Check this piece out from Char Miller on bark beetles.
More on the trade perspective when I return.
timber
Protection sought for black-backed woodpecker
The AP has the whole story, with highlighted snips below.
Four conservation groups filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday to list the black-backed woodpecker under the Endangered Species Act in the Sierra Nevada, Oregon’s Eastern Cascades and the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota.
In addition to fire suppression, the groups contend post-fire salvage logging combined with commercial thinning of green forests is eliminating what little remains of the bird’s habitat, mostly in national forests where it has no legal protection.
“Intensely burned forest habitat not only has no legal protection, but standard practice on private and public lands is to actively eliminate it,” the petition said. “When fire and insect outbreaks create excellent woodpecker habitat, salvage logging promptly destroys it.”
Chad Hanson, executive director the Earth Island’s John Muir Project based in Cedar Ridge, Calif., filed the petition Wednesday with the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. Co-petitioners are the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Ariz., the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in Fossil, Ore., and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyo.
Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis, said the black-backed woodpecker has been eating beetles in fire-killed stands of conifer forests for millions of years and specifically in North American forests for “many thousand years — since the last Ice Age.”
“Now, it’s very rare,” he said. The best science suggests there are fewer than 1,000 pairs in Oregon and California, and fewer than 500 pairs in the Black Hills, the petition said.
“Such small populations are at significant risk of extinction, especially when their habitat is mostly unprotected and is currently under threat of destruction and degradation,” the document said.
Richard Hutto, a biology professor and director of the Avian Science Center at the University of Montana, has been doing post-fire research since the early 1990s. He said it would be difficult to find a forest-bird species more restricted to a single vegetation cover type than the black-backed woodpecker is to early post-fire conditions.
The California State Fish and Game Commission agreed in December to add the woodpecker to the list of species that are candidates for protection under the California Endangered Species Act. State Commissioner Michael Sutton said a two-year review of the bird’s status is warranted because some Forest Service plans allow “100 percent salvage logging of burned areas, which is the preferred habitat of this species.”
For more information about black-backed woodpeckers, their habitat needs and the ecology of recently burned forests, check out Listen to the Message of the Black-backed Woodpecker, a Hot Fire Specialist from the February 2009 issue of Fire Science Brief from the Joint Fire Science Program.
UPDATE: Here’s a copy of the petition and here’s the press release from the conservation groups.
Our Forests: Two Worldviews
Americans continue to struggle with the idea of a public good, a “res publica,” in their national forests. We struggle in terms of both purpose of the national forests and how to best manage them. Herein we will contrast two different views of ‘national forests: for whom and for what.’ The first view comes from Dave Skinner, in a recent op-ed titled Impossible Dreams at the Flathead Beacon. The second view is mine, as aired here at the New Century of Forest Planning.
As I read through Dave Skinner’s “Impossible Dreams,” I reminded myself of just how diverse our worldviews are. Skinner views the world in a crass form of utilitarianism where forests are to be used for products and human pleasures: logs to flow freely to mills to make things, but also to generate monies to be returned to the treasury. Other ‘multiple use’ products flow freely too: oil and gas, minerals, red meat, and more. Roads are for human travel and to ‘manage’ the forests, recreation is for fun and, incidentally to be free, in part subsidized by timber and other products from the forests. [Note: The “to be free” tidbit is not in Skinner’s article, but is clearly what Skinner preaches elsewhere. Note further that I too share the idea of recreation for free outside certain improved sites. I also support commodity and service production from the national forests, but in a frame much more constrained than does Skinner.] Skinner makes no mention of environmental services, no mention of wildlife sanctuaries, no mention of sanctuaries for the human spirit. This is Skinner’s near-possible dream: that people might warm up to the idea that national forests ought to be managed for the version of multiple use embodied in the Multiple Use — Sustained Yield Act of 1960 (MUSY). MUSY predated the spate of environmental laws the were ushered in a mere decade later, following an upwelling of outrage at the wanton disregard for ‘caring for the earth’ that led to the passage of many US environmental laws and led to the celebration of Earth Day as a reminder of what damage we have done to our home—and as a reminder that we must now do better. These “US environmental laws” laws include the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and more. Skinner’s “impossible dream” is that the national forests would be better managed in the tradition of state trust lands, echoing Robert Nelson’s similar push to Free America from Her Public Lands.
I too have an impossible dream. A dream that the Forest Service will finally take Aldo Leopold seriously, and move management toward the ideal that people become part of the “land community,” not overlords of the wild, neither zoo-keepers of the wildlife and garden-tenders of the forest. My dream is also that the Forest Service work up this dream hand in hand with the American people, through the Art and Promise of Adaptive Governance, helping lead America toward sustainability and ecological resilience/restoration. I suspect the Forest Service harbors a similar dream, although I don’t believe that they share my path toward that dream.
Here is a condensed version of Skinner’s Impossible Dreams, Flathead Beacon, 4/11/2012:
Golly gee, yet another U.S. Forest Service project has been blocked in court, [by environmental extremists]. …
Yet again, I found myself “thanking” Congress for writing laws enabling a handful of misanthropic kooks to utterly waste the labors of hundreds of professional, professionally paid public employees. ..
Um, what’s it called when you do the same things over and over and expect different results? Crazy!
Utah’s government is trying something different. On March 23, Utah passed House Bill 148 into law, demanding the Feds transfer title to public lands … by the end of 2014. … Arizona … passed a nearly identical bill (SB 1332) through their Senate, but it died (for now) in Arizona’s House Rules committee. The bill sponsor … told the Arizona Republic he spearheaded the legislation because “in the last 30 years, the radical environmental policies of these federal agencies have ground [resource] industries to a halt ….”
