Planning

Next Week: Land Law Review Conference

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Next week is the summer June 2-4, 2010 Martz Summer Conference 2010
The Past, Present, and Future of Our Public Lands.
University of Colorado Law School
It sounds like John Rupe, Martin and I will all be there. Martin is the moderator of the timber session, and Rick Cables is speaking about Forest Service planning. Scott Fitzwilliams, the White River Forest Supervisor, is speaking on recreation, and Harris Sherman the Undersecretary for Natural Resources is a keynote speaker. With the variety of speakers, I am looking forward to some stimulating discussions to carry forward to this blog.

Question for consideration…

John and I have been talking about using ecosystem services as a broadening of consideration of different uses in forest plans- rather than “desired conditions” talk about desired services provided. Not to quantify them or cost them out, just to talk about what we want from a piece of ground and how those desires interrelate. John and I think that might be an easier shift from multiple uses to ecosystem services. I think he’s going to post in the near future on some of the problems we’ve experienced with the use of desired conditions.

As to sustainability- great concept, but it is difficult to prove anything is sustainable and balancing the three kinds of sustainability just led to analytical and conceptual problems, in my view.

What do you think about using ecosystem services as a framework for forest planning?
Pros, cons, and watch-outs?

The Hartwell Paper and A New Forest Planning Rule

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with this paper, it was a recent effort to figure out if another approach to climate policy could be more successful.

Here is quote from Mike Hulme in this essay on the Hartwell paper .

To move forward, we believe a startling proposition must be understood and accepted. It is not possible to have a “climate policy” that has emissions reduction as the all-encompassing and driving goal.

We advocate inverting and fragmenting the conventional approach: accepting that taming climate change will only be achieved successfully as a benefit contingent upon other goals that are politically attractive and relentlessly pragmatic. Without a fundamental re-framing of the issue, new mandates will not be granted for any fresh courses of action, even good ones.

The paper’s first primary goal focuses on access; to ensure that the basic needs, especially the energy demands, of the world’s growing population are adequately met.

The second is a sustainability goal; to ensure that we develop in a manner that balances social, economic and ecological goals.

Third is a resilience goal; to ensure that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause.

Most regular readers of this blog will know that my approach to climate change for public lands is basically:
1. Do all the things we know we should have been doing (monitor and adapt in a transparent disciplined way)
2. Preferentially protect the fundamentals, especially water and air. There is no correct or incorrect composition of plants and animals, now or in the future.
3. Connect landscapes through riparian and other corridors.
4. Use land trades to decrease fragmentation of public lands and open areas to solar or wind development.
5. Develop sustainable biomass industries where needed to conduct fuels treatment or for ecological resilience.

I am also a big fan of Trout Unlimited’s “protect, reconnect and restore” as described in their “Healing Troubled Waters” document here.

So here’s the question- think about Hulme’s concepts, my concepts, TU’s concepts and your own concepts of what to do about climate change… what is the public lands piece to you? And what, if any of that should fit into a planning rule?

Wanted: New Planning Paradigm

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A guest post by Lynn Jungwirth

Clearly modern forest plans must have a restoration plan embedded in them. We’ve been struggling here lately with trying to figure out “how much is enough”. Currently “cumulative effect” means that you figure out where the threshold is for negative impact….how many roaded acre equivalents can happen before you have tipped the watershed into an unacceptable trajectory. But if we are going to be planning for restoration and maintenance of ecosystem function, we do not have an equivalent cumulative effect analysis for when you reach a threshold which means the system is on a good trajectory and can take care of itself, or is at least adequately repaired or resilient in the face of projected climate change.

How could a forest planning rule help us make that investigation?

I’m also pretty concerned that many of these place-based approaches in legislation are sort of just running over the forest planning process and again splitting the baby . wilderness vs industrial restoration seems so old fashioned. The forests have been run ragged with this either “too much” or “not enough” management approach. The 22nd Century seems to ask more of us. If we are truly going to wrestle with the integration of recreation, silviculture, restoration, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and an “all lands” approach, it seems that what is required in forest plans is going to be very very different than what we have now.

