Restoration

The North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project EIS- On Big Trees and Diameter Limits

by

Brad Seaberg mentioned the North Yuba Forest Resiliency Project in a comment.  The NEPA is an EIS linked to specific RODs. Shout out to them for their NEPA experimentation (2023 ROD), for their work with partners, and for their rapid reply to my questions. There has been no litigation.

My questions are in bold and District Ranger Tom Parrack’s answers in italics.

Were there any objections to this project?  
There were no formal objections. The North Yuba Forest Partnership was created during planning and was able to address constituent concerns during the initial environmental impact statement.  This developed a tremendous widespread support for the project.
Has implementation started? 
Yes.  Technically, implementation has been ongoing for several years as pre-existing NEPA was incorporated into the overall project and was immediately acted upon.  The first Record of Decision (ROD) was signed in 2022 and the second ROD in 2024.  Most implementation in the ROD 1 project area is just beginning, with projects in ROD 2 currently in layout and nearing implantation.  ROD 3 is being planned for signature in January of 2028.
Is this an example of condition-based NEPA? In other words, were all the units mapped and analyzed prior to the decision?  
Yes. During each Record of Decision, surveys are conducted to ensure that the initial analysis is still accurate and applicable.  The partnership also has an “monitoring team” whose purpose is to review prior decisions, implementation, and effects to help guide future decisions and planning efforts.  As conditions change across the landscape, the planners are able to adapt within the scope of the initial environmental impact statement and determine the best means to reach desired condition

*********************

Here’s some of the rationale for thinning some large trees:

A century of excluding fire’s ecological role in this Landscape has resulted in high stand densities and continuous tree canopy cover in areas that would have not historically supported these densities.
The historic role of fire as a frequent, widely occurring ecological process has been largely absent. The lack of fire, combined with human activities and management, has led to alterations in forest structure and species composition. Tree densities are higher compared to historic conditions and overall tree species composition has shifted to more shade tolerant, less fire-resilient species (Knapp et al. 2013, Safford and Stevens 2017, Stephens et al. 2018).
Generally, the number of large trees (greater than 24 inches dbh) have declined by at least 50% in the Sierra Nevada ecoregion (see Figure 1 from McIntyre et al 2015, see also Dolanc et al 2014, Stephens et al. 2018, Easterday et al. 2018). Broadly, this has led to forest management goals that prioritize retention of large trees, restricting removal of all trees greater than or equal to 30 inches dbh. However, species composition has also shifted toward shade tolerant trees, which in some stands may dominate the growing space. In these types of stands, the targeted removal of some larger shade tolerant trees can provide growing space for the shade intolerant pines, recruiting the large diameter pines of the future. Moreover, trees greater than 30 inches dbh in the dripline of even larger pine trees may pose a fire hazard to the larger trees, and their removal may bolster the potential to maintain the desired larger pines on the landscape. Finally, the ability to create heterogeneous stands with openings is challenging with strict diameter limits. Collectively, this suggests that treatment needs may be more complex than the application of a strict diameter limit allows for yet given the importance of large trees on the landscape, the proposal includes stand-level field verification, documentation and disclosure, and formal public comment opportunity prior to implementing this
plan amendment. Currently, a lack of forest diversity/heterogeneity; limited seral-stage variation; and deficiencies in very large, old trees are compromising California spotted owl habitat resiliency (Forest Service 2019). A summary of references of natural range of variability (NRV) conditions for yellow-pine and mixed-conifer forests across the Sierra Nevada can be found in PSW-GTR-256 (Safford and Stevens 2017, pages 177 to 181; table 11, pages 178 and 179). Promoting development of existing large trees into very large trees and retaining existing very large or old trees aligns with the purpose and need for this proposal.

Below is what I could find in the FEIS about 30-39 inch trees. Note that the purpose and need involved both thinning, and making 1-3 acre openings.

