Planning

Forest Plan Litigation – early 2025 update

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FOREST PLANS

There are not a lot of lawsuits involving forest plans, but oddly there has been news about three of them (and maybe four) in the last couple of months.  I’ve separated those out for this summary, partly because I thought the first one was worth covering at length for any planning nerds left out there.

Court decision in San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council v. Dallas (D. Colorado)

(Thanks to Susan Jane Brown for filling in this gap in my newsfeed.)

On December 13, the district court upheld the Rio Grande’s revised forest plan against challenges based on its treatment of the Canada lynx and the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly (UFB).  Both species are federally listed as threatened under the ESA, but the claims were related to compliance with NFMA and NEPA.

Plaintiffs argued that the revised plan did not comply with the requirement of the Planning Rule for the UFB that plan components “provide the ecological conditions necessary to: contribute to the recovery of federally listed threatened and endangered species …” 36 C.F.R § 219.9(b)(1).  Key ecological conditions necessary for the UFB are large patches of snow willow located above 12,000 feet, and alleged threats to the UFB are from illegal collection, recreation, livestock grazing, and climate change.  Plaintiffs sought specific protection from these threats for colony sites and potential recovery areas.  The court conducted a granular review of the relevant forest plan components (and so will I).

It focused first on species-specific plan components that had been included in the draft plan, but not in the final plan, and plaintiffs believed this weakened the protection for these species beyond what NFMA requires.  The court found that these three plan components “may have been condensed into other components” in the final plan.  The court held, “Petitioners do not explain why condensing these three components into other components or removing them for redundancy was ‘a clear error of judgment’ sufficient to overcome the presumption of validity attaching to the agency’s action.

The court characterized a second argument as, “essentially that the final plan should have been identical to the draft plan because “neither the status review or Biological Assessment contain any different information than what was before the agency when it published the [draft] EIS.”  The court could find no “record evidence suggesting the eliminated species-specific components would have provided for butterfly recovery in a way that the remaining ecological plan components would not.”

The court then found that the discussion of the effects of other plan components (not specific to these species) showed they would meet the needs of these species, focusing on four desired conditions and one guideline.  The court found that the desired condition of “[m]aintain[ing] or improv[ing] habitat conditions that contribute to either stability or recovery” met the Planning Rule requirement to be “specific.”  The court added, “It certainly seems possible to measure whether the snow willow population in that area is ‘maintaining or improving,'” and that plaintiffs, “do not, however, provide any authority indicating what level of detail is required; nor was the Court able to locate caselaw defining that requirement.”

The court also found that two desired conditions for different “species of conservation concern” need not be disregarded because they may benefit the UFB even though they are not directed at that species.  Plaintiffs argued that a desired condition for connectivity was insufficient, to which the court responded that, “Petitioners point to no authority suggesting that desired conditions must be self-executing, or that each component must simultaneously address all possible threats to a given species.

With regard to the one guideline, the court discussed the programmatic nature of forest plans, and held:

“Petitioners do not provide any authority to support their assertion that the guideline insufficiently constrains the agency’s future management actions. They seem to believe that the 2020 Plan must be an exhaustive enumeration of all requirements for future site-specific actions….  The Court is thus unpersuaded by Petitioners’ request to, in effect, superimpose the requirements for approving site-specific projects onto its review of the more general Forest Plan at issue here.”

Finally, with regard to the adequacy of the ecosystem components leading to no need for species-specific plan components, “the Court finds the USFS exercised its prerogative to determine whether fine-filter components were necessary to provide for the key ecological conditions to contribute to the recovery of the UFB.”