Trigger Itch

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As Sharon writes, I have raised the possibility of using “triggers and thresholds” in some sort of adaptive management framework:  Here is the statement I made at last week’s science forum:

 One possible approach to this problem [how to practice adaptive management in the modern regulatory state] is to consider using some type of pre-negotiated commitments in an adaptive management framework.  These enforceable commitments would specify what actions will be taken by the agency if monitoring information shows X or Y.  In other words, some predetermined decisions, or more general courses of action, are built into the adaptive framework from the beginning (i.e., if this, then what).  Not every possible scenario can be prefigured of course, but having some thresholds or trigger mechanisms built into an adaptive framework might alleviate concerns about the amount of discretion ostensibly needed by agencies to plan and manage adaptively.

In retrospect, perhaps it’s wise to stay away from the term “threshold” because of its scientific usage and debate.  But triggers should still be considered by the agency.  I think the approach might work best in particular management situations, especially those that have an implementation monitoring program in place. 

I don’t think the approach is that uncommon actually.  Consider, for example, a report written by Chuck Quimby of USFS on using adaptive management options within a NEPA process focused on grazing (sorry, don’t have a PDF or link).  He discusses how various adaptive management options can be worked into EIS alternatives. 

Or consider various state wolf management plans whereby states commit to so many packs, and if monitoring shows they drop below some predetermined floor, a different suite of managerial requirements kick-in (more conservative wolf management). 

And to show that such an approach can cut in multiple directions consider the “adaptive timber management strategy” as used by the Tongass NF.  That strategy basically sets various triggers regarding timber harvesting and industrial development in SE Alaska.  If particular objectives are met, then additional roadless areas are opened for more harvesting.  This approach, if I recall correctly, was basically used by the Tongass as a way to more strategically open roadless lands for harvesting—rather than offering multiple sales in multiple roadless areas.  (Of course, conservationists see this as a complete bastardization of the AM approach, but it does demonstrate how adaptive management needs a purpose—it’s a means to an end—and that end needs to be defined by using NEPA). 

The approach could also be used in some restoration plan.  The USFS chooses a plan alternative (using NEPA) that emphasizes restoration.  Within that alternative are embedded a number of adaptive management options.  So, for example, if various restoration objectives are met by some date, then the agency will offer additional stewardship contracts in the following locations. 

 And one more hypothetical:  The USFS chooses a travel management alternative that connects two existing routes for OHV use.  Embedded within that alternative is an adaptive management option:  if an area adjacent to the connected route becomes illegally used and degraded, the new connected route shall be discontinued and decommissioned. 

 Sharon is right, however, because there will be lots of debate about where these trigger points are set.  (This has been a big issue in oil and gas planning and impacts to Grouse in Wyoming).  I imagine in most cases they will simply be politically negotiated, and in others scientists will be given a larger role to play (if used in the wildlife context). 

Martin Nie

When We Just Don’t Know

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I have often wondered why Forest Service scientists and managers talk about risk and uncertainty, yet don’t wander into the territory of “novelty, surprise, and ignorance.” My studies in decision-making and economics inform me that risk and uncertainty are the domains of games where probability distributions are well-known. Another realm, the realm of novelty, surprise, and ignorance is where many business and organizational management decisions live. That is why I’m often railing about “wicked problems”, and about how to make sense of the organizational, environmental, and social contexts we dwell in. Today I want to explore the wilds of “organizational ignorance.” In short, I want to take a look at what to do when we just don’t know.