Treatment Units with Removal of Some Shade Tolerant Conifers between 30 and 39.9 inches
My decision includes application of TERR-NORTH YUBA-STD-01 to remove shade-tolerant conifers between 30 and 39.9 inches dbh, consistent with this standard and all other applicable Forest Plan standards and guidelines, including modified SNFPA ROD Standard and Guideline #7, on approximately 408 acres in four units in the Galloway area (Units 141, 142, 150, and 151). Figure 2 displays these treatment units in the Galloway area. Consistent with project-specific forest plan amendment TERR-NORTH YUBA-MA-01 (Final EIS Appendix B), a silviculturist has reviewed field conditions in these four units. Stands within these four units are extremely dense and at risk of imminent tree mortality. Data collected in these stands show basal area averaging 400 square feet per acre with a stand density index (SDI) of 550, which is 120 percent of the maximum SDI for mixed conifer stands.6 (To avoid substantial tree mortality, SDI levels should be below 50 percent of a maximum SDI of 450 for mixed conifer stands in
this Landscape, i.e. SDI of 225 or less.7) These stands have between 36 and 44 trees per acre 30 inches dbh or larger,8 and approximately 57 to 67 percent of the trees between 30 and 39.9 inches are shade tolerant conifers9. Large pines within these stands are either dead or at high risk of loss due to high stand densities and there is the possibility of immediate, short- and long-term mortality of fir. At least half of the largest shade intolerant pines and some Douglas-fir trees have already died in these units. White fir is experiencing disease and density related mortality as well, and will continue to see high mortality rates due to root disease as the other species die out. Extensive tree mortality in these units may result in complete large tree stand loss over time without appropriate treatment, including removal of some shade tolerant conifers between 30 and 39.9 inches dbh. Removing some shade tolerant conifers in this size class is needed to retain and promote the growth of larger shade-intolerant trees by more effectively meeting project objectives for tree species composition and forest stand density. An estimated average of 2 to 8 shade tolerant trees between 30 and 39.9 inches dbh per acre could be removed, leaving an estimated average of 30 to 36 trees per acre greater than 30 inches dbh on site. Shade tolerant trees selected for removal would generally be of low vigor (less than 30 percent crown ratio), and reductions in overstory canopy cover would be limited. Removal of some shade tolerant trees between 30 and 39.9 inches in these stands would effectively reduce stand densities within approximately 55 percent of

5 Prescribed fire is not proposed as a follow up treatment for thinning on any of the 345 acres of hydraulic mine sites in the
Galloway and Rattlesnake Skinner areas.
6 Silviculture/Forest Health Technical Report, pg. 20 and pp. 30 -32
7 Silviculture/Forest Health Technical Report, pg.9
8 Silviculture/Forest Health Technical Report, pg. 28
9 North Yuba Drone Based Stand Mapping (available in the Project Record)
Record of Decision – North Yuba Landscape Resilience Project

maximum SDI, thereby largely mitigating density-related tree mortality, including loss of large pines. In contrast, applying a 30-inch diameter limit in these four units would continue to keep stand density levels in the zone of imminent tree mortality (greater than 70 percent maximum SDI) following thinning.10
Opportunities to create 1- to 3-acre openings to enhance stand structural heterogeneity are extremely limited in these four units due to the high density of trees greater than or equal to 30 inches dbh, TERR- NORTH YUBA-STD-01 could be used to create approximately four to eight 1-acre openings across the four units due to the high densities of trees (30 inches dbh and greater) in these units.

Is that enough explanation? Seemingly the same discussion (if considered sufficient)  could be made (in an appendix to) an EA or a CE.

It’s also of interest that four forests to the north of the Tahoe, with similar PP/true fir combos, the forests are required to follow the E side screens “21 inch rule.”

Is that because the Forests (and scientist amicus-filers) didn’t adequately argue their case? The absence of a relevant GTR?

Or is it simply an artifact of  vegetation management by courts?

