Role of science

Study: Fish and Wildlife Service Routinely Ignored Scientific Experts

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The following was just released by the Center for Biological Diversity:

A new study in the international journal Bioscience finds that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service routinely ignored scientific peer review when designating protected critical habitat for endangered species. According to the study published this month, the agency ignored recommendations by scientific experts to add areas to critical habitat to ensure the survival and recovery of endangered species 92 percent of the time.

“Our study shows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completely failed to rely on the best available science when deciding which habitat to protect for some of America’s most endangered species,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the peer-reviewed study. “This isn’t some meaningless bureaucratic oversight. Ignoring scientists’ advice jeopardizes the survival and recovery of endangered species.”

The designation of critical habitat is a key step in protecting the most important areas used by endangered species. Species with protected critical habitat are twice as likely to be recovering as those without it. As part of making a designation, the Fish and Wildlife Service must have experts outside the agency review the proposed designation to make sure it’s scientifically sound and suitable to help species survive and recover.

Using data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the study reviewed 169 peer reviews of 42 critical habitat designations for 336 species covering a five-year period (2002-2007). Of the 169 reviews, 85 recommended adding areas and 19 recommended subtracting areas. In response, the agency added areas in only four cases and subtracted areas in only nine cases. After peer review, 81 percent (34) of the 42 critical habitat designations were reduced by an average of 43 percent.

“Routinely, the agency dismisses scientific advice on the grounds that they need ‘flexibility’ to better serve endangered species,” said Stuart Pimm, chair of conservation at Duke University and one of the study’s authors. “There is absolutely no evidence that, in consistently denying threatened species their needed habitats, any species has benefitted.”

In addition to examining the peer reviews, the study presented case studies examining the process for designating critical habitat for the southwestern willow flycatcher and Cape Sable seaside sparrow. In the case of the flycatcher, the peer reviewers faulted the proposed designation for failing to include areas recommended by a scientific recovery plan. Rather than add additional areas, however, the agency cut the designation by 53 percent at the behest of a former political appointee at the Department of the Interior. In the case of the sparrow, the agency cut an area from critical habitat against the advice of peer reviewers (one of whom described the area as “extremely important”) based on the false premise that designation of critical habitat would conflict with Everglades restoration.

“Science, not politics, ought to drive which habitat is protected for endangered species,” said Greenwald. “Obtaining peer review shouldn’t simply be about checking off a box on a form. Saving species means saving the places they live and, when it comes to that, our best scientists need to be listened to.”

The study is the first to systematically examine a government agency’s response to peer review of its decisions. Peer review of government decisions is fundamentally different from peer review of scientific studies in that there is no editor to determine whether peer review has been properly considered or, if appropriate, followed. To rectify this situation, the study recommends appointing an arbiter to oversee the government’s response to peer review and giving agency scientists more independence to ensure closer adherence to scientific information.

More News on Colt Summit and “Collaboration”

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This morning’s Missoulian has another look at the Colt Summit timber sale on the Lolo National Forest, the first timber sale on the Lolo to be litigated in over 5 years. Here are some snips from that article:

Project opponent George Wuerthner, a writer and ecologist, countered in an email that the cumulative effects are there for anyone to see from an airplane. In a series of photos he posted online (bit.ly/L1436w), he argued the Colt-Summit area is one of the few remaining bits of habitat left in the region.

“I was shocked to see how much of the Seeley-Swan Valley is already logged that is not readily visible from the main highway or even by driving backroads,” Wuerthner wrote. “The problem for the Forest Service is that they are up against limits. You can’t continue to cut more and more of the valley without jeopardizing other values. There is such a thing as cumulative impacts and death by a thousand cuts.”

Friends of the Wild Swan director Arlene Montgomery added that the legal record also contradicts Forest Service claims of being inclusive and thorough.

“I’ve been through the whole project record, and I didn’t see anything that the collaborators who’ve come out against us were any more involved than I was,” Montgomery said. “The fact they think they can paper over cumulative effects in an area so fragmented from past logging – it’s quite remarkable they put in such little regard for our laws. The environmental assessment was devoid of that kind of analysis. And that’s not a gray area where we didn’t know where the line was. It was pretty black and white.”