Now, it’s constitutionally impossible to force such a transfer. But — what if a bunch of states followed Utah’s lead, and Congress went along?
In attacking [the] bill, Arizona Sierra Clubber Sandy Bahr rhetorically asked, “How in the world do they [states] think they could manage these federal public lands?”
Turns out the states (and tribes) already do a better job: Oregon State University forest engineering professor John Sessions has studied the comparative costs of forest management under various ownerships (federal, tribal, state, and private). Dr. Sessions found that, in post-spotted-owl Washington and Oregon, annual management budgets across ownerships were roughly comparable.
But when based on timber sold (which pays for management, imagine that), Indian forests harvested a thousand board feet for every $92 of budget. Private and state operators were in the $102-$107 range, with the Forest Service at a ridiculous $1,296. At the time (2001), wood stumpage in the region ran $150-$300 a thousand, putting USFS costs at four to eight times revenues — a loss carried by taxpayers. Other forests supported themselves.
Sessions’ pattern seems to hold for Montana, too. Both state and tribal forest management programs in Montana, operated under state or tribal laws and regulations, are fiscally self-supporting. More important, they are good, even excellent, forestry. …
If [the Flathead National Forest] could sell its plan maximum (50 million feet), meeting FNF expenses with revenues is an impossible dream — a dream doomed to remain impossible as long as these lands are “managed” by federal employees under federal law applied in federal courts.
So, while Greens like Ms. Bahr are doing everything possible to portray legislation such as Utah’s as impossible, even crazy – the current federal land management regime is no less crazy.
Congress should seriously consider allowing states (and tribes) so inclined to have a go at managing these lands — if they succeed, they keep the land. ….
For those not familiar with Skinner’s narrow, antiquated views and exhortations on this and other multiple use matters, neither with the legacy of plunder associated with both the Forest Service’s multiple use timber management of the 1960s and 1970s, I simply ask you to ponder a few good books, including Paul Hirt’s A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests since World War Two and Richard W. Behan’s Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands. David Clary’s Timber and the Forest Service is also useful to get a flavor of the religious zeal that drove Forest Service timber management back in the go-go years.
As to what Skinner calls “excellent forestry” on the state trust lands, all I can say is that ‘trusts’ are a good way to raise money from land. As to biodiversity conservation, ecosystems services for clean air and water, aesthetic considerations, wilderness, and other uses and values not amenable to commodification, I believe other avenues for forest management offer much better solutions to the res publica idea of national forests, parks, and monuments.
The jury is out as to what we want for our national forests in this emerging century. Somehow I don’t believe that “we,” the American people, really want to take the ‘forest land trust’ path, back toward those ‘thrilling days of yesteryear’. As for me, I’ll continue to support the Forest Service’s move toward Leopold’s philosophy/practice. And I’ll continue to champion public engagement in the process when done legally, and with and eye toward fairness.
Audubon: Implications of Pending Tongass National Forest Land Selections on Forest Diversity
Thank you to reader David Beebe for passing along this new report from Alaska Audubon titled, “High‐grading on the Tongass National Forest: Implications of Pending Land Selections on Forest Diversity.” The entire Audubon report is available here. I’ve pasted the report summary below, although that’s also available in PDF form here, with the citations included. – mk
UPDATED: Paul Olson from Sitka, Alaska (who has been a commercial fisherman in southeast Alaska since the 1970s and is the board president of a new regional organization called the Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community) provided some excellent context in the comments section that deserves to be highlighted here:
“This legislation is also relevant to the issues you discuss in the ‘collaboration’ blog since the current version of the bill is largely the result of negotiations between a subdivision of a Forest Service initiated ‘collaborative’ group, the Tongass Futures Roundtable. That secretive subdivision is known as the “Devil’s Club” and has been primarily responsible for persistent but to date unsuccessful efforts to rezone public lands on the Tongass National Forest for the primary benefit of private timberland owners. That collaborative group has all the characteristics of a typical collaborative stewardship group – it meets during the day when the working public cannot attend its deliberations; most of the NGO stakeholders had funding funneled to them as a result of high level Forest Service efforts; the participating environmental group representatives are for the most part inexperienced imports from distant lands or otherwise “soft” on certain types of resource development….”
Read Paul Olson’s entire comment here.
___________
Coastal temperate rainforests of the world occur in only ten areas, are extremely rare, and account for less than 3% of all forest cover on earth. Alaska’s Tongass National Forest contains a large portion of the world’s last remaining old‐growth rainforest. Regarded widely as the “crown jewel” of the national forest system, the Tongass is home to the bulk of America’s remaining old‐growth forest.
Over the last century, the Alaska timber industry has focused logging on the largest and most valuable old‐growth trees of the Tongass. This controversial practice is referred to as “high‐grading” and has already eliminated half or more of the very large‐tree stands on the Tongass. The very biggest trees, the ancient giants greater than 10 feet in diameter that can grow for many centuries, have largely been cut and eliminated from the forest.
Today, the remaining stands of very large‐tree old growth are extremely rare and account for only 0.5 percent (82,000 acres) of the 16.8 million‐acre Tongass. Known as volume class 7, these remnant stands are not only visually impressive but also provide important habitat for five species of Pacific salmon, Steelhead, brown bear, black bear, wolves, Sitka black‐tailed deer, river otter, marten, flying squirrel, Bald Eagle, Marbled Murrelet, Northern Goshawk and other wildlife.
Congress has long‐recognized the problem of high‐grading and took specific action to eliminate this practice of logging “a disproportionate amount of old growth timber” on the Tongass as part of the Tongass Timber Reform Act enacted in 1990. Some twenty years later, however, the Sealaska Corporation is seeking legislation (S 730/HR 1408) that threatens a return to high‐grading of the largest and most profitable trees. If enacted, the legislation would eliminate a substantial portion of the last remaining very large‐tree old growth forest on the Tongass.