Is this “thinning?”

by

These photographs accompany a Missoulian article on a vegetation management project on the Lolo National Forest in Missoula’s WUI, showing trees (ponderosa pines?) marked for removal.  Most of the purpose and need is related to reducing fire risk, but there is also an assertion that these marked trees are ecologically inappropriate.  Here is what the decision notice says:

While ecological restoration and resiliency are embedded in WAM, the MCCWPP, Forest Service policy, and the National Cohesive Strategy, there is less agreement from the Missoula community about restoration as the sole basis for wildfire risk reduction fuel treatments. This debate about restoration has been ongoing for many years, as the wildfire hazard and risk to our community continues to increase. As the District Ranger, I considered this challenge and while the purpose and need focuses on fuel treatments to reduce hazard and risk, the project also meets ecological objectives to create resilient ecosystems. Both objectives are met through the actions included in the Selected Action and this decision and are designed to achieve the following restoration and resilience strategies:

  • Reduce surface and ladder fuels; increase crown base heights

  • Reduce and maintain lower tree densities; decrease crown bulk density

  • Increase composition of fire and drought-tolerant species (ponderosa pine and western larch

  • Increase mean diameter and individual tree vigor by retaining large trees with healthy crowns

  • Conserve existing species and genetic diversity

  • Restore horizontal spatial heterogeneity of forest structure, including openings where early-seral species can establish

  • Reintroduce fire to reduce fuel loads, stimulate understory species, and maintain desired fuel beds

  • Reduce/maintain appropriate levels of pathogens, insects, and other disturbances in order to create decadence, mortality, and interactions with fire that lead to regeneration of new tree cohorts and diverse understories

  • Monitor key processes including mortality, regeneration, growth, fuel accumulation and new species colonization to inform management if the project is meeting objectives to reduce hazard and risk and create resilient ecosystems.

Make sense?  Both objectives met?  (Note that board feet is not mentioned here.)  To me this kind of captures the debate about when is it necessary to remove the overstory to provide fuel reduction, which is going to be the “mature” trees that many would like to save.  Should we be striving for historical conditions, or less density than that because there are houses nearby, in which case I would say the ecological goal is not being met?   Keeping in mind that the “natural range of variation” is a requirement for ecosystems, not projects, I hope the forest plan identifies areas where risk reduction outweighs restoration as a desired outcome (purpose and need) of projects.  And that the NRV for ecosystems takes into consideration the areas that won’t have that desired condition.

FS- NFWF California Forests and Watershed Grants

by

As you know, Dave Mertz and I have FOIAd the Keystone Agreements and relevant SPAs and required annual reports.  It’s possible that some of those bucks (as far as we know hundreds of millions have been obligated) have gone to communications people to provide info on where and how the funding is being spent. 

Any Keystone grantee is free to send me any info they have generated. The grantees I’ve contacted have not been forthcoming, and have generally answered “ask the Forest Service.” Since I think it would be important to be accountable and transparent, so when the FS returns to Congress asking for more bucks, they will have a good case to present, the whole thing is a tad mysterious.

I did run across this one by NFWF; not sure that that the FS chunk of funding ($58 mill) is part of the Keystone agreement with NFWF, but it seems likely.

It seems like there’s a great deal of planning in this work, which is necessary, of course, but as we know litigation may delay implementation, so hopefully the grantees won’t need further funding to implement projects somewhere down the road. Because it seems to me that employees, especially temporaries’, work can be flexed as the FS needs change, and if there are grants but not employees, flexibility could be lost. Not that the FS intended to fund one and not the other, and we’ll see when appropriators get back to work.

Committee Hearing on Various Federal Lands Bills, and Root and Stem Bill Testimony from PERC

by

TSW could really use someone to report on legislation.. there was a Committee Hearing today on several bills that may be of interest. Here’s the FS testimony.

 

Here’s Hannah Downey’s written testimony.

The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act
The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act (H.R. 674) is a bipartisan proposal to add more resources to advance forest restoration projects through the often-cumbersome environmental review process. For projects on Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land that have been collaboratively developed and meet local and rural community needs, a sponsor can front the funding for an approved outside contractor to complete the NEPA analysis for the project and be repaid through any receipts generated by the project that would otherwise go to the federal treasury.

The “A to Z” Project
The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act builds on the “A to Z” pilot project in the Colville National Forest in Washington.
This innovative project was highlighted in PERC’s 2021 Fix America’s Forests report as a way to leverage the value of timber to reduce bureaucratic burdens.
Several years ago, the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, a collaborative group of public and private partners, was looking to advance a forest project, but the Colville National Forest did not have the financial or staff resources to complete environmental reviews for the project. The coalition proposed allowing timber contractors who would perform the harvesting and restoration work to also bear the costs of doing the NEPA analysis. This “A to Z” project—so named because the winning bidder would be responsible for the entire process from initiating the project, to environmental review, to implementation—presented the opportunity to use the commercial value of harvested timber to advance the project and fund forest restoration.

