timber

Sunday Op-ed and Editorial Roundup from the Interior West

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In today’s Sunday papers, The Denver Post and the Missoulian had three op-eds and an editorial of relevance to our usual topics. Ski Area Water Rights, 21st century conservation, private lands conservation and Tester’s bill. I lumped them together below and one separate in a separate post (restoration op-ed in the Missoulian), just to reduce my work here. Please feel free to comment on any or all of them.

One thing I thought was interesting was that in the Jon Christenson piece (third below), conservation easements protect the land from development by allowing the lands to be working for grazing, agriculture or timber. On federal lands, though, we were discussing if roadless is not adequately “protected” and only wilderness is really “protected” (albeit not from air pollution or climate change).

The recession presented land trusts with some great opportunities in recent years, as development stalled, and prime lands were available at distress-sale prices. But most of the growth has come through conservation easements, which are becoming ever more popular because they allow land trusts to protect land at an even lower price. “You pay 40 to 50 percent of the fee value of the land without any management costs,” explains Nita Vail, executive director of the rancher-led California Rangeland Trust. That’s because the landowners continue to own and manage their lands for grazing, agriculture, or timber.

These “working landscapes” — ranches, farms and timberlands — are now a priority for the majority of land trusts nationwide, according to the Land Trust Alliance survey.

Editorial- Denver Post #1

Editorial: The right to enjoy the land vs. ski resorts’ water rights
As water becomes increasingly scarce, it is important to bring clarity to the issue of who controls this resource at ski areas.
Posted: 01/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By The Denver Post

The intensifying battle between the ski industry and the U.S. Forest Service over water rights is far more complicated and nuanced than it might seem at first glance.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the matter has landed in federal court so a judge can parse through the issues and apply the law fairly.

At the end of the day, we hope the rights of citizens to enjoy recreational opportunities on federal land are appropriately balanced against the financial interests of ski resorts.

We’ve heard a lot about ski industry contentions that new rules by the government amount to a “taking” of water rights they spent millions to acquire. The industry makes a compelling case.

Yet it’s important to keep in mind the government’s argument. The Forest Service says it is proposing regulations that clarify a 2004 change to ski permit conditions made during the Bush administration.

The government’s position is that water rights associated with ski areas should remain with the government even if the ownership of a resort or its business plans change.

An important point of disagreement between the ski areas and the government is this: Federal authorities contend the water rights at issue involve water that originates on federal land and didn’t have to be bought by the resorts. This rule doesn’t, they say, have anything to do with private rights bought by resorts.

That is to say, water from federal land that is permitted for use in snowmaking ought to remain with the property even if a ski resort were to be sold.

The National Ski Areas Association sees the water rights issue in a different light — one they construe as an effort to confiscate private property.

In a lawsuit filed last week in federal court, the industry group says the government is seeking control over water rights that ski areas obtain “from private lands or lands miles away from the ski area.”

These are vastly different interpretations of the proposed permit language that need to be resolved.

The federal courts are well-equipped to pull apart the complexities of water law and rule-making procedure. However, a better outcome would be a settlement.

We hope the parties can agree on a resolution of their differences over ski permit language without a protracted and costly legal battle.

Homes and businesses have sprouted up around ski runs built on federal land and people have come to expect access to these areas for alpine recreation. Those towns could be decimated by a decision that could allow water to be siphoned off for other uses.

As water becomes increasingly scarce, it is important to bring clarity to the issue of who controls this valuable resource at ski areas.

It would be a travesty if the future of the recreation that has so come to define Colorado were undercut by an unjust policy.

In my opinion, this lays out some of the basic principles and echoes my frequently stated “is litigation the best path?” question.

These two are about 21st century conservation (creativity needed!) on public and private lands:
Op-ed Denver Post #2

Guest Commentary: Conservation for today, and tomorrow
Posted: 01/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By Tim Sullivan

The start of a new year is a natural time to turn our thoughts to the future. However, for the conservation organizations, local governments and state agencies protecting Colorado’s most special natural resources, thinking about tomorrow is already ingrained in everything we do. Every project we undertake must not only have a tangible result today, but provide benefits to Coloradans far into the future.

This past year, we continued to find a balance between meeting people’s immediate needs and ensuring nature continues to benefit us all in the long run. The state of the economy, increasing population, demands for water and energy, and a changing climate will be among the many complicated factors we need to consider as we look ahead. To solve these issues, innovation will be crucial.

One example of conservation work paying benefits long into the future is the restoration of unhealthy forests. There is no short-term fix, but it’s a problem we must address or future generations will face more severe fires, insect and disease outbreaks, and threats to our homes and water supplies that we simply cannot afford. This summer will mark a decade since the massive Hayman Fire. When it comes to preventing the next mega-fire, an ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure. Colorado hosts a number of promising collaborative efforts between citizens, conservation groups, local governments and the U.S. Forest Service. These efforts help set priorities and resolve potential conflicts, allowing critical forest restoration work to proceed today, with benefits to be realized for years to come.

While Colorado is best known for our forests and mountains, the grasslands covering the eastern part of the state are a remarkable piece of our heritage. This rolling prairie landscape is home to many longtime ranching families, provides food for our urban populations, and sustains globally significant wildlife.

