists deserve our gratitude, not special political authority. What’s needed today is a politics that seeks authority not from Nature or Science but from a compelling vision of the future that is appropriate for the world we live in and the crises we face.

Learning from Failure

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One of the Meridian Institute consultants (working with the Forest Service on the “new planning rule”) recently asked me how I might frame discussions for the NFMA rule. Here is what I offered, adding that I thought it already too late for the kind of slow, thoughtful reflection/conversation that might make for effective change:

Suppose we could begin again. The public lands have just now been declared public. All laws, customs, and values are as they are, except that there is no RPA/NFMA. How might we begin to design a public process for managing the national forests as part of the nations’ public lands intermingled with private lands? How might we begin to discuss the possibility of a design process? How best to engage stakeholders?

Now fold in the RPA/NFMA, and the customs and history of the US Forest Service. What might we do now with the NFMA rule? How might that step fit within other design steps that might lead us to a useful outcome for managing the national forests?

Today I’ll add that we might want some “framing” to evaluate the eventual outcome of this NFMA “rule” effort. As I was pondering that, and remembering the many past failed attempts to reform planning and management in the Forest Service, I reread The Logic of Failure, by Dietrich Dörner. (book review) Then I did some internet sleuthing, and found a nice little reflective design blog that also built from Dörner’s wisdom. One tidbit of wisdom was titled “Metamorphosis: Transforming Non-designers into Designers” (pdf). I thought of Forest Service planners and managers. Maybe, if ever they are to learn, some might learn from this little paper. Here, altered a bit to get closer to the Forest Service’s task at hand, is the heart of the message:

[Consider] moving through three transitions:

(P) Pre-emergence
(T) Transitional
(D) Designerly Thinking

Characteristic of each of these transitions is a penetration of barriers. Rather than progression along a smooth continuum, you penetrate these (intellectual, practical, psychological and social) barriers in a step-like function. …

Barriers (numerals in parentheses indicate the transitional stage(s) where the barrier occurs):

  1. Design definitions. Naïve designers [tweak what has been framed too narrowly]; experienced designers also include [interaction, experience from others, emotion, and a ‘systems perspective’]. (P)
  2. Best solution. Naïve designers hold onto the belief that there is a best solution; experienced designers believe there exist many solutions and judged by critical criteria and presented through a design argument or explanation. (P)
  3. Technology-centered vs. human-centered. Naïve designers focus on the technology; experienced designers study human behavior, motivation and need. It’s very difficult to “let go” of gadgets and things; there’s an over-fascination with techno-fetishism among naïve designers. (P, T)
  4. Me and we. Naïve designers defend their own designs; experienced designers look to their team for inspiration and solutions. (P, T)
  5. User research. Naïve designers underplay the role of user research; they know what people want. Tools such as personas [pdf] are resisted rather than embraced naturally in the design process. Experienced designers do not make assumptions about human desires and motivations; they study it instead. (P, T)
  6. Algorithm / design paradox. Naïve designers expect to memorize algorithmic solutions to problems; experienced designers learn to deal with ill-structured problems, seemingly paradoxical situations and design thinking. (P, T)
  7. IT domination. Naïve designers tend to overemphasize efficiency, effectiveness, scalability; experienced designers include experience and emotion. (T)
  8. Idea loyalty. Naïve designers hold onto a single idea; experienced designers engage in systematic exploration of multiple ideas. (T)
  9. Critique culture. Naïve designers worry about [internally generated performance measures]; experienced designers welcome critique. (T, D)
  10. Notebook. Naïve designers [focus on] a particular project; experienced designers sketch continuously, deriving inspiration from all contexts. (T, D)
  11. Role. Naïve designers are learning what they do and how to do it; experienced designers begin to defend the position of design in a multi-person development team made up of designers and non-designers. (T, D)
  12. Research and philosophy. Naïve designers find solutions [patterned from past experience, “best management practices”, etc. — single-loop learning]; experienced designers explore philosophical foundations of design as well [i.e. double-loop learning]. (D)
  13. Reflective designer. Naïve designers spend little to no time reflecting on how they are designing versus experienced designers who can look at themselves “out of body” as they design. (D)
  14. Omnipresence. Naïve designers see design embedded in objects [or events]; experienced designers see systems that affect designs and designs that affect systems. (D)
  15. External / internal. Naïve designers find external answers to design problems; experienced designers begin to look internally and introspectively for inspiration and resolution. (D)

Maybe we can use these barriers/’barrier busters’ to see flaws in the Forest Service’s design strategy/tactics. Or maybe the Forest Service and its bevy of consultants can use them. Or maybe the roundtable participants can use them. Or maybe I’m just once-again wandering about in the wilderness of esoteric thought. More on Dörner’s book in a later post. But it is a “must read” for planners and managers.

