TGIF TSW News Round-up: More FOIA Frolics, Seed Orchards Return, as do Wolverines (maybe); and Pack Mules Never Left

Fire Retardant FOIA Frolics Update:
FOIA Review at White House White House

Remember that I was curious about how the decision was made for the USG to not support a fire retardant bill that aimed to exempt fire retardant from CWA permitting. I had heard through a few grapevines that this was not the USDA position and they had been overruled.   I was wondering how these disagreements are hashed out in the Biden Admin, and so I FOIAd CEQ and USDA Office of the Secretary.

I’m still waiting on a part of the FOIA from CEQ; their FOIA folks are incredibly helpful, so a big shout-out to them, as well as USDA FOIA folks! Unfortunately, there’s apparently a relatively new White House review process that requires all FOIAs with messages with emails “who.eop.gov”  to be reviewed by the White House.. I guess this is the White House White House, not just CEQ,  OSTP, USTR ,NSC, OMB nor any of those other White House “Executive Office of the President” agencies. You can find all the EOP agencies  listed  here. From now on, I’ll just call the White House White House as in “who.eop.gov”  WH2.

It’s probably easier than calling them “Who”; could be confusing. As in “who’s on first” and so on. The good news is that one of our forest issues attracted the attention of someone in the WH2. Who? Why? What did they have to say? Time will tell, hopefully, when the review gets finished. Stay tuned. This review process seems to hold up transparency, which I think is a value of the Admin, so there’s that, or at least it was.

Biden plans to “bring transparency and truth back to the government to share the truth, even when it’s hard to hear,” she said.

I’m sympathetic, as saying you’re going to do things is easier than actually doing them.  I have the same problem.

Why NSC Was on Email Chain
According to sources, NSC is usually involved in Wildland Fire issues. According to these sources, USDA tried to involve NSC to get the debate at the CEQ.EOP vs. NSC.EOP level (more level footing), as opposed to CEQ.EOP vs. Department level. Seems like a good strategy for USDA, even if it didn’t work this time.  Perhaps the question was resolved at WH2. Thanks to FOIA, we should find out. And we should all thank TSW Contributor Andy Stahl for this opportunity to gain insight into the Department and EOP conflict resolution processes and the role of WH2.

Who Knew? Seed Orchards are Cool Again…

 

Just when you think everyone who knew about something is retired.. it becomes cool again.. reforestation, nurseries, and now at least one seed orchard! Since we are using them for good purposes now -as in climate adapation and carbon sequestration- reforestation is back to being white hat-ish at least.

Check out this video with Jad Daley of American Forests on a refurbished Gifford Pinchot NF seed orchard! As Jad says “let’s get to work on reforestation.” We finally have the bucks.

“Hey #Forests4Climate, coming live from this rehabilitated seed orchard on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Give a listen to hear the story, and how we can use REPLANT & other BIL/IRA funds to rebuild the #reforestation supply chain. ⁦”
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But…Pack Mules Never Go Out of Style
Thanks to the Hotshot Wakeup for this one.
The Deep Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest has been using pack mules to shuttle supplies to firefighters punching in handline “deep” in the forest. Crews have made tremendous progress. Other incidents in California in remote areas are still chunking away. The Smith River Complex in the Six Rivers National Forest is now 57,200+ acres and the Happy Camp Complex is pushing 16,000 acres on the Klamath National Forest.
The mules seem surprising unconcerned about the fire; but then I’m more familiar with horses.  Let’s lift our Friday beverage glasses to the brave and helpful pack mule!
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Reintroducing Wolverines to Colorado
This Denver Post article is interesting on the “letting them come back on their own” vs. “reintroducing them” debate..

Natural wanderers

Colorado’s last wolverine lived here between 2009 and 2012 after traveling 585 miles over a few months from the northwest corner of Wyoming to the mountains west of Breckenridge, crossing two interstates, several mountains ranges and Wyoming’s vast and arid Red Desert.

M56 was the first wolverine seen in the state since 1919, but it didn’t stay put. It eventually wandered out of the state and was shot and killed on a ranch in North Dakota.

Data collected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows that wolverines are moving back into some of their previous territories all on their own.

That’s why Colorado officials should wait for wolverines to reintroduce themselves instead of forcibly moving wolverines into the state, said Jeff Copeland, executive director of the Wolverine Foundation and a wildlife biologist who studied the species for more than 30 years.

Wolverines have moved back into all of the lower 48 states they previously occupied except Nevada, California and Colorado, Copeland said.

“Reintroduction is kind of happening on its own,” Copeland said. “The fact that we can see that and watch it is very exciting to me.”

Wolverines have been spotted recently in places where they hadn’t been for a century. In June, a young male was spotted three times in and near Yosemite National Park in California. Utah wildlife officials have confirmed several sightings.

The species’ rambling nature is what gives Copeland hope that a human-initiated reintroduction won’t be necessary in Colorado.

“It’s a very messy process,” he said. “It’s a last resort. It’s not the first choice because you’re going through a capture process, trying to capture these animals, transport them thousands of miles and then drop them off in completely new habitats and expecting them to live.”

Because wolverines do not live near each other, taking one or two will impact the ecosystem of that area, Copeland said.