As for NEPA, the court found that analyzing the effects of the winter motorized recreation plan components on lynx without first updating the 2018 lynx map for changes in snow compaction levels was not arbitrary or capricious.  While the court observed that plaintiff’s argument seemed reasonable, it said they didn’t do enough to overcome the Forest Service position that there were “no significant changes in the compaction routes and noted that it was committed to ‘remapping of compaction and the overlap with associated LAUs . . . as soon as practical.’”  The court held, “it is clear from the record that the USFS considered and applied what it considered to be the best available science…” and plaintiff’s argument was “more of a methodological quibble.”  For the UFB, the court referred to its analysis for the NFMA claim as determinative of the NEPA claim and found that “the analysis of the UFB” was adequate under NEPA.

Finally, plaintiffs claimed that the Forest should have considered an alternative that included two Special Interest Areas.  The court rejected an argument by the Forest Service that they could reject such an alternative because that would keep them from providing other multiple-uses.  However, the court then decided that these alternatives were not “significantly distinguishable from alternatives already considered.”  With regard to one of the areas, the court faulted plaintiffs for not showing that an existing alternative “would result in significantly different regulatory requirements.”  For the other area, the court found that the proposed Special Interest Area would either provide protection for lynx that already existed in the no-action alternative or if not, “would not have promoted the objectives of balancing competing interests in the plan area.”  Therefore, it was properly eliminated from detailed study as an alternative.

For those looking for insights into how the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright could affect the deference that courts will give to federal land management agencies, that opinion was not briefed in this case, but the district court explained in a footnote: “But this Court has likewise found no basis to conclude it affects the analysis here, which—though it implicates the APA—does not involve any disputed statutory construction.”  However, with regard to the analysis of effects on wildlife species, “where that analysis ‘requires a high degree of technical expertise,’ the Court properly ‘defer[s] to the informed discretion of the responsible agency.’”  Overall, “a presumption of validity attaches to agency action.”

(For what it’s worth, I found a number of flaws in the court’s reasoning that I think could be worth an appeal, but I understand plaintiffs are not going to do that.)

Government drops its appeal in Swan View Coalition v. Haaland (9th Cir.)

On February 20, the circuit court dismissed this case against the Flathead National Forest after the defendants opted not to appeal a lower court’s determination that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act because it failed to adequately consider the effects on grizzly bears and bull trout of closed roads and unauthorized use of roads when it adopted its revised forest plan (discussed here).  Here is the order.

Court decision in Helena Hunters and Anglers Association v. Moore (9th Circuit)

On February 25, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court decision (discussed here) to uphold the ESA consultation on the revised forest plan for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.  The circuit court addressed only the question of how the Fish and Wildlife Service must analyze the “removal” of ten standards for big game that were in the original plan and also protected grizzly bears.  It held:

“FWS was not required to spell out, separately and specifically, all changes between the 1986 Plan and the 2021 Plan and their incremental effects on grizzly bears. Instead, the text of the ESA and its implementing regulations requires a more wholistic approach that was satisfied here…  The analysis by FWS therefore captured the total net effect of implementing the entire forest plan.”

New lawsuit:  Native Ecosystems Council v. Webber (D. Montana)

On February 18, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council and Council on Fish and Wildlife sued the Forest Service over its approval of the Wood Duck Project on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.  It calls for 42 acres of clearcutting, 936 acres of additional commercial logging, and 263 acres of other logging in an area of widespread tree mortality.  Plaintiffs state that 195 acres is in old growth, and the area is important to grizzly bears and big game, and they allege violations of NEPA and NFMA.  According the plaintiffs, “The lawsuit raises challenges against the project, and also against the Forest Service’s failure to implement strong protections for public land elk habitat, grizzly bear travel corridors, and old growth forest across the Helena – Lewis and Clark National Forest.”  That sounds like they could also be initiating a lawsuit against the revised forest plan.  (I have not seen the complaint.)

 

2025 Forest Plan Revision Schedule – (A new quarter-century of forest planning?)

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Ignoring for the moment that planning for anything in government right now is impossible, I’ve updated the spreadsheet that the Forest Service used to maintain to let everyone know the status of forest planning across the country.  (Maybe they still have one available internally, but it’s no longer on the website.)  Any way, here it is:  2025 planning status  

This is based on my review of the websites provided in prior years by the Forest Service (some of which were not valid, so I found another).  Feel free to correct anything.