A mix of economic realities can make it difficult for land to be shared or handed down to sons and daughters who want to carry on the tradition. This year, a remarkable partnership helped address this issue while permanently protecting vital grassland habitat.

When a large ranch east of Colorado Springs went on the market, several families holding adjacent property expressed interest. However, the cost made it impossible for just one family to purchase. Using conservation easements and monies from the lottery-funded Great Outdoors Colorado, an innovative financial model was born where the land was purchased and split between four families. The result was a win-win for wildlife and the local ranching community.

While it may seem natural for ranchers to pass on their conservation ethic to the next generation, children living in urban areas often have limited opportunities to connect to the natural world. Creating connections between youth, wherever they live, and the natural world is essential to the future of our state.

Environmental education, volunteer opportunities and youth internships with conservation organizations will serve as the catalyst to engage a future cadre of environmental leaders.

We still face many challenges to ensure our children, and theirs after them, will experience the same wonders we enjoy — the iconic places, amazing wildlife and abundant resources of Colorado. I believe we are up to the challenge and together can create a future where the lands and waters on which all life depends are protected.

Tim Sullivan is state director of The Nature Conservancy in Colorado.

This one’s also from High Country News
Op-ed Denver Post #3

opinion
Recession is aiding the conservation of Western lands
Posted: 01/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By Jon Christensen
High Country News

The Great Recession, it turns out, may have been good for one thing in the West: private land conservation. From the tiny Orient Land Trust in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which has nearly doubled its holdings to 2,260 acres, to the 138,041 acres of ranchland protected by the California Rangeland Trust over the last five years, statewide and local land trusts in the West have done better than ever recently, even as many environmental advocacy groups continue to trim budgets and federal funding for conservation falters.

The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, which agencies rely on to acquire valuable private lands, suffered a 38 percent cut and protected just over 500,000 acres over the last five years. During the same period, private nonprofit land trusts protected 20 times as much undeveloped land — 10 million acres nationwide, according to data in a new census of 1,700 land trusts in the national Land Trust Alliance.

Land trusts also grew in other ways, including a 19 percent increase in paid employees and contractors, a 36 percent increase in operating budgets, a 70 percent increase in volunteer numbers, and a near tripling of long-term endowments.

Land trusts protect land by either buying it outright or paying for a conservation easement, which restricts or removes the landowner’s right to develop open land. Landowners can also donate property and easements and then receive a break on their income taxes from the federal government and some state governments. The latest gains bring the total area protected by the nation’s land trusts to 47 million acres — more than twice the area covered by all of the national parks in the lower 48 states.

In fact, private land conservation is now shaping the future of much of the West as decisively as development. Land that is protected by conservation easements or bought by land trusts is legally required to be protected in perpetuity. And in recent years, local land trusts have been “saving more land than is lost to development,” says Rand Wentworth, president of the Washington, D.C.- based Land Trust Alliance. That pattern was apparent in the alliance’s last census five years ago, when new conservation barely edged out new development nationwide and in the West. It became much more dramatic during the recession, as new housing construction crashed and conservation efforts in most states continued to grow.

This trend is particularly strong in the Western states, where statewide and local land trusts conserved 2.6 million acres between 2005 and 2010, 30 percent more than they did from 2000 to 2005. These trends put California, Colorado and Montana among the top five states nationwide in total private land conserved. Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming made large gains compared to the previous period. And in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, so much more rural land is now being conserved than is being developed that it seems that much of their open land will likely remain undeveloped.

The recession presented land trusts with some great opportunities in recent years, as development stalled, and prime lands were available at distress-sale prices. But most of the growth has come through conservation easements, which are becoming ever more popular because they allow land trusts to protect land at an even lower price. “You pay 40 to 50 percent of the fee value of the land without any management costs,” explains Nita Vail, executive director of the rancher-led California Rangeland Trust. That’s because the landowners continue to own and manage their lands for grazing, agriculture, or timber.

These “working landscapes” — ranches, farms and timberlands — are now a priority for the majority of land trusts nationwide, according to the Land Trust Alliance survey.

Whether the blazing growth of private conservation in the West will continue unabated is unclear, though. The recession may yet have lagging effects. Like her colleagues around the country, Vail worries about the loss of generous tax incentives for conservation easement donations, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts to renew them.

Jon Christensen is executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University and wrote this for High Country News (hcn.org, where a longer version can be found). Also contributing were Jenny Rempel and Judee Burr, researchers at the center.

Finally this editorial from the Missoulian on the Tester bill.

Editorial Missoulian #4

Middle ground on forest bill

Posted: Sunday, January 15, 2012 8:00 am

It’s the beginning of a big election year, and the national spotlight is already shining on one of Montana’s U.S. Senate seats. Will Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester be ousted by Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg? We’ll find out in November.

In the meantime, many Montanans are justifiably concerned that the next 10 months will be hopelessly politicized, with two of the state’s three congressional delegates tied up in campaign-caused gridlock.

In meetings with the Missoulian editorial board earlier this month, both Rehberg and Tester provided assurances that they will not allow that to happen. Both candidates pledged to remain focused on their jobs in Congress. And both declared that no amount of campaign politics would prevent them from working together to do what’s right for Montana.

