Some members of Congress are trying to shine a spotlight on the threat to public land from armed militias. They point out the direct threats, but also link them to the attempts to transfer federal lands to states:
“Anti-government extremists didn’t always direct their ire at public-lands agencies. That changed, in part, because a group of Western congressmen, state legislators and county sheriffs built their careers by advocating the transfer of millions of acres of federal land to states or counties, even though no state or county had ever owned the land in question or could afford to manage it now.”
They cite, in particular, a letter from 32 former employees of federal land management agencies (including three former Forest Service chiefs), which lists ten threats to public lands from anti-government extremism.
Oregon Wild has proposed a massive half million acre Wilderness Area, partly to “protect” Crater Lake. The Klamath County Commissioners are saying no, with fears that summer fires would affect public health, and that those unhealthy forests need active management.
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico has ruled that an Otero County resolution permitting the removal of trees from the Lincoln National Forest is unconstitutional because it violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The court’s order also invalidated the New Mexico state statute upon which the Otero County resolution relied because it too violated the Supremacy Clause.
We’ll hope the Forest Service helps spread the word to the rest of the states and counties that believe otherwise.
Sage grouse are putting that question out there. BLM and the Forest Service are amending plans to adopt strategies for federal lands that are more ‘strict’ than what states would do. States don’t like this; do you?
A related question – how important is it to have a consistent conservation strategy across jurisdictions?
I am disappointed by the many proposed differences between BLM’s Montana’s RMPs and the Montana Sage Grouse Habitat Conservation Program,” Bullock wrote in a 12-page letter to Jamie Connell, the BLM director for the state. “The difference between the Wyoming and Montana state plans and the Montana RMPs reflect inconsistencies that simply do not make sense when serving for a consistent approach to sage grouse conservation across significant and interconnected working landscapes.”
Since I criticized the FS there in a couple of previous posts, here’s a couple of things I think they’ve done right.
It’s important that the public understand the relationship between forest planning and travel management planning, and this explanation from the Wallowa-Whitman is reasonably clear. I think it should work about as well as it can if the Subpart A (roads analysis) precedes forest plan revision, and Subpart B (designation of roads open to motorized vehicles) follows it.
A little further back, I faulted the FS for not being honest about the legality of the local ordinance that sought to regulate the federal government. That came up again at this Malheur meeting, and the FS set the record straight: “Our attorneys do not believe the Grant County ordinance is legal,” Beverlin said.
The proposals to amend federal BLM and Forest Service plans to protect sage grouse have been released. I haven’t read the new plan components but I have followed the process since I was peripherally involved before I retired from the FS, and I was also more heavily involved in developing similar strategies for bull trout, lynx and grizzly bears. This is the way conservation planning on federal lands should be done – but BEFORE it gets to the point of possible listing and this kind of crisis management.
It would be nice to see this happening now in the forest plan revision process for species of conservation concern (for which a regional forester has found “substantial concern about a species’ capability to persist over the long-term in the plan area”). Instead of consistent conservation strategies being developed (based on ecosystem and/or species-specific plan components) we see species like wolverine, which recently barely (and maybe temporarily) dodged listing, not even being identified as a species of conservation concern in the Idaho and Montana plans that are being revised. There doesn’t seem to be a learning process here.
But the states are worse. They’ve had jurisdiction over sage grouse for the last century or two, and we’ve seen what results. It’s pretty laughable for them to now say the feds should follow state plans for sage grouse.
This is just flat out wrong,” Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said of the plan. “If the Administration really cares about the bird they will adopt the state plans as they originally said they would. The state plans work. This proposal is only about controlling land, not saving the bird.”
Are the states trying to save the bird, or do they just see this as another opportunity to exert their control on federal lands?
The continuing judicial story of the South Canyon Road on the Jarbridge River (where the first battle was fought with shovels).
Legal arguments center on an 1866 law that established so-called RS 2477 roads by granting states and counties the right of way to build highways on federal lands… The government denies such a right of way exists. But under political pressure, the Forest Service signed a settlement agreement in 2003 with assurances it no longer would challenge the county’s claim.
The Wilderness Society and Great Old Broads for Wilderness sued to block the deal, saying U.S. officials lacked the authority to cede control of the road and shirked their responsibility to protect the bull trout. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and tossed the agreement out in 2005, before the agency signed a similar deal in 2011 and conservationists sued again.
This is an oil and gas task force meeting with Governor Hickenlooper. Another Colorado policy experiment, with people who disagree talking to each other.
Today there were a couple of articles on the sage grouse and Gardner’s bill that I think are worthy of interest. There is one in the Denver Post (may they live long and prosper!) here. Also a couple in E&E News here (I think you need a subscription for this one) and here .
So national groups tell us that ecosystems will unravel or at least grouse will die out, if states are allowed to pursue their own way (even for six years). I guess they think that states can’t be trusted with environmental policy. Of course, the Clean Air Act is an example of state responsibility with federal oversight and that seems to work. Do we have a reason to believe that states are “good on air and bad on critters?”. One of the reasons I’m not afraid is that I spent about six years working on the Colorado Roadless Rule. My experiences with the Colorado Roadless Rule involved all kinds of permutations (state-led and federal-led processes; different administration (3 state and 2 federal)) and so on.
