Restoration

Restoration Economy – Two Views or One?

by
Furniture maker Ryan Schlaefer starts with kiln-dried pine from a Fort Collins milling and lumber company that buys from a Woodland Park beetle kill supplier. A recent curio case is framed in quarter-inch solid pine on the face, backed up with a plywood core, plus a maple veneer on the outside edge he made with a glue press.

The above photo is from an article sent in by Bob Berwyn here.

Note: I reposted this from Sunday, as it seems like the question “”what does it take to have reached the “restoration economy” and have we reached it?” is fundamental. Because if it happened that there was agreement on a vision of sustainable levels of harvesting to local mills (as in the Jake Kreilick piece below), there may be some places that have “too many/too large (??)” (still not clear on Montana) but we would have other areas (the Southwest, Colorado) that don’t have “enough” capacity to be at that level.

Here is an op-ed from the Missoulian. So not being a Montanan, it would be helpful if Montanans could explain why these two views sound so similar in philosophy, yet there appears to be discord.

From where I sit: People agree that:
There are too many roads
There is a need to restore riparian
But where they diverge is the below concept:
Given that Congress gives Montana $x for federal forest restoration that provide y units of restoration.
You could have y + z restoration done, and have local jobs and the associated economic benefits if some trees went to mills.
If trees don’t go to mills people will still buy and use wood, but the economic benefits will accrue to our neighbors in Canada (for the most part).

Restoration economy has USFS at crossroads

guest column by JULIA ALTEMUS |

At the same time the timber industry was collapsing in the 1990s, natural resource managers, policy makers and communities were starting to realize the social, ecological and economic sustainability of the West was increasingly threatened by declining forest health and closure of the local sawmill.

Stand-replacing wildfires of the 1990s, 2000, and 2002 were the wake-up call, promulgating a series of policy initiatives focused on the restoration of forests and the reduction of hazardous fuels. Prior to 1998, hazardous fuels reduction was not even a line item in the federal budget. Funds had never been requested. From 1998 through 2000, Congress appropriated $93 million a year for hazardous fuels reduction, which escalated to $1 billion in 2001 and $3 billion by 2005. With a 100-million-acre crisis at hand and support from Congress, timber no longer needed to pay its way out of the forest. Federal agencies changed their management focus from merchantable, large-diameter sawlog removals, to small-diameter, sub-merchantable materials.

As a response, place-based initiatives emerged uniting conservationists, labor management, local stakeholder interests and policy makers. All centered on a restoration framework and an emerging local “green” restoration economy, operating within a “zone of agreement” around social, ecological and certain economic values.

By-products of community protection and forest restoration are primarily small diameter trees and woody biomass. Existing and new cottage industries were encouraged to develop and provide for utilization of these sub-merchantable materials. The West was particularly ripe for this conversion due to a growing commitment to restore federal forests.

However, one of the greatest challenges to building a forest restoration economy was finding ways to fund restoration activities when traditional sawlog values were no longer primarily relied upon to offset costs. As a response, congress passed the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2009, authorizing up to $40 million per year to be spent out of the existing Forest Service’s budget to subsidize restoration work across the country.

The October/November 2011 Journal of Forestry published an article by U.S. Forest Service Chief, Tom Tidwell, who is quoted as saying, “The time is right for a restoration economy. The Forest Service is tailoring its programs and projects to a new management environment.” This was news to many in the forest products community. Up until then, restoration activities were a tool in the federal forest management toolbox. It appeared that restoration was no longer simply a tool, but was being used to create a “new management environment.” For those that rely upon sawlog volume to keep mills running, this is a problem.

The proposed “new” forest restoration economy focuses less on ecosystem components and outputs and more on ecosystem functions, ecological processes and outcomes. When economics plays a less important role – in any economy – political and economic regimes emerge within smaller social groups and social networks. Because these political economic regimes influence and are influenced by the organization of both social and political economic capital, it lacks a standard economic value.

With the current national deficit, pumping millions of dollars into federally subsidized forest restoration activities is unlikely unless there is political will to do so. A simple solution is to broaden the scope of projects, allowing the value of the sawlogs to pay for the restoration activities. Harvesting sawlogs within the context of restoration has been controversial and unpopular with most conservation groups.