My personal feeling on the matter is that it’s important for people to understand that not all “collaborative” groups around the country are created equally.  Unfortunately, in the opinion of lots of conservation groups around the country, some of the “collaboration” currently taking place in Montana is viewed negatively because it feels more like a takeover of our public forests by largely well-funded organizations, the timber industry, local governments and politicians.

My observation being a part of some of these Montana “collaborations” is that if you don’t agree up-front to most of what the Forest Service and the timber industry wants to do anyway, that these “collaborative” groups  just make it difficult for a normal citizen or smaller organization to participate.  And, besides, many of these Montana “collaboration” meetings take place mid-day during the week, not exactly an ideal time for most of the general public.

So, essentially, the vast majority of the people attending some of these Montana collaborative meetings are paid to be there.  Either they work for the Forest Service, timber industry, well-funded conservation groups or local governments or a politician.  On top of that, many of the meetings never seem about understanding the latest science, research or legal requirements.  It’s more about supporting the Forest Service’s projects by attending these meetings, smiling, nodding in agreement, eating your bag lunch and then going out and running a PR campaign through paid ads, letters to the editors and hosting one-sided events to give the impression that everyone in the world agrees with what the Forest Service has come up with.

Take Colt Summit, for example. It’s clear from the administrative record that the Forest Service designed the Colt Summit Project and the specific prescriptions, then delivered the project to the SWCC (Southwestern Crown of the Continent Collaborative group) for approval and inclusion in the SWCC’s CFLRP application.

Claims by some of the “collaborators” that the plaintiffs didn’t participate in the up-front planning for the Colt Summit project are completely untrue.  In fact, the public record for this timber sale actually reflects a higher level of involvement from the plaintiffs from some of the ‘collaborators.’ Plaintiffs attended all meetings, all field trips and submitted extensive, detailed and substantive comments during the entire NEPA process.  Some of the collaborating conservation groups didn’t even submit detailed comments during NEPA.  They are essentially replacing their largely self-selective “collaborative group” for the NEPA process, which is open equally and inclusively for all Americans.

One of my main concerns with some of the worst examples of “collaboration” that I see in Montana is that some of these conservationist ‘collaborators’ are running what are essentially political campaigns, not campaigns to hold the Forest Service accountable and make sure that management of national forests is guided by law, the latest science and economically-sound policies.  These conservation groups, such as the Montana Wilderness Association,  have effectively abandoned any of these public education efforts. Honestly, I’m not sure that most of MWA’s new hires over the past few years have any clue about the law, science and economics of the federal timber sale program.  Furthermore, some of these conservation groups have basically neutered themselves from speaking out against Forest Service logging projects or the timber industry’s demands to do away with the public appeals process and exempt many Montana logging projects from court challenge.

What the future of national forest management looks like without an effective checks-and-balance on the Forest Service and timber industry is anyone’s guess, but my hunch is that some of these “collaborative” approaches that we are seeing here in Montana will not be in the best interest of America’s public lands legacy.

AWR Responds to Timber Industry Ads: No ‘lawless logging’ in Montana

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On Wednesday RY Timber, Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Roseburg Forest Products and Sun Mountain Lumber took out this full-page advertisement in at least six Montana newspapers, including the Helena Independent Record, Missoulian, Kalispell Daily Interlake, Great Falls Tribune, Montana Standard and Bozeman Chronicle. According to Ad reps, the retail cost of the advertisements likely ran between $27,000 and $31,000. 

Among other things, the timber industry Ads called for 1) scrapping the entire Forest Service public appeals process and 2) exempting many timber sales in Montana from judicial review.  These are the same timber companies pushing Senator Tester’s mandated logging bill, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, which would require logging on over 156 square miles of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenia National Forest over the next 15 years.  More information on the timber industry Ads can be found here.    Today, Mike Garrity – Alliance for the Wild Rockies executive director and a 5th generation Montanan – responds to the Ad with this guest column in the Montana Standard.
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No ‘lawless logging’ in Montana
By Mike Garrity

A handful of timber corporations recently took out full-page ads statewide to criticize the Alliance for the Wild Rockies for doing what we do well — working to keep Montana “high, wide and handsome” as Joseph Kinsey Howard famously wrote.

