Sustainable Rural Economies 8 | The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views

Planning in HR 1526 – Guest Post by Jon Haber

October 3, 2013October 3, 2013 by Sharon

This recent article on the ‘Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act’ got me to look at the actual bill.

Neither the Administration nor the previous discussion on this blog really addressed the ‘forest planning’ implications of this bill.

Section 505 is titled ‘Clarification of National Forest Management Act of 1976 Authority,’ and it addresses tree marking. Actually, this bill could exempt the entire tree-growing portion of National Forest System completely from NFMA, except for designated wilderness, national monuments and where there are statutory prohibitions.

In Section 103, the Forest Service is required to identify at least one Forest Reserve Revenue Area on each national forest, and such areas must include at least half of the commercial forest lands (there is no upper limit). This is to be done ‘notwithstanding any other provision of law.’ The acreage may never be reduced. This designation must be completed in 60 days, and there is no requirement for public participation.

These areas must then be managed to achieve an ‘annual volume requirement’ of 50% of their sustained yield, which is to be determined as the ‘maximum annual growth potential of the forest.’ This sustained yield does not reflect the needs of any other resources. In comparison, the ASQ in current plans is based on a long-term sustained-yield capacity that reflects many other resource needs, and very few national forests are harvesting anywhere near their ASQ. The 50% figure seems arbitrary and very likely unobtainable (and/or unsustainable) most places without the kind of impacts that NFMA was intended to mitigate.

The bill specifically exempts management of these areas from the NFMA prohibition against choosing clearcutting primarily for economic reasons. It also states, “The Secretary may modify the standards and guidelines contained in the land and resource management plan for the unit of the National Forest System in which the covered forest reserve project will be carried out as necessary to achieve the requirements of this Act.” The management of potentially the majority of the National Forest System would thus effectively be exempt from the direction in existing land management plans, the requirements of the 2012 planning regulations (including collaboration), and NFMA itself (and presumably the Roadless Area Conservation Rule if it interferes with achieving the volume requirement).

For any lands not designated under Section 103 (and over 200,000 acres), Section 402 requires the Forest Service to establish Community Forest Demonstration Areas if requested by an advisory committee appointed by state governors (with only requirements to represent governmental, commercial and recreational interests). “The administration and management of a community forest demonstration area, including implementing actions, shall not be considered Federal action.” Again, NFMA and forest plans would be irrelevant to the selection and management of these areas.

Section 205 allows a state governor to designate ‘high risk areas.’ “Designation of high-risk areas shall be consistent with standards and guidelines contained in the land and resource management plan or land use plan for the unit of Federal land for which the designation is being made, except that the Secretary concerned may modify such standards and guidelines to correspond with a specific high-risk area designation.” The exception swallows the NFMA requirement for consistency with a land management plan.

In sum, this would return national forest planning and management on probably the majority of national forest lands to dominant timber use for economic gain– which is what triggered the National Forest Management Act in 1976. I can see why this rearview mirror approach can’t be taken very seriously.

Jon retired from the Forest Service at the end of 2012 after 32 years as a forest and regional planner in Regions 6 and 1. His background is in forestry and natural resource management and includes a law degree. The last half of his career focused on rewriting the NFMA planning rule, planning for threatened/endangered/sensitive species, and large landscape conservation planning efforts.

Federal forestlands would benefit from Oregon rules: Op-ed In Oregonian

October 1, 2013 by Sharon

From the Oregonian, here.

By James E. Brown, Hal Salwasser and Ted Lorensen

Managing some of the federal O&C forestlands more like private forestlands, as is supported by Oregon’s Reps. Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader, would produce a better set of environmental and economic outcomes than is currently the case.

Oregon’s 29 million acres of diverse forests have four general emphases of management: multiresource, reserve, wood production and residential, based upon forest types, ownerships, policies and locations. About 60 percent of Oregon’s forests are federal. In combination for all ownerships, acreage planned to be managed under wood production, multiresource and reserve emphases are about equal, but in practice, because of litigation and other factors, the majority of federal lands have a reserve emphasis. Ensuring that more of the O&C lands — once owned by the now-defunct Oregon & California Railroad — are managed with wood production or multiresource emphases would restore the balance of outcomes intended under the Northwest Forest Plan and O&C Act.

Our federal lands are no longer economically sustainable, and local communities are impoverished because of that. Because of the chronic severe fire suppression costs, the basic infrastructure on our federal forest is no longer being maintained, and resource values and lives are being lost in catastrophic wildfires.