S 730/HR 1408 would re‐open the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971 to give the Sealaska Corporation the unprecedented ability to select and obtain highly valuable public lands in the Tongass containing extremely disproportionate quantities of very large‐tree old‐growth timber. The legislation would permit a 12‐fold increase in the Sealaska Corporation’s logging of very large‐tree old growth. The legislation would also authorize Sealaska Corporation to obtain some the most popular public lands in the Tongass in hundreds of smaller parcels scattered throughout the forest that are currently open to the public for fishing, hunting, and recreation.
Signed into law in 1971, ANCSA is the largest land claims settlement in U.S. history, andwas enacted with strong bi‐partisan support to resolve all aboriginal land claims in Alaska. Under existing ANCSA law, Sealaska Corporation has already made its final land selections within the Tongass. S 730/HR 1408 would give Sealaska Corporation approximately 65,000 acres in new public lands for logging and development outside of areas where the corporation’s existing selections have been made.
To evaluate the impact S 730/HR 1408, Audubon Alaska mapped each of the proposed new timber selections using a US Forest Service forest cover database.
Key report findings include:
• Following decades of controversial logging involving “high grading” (i.e., logging that targets the largest and most valuable old‐growth trees) the remaining stands of very large‐tree old‐growth (class 7) are extremely rare. These stands account for only 0.5 percent or ~ 82,000 acres of the 16.8 million‐acre Tongass National Forest.
• S. 730/HR 1408 would enable Sealaska Corporation to clearcut vastly greater amounts of highly valuable very large‐tree old growth than under current law. Public lands that would be transferred to Sealaska Corporation contain up to 12 times more acres of very large‐tree old growth than occurs on the lands the corporation has already selected under current ANCSA law.
• The public lands that would be obtained by Sealaska Corporation include a significant portion of the last remaining very large‐tree old growth in the Tongass. These highest‐volume large‐tree stands account for only 1.6 percent of productive old growth on the Tongass as a whole but make up 24‐27 percent of the lands Sealaska Corporation seeks under S 730/HR1408.
• Under S 730/HR 1408 Sealaska Corporation could clearcut up to 17 percent of the last remaining very large‐tree old growth (class 7) on the Tongass.
• Public lands that Sealaska Corporation would obtain under S 730/HR 1408 are far more valuable than the corporation’s existing land selections and include approximately $50 million worth of taxpayer‐funded infrastructure and other investments (e.g., roads, trails, bridges, transfer sites, fish habitat restoration projects).
S 730/HR 1408 would result in the permanent loss of a substantial portion of the remaining very large‐tree old growth on the Tongass National Forest. This loss would be additive to the logging of any other large‐tree old growth resulting from U.S. Forest Service timber sales, with long‐term impacts on forest diversity and associated wildlife habitat.
Changes in Longitudes, Changes in Attitudes about Wood Products
Fight over forest use snares rural school funding
By Michael Doyle – Bee Washington Bureau
Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 | 07:50 PMhttp://www.fresnobee.com/2012/02/15/2723930/fight-over-forest-use-snares-rural.html
WASHINGTON — California’s rural schools are caught in a fight over funding and forests, and there’s no clear resolution in sight.
With millions of dollars and myriad trees at stake, a key House committee on Thursday will push a Republican-led plan that explicitly ties rural schools-and-roads funding to more active logging, grazing and mining on individual national forests.
The plan replaces an expired funding scheme that delivered $47.8 million to rural California counties — including Fresno, Madera and Tulare — in Fiscal 2010.
The bill set for approval by the GOP-controlled House Natural Resources Committee boosts logging and aids counties that are home to untaxed national forest land. This is huge in California, where 18 national forests span some 20 million acres.
The federal government once funded rural schools and roads based on timber harvest revenues, which collapsed partly because of new environmental restrictions. Starting in 2000, the Secure Rural Schools Act provided more secure funding.
John Wilborn, director of external business services with the Tulare County Office of Education, said the additional funding can be “significant” for some of his county’s smallest rural schools.
The Secure Rural Schools Act expired last year, following several extensions.
Emphasizing the commercial potential of public lands, Western Republicans want to connect new rural schools-and-roads funding with the individual forest’s average timber harvest revenues between 1980 and 2000, a period of particularly heavy logging.
In 1988, for instance, timber sales exceeded $218 million from California’s 18 national forests. Last year, timber sales from the same forests tumbled to only about $19 million.
There are 155 national forests in the U.S.
“Active management of our national forests is necessary to help rural communities create jobs and to fund roads, schools and emergency services,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chair of the House resources panel.
The House bill would set up a two-year transition period, giving counties a chance to opt out of the new funding stream and revert to the less-generous old system. The bill would also sidestep some environmental reviews and block lawsuits challenging some timber projects.
Skeptics counter that the specific revenue targets and bypassed environmental standards will damage national forests.
“Perhaps most troubling, this proposal creates a false expectation that we can return to the peak timber production levels of decades past,” Undersecretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman warned the House panel last year, adding that “the market conditions that supported those levels simply no longer exist.”
Instead, a number of congressional Democrats including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer want to renew for five years some version of the Secure Rural Schools Act, with guaranteed funding dropping by 5% each year.
I completely agree with Harris about the current conditions. But I can also see different ways of building up wood based businesses, plus I think a “locally grown” label for California forest products might be worth exploring. Californians are very sensitive about environmental issues, so I would think that appropriately grown local products, if labelled, might have a greater advantage if publicized in the marketplace.
This reminds me of discussions with my major professor at Berkeley, Dr. Bill Libby who was quoted saying
“We Californians are really not very good conservationists – we’re very good preservationists,” Bill Libby, a professor emeritus of forestry at the University of California, told me. “Conservation means you use resources well and responsibly. Preservation means you are rich enough to set aside the things you want and buy them from someone else.”