We protect public land from corporations and government bureaucracies that want to log public lands without following the law. To put it simply, they want to return to the “good old days” before we had any environmental laws and corporations such as the Anaconda Company called all the shots.

As a fifth generation Montanan, I clearly recall the days when Silver Bow Creek ran red with mine waste and the Clark Fork River was a dead, sludge-filled industrial sewer. And it was not that long ago when you had to turn your car lights on in the middle of the day in Butte because the air was so polluted. These were also the days when our forests had little big game and native fish were beginning to vanish because of massive clearcutting.

Today Montana has some of the best hunting and fishing in the world. The state recently celebrated the return of native westslope cutthroat trout to Silver Bow Creek and Milltown Dam no longer holds millions of tons of toxic waste seeping into the groundwater.

Do we really want to go back to these good old days of cut-and-run where there are no environmental laws? Montanans love our national forests, which belong to the American people, not to the career bureaucrats in the Forest Service or the CEOs and stockholders of timber corporations.

Yet, in their ads, the timber corporations clearly laid out their goals for the conditions and laws they want applied to their personal profit-driven extraction of public resources. In their own words, the timber companies want to “scrap the entire Forest Service Administrative Appeals Process,” “exempt from judicial review those timber sales which deal with trees that have been killed or severely damaged by the Mountain Pine Beetle,” and “amend the Equal Access to Justice Act by requiring a cash bond in these types of administrative appeals and lawsuits.”

In plain language, what that means is that these corporations no longer want citizens to have a voice in how our public lands get used or abused. But that ignores both the history and intent of law and policy on public lands management.

Congress placed citizen suit provisions in virtually all federal environmental laws because citizens are often the only group willing to police the government. As the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals famously wrote, citizens “stand in the shoes” of regulatory enforcement agencies to enforce the law — and to do so without any prospect of personal benefit. If someone throws a brick through a window, the police would enforce the law. But when the federal government breaks the law, citizens are often the only enforcers.

Unfortunately a disturbing trend has appeared as big environmental groups such as the Montana Wilderness Association and The Wilderness Society increasingly take foundation money to “collaborate” with timber corporations. And much like the Vichy French helped the Nazis occupy France during WWII; these collaborators now have to face the harsh and shameful legacy of what they have done and continue to do.

Behind it all is the very simple truth now revealed by the timber companies’ own damning ads: these corporations want access and the subsidy to extract timber resources from public lands unencumbered by environmental laws. Their profit, our loss, and a return to the bad old days of corporate domination of Montana’s lands and people. But Montanans don’t want to return to those days when corporations like the Anaconda Co. controlled public policy and the rivers ran red with mine waste. We want a sustainable supply of clean water, fish, wildlife and timber.

It’s time to tell these corporations and their collaborative partners that the days of rape and run in Montana are over. Montana is worth fighting for, which is exactly what the Alliance for the Wild Rockies intends to continue to do.

Mike Garrity is executive director Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Forest Service Awards One of Largest-ever Timber Contracts to Agency Insiders

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From the Center for Biological Diversity:

Center for Biological Diversity ecologist Jay Lininger displays the core of 180-year-old ponderosa pine marked for logging at the Jacob Ryan timber sale. CBD photo.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— The U.S. Forest Service awarded one of the largest-ever tree-cutting contracts in the history of the national forest system today to a timber company represented by a retired Forest Service official. While he was a federal employee, the official was the agency’s liaison to that same company’s timber-sale inquiries in the same region. The contract calls for timber harvesting on approximately 300,000 acres of ponderosa pine in northern Arizona as part of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, a showcase forest restoration project for the Obama administration under what’s known as “the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act” and program.

Speaking of today’s contract award, Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns director with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has led the charge to reform logging in the Southwest, said, “The decision stinks of cronyism.”

“Much of the Southwest’s last old growth was liquidated on Marlin Johnson’s watch during his years at the Forest Service—it was wrong then and it’s wrong now, and the fact that Mr. Johnson is wearing a different hat this time underlines that fact,” he continued.