To make my case, I want to examine a little article that I found a few years ago on the subject, titled Managing Organizational Ignorance, by Michael Zack. The only time I mentioned it before on internet chatter, best I can tell, was when the Forest Service was trying to wed Planning with Environmental Management Systems. (my Forest Service EMS/Planning blog chronicles are here). Here is what I said:

[A]s we continue on this EMS journey maybe we ought to spend more time exploring novelty, surprise and ignorance. Study adaptive management, and read in detail books like Panarchy, Supply Side Sustainability, Compass and Gyroscope, Discordant Harmonies, and more. And don’t forget to wander over and read Michael Zack’s Managing Organizational Ignorance—either right now, or later after you’ve worked yourself into a frenzy over EMS and come up short.

Zack begins with one of my favorite quotes, from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, “Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” [Note: Postman’s book ought to be required reading for everyone in the U.S.—to better understand our current plight w/r/t ignorance]

Zack builds his thesis around four knowledge-processing problems, each describing a unique form of “organizational ignorance”:

  • Uncertainty: not having enough information;
  • Complexity: having to process more information than you can manage or understand;
  • Ambiguity: not having a conceptual framework for interpreting information;
  • Equivocality: having several competing or contradictory conceptual frameworks.

Each problem describes a particular form of organizational ignorance, calling for a particular knowledge-processing capability. Each in some way also represents a fundamental organizational or strategic management problem. Taken together they define the range of knowledge processing capabilities an organization must have to manage its ignorance effectively. These four knowledge problems can be categorized along two axes: 1) the nature of the knowledge being processed, and 2) whether the solution is to acquire more knowledge or to place restrictions on what you have.

Here is Zack’s table, summarizing the relationship between the knowledge problems and information processing (gathering, restricting, analyzing, etc.):

Zack sums up with:

The four knowledge-problems framework provides a powerful lens for viewing information processing, communication, and knowledge management in organizations. It suggests several prescriptions and conclusions.