I couldn’t find any of his articles on the topic readily, but here is one on the same topic by Tom Knudson of the Sacramento Bee (at the time) a Starker Lecture at Oregon State from 2004 here.
Although Colorado doesn’t benefit from Rural Schools as much (or at all, haven’t looked up the figures), here is some thinking about generating new industry. Thanks to Bob Berwyn for this.
Summit County meeting to focus on regional financing program
By Summit Voice
SUMMIT COUNTY —Even as the pine beetle outbreak slows down in Colorado, state and regional officials are redoubling their efforts to find some use for the vast tracts of dead trees left behind and to jump-start businesses that could help build a sustainable forest product industry in the years to come.
A new fund set up by the Colorado State Forest Service and administered through the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments is offering loans to help businesses that harvest, remove, utilize or market timber from beetle-killed stands and other forested areas in northwest Colorado.
The Forest Business Loan Fund will provide community-based financial lending capital for timber and wood products businesses to expand their capacity to more economically remove and use timber, develop new market opportunities, and help address employment concerns in forest-based communities. This fund is currently limited to businesses in counties serviced by the Northwest Loan Fund.
The loan fund will be the featured topic of discussion at today’s (Feb. 14) Summit County Forest Health Task Force lunch at the Backcountry Brewery in Frisco (12 p.,. – 1:30 p.m.) with Kim Langmaid, of the National Forest Foundation and June Walters, of the Northwest Loan Fund.
Funds will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. There is no closing date to apply, but applications are encouraged to be submitted by April 30 for timely consideration.
At first glance, this topic also seems more partisanized than it does in Colorado. Maybe partisanization favors getting stuck in positions and not mutual finding a new way forward. That was the case when I worked as a staff person in the House of Representatives in the 90’s. I was the environmental and science and women’s issues staff for a Democratic Member, and the R’s wanted to update and improve (or mess with, depending on your perspective, ESA). We were told we didn’t want to enter discussions with them to find out what their issues were, because we wanted to characterize them as ESA-haters for future elections. Working with the other side only had downsides in that context.
Historic thinning plan could save Rim Country
Thanks to the SAF E-Forester for this one from the Payson Roundup:
Historic thinning plan could save Rim Country
Projects included in first phase of ambitious plan to revive timber industry and protect the forest
By Pete Aleshire
January 31, 2012
At least 2,000 acres in Rim Country will be included in the first, historic 10-year contract with a new generation of loggers to protect forested communities through massive thinning projects, a Forest Service team told top elected officials in Payson last week.
Loggers will thin two huge tracts of overgrown forest along the Control Road between Tonto Village and Whispering Pines as part of the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4-FRI), which ultimately hopes to thin 2.5 million acres in four national forests.
“This is the largest environmental impact statement ever done and the largest statewide contract in history,” said Dick Fleishman, assistant team leader in the sweeping attempt to restore the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest.
The Forest Service team made the presentation at the Payson Town Hall last Thursday before Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin, Payson Mayor Kenny Evans and other Rim Country leaders.
The rangers said they hope to settle on a contractor to thin the first 300,000 acres soon and complete a groundbreaking environmental impact study before the end of the year.
The Forest Service hopes the huge acreage and 10-year contract term will convince timber companies to invest heavily in new sawmills, wood-burning power plants and wood product factories to make things like pressed wood and particle board products. Such mills and power plants could turn a profit on the hundreds of millions of small trees that now pose an ecological drain on the forest and a fire danger to communities like Payson.
The Forest Service has spent millions hand-thinning and burning 80,000 acres of buffer zones around Rim
Country communities in the past five years. But this project would get timber companies to do the thinning at no cost to the taxpayers in return for the wood from the small trees. Tree densities in the past century have increased from perhaps 50 per acre to 600 to 1,500 per acre due to fire suppression and grazing, according to Northern Arizona University researchers.
Mayor Evans appealed to the Forest Service team to make sure 4-FRI quickly thins a 224,000-acre watershed that drains into the Blue Ridge Reservoir. Water in that deep narrow reservoir will double Payson’s long-term water supply as soon as the town completes a $30 million pipeline.
Forest Service Team Leader Henry Provencio said crews in that area have already thinned some 5,700 acres and partially cleared out another 30,000 acres with controlled burns.
Supervisor Martin said a single fire in the thick forest could cause erosion that could start to fill the Blue Ridge Reservoir with rock and soil.
“One fire later, we’ve got nothing but mud slides,” she said.
Provencio conceded that the bulk of the 300,000 acres included in the first set of contracts lie around Flagstaff in the Coconino and Kaibab forests, since the forests there had already been inventoried and pose the greatest danger to towns and subdivisions.
However, he said the Blue Ridge area could make it into a second set of contracts for 300,000 to 700,000 acres the Forest Service hopes to have ready to bid in another year or two.
“We have a two-year plan. There can obviously still be fires in there. I guess we keep our fingers crossed in the interim,” said Provencio. “But it’s a priority area.”
The two Rim Country areas most likely to make it into the first round of contracts would help protect Christopher Creek, Tonto Village and Whispering Pines, currently the most fire-menaced communities in Rim Country.
The Payson Ranger District has thinned thousands of acres to create buffer zones around all the other major Rim Country communities, including Payson Pine, Strawberry and Star Valley. That includes some $1.3 million spent this year to re-thin about 8,000 acres as well as about 800 acres of new thinning and burning.
“We’re 95 percent done with our most critical areas,” said Payson Ranger District Fire Management Officer Don Nunley.