But other advocates for the species said there is risk in waiting and hoping that wolverines reestablish themselves here. Even if a breeding pair make its way down south, more will have to follow to make sure there is enough genetic diversity, said Michael Robinson, senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Colorado should do it on the principle that wolverines belong in Colorado,” Robinson said. “They’re part of the natural ecosystem and Colorado’s ecosystem can make a big difference.”

I also think it’s interesting how ideas about ecosystems and climate change are blended in this article.

“The governor continues to join so many Coloradans who share his enthusiasm for reintroducing the native wolverine, last spotted in 2009 in our state, to better restore ecological balance in wild Colorado areas,” Gov. Jared Polis’ spokesman, Conor Cahill,

So we need them to “restore ecological balance.”

Colorado’s high snowy mountains are the species’ largest unoccupied territory and will only become more important as a warming climate shrink the snowpack the wolverines need for dens.

“There is a real role for Colorado to play in conservation here,” Odell said. “Wolverines really need Colorado.”

So Colorado will be balanced (unless climate change gets worse) with wolverines, but Montana will be unbalanced if the wolverine habitat declines or goes away.  Does that mean once Montana enters the state of unbalance, it can or can’t get more unbalanced if other species exit or enter? Maybe balance is not a useful or meaningful concept in this context.

The most significant stressor on wolverines in the coming years will be climate change, according to an analysis by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wolverines create high-altitude dens in the snowy mountains in the winter and raise their kits there to keep them warm and protect them from predators. Wolverine mothers need deep snow that lasts long into the spring months.

That type of snow will become rare in the American West as the climate warms. Wolverines will lose an estimated 30% of their habitat in the lower 48 states in the next 30 years and 60% of their habitat here in the next 70, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

But will Colorado really be “balanced” just by getting wolverines back? Because that’s also said about wolves.. and grizzlies.  I think “wanting all species back everywhere they used to be” is a human idea but unlikely to happen due to climate change and a variety of other factors.  But ecosystems are not somehow “unbalanced” without them.. they are just.. different. 

 

 

 

 

 

Lotsa New Stuff from Admin: MOG Inventory, Reforestation, ANPR for Resilience, Climate Risk Viewer and Field Guidance

These are all of interest. Please take a look and let us know what you think! Here’s the press release. My first few thoughts are in italics.

“WASHINGTON, April 20, 2023 – Today, in anticipation of the upcoming Earth Day celebrations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced actions to foster forest conservation, enhance forest resilience to climate change, and inform policymaking on ensuring healthy forests on federally managed lands administered by the USDA Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

To support these actions, USDA and DOI worked together to develop several reports, as directed by President Biden’s Executive Order on Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies (E.O. 14072), which he signed on Earth Day 2022. The Executive Order calls for inventorying mature and old-growth forests, setting reforestation targets on federally managed lands, and analyzing reforestation opportunities on state, Tribal and private lands. In addition, the Forest Service is releasing a new tool that illustrates the risks and vulnerabilities of climate change across the landscape along with a call for public input on how national forests and grasslands should be managed for climate resilience.

These actions represent concrete progress on the goals and priorities outlined one year ago in President Biden’s Executive Order, Secretary Vilsack’s Memorandum on Climate Resilience and Carbon Stewardship, as well as in the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis StrategyClimate Adaptation Plan (PDF, 26.1 MB), and Reforestation Strategy (PDF, 7 MB).

“Our forest ecosystems and communities are struggling to keep up with the stresses of climate change, whether it’s fire, drought, or insect infestations, it is clear that we must adapt quickly,” said USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment Homer Wilkes. “The USDA and our federal, tribal, state, local and community partners are working together to meet these challenges, pooling knowledge, sharing resources and discovering new ways to conserve resources, protect communities and ensure future generations can enjoy the countless benefits our forests provide.”

“Healthy, resilient forests are critical to helping us respond to the climate impacts being felt by communities across the country, because they store carbon, provide clean air and water, and sustain biodiversity,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. “The reports released today will help enhance our work to protect and grow forests by creating a scientific framework for further study and public engagement for effective forest management and protection.”

Newly Released Joint Reports on Forest Conservation

The Mature and Old-Growth Forest report defines what mature and old growth forests are, establishes the first-ever initial inventory of those forests, and shows their distribution across lands managed by the USDA Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. The initial inventory identified more than 32 million acres of old-growth and around 80 million acres of mature forest across 200 types of forests. The initial inventory found that old-growth forest represents 18% and mature forest another 45% of all forested land managed by the two agencies. Recognizing the many values of mature and old-growth forests, both agencies conducted significant outreach to gather public input from communities, tribes, scientists, and agency professionals in the report’s development.

Like all the nation’s forests, mature and old-growth forests are threatened by climate change and associated stressors. The initial inventory and definitions for mature and old-growth forests are part of an overarching climate-informed strategy to help retain carbon, reduce wildfire risk, and address climate-related impacts, including increased insects and disease.

