You can buy this home in Avon Colorado for $5.1 million (559 Eagle Dr.)
A Denver Post article today here talks about ski visits being up this year in Colorado. Below is an excerpt:
Thanks to a 5.6 percent surge in visitation for the final three months of the 2013-14 ski season at its Colorado resorts — Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone — as well as increased guest spending on passes, lodging, dining, lessons and ski rentals, the largest resort operator in the North America netted $117.9 million in income for the quarter, up 20.8 percent from the same months in 2013.
Spring sales of Vail Resorts’ popular Epic Pass reached record levels in recent months, with an annual increase of 14 percent in number of passes sold and a 20 percent increase in sales dollars.
Vacationer spending is climbing in the high country, with many mountain resorts reporting record spending for the 2013-14 ski season.
Vail Resorts saw lift revenue for the quarter climb 17.1 percent, not including pass sales. That growth came from Colorado and Utah’s Canyons resorts and offset a decline in spending at its three Tahoe, Calif.-area resorts. Guests spent more on ski lessons too, delivering a 16.8 percent annual increase in revenue to the company. They ate more too, fueling an 11.7 percent increase in revenue. Retail and rental revenue climbed 11.2 percent for the quarter.
The company finished the quarter with $307.4 million in cash, which arms Vail Resorts for potential acquisitions of ski resorts.
This seems to be about just the resorts themselves and not associated businesses, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, etc.
Now occasionally in arguing for more “protected areas” folks will cite this Headwaters study which “found a meaningful relationship between the amount of protected public land and higher per capita income levels in 2010.” Now we all learned in statistics that “correlation is not causation.” Still, if we put this study and the ski area info together it is hard to argue that folks in Summit County would have higher per capita income if the ski areas were removed and put into “protected” status (I am putting the term “protected” in quotes here because the term was used in the study in a specific way, and we can all disagree about what is “protected” and from what it is “protected.” If you don’t believe this, FOIA any Roadless Rule documents or check out the reports of the recent FACA committee (RACNAC).
Not to get all epistemological, but some things may be true if you look at numbers for all western counties and do a correlation, but not be true individually. It seems to me that the question is really a localized question…economically is protecting better than alternative uses (which might occur in a given area). If oil and gas leasing or ski areas are alternative uses, the economics would be be different from if the alternative to “protection” were campgrounds or OHV trails. But only certain places are conducive to wind farms, oil and gas leasing, coal mines, or ski areas.
This reminds me of the old studies that said if Forks Washington has a bad economy it doesn’t matter because jobs are growing in Seattle. Scale can be everything and choosing a scale is a value, not “science.”
Also in the Post today was a note that states get 50% from BLM lease sales.
Based on this story in the Oregonian, this effort seems to be a success, with no litigation. I wonder what lessons could be learned from this? What went right?
In 2009, Congress authorized the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Fund, providing $40 million annually through 2019 to restore national forests.
Forest Service officials on the Deschutes National Forest at first identified 150,000 acres in need of restoration and secured $1 million a year for the next 10 years for the work.
Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project Diverse forest interests come together with the help of the US Forest Service to make the Deschutes National Forest more resistant to fire, insects and disease.
Last summer, the restoration area expanded to about 257,000 acres.
The Forest Service is focusing on eight zones within the project. This month, they moved forward on the West Bend Vegetation project — 26,000 acres where mowing, thinning and prescribed burning are expected to open up the forest.
“A whole lot of people here have a whole lot of interest in that landscape,” said Kevin Larkin, the Bend/Fort Rock district ranger for the Deschutes National Forest. “It’s used all year round by a large group of recreationalists.”
“There is a high level of agreement and shared vision on Ponderosa forests,” said Phil Chang, staff coordinator for the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council.
The council includes elected officials from three counties — Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson — and eight central Oregon cities.
The 10-year project also seeks to restore watersheds within the forest to improve fish habitat, including the re-introduction of steelhead salmon into the Deschutes basin. Roads will be decommissioned, soils improved, trails rebuilt and the planting of native plants.
Because the long-term work will have such a direct effect on users of the forest, the overall project has taken input from environmental groups, the timber community, recreationalists and business interests.