In fact, during his meeting with the Missoulian, Rehberg mapped out a road to compromise with Tester on one of their biggest sticking points: the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

Tester first introduced the act in July 2009 at the urging of a diverse coalition of timber interests and environmental groups, and has made several running attempts to push the bill forward in Congress. The bill, which links aspects of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, the Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project and the Three Rivers Challenge, is aimed at both designating new wilderness in Montana and setting logging mandates for the U.S. Forest Service.

Both Tester, a first-term senator, and Rehberg, a four-term congressman, have held multiple public meetings in communities across Montana to gather opinions on the proposal.

Those meetings resulted in several ideas that could be – and should be – used to improve the bill, Rehberg explained. One of them, he said, is the phase-in proposal he first began advocating for nearly a year ago. That measure would require that a treatment threshold for a set number of forest acres – say, 10 percent of the total outlined in the bill – be achieved before new wilderness and recreation areas could be designated.

Requiring logging or thinning triggers to be met before releasing new wilderness would help ensure that the bill actually does what it is aimed at doing – creating jobs, Rehberg said. As it stands, “there’s no such thing as a mandate for jobs in that bill,” he told the Missoulian.

While Tester has not been receptive to the phase-in suggestion – his spokesman has said previously that it would have no chance of gaining congressional approval – Rehberg invited Tester to take a second look at including the phase-in, and offered that he could “work with (Tester’s) bill if he can get something through the Senate and I can have this phase-in.”

Jobs are certainly a top priority in the nation and in Montana right now. Western Montana’s economy could use the boost this act would provide. While eastern Montana has been buoyed by the ongoing oil boom, western Montana has watched one mill after another shutter – including two in Missoula that once employed hundreds of workers.

We hold no illusions that incorporating a phase-in plan will resolve every one of Rehberg’s concerns with the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. But it’s a place to start – a hand reached across the aisle at a time when Montanans desperately need our elected officials to pass legislation that provides real economic progress.

From the beginning, the proposals that ultimately became the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act were marked by compromise. They brought people with very different and often opposing interests to the same table to reach an agreement on what’s best for all.

It would be wonderful, and a wonderful reflection on Montana, if our junior senator and sole congressman were able to bring this same spirit of cooperation to Congress.

EDITORIAL BOARD: Publisher Jim McGowan, Editor Sherry Devlin, Opinion Editor Tyler Christensen

Bitterroot National Forest timber sales attract bids on second go-round

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Photo of Lake Como recreation site from FS Northern Region

Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this submission. I found the photo on the Northern Region’s Flickr photostream site here, which may be worth browsing for those interested in photos.


Bitterroot National Forest timber sales attract bids on second go-round

By PERRY BACKUS Ravalli Republic | Posted: Saturday, January 7, 2012 11:15 pm

HAMILTON – The Bitterroot National Forest made the adjustments it needed to entice loggers to take another look at a pair of timber sales no one wanted when they were first offered.

Even then, on the largest of the two – a 700,000-board-foot sale at Lake Como – only one person submitted a bid.

“We were thrilled we had one,” said Darby District Ranger Chuck Oliver.

When forest officials offered the two sales in the southern reaches of the Bitterroot in November, they didn’t get a single bid.

Oliver said local logging contractors told the agency the sales were a long way from mills and the list of restrictions, including winter logging, were too strict.

The Lake Como project is designed to remove beetle-killed pine and thin forests to help protect the remaining trees from further beetle infestations.

Since most of the trees to be harvested are located within the most popular national forest summer recreation area in the region, the challenge was getting the work done before campers started to arrive.

“We had hoped to get those trees out before the beetles started to fly again this summer,” Oliver said. “We wanted to get most of that accomplished this winter, but the contractors told us that was impossible because their crew numbers are down.”

The work this winter will focus on the boat launch and campgrounds. Work on the fringe areas will be completed later.

The Forest Service also agreed to drop the appraised value to minimal rates and increase the number of slash disposal sites on the sale.

Bob Walker of Darby purchased the sale.

Oliver has heard from locals concerned the upcoming timber sale will remove too many trees from the popular recreational area.

The agency followed the recommendations of Forest Service scientists in determining a strategy to give the remaining trees a fighting chance against almost certain beetle attacks in upcoming years, Oliver said.

“There’s no guarantee that it will work,” he said. “It was the best that they had to offer us.”

Oliver said recreation specialists returned to the site after the trees were initially marked.

“We wanted to be able to maintain as much as we could,” Oliver said.

In places where officials decided the proposed timber removal was too much, some trees were removed from the sale.

“There are a lot of trees up there that are marked that still have green needles, but they’ve been hit hard by beetles,” he said. “They are not going to survive. People can look at those and not realize they are basically already dead.”

The agency dropped the minimum bidding prices and extended contract terms on a second sale of already cut and stacked logs in the Sapphire Mountains. The Up Top logs were harvested last summer to build fire line around the 41 Complex fires.

Tricon Lumber of St. Regis purchased that sale. There were four bidders.

The reluctance of logging contractors to bid on sales in the southern Bitterroot has forest officials concerned.

The next sale the Bitterroot Forest plans to offer is in the West Fork. It is an estimated 5 million board feet.

“We were surprised that we only got one bid on Como after all the adjustments we made,” Oliver said. “The next one we have to offer is even further away.”