During his tenure as the southwestern region’s silviculturist, Marlin Johnson was one of the agency’s liaisons for Pioneer Forest Products’ timber-sale inquiries; within a year of retirement, in 2008, Johnson began representing Pioneer’s inquiries to the same Forest Service office in which he had worked. Since then, representing Pioneer in Four Forest Restoration Initiative stakeholder meetings with the Forest Service, Johnson has openly pushed to log old-growth trees and forests.

As regional silviculturist Johnson presided over an attempt to loosen regional limits on logging mature and old trees and forests in Arizona and New Mexico without public or environmental review. Without officially changing the forest plans that guide management of the public’s forests, and over the concern of staff and other agencies about lawfulness and impacts to wildlife, the Forest Service’s southwestern regional office under Johnson tried to sharply reduce the amount of mature and old forest the agency is required to leave on the landscape after logging.

The southwestern region has tried to follow this guidance since Johnson’s retirement, and because logging intensities violate wildlife protections in forest plans, several of those timber sales have crumbled under internal review prompted by administrative objections from the Center. In its collaboration on the Four Forests initiative, which has suffered at the hands of regional micromanagement, the Center has warned the Forest Service not to deploy Johnson’s guidance; it’s unclear whether or not the Service will do so.  Last week the Center sued the Forest Service for using that guidance at the Jacob Ryan timber sale, which would log old growth trees near Grand Canyon’s north rim.

Pioneer Forest Products, a Montana corporation, was one of four bidders on the contract. Another, Arizona Forest Restoration Products, had advanced a plan solely focused on using small-diameter trees, and signed an historic memo of understanding with conservation groups committing to a common goal of ecological restoration as a step to restoring healthy, fire-maintained forests and native biological diversity.

“Today’s decision, among many other signs, suggests that the Forest Service’s leadership, after all these years and despite mountains of restoration rhetoric to the contrary, remains hopelessly mired in an antiquated age of agricultural forestry.”

On Time, On Target: How the ESA is saving America’s Wildlife

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The Center for Biological Diversity just keeps on pumping it out. Today, they released this new report (PDF).  The Executive Summary is pasted below.

Report

Critics of the Endangered Species Act contend it is a failure because only 1 percent of the species under its protection have recovered and been delisted. The critique, however, is undermined by its failure to explain how many species should have recovered by now. It is a ship without an anchor.

To objectively test whether the Endangered Species Act is recovering species at a sufficient rate, we compared the actual recovery rate of 110 species with the projected recovery rate in their federal recovery plans. The species range over all 50 states, include all major taxonomic groups, and have a diversity of listing lengths.

We found that the Endangered Species Act has a remarkably successful recovery rate: 90 percent of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan.

On average, species recovered in 25 years, while their recovery plan predicted 23 years — a 91 percent timeliness accomplishment.

We confirmed the conclusion of scientists and auditors who assert that the great majority of species have not been listed long enough to warrant an expectation of recovery: 80 percent of species have not yet reached their expected recovery year. On average, these species have been listed for just 32 years, while their recovery plans required 46 years of listing.

Many species that have not been listed long enough to reach their recovery goals increased dramatically since being protected by the Endangered Species Act:

California least tern2,819%  increase in nesting pairs
San Miguel island fox3,830%  increase in wild foxes
Black-footed ferret8,280%  increase in the fall population
Atlantic green sea turtle2,206%  increase in nesting females on Florida beaches
El Segundo blue butterfly22,312%  increase in butterflies

While many species are near or above the numeric population goal set by their recovery plan and will likely be delisted in the next 10 to 15 years, others also have strong recovery trends, but will not be delisted for many decades because their recovery plans require that much time to fully secure their fate.

The study’s findings are similar to a 2006 analysis of all federally protected species in the Northeast, which found 93 percent were stabilized or improving since being put on the endangered species list and 82 percent were on pace to meet recovery goals.

When judged in the light of meeting recovery plan timelines for recovery, the Endangered Species Act is remarkably successful. Few laws of any kind can boast a 90 percent success rate.

Scientific Integrity Policies.. Unintended Consequences?