  • Organizations must be open to novelty and anomaly. Only by acknowledging its ignorance can an organization put itself on the road to learning. Organizations must recognize and accept that there are events that may be difficult to explain because no one understands them well enough. …
  • Knowledge management today focuses primarily on solving problems of complexity and uncertainty. It aims to share and exploit what is known within well-defined circumstances and contexts, and is dominated by information technology. Expert systems apply codifiable but highly complex sets of rules; best practice databases attempt to share less structured but well-documented expertise; point of sale systems attempt to provide rapid feedback for managing market uncertainty, while e-mail and discussion databases do the same for internal uncertainty. Much less effort has been spent worrying about the ambiguous and equivocal situations resulting from more profound forms of organizational ignorance. To truly manage knowledge and expertise, however, organizations must make sure that their members work toward building a shared fundamental understanding of the situations and problems they face. Meetings and teams, as well as informal opportunities for engaging in sense-making conversations that raise good questions, challenge the status quo, and directly deal with ambiguity and equivocality are all essential. Solving convergent, well-defined problems requires having a shared understanding in place first. It is therefore critical for organizations to be aware of and to solve problems of ambiguity and equivocality before diving into the more structured problems of uncertainty and complexity.
  • Information technology can play an important role in managing information and knowledge, when it is appropriately applied. This requires diagnosing the nature of the knowledge problem beings solved. Information technology makes sense in cases of uncertainty and complexity, but much less so for dealing with ambiguity and equivocality
  • Organizations need to go beyond their own boundaries to find the knowledge they need to help them make sense of the world. Where the organization is relatively ignorant…, it should include [constituents] in the sense-making process. In doing so, the organization will also develop a shared understanding and basis for ongoing communication with its [constituents]. As ambiguity and equivocality give way to uncertainty and complexity, the organization can more easily migrate to more structured technologies to communicate and coordinate with its external partners. … Organizations may use information technology to exchange data and information, but they will need to use social interaction to exchange knowledge in building a shared understanding about their commercial relationships.
  • Senior executives and managers must interact freely with those at lower levels of the organization in sensemaking and problem-solving processes to discover what the organization as a whole truly knows. It is not enough for managers merely to catalog organizational knowledge by creating a “knowledge map.” Rather, they must sense the organization’s knowledge and ignorance by engaging all organizational levels in the process of resolving the four knowledge problems.
  • Like managing knowledge, managing organizational ignorance requires an appropriate culture. In general, the organization must create an environment in which it is acceptable to publicly admit that one does not know something. Multinational organizations I have observed find this to be particularly problematic in certain national cultures. Managing complexity requires a culture in which it is acceptable to identify and support experts and seek their advice. Resolving uncertainty requires a culture supportive of open, clear and extensive cross-boundary communication, and a willingness and ability to bridge various languages (both professional and national) in use across the organization. Resolving ambiguity requires the ability to confess ignorance and confusion. Managing equivocality requires an environment in which it is acceptable to disagree about interpretations and which accepts diversity of views as well as useful and productive consensus.
  • Each of the four knowledge problems suggests a different set of processes, roles, information technologies, and organizational structures for their resolution. … Often … problems are intertwined. [An organization] must be flexible enough to modify itself dynamically to deal with the knowledge problem at hand. …
  • Even the non-routine or unpredictable aspects of the four problems can be managed, or at least anticipated, in a routine fashion. Where ambiguity or equivocality routinely arises, organizations should create standing mechanisms to address them. Provisions must be made for face-to-face conversations to occur among those most relevant to resolving ambiguity or equivocality. Those responsible for executing the resulting interpretations must also be involved so that those interpretations can be meaningfully communicated. Uncertainty can be routinely handled by anticipatory mechanisms for exchanging information; complexity can be handled by anticipatory mechanisms for locating knowledge.
  • The four problems suggest a framework for managing organizational learning. Ambiguous and equivocal problems often represent non-routine events about which the organization lacks sufficient knowledge. The process of resolving ambiguity and equivocality, however, is the stuff of which organizational learning is made. Ambiguous and equivocal events, if encountered enough times, eventually become familiar enough to be migrated to more routine processes. Organizations must have the ability to evaluate events to determine if they are interpretable or not, route them to the appropriate resolution process, and eventually migrate those that become familiar to routine processes, thereby reserving the organization’s capacity to continually handle novelty and confusion. [Emphasis (bold) added by Iverson]

Is the Forest Service ready to deal with Zack’s four knowledge-processing problems? Do they help make better sense of “ignorance problems” than traditional rhetoric of “risk and uncertainty”? Have Forest Service managers/scientists/staffers already been dealing with these problems albeit in different frames? In short, what do you think?

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.

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.

Fixing the “Rule”

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As we have been discussing in previous posts/comments, one possible resolution to the forest planning dilemma — as part of NFMA rule development — is to deal with what has been called forest planning under the broad umbrella of adaptive governance, or adaptive co-management.

A part of the process would be to require an “every five years review/evaluation” of ALL decisions related to or interrelated with an administrative unit of the national forest system. This was recommended by the Clinton era Committee of Scientists as I recall. The evaluation, along with a database of all decisions relating to the FS unit would be all that a new rule would require. Specifics required by the law could be packed into the review/evaluation requirements or allowed in other decisions fitting into “ALL decisions” above. Note that most decisions would be appropriately framed (scale and scope) and dealt with as wicked problems (Wikipedia, EcoWatch) at levels above or below the forest administrative unit—on rare occasions “at” the level of the administrative unit.

The “review” might be accompanied by some simple scenario planning (Wikipedia) — which is more the stuff of futuring than of planning — to deal with emergent, but unknown, even unknowable futures. Note that scenario planning specifically avoids the “desired future” trap.

My vision of the every-five-years-evaluation would also allow for “niche” statements to be developed for a forest unit (perhaps for appropriate subunits as well). As with “scenario planning”, the Forest Service/USDA might or might not require niche statements in the NFMA Rule. My preference would be to include both, but with a strong caution not to over-complicate “requirements”, in the rule, in manuals, in handbooks.