All’s Well on the Planning Front — Or is it?

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The year was 1995 (or thereabouts). I attended a Forest Service sponsored meeting on Strategic Planning at Grey Towers. I carried my brand new copy of Henry Mintzberg’s Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning to the meeting, referring to Mintzberg’s death-knell for planning whenever I could. (Here is a six-page summary pdf) A few souls agreed that Strategic Planning as envisioned by the NFMA regulation ought to have died even before Mintzberg penned his classic. But most in attendance were true soldiers from the Forest Service and a few other government agencies — looking only to do better at their assigned/accepted tasks.

Now it is 2010 and the Forest Service is once-again playing the Frame Game to make sure that the status quo planning frame is not upset too much. Or so it seems to me. As always, I hope I’m wrong. The game is to rewrite the regulatory “rule” for NFMA. If he Forest Service believes it to be a “planning rule” my guess it that the game is lost before it begins. To set a stage the Forest Service is hosting a bunch of so-called collaboration meetings. First out the chute, a Science Forum — a two-day gathering of “scientists” early this week. The outcome of the meeting will likely prove up my 1995 observation-warning that the Forest Service hadn’t (and hasn’t yet) learned its science lesson:

It is folly to assume that, “Science will find the answer,” as if science alone were the key to resolving social problems. Such thinking hasn’t been helpful to medical practitioners, engineers, even scientists when challenged to help explain the cultural mess we’ve gotten ourselves into relative to sustainability.

A framing question lingers: Why is the Forest Service once-again leading with science if the intent is to reframe policy and/or management?

On the heels of the Science Forum, the Forest Service will host three two-day sessions in Washington DC, and a series of one-day sessions in the hinterlands. Not enough time for thoughtful deliberation of what social mess (or wicked problem nest) the Forest Service is in, neither how it got there, neither how it might begin to move forward.

A framing question lingers: Why is the Forest Service once-again hosting a series of meetings to begin reframing the “rule”? Isn’t there any other way? Or is tradition rearing its head once again? Some of us have advocated for Blogs (internet discussion forums) to begin discussing serious policy matters and Wikis to actually write alternative versions of policy. (See, e.g. here.) But all, so far, is to no avail. We’ll see what will happen this time relatively soon. For now, though, let’s step back again in time.

The year was 2002. I began to preach the gospel of Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Buzz Holling’s intro to the Panarchy idea), following on the heels of Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions, The Politics of Ecosystem Management, Managing the Unexpected and a few other key books. (See: Collaboration Readings for Reflective Practitioners). I continued to do so until my retirement in 2007. Nobody, other than a few who blog here, seemed to care. Nobody seemed anxious to seek a different path. At least no one in power circles seemed to care.

Inevitably each new idea that emerged was transformed into “Planning”: assess, plan, act, evaluate, plan, …. Planning swallowed up adaptive management without a hiccup. Planning swallowed up Environmental Management Systems, or almost , again without a hiccup. (my 2005-2007 EMS blog) But it was pretense. Pretend adaptive management. Pretend collaboration. Nothing remotely real about it. Still, it suited the Forest Service bureaucracy well. It could be force-fit into the rigid straitjacket of the Manual/Handbook system. Nothing would change the planning juggernaut that was launched way back in 1979.

All could be pretended to be well. If only the damn enviros would just quit suing. After all the Forest Service was/is no longer rapaciously clearcutting. Never mind the mining/drilling interests, the grazers, the commercial recreation interests, etc. Never mind the suited men behind the curtains. Why can’t the enviros just settle in, kick back and enjoy (by 2009) the stimulus money that is being thrown thither and yon, some of it for so-called ecological restoration. Note: the reason the “rule” is once-again ‘in play’ is because some damn enviros sued and got the last one thrown out. (Personal admission: I am one of those ‘damn enviros’, and was long before retiring from the Forest Service.)