A local sawmill, Vaagen Brothers Lumber, won the 10-year Forest Service stewardship contract in 2013 to test the privately funded, publicly managed NEPA process. It subcontracted with a third party to plan and perform the environmental analysis. To avoid any conflict of interest, the subcontractor’s performance was overseen by agency personnel rather than Vaagen Brothers. The NEPA analysis was completed in 2016, and the Vaagen Brothers began commercial thinning operations on more than 4,500 acres of national forest lands that contain excess wildfire fuels.
With a mill that can process small-diameter trees and nearby processing facilities that can turn that timber into laminated building products, the contract provides Vaagen Brothers with a supply of merchantable wood products. In exchange, the terms of the stewardship contract also require that the private company rehabilitate streams, replace culverts, restore roads, and control noxious weeds, leaving the forest ecosystem more resilient to insects and disease, enhanced wildlife habitat, and a substantially reduced risk for severe wildfire.

How It Works
The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act establishes a formal process for a project sponsor to provide the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management upfront funding to hire an approved contractor to conduct the NEPA analysis for a collaboratively designed restoration project. It also adds the requirement that receipts generated by the project can be used to repay the sponsor instead of being deposited into the general fund of the treasury. Building on the success of the “A to Z” project, this approach could substantially speed up needed activities while freeing up agency resources and personnel for other projects.  The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management can currently contract with non-federal parties for environmental analysis and accept outside funds to pay for that review, as demonstrated by the “A to Z” project.

The significant reform that the Root and Stem Project Authorization Act would make is to allow a project’s timber revenues to reimburse the party who funds the environmental review. This improvement would create more opportunity and motivation for forest collaboratives, conservation organizations, timber companies, and other entities who would benefit from the restoration project to provide the initial funding.
Under this proposal, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management would maintain an approved list of non-federal, third-party contractors in each state that the agency can hire to complete NEPA analyses and any consultations required under the Endangered Species Act. For forest restoration projects that have been collaboratively developed on federal lands, a project sponsor could propose a stewardship contract and provide the federal land management agency with the funding to hire one of the approved contractors to conduct the necessary project analysis. Once the project was approved, the federal land manager would have to solicit bids to carry out the project and use any available receipts generated by the project to repay the sponsor.
Though outside parties would be providing upfront funding and completing the environmental review documents, the federal land management agency would still retain authority over the environmental review and the project. Additionally, the relevant secretary would still be required to determine the sufficiency of any documents and authorize the project to proceed.

Improving Forest Restoration
At a time of great need for more forest restoration activities, the Root and Stem Project Authorization Act would bring more resources to the table to get important work done. Bringing in outside funding will not only benefit the collaborative projects reviewed under the Root and Stem authority but will also allow limited Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management resources to be spent on other priorities. Ultimately, more needed forest restoration projects—both ones that do and do not generate revenues—will make it through the environmental review process so that work can begin on the ground to reduce fuel-loading and protect our forest ecosystems from catastrophic wildfires.

 

Flowers Grow in Openings in Ponderosa Pine Forests: Bees Like Flowers; Thinning Good for Biodiversity

by

This is an interesting and pretty comprehensive story from the Colorado Sun. Kind of a bee-centric take on desirable vegetation structures. Ecology is a funny thing in that there are all kinds of ecologists interested in all kinds of critters who may not prefer the same kinds of vegetation. So what is the “ecological work” that needs to be done- and what variety of ecologist decides?

The more-than-decadelong effort to thin Front Range forests to reduce fire danger has brought more bees, more flowers and increased resilience to climate change, new research shows.

The raw number and the diversity of bees and plants exploded a few years after ponderosa pine forests were restored to a “pre-European” state, researchers from Colorado State and Utah State universities found.

“We found that if you cut trees and open up the canopy, between three and 10 years later, you see a pretty good response,” said Seth Davis, associate professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University and co-author of a study recently published in “Ecological Applications.”

“Forest restoration and forest thinning is one of the ways that we can conserve our native communities.”