“We’ve brought them all together and they’ve come to an agreement for the most part on all aspects of the project,’’ Larkin said. “What should have been a very contentious project is going forward without litigation and broad-scale support from all these disparate groups.”
Here’s a site with the documentation. The objections can be found here . (Note to folks developing project websites.. please link directly to objections rather than have people need to go search through various years to find them.)
Clearly not everyone agreed, but no one litigated. Anyone know more about this story?
While Southern wetlands are going Up in Smoke so European Governments can meet their renewable energy targets, our forests and communities are hit the hardest. From Virginia to Florida, along the Mississippi River and throughout the South the negative impact on our communities has become clearer every day, and the Injustice in NorthamptonCounty in northeastern North Carolina is no different.
Residents in this rural community close to the Enviva Northampton plant now face 24/7 extreme noise and lights, dust that coats cars, buildings and lungs in just a few minutes of exposure, along with dangerous, heavy truck traffic. The Northampton community quickly rallied and are working with Dogwood Alliance and Clean Water For North Carolina to bring the attention of local officials to the conditions that Enviva forces them to live with every day.
For more information on the Our Forests Aren’t Fuel campaign visit here.
To read more about the situation in Northampton and how locals are fighting back visit here.
Logic and an open mind shows a conservationist with a strict conservation easement and the land trust Montana Land Reliance the need for modifying their agreement to save a forest through sound forest management. This is an example of tailoring sound forest management to accommodate strong conservationist viewpoints while recognizing the shortsightedness of their original “blinders on” “no harvest and no logging” agreement in order to reduce the risk of loss and improve aesthetics. Where there is a common goal and a true love for the forest, blinders come off and the environment wins. See the Bitterroot Star.
Some quotes include:
– “The sixty-acre tract of land, located up the Tin Cup Creek drainage west of Darby, is owned by Stewart Brandborg, a longtime conservationist. A conservation easement was placed on the land to preserve it in its forested state. “It was a pretty strict easement,” said Brandborg, “to the extent of no harvest and no logging.” So why are they in there logging now, you might ask. To preserve the forest would be the short answer.”
– “The Brandborgs went to the Montana Land Reliance, the company that holds the easement on the property, and worked out a solution that was satisfactory to all concerned. It would allow some light-on-the-land forest thinning to take out the bug killed trees. A prescription was designed by John Wells, a professional forester, that would make for a healthier stand of trees and lessen the fire hazard while preserving the values which the conservation easement was designed to maintain. It was not designed for profit.” –> Note: Profit here is “Landowner Profit”
– “Two small landing areas were cleared where the down trees were hauled to be de-limbed, cut to length and sorted. There was a pile that would go to a small sawmill in Corvallis, a couple of other piles of #1 and #2 house logs, a pile to go to Porterbilt for posts and rails, a pile for Pyramid Lumber, a pile of firewood, and a pile of slash that could be chipped or burned on the spot when the job was done. Stoker said that keeping the destination of the product as close to the logging site as possible was the key to making the small operation profitable.” –> Note: Profit here is “Logger Profit” to keep his business going.
– ““The big thing we try to do is to see what we want it to look like in the long term,” said Stoker. “Then, like Michelangelo and the rock, we take out everything that doesn’t look like that picture.”
All the big yellow pines and the big fir trees were left. In fact, almost all the larger living trees on the place were left untouched. Lots of dead snags were also left for the benefit of wildlife. Big patches of thick growth were also left scattered through the area as refuge and bedding spots for big game and other animals.
“What I like is that you can see a lot of individual trees now,” said Stoker. He pointed to one large 400-year-old pine and said that close to 50 small Douglas fir trees from 15 to 30 feet tall were removed from around the base of the big pine. It not only gets more air and light, it might even survive a fire now that the “fire ladder” surrounding it has been removed.
Stoker said that the woods were so thick on this piece of land that it was hard to see anything.
“We also opened up some views,” said Stoker. “Now you can see some of those big yellow pines on the cliff and see the cliffs themselves. Before, the canopy was so thick that you couldn’t see anything from down here. I think it’s cool seeing the ice coming off the cliff like that. It’s beautiful.”
Stewart Brandborg remains an ardent conservationist. But he also believes that local loggers can still be put to work doing sound management for the health and well-being of the forest, and, with the right machinery, at the right time, and with the right amount of care, they can do it without destroying the landscape.”