With a recent move to reduce the federal budget, as much as one third of the Forest Service’s workforce could retire, not in five years or even within the next year, but in the next two months! With the loss of so many seasoned professionals, the Forest Service will likely rely upon social groups and social networks to accomplish their mission. The Forest Service is at a crossroads; whether the new forest restoration economy is the next evolutionary step in a 100-year-old agency or forces the devolution of management to social groups, states and/or counties is uncertain.

Management of our federal forests resources, in a combination that contributes to the three interrelated and interdependent elements of sustainability – social, ecological and economic – is important and keeps us from repeating mistakes of the past. However, economics in the larger context must be equal with other social values.

Julia Altemus is executive vice-president of the Montana Wood Products Association.

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/restoration-economy-has-usfs-at-crossroads/article_093bca28-3dfd-11e1-b200-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=story#ixzz1jYzaEGDT

And Matthew Koehler’s comment:

The following piece was written in 2005, and helps to illustrate just how forward-thinking some in the forest activist community have been regarding restoration of our public lands.

Forest Service should embrace century of restoration
By Jake Kreilick
National Forest Protection Alliance

Even since I started planting trees on the Kootenai National Forest, I’ve had a keen interest in forest restoration. From 1988-92, I planted thousands of trees across dozens of clearcuts. The days were long and the work was exhausting but I valued the experience gained, not to mention the money earned. In the end, these experiences would shape my career path and influence my view of restoration.

When I started planting trees, I believed I was aiding forest recovery. However, within a few seasons I felt like an unwilling accomplice to the wholesale liquidation of massive, ancient forests and colossal roadbuilding projects that were so en vogue under the forest policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

Essentially, we were replacing the rich biological diversity of this mixed conifer, cool temperate forest with an even-aged tree farm composed of the most commercially valuable species. What’s worse, we were making the forest more vulnerable to natural disturbances like insect infestations and fires.

This revelation forced me to conclude that tree planting on national forests was not being done for restoration purposes nor to improve forest health, but rather to perpetuate an ecologically destructive, money-losing federal logging program. Granted, this program allowed mills like Owens & Hurst in Eureka, who recently announced they are closing, to flourish for nearly 25 years before a combination of market forces, corporate greed and environmental concerns changed the timber industry landscape in our region.

My tree planting years fostered a deeper understanding about the many impacts logging has had on our national forests. Despite the fact that the overall cut on national forests has declined from a high of 12.6 billion board feet in 1989 to around 2 billion board feet, the logging legacy lives on in many forms.

Consider the following:

– There are 445,000 miles of roads on national forests – enough to circle the Earth 18 times – and the Forest Service faces a $10 billion road maintenance backlog.

– An estimated 50 percent of riparian areas on national forests require restoration due to impacts from logging, roadbuilding, grazing, mining and off-road vehicles.

– Less than 5 percent of America’s ancient, old-growth forests remain.

– 421 wildlife species that call national forests home are in need of protective measures provided by the Endangered Species Act.

Clearly, America’s national forests, rivers and wildlife deserve better and would benefit greatly from an ecologically-based restoration program, to say nothing of the tremendous social and economic benefits restoration activities would bring to our local workforce.

Since 2005 marks the Forest Service’s centennial, we believe there is a golden opportunity to make the focus of the next 100 years of Forest Service management the “Restoration Century.”

To this end, the National Forest Protection Alliance and our member groups have been involved with a three-year bridge-building effort between community forestry advocates and restoration workers. The goal has focused on developing agreement on an ecologically based framework for restoring our nation’s forests that’s not only good for the land, but also good for communities and workers. While it has not always been an easy process, it has resulted in us finding a surprising amount of common ground.

One of the results of this process has been the development of a set of Restoration Principles (www.asje.org/resprinc.pdf) as a national policy statement to guide sound ecological restoration. The Principles are an essential tool for stakeholders and decision-makers at all levels to develop, evaluate, critique, improve, support or reject proposed restoration projects.

Here in western Montana, NFPA, Native Forest Network, Wildlands CPR and other environmental groups have used the Restoration Principles to work in a more collaborative fashion with the Lolo National Forest. Following a series of field trips and meetings, we believe the Lolo staff is gaining a better understanding of our restoration approach and they are exploring some of our restoration ideas and proposals.