I like that reporter William Allstetter provided the historical context for how these particular forests came to be.

For thousands of years, natural fires have been an integral part of healthy forest ecosystems in the West. Small fires that clear out underbrush every five to 30 years as well as more devastating fires that can raze the forest to the ground every 50 to 100 or more years clear the way for new growth. Native Americans were known to set small fires to clear out undergrowth for better hunting and regeneration of valuable plants, but did not cause major changes in the ecosystem. Then, beginning in 1859, Euro-Americans flooded into Colorado seeking gold and silver.

I’m not sure that’s accurate; not sure that we can know whether larger pre-European fires were set intentionally. Larger fires did occur.

“Suddenly, in a span of decades, the Colorado Rockies were engulfed by this new, highly unpredictable world of commodity capitalism, of smelters and railroad investment, of boomtowns and sudden busts, of landscape changes so fundamental that they dwarfed the modest human impacts made over the prior 10 centuries,” historical geographer William Wyckoff wrote in his book “Creating Colorado.”

Vast swaths of the Front Range forests were cleared to obtain wood for mining, construction and railroads. Extensive fires also surged across the landscape, fueled by accidental and intentional fires.

To combat the rampant and unregulated logging of these forests, the federal government in the early years of the 20th century created the White River, Pike, and Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests along the Front Range and high into the Rockies. At about the same time, firefighters began trying to suppress all fires.

As a result, over the past century, dense forests with thick undergrowth have grown up across the Front Range and the entire West. Many of the plants that thrived in the pre-European forests disappeared from the now shady forest floor. And with them went many of the animals that ate and pollinated them. You end up with a rather homogeneous landscape that doesn’t have a lot of flowers in it,” Davis said. “You end up with a situation where you can’t have a lot of native bees there.”

************

They found an impressively richer, more dense and resilient web of life. While the bee population roughly doubled, the number of interactions between bees and plants rose eightfold and there were five times as many unique connections between specific bee species and plant species.

The researchers illustrated the interactions in a diagram, which visually depicts a richer, more complex web of life.

“Yeah, it’s kind of mind-blowing,” Davis said. “You just see there’s just far more diversity or more complexity.

“You get the idea that if you lost one or two of the flowers or one or two of the bees out of this system, the whole network doesn’t just collapse and fall apart. Whereas on these control plots, if you remove one or two things, you just got a lot more vulnerable ecosystem.”

“This paper is a strong piece of evidence for the ecosystem benefits of forest thinning in areas where fire has been suppressed and the canopy is overgrown,” said Amy Yarger, director of horticulture at the Butterfly Pavilion. She was not involved in the research. “With climate change and biodiversity loss posing existential threats, mindful forest management is key for conservation and for preserving our way of life in Colorado.”

*******************

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Here are some really key species for supporting a lot of biodiversity of pollinators, which in turn supports biodiversity of plants,” said Julian Resasco, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado. “Things that maintain the integrity and the diversity of these ecosystems make them more robust to other threats, like climate change.”

The researchers recommended that forest managers seed ponderosa pine forests with these plants to promote a robust pollinator network. They also could be good plants for people to plant in their gardens. “These are good choices for planting because they’re going to support the bee-flower interaction network,” Davis said.

He believes the environmental benefits extend beyond bees and plants. “We’re sort of measuring one little component of the overall food web here,” Davis said. “By bolstering their abundances, you’re also bolstering the abundances of things which prey upon them, like predators, which could be birds and other animals.” Another study from 2020 suggests that the thinned forests also benefited bird populations.

Not every scientific paper reminds me of an old pop song.. birds, bees, flowers, trees, this paper has it all.

The Department of the Interior Goes All in on “Nature-Based Solutions”

by

There are many new readers to TSW, so I will tell this story again.  After I retired from the Forest Service, I spent a few months working as the Catholic Channel administrator for a for-profit company called Patheos.  My job was to post snippets of blogs written by our writers .  As part of that job, we had training that it was important to tie the blog topics to current events, even if it was quite a stretch, so that they would get more clicks and hence revenue.