After reading recent guest opinion pieces (Keene 2/4/14, and Doppelt 2/5/14) citing climate change as a primary reason to curtail management of the O&C forests, I felt compelled as Paul Harvey might have put it: “to tell the rest of the story”. The following is a key message from the forestry chapter of the 2013 draft National Climate Assessment (NCA): “Climate change is increasing the vulnerability of forests to ecosystem change and tree mortality through fire, insect infestations, drought, and disease outbreaks. Western U. S. forests are particularly vulnerable to increased wildfire and insect outbreaks…” In 2012, U. S. Forest Service researchers supporting the NCA concluded: “By the end of the 21st century, forest ecosystems in the U. S. will differ from those of today as a result of changing climate…wildfires, insect infestations, pulses of erosion and flooding and drought-induced tree mortality are all expected to increase during the 21st century.”
Around 48% of the 2.2 million acres of O&C forests are unhealthy and fire-prone, conditions that will only worsen with prolonged climate warming. Nearly 25% are classified as Fire Regime Condition Class 3 (FRCC3) meaning the risk of losing key ecosystem components (i.e., soil, water, wildlife) to uncharacteristic wildfires that are larger and more intense and severe than normal, is high. In addition to climate warming, these conditions reflect the long-term policy of fire exclusion and the dramatic reduction of timber management since 1990. Natural disturbance cycles have been altered, and have not been replaced by managed systems. Most of these “at risk” forests are called “Dry Forests” by Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson and are generally found between the southern end of the Willamette Valley and California on the BLM Roseburg and Medford Districts and the Klamath Falls Resource Area. Forest types include Southwest Oregon mixed conifer, dry ponderosa pine, red fir, dry Douglas fir, and California mixed evergreen habitats.
The 2000 National Fire Plan and the 2012 National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy are federal/state government partnership initiatives to address the problems of the O&C at risk forests and those like them throughout the West. Goals are: restore and maintain landscapes that are resilient to fire related disturbances; provide for fire adapted human communities that can withstand wildfire without loss of life and property; and, make efficient risk-based wildfire management decisions. The most fundamental principle is: Actively manage at risk forests to make them more resilient to disturbance and protect human communities. To restore the FRCC3 O&C forests to resilience in a 20-25 year time period, 15,000-20,000 acres per year need to have tree densities reduced through selective harvest and prescribed fire while maintaining Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife population goals for wildlife.
Management of at risk forests to restore resilience is not a “Trojan Horse” to “get the cut out”, as some claim. Clearly, the absence of active management is at least one of the principal factors resulting in the 2002 Biscuit Fire, Oregon’s largest. There, forest types the same as those at risk on the O&C forests burned in many places with uncharacteristic and harmful effects blowing the entire topsoil horizon out to sea in many places and destroying ESA protected Northern Spotted Owl habitat. The need for active management of the O&C forests is part of a much larger state problem. Many of Oregon’s more than 18 million federal forest acres reflect an unhealthy condition made worse by climate warming where most are considered at risk of uncharacteristic wildfire and nearly 40% (Dry Forests) are considered at high risk. In the past 10 years over 3 million acres in more than 20,000 wildfires have burned affecting 10% of Oregon’s total forest land and 16% of its timber land. These fires have come at significant economic and ecological costs. A hopeful response in Oregon’s Blue Mountains with much FRCC2&3 forests is a Forest Service program dubbed “accelerated restoration” designed to provide more timber for mills while restoring resilience to tree-killing insects, disease and wildfires.
Oregonians should be grateful especially to Congressmen DeFazio, Walden and Schrader, and Senator Wyden for addressing the needs for healthy forests and healthy communities in their respective proposals for management of O&C forests. While their approaches differ in some respects all agree that active forest management to restore forests and associated communities is imperative ecologically and economically. Proposed timber harvest in “Moist Forests” not only benefits local communities economically but can, if well distributed, create high quality early seral habitat beneficial to a wide array of wildlife species including elk and deer which are in steep decline.