A framing question lingers: Did I fall into the ‘Good Will Hunting’ trap? Here is the trap in a nutshell: Badboy Will said to his psychiatrist, in essence: “You people baffle me. You spend all your money on these fancy books, you surround yourselves with ’em — and they’re the wrong fucking books.” (Great movie, btw)

Did I read the wrong books? If so, assuming that any power brokers in the Forest Service actually read, what books ought I to have been studying and preaching from. And if ideas, visions, and paths forward are not to have come from books, what ought I to have been looking for smoking?

Just a few Sunday thoughts to ponder while awaiting the meetings, and the posts that will flow here and in the official FS nonblog.

Panelists for the Science Forum

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The series of public meetings on the planning rulemaking process starts with a science forum next Monday and Tuesday (March 29-30) in Washington D.C.  The draft agenda has five panels over the two day event.   The event will be webcast.  Here is information on the panels and panelists with their web links.  The panels are a mix of academia and Forest Service researchers, private consultants and non-governmental organizations.

Panel 1: Drivers of Ecosystems  This panel will discuss the ecological processes that function at the landscape scale across multiple ownerships and suggest ways that the planning rule might better consider these processes. 

Tom Sisk – Topic: Landscape Ecology and Land Use Patterns

Tom Sisk is Director of the Lab of Landscape Ecology and Conservation Biology at Northern Arizona Univ.  His areas of research interest and expertise include ecology, conservation biology, landscape design; land use and environmental policy; collaborative management and democratic process in land and resource management, and; biocultural conservation on the Colorado Plateau and across western North America.

Jim Vose – Topic: Watershed Science

 Jim Vose is Project Leader of the Forest Service Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in Otto, NC. His current research emphasis has been on phytoremediation of groundwater pollutants, riparian zone restoration, forest carbon, nutrient, and water cycling, modeling of biological systems, fire ecology and restoration of fire dependent ecosystems, old-growth structure and function.

Connie Millar – Topic: Climate Change and Forest Ecosystems 

 Connie Millar is a Research Paleoecologist at the Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station. Her research interest is the integration of science with policy at the ecoregional and interdisciplinary scale. She is especially interested in communicating and interpreting current research on climate change and its ecological effects in conservation and restoration contexts.

Max Moritz – Topic: Fire

 Max Moritz is a Cooperative Extension Specialist and a wildland fire expert at UC Berkeley.  Much of his research is focused on understanding the dynamics of fire regimes at relatively broad scales and using this information in ecosystem management. He employs quantitative analyses of fire history, examining the relative importance of different mechanisms that drive fire patterns on the landscape. Also he is interested in simulation of fire dynamics, using spatially-explicit models of fire spread and vegetation regrowth.

Panel 2: Panelists will discuss current science as it relates to planning, managing, monitoring, and adapting at the landscape scale and explore ways that a planning rule could address these topics.

Eric Gustafson – Topic: Projecting Impacts of Management Alternatives

  Eric Gustafson is a Forest Service Project Leader and Research Landscape Ecologist at the Institute for Applied Ecosystem Studies. His current research focuses on timber harvest simulation (HARVEST), which allows scientists to simulate timber management strategies in a spatially explicit manner through time. He uses HARVEST to study the cumulative effects of the various objectives of multiple landowners across an entire landscape.  He helped develop the LANDIS forest succession and disturbance model, and he is working with other scientists to study the interactions among human and natural disturbances to determine the risk of wildfire within large landscapes. 

Steve McNulty – Topic: Water and Climate Change at the Landscape Level

 Steve McNulty is a Forest Service Research Ecologist with the Southern Research Station. His current research includes regional to continental scale forest modeling including forest hydrology, productivity, resource economics, and wildlife and forest diversity. Emphasis is given to model interactions and response of forests to global climate change and other environmental stresses including ozone, nitrogen deposition, and atmospheric CO2.Other research includes the influence of forest management practices on forest hydrology, productivity, and spatially explicit soil erosion.

B. Ken Williams  – Topic: Adaptive Management

Ken Williams is the Chief of the USGS Cooperative Research Units.  He is an author of numerous publications on analysis and management of animal populations and conservation and on adaptive management. 

Sam Cushman – Topic: Quantitative Landscape Ecology

 

Sam Cushman is a Forest Service Research Landscape Ecologist with the Forest and Woodlands Ecosystems Program at the Rocky Mountain Research Station. His current research includes integrated landscape modeling, biological diversity, and quantitative ecology.