As directed in President Biden’s Executive Order and laid out in the report, the USDA Forest Service and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management will use these definitions and initial inventory to continue to refine results, assess threats to old growth and mature forest stands, and conduct public engagement. In the near future, the USDA and BLM also plan to incorporate information gathered from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation mission, which will provide forest inventory and analysis plots using space-based laser measurements. These efforts will help the agencies meet the science-based approach required in the executive order as well as develop management policy and strategies to recruit, sustain, and restore mature and old-growth forests.

Pinyon and juniper woodlands are the most abundant forest type in the federally managed inventory of mature and old-growth forests, with nine million acres of old-growth pinyon-juniper across BLM and Forest Service lands and an additional 14 million acres of mature pinyon-juniper. This summer, the Forest Service and the BLM will be co-hosting public workshops focused on sustaining resilient pinyon-juniper ecosystems. The workshops are intended to ensure robust public engagement and scientific expertise and knowledge are underpinning the approaches taken to fulfill the Executive Order and other management strategies for ensuring healthy, resilient pinyon and juniper woodlands.

Interesting because as I’ve pointed out, previous forest policy issues and debates have always had a mesic/timber framing.  “Robust public engagement” might mean with those inhabiting those ecoystems- perhaps a different set of folks than the usual suspects.

USDA and DOI are also releasing a joint reforestation report (PDF, 471 KB) which includes reforestation targets, assessments and recommendations for increased capacity for seeds and nurseries.

In response to feedback from stakeholder engagement, the report offers recommendations to conduct seed and nursery operations, improve coordination with non-federal partners, leverage opportunities for innovation with the private sector, and build a reforestation workforce with partners like the Conservation Corps.

To develop targets for reforestation on public lands by 2030, USDA and DOI evaluated recent peer-reviewed assessments and datasets conducted on public lands and identified more than 2.3 million acres in need of reforestation. This report also includes an assessment of more than 70 million acres of possible reforestation opportunities with state, tribal and private landowners, providing valuable insight on how existing partnerships and programs could be focused where they are needed most.

Advanced Notice of Public Rulemaking to Build Climate Resilience

With climate change and related stressors causing rapid, variable change on national forests and grasslands, the Forest Service is asking for public input on how the agency should adapt current policies to protect, conserve, and manage national forests and grasslands for climate resilience. This Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for National Forest and Grassland Climate Resilience will be published in the Federal Register and publication will begin a 60-day public comment period. The Forest Service is also consulting with tribes and requesting feedback on current issues and considerations related to relying on the best available science including indigenous knowledge, as well as climate adaptation, mature and old-growth forests, and considerations for social and economic resilience.

I wonder why the BLM isn’t doing this also?  They don’t need a comment period, as they already know how to build climate resilience?  One could argue the FS also has a pretty good idea.  So, what is this really about?

Climate Risk Viewer

As part of today’s announcement, the USDA Forest Service is sharing the beta version of a new tool to assess climate risks and vulnerabilities called the Forest Service Climate Risk Viewer. Developed with 28 high-quality datasets, it shows how resources overlap with climate exposure and vulnerability. This allows for more localized analysis of how climate adaptation can maintain, restore and expand forest ecosystems and watersheds. The viewer includes the new mature and old-growth forest inventory data for the Forest Service as well as datasets to identify gaps between current management and potential conservation and adaptation practices.

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Field Guidance

In keeping with the spirit of President Biden’s Executive Order, earlier this week Forest Service Deputy Chief Chris French sent a letter to Forest Service Regional Foresters outlining leadership direction related to implementation of section 40803(g) of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law regarding, which requires the consideration of how to manage for among other things, large trees and old growth stands in forest health projects.”

I’m not sure how this last one might fit with legislative intent, but if it’s not, I’m sure that Congressional folks will point it out.

 

“If we can control how fires burn, it’ll give seedlings a fighting chance”: Denver Post Op-ed by Davis, Peeler and Higuera

This is a Denver Post op-ed from three of the (over 50) authors of the paper Steve posted (Davis et al., 2023) and we discussed, earlier here.

 

Carlos Avila Gonzalez, San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File
A burned hillside where crews are planting seedlings including Giant Sequoia in Mountain Home State Demonstration Forest outside Springville, Calif., on April 26, 2022. Destructive fires in recent years that burned too hot for forests to quickly regrow have far outpaced the government’s capacity to replant trees.

In the above photo, taken from the op-ed, I found a new idea.. that we need to keep living trees around as much as possible because we can’t scale up artificial regeneration otherwise (depending on assumptions about future fires).  I had never heard that, but increasing the possibility of natural regeneration seems like a good idea for a number of reasons, biological and economic. Plus there is much truth to the difficulty of scaling up.

The op-ed goes into some of the mechanics that many of us have known to be true and seem obvious (dead trees (except for serotinous cones) produce no offspring).  And shade helps surface temperatures.

Even when summers are hotter and drier after a wildfire than in the past, just having trees around that survived a fire helps new seedlings establish and grow.

Besides providing seeds, surviving trees reduce temperatures on the ground, where it matters most to seedlings. In some cases, temperatures can be 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler (2.2 to 2.8 C) around surviving trees, giving seedlings the edge needed to germinate and survive.

In our study, projections of future forests varied dramatically, depending on how many trees we assumed survived future wildfires.