In comparison, Oregon’s approach to regulating and promoting forest management on private forestlands under the Oregon Forest Practices Act and the statewide land-use program is economically sustainable. While no single metric can evaluate the success of forest management, research from paired watershed studies demonstrates that modern forest practices maintain water quality and protect fish and fish habitat. Timber growth and harvest on private lands is in balance, and reforestation is excellent. Wood-production forests sustain family-wage jobs and provide increased revenues to local government. Timber harvested in Oregon is high quality and produces lumber that is economically competitive with other regions of the world. This helps avoid importing wood from parts of the world that have poor forest practices and also minimizes the substitution of less environmentally friendly products, such as concrete, steel and plastic.

Oregon’s approach of both effective and economically efficient forest practices is essential for sustaining forestland. “If it pays, it stays.” Loss in forestland value in California and Washington has resulted in significantly more conversion of private forest to non-forest uses than in Oregon. As an example, 25 percent of working forests in the Puget Sound area were converted to residential or commercial development between 1988 and 2004. In contrast, as of 2009, Oregon had 98 percent of the forestland that was forestland in 1974.

Forestland conversion is especially counterproductive to sustaining fish. Data for fish habitat from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife indicates that “the highest rearing potential among land uses was on private industrial forest land. … Urban and agricultural lands had the lowest capacity. … Federal and state forest land had a moderate capacity.” Private forestland support for salmon recovery has contributed to populations that again allow for the harvest this fall of wild coho in a number of streams, many with a majority of private forestlands. It is not logical that we could have such outcomes for fish on Oregon’s private forestlands if forest practices regulations were inadequate.

As the O&C lands are addressed and claims are made to prevent much needed management change, we urge you to dig a little deeper to find the facts about Oregon’s forests at the Board of Forestry’s website.

James E. Brown is a retired state forester. Hal Salwasser is a professor and the former dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Ted Lorensen is a retired assistant state forester.

Note from Sharon: It’s interesting to me, how Oregon’s Forest Practices regulation has been targeted by some in this issue about federal land management.

White House Dislikes Hastings Bill

September 18, 2013 by Sharon

As many know, I am “politically impaired” so don’t understand why the White House would get all interested in a bill that is unlikely to pass both houses.. when there are potential and real world crises going on..

So what theater might this be about? An effort to affect Wyden’s thinking? Any politically astute people are welcome to hypothesize.

I saw this blog post from the Hill..here’s a quote.

The bill would would force plaintiffs to pay for the government’s court fees, potentially limiting access to the courts, would give states new powers for federal land management and exempt a variety of actions from federal laws.
“This would undermine appropriate management and stewardship of these lands, which belong to all Americans, would compromise habitat for threatened and endangered species, and would create legal uncertainty over management of these lands as well as increase litigation risk,” the White House said.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would cost $86 million over the next five years, but would reduce federal spending by $269 million by 2023.

So I am having trouble with how 1) potentially limiting access to the courts, 2) exempting a variety of actions from federal law.. would actually INCREASE litigation risk, according to the White House. Which I’m sure is the opposite of what is intended. Are they saying that the bill isn’t written correctly to have the desired outcome?

I also thought the CBO figures were interesting.

Editorial: Listing of O&C lands as endangered rankles

September 3, 2013 by Sharon

Thanks to the reader who sent this in from the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