Panel 3:  Panelists will talk about the current science behind planning for, managing to maintain and restore, and monitoring plant and animal diversity.

Kevin McKelvey –  Topic: Quantification of Diversity

 Kevin McKelvey is a Forest Service Monitoring and Disturbance Ecology Team Leader with the Wildlife Ecology Research Unit at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.  Recent focus is on developing methods to evaluate status and trends of organisms across broad spatial and temporal domains. This includes methods to non-invasively survey fisher, marten, cougar, and Canada lynx. Because many population metrics are extremely sensitive to genotyping errors his team has developed cost effective methods to remove errors from genetic samples.

Marilyn Stoll – Topic: Endangered Species

 Marilyn Stoll is a Senior Biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service Everglades Restoration Program. She provides technical advice to DOI leadership on Endangered Species Act compliance, Fish and Water Coordination Act activities, Clean Water Act compliance and Migratory Bird Treaty Act action.  Previously she served as a supervisory biologist in FWS in Florida managing Everglades Restoration projects and in Washington (state) as the supervisory team lead for FWS on the Northwest Forest Plan (Olympic Penninsula and Washington Cascades Teams).  She has worked for USDA Forest Service NFS, International Programs, and R&D on projects like FEMAT, Spotted Owl, Fisher, and Puerto Rican parrot.

Gary Morishima – Topic: All Lands Approach to Maintaining Diversity

 Gary Morishima is CEO of his natural resources consulting firm, MORI-ko LLC, since 1969,  which specializes in providing consulting services to Indian tribes, government agencies, and private industry in areas pertaining to computer simulation of natural resource management systems, statistical analysis, forestry, and fisheries management.  He has been a technical advisor to the Quinault Nation for more than 30 years.   His areas of study and expertise include fisheries population dynamics, operations research, resource economics, numerical analysis, and mathematical statistics.  He was appointed to the Intergovernmental Advisory Council by the US Secretary of Agriculture to provide advice regarding implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan and to the Salmon and Steelhead Advisory Commission by the Secretary of Commerce.  He has served on several other commissions and task forces related to fisheries, tribal economics, and state government. 

Bill Zielinski  -Topic: Science principles for maintaining diversity

  (photo of pacific fisher)

Bill Zielinski is a Forest Service Research Ecologist at the Pacific Southwest Research Station.   He conducts research on maintaining faunal diversity in forested ecosystems of the coastal and intermountain west.  His research focuses on rare forest species such as wolverine, lynx, fisher and pine marten, and he has published many papers on the wolverines, fishers, pine marten and lynx. 

Panel 4:  Panelists will look at the relationship among social, cultural, and economic sustainability and explore how planning for national forest management should address these dimensions.

Mike Dockry – Topic: Sustainable management of natural resources

 Mike Dockry is a Forest Service Liaison to the College of Menominee Nation Sustainable Development Institute. He works with the Sustainable Development Institute to facilitate sustainable forestry research, education, policy analysis, and technical assistance, and represents five Forest Service Units, Forest Products Laboratory, North Central Research Station, North East Research Station, Northeast Area State and Private Forestry, and Region 9 of the National Forest System. 

Roger Sedjo – Topic: Ecosystem Services

 Roger Sedjo is a senior fellow and the director of Resources for the Future’s forest economics and policy program. He was on the 1999 planning rule Committee of Scientists.  His research interests include forests and global environmental problems; climate change and biodiversity; public lands issues; long-term sustainability of forests; industrial forestry and demand; timber supply modeling; international forestry; global forest trade; forest biotechnology; and land use change. He has written or edited 14 books related to forestry and natural resources.  He has co-chaired the committee of authors who wrote the chapter on biological sinks for the International Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report on climate change mitigation through forestry and other land use measures.

Randall Wilson – Topic: Socioeconomic context to management of National Forests

 

Randall Wilson is an associate professor of environmental studies at Gettysburg College.  His teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of nature and society.  His recent research has examined community-based resource management as practiced on national forests in the western US as well as studies of the impacts of sprawl in rural Pennsylvania.