Of course, in many areas before and after burning we can see that topography and soils (or lack thereof, as Larry pointed out) affects which species grow successfully.  And most (all) climate modeling doesn’t take that into account. Nevertheless, they go on to say..

Science supports the use of a number of tools, or forest treatments, that can help decrease the number of trees killed by wildfires.

Controlled burning with forest thinning or cultural burning by local Indigenous groups removes small trees and brush. That leads to fewer trees killed in subsequent fires, especially in forests that historically burned frequently. In high-elevation forests that historically experienced less frequent but more severe wildfires, planting trees after wildfires can help jump-start forest recovery.

Although forest treatments are effective, wildfires burn much more area than can be feasibly treated. Given this, fire scientists suggest letting some wildfires burn when conditions are safe and more likely to leave surviving trees on the landscape.

Expanding the use of wildfires and controlled burning as management tools is challenging, but the evidence suggests it may be one of the most effective and economical ways to reduce the number of trees killed by future wildfires.

There are clear ways to lessen the impacts of global warming and wildfires on seedlings and future forests. But in some areas, even as we work to reverse global warming, the window of opportunity is short. In these areas, forest treatments that modify wildfire or jump-start recovery will be most effective in the next few decades, setting up seedlings to better withstand near-term warming.

 

Perhaps fire ecologists views – thin when necessary, burn, sometimes plant where you need to; plus some WFU (or let me know what the current term is) are the way to go. Does anyone disagree with this?

 

“Proforestation” It Aint What It Claims To Be

‘Proforestation’ separates people from forests

AKA: Ignorance and Arrogance Still Reign Supreme at the Sierra Club.

I picked this up from Nick Smith’s Newsletter (sign up here)
Emphasis added by myself as follows:
1)  Brown Text for items NOT SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.                                                                                                                                                        2) Bold Green Text for items SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.
3) >>>Bracketed Italics for my added thoughts based on 59 years of experience and review of a vast range of literature going back to way before the internet.<<<

“Proforestation” is a relatively new term in the environmental community. The Sierra Club defines it as: “extending protections so as to allow areas of previously-logged forest to mature, removing vast amounts of atmospheric carbon and recovering their ecological and carbon storage potential.”          >>>Apparently, after 130 years of existence, the Sierra Club still doesn’t know much about plant physiology, the carbon cycle or the increased risk of calamitous wild fire spread caused by the close proximity of stems and competition driven mortality in unmanged stands (i.e. the science of plant physiology regarding competition, limited resources and fire spread physics). Nor have they thought out the real risk of permanent destruction of the desired ecosystems nor the resulting impact on climate change.<<<

Not only must we preserve untouched forests, proponents argue, but we must also walk away from previously-managed forests too. People should be entirely separate from forest ecology and succession. >>>More abject ignorance and arrogant woke policy based only on vacuous wishful thinking.<<<

Except humans have managed forests for millennia. In North America, Indigenous communities managed forests and sustained its resources for at least 8,000 years prior to European settlement. It is true people have not always managed forests sustainably. Forest practices of the late 19th century are a good example.                                                                                                                                                 >>>Yes, and the political solution pushed on us by the Sierra Club and other faux conservationists beginning with false assumptions about the Northern Spotted Owl was to throw out the continuously improving science (i.e. Continuous Process Improvement [CPI]).  The concept of using the science to create sustainable practices and laws that regulated the bad practices driven by greed and arrogance wasn’t even considered seriously.  As always, the politicians listened to the well heeled squeaky voters.  Now, their arrogant ignorance has given us National Ashtrays, destruction of soils, and an ever increasing probability that great acreages of forest ecosystems will be lost to the generations that follow who will also have to cope with the exacerbated climate change.  So here we are, in 30+/- years the Faux Conservationists have made things worse than the greedy timber barons ever could have.  And the willfully blind can’t seem to see what they have done. Talk about arrogance.<<<

Forest management provides tools to correct past mistakes and restore ecosystems. But Proforestation even seems to reject forest restoration that helps return a forest to a healthy state, including controlling invasive species, maintaining tree diversity, returning forest composition and structure to a more natural state.

Proforestation is not just a philosophical exercise. The goal is to ban active forest management on public lands. It has real policy implications for the future management (or non-management) of forests and how we deal with wildfires, climate change and other disturbances.

We’ve written before about how this concept applies to so-called “carbon reserves.” Now, powerful and well-funded anti-forestry groups are pressuring the Biden Administration to set-aside national forests and other federally-owned lands under the guise of “protecting mature and old-growth” trees.

In its recent white paper on Proforestation (read more here), the Society of American Foresters writes that “preservation can be appropriate for unique protected areas, but it has not been demonstrated as a solution for carbon storage or climate change across all forested landscapes.”

Proforestation doesn’t work when forests convert from carbon sinks into carbon sources. A United Nations report pointed out that at least 10 World Heritage sites – the places with the highest formal environmental protections on the planet – are net sources of carbon pollution. This includes the iconic Yosemite National Park.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes active forest management will yield the highest carbon benefits over the long term because of its ability to mitigate carbon emitting disturbance events and store carbon in harvested wood products. Beyond carbon, forest management ensures forests continue to provide assets like clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and economic activity.
>>>(i.e. TRUE SUSTAINABILITY)<<<

Forest management offers strategies to manage forests for carbon sequestration and long-term storage.Proforestation rejects active stewardship that can not only help cool the planet, but help meet the needs of people, wildlife and ecosystems. You can expect to see this debate intensify in 2023.