For example, we have taken numerous trips with the Forest Service, restoration workers and a Pyramid Mountain Lumber representative to the proposed Monture Creek Fuels Reduction project north of Ovando. While we remain concerned that this project removes too many trees and that mechanical harvesters will damage sensitive soils, the district ranger has agreed to let us put the Restoration Principles to work on a portion of this project.

This spring, together with Wildland Conservation Services – a local restoration company that has received a service contract from the Forest Service – we will demonstrate the viability of forest restoration approaches that will enhance ecological integrity, protect soils and reduce fuels while putting money in the pockets of some local workers.

Another exciting restoration opportunity looming on the horizon is a water quality restoration plan for Upper Lolo Creek. While the Forest Service’s assessment for Upper Lolo Creek is nearly complete they lack funding to complete the needed road and watershed restoration work to improve water quality and fish habitat. We feel this is a perfect opportunity to collaborate locally with the recently formed Lolo Watershed Group, community leaders and restoration workers to ask Montana’s congressional delegation to find money for this project.

We know that moving forward with a comprehensive restoration program for America’s national forests is going to take time and it isn’t always going to be easy. However, the National Forest Protection Alliance and our 130 member groups across the country are committed to making the “Restoration Century” a reality.

Ethnobotany Interrupted

by

Thanks to Bob Zybach for this piece from the Eugene Weekly. It talks about “what is “restoration” and what is the role of Native Americans and their traditional management techniques.
Here’s an excerpt. the original story is here.

A Human Dilemma

Current restoration objectives for the West Eugene Wetlands tend to center around creating habitat for threatened and endangered species, such as Fender’s blue butterfly. This often involves removing invasive plants like blackberry and ivy, and introducing native plants that are beneficial to species at risk.

For the most part, land managers and restoration ecologists — including those who oversee the Wetlands — tend to focus on restoring natural functions, not so much on returning a landscape to any particular previous state. Ecologists study the relationships between natural elements such as native species, soil quality and the ability of nutrients to flow through a system, and attempt to restore as many of these elements as possible to ensure biodiversity.

“What you’re restoring a landscape to is a really important question,” says Emily Steele, a restoration ecologist with the city of Eugene. “And you’ll hear a lot of different things from different people. We’re trying to get the habitat back to a state where it can be self sufficient and resilient, so that it will require less management from people.”

But restoring land using traditional Native American methods involves preserving culturally important native plants with the intention of using them — for basketry, food or canoes.

Zybach, who is an expert in Indian burning patterns in the Willamette Valley, says that because ecosystems in the Willamette Valley evolved alongside human activity, they function best when people are using them.“Restoration doesn’t mean a return to natural functions; it means a return to a previous condition,” he says. “Natural to people often means no humans. But if we’re not interrelating with the environment, something’s wrong. You have to have people tending the land.”

“When you restore a landscape, that would include cultural use,” says Lewis. “There’s an assumption that plants, animals and humans are separate, but in ecology we know that they’re interrelated. That traditional landscape is almost gone, and you want to preserve what’s endangered. It’s a cultural landscape; people were involved in it, therefore, you want people to come back in.”

Our Mutual Future- the Restoration Biz?

by

Seems to me like good work- is anyone out there against this?

Restoring local creeks, waterways
Work helps nature, ecosystems and new businesses thrive

By Kate Ramsayer /from the Bend Bulletin here

Karen Allen chooses native seeds to be planted in Camp Polk Meadow based on how much water the area will receive. She also works with engineers, fish biologists, hydrologists and others to come up with a plant design for a restoration project.

Karen Allen chooses native seeds to be planted in Camp Polk Meadow based on how much water the area will receive. She also works with engineers, fish biologists, hydrologists and others to come up with a plant design for a restoration project.
Ryan Brennecke The Bulletin
advertisement:

As workers with J & S Trucking reconstructed a section of Whychus Creek this fall, placing logs in the banks and boulders in the creek bed to create fish habitat, the work was a far cry from what the company was doing a decade ago.

“We kind of got into it as a natural progression,” said Sean Kelly, owner of the Powell Butte company, which started as a trucking business. About seven years ago, they started focusing on heavy excavation, building roads and replacing culverts for federal land management agencies. Recently, they started working on specialized projects to restore creeks and waterways.