Briefly, it shows 14 forest plans “in revision,” 30 plans that have never been revised, 63 plans that were revised under the 1982 regulations, and 18 revised under the 2012 Planning Rule.  78 plans are currently beyond the 15-year deadline in NFMA for being revised.

One thing that has surprised me a bit is the sparse media coverage of planning, but maybe that’s just because not much has been going on.  Here’s a recent sample.

A couple of plan amendment stories:

This site provides information on BLM planning from June 2024.  (Thanks, BLM!)

 

Western Solar Energy Plan update

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It’s past time for a follow-up to Sharon’s post on the BLM’s western solar plan.  The final plan was released at the end of August.   The BLM says it received 162 formal protests during that 30-day protest period that are being reviewed (but apparently won’t release the names of the parties, unlike the Forest Service objection process).

A number of conservation groups have protested the failure to protect the integrity of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. Lynn County, Nevada, just southeast of Reno, is concerned the proposed plan will “result in fiscal impacts as it will be left to deal with speculative solar applications in inappropriate areas.”  Apparently, the Western Congressional Caucus doesn’t like it because it “risks taking lands offline for purposes other than solar use, limiting the potential for mining, grazing and public access.”  And, of course, enviros are unhappy, too.

According to the BLM,

“It would make over 31 million acres of public lands across 11 western states available for potential solar development, driving development closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands and avoiding protected lands, sensitive cultural resources and important wildlife habitat.

Steering project proposals away from areas where they may conflict with other resources or uses will help ensure responsible development, speed the permitting process, and provide greater predictability to the solar energy industry.”

That sounds like good planning.  However, a scientist says that, instead, “It makes available to solar areas that are ecologically sensitive, areas that include sensitive species. It stands to significantly impact and alter ecosystems across the Great Basin and Mojave Desert.”  The federally threatened desert tortoise is a particular concern.

The Center for Biological Diversity would have opted for an alternative that prioritized already developed or degraded areas on public lands and rooftop solar on structures.  There seems to be some debate about whether it is necessary to essentially plow up the desert in order to install solar facilities.  But things may be different in Wyoming, where local conservationists see this as additional protection for big game habitat.

And then there’s some “sensitive cultural resources” that got missed.

There are also questions about how responsive the BLM will be to site-specific concerns that arise when more information is available for a proposed project.  We have an early example of that with the Rough Hat Clark Solar Project in Nevada.  According to E & E news, “The Bureau of Land Management is paving the way for a major solar power project to be built in a valley west of Las Vegas despite the objections of environmental groups that have petitioned the agency to protect the region.”

This is obviously a very large-scale planning effort, where it is not possible to identify more localized issues (though it seems like there was local knowledge that was provided by the public that might have been incorporated). The total acreage “available” is admittedly much greater than what is needed, so presumably further “unavailability” is expected and will be provided as future projects are considered.  As a Wyoming representative of the Wilderness Society put it, “The implementation is going to matter.”  A final decision is expected by the end of the year.

“Conserving and Restoring Terrestrial Wildlife Habitat Connectivity and Corridors in the United States”

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Center for Large Landscape Conservation

 

One of the hills I died on near the end of my Forest Service career was an attempt to get national forest planning to coordinate with future plans for adjacent ownerships to provide for wildlife habitat connectivity among them, including local government planning and land trust conservation easements.  I thought the Forest Service could play a leadership role in coordinating this.  The response I got was that anything to do with private lands was a “third rail” that they didn’t want to go near.  This sounds different.