National Nursery Directory For Forest Trees and Native Plants in the US and Canada

Screenshot of the Directory map view for part of California, including the Placerville Nursery.

Jon asked some questions about nurseries, and so I went looking to answer the question “what kind of nurseries are there that produce forest tree seedlings?” It turns out that the Forest Service has partnered with Southern Regional Extension Forestry to put up a website that shows nurseries in the US and Canada, . So I’m posting in the interests of public service.

Jon asked about the terms reforestation and restoration.  The Helms (1998) Dictionary of Forestry definition for reforestation is: “the reeestablishment of forest cover either naturally or artificially.” Anyone have the newer edition and can check if there’s a new definition?  But I think when these people use the term, they probably mean “planting plants that aren’t trees” because reforestation has traditionally dealt with trees (“forest cover” doesn’t usually mean bear clover or manzanita.  It’s confusing for sure, as people have always “reforested” burned areas whether they had timber production goals or simply shade goals. And if you’re talking outside what we might call the refo/resto community, restoration may mean prescribed fire, thinning, removing invasives or a variety of things not related to planting plants at all.

Ah, but people will say “trees are not forests, forests are a complex interrelationship…”. While is absolutely true, of course. So perhaps trees are necessary, but not sufficient to be part of a forest. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine “restoring a forest ecosystem” without trees.

Afforestation is defined as “establishment of a forest or stand in an area where the preceding vegetation or land use was not forest.”

Trivia Question

Name the largest human-made forest in the United States (at least according to its website)

Analyzing Reforestation Controversy: The Five P’s and Whitebark Planting

I posted Matthew Burgess’s work that shows 90% of people support tree planting.  But there are still controversies about it, that we will explore.  I think to some extent they are what we might call “manufactured controversies” or controversies that occur within the realm of “ideas about things at some global level” vs. “do we support planting these trees here now.”  How does something non-controversial become controversial? Well, it’s in the nature of current media to stoke controversy. If you want a truly depressing read, I recommend “Trust Me, I’m Lying” by Ryan Holiday. So let’s explore that together.

I’d like to start with my Five P’s. This might appeal to fans of the Pyramid of Pristinity.  It works for basically any natural resource topic, and helps us to understand the factors that are used in making judgment calls about whether doing something is a good thing.. or not. Feel free to add your own P or other consideration.

1.People.  Which people are proposing it and which benefit?  Some people have the benefit of the doubt and others not so much.  For example, Tribes might have the benefit of the doubt with regard to say, whitebark pine restoration.  But maybe not other Tribes who want pipelines or whatever. E.g., this Denver Post story from October 15. It’s a pretty interesting article;  hope it’s not paywalled.

“The Southern Ute Indian Tribe of southwestern Colorado has a higher long-term credit rating than Wells Fargo & Co. and more oil and natural-gas wells than it has members. Welcome to the other side of the tribal land energy conundrum.”

Sometimes this is brought up by people against projects, such as “foreign” companies.

2.  Purpose.  Why is the project being considered?  Thinning is good, for example, if it’s for fuels reduction, but bad if it produces “commercial” products.  I understand the concern that the Forest Service is incentivized by Congress to do timber sales, and that does affect priorities and practices.  For example, let’s look at firewood. Do we think that firewood permits for people are good, but for commercial folks are bad? But commercial folks supply to folks who perhaps can’t get out and do it themselves, due to disability or age. To me concerns about “lining the pockets of the rich” seem to be focused on forest products and oil and gas, and not so much ski areas, for example.

3. Practices.  This is where I, and many folks, like to dwell.  If we look at the history of forest certification.  With FSC, for example, that was the idea that wood products from forests would be considered good (sustainable) if certain practices were followed, to some extent regardless of purpose or people.  Forest certification has been successful, but there continue to be people who are against cutting trees regardless of purpose or practice.  And that’s OK, the point is to clarify the reasons people feel the way they do.

4. Place.  Some things may be acceptable in some places than others. Place, to my mind,  is a complex mix of people, Nature and history. People and Place are certainly related, but People within a Place can and do often disagree. Additionally, there are concepts of what People means, in terms of say race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and so on, that transcend a specific Place.

5. Property.  This is a bit different from place, in the sense that we might want different things from say, private, county, state or various designations of federal lands.

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There are also two non-Ps

Where do the controversies occur (media, scientific journals, within agencies)?

Are there institutions or mechanisms for resolution of these controversies?

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So let’s look at Tribes restoring whitebark versus previous efforts. Note: there has been a large body of effort, in both the Pacific Northwest and in the Northern Rockies, to breed resistant whitebark pine despite the fact it has never been a timber tree. It began in 2001 in the northern Rockies according to this paper.

Or you might remember the hard-working folks who developed a Range-Wide Restoration Strategy, a RMRS GTR in 2012.

Anyway, if you weren’t following this, there was some debate about whether planting trees is “trammeling by man” in Wilderness.