In the past decade, the Payson Ranger District has hand-thinned 29,000 acres and used controlled burns to clear another 53,000 acres. Various communities have contributed perhaps $700,000 to help push that effort, but most of the money has come from the Forest Service.
The 4-FRI team said the first contracts went to the Flagstaff area partly because of the access to existing mills and wood product operations. In addition, Flagstaff faces an enormous fire danger, as illustrated in 2010 by the 15,000-acre Schultz Fire, which spurred evacuations, consumed homes and then caused devastating mud slides.
“They did the easy areas first — we’re one of the hard areas,” said Supervisor Martin, who has spent years working with loggers, environmentalists, researchers and forest managers to help develop the 4-FRI approach.
The plan depends on convincing timber companies to invest in mills that can use the small-diameter trees and brush.
The 4-FRI team hopes it can structure the contracts so the timber companies can use the profits they make in areas with lots of mid-sized trees to help subsidize areas with a greater mix of brush and small trees, like Rim Country.
Both Martin and Evans urged the 4-FRI team to get the law changed to allow 20- and 30-year contracts, rather than the present, 10-year maximum.
Evans said the 10-year contract term has scared away many timber companies.
“We’ve had multiple contacts with people that want to come in, but we say ‘10-year contract’ and they don’t return our calls. You have to find a way around that 10-year limit if you’re going to convince companies to invest in mills,” said Evans.
Provencio noted that the Forest Service hopes that the Congress will allow longer terms on the contracts when it reauthorizes the key law in 2013.
The group also discussed one of the most contentious aspects of the forest restoration approach — a proposed limit on the size of the trees cut.
The coalition that developed the 4-FRI approach agreed that the thinning should focus on trees less than 16 inches in diameter, a key point in winning over environmental groups that had lobbied for years to restore old-growth forests dominated by big trees.
Such big trees can withstand frequent, low-intensity ground fires natural to ponderosa pine forests, but not when thickets of small trees carry the fire up into their lower branches.
The legal deadlock that stalled many timber sales often focused on the struggle to save those big trees.
However, Provencio said research convinced the team to design timber cuts to create a diverse, open forest with open areas and clusters of trees. In many areas, that may require removing trees larger than 16 inches.
Each site will differ depending on soils, rainfall and other factors. The open space built into the timber sale will likely range from 10 percent to 50 percent.
“It’s not ‘one size fits all.’ In the last 100 years, a lot of trees have grown into those open areas,” said Provencio. Instead, a healthy forest requires clusters of trees separated by open areas.
Martin said the agreement to leave most of the 16-inch trees was crucial to creating the consensus between the loggers and the environmentalists.
“Many of us don’t believe in a 16-inch diameter cap. But if we don’t have the cap, then the industry will just go after the big trees. But we can live to fight another day if we can get all the stuff below 16 inches out of there.”
That process will build trust between all of the parties involved, who all ultimately want a healthy forest. “Trust is something you behave yourself into,” said Martin.
More on CFLRP and Restoration
As Marek Smith says in this comment , linked to this document
titled “Increasing the pace of restoration and job creation on our national forests.”
there is much going on right now. I won’t be able to catch up until the weekend. But here’s a piece from Rob Chaney of the Missoulian:
U.S. Forest Service plans to boost timber production, forest health work
ttp://missoulian.com/news/local/u-s-forest-service-plans-to-boost-timber-production-forest/article_710829e8-4e16-11e1-aff9-001871e3ce6c.html
The U.S. Forest Service wants to speed up work on national forests, for both timber production and forest health.
“Collaboration is most effective in getting forests managed in a proper way,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a conference call on Thursday. “We want to move beyond the conflicts in the past that slowed progress down. We’re going to look to encourage environmentalists, folks in the forest industry, people who live in forest communities and other stakeholders to work for healthy forests.”
Vilsack pledged the Forest Service would boost its lumber production from 2.4 billion board feet in 2011 to 3 billion board feet by 2014. That would come through a 20 percent increase in forest acres treated over the next three years.
Those treatments also include fuels reduction, reforestation, stream restoration, road decommissioning, culvert work and prescribed fire, as well as timber harvesting.
Much of it will be paid for with $40 million in new congressional funding for local forest projects this year. That’s up from $25 million last year, the first time Congress authorized money for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.
Montana’s Southwest Crown of the Continent forest project was one of the first 10 selected for the program, receiving $4 million in 2011. It should receive that amount again in 2012, according to Forest Service director of forest management Cal Joyner.
“By increasing the scale of areas we look at, we’re planning and considering larger parts of the landscape,” Joyner said. “That leads to a greater pace of activity.”
Idaho had one project approved last year in the Selway-Middle Fork Clearwater region. This year, the state has two more: the Weiser-Little Salmon Headwaters Project for $2.4 million and the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative for $324,000.
The board feet expansion could have a significant effect in the Forest Service’s Region 1, which includes Montana, according to Montana Wood Products Association director Julia Altemus.
“That would be about 360 million board feet coming off Region 1,” Altemus said. “That’s a lot. The target is usually 270 million to 300 million, so they’re looking at doubling that. I’m not sure they’re going to have the personnel capacity (in the Forest Service) to do that.”
The acceleration should not cause problems with local state initiatives like Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s proposed Forest Jobs and Restoration Act or a similar measure proposed in Oregon, Vilsack said. Those measures would also require the Forest Service to increase the pace of forest work, such as Tester’s mandate for treating at least 10,000 acres of Montana national forests a year.
“I don’t see we’re going to be working in conflict,” Vilsack said. “We’re going to be working cooperatively and collaboratively to make sure that we get the best use of the forest opportunities we have.”
The Forest Service work would also include bark beetle treatment, projects to improve watershed health and wildlife habitat, improving markets for wood products like biomass-based fuels and efforts to boost recreation opportunities, Vilsack said.