“During the building boom, guys really had to find a niche — and we really focused our attention away from the building boom and into the forest,” Kelly said. “It’s paying off now.”

With efforts to return salmon and steelhead runs to the Upper Deschutes Basin, the passage of Measure 76 to renew lottery funding for restoration projects, and focused efforts to make the forests less prone to catastrophic wildfires, some businesses in Central Oregon that focus on ecosystem rehabilitation are seeing a demand for their services.

“It continues to increase, and the jobs are getting larger and more complex as funding becomes available,” Kelly said. “And as these agencies see that it really works, they push to do more and more of it.”

Restoration work has picked up in the last five years or so, said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council. And as nonprofits like the watershed council and the Deschutes Land Trust start doing restoration or canal piping projects, they need businesses with specialized skills to help out.

“If we’re going to do 10 projects a year, we just need more help,” he said. “I think a lot of it is just the organic nature in which sectors develop. Those folks were always there, but they saw a business opportunity, we had a need, these pieces started fitting together.”

When the watershed council was planning its project to restore Tumalo Creek, for example, it needed a source of plants, Houston said. And it turned to Clearwater Native Plant Nursery, which was getting off the ground.

Mike Lattig, owner of the nursery, turned a botany degree and a gardening hobby into a business where he grows plants native to the area, both for large restoration projects and smaller landowners.

“There’s a demand for native plants, for sure,” Lattig said.

Business with the private landowners has dropped in the last couple of years as the economy tanked, he said, but recent years have also brought large restoration projects, which needed thousands of plants. And although there aren’t large projects slated for next year, Lattig said there’s a long-term need to restore salmon and steelhead habitat, and Oregon’s green mindset makes native plants a good business.

“There’s plenty of places to fix,” he said.

The passage of Measure 76, which stated that Oregon would continue to dedicate a portion of lottery funds for parks and natural resources, means that there will be a continuing funding source for good restoration projects, said Brad Chalfant, executive director of the Deschutes Land Trust.

“What the voters did, whether they realize it or not, is kept the partners working together, moving forward … and in the process, help incubate a growing field of restoration foresters, biologists, botanists, engineers, etc., that are doing this kind of work,” Chalfant said.

While jobs for a business like a logging contractor might fluctuate with the lumber market and can reflect the economy, he said, restoration projects are planned far in advance, and provide a little bit of stability.

“We’ll never replace all of the jobs that were lost in the woods,” Chalfant said. “But it allows us to start doing some things to address the crisis that we’ve got in our forests and in our streams.”

Karen Allen does plant design for stream restoration with her business, Aequinox. She works with the engineers, fish biologists, hydrologists and more to figure out what native vegetation should be planted where, based on how much water a site will get and other considerations. A big part of her business, she said, is working on projects that are tied to the efforts to bring back salmon and steelhead runs to the basin. After decades of planning, and the construction of a more than $100 million fish passage facility, a number of groups and agencies are working to restore the habitat where the fish will grow up and then return to spawn.

“There’s a lot of interest in that, and money available,” she said, adding that it is, however, niche work.

Work to make the forests healthier and more resilient to high-intensity fires is the focus of Darin Stringer, a part owner and forest ecologist with Integrated Resource Management.

“We work with a broad range of clients — Forest Service, state and local governments, not-for-profit conservation organizations,” Stringer said.

He’s worked with the Land Trust to develop a plan for the organization’s Metolius Preserve, designing forest thinning projects that would reduce fire risk and promote old-growth characteristics near Camp Sherman. And after that project, the Forest Service hired him to help design the Glaze Stewardship project as well as train Forest Service crews in how to carry out the prescriptions.

“In the last 10 years, I think there’s been a lot of movement toward forestry that’s not just timber-based,” Stringer said.

And after a jolt of stimulus funds, the money flowing to restoration projects should be pretty steady now, he said, and there are plenty of areas that could use some help.

“There’s a lot of money that needs to go back into the forest,” Stringer said.

Interaction of Fire Exclusion and Logging- UM Paper

by

Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this find.