Finally, in September 2013, the Pinchot Institute in Pennsylvania convened some of the nation’s leading thinkers in conservation science and practice to re-examine the vision, goals, and methods for conserving and sustainably managing forests in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch where humans are massively changing Earth’s life support systems. More active management of forest ecosystems was seen as important to conserving biodiversity and maintaining other essential values of forest ecosystems such as water resource protection. Unmanaged “static” conservation reserves in rapidly changing “dynamic” ecosystems were not seen as useful options. That’s the rest of the story.
*Steve Mealey lives near Leaburg. He is Vice President for Conservation, Boone and Crockett Club, the oldest American hunter/conservationist organization in America. The Club was founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887.
In Gypsum, located 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity. A wall board plant is at left, the biomass plant is to the right. Bill Heicher photo.
Most of the discussion in Colorado these weeks have been about the green (Cannabis) and the blue and orange (Broncos). Of course, the winter sky is blue, living trees are green and dead trees are orange, at least for a while. Here’s an article in the Sunday Denver Post Perspective, by Allen Best, about some new biomass plants in Colorado.
For most of the last decade, Coloradans have been talking about how to make good use of their mountain forests, dying and gray. Something is finally happening.
In Gypsum, 140 miles west of Denver, a biomass mill began operations in December, burning wood to create 10 megawatts of round-the-clock electricity.
In Colorado Springs, the city utility began mixing biomass with coal in January to produce 4.5 megawatts of power.
In Pagosa Springs, a 5-megawatt biomass plant may be launched next year, producing one-sixth of the baseload demand in Archuleta County.
And at Xcel Energy’s headquarters in Denver, environmental officials are sorting through proposals for a 2-megawatt biomass demonstration plant. The utility wants to understand the technology, the problems and promises.
This isn’t much electricity compared to the 1,426 megawatts generated by the Comanche coal-fired complex at Pueblo and the 1,139 megawatts at Craig. But biomass plants can and should be part of the electrical mix. In providing a market for woody material, they can make forests less vulnerable to fires like the ones that have killed nine people and destroyed 1,164 homes along the Front Range over the last two years.
Biomass also displaces burning of fossil fuels, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. That’s worth something, maybe a lot to Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy, which is paying extra for the electricity produced at Gypsum to help reduce its carbon footprint. It expects to be at 23 percent renewables later this year.
Colorado environmental groups, however, are skeptical that biomass plants will actually lower carbon dioxide emissions. “We’re saying we want to see the analysis of greenhouse gas impacts,” says Gwen Farnsworth of Western Resource Advocates.
Biomass clearly can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by displacing fossil fuels, says Keith Paustian, a professor of soil ecology at Colorado State University. “There are questions as to what degree you do that, and obviously, you want as low a carbon footprint as possible,” he says.
Paustian hopes a more detailed accounting of carbon impacts will be a byproduct of the $10 million research project he is leading. The project, the Bioenergy Alliance Network of the Rockies, seeks to examine the potential for conversion of the 22 million acres of beetle-impacted wood in the Rocky Mountains into bioenergy.
An even broader fear among some environmental groups is that public lands will be managed to feed the hunger of biomass plants, instead of the bieomass plants being a useful tool for curbing fire risk. “We don’t want the tail wagging the dog,” says Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop.
If Eagle Valley Clean Energy, developer of the plant at Gypsum, sticks to its projections, that won’t be a problem. It insists that at least 30 percent of wood will come from landfills, another 20 percent or more from private lands, and a minimum of 40 percent from state or federal lands.
As far as I know if the question is “environmental impacts of burning wood that is dead and would give off greenhouse gases anyway, compared to coal and natural gas, it seems like it has been studied, in fact, quite a bit.
What the big biomass controversies I’ve seen are about “if people convert lands to grow biomass energy” or other “ifs” about biomass sources that are not considered to be “residues.”
Western Resource Advocates works against coal and natural gas, which are our current main sources of energy here.
I also appreciated Sloan’s comment. It seems to me you can work with “fear of getting too large” pretty easily by only using small sized units and putting a cap on the total. But if it’s about trust, maybe not. I have to note that back when I worked on bark beetle residues, DOE was supposed to help the FS with this, but focused their work on giant-sized solutions, not small or mobile technologies.
Best’s last paragraph..