Well, we definitely see that with the COP.. there’s been a plethora of what I call COPaganda and COProphilia.  I see that as the context for this Interior Department press release. I have to wonder about 70K people traveling using fossil fuels, to a meeting in a country that produces fossil fuels, to decry fossil fuels.

The announcement comes as Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Shannon Estenoz wraps up her trip to the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai,

I wonder how many people the US Government sent to this meeting from how many different departments and agencies?

Anyway, the Department is going to go with “nature-based solutions”:

“Investing in nature is investing in ourselves. By employing nature-based solutions, land managers and decision makers can restore and sustain healthy ecosystems that in turn support healthy communities and economies,” said Assistant Secretary Estenoz.

Nature-based solutions use or mimic natural features or processes to improve biodiversity, strengthen resilience for disaster and hazard-risk management, support climate adaptation, and address carbon management to offset greenhouse gas emissions, while also benefitting both people and nature. These can include green infrastructure, natural infrastructure, and natural climate solutions.

The Department today also announced a new policy that will strengthen the Department’s ability to meet its mission in the face of a changing climate by prioritizing nature-based solutions across bureaus and offices. The policy will provide land managers and decision makers with guidance on using nature-based climate solutions, and will center collaborative partnerships, equity, environmental justice, and the use of the best available evidence. This new policy compliments the announcement in September 2023 of new policies to strengthen climate adaptation and resilience efforts, including the first-ever effort to factor the climate crisis into all operations.

The Department is prioritizing high return nature-based investments that connect lands and waters, promote cross-bureau collaboration, and leverage partnerships. By implementing these innovative strategies, our efforts also aim to ensure climate security, improve equity and address environmental justice, incorporate Indigenous Knowledge into decision making, and apply evidence-based scientific approaches to predict, monitor, and assess implementation effectiveness.

It sounds like all the great things that they were already doing, but now they are “innovative strategies”.

Now some of us have been through “sustainability” and the Montreal Process; “ecosystem health”; biodiversity; ecosystem management, ecosystem services, ecological integrity, climate resilience and probably other abstractions over time. In my paid career, each one of these had their own cadre of experts, and we would attend meetings and listen to them. At the end of the day, though, for federal land management agencies (and noted that Interior does many other useful things), we are discussing the exact same things that we were 50 years ago- grazing, the timber industry, how to manage wildfires, infrastructure projects (renewable or other energy, transmission) and mining. We have a mass of interlocking disciplines that work with each of these kinds of uses- wildlife biologists, fisheries folks, hydrologists, foresters, fuels folks, economists, social scientists, NEPA practitioners and so on.

I’m a bit leery of the USG going to outside sources (including NGOs and universities) when they usually have more experts in-house, but OK, let’s look at the forest section. I think, to be fair, that the NBS idea makes more sense for riparian and coastal management; maybe it’s just same-old for forests.
**********
Forest restoration is the process of returning a forest to its healthy state; this can include a variety of actions such as prescribed burns, reforestation, controlling invasive species, and pruning competing underbrush (American Forests 2023). Forest conservation as a management practice is the maintenance of forested areas for both people and the environment. Both
conservation and restoration are essential to forest management (Pawar and Rothkar, 2015).

TECHNICAL APPROACH
Forest conservation and restoration approaches vary based on the goals of the particular manager or management agency. Goals typically include both ecosystem and socioeconomic outcomes (Stanturf et al. 2017). When considering forest conservation and restoration, it is crucial to evaluate the trade-offs of timber production and ecosystem values (University of Cambridge 2022). Some primary forest conservation and restoration methods are as follows:
• Fuels management: Fuels management is a priority for many forests as a method to mitigate the harmful effects of wildfires, invasive species, and other disturbances. Within forests, fuels management often consists of prescribed burning and mechanical thinning (USFS 2021).
• Reforestation: Reforestation is one of the main practices for forest restoration.
There are three main reforestation methods: natural regeneration, assisted natural regeneration, and planting (USFS 2022).
• Natural regeneration: Natural regeneration allows regrowth to occur naturally. Depending on the project, natural regeneration can provide the most cost-effective reforestation method. It is essential to be aware of the species that will likely grow in these areas to ensure they will meet project goals (Chazdon 2017).
• Assisted natural regeneration (ANR): ANR is a method requiring less labor and funding than planting, but aims to accelerate a forest’s natural regeneration process. ANR can be achieved by improving soil, removing competing species, and mitigating disturbances (Ciccarese et al. 2012).
• Planting: Some forest restoration projects require systematic planting of native species, with the best results coming from species-diverse planting projects (Ciccarese et al. 2012).
• Controlling invasive species: Another crucial management approach to forest restoration is invasive species management, including prevention, early detection and rapid response, long-term control, and monitoring. In long-term, large-scale forest conservation and restoration projects, prioritization is critical to ensure cost-effective management. Native tree species resistant to invasive pests can be planted to aid in stand reestablishment (NPS 2022).