Spencer Phillips – Topic: Balancing recreation carrying capacity and ecosystem health

 Spencer Phillips is Vice President for Ecology & Economics Research at the Wilderness Society.  He is a natural resource economist who has been with The Wilderness Society’s scientific team since 1992. His economic work has focused on helping people, communities and institutions realize the benefits of wildland conservation, and he oversees  TWS’ economic, ecological, landscape analysis and resource policy research.

Panel 5:  Panelists will explore how the current science discussed during the four other panels can be brought forward into the rule-writing process to produce a planning rule that is durable, widely-supported, and can be implemented on the ground in a timely way.

Clare Ryan – Topic: Rule process to incorporate the best science

 

Clare Ryan is an Associate Professor in Natural Resource Policy and Conflict Management at the University of Washington. Her research includes natural resource policy formulation and implementation, environmental conflict management, collaborative processes, water resource policy and management, urban ecology, participant roles in collaborative decision-making processes, adaptive management in the United States and Canada, and collaborative watershed planning in Washington and Oregon.

Martin Nie – Topic: Place-based planning and adaptive management

 

Martin Nie, one of the cohosts of this blog, is an associate professor of natural resource policy at University of Montana.  His research involves environmental and natural resources policy, law and administration, with a particular focus on environmental conflict and governance—the political institutions and decision making processes used to handle difficult policy problems.

Tony Cheng  – Topic: Ecologically integrated forest planning

 

Tony Cheng is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University. Cheng received his Ph.D. in Forest Resource Policy from Oregon State University.  His current interest is in local institutional arrangements and participatory decision processes that address linked forest land management and community development and well-being issues. He is particularly interested in: participatory, collaborative planning and implementation approaches; the inter-relationship between governmental, non-profit, and for-profit organizations as emergent institutional arrangements, and; the interplay between local institutional arrangements and national policy.

Chris Liggett – Topic: Tools for forest plan development

 

Chris Liggett is the Planning Director in the Forest Service Southern Region.

Mike Harper – Topic: All lands approach to planning

 Mike Harper is a member of  the National Association of County Planners, currently acting as Treasurer.  Recently he retired as the Advanced Planning Program Planning Manager of the Washoe County Department of Community Development in Reno, Nevada. He worked for Washoe County for over 29 years, holding a number of management positions: Special Projects Manager (Community Development Department), Assistant Director (Comprehensive Planning Department), Director (Development Review Department). He served in leadership positions in many of the professional organizations to which he belongs. He was President of the Nevada Chapter of the American Planning Association, Commissioner on the AICP Commission, and President of the Sierra Nevada Chapter, American Society for Public Administration. He is currently the Nevada Chapter, APA, representative to the Western Planning Resources, Inc. (and a member of the executive board); a member of the site review team pool for the Planning Accreditation Board; and Treasurer of the County Planning Division, APA.

K.I.S.S. in Rule Form, Part 2

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Now for some nitty-gritty. Here’s language that fleshes out the first task of plan revision: “(1) Decide the vegetation management and timber harvest program, including the proportion of probable methods of tree removal.”

Most of the proposed rule is taken verbatim from the NFMA itself. The biggest change from the status quo is that vegetation management decisions would be made in the forest plan revision and not revisited in a second project-level decision and associated NEPA review. The proposed rule includes a strong incentive for doing so — it eliminates the site-specific notice, comment and appeals process for vegetation management/timber harvest activities. That’s because the forest plan revision would now make these site-specific decisions.

The vegetation management and timber harvest program component of forest plans would be revised more frequently (every 1 to 3 years) because the program makes site-specific decisions. But with only one NEPA document for each plan revision, this proposal would reduce by 90% (my guesstimate) the Forest Service’s vegetation-related NEPA document production.

36 CFR 219.2: Vegetation Management and Timber Harvest Program.

(a) The vegetation management and timber harvest program (“program”) shall include all site-specific vegetation management activities, including the sale of timber, purchase of vegetation management services by stewardship or other contractual method, and fire use necessary to meet the plan’s goals and objectives for a period of one to three years. An environmental impact statement shall be prepared for the program, if required by Section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et seq. The program can be amended at any time. All amendments shall comply with NEPA procedures.

(b) A vegetation management activity included in the program shall not be subject to the notice, comment or appeal requirements of the Forest Service Decisionmaking and Appeals Reform Act, 16 U.S.C. 1612 (notes), but shall be subject to the objection procedures contained in this subpart.