The conservation group Oregon Wild last week released a report in which it named western Oregon’s O&C forests the most endangered place in the state.
The ranking is part of an annual report of endangered public lands in Oregon — an annual rundown of areas the group believes are at risk from “logging, mining, pollution and other harmful development.”
We understand that this type of report is crafted to draw public attention. We also understand that writing about the report requires falling into that trap.
But, still, something about this year’s rankings rankles: They are tone-deaf to the broader issues related to the long-running saga of the O&C lands and the counties that rely on them.
These lands, about 2.6 million acres, originally were granted to the Oregon & California Railroad to build a railroad line.
The lands were reconveyed to the federal government in 1916 and now are managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Benton County includes about 53,000 acres of O&C lands.
Since 1916, the 18 counties where the O&C lands are located have received payments from the federal government to compensate for the loss of tax revenue, starting with a 50 percent share of timber revenue on those lands.
As we cut back on timber harvests on federal lands, those payments were trimmed back as well. Now, the counties with O&C lands are struggling, to different degrees, to find replacement sources of revenue and some counties, primarily in southwest Oregon, teeter on the brink of financial failure.
What fuels the worries of Oregon Wild and other groups is a proposal making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives to place the O&C lands into two trusts.
Roughly half of the acreage would be managed for conservation; the remainder would focus on sustainable timber production to help fund county coffers – and maybe even restore some rural jobs in the timber industry.
Oregon Wild worries that the proposal, being pushed by Reps. Greg Walden and Peter DeFazio, among others, amounts to a license to clearcut big swaths of the O&C lands.
We doubt that would be the result — in part because those practices increasingly are unacceptable to the public, but also because no one expects the House plan to make any headway in the Senate. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden has a similar proposal, which would increase timber harvests on the lands, but to a lesser extent than the House legislation.
It’s likely the two plans will meet in a conference committee.
To its credit, the full Oregon Wild report, while it emphasizes the importance of tourism and recreation, does talk about the need to find a long-term solution to county funding, and it suggests that badly needed restoration work on our forests would get people back to work.
We agree with that. So does everyone else, as far as we can tell. So what’s the holdup?

Sharon’s note: Hmm. I think the “hold-up” is that no one wants to pay for it (!). You could make a downpayment, though, with the 50K or so that went to the Oregonian full page ads…

And at the risk of offending my West Side friends, I have seen many nice forest places to play across the West and I don’t think the rainy, damp West side is among most people’s favorites.
In fact, the people from there tend to recreate on the East side, at least when I lived in the Bend area. I wonder if people considered that in their ideas about tourism replacing timber harvesting? As we used to say in Region 2, “Hope is not a strategy.”

Wonder Who is Funding Ads on Youtube About O&C Lands?

August 27, 2013 by Sharon

This morning I was looking up some music on Youtube for one of my other hobbies, and got an ad about “write Senator Wyden about O&C Lands” . It said “a balanced approach is best but no clearcutting.” It kind of creeps me out that that could have been targeted at me (or they have enough money to go after random people in Colorado), but I wonder who is doing this, and how much it costs to put it on Youtube?

I’d be interested if anyone else has seen this or other ads.. then perhaps we can check the organization’s 990 and figure it out next year.

The Colville Experiment

August 27, 2013 by Sharon

This sounds like an interesting approach. Here’s the news story.

COLVILLE, WA – Today, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) held a Summit with a panel of local business and community leaders involved in the Colville National Forest to discuss how to more effectively utilize Forest Service land to promote healthier forests, reduce the risks of forest fires, and strengthen rural economies.
Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers said, “The Colville National Forest is the economic engine for our Northeastern Washington counties and healthy forests mean healthy communities. Of the 1.1 million acre Colville National Forest, over 300,000 acres are bug infested. In addition, it has the potential to bring more jobs, recreation and increased local revenue to Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille counties.”
The federal government made a promise over a century ago to actively manage our forests and provide 25% of revenues for schools and counties impacted by National Forest land. But declining timber harvests has meant dramatically less revenue.
McMorris Rodgers is an original sponsor of H.R. 1526, Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act. It directs the Forest Service to meet specific harvest levels in certain areas, will help improve forest health and prevent catastrophic wildfires, extends supplemental Secure Rural Schools payments for one year, and would improve local forest management by allowing counties to actively manage portions of National Forest land through the creation of “Community Forest Demonstration Areas.”
The bill is expected to be on the House Floor this fall.
McMorris Rodgers has also been working for the past two years to initiate an innovative public-private partnership in the national forest.
The “A to Z” Mill Creek Pilot Project sets up a 10-year contract on 50,000 acres in the Colville National Forest. It allows a private company to use private dollars for everything after the timber sale is laid out, including the pre-sale environmental requirements and NEPA. With private funds and local management, the Colville National Forest can be managed for healthier forests and stable, sustainable revenue.
According to McMorris Rodgers, the Washington Department of Natural Resources produces seven times the timber from one-quarter of the acreage as the Forest Service in Washington state.
“The Forest Service should work with the timber industry to create jobs and revenue at a time when they are badly needed, while still protecting the environment and ensuring a sustainable harvest. This pilot project will show how it can be done, and I want Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties to be model for the rest of the country.”
The winning bid will be announced in September.