On October 21, a Department of Agriculture memo announced “a Department-wide effort to support connectivity of wildlife habitat on working landscapes through the management of National Forests and voluntary conservation assistance on private agricultural lands.”  Specifically, a new Secretary’s Memorandum directs USDA agencies to:

  • Incorporate consideration of terrestrial wildlife habitat connectivity and corridors into relevant planning processes, programs, and assessments.
  • Improve the coordination, compatibility, and delivery of USDA planning processes and programs to improve outcomes for terrestrial wildlife connectivity.
  • Increase inter-jurisdictional coordination with states, tribes and other federal departments.
  • Coordinate within USDA to implement the actions outlined in this memo, with the goal of improved delivery of USDA programs and outcomes for terrestrial connectivity.

Needless to say, I like the recognition in the first bullet that planning, specifically recognized later to include “FS land management planning,” is important to a desired outcome that requires designing bridges connecting multiple owners; otherwise, the result may be bridges to nowhere or with missing spans.

The memo recognizes that “A recent revolution in animal tracking, remote sensing, and computational analysis is improving the prioritization of conservation and restoration actions.”  It also notes, “The agency’s 2012 planning rule, which governs land management planning across these lands, included requirements for evaluating, maintaining, or restoring connectivity” (my contribution to posterity).  The directive includes a specific proposal related to forest planning:

  • Improving planning through Forest Service analytic tools, including a Climate Risk Viewer that identifies climate change-driven risks to key resources, such as corridors and connectivity, as well as migration corridor tool development among the National Forest System, Research Stations, and partners.

Because “Federal lands often serve as anchor points for wildlife, but most of the country’s wildlife reside on private lands,” much of the emphasis may be on supporting private land conservation.  However, “this collaboration will build on the crucial connection between public lands and the private lands around them.”  (Or at least to the extent that a Secretary’s memo can accomplish anything.)

Old Growth Amendment – When can you cut down large/old trees?

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There are some other recent threads here that have been discussing this question, and I thought it might be helpful to post the actual language from the draft of the amendment (Table 1) that would answer this question.  It establishes criteria at the plan level that must be met by projects proposed in forests identified as old growth, as well as a guideline for removing “old trees” in other areas.   I have to say my overall impression is that there are enough exceptions that it is hard to believe the Forest Service couldn’t find one that would allow removal of large/old trees in any project it proposes.  On the other hand, this does put the burden on the Forest Service to demonstrate in the project record that the project would meet the exception, e.g. that it would in fact “reduce hazardous fuels.”  (But any wood is a “fuel,” so what makes it “hazardous?”)

I think Standard 3 is interesting.  If projects in old growth forests can not be for commercial timber production, I assume that these forests must then be classified as unsuitable for timber production?

An interesting omission:  “resilience to climate change,” which is what the 2012 Planning Rule is all about.

I’ve added a few italics to help frame the structure (and I see that the copying messed up the numbering of the criteria ….).

(The comment period closes around September 21.)

 

Standard 2.a

Where conditions meet the definitions and associated criteria

of old-growth forest, vegetation management may only be for

the purpose of proactive stewardship. For the purposes of this

standard, the term “vegetation management” includes – but is

not limited to – prescribed fire, timber harvest, and other

mechanical/non-mechanical treatments used to achieve

specific silviculture or other management objectives (e.g.

hazardous fuel reduction, wildlife habitat improvement). For

the purposes of this standard, the term “proactive stewardship”

refers to vegetation management that promotes the quality,

composition, structure, pattern, or ecological processes

necessary for old-growth forests to be resilient and adaptable

to stressors and likely future environments. Proactive

stewardship in old-growth forests shall promote one or more of

the following:

  1. reduction of hazardous fuels to reduce the risk of loss

of old-growth forests to uncharacteristic wildfire, and to

facilitate the return of appropriate fire disturbance

regimes and conditions;

  1. resilience to insect and disease outbreaks that would

result in the loss of old-growth conditions;

1. ecological conditions for at-risk species associated

with old-growth forest, including conditions needed for

the recovery of threatened and endangered species;

  1. amount, density, distribution and species composition

of old trees, downed logs, and standing snags

appropriate for the forest ecosystem type;