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Like so many things, “scientific integrity” sounds good. But as I pointed out in some posts on Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog a while back, good public policy is never built on a foundation of fuzzy concepts. Here are the posts: A Policy Practitioner Deconstructs the Science Integrity Guidelines- The President’s Memo, I. and More Deconstruction of “Science Integrity”: The President’s Memo Principles.

So after much ado, including easily hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars worth of the usual DC kinds of work- involving meetings, discussing things, drafting documents, editing, and multiple levels of review, we have the situation described today in Roger’s blog here about the Interior Dept. Nothing could have been more predictable, IMHO. Of course, a good scientific dispute is the most fun way to learn about science!

Here’s the end of Roger’s post:

Who decides what information should and should not be included? Who gets to second guess agency policy makers and the press office on what information should be included or not included? I testified on this issue in 2007 before the House Government Reform Committee during the period when the Bush Administration received similar criticisms (here in PDF). At the time I wrote:

[N]o information management policy can ever hope to eliminate political considerations in the preparation of government reports with scientific content
The issues remain much the same today under a different administration. Even though the political context has changed, the underlying dynamics have not.

The Houser case will likely prompt some additional thinking about these issues and what it means to try to regulate or otherwise manage the scientific content of agency information. I suspect that eventually agencies will have to accept the reality that in many if not most cases the proper place for debate over agency decisions and communications is simply in the broader political arena as part of ongoing policy debate.

As it stands, the DOI scientific integrity policy may foreshadow ever more disputes over science between career government employees and political appointees, and perhaps even a further politicization of agency science. This is probably not the outcome expected or desired by the Obama Administration when putting forward a call for agency integrity guidelines.

Who Has Authority in Political Debates involving Science? From Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog

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Check out Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog post here.

Roger links to Jan Paul van Soest’s blog here.

The body of knowledge in Earth System Sciences in the broadest sense, is impressive. Yet, most scientists at Planet under Pressure feel their knowledge is hardly translated into actions. Below the surface, frustrations can easily be sensed. Frustration may provoke scientists to even stronger formulate their messages, and choose words that fit better in the realm of societal and political discussions than in the scientific domain: ‘We must’, ‘we should’, ‘an imperative to act’, ‘we can no longer afford waiting’ and comparable phrases are frequently used to mask frustrations.

However understandable, these expressions are unlikely to be effective. The audience may think that the scientist using these terms have a political agenda. This perception undermines the scientific credibility, whether the scientist in question has a political agenda indeed or not. My take is: they don’t; most scientist don’t even really understand the nature of politics and policy-making processes. And to the extend they do, they are doing a lousy job in terms of lobbying and influencing the public and policy debate. Otherwise, more scientists would realise that overstating is not really effective in getting the message across.


Trust
The risk of being perceived as someone pursuing a political agenda is one pitfall, a second one is reinforcing communication efforts without changing the nature of the communication. “We should communicate more/better”, is quite often heard. Underlying assumption is that giving more and better information will lead to better listening and different choices. However, if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got. People just don’t change their convictions and belief systems, let alone their decisions and actions, on the basis of more information. Interesting enough, some psychologists and sociologists gave exactly that message at the Planet under Pressure conference, in a couple of parallel sessions, such as the one chaired by prof. Heinz Gutscher. Co-operation and collective action builds on trust, said Gutscher, and if that is lacking, giving ever more information has zero or even counterproductive effects.

Imperatives or options

The third pitfall may even be more problematic: communicating science in terms of imperatives actually undermines the politicians’ sense of responsibility. Although some politicians may be risk averse, the key role of politicians is to choose, not to blindly follow someone else’s view. Who would need politicians if science would automatically lead to policies? It doesn’t. Therefore, imperatives can easily be laid aside, and are likely ineffective. They disempower politicians, instead of addressing them in their key role and responsibility: choosing and negotiating options.

There were some good examples of presenting the science in a more open way, in terms of a variety of options and their consequences, and including the scientific uncertainties. A subsession on fisheries and oceanic ecosystem governance demonstrated that: a science-based mapping of goals, options, timing and uncertainties made clear what the actual choices are, and helps making progress in decision-making, even in a situation where governance is still ruled by the 1609 pamphlet Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) by the Dutch philosopher and jurist Hugo Grotius.