UM Study Finds Logged Forests More Prone To Severe Wildfires
Oct. 04, 2010

UM Press Release: http://news.umt.edu/2010/10/100110fire.aspx

Copy of Ecological Applications article: http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~cana4848/papers/Naficy_et_al_2010_Ecol_App.pdf

Contact:
Anna Sala, professor, UM Division of Biological Sciences, 406-243-6009, [email protected] .

MISSOULA – Historically logged forest sites are denser and potentially more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuel-reduction treatments, according to a new University of Montana study.

Anna Sala and Cameron Naficy, the lead researchers in the study, published an article on these findings in the most recent issue of the journal Ecological Applications. Sala is a professor in UM’s Division of Biological Sciences, and Naficy graduated with a master’s degree from UM in 2008.

Sala and Naficy’s study compared logged, fire-excluded sites to unlogged, fire-excluded sites in forests mainly consisting of ponderosa pines. The study covered a broad region spanning the Continental Divide of the Northern Rockies, from central Montana to central Idaho.

The findings contradict much of the conventional wisdom defining current U.S. forest policy, which assumes that increases in forest density, which in turn increase the susceptibility to severe wildfires or insect outbreaks, are primarily caused by fire suppression.

“This is an important finding because it highlights that vegetation management can result in long-lasting changes to forests that are likely to affect how large-scale disturbances, such as wildfires or insect outbreaks, play out on the landscape well into the future,” Naficy said.

“Furthermore, it shows that previously harvested and unharvested forests have very different restoration needs and fire hazard potential,” Sala said. “This recognition should go a long way in helping land managers to prioritize restoration and fuel-reduction efforts where they are most likely to be successful.”

For more information, call Sala at 406-243-6009, e-mail [email protected] or e-mail Naficy at [email protected] .

# # #

Naficy, Cameron, Anna Sala, Eric G. Keeling, Jon Graham, and Thomas H. DeLuca. 2010. Interactive effects of historical logging and fire exclusion on ponderosa pine forest structure in the northern Rockies. Ecological Applications 20:1851-1864. [doi:10.1890/09-0217.1]

Increased forest density resulting from decades of fire exclusion is often perceived as the leading cause of historically aberrant, severe, contemporary wildfires and insect outbreaks documented in some fire-prone forests of the western United States. Based on this notion, current U.S. forest policy directs managers to reduce stand density and restore historical conditions in fire-excluded forests to help minimize high-severity disturbances. Historical logging, however, has also caused widespread change in forest vegetation conditions, but its long-term effects on vegetation structure and composition have never been adequately quantified. We document that fire-excluded ponderosa pine forests of the northern Rocky Mountains logged prior to 1960 have much higher average stand density, greater homogeneity of stand structure, more standing dead trees and increased abundance of fire-intolerant trees than paired fire-excluded, unlogged counterparts. Notably, the magnitude of the interactive effect of fire exclusion and historical logging substantially exceeds the effects of fire exclusion alone. These differences suggest that historically logged sites are more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuels reduction treatments. Furthermore, we propose that ponderosa pine forests with these distinct management histories likely require distinct restoration approaches. We also highlight potential long-term risks of mechanical stand manipulation in unlogged forests and emphasize the need for a long-term view of fuels management.

Should Restoration be the Forest Service Mission?

by

The first “substantive principle” in last year’s Federal Register notice for a new Forest Service planning rule is restoration.  How did we get here?  Should we get out?  Before we adopt the restoration idea as a central theme of the rule, we need to be aware of the pitfalls.

The idea of restoration started with site-based approaches on well-defined areas such as a minesite or a wetland.  In the 1990s, a need was recognized to expand the scope of restoration ecology to embrace broader scales and tackle landscape-scale problems.  The term  “Forest Landscape Restoration” was a term first coined in 2000 by a group of forest restoration experts that met in Segovia Spain.  Internationally, several organizations such as the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration have formed to address the worldwide loss of half of the Earth’s forests over the last 200 years. 

There is currently a wealth of information about the emerging field of ecological restoration.  The non-profit Society for Ecological Restoration publishes a Restoration Ecology journal that helps explain restoration processes and descriptions of techniques.  The Society also works with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to publish an Ecological Restoration journal about current projects and techniques, and essays about the restoration idea.