The Timber Racket Op-Ed by Jeffrey Kent

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this submission..

The Register-Guard
http://www.registerguard.com/
GUEST VIEWPOINT: The timber racket
A culture of corruption and political payoffs harms the land and ourselves
By Jeffrey Kent

For The Register-Guard

Published: Sunday, Jan 1, 2012 05:00AM

As a federal prosecutor in Eugene I oversaw in the late 1980s and early 1990s a dozen investigations and prosecutions exposing rampant theft of federal timber. These thefts ran into the tens of millions of dollars and mocked thousands of hours of scientific work that established federal timber sale boundaries.

I saw partial- and select-cut sales metamorphose into logged clear-cuts. I saw sale boundaries breached by acres. I saw off-limits streams desecrated by heavy equipment. I saw wildlife migration preserves sliced and diced.

I later oversaw investigations that made these crude but massive multi-million dollar thefts look like piker play when hundreds of millions of dollars in perfectly merchantable federal timber removed from these sales was scaled as defective by so-called independent scaling bureaus hired by the timber companies.

By far the most disturbing aspect of all this was the ease with which these crimes were perpetrated while the government’s flawed monitoring systems were systematically compromised.

I came from Chicago, where I prosecuted public corruption cases involving every imaginable type of venality. Based upon my experience, I naturally assumed that government officials had been paid off to ignore theft and fraud on federal timber sales. Only after extensive grand jury investigations in numerous cases over many years did I conclude that the corruption was primarily cultural rather than monetary.

When I arrived in Oregon in the mid-1980s in the middle of the forest wars, I believed that poor Smokey Bear was trapped in a hellacious battle between rabid environmentalists and greedy timber companies and was doing the best he could to balance competing interests in his ham-handed paws. A decade later I became convinced to my core that Smokey was a tamed denizen of industry.

How did this happen? The Gulf oil spill, defense contracting scandals, the current financial crisis, and numerous other scandals that have bridged generations lead to an inescapable conclusion: The regulatory agencies of government have been co-opted by industry.

All such regulatory problems germinate at the campaign contribution stage, mushrooming into a pervasive culture that serves profit-driven corporations to the detriment of Joe Citizen. Powerful industries help to finance our elected officials’ political campaigns. This system of legalized bribery has been legitimized by illogical court rulings that campaign contributions are “free speech” and other legal fictions that ignore the reality of a government for sale. In return donors from regulated industries fully expect the regulatory agencies to be made well aware of industry’s expectations and demands.

Regulatory dereliction manifests itself in government timber sales in many ways. Standard timber sale contracts overwhelmingly benefit the industry, typically leading to net taxpayer losses on timber sales after the public has paid for logging roads and other costs. Contractual breaches often result in additional company profits rather than penalties when the fines for taking timber illegally are far below the price paid by the mills for illicitly cut timber. Clear-cuts approved by the Forest Service destroy forest diversity but make it less expensive for timber companies to log sites. I observed these and many other flaws over the course of 10 maddening years.

My first major case of systematic theft was never reported by the Forest Service, but was discovered when members of a Sisters environmental group hiked through a grove of old-growth Ponderosa pine that they had been instrumental in sparing — only to discover that this magnificent stand had been clear-cut by the logging company, even though paint clearly marked the base of the trees that were to be left. Only the vocal complaints of this small group led to law enforcement investigating an apparent criminal act.

When Forest Service law enforcement agents and forest forensics specialists inspected hundreds of units of many timber sales logged over many years by this company, they discovered systematic expansion of boundaries and removal of reserve trees — obvious breaches that were never reported by any of the numerous timber sale administrators charged with inspecting these sales.

How could this be? The search for an answer was initially baffling. My Chicago background caused me to search for payoffs, but after years of investigations, including months of grand jury sessions and thousands of law enforcement interviews, I never found bribes paid to Forest Service officials in the grand Chicago tradition. The answer proved to be much more complex and ultimately institutional and cultural.

This culture originated in the political sphere with campaign contributions and eventually permeated the entire regulatory agency. Timber sale administrators learned early in their careers that tough regulatory stances were routinely trumped by supervisors responding to industry complaints. These low-level administrators soon realized that it would be easier to get along than to fight such a formidable foe. They learned that any inappropriate logging of reserve trees was presumed to be a result of mistakes, and never willful criminal acts. They also learned early that potential crimes were not to be reported to law enforcement without explicit supervisor approval, which seemed to never come.

High-ranking Forest Service supervisors routinely referred to the timber industry as their “partner” rather than as companies doing commercial business with the government. This terminology betrayed naiveté and carried a strong suggestion of a political rather than a regulatory choice of words.

Following widespread media coverage of the failure of the Forest Service to prevent these massive timber thefts, congressional hearings were conducted to examine the regulatory flaws that made theft so easy. Predictably, the Forest Service vowed to re-examine and tighten its security systems.

In the wake of these embarrassing revelations a Timber Theft Task Force made up of agency law enforcement agents and trustworthy other agency personnel was formed.

As time passed, it became clear to me that all of this was little more than posturing to allay media criticism. I had seen this same drama play out many times in Chicago. Business as usual continued as soon as the political storm passed.