(c) Program activities shall be conducted only on lands suitable for the activity.

(d) Program activities shall maintain viable populations of existing native and desired non-native species in the planning area.

(e) Program activities shall be consistent with the plan’s standards and guidelines, or the standard or guideline shall be revised pursuant to this subsection.

(f) Before stands of trees are harvested, the stand’s average annual growth shall have culminated calculated on the basis of cubic measurement or other method at the discretion of the responsible official. Stands can be thinned before growth has culminated. Salvage or sanitation harvesting of timber stands that are substantially damaged by fire, windthrow or other catastrophe, or that are in imminent danger from insect or disease attack, can be harvested before growth has culminated.

(g) Timber will not be harvested where soil, slope, or other watershed conditions will be irreversibly damaged.

(h) Timber will not be harvested where adequate restocking within five years is not assured.

(i) Timber will not be harvested where water conditions or fish habitat are likely to be seriously and adversely affected by detrimental changes in water temperatures, blockages of water courses, or deposits of sediments.

(j) The timber harvest system will be selected based upon meeting the plan’s goals and objectives and not primarily upon the greatest dollar return or the greatest unit of output of timber.

(k) Timber harvest designed to regenerate an even-aged stand of timber will be used only where:

(1) For clearcutting it is the optimum method to meet the plan’s goals and objectives;

(2) For other even-aged methods it is appropriate to meet the plan’s goals and objectives;

(3) The harvest activity is included in the program and has been assessed pursuant to this subpart;

(4) Cut blocks, patches, or strips are shaped and blended to the extent practicable with the natural terrain;

(5) The area to be cut in one harvest operation (e.g., one cut block) does not exceed the maximum size limit established by the land management plan. If the plan has no maximum size limits, even-aged harvest cannot proceed until the plan is revised to include maximum size limits. Maximum size limits may be exceeded after public notice and review by the responsible Forest Service officer one level above the Forest Service officer who normally would approve the harvest activity. Maximum size limits shall not apply to the size of areas harvested as a result of natural catastrophic conditions such as fire, insect and disease attack, or windstorm; and,

(6) The even-aged harvest protects soil, watershed, fish, wildlife, recreation, and esthetic resources, and assures the regeneration of trees.

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

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Our task is to write regulations required by NFMA. Having proposed a framework in previous posts (K.I.S.S. and K.I.S.S. II), it’s time to put rubber to the road. Here’s the introductory framework. What have I missed?

36 CFR 219.1: Purpose and principles.

(a) The rules in this subpart set forth the process for revising land management plans for units of the National Forest System as required by the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, as amended. Land management plans shall be revised when conditions in a unit have significantly changed, but no less frequently than every fifteen years.

(b) A land management plan revision shall:

(1) Decide the vegetation management and timber harvest sale program and the proportion of probable methods of tree removal timber harvest (Sec. __);

(2) Include an assessment of new information and changed circumstances since adoption of the previous land management plan or revision thereof (Sec. __);

(3) Be prepared by an interdisciplinary team (Sec. __);

(4) Be based upon inventories appropriate to inform the decisions made by the plan revision (Sec. __);

(5) Involve the public in its promulgation (Sec. __);

(6) Provide for diversity of plant and animal communities and preserve the diversity of tree species (Sec. __);

(7) Ensure that, subject to valid existing rights, all outstanding and future permits, contracts, cooperative agreements, and other instruments for occupancy and use of affected lands are consistent with the revised plan (Sec. __); and,

(78) Review previous decisions to classify lands as suited or not suited for timber production if the prior classification decision is older than ten years (Sec. __).

Forest Planning Without Knowing the Mission

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The definition of multiple-use management provides no guarantees.

In 1972 two brothers with cattle grazing permits within the Prescott National Forest in Arizona had a gripe with the Forest Service.   One brother’s permit had been reduced from 517 to 250 head, and the next year the other brother’s permit was reduced from 158 to 50.  The numbers had been reduced to protect the watershed from overgrazing, but Thomas and David Perkins questioned if these drastic reductions constituted a revocation of their grazing permit.  So they took the Forest Service to court. In 1977, the District Court sided with the Forest Service, but the brothers appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

When the case made it the appeals court, the Perkins’ attorney tried a new argument.  They asserted that the 1960 Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act (MUSYA) established a mandate to allow multiple-uses such as livestock grazing.   MUSYA is perhaps the only statement from Congress about the purpose of managing National Forests and Grasslands.  The Organic Act established timber and water flows as dominant uses, and the agency was built on Gifford Pinchot’s philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the long run, but it wasn’t until the MUSYA that the idea of multiple-use was codified.  The MUSYA said that forests were to be managed for recreation, range, timber, watershed, wildlife and fish, in addition to minerals and wilderness.  Renewable resources were to be managed to best meet the needs of the American people, without impairing the productivity of the land, and maintained at a high level in perpetuity.