  1. vertical and horizontal distribution of old-growth

structures, including canopy structure and composition;

  1. patch size characteristics, percentage or proportion of

forest interior, and connectivity;

1. types, frequencies, severities, patch sizes, extent, and

spatial patterns of disturbances;

1. successional pathways and stand development;

  1. connectivity and the ability of old-growth obligate

species to move through the area and cross into

adjacent areas;

  1. culturally significant species or values, to include key

understory species;

  1. species diversity, and presence and abundance of rare

or unique habitat features associated with old-growth

forests; or

1. other key characteristics of ecological integrity

associated with old-growth forests.

 

Standard 2.b

 The cutting or removal of trees in old-growth forest for

purposes other than proactive stewardship is permitted when

(1) incidental to the implementation of a management activity

not otherwise prohibited by the plan, and (2) the area – as

defined at an ecologically appropriate scale – continues to

meet the definition and associated criteria for old-growth forest

after the incidental tree cutting or removal.

 

Standard 2.c

 Deviation from Standard 2.a and 2.b may only be allowed if

the responsible official determines that vegetation

management actions or incidental tree-cutting or removal are

necessary for the following reasons and includes the rationale

in a decision document or supporting documentation:

  1. In cases where this standard would preclude

achievement of wildfire risk management objectives

within municipal watersheds or the wildland-urban

interface (WUI) as defined in Section 101 of the

Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 (16 USC

6511) and its application by the local planning unit, or

would prevent protection of critical infrastructure from

wildfire;

  1. to protect public health and safety;

1. to comply with other statutes or regulations, valid

existing rights for mineral and energy resources, or

authorizations of occupancy and use made prior to

the old-growth amendment decision;

  1. for culturally significant uses as informed by tribes or

for de minimis use for local community purposes;

  1. in areas designated for research purposes, such as

experimental forests or research natural areas; or

  1. in cases where it is determined – based on best

available science, which includes Indigenous

Knowledge – that the direction in this standard is not

relevant or beneficial to a particular species or forest

ecosystem type.

 

Standard 3

Proactive stewardship in old-growth forests shall not be for the

purpose of timber production as defined in 36 CFR 219.19.

 

Guideline 3

 

To preserve the cultural and historical value of old trees

occurring outside of old-growth forests, vegetation

management projects should retain and promote the

conservation and survivability of old trees that are rare when

compared to nearby forested conditions that are of a

noticeable younger age class or unique in their ability to

persist in the current or future environment, and are not

detracting from desired species composition or ecological

processes.

Recent planning news – August 1, 2024

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Since the courts were kind of quiet during July, here’s some things that have been going on with forest/BLM plans recently.  The last time I did this, I was able to assemble what I thought was a fairly complete summary of the status of national forest planning.  It’s now been long enough since the Forest Service has provided this information that I’m not confident that I’ve picked up information about every unit that is revising its plan (it now looks like this would require a visit to each national forest’s website).  But here’s some stories I’ve seen lately (hopefully in order of those closest to being done first).

Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest revision

May 11:  The Nez Perce-Clearwater  wrapped up a three-day virtual meeting with parties who filed objections or comments on the proposed final land management plan.

Gila National Forest revision

July 30:  The Forest Service initiated the 60-day objection period for the final EIS and draft record of decision for the Gila National Forest revised land management plan, as well as the Southwestern Regional Forester’s Species of Conservation Concern list for the Gila.

Manti-LaSal National Forest revision

June 5:   The Acting Forest Planner for Manti-La-Sal  discussed the completed draft for the revised forest plan with the Emery County Public Lands Committee .  The DEIS comment period is now closed.

Black Hills National Forest revision

June 12:  After completing its assessment in December, the Black Hills has pushed back publication of the notice of intent to begin developing the plan to fall or early winter, according to a consultant for the county commissioners.

Blue Mountains national forests revisions

April:  The Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests hosted a series of public meetings  for the public to submit feedback about the Forest Plan Revision Draft Assessment documents.