Obama admin vows to speed restorations, increase timber harvests E&E News
Obama admin vows to speed restorations, increase timber harvests
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
The Obama administration announced plans to accelerate today the restoration of 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, a proposal expected to significantly increase timber harvests.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also announced more than a dozen new collaborative restoration projects made possible in large part by a boost in 2012 funding.
The projects, which are outlined in a new report, will include forest thinning, invasive species removal and road decommissionings. They are designed to combat threats like wildfires, bark beetle infestations and climate change.
They are also designed to bolster logging jobs by increasing timber harvests 25 percent by 2014.
“These efforts will increase our ability to fight fires effectively,” Vilsack said in a conference call this afternoon with reporters. “This is about jobs. It’s about proper restoration. It’s about safer communities.”
Most of the new projects will be funded under the collaborative forest landscape restoration program, an initiative established in 2009 by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) as part of an omnibus public lands bill.
The program received its maximum allowed $40 million this year, up from $25 million in 2011.
Vilsack said the Forest Service will be funding 13 new restoration projects, on top of the 10 projects that were approved for funding in 2010.
Activities will include thinning for wildfire reduction, stream restorations, road decommissioning and replacing culverts for fish passage as well as prescribed fire, said Mary Wagner, associate chief of the Forest Service. The agency expects to increase the acres it mechanically treats by 20 percent over the next two years.
“That’s well supported by the collaborative, science-based approaches the … projects are using,” she said.
The collaborative program has garnered support from environmentalists, timber groups and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Bingaman and Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo (R) last fall successfully urged colleagues to boost CFLR funding from $30 million to $40 million (E&E Daily, Nov. 10, 2011).
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, last summer credited the program’s Four Forest Restoration Initiative in Arizona — a $3.5 million project that will treat up to 50,000 acres per year of southwestern ponderosa pine — for reducing the severity of wildfires in his state. The Center for Biological Diversity, a frequent litigant against forest projects, has also endorsed the initiative.
The new projects to receive CFLR funding are:
•Burney-Hat Creek Basins Project in California, $605,000.
•Pine-Oak Woodlands Restoration Project in Missouri, $617,000.
•Shortleaf-Bluestem Community Project in Arkansas and Oklahoma, $342,000.
•Weiser-Little Salmon Headwaters Project in Idaho, $2,450,000.
•Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative in Idaho, $324,000.
•Southern Blues Restoration Coalition in Oregon, $2.5 million.
•Lakeview Stewardship Project in Oregon, $3.5 million.
•Zuni Mountain Project in New Mexico, $400,000.
•Grandfather Restoration Project in North Carolina, $605,000.
•Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group Cornerstone Project in California, $730,000.
In addition, the following three projects were approved to receive Forest Service funding in 2012:•Northeast Washington Forest Vision 2020 in Washington, $968,000.
•Ozark Highlands Ecosystem Restoration in Arkansas, $959,000.
•Longleaf Pine Ecosystem Restoration and Hazardous Fuels Reduction, De Soto National Forest, national forests in Mississippi, $2.7 million.
Working Towards Common Ground in Idaho
x-foes aim for common ground on Idaho forests
Environmentalists, timber executives, scientists and others converge on Boise to begin the hard part of their forest collaboration work.
BY ROCKY BARKER – [email protected]
Copyright: © 2012 Idaho Statesman
Published: 01/31/12
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/01/31/1974737/ex-foes-aim-for-common-groundon.html
The easy work for former adversaries in the Idaho timber wars was to start talking and develop trust.
Now those environmentalists, foresters and loggers are testing the strong relationships they’ve forged in collaborative efforts state-wide. The Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership is tackling the hard issues about how much timber can be cut and thinned to restore healthy forests, and how that will be paid for.
“So much of it comes down to what we are leaving behind,” said Jonathan Oppenheimer, senior associate for the Idaho Conservation League. “More and more, we’re having these discussions.”
The collaborators are in Boise this week for two days of conferences aimed at finding common ground on thinning or cutting the forests of North Idaho.
There is consensus among environmentalists and industry foresters that thinning the ponderosa pine-dominated forests makes them healthier, more resilient and more resistant to large-scale fires. Ponderosa pines make up most of the forests around Boise.
There is less agreement about the stands of trees that grow in the wetter, higher elevations — “mixed severity forests” — that make up most of North Idaho.
But forest science is beginning to suggest that these large areas of mixed-severity forests can, and perhaps should, be cut.
HUMANS IN THE FORESTS
Collaborators are forging new paths in places like the Clearwater-Nez Perce National Forest of Central Idaho. There, 3 million acres of national forest is in wilderness and roadless areas, essentially off-limits to logging. It’s the other 1 million acres for which the two sides are seeking to develop a restoration schedule — with the goal of finding an approach that improves fish and wildlife habitat, allows the right kind of fires and allows a steady, predictable pipeline of forest products.
In most western forests, fire is the main ecologic disturbance. That’s true for North Idaho’s roadless and wilderness areas.
But outside those areas, humans — through logging, thinning and even prescribed burning — are the primary actor on the forest’s ecology.
“Man is the disturbance agent here,” said Bill Higgins, the resource manager of the Idaho Forest Group in Grangeville, one of the larger timber companies in the state. “If you buy that, then you are a long way down the road.”
The idea is that through careful combinations of thinning, prescribed burning and logging — with stream buffers to protect endangered salmon and bull trout — loggers can mimic the effect of fire at keeping the forests healthy and not dangerously overgrown.
As part of this holistic approach, old eroding roads would be obliterated, stands of old-growth trees protected and wildlife habitat enhanced.
Higgins has two goals. One is to make the projects — which the Forest Service calls “stewardship contracts” — big enough to keep workers on the job for a couple of years and provide a dependable supply of logs for mill owners.