*******
Here are some forest examples (I circled the lessons learned that I thought we already knew, plus the AS duration is perhaps incorrect (if not, please let us know more!):

So I guess they are saying that all these things (BAU) can be put under the new umbrella of “nature-based solutions.”

***************

Several barriers are common across many of the nature-based solutions strategies; these are described in more detail in Section 1 of the Roadmap. Additional notes about the barriers specific to forest conservation and restoration are included here.
• Expense: Lack of funding is the primary obstacle forest restoration practitioners report (Cook-Patton et al. 2020). Forest restoration costs on a landscape-scale level can be in the billions of dollars. While the economic investment is high, forest conservation and restoration should be considered socioeconomic and environmental investments for the future (Wu et al. 2011).
• Capacity: Certain methods of forest restoration have high labor requirements, which can be a constraint in implementing these projects (Ciccarese et al. 2012).
• Public opinion: Public support is crucial for forest conservation and restoration on public lands. It is important to educate about the importance of the conservation and restoration work (USFS 2012).
• Conflict with other land uses: Forest land conversion is one of the primary causes of forest loss. This land is typically converted into development or agriculture. With the growing population, deforestation is estimated to exceed 50 million ac by 2050. Forest land conversion has lasting socioeconomic and ecological effects, and it is important to find integrated ways to sustain the growing population while still prioritizing forest conservation and restoration (Alig et al.)
• Regulation: Forest restoration projects can be delayed by regulatory requirementssuch as fulfilling National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and endangered species consultation requirements. However, in some cases, categorical exclusions can exempt a particular project from NEPA requirements (Fretwell and Wood 2021).
Community
• Legal and administrative constraints: Forest restoration is not currently occurring at the desired rate, often because of funding, legal, and organizational constraints and barriers (Jones et al. 2021).
• Species-poor plantations: Forest conservation and restoration may create singlespecies tree plantations, which do not provide the same ecological benefits as speciesdiverse forests (Aerts and Honnay 2011).

San Carlos Apaches and Forest Service Sign Contract for Restoration

by
San Carlos Tribe Chairman Terry Rambler (right) signs an agreement with Kurt Davis, deputy forest Supervisor for the Coronado National Forest, to allow the tribe to contract with the federal government to to allow the tribe to take part in large-scale restoration efforts on the Apache-Sitgreaves, Tonto and Coronado national forests and other ancestral lands in order to return them to a natural and historic state.

San Carlos Apache Tribe finalizes restoration agreement with Forest Service

“The U.S. Forest Service and the San Carlos Apache Tribe have forged an agreement to allow the tribe to take part in large-scale restoration efforts.

It was made official earlier this week at a signing ceremony on the reservation.

The tribe now has the legal authority to contract with the federal government to work on the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coronado and Tonto national forests and adjacent ancestral lands while tapping $24 million in infrastructure funding.

The treatments will include fuels reduction and use prescribed fire to return the landscape to a historical and natural state in a culturally sensitive way while emphasizing clean water, medicinal plants and traditional food sources like acorns, berries and wildlife. Initial projects have already begun.”

This seems like a great idea and much easier than “conservation leasing”.. just sign a contract, figure out the projects, and get them done..

“Proforestation” It Aint What It Claims To Be

by

‘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.

Possible Salvage Strategy for Dixie and Caldor Fires

by

Since a battle for salvage projects is brewing, I think the Forest Service and the timber industry should consider my idea to get the work done, as soon as possible, under the rules, laws and policies, currently in force. It would be a good thing to ‘preempt’ the expected litigation before it goes to Appeals Court.