In other words, biomass plants aren’t the answer to everything that ails us. They won’t immediately turn our forests green, nor will they alone replace the fossil-fuel plants that are fouling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
But biomass has another attribute. Think of it as the energy equivalent of community agriculture. The 20th century was all about bigger and more centralized production of everything. This creates huge supply lines, mile-long coal trains going to plants, and high-voltage power lines leaving them.
It’s easy to think of water originating in the tap, electricity in the outlet, without broader consequences. Smaller sources of power generation, close to their locations of use, keep us in touch with the spider’s web of our relationship to the energy we use.
You could probably say that about local wood products as well..
The article is about Mesa County but I couldn’t find a map like this of them so this is San Juan County. You can click on it if you want to see the names of the towns and roads.
This article was on the front page of the Denver Post. Again, I think it’s interesting what having regional newspapers means to what kind of coverage there is of regional issues. But, of course, all public lands are national issues. But what would a newspaper reader in San Francisco or New York or DC see in their paper about public lands compared to the Denver or Salt Lake or Boise or Missoula paper? Something to think about as the newspaper industry deconstructs..
Anyway, below is an excerpt. Note that D’s and R’s are together on this..and you don’t need lack of timber receipts for the issue to be a problem.
WASHINGTON — Colorado’s rural, mountainous counties that boast some of the most picturesque , yet isolated, scenery in the nation face the prospect of receiving $31.9 million fewer federal dollars this year.
The money was left out of last week’s budget deal approved by Congress and supported by President Barack Obama.
Known as “Payments in Lieu of Taxes,” or PILT, the federal payments backfill budgets in places such as Mesa County, which has a lot of federal land that doesn’t generate any property taxes. The dynamic puts Mesa at a disadvantage compared with, say, Denver County, whose dense population generates county dollars to take care of infrastructure, emergency services and roads.
Colorado is among the five biggest recipients of federal PILT dollars. Other large recipients include Utah, Wyoming and Montana.
“If any other property taxpayer in the country decided that ‘Money was too tight, I’m in a deficit situation and I’m just going to quit paying my property taxes,’ they’d find their property on the auction block,” said Mesa County Commissioner Steve Acquafresca. “Yet the federal government exempts themselves from that.”
PILT, like hundreds of other line items in the voluminous federal budget, has a history of being tucked into various funding measures over the years.
Created in the 1970s, it was funded through the regular appropriations process on Capitol Hill until 2008. Then it was stuck in the Troubled Asset Relief Program bill for five years. Last year, it was tucked in transportation funding.
Last week’s budget, passed by both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, failed to include PILT funding.
“I’m very disturbed … that the decision was made to zero it out,” said Rep. Scott Tipton, a Republican whose 3rd District gets more of these federal dollars than anywhere else in Colorado and who voted against the budget package. “We’re concerned on the impact primarily on our communities. … This is a real challenge. When a hiker gets lost on federal land, the federal government doesn’t help — it’s going to be the local sheriff.”
The federal government owns roughly 75 percent of Mesa County’s land. The county’s 146,000 denizens live on the remaining fourth, mostly in Grand Junction and Fruita.
Yet Acquafresca points out that county officials are in charge of all the land — including road access, emergency service and law enforcement.
The county received $3.12 million last year from the federal government. The money accounts for about 5 percent of the county’s overall budget. Mesa gets more of the federal money than any other county in Colorado.
Acquafresca and his commissioner colleagues have budgeted this year for the federal dollars and says he doesn’t know what they’ll do if the money doesn’t come through in June.
“We don’t provide frivolous services,” he said. “Everything we do in this community is vital.”
Tipton, who is in Colorado this week on a congressional recess with the other members, said GOP leadership assured him they would try to get PILT funding restored in the Farm Bill.
Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, who was on the Western Slope this week hearing from county commissioners on the matter, is making the same push from his position on the Farm Bill conference committee.
“It’s very, very important to the operating budgets to counties all over Colorado, vitally important to first responders and schools. That’s the message I heard loud and clear,” Bennet said.
La Plata County Commissioner Julie Westendorff said the $607,959 her county received last year helped fund rescue efforts and emergency services in the bountiful, heavily traversed mountains near Durango.
You can check out the comments too, but some of them devolve pretty quickly to partisan name-calling (another one says that search and rescue is reimbursed and not really an issue).