If anything, some Forest Service managers became even more intransigent with law enforcement, even ordering its agents not to share reports of potential timber theft with the meddlesome federal prosecutor in Eugene. These forest supervisors viewed the congressional and industry mandate to “get the cut out” as far more important than making sure that the cutting was lawful.

At great risk to their careers, some Forest Service personnel followed their higher authority — the pursuit of the truth — and reported both the investigative findings and the potential obstruction to the prosecutor’s office.

These and other incidents nationally led to yet another set of congressional hearings questioning whether Forest Service management was interfering with legitimate criminal investigations into potential timber theft. After these hearings, where the Oregon U.S. attorney himself testified about a long history of such problems, there was in fact some substantive reform — laws requiring that the Forest Service law enforcement function be independent from timber management.

The establishment of the Timber Theft Task Force led to an even more significant investigation. One sliver of the national forest near Salem, the North Santiam Canyon, was intensely scrutinized in a far-ranging grand jury investigation and prosecution. Statistical analyses revealed that over decades major companies in that area were reporting through log scalers — hired by the companies with the endorsement of the Forest Service — 30 percent less merchantable timber than Forest Service timber cruisers concluded was present in the timber sale sites. The companies were not required to pay for the timber that was scaled as defective.

The statistical analyses indicated that just one log scaler with his pencil cheated Joe Taxpayer out of $1 million a year for 20 years, to the benefit of three companies in the North Santiam Canyon.

How could any law-abiding company compete against this triad of illicit profiteers? It was not only the taxpayer coffers being plundered: honest companies were also being forced out of business in that area.

If one scaler could inflict that much damage in one sliver of the massive national forest system, the inherently conflicted scaling system — in which scalers are indebted for their very jobs to the company that hired them — may well have pilfered hundreds of millions of dollars from the taxpayers over the years.

A recurrent topic at multiple congressional hearings in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the dubious ability of the widely used scaling system to honestly determine defects in timber. Time and again Congress recommended that the scaling system be abolished in favor of a system of lump sum sales, where timber companies would make bids based upon their own estimates of defect in a sale site, which would set the price of the timber sale.

Industry officials, in meetings with Forest Service management, strongly opposed the lump sum sale system widely used by the Bureau of Land Management without problems or controversy. To my knowledge the vulnerable conflict-riddled scaling system remains operational in Forest Service timber sales, contrary to repeated congressional recommendations.

During this period I was invited to speak to Forest Service employees around the country regarding the flaws exposed in these prosecutions and investigations. What remains most vivid to me after years of these embarrassing revelations was the continuing resistance of Forest Service management to reporting potential timber theft or scaling fraud to law enforcement officials — because in their opinion it was almost certainly an innocent error.

The recalcitrant culture remained undaunted. In fact, things began to go backwards. The Timber Theft Task Force was summarily abolished for no apparent reason other than potential pressure from Forest Service management and industry. Those brave members who participated were retaliated against in a variety of transparent ways, including undesirable reassignments requiring relocation and being given new duties unrelated to timber theft or scaling fraud.

Predictably, timber theft and timber fraud reports, investigations, and prosecutions dried up despite there being little reason to believe that the system had been systematically improved.

Frustrated, disgusted and burned out by this quixotic effort to change the unchangeable, I asked to be reassigned to other federal cases. For 100 years it was said that “Chicago ain’t ready for reform.” I found the Forest Service comparably resistant.

As the forest wars heat up yet again in a flagging economy and in the midst of massive cuts in government services, recent proposals have included:

Ceding large tracts of public lands to the timber industry.

Suspending environmental laws on certain federal and state lands.

Intensifying the timber harvest on federal and state lands.

Allowing the collection of “biomass” on vast swaths of federal lands.

These and other proposals ignore other potential sources of revenue that are mystifyingly off the table. Corporations with massive timberlands been granted exemptions from state and local property and extraction taxes. These same timber companies have been given unlimited rights to export raw logs from their private lands (and with them thousands of local mill jobs), which then puts additional pressure on our public lands to provide logs to local mills. How can these exemptions, which deprive local and state governments of millions of dollars, be explained as anything other than political payback by misnamed public officials?

Timber companies also enjoy the right to clear-cut public forests when such methods turn diverse forests into pockmarked tree farms, along with the cutting for decades from public lands volumes of timber that far exceeded a sustainable and lawful yield.

These exemptions, actions, and decisions, clearly contrary to the public interest, can only be explained by the extreme bias created by the culture of campaign contributions and fear of reprisal created by the powerful special interest known as the timber industry. In such a climate it would require politicians and bureaucrats to be uncharacteristically courageous in confronting and reversing these policies.

While I believe that most people in both the timber industry and the Forest Service are basically honest, the widespread failure of members of the industry to report theft and fraud and the chronic failure of Forest Service employees to detect and report obvious theft and fraud remain disturbing to me. It was a constant frustration to encounter sworn statements by industry employees denying any knowledge of rampant theft and fraud in their midst. This implausible deniability caused me to conclude after many years that, as was true in the Forest Service, there existed a culture that discouraged such reports.

How can the citizens who own these forests and their local governments now clamoring for timber sale proceeds be protected from theft and fraud and decades of tax-exemption favoritism? Will politicians be willing and able to act only in the public interest, as their oath of office demands? Will the Forest Service be able and willing to devise and implement systems that are effective against fraud and theft, honoring its obligations to the citizenry?