Schott Resigns from Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative

August 26, 2013 by Sharon

A reader submitted this editorial in the Albany (Oregon) Democrat-Herald, which I think it an interesting bookend to the discussion about local wood below. So Santa Cruz-ites are finding a middle ground, where the sector has NOT been important, but where it has been important, in Southern Oregon, they cannot find common ground. Hypotheses anyone? I wish the People’s Research Fund could fund social scientists to survey folks across the west on some of their deeper values around this.

The story involved the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative, a local effort which has been working to reach a common ground on ecological issues and reforestation.
But the effort has hit a bump: The only representative of the timber industry in the group, Dave Schott, has resigned. In explaining the reasons for his resignation, Schott said that in his view, the group has been overly focused on the priorities of environmentalists and has failed to take into account the needs of the logging industry.
The director of the collaborative called Schott’s decision “short-sighted,” according to a story about the dustup in the Medford Mail-Tribune newspaper.
And that short-sighted assessment would seem justified, except for one thing:
Schott had spent eight years on the board.
Eight years.
Now, maybe the better part of a decade doesn’t amount to a lot of time in the effort to change the policies that have led to generations of gridlock over our forests.
But surely it’s not too much to hope that one would have seen some progress in those eight years toward resolving the issues that have devastated our rural communities — and threatened the health of our forests, as witnessed by this summer’s busy wildfire season.
When the group initially formed, the collaborative agreed to base its work on a three-pronged approach that included economic, environmental and social considerations, said Schott, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. But, he said, as the years went on, the economic prong of the equation kept getting short shrift.
No one thinks that logging levels ever will return to the levels of the 1950s and 1960s. And no one is advocating anything like widespread clearcuts or the elimination of old-growth stands.
But there is a place for logging as we work to reboot our rural economies, an important place. The idea that we should simply declare our public forests off-limits not only jeopardizes the health of our forests but makes it difficult to move toward any of kind of compromise.
And it also means there isn’t any way to compromise. As one player in this drama noted, “Special interest groups are hard to bring to the middle, no matter how big that middle may be.“
The result? Years go by, and little happens — except people who started a good-faith effort to locate some common ground increasingly despair of finding it.
Maybe the efforts currently running through Congress — in discussions led by members of Oregon’s delegation — finally will make some progress.
But there is a sense that time is running out.
“This is coming to a head,” Schott said of the debate. “People are realizing something has to be done. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.” (mm)

Buy Local Wood – (from Santa Cruz?)

August 26, 2013 by Sharon

Thanks to Mike De LaSaux for posting this on the SAF LinkedIn site.

It is a TED talk video of a conservationist, Terry Corwin talking about using local sustainably produced wood for construction. Here are some of the snippets I copied..
“islands of privilege” “environmental haves and have-nots” “bias toward local sustainably produced wood,” and “embrace local supply of building material as much as food.”

I remember submitting an op-ed to the Denver Post with a similar message and received the reply that “this was nothing new.” My op-ed was around “why can I go to the grocery store and find a locally grown section but not Home Depot or Lowe’s?” and so on.

It would be interesting if that were thought to be the “right thing” to do in Santa Cruz but not in places where federal lands happen to be.

But I think what’s most important is who stands up and what kind of credibility they have. If conservationists would stand up with this message everywhere, some of our battles might be different; or not be battles at all.

I was curious about the local wood movement, and found this link at Dovetail Partners. Here is a link to the Colorado campaign.

I have always wondered why “timber industry” doesn’t play a larger role in this local wood effort. I can only think that the “industry” is not a monolith (as we have been discussing recently) and some parts benefit from imports. If not them, who should play this role? (personally I think that some of the Endowment should go for supporting a “Local Wood” effort, but not sure that’s appropriate given their charter).

It would be somewhat ironic if conservationists, such as Ms. Corwin, carried the water on this effort.

Pete DeFazio’s Take on The Problem

August 2, 2013 by Sharon

Here’s a link to a story on a House Bill from the Durango Herald. Italics are mine.

Grijalva predicted the Democratic-controlled Senate will not go for the bill.
“Why not craft something that would be taken seriously?” he said.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said members of Congress from the American West in the two parties have a lot of common ground on the forest-health problem, but Tipton’s bill goes too far. In any case, the real problem is prying money from Congress and the White House in order to fund forest-thinning projects, he said.
“Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have come up short in funding hazardous fuel-reduction treatments,” DeFazio said.
The bill’s number is H.R. 1526. Wednesday’s vote puts it in line for a vote on the House floor after Congress returns from its August recess.
Tipton urged quick passage.
Did you really say this?

Please Representative DeFazio, say it ain’t so.