Recent photo of the Black Hills Advisory Committee (FACA)
So sorry.. there was a “here” in the original post that didn’t have the link. HERE is the link.
I am solely responsible for choosing the excerpts. I felt I had to excerpt, because although the whole thing was worth reading, it was too long for one post. Maybe I should’ve had several posts.. but then the discussion would have been in each post. Anyway, I am not allowing comments on this post because it would be better in my opinion if all the comments were on the previous post here.
Update: Thanks to the Black Hills for the recent photo of their FACA Committee!
This is from Barry Wynsma in Evergreen. Thanks to Jim Petersen for permission to repost. We have discussed the Black Hills success story in terms of litigation and appeals before. here and here. There are several other posts about the Hills you can find by searching in the search box.
There are many notable things about the Hills, including the fact that they have a formal FACA committee (photo above).
It’s fairly long and worth reading in its entirety, but I focused on this section that talks about litigation. Feel free to comment on any of the other parts as well.
The Alliance for The Wild Rockies, The Wild West Institute, The Lands Council, The Native Ecosystems Council, Friends of the Clearwater, Etcetera…
Another reason – maybe the reason – why comparing the Northern Region with the Black Hills National forest may not be equitable is that the sheer number of species that have to be dealt with in Region 1 makes its national forests huge and easy targets for environmentalists who oppose active forest management.
During fiscal year 2012, there were 140 appeals filed in the Northern Region5. As of August of 2013, 44 more appeals were filed in the Northern Region. Of those, 16 were against projects that included commercial sales of forest products [personal communication with FS]. Also as of August 2012, personnel in the R1 regional office told me the appeals/objections were holding up about 225 million board feet of commercial timber sales.
By comparison, the Black Hills National Forest received 3 appeals [actually objections under the “218” rules] in 2012 and none in 2013.
In referencing the Forest Service Appeals and Litigation website6 I can see that in the Northern Region, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, The Land’s Council, Friends of the Clearwater and the Native Ecosystems Council seem to like to appeal all projects that involve the commercial sale of forest products. Readers that check out this website will also see other groups and individuals that have made it their agenda to appeal commercial timber sale projects.
In comparison and referencing the same Forest Service website, Friends of the Norbeck, Prairie Hills Audubon Society and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance appears to be the only environmental groups that occasionally appeal projects on the Black Hills National Forest.
The Government Accountability Office [GAO] provided data on Forest Service appeals and litigation for the period 2006-20087 for fuels reduction projects, not necessarily including all projects that involve commercial sale of forest products.
Excerpted from the GAO report are the following findings:
“In fiscal years 2006 through 2008, the Forest Service issued 1,415 decisions involving fuel reduction activities, covering 10.5 million acres.
Of this total, 1,191 decisions, covering about 9 million acres, were subject to appeal and 217-about 18 percent-were appealed. Another 121 decisions, covering about 1.2 million acres, were subject to objection and 49-about 40 percent-were objected to. The remaining 103 decisions were exempt from both objection and appeal. Finally, 29 decisions-about 2 percent of all decisions-were litigated, involving about 124,000 acres.
For 54 percent of the appeals filed, the Forest Service allowed the project to proceed without changes; 7 percent required some changes before being implemented; and 8 percent were not allowed to be implemented. The remaining appeals were generally dismissed for procedural reasons or withdrawn before they could be resolved. Regarding objections, 37 percent of objections resulted in no change to a final decision; 35 percent resulted in a change to a final decision or additional analysis on the part of the Forest Service; and the remaining 28 percent were set aside from review for procedural reasons or addressed in some other way. And finally, of the 29 decisions that were litigated, lawsuits on 21 decisions have been resolved, and 8 are ongoing. Of the lawsuits that have been resolved, the parties settled 3 decisions, 8 were decided in favor of the plaintiffs, and 10 were decided in favor of the Forest Service. All appeals and objections were processed within prescribed time frames-generally, within 90 days of a decision (for appeals), or within 60 days of the legal notice of a proposed decision (for objections).”
Note that this report found that of the projects involved in this report, 18 percent were appealed, 40 percent were objected to and “only” about two percent were litigated. Some environmentalists like to use this two percent figure to downplay the significance of their commercial timber sale appeals.