In short, can the culture be changed?

I frankly doubt it. The system of elections supported by campaign contributions, now made unlimited under recent irrational U.S. Supreme Court decisions, poisons the entire political and regulatory system. Whether the industry is oil, finance, defense, or timber, all decisions inevitably favor industry, typically at the expense of the public interest.

The only remedy, in my opinion, is a constitutional amendment that nullifies the Supreme Court opinions and mandates publicly financed campaigns so that politicians’ and bureaucrats’ obligations and loyalties are no longer compromised by campaign contributions from special interests. Unfortunately, the path to such a solution is clogged by the very politicians who are already indebted to their campaign contributors.

However, a broad coalition of arch-conservatives (tea partiers, libertarians, etc.), ultra-liberals (Occupy Wall Street, etc.) and right-thinking independents, Democrats and Republicans already overwhelmingly agree that money and democracy do not mix.

The politicians, many of whom dislike the necessary evil of fundraising, would eventually be forced by a wave of bipartisan and cross-cultural forces to support such an amendment and begin working full time and free of financial conflicts on the nation’s critical issues.

Who knows? Maybe the regulatory agencies such as the Forest Service will eventually change as the residual culture of bias wanes.

Quixotic? A pipe dream? So were the origins of our democracy in 1776. It is time for a re-revolution that restores our form of government to the one envisioned by our founders, where true democracy for real people thrives once again with a capitalism energized by hard work, great ideas and, most importantly, a level field created by honesty and fairness.

University of Idaho Policy Analysis Group- Recent Publications

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Derek’s comment on a previous post reminded me that I thought the topic of state/federal differences in management had been studied a while back. I thought perhaps by the University of Idaho Policy Analysis Group, and perhaps by folks in Oregon and Washington. While looking around on their site, I found a list of recent studies they had done:
Policy Analysis Group (PAG) Reports
1. Idaho’s endowment lands: A matter of sacred trust (March 1990, second edition July 2011)
2. BLM riparian policy in Idaho: Analysis of public comment on a proposed policy statement (June 1990).
3. Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s land acquisition and land management program (October 1990).
4. Wolf recovery in central Idaho: Alternative strategies and impacts (February 1991).
5. State agency roles in Idaho water quality policy (February 1991, with separate Executive Summary).
6. Silver Valley resource analysis for pulp and paper mill feasibility (October 1991).
7. A national park in Idaho? Proposals and possibilities (June 1992).
8. Design of forest riparian buffer strips for protection of water quality: Analysis of scientific literature (June 1992).
9. Analysis of methods for determining minimum instream flows for recreation (March 1993).
10. Idaho roadless areas and wilderness proposals (July 1993).
11. Forest health conditions in Idaho (December 1993, with separate Executive Summary).
12. Grizzly bear recovery in Idaho (November 1994).
13. Endangered Species Act at the crossroads: New directions from Idaho case studies (October 1995, with
separate Executive Summary).
14. Idaho water quality policy for nonpoint source pollution: A manual for decision-makers (December 1996, with
separate Executive Summary).
15. Guidelines for managing cattle grazing in riparian areas to protect water quality: Review of research and best
management practices policy (December 1997).
16. History and analysis of federally administered land in Idaho (June 1998).
17. Public opinion of water pollution control funding sources in Idaho (December 1998).
18. Toward sustainable forest management: Part I – certification programs (December 1999).
19. Toward sustainable forest management: Part II – the role and effects of timber harvesting in Idaho
(December 2000).
20. Taxing forest property: Analysis of alternative methods and impacts in Idaho (November 2001).
21. Endowment fund reform and Idaho’s state lands: Evaluating financial performance of forest and rangeland
assets (December 2001).
22. Forest resource-based economic development in Idaho: Analysis of concepts, resource management policies,
and community effects (May 2003).
23. Comparison of two forest certification systems and Idaho legal requirements (December 2003).
24. Forest fire smoke management policy: Can prescribed fire reduce subsequent wildland fire emissions?
(November 2004).
25. Delisting endangered species: Process analysis and Idaho case studies (October 2005).
26. Idaho’s forest products business sector: Contributions, challenges, and opportunities (August 2006).
27. Off-highway vehicle and snowmobile management in Idaho (October 2008).
28. Analysis of procedures for residential real estate (cottage site) leases on Idaho’s endowment lands (Oct. 2008).
29. Public land exchanges: Benefits, challenges, and potential for Idaho (December 2009).
30. Bighorn sheep and domestic sheep: Current situation in Idaho (January 2010).
31. Accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from wood bioenergy (September 2010).

I know I’ve mentioned the work of this group before on this blog, but there are numerous reports that relate to topics of current interest to us.

The Whole Op-Ed on Bitterroot Sales

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On the op-ed… this is definitely a mea culpa on my part. I didn’t cross check Matthew’s emailed version with the original and didn’t pay close attention to the fact that Matthew had snipped. So I did find this version just now here on the forest website.