Largely due to concerns about fuels and increases in large fires, the Forest Service started thinking about restoring fire regimes affected by a century of fire suppression.  Along with concerns about invasive species, declining road maintenance budgets, and climate change, in 2005, the Forest Service chartered a team to look at the evolving science of landscape restoration, and developed an Ecosystem Restoration Framework.  The framework made the following recommendations:

  • adopt a national policy regarding ecosystem restoration, including defining ecosystem restoration as “the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed;”
  • increase the productivity of the agency’s restoration efforts through improved integration of various programs spanning all Deputy areas;
  • use national, forest, and project planning to engage Forest Service resources, partners, and stakeholders in identifying and implementing restoration needs and priorities;
  • use budget and performance incentives to increase accomplishment of ecosystem restoration objectives.

Based on these recommendations, an interim directive was initially written last year and updated in March.  This directive, Forest Service Manual id-2020 , says that ecological restoration is a “foundational policy” for all program areas for the National Forest System.  It defines ecological restoration as:

Ecological restoration.  The process of assisting the recovery of resilience and adaptive capacity of ecosystems that have been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.  Restoration focuses on establishing the composition, structure, pattern, and ecological processes necessary to make terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems sustainable, resilient, and healthy under current and future conditions.

As a signal of the intent of the Administration, the Secretary of Agriculture spoke prominently about ecological restoration in his August 2009 speech in Seattle about the Forest Service. 

Then, the restoration idea quickly got more attention when the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program was established in the 2009 Omnibus Public Lands Management Act.  Now restoration needs were tied to money, and not surprisingly, needs were identified nearly everywhere.

Restoration is now being offered as a central theme of a new Forest Service planning rule.  But there are several problems.

First, the Forest Service may have troubles reconciling the idea that there are “degraded” ecosystems which must be restored, with its 100-plus year history of managing these lands.  Are agency leaders willing to admit that past forest management policies were wrong?  Are these past policies continuing today?  How can they be changed?

I remember talking to a representative of the timber industry at a regional roundtable meeting on the planning rule in Rapid City, South Dakota.  He told me that there are many “managed” forests that aren’t in need of restoration because of past forest management practices.  He described those instances where timber management has been used to thin forests and reduce fuels.

Second, for some forest types, there isn’t a clear idea about what restoration might look like.  For instance, in lodgepole pine, trees will eventually burn or die from insects.  The presence of large fires or insect outbreaks does not mean that the system is out of balance.

The idea of restoration leads to several value-laden questions:  restoring to what?  restoring for what purpose?  what do you do once things are restored?  Earlier posts on this blog have discussed the confusion with the Forest Service multiple-use mission, and the wicked problem that Forest Planning attempts to solve.  In describing the social problem posed by the idea of restoration, Eric Higgs from the University of Alberta notes that restoration efforts rest in the notion of redemption, where we heal ourselves culturally and perhaps spiritually by healing nature.  Because nature and ecosystems are historically and culturally contingent ideas, Higgs suggests that there is no one single, fixed, correct restoration for any particular site, although structure, composition, and function criteria may provide tight guidelines for success of a project.

Third, shouldn’t the idea of “maintenance” of ecosystems at least get equal billing?  A regional watershed program manager recently told me that “maintenance” is a well thought out priority for land management, as captured in the mantra for the Northwest Forest Plan: “Save the best, restore the rest”.    Maintenance means your first priority is to make sure that ecosystems that are already functioning well stay that way.  Maintenance gets to the core of what the agency does on the landscape – all the mitigation measures (i.e  soil and water  BMPs) that we supposedly implement for our projects and for third party authorizations, to ensure that we “do no harm”.   Even if it’s important to fix what’s broken, it’s also important to not break anything else.

 The problem with a restoration only focus is that it could potentially reward bad behavior (you made a mess, now you get money to clean it up) rather than reinforcing good behavior (you implemented BMPs, monitored to see that they were effective, and nothing went wrong).

Fourth, there are the purported “myths” about restoration ecology.  In a 2005 article by Robert Hilderbrand, Adams Watts, and April Randle,  the authors describe five problems with the restoration idea.  First, there is a problem with the typical assumption that ecosystems develop in a predictable fashion toward a specified, static, end-point or climax.  Many Forest Service planners these days are enamored by the “desired future condition” description as the central part of a Forest Plan.  But when systems are “reset” they usually don’t end at the same point, and the idea that you can restore a “carbon copy” of an ecosystem is the first myth.