Some of the 50 people in the audience scoffed as they pointed to the section of the Wilderness Act that defines wilderness as an area “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” They argued that nowhere on the planet now escapes the influence of man, so planting trees shouldn’t be a big deal.

But Jimmy Gaudry, USFS Northern Region wilderness program manager, said it might be a big deal, depending on how many other groups want to manipulate the wilderness for their special purpose.

“It’s the concept of a death of a thousand cuts. One thing after another, we’re making concessions for the types of activities we’re approving in wilderness landscapes,” Gaudry said. “It gets to the point where what are we doing different in the wilderness versus what we’re doing on the rest of the forest. Every time we say yes to something, why are we saying yes to that and not the next thing that comes through the door?”

Gaudry said he encouraged the discussion, but a more neutral process was needed, where trust could be built between stakeholders and where people would do a better job of listening to each other.

But for now, the Forest Service would lean on policy and law, which provides “solid direction regarding wilderness management,” Guadry said.

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So here we have it.. restoring whitebark pine is generally a good thing, because People want it; it has a Purpose everyone agrees on; it’s an acceptable technology (Practice) and we think it will work in that Place; but our understanding of Property in terms of Wilderness means it’s a no-go.

So let’s look at the non-Ps-

Controversy occurs within the FS/stakeholder community

Controversy is resolved by the Forest Service.

For Tribes, Reforesting Means Reconnection to History, Culture: Pew Story on Tribal Nurseries

ShiNaasha Pete, reforestation forester with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, gestures at whitebark pine seedlings being grown in a greenhouse on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. The tribes are working to restore whitebark pines, which are threatened by an invasive disease, because they serve as a crucial ecologic and cultural resource.
Alex Brown

 

Thanks to readers who sent in this article on Tribes and reforestation by Alex Brown of Pew. I didn’t know this but apparently they have a weekly newsletter called Stateline.

This is a generally good article IMHO, but I felt obliged to add context to this statement.

State-run and commercial nurseries often specialize in the species used for large-scale timber production, such as Douglas fir or loblolly pine. Some tribal programs similarly supply logging operations.

Many, though, have focused on species that are critical to ecosystems, and those that are woven into tribal history and culture.

A person might ask if Douglas-fir and ponderosa might also be critical to ecosystems, because they are predominant species in many places.  Also some species seem to do just fine with natural regeneration and others not so much.

Anyway,  I checked out my state’s nursery (which is closed this year for new orders).

Here’s what it says..

Covering Conservation

The seedling program allows farmers, ranchers, other landowners and land managers to obtain trees at a nominal cost to help achieve conservation goals, including:

  • Restoration after wildfire, flood and other natural disturbances

  • Growing shelterbelts, windbreaks and living snow fences

  • Creating and enhancing wildlife habitat

  • Protecting homes, cropland, livestock and highways

  • Increasing erosion control

  • Practicing “backyard” conservation that promotes clean air and water

You’ll note that trees for timber production aren’t mentioned..

OK, well perhaps Colorado isn’t a timber state, OK then, here’s Montana’s state nursery inventory. And Tennessee’s.   

Seems like each state nursery focuses on trees that grow there that people want to plant for whatever reasons.

The article doesn’t mention Forest Service nurseries, so here is their story.

 Over the last 15 years, the traditional role of the Forest Service nurseries has expanded to include the production of a wide variety of additional native plant species to meet the increasing needs of ecosystem restoration. These opportunities present new challenges to nursery managers because little is known about propagating many of these new species.

Anyway, that’s just a little context. Below are some excerpts from the Pew story.

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Pete oversees a program to restore whitebark pine trees to tribal lands and nearby forests. After identifying a handful of trees with genetic resistance to the blister rust, the team has collected enough seeds to repopulate the tribe’s entire 105,000 acres of whitebark pine habitat.

“It’s a keystone species,” Pete said. “It has over 100 different species that are reliant upon it. If we lose whitebark pine, it’s going to eliminate that ecosystem and habitat at the higher elevations, and that will have an effect on everything down below.”

The program has produced almost 11,000 seedlings, with plans to plant 4,300 of them next spring. Pete hopes to scale up to planting 50,000 seedlings a year. It will take 60 to 80 years before the trees she plants produce their own seeds.

Pete said she hopes to plant enough trees to reintroduce seeds as food for tribal winter ceremonies.

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State-run and commercial nurseries often specialize in the species used for large-scale timber production, such as Douglas fir or loblolly pine. Some tribal programs similarly supply logging operations.

Many, though, have focused on species that are critical to ecosystems, and those that are woven into tribal history and culture.

“Our forest management isn’t based on revenue. It’s based on restoration,” said Tony Incashola, Jr., head of forestry with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

The tribes grow more than 1 million seedlings each year at nurseries on the reservation, and the operation has doubled its conifer production over the last five years. Roughly half of the plants are grown for restoration projects on tribal lands, while the remaining half are sold to partners, including state agencies and other tribes.

In many tribal nations, nursery managers are growing tree species to help forests survive climate change, diseases and pests. The Mescalero Apache Tribe grows about 75,000 seedlings of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir each year.