Tongas National Forest revision

July 24:  The Tongass has released a draft inventory for potential wilderness recommendations as part of its assessment process for the revised plan, with comments due September 14.

Bridger-Teton National Forest revision

May 30:  The Bridger-Teton National Forest has published a notice of its intent to prepare an assessment and initiate the land management plan revision process in the Federal Register. There is no formal comment period at this time.

Superior National Forest Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness plan amendment

May 17:  The comment period for scoping  to “update and modernize” the 30-year old forest plan direction for the BWCAW has ended.

BLM Gunnison sage-grouse amendment

July 3:  The BLM has released a Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment and Final Environmental Impact Statement that applies to the management of habitat for eight Gunnison sage-grouse populations on BLM-managed public lands across southwest Colorado and southeast Utah following its listing as a threatened species under the ESA in 2104.  Protests must be received by August 5.

BLM greater sage-grouse amendments

June 13:  The Draft Resource Management Plan Amendments (RMPA) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Greater Sage-Grouse Rangewide Planning were made available for public review, and the 90-day public comment period has ended. 

 

 

 

 

 

Featured lawsuit – Flathead National Forest plan revision (and the effect of no Chevron judicial deference)

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Court decision in Swan View Coalition v. Haaland (D. Montana)

On June 28, the district judge adopted the magistrate judge’s findings that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act because it failed to adequately consider the effects on grizzly bears and bull trout of closed roads and unauthorized use of roads when it adopted its revised forest plan (discussed in depth here).  This article has a link to the court order, which remands the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion, but does not disturb the forest plan, or enjoin any projects.

This is the second time the Forest Service has lost this case, and I thought it might be interesting to explore this example of the role the courts have in considering scientific issues related to land management, and whether such judicial review looks different with Chevron deference to agency expertise no longer the law.  The scientific question in this case concerns the effects of “closed” roads on grizzly bears and bull trout – more specifically the difference between the effects of roads closed by obliteration and restoration (as required by the prior forest plan) and roads closed by signs and barriers, without removing culverts (as required by the revised forest plan, and referred to as “impassable” roads).  There are documented violations of the latter kinds of closures, and the agencies agree that they are less than 100% effective.  However, the Fish and Wildlife Service declined to consider the effects of these closed roads or their use on the listed species in its biological opinion.

This court found held that the FWS violated the ESA because the agency “offered an explanation for its decision to exclude impassable roads from (total road density) that runs counter to the evidence before the agency.”  With regard to grizzly bears, the agency “failed to address the exclusion of unauthorized motorized use from road density calculations and, to the extent the agency did address this issue, failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation regarding its decision.” Regarding bull trout, the court ruled that FWS violated the ESA because the agency “failed to address its decision to abandon the culvert removal requirement with respect to impassable roads.”

This court largely followed the reasoning in a prior case regarding deference to the agencies (referring to that prior opinion):  “The Court explained that, while it would defer to the agencies’ expertise on how to account for unauthorized motorized access going forward, ‘the agencies must actually exercise that expertise for their decision to stand.’ Id. at 1138. In summary, ‘[c]laiming a total inability to ascertain, or even estimate, effects of unauthorized motorized use on OMRD, TMRD, and Core—and, by extension, the effects on grizzly bears—despite the evidence in the record . . . does not suffice.’”

Courts can tell from the administrative record whether an agency actually considered the scientific facts in the record, and the agency will be found arbitrary if it did not.  This is an application of the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, not an interpretation of a subject matter statute.  Such cases wouldn’t have invoked Chevron deference in the past, and so nothing should change.

We might perceive a little wiggle room in the question of a “satisfactory” explanation of how the facts were considered.  The court walks through this question on pp. 29-33, where it refers to “logic” and whether the facts in the record support the statements made by the agencies.  It concludes that the explanation in this case “runs counter to the evidence before the agency.”  This still looks like an APA record review rather than one involving interpretations of law or fact that could have raised questions about Chevron deference.  I don’t see evidence that the judge is usurping agency expertise.