There is also the problem with the idea that restoration of the physical structure will result in the same biological response.  The authors point out the “field of dreams” myth – that if you build it, they will come.  It’s not apparent that you will get the same distribution of species when you create the previous habitat.

Other myths include the idea that you can “fast-forward” succession and ecosystem-development, that you can develop a “cookbook” of practices that can be used to restore landscapes, and the “sisyphus complex” that nature can be controlled.  We may describe detailed and specific desired conditions in a Forest Plan, but can we really control the outcomes?

The authors are clearly in the adaptive management camp, and they explain that to get beyond the myths, projects need decision points along the way for possible interventions with contingency plans if things aren’t proceeding appropriately.

In previous attempts to develop a planning rule, the Forest Service has committed to the idea of “sustainability” as the guiding star for management of National Forests.  This idea flows from the legal mandate under the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act.  The idea of ecosystem services is an extension of the multiple use mission.   Perhaps restoration is a part of this mission, because the ecosystem must be functioning in order to provide the services.  But restoration may not be the full story, and perhaps it’s not the best way to describe the important work that must be done.

The Forest Service’s Fatal Flaw?

by
Road removal in Redwood State Park (CA). Adam Switalski 2004c.

Guest Post by Bethanie Walder, Wildlands CPR.  (as requested by Martin Nie)

Oedipus Rex, Macbeth, Willy Loman, Tony Soprano, and … the Forest Service? A diverse group with a common theme – tragic or fatal flaws. From ancient literature to modern times, people have written about, read about and dissected the concept of the fatal flaw. High school and college classes abound with papers about tragic heroes, fatal flaws, and what can be learned from them. While it’s been a long time since I’ve taken such a class, and my metaphorical synapses are a little rusty, it seems to me that the Forest Service may have a fatal flaw when it comes to implementing their new restoration vision: accountability.

One word may be too simplistic to describe the whole problem – which is really an issue of infrastructure-deficiency. Basically, the Forest Service has no staff, program, or office dedicated to implementing restoration at either the policy or on-the-ground levels, yet they have adopted restoration as their new vision for the 21st Century. The problem is, you can’t have a 21st Century vision without a commensurate infrastructure to enable you to implement that vision. To adapt a well known metaphor, “if all the Forest Service has is a chainsaw, then every restoration opportunity will be a tree.” The infrastructure and accountability issue is deep-seated and emblematic of how hard it is for the Forest Service to adapt to changing conditions – both politically and on-the-ground. To get a sense of whether this really is a tragic flaw, here are a few quick internet definitions of the concept (emphasis added in all definitions below):

“A tragic flaw is a literary term that refers to a personality trait of a main character that leads to his or her downfall. In other words, a character with a tragic flaw is in need of some kind of attitude adjustment.”

“The tragic hero is a longstanding literary concept, a character with a Fatal Flaw like Pride who is doomed to fail in search of their Tragic Dream despite their best efforts or good intentions.” 

While many people within the agency really do have the best of intentions when it comes to restoration, I am concerned that the Forest Service, without an “attitude adjustment,” is doomed to fail.

For more than a century, the Forest Service has operated largely as a provider of natural resources like timber, oil, gas, grazing, and even recreation. But supplying timber is what the agency is most known for. They’ve created an infrastructure that enables them to do this – though environmental accountability has long been a problem. In 2009, however, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack outlined a new vision for the Forest Service: restoration. While creative agency staff have been implementing restoration projects for years, Vilsack defined a new guiding restoration vision with an emphasis on clean water.

The new vision however, still encompasses plenty of resource extraction. The agency’s proposed Fiscal Year 2011 budget combines three major budgetary programs (timber, fisheries and wildlife, vegetation and watersheds) into one large pool to promote and hasten restoration activities on national forests. The proposed Integrated Resource Restoration Program or “IRR” (see RIPorter 15:1) would funnel nearly $700 million into a single funding bucket for “restoration.” The result is likely to be that every new timber sale will be a “restoration sale.” Again, if allyou have is a chainsaw, then every problem is most certainly a tree.