The other is a larger goal: Through the kind of landscape management that environmentalists have pushed for two decades, Higgins hopes to persuade the Forest Service to increase the planned harvests in its forest plans to provide a solid foundation for the industry so that he and other companies can market the byproducts of restoration.
PAYING FOR RESTORATION
It all comes down to financing, said David New, a former vice president for timber land for Boise Cascade, who is now a consultant.
For a company to attract the capital necessary, the supply of timber products has to be assured for at least seven years, which is the pay-back period on the loan.
“Ask a bank to finance just a third of it, and if you’ve only secured fiber for one or two years, they’re going to show you the door,” he said.
This is where it gets tough for environmentalists. Their supporters don’t want to return to the time when pressure to assure a certain amount of timber — “get out the cut” — took precedence over protecting water quality and wildlife.
Oppenheimer and representatives of national environmental groups, like John McCarthy of the Wilderness Society’s Idaho office, have to bring their own constituencies along as they face these questions.
“There is a lot of forested ground where we can find agreement,” Oppenheimer said. “It’s not an all-or-nothing approach.
“But it takes time to build that trust to have more aggressive logging in some of these forests.”
PRESERVING A HEALTHY FOREST INDUSTRY
Last week, the Forest Service released a new set of forest planning rules designed to encourage restoration and collaboration, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. The agency hopes to reduce the amount of litigation and the time and cost of planning.
Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said in an interview that the agency wants to support industry growth so it can strengthen communities and carry out its agenda.
“Without that industry,” said Tidwell, “there is no way we are going to be able to do the work we need to restore our forests.”
Note from Sharon: This is put on by the Idaho Environmental Forum, a group with a mission not unlike this blog.
The Idaho Environmental Forum is an informal, nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational association whose sole mission is to promote serious, cordial, and productive discourse on a broad range of environmental policies affecting Idaho. We take no positions, advocate no causes, and endorse no candidates. Our goal is simply to provide a forum for dialog from a range of perspectives.
I wonder if other states have groups like this? It will be interesting to see what comes from this meeting.
Restoration Economy – Two Views or One?
The above photo is from an article sent in by Bob Berwyn here.
Note: I reposted this from Sunday, as it seems like the question “”what does it take to have reached the “restoration economy” and have we reached it?” is fundamental. Because if it happened that there was agreement on a vision of sustainable levels of harvesting to local mills (as in the Jake Kreilick piece below), there may be some places that have “too many/too large (??)” (still not clear on Montana) but we would have other areas (the Southwest, Colorado) that don’t have “enough” capacity to be at that level.
Here is an op-ed from the Missoulian. So not being a Montanan, it would be helpful if Montanans could explain why these two views sound so similar in philosophy, yet there appears to be discord.
From where I sit: People agree that:
There are too many roads
There is a need to restore riparian
But where they diverge is the below concept:
Given that Congress gives Montana $x for federal forest restoration that provide y units of restoration.
You could have y + z restoration done, and have local jobs and the associated economic benefits if some trees went to mills.
If trees don’t go to mills people will still buy and use wood, but the economic benefits will accrue to our neighbors in Canada (for the most part).
Restoration economy has USFS at crossroads
guest column by JULIA ALTEMUS |
At the same time the timber industry was collapsing in the 1990s, natural resource managers, policy makers and communities were starting to realize the social, ecological and economic sustainability of the West was increasingly threatened by declining forest health and closure of the local sawmill.
Stand-replacing wildfires of the 1990s, 2000, and 2002 were the wake-up call, promulgating a series of policy initiatives focused on the restoration of forests and the reduction of hazardous fuels. Prior to 1998, hazardous fuels reduction was not even a line item in the federal budget. Funds had never been requested. From 1998 through 2000, Congress appropriated $93 million a year for hazardous fuels reduction, which escalated to $1 billion in 2001 and $3 billion by 2005. With a 100-million-acre crisis at hand and support from Congress, timber no longer needed to pay its way out of the forest. Federal agencies changed their management focus from merchantable, large-diameter sawlog removals, to small-diameter, sub-merchantable materials.
As a response, place-based initiatives emerged uniting conservationists, labor management, local stakeholder interests and policy makers. All centered on a restoration framework and an emerging local “green” restoration economy, operating within a “zone of agreement” around social, ecological and certain economic values.
By-products of community protection and forest restoration are primarily small diameter trees and woody biomass. Existing and new cottage industries were encouraged to develop and provide for utilization of these sub-merchantable materials. The West was particularly ripe for this conversion due to a growing commitment to restore federal forests.
However, one of the greatest challenges to building a forest restoration economy was finding ways to fund restoration activities when traditional sawlog values were no longer primarily relied upon to offset costs. As a response, congress passed the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2009, authorizing up to $40 million per year to be spent out of the existing Forest Service’s budget to subsidize restoration work across the country.
The October/November 2011 Journal of Forestry published an article by U.S. Forest Service Chief, Tom Tidwell, who is quoted as saying, “The time is right for a restoration economy. The Forest Service is tailoring its programs and projects to a new management environment.” This was news to many in the forest products community. Up until then, restoration activities were a tool in the federal forest management toolbox. It appeared that restoration was no longer simply a tool, but was being used to create a “new management environment.” For those that rely upon sawlog volume to keep mills running, this is a problem.
The proposed “new” forest restoration economy focuses less on ecosystem components and outputs and more on ecosystem functions, ecological processes and outcomes. When economics plays a less important role – in any economy – political and economic regimes emerge within smaller social groups and social networks. Because these political economic regimes influence and are influenced by the organization of both social and political economic capital, it lacks a standard economic value.