The appeals court rejected the Perkins’ argument that the MUSYA established a mandate for use.   The Court wrote:

These sections of MUSYA contain the most general clauses and phrases. For example, the agency is “directed” in section 529 to administer the national forests “for multiple use and sustained yield of the several products and services obtained therefrom,” with “due consideration (to) be given to the relative values of the various resources in particular areas.” This language, partially defined in section 531 in such terms as “that (which) will best meet the needs of the American people” and “making the most judicious use of the land”, can hardly be considered concrete limits upon agency discretion. Rather, it is language which “breathe(s) discretion at every pore.”  What appellants really seem to be saying when they rely on the multiple-use legislation is that they do not agree with the Secretary on how best to administer the forest land on which their cattle graze. While this disagreement is understandable, the courts are not at liberty to break the tie by choosing one theory of range management as superior to another.”

The Perkins brothers’ case became one of the leading cases in the Ninth Circuit about the judicial standard of review.  Courts would limit their review to determining whether factual findings as to range conditions and carrying capacity are arbitrary and capricious.  The review was so narrow that very few challenges to multiple use decisions could meet it, semantically or practically. Plaintiffs could satisfy their burden of proof only by demonstrating that there was “virtually no evidence in the record to support the agency’s methodology in gathering and evaluating the data.”  A court would not choose among competing expert views.  The case also meant that MUSYA placed no real limits on the Forest Service, and that it was up to the agency to interpret the principles.

The discretion in MUSYA carried over into the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), which used MUSYA as a primary objective of Forest Planning.  Another Ninth Circuit decision observed that forest planning is inherently discretionary given NFMA’s broad authorizing language.  When the Prescott Forest Plan was completed, the Ninth Circuit refused to second guess the findings about suitable grazing lands.

Since MUSYA and NFMA were broadly discretionary,  Congress essentially left the work to the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service to define a mission.  In the 1990s, the Forest Service developed its present mission statement: to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.   Multiple-use management is relegated to the fine print.

Then, regulations issued by the Department became important in shaping the mission.  In the preamble to the 2001 roadless rule (p. 3252), the Perkins brothers case was used to explain that the Secretary’s discretion under MUSYA and NFMA allowed roadless areas.   Essentially, the preamble explained that the roadless rule itself was an NFMA rule.

In the  2000 planning rule,  the Secretary translated multiple-use management into the concept of sustainability.   The rule said that the first priority is to maintain or restore ecological sustainability and that it is essential that today’s uses do not impair the functioning of ecological processes.  In an appendix to the 1999 Committee of Scientist report for that rule, one of the scientists, Roger Sedjo, said this was a change to the Forest Service mission.  He noted that sustainability of a forest is fundamentally different than the sustainable production of multiple outputs.  Sedjo later wrote that the search for a new mission is being frustrated by a lack of clear consensus.

The 2005/2008 planning rule didn’t directly address this concern.  It acknowledged the MUSYA, saying ecological, economic and social sustainability were all equal, but focused instead on the mechanics of planning for a “desired condition.”  The weakness of this approach was that the rule never required planning teams to identify why those conditions were desired.   In practice, many planning teams using this rule overcame this weakness through a collaborative exploration of what each forest was about, through identification of the “roles and contributions” and the “niche” of each forest.  But these statements were not to be considered official “plan components” and would not be binding.  The plan had to focus on desired conditions, and all other plan components needed to be linked to those conditions.  But participants typically didn’t want to talk about desired conditions, they wanted to talk about uses.

Now we have begun work on a new planning rule.  The Federal Register notice discusses concerns like restoration, ecosystem resilience, and forest health.  The split in public opinion is again showing up in the formal scoping comments.  If this rule follows the pattern, it may be about more than planning – it may be about the Forest Service.