Accountability for how this funding would be spent, and whether or not it would result in real watershed restoration on-the-ground, is nowhere to be found. Similarly, the budget has no recommendations for the type of infrastructure changes (as opposed to simply changing funding mechanisms) that would enable them to implement such a program effectively and with accountability.

But this lack of accountability and capacity is not solely related to the IRR. The agency as a whole does NOT currently have the infrastructure needed to implement a robust, comprehensive, effective and viable restoration effort, yet they are asking for an enormous pot of funding to be dedicated to “restoration.” Their tragic flaw, therefore, may be their failure to create a new infrastructure to develop, promote, direct and implement their watershed restoration plans. While only the Forest Service can determine the exact infrastructure needed, we have some preliminary recommendations. For example, we think they should develop a national Watershed Restoration Program, led by a national Director of Watershed Restoration, with regional Restoration Directors, and we have proposed this to the agency. These staff should be trained in hydrology and/or aquatic/fisheries ecology, and they should be tasked with developing and implementing clear, science-based, ecoregion-specific restoration agendas for the agency that put resource needs over economic returns.

Lest this seem somewhat trivial, here’s a first-hand example of why Wildlands CPR thinks it so important for the Forest Service to create a proper structure to achieve their vision. The agency has received $180 million over the last three years to implement Legacy Roads and Trails specifically to restore and protect clean drinking water and other aquatic and fisheries resources impacted by roads. Many fisheries,  hydrology, and soils staff we’ve spoken with love this initiative, and it provides an incredible opportunity to move towards Vilsack’s vision. But because of their infrastructure, Legacy Roads and Trails, a potentially brilliant watershed restoration effort, is largely run by engineers. That’s not bad in and of itself (there are some enlightened engineers working on it), but quite frankly, most engineers love roads and have been trained to construct things. Few people like to remove their creations, yet road reclamation is a key purpose of Legacy Roads and Trails.

Initially, not recognizing their tragic flaw, we pushed the agency both to implement Legacy Roads and Trails immediately based on pressing needs, and to undertake a long-overdue national analysis of their road system to determine which roads they still need, and which they can reclaim or close. Way back in 2001, the Forest Service adopted a long-term roads policy that provided guidance for identifying a smaller, more affordable, and less ecologically damaging “minimum road system” that would meet recreational and resource management needs. Their 2001 policy envisioned the reclamation of 80-120,000 miles of system roads. To date, they have largely failed to identify that minimum system, even though doing so would provide the blueprint for how to spend Legacy Roads and Trails money.

But engineers are basically in charge of Legacy Roads and Trails, and thus in charge of implementing the minimum roads system, albeit with help from recreation and watershed staff. In March I asked some of the lead engineers in DC about their plans for this minimum road system. I was dismayed, but not surprised, to learn that they only thought they would have to get rid of about 25,000 miles to achieve it. This reflects the tragic flaw. When I asked the Chief about this and how to provide the accountability needed to ensure that a truly ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system is identified, he said that it wouldn’t just be the responsibility of the engineers, they would engage other departments. But how? And who has final authority?  Where does the buck stop? Why isn’t there someone, a national Watershed Restoration Director for example, who is responsible for ensuring that the final decisions are appropriately balanced?

And this is only for identifying a minimum road system. What happens when you scale that up to $700 million a year or more with the proposed IRR? With no watershed restoration program, no Director of Restoration, and no accountability, it seems impossible for the agency to implement a new restoration vision effectively, or even at all. Unless, that is, they get an attitude adjustment – or as the case may be, an infrastructure adjustment.

Without a new watershed restoration program, the IRR, Legacy Roads and Trails, and any other new restoration efforts are likely to be mere variations on an old theme, as the resource extraction  mentality and structure of the agency butts up against their theoretical 21st Century vision. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The agency can make an attitude adjustment, they can create the necessary infrastructure and accountability, and they can implement the restoration vision that Secretary Vilsack and others have laid out. In typical tragedies, the “hero” is incapable of overcoming their flaw, and thus they fail. But this isn’t a story, it’s real life, and it doesn’t have to be a tragedy.

This essay originally appeared at http://www.wildlandscpr.org/article/forest-services-fatal-flaw