Guest Opinion by Forest Supervisor Julie King

Release Date: Dec 15, 2011

Hamilton, Montana – A fair and adequate amount of accurate information is central to a healthy discussion and reasonable decision-making process. In the Forest Service we practice this as a matter of direction under the National Environmental Policy Act when it comes to public involvement and interaction on our land management decisions. I believe it is imperative that communication lines remain open and we work together to find solutions and ways to survive the current economy and poor market conditions of our timber industry.

So it is unfortunate for us all that incomplete information in a recent article in local newspapers claimed that the Bitterroot National Forest, unlike other national forests, was not selling timber. The article went on to suggest that if national forests would sell more timber, local jobs would return, shuttered mills would re-open, and the boom days of the Bitterroot Valley would be back. While I certainly wish all our challenges were this easy to solve, I feel compelled to share some facts and information with you regarding timber sales on the Bitterroot National Forest.

First and foremost, the Forest is continuing to sell timber. In 2011, 9.6 million board feet were harvested on the Forest. Trees were cut on more than 2,000 acres sending an estimated 1,933 truckloads of logs to Montana sawmills. The Bitterroot’s largest timber project, Trapper Bunkhouse (2,700 acres) continues on the Darby Ranger District. There were eight timber projects under contract on our Forest this year.

The Bitterroot currently ranks number three among the nine national forests in Montana in total saw log volume. This despite the fact that we have less acreage available for timber as half of our Forest is dedicated to the largest expanse of continuous wilderness in the lower 48 states. Perhaps most importantly, all of our current timber projects accomplish needed reductions in hazardous fuels, address wildlife habitat needs and forest health issues. While the timber industry is a valued partner in land stewardship, our timber sales are not offered simply because a buyer desires a certain product like house logs. All timber projects must meet multiple land management objectives outlined in the Forest Plan.

Some of you may be wondering why timber is not being sold as it was in previous decades when the Bitterroot routinely produced 20 million board feet or more. One of the main reasons is that no one is buying the wood. For example, the Bitterroot National Forest recently offered two different timber sales on land that is easy to access near paved roads, and neither sale received any offers. That’s right, not one buyer or company was interested in 250 acres of timber near Lake Como or in 40 acres of already cut and stacked logs in the Sapphire Mountains. These were not isolated incidents. In 2011, the Forest brought four timber sales to the public that did not receive one bid from an interested buyer. Why is this happening? Much like the housing crisis, the answers can be found in the market.

Many of the problems occurring in the timber market today are not due to a lack of supply, but rather a lack of demand. Logs that were selling for $80 a ton during the housing boom, are worth less than $45 a ton today. This loss of demand has had a significant local impact on acres harvested. Dramatically lower timber prices have also changed the way we do business including how we prepare our contracts. In today’s market of fewer and smaller logging operations, we have tailored our contracts to be much smaller in response to feedback from potential purchasers. Poor market conditions have also forced us to use scarce taxpayer dollars to pay to remove timber to meet our Forest fuel reduction goals in areas adjacent to private property.

Here in the Bitterroot, the problem is compounded even more with the recent closure of many sawmills, including Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. in Frenchtown. Saw logs must now be hauled to the closest operational mills in Seeley Lake or St. Regis, more than doubling hauling distances and costs. Rising fuel prices have added yet another obstacle when you consider that some timber projects on our Forest are now located more than 150 miles from the nearest mill. It all adds up to the “perfect storm” and it is going to take all of us working together to find answers and solutions moving forward.

Despite all these challenges, I am still optimistic about the future of forest products and there are some promising signs that the market may be improving. The opening of a new chip processing facility in Bonner provides hope that demand for small diameter materials may be improving. Until then, we need to continue building partnerships and collaborating on projects that can keep people working in our woods. That is exactly what the Bitterroot National Forest is focusing on. This year, we completed a 250 acre, first-of-its-kind ponderosa pine plantation thinning project on the Sula Ranger District on terraced landscapes. The Swift Creek project was a partnership with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Using research, the Forest was able to develop new equipment to reduce compaction on the terraces and thin overstocked trees enhancing soil conditions. In addition to improving habitat for elk and deer forage, the project also employed local contractor Dirk Krueger and provided local jobs. The University of Montana has established research plots to monitor soil health on the terraced lands.

The Forest also applied for and received more than $2 million in Recovery Act funds to complete the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project in 2011. Among 43 different projects supported by Recovery Act funds, the Middle East Fork project treated more than 10,000 acres in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) protecting homeowners while also providing more than 30 local jobs. The project, which began in 2005, supported four local logging companies and salvaged approximately 16.3 million board feet of timber for use in Montana sawmills and log home manufacturing. The $2.1 million contract was awarded to a Bitterroot company – R & R Conner Aviation Logging.

Recently, we announced two additional timber projects that will treat approximately 500 acres at the Lost Trail Powder Mountain Ski Area while also providing for skier safety, protecting ski area infrastructure, and improving the health and resiliency of the Forest. The thinning project near chair #4 alone is an investment of $100,000 in taxpayer dollars to protect this high value recreation area. It’s part of a $3 million project the Forest will undertake in 2012-13 to remove and salvage trees killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic. These projects will employ more local people and will lead to more opportunities and jobs for companies here in the Valley. The Grasser Family, which has operated the ski area since 1967 under a special Forest Service permit, has been a partner in this project.