I would be pleased to see the Forest Service adopt such a resolution or to at least explain how such is inappropriate framing (Wikipedia) for RPA/NFMA forest planning/management, or inferior to alternate proposals. Maybe some who frequent this blog can step up and explain any inappropriateness in advance of what will likely be yet-another nonresponse from the Forest Service. Or maybe you will like it, and will offer up suggestions for improvement. I am very concerned that the forthcoming “show and tell” NFMA Rule meetings will yield no useful results. So any suggestions coming from us here may be the Forest Service’s best hope to avoid another wasted 30 years.

Related:
The Frame Game
A Simpler Way (Forest Policy-Practice, 2006)
Interrelated Ecosystems and Adaptive Management, (EcoWatch, 1992)

Imagining A Changing Forest

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A desired condition is not a picture.  It’s a movie.

This is a map of four seral stages for the Pagosa Springs district of the San Juan National Forest.  Young stands of trees (class 1) are very rare.  So are the purple areas representing the oldest stands of trees (class 4).  Most of the map shows middle-aged stands (red and green).  Think about how this information might be used in forest planning.  For instance, the purple areas might be important habitat for late-seral stage wildlife species, they might be mapped as ecological reserves, or they might have some unique social values we want to protect.

Here is a simulation of what could happen to these stands of trees over time due to fire, insects and disease.  Each interval in the movie is a 10-year increment.   It is based on work by Kevin McGarigal of the University of Massachusetts and Bill Romme now at CSU, for the San Juan Forest Plan Revision using a GIS-based simulator called RMLANDS.  It formed an understanding of the historical range of variability of vegetation for the DEIS.

The stand size and distribution is most dependent upon fire interval and fire size, randomly simulated based on historical data.  Over time, the tree conditions seem to float across the landscape like shifting sand.  There are some places where topography seems to influence the disturbances to allow persistence of older trees, but even these areas are eventually affected by the random events.

The smaller the scale, the larger the variation.  If you look at a particular place, there is more change over time in the color of the place.  The larger the scale, there is more likelihood that you’ll find the color you are looking for somewhere.

When planning for forests influenced by disturbance, landscape ecologists advise us that it’s important to think of time and space.   It calls for a discussion beyond static desired conditions.  Instead, a discussion is needed on the disturbance processes, if anything should be or can be done to shape those processes, and what we should do with the conditions that might result.  This is a very different type of forest plan than we have done in the past.

Putting Your Dot on the Map

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They are “remembered landscapes.”

Nearly every weekend when I was growing up, my parents, my two sisters, our large family dog, and I would get in the car and head to my grandparents’ house in St. Maries, Idaho.  The trip was usually pretty boring for a kid, but we always got excited when we got to the White Pine Scenic Drive in the St. Joe National Forest.  The highway carved through the forest creating a tunnel effect, and in the middle was a sign along the highway that said “cool spring.”  Even the dog somehow knew when we were getting close to cool spring.  We’d stop, get a drink, walk into the woods a bit, and marvel at the dense trees with moss growing everywhere.  Down the road was the tallest white pine tree in the world, but that was just a boring statistic to a kid.   The statistics didn’t matter, but the place was special.

Today the sign is gone, cool spring is gone, and the trail has been expanded for motorized use.  White pine is incredibly susceptible to blister rust and many trees have died.  The large tree has fallen over.  My dad and my niece got their picture taken by the incredibly huge roots.  It doesn’t matter that the forest has changed, but the place will always be special.

When I was working in the Black Hills, I once talked to a county commissioner on the Wyoming side.  She told me that when she was growing up, her dad loaded up the Studebaker and headed up a road that isn’t even recognized as a road today.  They would reach a large meadow and have a picnic lunch.  Today, that meadow is overgrown with dense small trees, and probably needs to be thinned.  The place is special, but her experience is gone.