It’s a well known fact that states are incubators for policy experiments. People have ideas and can carry them out without invoking The Big Players, and Partisanizing Everything. What happens in D.C. is that a simple policy idea quickly turns into something one party tries to bash the other party with. I don’t know why it didn’t happen in Colorado. It could be because we’re purple, or because Things Have To Get Done in a state.
Here are a couple of thoughts about why states can do things better. People who work for states know, and have databases with, a great deal of information that the feds do not. For example, when it was desired to restrict roads in roadless areas for undeveloped water rights, the state had the information on water rights. These kinds of issues could be accommodated in a state-specific rulemaking but would tend to get washed out at the national level. For one thing, water law is different in different states.
When our team met with representatives of national environmental groups it seemed like it was all about abstractions, and generalities and posturing and perhaps grandstanding. They would use words like PROTECTION and INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT and so on and weren’t really engaging at the scale of on the ground problems and issues. One national group said we had to “give them something” for them to support the rule. State and local environmental groups tended to want more specific changes.
As I recall, some wildlife people on the western slope wanted to cut down some trees or large brush for better habitat for some critter (a critter that wasn’t endangered) and their concerns were too small to be heard, because the goal was “words that please national groups.” Another example is that some people kept claiming “the science says” that you don’t need to cut down trees around communities (sound familiar?) and Mike King, State DNR Director, organized a meeting with elected officials from communities, fire people, and all the other interests in which each “side” selected three scientists to talk about fuel treatments. When I think about that meeting, I think 1) state people know the biophysical side of the issue and they know the people such that 2) people need to be more or less accountable for what they say. People are used to “gettin’ er’ done” in terms of policy. Grandstanding is not much tolerated in that kind of group. I think that the level of discourse at that meeting, was much higher than my experiences in D.C., where one side at a time tends to come in, and the Feds just listen and not question or disagree. Obviously I believe open discussions of scientific and other points of view should be valued and be a part of any public process.
So that is my experience. Better discourse, more knowledge, more transparency, and ultimately a better policy outcome.
Dave Freudenthal, the (Democrat) former Governor of Wyoming, made a similar point in a letter to Secretary Salazar in 2010 about oil and gas regulation:
In terms of development, I have always been a strong proponent of balance. In general, given the right information and proper motivation, we have usually found our way to a development array that meets the terms of those that understand the need for both production and protection. Frankly, we know that there will never be a meeting of the minds of those in the “drill here, drill now” crowd and the “not one blade of grass” crowd, mainly because neither side is willing to give toward the middle. Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. seems to go from pillar to post to placate what is perceived as a key constituency. I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. With the changes announced yesterday, I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process. Meanwhile in places like Cheyenne, Casper, Wamsutter and Cody, Wyoming, we in the middle simply want a good job, clean air, healthy watersheds and a place to hunt, fish and hike with our families.
As Governor Freudenthal said, who should be making decisions “in the middle”? A random mix of ideologues or the people who have to live there in open discussion with each other?
In my experience on the Colorado Roadless Rule, I saw better policy work actually being done when states and feds had to work together, as well as people with different perspectives, including political ones. I think the sage grouse and the people in Colorado deserve that quality of work.
The commission would like to see the management plan changed to allow an increased timber harvest. This would bring in more money for the county’s schools and Road and Bridge Fund.
“The preservationist mindset at the national forest is hurting our communities,” says Skiles. “We need to ask who the forests belong to, and ensure that they are a multiuse asset for our country.”
We welcome the public’s input,” says Salem Forest Service District Ranger Thom Haines. “We are not revising our management plan yet, but it will be coming up. When we do, we will engage with the public and our leaders to determine the best plan forward.”
A reform of the forest management plan will no doubt stir up another local debate, and concern is already growing over the viability of industrializing the national forest.
“We have to deal with the market,” says Haines. “It’s not as simple as cutting more trees. The counties do get a 25 percent cut of timber sales, but there is a lot of wood harvested now which doesn’t sell. The counties will only get that money if the wood is sold, and if it doesn’t sell quickly, that wood will rot and then it will not be worth anything.”
Among the other issues that will have to be confronted with an increase in logging are; cheaper foreign wood entering the US market, fluctuating wood prices, and the lower quality of timber coming from the Ozarks in comparison to areas with richer soil, better climates and older growth forests.
“We are not a preservationist organization,” says Haines. “The forest service exists to benefit local communities in many ways, including economically. But as Gifford Pinchot once said, we are here to do the greatest good, for the greatest number of people, for the greatest amount of time. That means conservation. What we have to ask ourselves is what conservation means for us today, and for future generations.”
Maybe the Forest Service was too subtle with its suggestion that “the greatest number” part puts the local county’s financial needs in the proper perspective. At least they are now asking Clawson’s question through the planning process he probably contributed to creating.