New Flathead National Forest Supervisor interview

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Anthony Botello took the job as forest supervisor on the Flathead at the beginning of the year, and provided this extended interview to the Missoulian.  This may be paywalled, but I’ve pulled out a few quotes related to things I tend to talk about.

Staffing of NEPA specialists is especially hard:

We have staffing challenges all across our workforce, but the one that pops to mind right now — because much of what we do revolves around very smart people who lead our ID (interdisciplinary) teams through our NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) process, and those are folks that are in high demand and we have very limited numbers of them that are interested in our jobs.

For example, we have three interdisciplinary teams on this forest that do the work all across the forest, and we plan projects that then we go and implement. It could be timber, it could be fuels reduction, recreation. And we need team leaders — we call them environmental coordinators or team leaders — to lead those teams to get us through that legal NEPA process. And we’re struggling, not just this forest but the forest I came from was struggling.

Condition-based NEPA:

Some projects have a very focused purpose and need, they’re very focused in what we’re wanting to do, and so we have more of the traditional, our specialists go out there and monitor and look at conditions and then use that for our analysis to determine.

And then we have some places where we want to look at bigger landscapes, we want to look at more adaptive management, so we pull into this idea of, let’s make conceptual decisions and then when we go to implement we’ll do more of the site-specific look at things.

A new forest plan is a good thing:

We’ve got really good strong language in our forest plan. The forest plan that we have here is a relatively new plan. In my career I’ve worked on forests with 20-, 30-year-old forest plans. The Payette had a relatively new plan when I was there, the Wallowa-Whitman had a pretty old plan.

And this one, thankfully, has been redone as of ’18. In that, we worked very closely with some of our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks partners to come up with the standards that are in there.

And our forest plan — through public involvement, through NEPA, through line officer decision — withstood all of those thresholds, which was good. And we’re implementing the forest plan. The forest plan does have some pretty good, strong, prescriptive language about all those things — about roads, about (recreation) sites, about grizzly habitat — it’s a very contemporary plan when it comes to that.

Litigation and policy decisions:

The role of a line officer is not to interpret any kind of court ruling, decision, etc. We wait for our agency to promulgate a rule or a regulation.

(Follow-up question)

Just to make sure I understand: In a situation where the forest plan or a project loses in court in a certain issue, any sort of reaction to that is not going to come from you as the forest supervisor, it’s going to come from higher-up in the agency with either a new rule or amendment to a plan? And then when that comes down, you simply keep following the plan or the rule? 

Kind of, yeah. Litigation, obviously, can affect the way we manage. But there’s a whole bunch of steps between that and changing our forest plan. We have a legal staff that advises us on that, and until that happens we’re managing the way our forest plan has guided us to manage.

There’s a whole bunch of steps that would happen between some theoretical court case and us changing our management, and we’ll do that when it goes through the process that it needs to go through before it changes something that we’ve already adopted.

Northwest Forest Plan Amendment- FACA Committee Discussion Draft Plan of Components

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Susan Jane Brown was kind enough to provide links to the draft plan components and draft recommendations. She pointed out, importantly (!) that “THESE ARE DRAFT AND UNDER ACTIVE DISCUSSION AND NEGOTIATION. The USFS hasn’t made any decisions yet, nor has the FAC reached consensus.” Here’s a link to their meeting archive page, and here’s one to the recommendations.

As with many things in forest planning there are many words here,  the Tribal recommendations are too long to post, 15 pages and change.

So I hope readers will take a look and give us your thoughts on any section. Maybe our thoughts will help inform the FACA committee and the Forest Service? I’d like it if they would not use “resiliency” and always use “resilience” but that’s just me.

Here are plan components for those not familiar with the planning process:

Here are the different sections for you to look at.

Here’s a section some might be interested in (I picked it because it is relatively short):

Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty: Should the Forest Service and BLM Try This?