In Colorado, Monarch Pass feels like it’s on top of the world.  From the top, you can see an expanse of trees that seems to go forever.  For folks that have traveled on U.S. 50 from the east, this is their continental divide experience.

In the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado, you can go on a hike from the desert to a meadow with a stream running through it, and look up at snow capped peaks as high as you can imagine.  It’s unreal that you can see desert and tundra at the same time.

Social scientists often group participants in a forest planning process as members of a “community of place” or “community of interest.”  I don’t have a direct economic or social stake in how forests in Idaho are managed.  I don’t even live in Idaho any more, but I am still connected to a “place” in a forest along a 12-mile stretch of highway.

Before 1976, the Forest Service conducted “unit planning” with units roughly the size of ranger districts.  In part to increase the working circle of potential timber harvest to assure a continuous supply, NFMA established Forest Plans.  But Forests often were too big for the community of place.  Then, the scale of planning grew even bigger.  The St. Joe and White Pine Drive were administratively split between the Clearwater and the new monolithic Idaho Panhandle National Forests.   The area around cool spring fell on the Clearwater side.  The old Forest Plan put White Pine Drive in a scenic corridor management area, but the area was too small to show on the forest plan map.  The Clearwater has now combined with the Nez Perce to complete one large planning effort.

The area in the Black Hills fell into an inventoried roadless area subject to the 2000 roadless rule.  Monarch Pass was designated in the Westwide Energy Corridor EIS as an important corridor.  The multi-state decision doesn’t mention how the corridor entirely covers the Monarch Pass Ski Area.

Forest planners have discovered that place matters.  The Medicine Bow-Routt-Thunder Basin has done three plans.  The Pike-San Isabel-Cimarron-Comanche will do two.  There are some excellent examples of place-based planning in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Chugach, and GMUG forest planning processes, where forests are subdivided into “places” for planning.  These were discussed in a 2003 workshop in Portland.    The authors note:

“Place-based planning” refers to land and natural resource planning efforts that bring together diverse human values, uses, experiences, and activities tied to specific geographic locations. Although planning efforts have always focused on specific places through land use zoning frameworks, place-based planning is different from other types of approaches. For example, whereas land use zoning segregates dominant uses from one another on the landscape, place-based planning takes a more holistic approach, focusing on identifying current uses, values, and meanings. In addition, place-based approaches tend to take a longitudinal perspective, exploring desired future conditions for the landscape. This approach enables participants to identify a variety of uses that might occur concurrently rather than designating one primary use for the upcoming 10 to 20 years.

Some commentators are concerned that place-based planning and the new emphasis on collaboration are putting National groups at a disadvantage.  Ohio University political science professor Nancy Manring wrote a paper in 2004 about the 2005 planning rule provision that replaced the appeals process with an objection process.   She observed:

“McCloskey (2000), Coggins (2001), Foster (2002), Hibbard and Madsen (2003) and Kenney (2000) all have argued that collaboratives may maximize community-based interests at the expense of national stakeholders and values. As Weber (1999, p. 482) cautioned, “The danger is that such communities will develop a sense of themselves apart from and to the detriment of the nation.” No doubt, it will be easier for communities to develop a separate sense of themselves if representatives of national interests and values are not physically present at the negotiating table. The potential tensions between local and national values – between the communities of place and the communities of interest – are thrown into sharp relief by the realities of collaborative planning without the traditional appeals process as a safeguard. “

At the beginning of the planning process for the San Juan Forest Plan Revision, participants at public meetings were given sticky dots to place on a map.  There was even a parallel process on the web, where you could put a computerized dot on the map.  The idea was that participants could identify their special places, and where resource conflicts might occur.  These sticky dots were used in drawing the the forest plan map.  The Plan will use geographic areas as big as ranger districts, and within the areas, there are subdivisions displayed by using eight development “themes.”  A final Plan is expected next year.