The best and most effective ways of communicating science therefore seem to be those that separate knowledge from decision, that provide policy-makers with options instead of imperatives, and with ‘what if’ instead of ‘will happen inevitably’.

It could be enlightening to get more information on the subsession on fisheries and how it was structured.

Toward an Era of Restoration in Ecology: Successes, Failures, and Opportunities Ahead

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Given the many discussions we’ve had on this blog concerning the top of restoration, this new research from Katharine N. Suding, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley should be of great interest to readers.  The title of the paper is “Toward an Era of Restoration in Ecology: Successes, Failures, and Opportunities Ahead” (PDF copy here).  Below is a teaser from the Abstract (emphasis added). – mk

Abstract
As an inevitable consequence of increased environmental degradation and anticipated future environmental change, societal demand for ecosystem restoration is rapidly increasing. Here, I evaluate successes and failures in restoration, how science is informing these efforts, and ways to better address decision-making and policy needs. Despite the multitude of restoration projects and wide agreement that evaluation is a key to future progress, comprehensive evaluations are rare. Based on the limited available information, restoration outcomes vary widely. Cases of complete recovery are frequently characterized by the persistence of species and abiotic processes that permit natural regeneration. Incomplete recovery is often attributed to a mixture of local and landscape constraints, including shifts in species distributions and legacies of past land use. Lastly, strong species feedbacks and regional shifts in species pools and climate can result in little to no recovery. More forward-looking paradigms, such as enhancing ecosystem services and increasing resilience to future change, are exciting new directions that need more assessment. Increased evidence-based evaluation and cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer will better inform a wide range of critical restoration issues such as how to prioritize sites and interventions, include uncertainty in decision making, incorporate temporal and spatial dependencies, and standardize outcome assessments. As environmental policy increasingly embraces restoration, the opportunities have never been greater.

Mature & Old-growth Forests Hold Keys to Adapting to Climate Change

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The following press release and article come from the Geos Insitute. – mk

Ashland, Oregon – Scientists released new findings today on the importance of mature and old-growth 
forests in preparing the Klamath-Siskiyou region of southwest Oregon and northern California for global 
climate disruptions. Published in the January edition of The Natural Areas Journal (Volume 32: 65-74)
by the Natural Areas Association, the study calls on regional land managers to protect mature and old-growth 
forests as an insurance policy for fish and wildlife facing mounting climate change pressures from 
rising temperatures, declining snow levels, and reductions in fog along the coast.  Click here to read the article.

The project was led by the Ashland-based Geos Institute who brought together scientists with
 back grounds in climate change science, Klamath-Siskiyou regional ecology, and conservation planning to
 comb through data on temperature and precipitation changes and to develop recommendations to help 
adapt ecosystems while the ecological and economic costs are relatively low.

According to Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist & President of Geos Institute, who led the project
 team, “for millennia our region’s mature and old-growth forests have been a wellspring for nature and
 they now hold the keys to sustaining the very ecosystem benefits we will increasingly depend on for 
fresh water, clean air, and viable fish and wildlife populations as global climate disruptions increasingly 
impact our area.”

One of the authors of the study, Reed Noss, Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of
 Central Florida, underscored the importance of the studies findings for land managers. “Climate change,
 combined with habitat loss and fragmentation, is the greatest threat we face to nature. This study shows
 that land managers can reduce impacts of climate change by protecting older forests in a region whose 
biological diversity has been recognized globally as among the top ten coniferous forests on earth.”

The study used computer mapping and extensive data sets on regional climate and wildlife distributions to 
determine what areas are most likely to hang on to their local climatic conditions for wildlife seeking
 refuge from rising temperatures and changes to precipitation caused by climate change disruption. Old growth 
and mature forests, with their closed canopies and moist environments, are predicted to remain cooler for longer periods of time, therefore providing refuge for species that depend on these conditions.