While this may be true on its face, it reminds me of the Forest Service claim that more than 90 percent of all wildfires in the U.S. each year are put out before they become catastrophic. Whether it’s a big fire or a big lawsuit, the two percent we are discussing is causing significant damage to the environment, to the ability for the Forest Service to manage timber stands that are suitable for commercial timber harvests and to the economic stability of the communities surrounded by national forests.
Looking at the GAO report again, Tables 7 and 8 show that the top five “serial” appellants [to coin Jim Petersen’s phrase] in the Northern Region for the period 2006-2008 includes the Alliance for the Wild Rockies with 35 appeals/objections, the Wild West Institute with 26 appeals/objections, The Land’s Council with 25 appeals/objections, Native Ecosystems Council with 13 appeals/objections and Friends of the Clearwater with 8 appeals/objections. The Northern Region had a total of 187 appeals/objections during this period from the above mentioned and other groups and individuals.
Tables 7 and 8 also provide comparative data for the Rocky Mountain Region, but not the Black Hills National Forest specifically. Even so, the entire region – which includes the BHNF – saw only 44 appeals/objections during the same time frame. The appeals were filed by the following environmental groups: Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, 13 appeals/objections; Colorado Wild, 5 appeals/objections; Prairie Hills Audubon Society, 4 appeals; Western Watersheds Project, 1 appeal; Great Old Broads for Wilderness, 1 objection, Sierra Club, 1 objection, Sinapu, 1 objection, Wilderness Workshop, 1 objection and; Wild Connections, 1 appeal.
All these appeals, objections and a small percentage of litigation has a catastrophic affect not just on those projects that have been directly targeted, but more often than not, they indirectly effect most if not all projects nationally that are undergoing environmental analysis and the NEPA process. This is especially true for those projects that entail commercial timber harvests. There is a ripple effect on the recommended level of analysis needed to satisfy the latest court case decisions in order to head off the future threat of litigation.
Because appeals and litigation often involve the issues of threatened, endangered and sensitive species (based on my personal experience for the past 23 years as a project leader and 33 years as a Forest Service employee), you can plainly see that those forests and regions that have more listed species will have a correspondingly higher level of difficulty navigating the appeals/objection/litigation process.
Barry was a 33 year employee of the Forest Service, the last 23 as a small sales and special forest products project leader on the Bonners Ferry Ranger District, Idaho Panhandle NF. I specialized in small tree and biomass utilization projects and was also a co-author of the Forest Service’s Woody Biomass Utilization Desk Guide.
Thanks to the Bend Bulletin for writing, and Terry Seyden for forwarding this article. It sounds very confusing..
For folks who haven’t worked in DC, it is a window on “how agencies really work with OMB”.. in this case fits and starts. And “how agencies coordinate” .. as in BLM and the FS doing things differently. Not to rehash old topics, but it seems to me that muddling the same kinds of programs through two agencies wastes time and taxpayer bucks. I’m sure there were many hours spent in meetings about this for each agency.
In a hearing Tuesday, the committee heard testimony and presented a report showing the confusion faced by federal agencies surrounding mandatory spending cuts called sequestration that went into effect on March 1, 2013.
On Jan. 15, 2013, the Forest Service dispersed $323 million in 2012 payments under the Secure Rural Schools program, including $63 million for Oregon. Since the money represented funds committed before sequestration went into effect on March 1, the Office of Management and Budget at first believed the cuts did not apply, although a lack of clarity seems to have surrounded the issue.
“The main question now is: Are these payments from 2012 (budget authority)? I think they are but can you please confirm that. If it is 2012 (budget authority), then the money is not sequesterable but the 2013 (budget authority) is sequesterable in these accounts,” wrote an OMB official in an internal email on Jan. 18, three days after the funds had been released.
The internal debate between OMB officials continued, according to documents, made even more confusing by the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to withhold 10 percent from its own timber payments due to sequestration. In emails in February, a different OMB official wrote that the Forest Service “took our guidance to act as normal and ran with it.”
“The Forest Service did not make an error. That is not the appropriate word,” a later OMB email states. “They opted to pay in full, knowing sequestration could happen. That is not an error.”
Subsequently, the Forest Service asked states to return $17.9 million in timber payments.