With the current national deficit, pumping millions of dollars into federally subsidized forest restoration activities is unlikely unless there is political will to do so. A simple solution is to broaden the scope of projects, allowing the value of the sawlogs to pay for the restoration activities. Harvesting sawlogs within the context of restoration has been controversial and unpopular with most conservation groups.
With a recent move to reduce the federal budget, as much as one third of the Forest Service’s workforce could retire, not in five years or even within the next year, but in the next two months! With the loss of so many seasoned professionals, the Forest Service will likely rely upon social groups and social networks to accomplish their mission. The Forest Service is at a crossroads; whether the new forest restoration economy is the next evolutionary step in a 100-year-old agency or forces the devolution of management to social groups, states and/or counties is uncertain.
Management of our federal forests resources, in a combination that contributes to the three interrelated and interdependent elements of sustainability – social, ecological and economic – is important and keeps us from repeating mistakes of the past. However, economics in the larger context must be equal with other social values.
Julia Altemus is executive vice-president of the Montana Wood Products Association.
Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/restoration-economy-has-usfs-at-crossroads/article_093bca28-3dfd-11e1-b200-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=story#ixzz1jYzaEGDT
And Matthew Koehler’s comment:
The following piece was written in 2005, and helps to illustrate just how forward-thinking some in the forest activist community have been regarding restoration of our public lands.
Forest Service should embrace century of restoration
By Jake Kreilick
National Forest Protection AllianceEven since I started planting trees on the Kootenai National Forest, I’ve had a keen interest in forest restoration. From 1988-92, I planted thousands of trees across dozens of clearcuts. The days were long and the work was exhausting but I valued the experience gained, not to mention the money earned. In the end, these experiences would shape my career path and influence my view of restoration.
When I started planting trees, I believed I was aiding forest recovery. However, within a few seasons I felt like an unwilling accomplice to the wholesale liquidation of massive, ancient forests and colossal roadbuilding projects that were so en vogue under the forest policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.
Essentially, we were replacing the rich biological diversity of this mixed conifer, cool temperate forest with an even-aged tree farm composed of the most commercially valuable species. What’s worse, we were making the forest more vulnerable to natural disturbances like insect infestations and fires.
This revelation forced me to conclude that tree planting on national forests was not being done for restoration purposes nor to improve forest health, but rather to perpetuate an ecologically destructive, money-losing federal logging program. Granted, this program allowed mills like Owens & Hurst in Eureka, who recently announced they are closing, to flourish for nearly 25 years before a combination of market forces, corporate greed and environmental concerns changed the timber industry landscape in our region.
My tree planting years fostered a deeper understanding about the many impacts logging has had on our national forests. Despite the fact that the overall cut on national forests has declined from a high of 12.6 billion board feet in 1989 to around 2 billion board feet, the logging legacy lives on in many forms.
Consider the following:
– There are 445,000 miles of roads on national forests – enough to circle the Earth 18 times – and the Forest Service faces a $10 billion road maintenance backlog.
– An estimated 50 percent of riparian areas on national forests require restoration due to impacts from logging, roadbuilding, grazing, mining and off-road vehicles.
– Less than 5 percent of America’s ancient, old-growth forests remain.
– 421 wildlife species that call national forests home are in need of protective measures provided by the Endangered Species Act.
Clearly, America’s national forests, rivers and wildlife deserve better and would benefit greatly from an ecologically-based restoration program, to say nothing of the tremendous social and economic benefits restoration activities would bring to our local workforce.
Since 2005 marks the Forest Service’s centennial, we believe there is a golden opportunity to make the focus of the next 100 years of Forest Service management the “Restoration Century.”
To this end, the National Forest Protection Alliance and our member groups have been involved with a three-year bridge-building effort between community forestry advocates and restoration workers. The goal has focused on developing agreement on an ecologically based framework for restoring our nation’s forests that’s not only good for the land, but also good for communities and workers. While it has not always been an easy process, it has resulted in us finding a surprising amount of common ground.
One of the results of this process has been the development of a set of Restoration Principles (www.asje.org/resprinc.pdf) as a national policy statement to guide sound ecological restoration. The Principles are an essential tool for stakeholders and decision-makers at all levels to develop, evaluate, critique, improve, support or reject proposed restoration projects.
Here in western Montana, NFPA, Native Forest Network, Wildlands CPR and other environmental groups have used the Restoration Principles to work in a more collaborative fashion with the Lolo National Forest. Following a series of field trips and meetings, we believe the Lolo staff is gaining a better understanding of our restoration approach and they are exploring some of our restoration ideas and proposals.
For example, we have taken numerous trips with the Forest Service, restoration workers and a Pyramid Mountain Lumber representative to the proposed Monture Creek Fuels Reduction project north of Ovando. While we remain concerned that this project removes too many trees and that mechanical harvesters will damage sensitive soils, the district ranger has agreed to let us put the Restoration Principles to work on a portion of this project.
This spring, together with Wildland Conservation Services – a local restoration company that has received a service contract from the Forest Service – we will demonstrate the viability of forest restoration approaches that will enhance ecological integrity, protect soils and reduce fuels while putting money in the pockets of some local workers.
Another exciting restoration opportunity looming on the horizon is a water quality restoration plan for Upper Lolo Creek. While the Forest Service’s assessment for Upper Lolo Creek is nearly complete they lack funding to complete the needed road and watershed restoration work to improve water quality and fish habitat. We feel this is a perfect opportunity to collaborate locally with the recently formed Lolo Watershed Group, community leaders and restoration workers to ask Montana’s congressional delegation to find money for this project.
We know that moving forward with a comprehensive restoration program for America’s national forests is going to take time and it isn’t always going to be easy. However, the National Forest Protection Alliance and our 130 member groups across the country are committed to making the “Restoration Century” a reality.