Key Findings:
• Based on related studies undertaken by Geos Institute and partners, climate disruptions in the
 Rogue basin, for instance, will likely include: (1) an increase in average annual temperatures 
from 1 to 3° F by around 2040 and 4 to 8° F by around 2080; (2) substantial increases in
 summer temperatures of 7 to 15° F by 2080; and (3) snow turning more often to rain in lower
 elevations with a decrease in average January snowpack and corresponding decline in spring 
runoff and stream flows. Other studies document significant reductions in fog along the coast,
 which pose risks to coastal redwoods.

• While all of the regions’ older forests are important, those on north-facing slopes and in canyon 
bottoms, lower- and middle-elevations, and wetter coastal mountains will provide for cooler, 
moister conditions as the rest of the region heats up.

• Several areas deserve immediate conservation attention because they contain high 
concentrations of older forests with preferred climatic conditions, including along the southern
 bend of the Klamath River Northern in California; lower slopes of the Klamath River from 
around China Point eastwards to Hamburg in California; northern slope of the Scott Bar 
Mountains and along the lower Scott River in California; coastal areas in Oregon and in the
 foothills behind the redwood belt in northwestern California; the Middle Smith River in
 California; areas west of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, southwest Oregon; southeastern 
watersheds of the Siskiyou Mountains (e.g., Dillon and Rock Creek area, California); and the 
northern Siskiyou Mountains to western Siskiyou Crest region, California. These areas are
 likely to serve as wellsprings of nature as the climate increasingly shifts.

• BLM landholdings in western Oregon are noteworthy as they contain over 1.6 million acres of 
mature and old-growth forests, which are critical for threatened species like the spotted owl and
 marbled murrelet, and 1.8 million acres of habitat critical to coho salmon recovery. These are
 some of the last low-elevation forests in the region that can still function as a climate refuge but 
are at the biggest risk from logging proposals being championed by Congress.

• Reducing non-climate stressors from logging, roads, and other land uses is the single most
 important adaptation measure that land managers can take now to reduce climate related 
impacts.

Center for Biological Diversity on the New Planning Rule

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For Immediate Release, March 23, 2012

Contact: Taylor McKinnon, (928) 310-6713 or [email protected]

Obama’s Forest Service Weakens Protections for Wildlife on All National Forests

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Forest Service today released its new final rule to govern the nation’s 193-million-acre national forest system. The new rule significantly weakens longstanding protections for fish and wildlife species on national forests. While the Forest Service was previously required to ensure the viability of those populations, the new rule largely defers to local Forest Service officials.

“The Forest Service today completed what it’s been trying to do for 12 years, which is to weaken wildlife protections and public accountability on our national forests,” said Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These forests, owned by the American people, are vitally important habitat for hundreds of species now vulnerable to climate change — yet the Forest Service is weakening, rather than strengthening, the safety net that keeps them alive.”

Congress enacted the National Forest Management Act in 1976 to guide management of the national forest system, which consists of 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands. In 1982, the Forest Service adopted national regulations to provide specific direction for activities such as logging, mining, livestock grazing and recreation. Those rules included strong, mandatory protections for fish and wildlife, requiring the Service to monitor and maintain viable populations.

The new rule represents the Forest Service’s fourth attempt since 2000 to weaken those 1982 regulations. All three previous attempts were challenged in court by the Center and allies; federal courts found all three unlawful. Like the 2000, 2005 and 2008 rules, the Obama administration’s rule would decrease protections for wildlife and increase the discretion of local Forest Service officials.

The Forest Service’s 1982 regulations required that the Forest Service maintain viable populations of fish and wildlife; that requirement applied to both forest plans and site-specific projects. The new rule requires that the Forest Service only maintain viable populations of species “of conservation concern,” and only at the discretion of local forest supervisors; plan protections set forth for those species can be voluntary “guidelines” rather than mandatory “standards.” The new rule also replaces the longstanding administrative appeal process with a pre-decision objection process; it eliminates opportunities for post-decision administrative solutions, leaving litigation as the public’s only means to correct harmful and unlawful decisions.

“At a time when the emergency room is already overflowing with endangered species, weakening preventative care is exactly the wrong approach,” said McKinnon. “But by making species protection voluntary rather than necessary, that’s exactly what today’s rule does.”