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I’m not following the Northwest Forest Plan update.. fortunately many members of the TSW community are tracking it and hopefully will provide us with updates. But when I read this paper (open access), it made so much sense to me that I thought it was worth sharing. It’s about how the Bureau of Reclamation, one of the Forest Service’s many cousin DOI agencies, deals with the complex world of uncertain futures, climate change being one of many. Not only that, but even if we could project future microclimates accurately (which we can’t), we don’t know how climate changes will cause different interactions with hydrology, temperature, plants, animals, the rhizosphere, insects, diseases, etc. So there are different ways of planning based on acknowledging uncertainties. And yet at some point, the modeling and scenario-building with acknowledged uncertainties could get so complex that no single person could possible understand it. And how can the public effectively be involved in that case?

The Forest Service is legally required via NFMA to do long-range planning (although the RPA Program seems to have fallen by the wayside). The question is “what is the variety with which agencies approach the use of climate as well as other uncertainties in decision-making?” Are they consistent (even within a department)? Should they be? Are some approaches better than others? Based on what criteria?

I kind of like this approach; at least it might be worth a try in a pilot. Or perhaps the Northwest Forest Plan revision?

Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty
A focus on vulnerability, robustness, and adaptation necessitates an expansion of analytical methods beyond those traditionally used in long-term water resources planning. Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) is a subfield of decision science that focuses on developing and applying the frameworks, tools and techniques necessary to produce actionable information while appropriately accounting for deep uncertainty (Marchau et al. 2019). Models have long been used to answer “what-if” questions (Bankes et al. 2013) and have been widely adopted in many planning contexts, including in the Colorado River Basin. DMDU builds on this model-informed decision making by helping planners strategically design the “what ifs” and offering new quantitative tools to drive models and analyze output. Since the early 2000s, a dedicated and rapidly growing community of researchers and practitioners forming the Society for DMDU (http://www.deepuncertainty.org) has been applying and refining DMDU methods in a wide range of domains including national security (Dixon et al. 2008), energy planning (Toman et al. 2008), and water resources management (Lempert and Groves 2010; Means et al. 2010; Basdekas 2014; Raucher and Raucher 2015; Groves et al. 2019).

DMDU techniques share a common underlying philosophy of designing iterative planning processes and analyses to identify actions that reduce a system’s vulnerability to uncertain future conditions. Robust Decision Making (RDM) (Lempert 2002) is described here as an example because Reclamation has used components of it in the past and is continuing to explore and develop related methods.

RDM is designed to facilitate a “deliberation with analysis” process through which parties can systematically integrate a large amount of information and wide-ranging positions about possible future conditions, important performance objectives, and appropriate actions to address challenges. The ultimate goals of RDM are to develop shared understanding of a system and identify a broadly acceptable plan or policy that is robust to a range of futures. The steps of RDM are depicted in Figure 3 and summarized below. Note that although the steps are numbered here and described in order, in practice the relationships between the components of RDM are flexible.

In Step 1, stakeholders define key components of the analysis: performance objectives and criteria; the sets of possible actions, or strategies, that could be undertaken in pursuit of the objectives; ranges of values for uncertain future conditions; and a model that simulates relationships between objectives, actions, and uncertainties. In Step 2, a proposed strategy is tested in a wide range of future conditions to generate a thorough representation of performance variability. In Step 3, the performance information is analyzed with statistical data mining techniques that seek to “discover” decision-relevant scenarios, or those combinations of uncertain conditions that cause the strategy to perform poorly. (This is a departure from traditional analysis in that the scenarios themselves are not dictated in advance of the procedure.) In Step 4, tradeoffs with respect to robustness, vulnerabilities, and costs among different strategies are analyzed, and a single strategy may be agreed upon. If insights from Step 3 or Step 4 warrant it, Step 5 may be necessary to reframe the decision and develop new strategies, at which point the RDM process repeats.