 

The Forest Service should quickly get their plans together, making sure that the project will survive the lower court battles. It is likely that such plans that were upheld by lower courts, in the past, would survive the inevitable lower court battles. Once the lower court allows the project(s), the timber industry should get all the fallers they can find, and get every snag designated for harvest on the ground. Don’t worry too much about skidding until the felling gets done. That way, when the case is appealed, most of Chad Hanson’s issues would now be rendered ‘moot’. It sure seems like the Hanson folks’ entire case is dependent on having standing snags. If this idea is successful, I’m sure that Hanson will try to block the skidding and transport of logs to the mill. The Appeals Court would have to decide if skidding operations and log hauling are harmful to spotted owls and black-backed woodpeckers.

 

It seems worth a try, to thin out snags over HUGE areas, while minimizing the legal wranglings.

Science is clear: Catastrophic wildfire requires forest management

by

“Science is clear: Catastrophic wildfire requires forest management” was written by Steve Ellis, Chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees (NAFSR), who is a former U.S. Forest Service Forest Supervisor and retired Bureau of Land Management Deputy Director for Operations—the senior career position in that agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

I have extracted a few snippets (Emphasis added) from the above article published by the NAFSR:

1) Last year was a historically destructive wildfire season. While we haven’t yet seen the end of 2021, nationally 64 large fires have burned over 3 million acres. The economic damage caused by wildfire in 2020 is estimated at $150 billion. The loss of communities, loss of life, impacts on health, and untold environmental damage to our watersheds—not to mention the pumping of climate-changing carbon into the atmosphere—are devastating. This continuing disaster needs to be addressed like the catastrophe it is.

2) We are the National Association of Forest Service Retirees (NAFSR), an organization of dedicated natural resource professionals—field practitioners, firefighters, and scientists—with thousands of years of on the ground experience. Our membership lives in every state of the nation. We are dedicated to sustaining healthy National Forests and National Grasslands, the lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, to provide clean water, quality outdoor recreation, wildlife and fish habitat, and carbon sequestration, and to be more resilient to catastrophic wildfire as our climate changes.

3) As some of us here on the Smokey Wire have been explaining for years, the NAFSR very clearly and succinctly states:
“Small treatment areas, scattered “random acts of restoration” across the landscape, are not large enough to make a meaningful difference. Decades of field observations and peer reviewed research both document the effectiveness of strategic landscape fuel treatments and support the pressing need to do more. The cost of necessary treatments is a fraction of the wildfire damage such treatments can prevent. Today’s wildfires in overstocked forests burn so hot and on such vast acreages that reforestation becomes difficult or next to impossible in some areas. Soil damage and erosion become extreme. Watersheds which supply vital domestic, industrial, and agricultural water are damaged or destroyed.”

4) This summer, America watched with great apprehension as the Caldor Fire approached South Lake Tahoe. In a community briefing, wildfire incident commander Rocky Oplinger described how active management of forestlands assisted firefighters. “When the fire spotted above Meyers, it reached a fuels treatment that helped reduce flame lengths from 150 feet to 15 feet, enabling firefighters to mount a direct attack and protect homes,” The Los Angeles Times quoted him.

5) And in a Sacramento Bee interview in which fire researcher Scott Stephens was asked how much consensus there is among fire scientists that fuels treatments do help, he answered “I’d say at least 99%. I’ll be honest with you, it’s that strong; it’s that strong. There’s at least 99% certainty that treated areas do moderate fire behavior. You will always have the ignition potential, but the fires will be much easier to manage.” I (Steve Ellis) don’t know if it’s 99% or not, but a wildfire commander with decades of experience recently told me this figure would be at least 90%. What is important here is that there is broad agreement among professionals that properly treated landscapes do moderate fire behavior.

6) During my career (Steve Ellis), I have personally witnessed fire dropping from tree crowns to the ground when it hit a thinned forest. So have many NAFSR members. This is an issue where scientist and practitioners agree. More strategic landscape treatments are necessary to help avoid increasingly disastrous wildfires. So, the next time you read or hear someone say that thinning and prescribed fire in the forest does not work, remember that nothing can be further from the truth.