“Our forest on the reservation is probably one of the healthiest in southern New Mexico,” said Smith, the nursery manager. “We cut out all the diseased trees and go back and replant in that area.”

Cut Douglas firs are used as lodgepoles for teepees, Smith said. Within the past five years, the tribe has grown more native plants to benefit wildlife using money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The Fort Belknap Indian Community, home to two Montana tribes, is seeking to restore subalpine fir, which a wildfire devastated in the 1930s. The tribes are in the first phase of their effort, conducting a study to see whether any remnant populations of the tree exist in its chain of mountains.

“If we do find some pockets of any remaining subalpine fir, we’re going to collect some seeds and possibly use them to grow and propagate and plant them back up in our mountains,” said Dennis Longknife Jr., the community’s climate change coordinator. “If we don’t have any, we have to find out where we can get some seed stock.”

Longknife, Jr. said the tree has cultural significance to the tribes, used for ceremonial purposes. The next steps in the restoration process will include identifying sites to grow the plants and areas for restoration. He noted that grant programs in the federal infrastructure bill may provide funding opportunities to support that work.

As nursery operations proliferate and expand, such efforts stand to benefit many other tribal programs, said Pinto, the Forest Service nursery specialist.

We’re #1! Reforestation as a Bipartisan Climate Solution: Matt Burgess (CU) Video with Some Ancient Wisdom

I’m sure that many of you are suffering from the seasonal influx of Obnoxious Political Ads. Last week, I ran across this video by a Professor Matt Burgess at University of Colorado who is studying polarization, with an eye to understanding and decreasing it. I thought it was super that an academic was looking into this instead of fanning the flames (I do see quite a bit of that), so here’s a shout out to Matt!

Check out his video on climate change polarization and what people agree on. I took some screenshots of some slides. They looked at climate policies that people broadly agree on.

Here’s an important screenshot for forest folks:

It’s particularly interesting as in President Biden’s Executive Order has different prongs.. MOG, wildfire risk, reforestation and economic development.

Here’s the reforestation part.

(d)  The Secretaries, in coordination with the heads of other agencies as appropriate, shall within 1 year of the date of this order:

(i)    develop a Federal goal that charges agencies to meet agency-specific reforestation targets by 2030, including an assessment of reforestation opportunities on Federal lands and through existing Federal programs and partnerships;

(ii)   develop, in collaboration with Federal, State, Tribal, and private-sector partners, a climate-informed plan (building on existing efforts) to increase Federal cone and seed collection and to ensure seed and seedling nursery capacity is sufficient to meet anticipated reforestation demand; and

We haven’t heard as much about this part of the response to the EO. Perhaps because it’s not controversial. But shouldn’t we talk about the non-controversial parts just as much?  Perhaps controversy is interesting in a way that mutually moving forward in a positive direction is not?

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Discussing With Those Whom You Disagree… Burgess’s Take:

Here are a few of his slides about conversations with those people you disagree with.  Some old ideas and some new ones for us who have been doing this work. This discussion is about 45 minutes in.

Burgess explains that “steelmanning” instead of “strawmanning”  is that you want to understand the best argument for the other side before you argue for our own side.

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If this reminds you of Hillel and Shammai, as well as our friend, the author of the book of Kohelet in the Hebrew Bible – “there is nothing new under the sun,” well, maybe those ancient folks knew a thing or two.

[The law is in accord with the School of Hillel] because they were kindly and modest, because they studied not only their own rulings but also those of the School of Shammai, and because they taught the words of the School of Shammai before their own.  Eruvin 13b.

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Secretary and Chief Roll Out New FS Reforestation Strategy

If the Old Growth comment period feels like Groundhog Day, this feels like Back to the Future.

WASHINGTON, July 25, 2022 — Today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a strategy for how the Biden-Harris Administration, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will address a reforestation backlog of four million acres on national forests and plant more than one billion trees over the next decade.

With new resources made available through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, combined with support from state, local, and Tribal governments as well as other partners, the Forest Service aims to eliminate the backlog over the next 10 years and develop the infrastructure, such as nurseries, to keep up with increasing needs.

The Forest Service has invested more than $100 million in reforestation this year – more than three times the investment in previous years – thanks to the Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees (REPLANT) Act made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These historic investments will help mitigate the impacts of climate change, rebuild in the aftermath of devastating wildfires and strengthen America’s forestlands.

“Forests are a powerful tool in the fight against climate change,” said Secretary Vilsack. “Nurturing their natural regeneration and planting in areas with the most need is critical to mitigating the worst effects of climate change while also making those forests more resilient to the threats they face from catastrophic wildfire, historic drought, disease outbreaks and pest infestation.”

Before the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and REPLANT, the Forest Service was only able to address about 6% of its post-wildfire reforestation needs. The REPLANT Act directs the Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees over the next decade, removes a cap of $30 million and is now expected to provide the agency significantly more resources every year to do so.

According to Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, the reforestation strategy (PDF, 7 MB) will serve as a framework to understand reforestation needs, develop shared priorities with partners, expand reforestation and nursery capacity, and ensure the trees planted grow to support healthy, resilient forests.

“Our reforestation efforts on national forests only increase through strong partnerships with other federal agencies, tribes, state and local governments, communities and organizations,” Moore said. “We recognize that successfully increasing reforestation on national forests is dependent on these strong partnerships.”

Secretary Vilsack and Chief Moore said that the strategy announced today is an important first step in realizing the goals laid out in President Biden’s direction to scale up climate-smart reforestation and also supports the Forest Service’s 10-year strategy to cut wildfire risk, protect communities and improve forest health.

In addition to the reforestation strategy, Secretary Vilsack announced 13 new USDA agency climate adaptation plans, which outline how each USDA agency will incorporate climate change into their operations and decisions to support communities, agriculture and forests nationwide.

“Our climate adaptation plans represent a blueprint for how we account for the risks our changing climate has on those groups most vulnerable to its effects – America’s farmers, ranchers, forest landowners and rural communities,” said Secretary Vilsack.

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Center for Western Priorities, in reporting on this,

The Biden administration plans to replant trees on millions of acres of forest affected by wildfires and other symptoms of climate change, like insects and droughtWarming temperatures and less rain mean hotter and bigger fires are taking out trees more rapidly than in the past, leading to a backlog of 4 million acres of forest in need of replanting. This comes on the heels of legislation passed last year requiring the Forest Service to plant 1.2 billion trees in national forests, called the REPLANT Act.

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But this replanting effort could be stymied by the very conditions that precipitated it, as many seedlings won’t be able to survive to adulthood due to climate change. That’s according to Joe Fargione, science director for North America at the Nature Conservancy.

“You’ve got to be smart about where you plant,” he said. “There are some places that the climate has already changed enough that it makes the probability of successfully reestablishing trees pretty low.”

If changes will be such that seedlings won’t be able to survive to adulthood due to climate change, one wonders how we would know whether such changes will affect young trees more than old (presumably less vigorous) trees. I actually don’t think that that’s known by anyone.

I’m also not sure that there are places on FS land where “the climate has changed enough that it makes the probability of successfully reestablishing trees pretty low.” Everywhere I look that has been burned (and where seed is available) I see the same species growing back (without being planted). What does it look like where you live?

Climate Change: Does “No Seedlings” Really Mean “No Future Forests”?

Matthew posted a link to this Grist article before, and I think it’s worthy of its own discussion.

 

The driving force here is that the rising global temperature is wiping out seedlings. In many spots around the U.S. West, summer temperatures are already high enough to cook young trees before they can develop thick protective bark. Others have become so dry that seedlings shrivel before their roots can grow deep enough to reach groundwater. Both circumstances can thwart forest regeneration. Mature trees can survive in these areas long after they stop reproducing. But when fires wipe out these forests and seedings can’t get a foothold, they are replaced with grasses and dense brush.

Some of us remember reforestation problems on dry sites before climate change (I think people would say it was occurring then, we just didn’t know about it.)  Here is what we thought then… first you need seed.  And ponderosa pines have intermittent seed crops.  So grasses/forbs/shrubs may have reclaimed the site (sucked up the sun and soil moisture) by the time Mom and Dad ponderosa got together, not leaving any openings for baby trees to take hold.  Then there are seed predators of various kinds.  Then there’s soil moisture at the right time.  And critters that munch on seedlings.  You can go out to various sites today and see a range of  ponderosa (and in my hood, Doug fir, regeneration) from none to lots.

Back in those days, it was OK, and even desirable, to assist seedlings in “getting a foothold.”  As I’ve said numerous times, in the 80’s, we learned about seed collection, nursery practices, seedling treatment in transit, vermiculite slurries, vexar tubing, and so on.  We used to travel around and examine cone crops and numbers of filled seed to select good sites to produce seed. The whole thing as down to.. dare I say… a science.

What was interesting to me is how different conceptions and research methods can yield the same, or different conclusions.
Here are some concepts (not observations):

(1) if forests won’t grow back without help, then we must just get used to fewer forests.

(2) the absence of natural regeneration (over some time period)  means that trees won’t otherwise grow well if planted.

What physiologists and silviculturists (applied forest ecologists) used to tell us through logic and observation (seeds must come from somewhere), we now can validate via regression models.

 

While annual climate was an important driver of postfire regeneration, our findings also highlight that the nature of a fire event strongly influences postfire regeneration. For example, the combined relative influence of annual climate variables on tree recruitment in our boosted regression tree (BRT) models was 24% for ponderosa pine and 34% for Douglas-fir (SI Appendix, Fig. S3), while the relative influence of distance to seed source, which is largely determined by fire severity, was 32% for ponderosa pine and 21% for Douglas-fir (SI Appendix, Fig. S3). The importance of seed tree availability in determining postfire regeneration has been demonstrated across forest types in the western United States (e.g., refs. 1720, and 46),

TSW readers tend to be out and about in the woods. Take a look next time (in a place where there are parent trees producing seed) and check out whether there is natural regeneration. I did that in my neighborhood and came up with the above photo. I also live in the fringe of ponderosa pine habitat on the Front Range of Colorado.  In this photo you can see parent trees, cones on the ground, and many seedlings. It’s something we can pay attention to, and maybe learn something by sharing what we see in different parts of the west.