In 2012, the Bitterroot National Forest is planning additional timber sales in the Larry Creek and Ambrose Saddle Areas on the Stevensville Ranger District and the Lower West Fork, among others. These three sales alone, which all meet land management and stewardship objectives, are estimated at 14.6 million board feet. The big question is – will anyone be interested in buying the wood?

We live in very challenging times, and if we spend energy opposing and not communicating on these issues it will only contribute to our demise. I am open to hearing ideas or being part of meetings or forums where timber industry and supply are discussed. I am also available to meet with groups or individuals to discuss this or any other issues concerning the National Forest. Please contact me at (406) 363-7100.

Forest Supervisor Julie King has worked on the Bitterroot National Forest since 2008.

Bosworth on Payments to Counties

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Douglas fir trees await processing at the Pacific Lumber Co. plant in Scotia, Calif. (Ben Margot / AP Photo / June 15, 2005) (Note from Sharon-the Times used this photo; I will replace with more recent California mill photo is anyone has one).

From the LA Times here.

By Dale Bosworth

December 18, 2011

During my long career with the U.S. Forest Service, people frequently expressed their concerns about the management of public lands to me when I’d run into them at the grocery store or on a hiking trail. One of the main issues they brought up had to do with the relationship between timber harvests and county budgets.

Here’s the dilemma. Counties traditionally rely on property taxes to fund basic services and education. But local governments cannot tax national forest land, and many Western states have a high percentage of their land in federal ownership. In Idaho, for example, about 63% of the land is owned by the federal government (as compared with, say, New York, where less than 1% of land is in federal hands).

To help compensate local governments for that loss of tax revenue, the Forest Service for decades returned 25% of the money it made from harvesting timber to the county government where the logging occurred. But that was problematic too because revenues were prone to wide swings depending on how much timber was harvested and what price it brought.

To address the uncertainty, Congress in 2000 passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which guaranteed revenues to counties based on past timber receipts. The act also introduced new goals of funding restoration and stewardship projects on public lands to help communities improve forest health and diversify their economies. In 2008, funding was extended through 2011 and some revisions were made to the law.

Next year, unless the program is renewed, the payment system will revert to the old method, in which counties receive 25% of timber revenues. This formula would return uncertainty and drastically reduce payments to counties at a time when rural America is already struggling.

A working paper put out last month by the Oregon State University Rural Studies program estimated that Oregon (with about half of its land owned by the federal government) stands to lose about 4,000 jobs and would have to make deep cuts in school funding unless the bill is reauthorized. And Oregon is just one of many states affected.

Instead of allowing the program to end, the act should be renewed, and Congress should take the opportunity to better align payment incentives with current economic realities and forest health goals.

Unfortunately, current proposals from the Obama administration, the House and the Senate all fall short. The president’s 2012 budget, for example, proposes to phase out the payments over two to five years, with no clarity for how the federal government will assist counties with large amounts of public land going forward.

In addition, the administration proposal would, for the first time, fund the payments directly from the Forest Service budget, a budget already stressed by deep cuts. Subjecting the county reimbursements to the annual appropriations process rather than setting up a multiyear reauthorization would make it difficult for many counties to provide basic services.

In the House, a draft bill proposes a timber-only approach in which logging would pay for all future federal payments to counties. This would be accomplished largely by rolling back environmental laws and abandoning collaborative efforts. Even if this bill could pass, it would require unsustainable logging levels to maintain payment levels, and it would require more federal spending than current appropriations.

In the Senate, a draft bill proposes continuing the current payment system at a reduced level for five years, but that only kicks long-term reform down the road.

There is still time before the payments end in mid-2012 to pass legislation that ties future county payments to achievable forest management goals and provides real economic options for counties.

One promising idea would be to deliver payments to counties based on economic need, so that payments are targeted to ensure the best use of taxpayer dollars. Another would be to link funding to efforts by counties to improve ecosystems and recreation opportunities on federal lands.

Although logging alone cannot lift rural economies, logging combined with forest and watershed restoration work — a timber-plus jobs bill — could be the basis for both funding and job growth in counties.

Dale Bosworth worked for the U.S. Forest Service for 41 years, and served as its chief from 2001 to 2007.

More on Timber Harvests, the Economy and Montana

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this submission:

The following guest column was written by the USFS Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest. While the Tester mandated logging bill collaborators falsely give the public the impression that politicians stepping in to mandate more industrial logging of national forests is the key to economic development, the supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest offers her perspective based on economic reality.

SNIPS:

“Some of you may be wondering why timber is not being sold as it was in previous decades when the Bitterroot routinely produced 20 million board feet or more. One of the main reasons is that no one is buying the wood. For example, the Bitterroot National Forest recently offered two different timber sales on land that is easy to access near paved roads, and neither sale received any offers. These were not isolated incidents. In 2011, the forest brought four timber sales to the public that did not receive one bid from an interested buyer. Why is this happening? Much like the housing crisis, the answers can be found in the market. Many of the problems occurring in the timber market today are not due to a lack of supply, but rather a lack of demand. Logs that were selling for $80 a ton during the housing boom, are worth less than $45 a ton today. This loss of demand has had a significant local impact on acres harvested. Poor market conditions have also forced us to use scarce taxpayer dollars to pay to remove timber to meet our forest fuel reduction goals in areas adjacent to private property.”

Timber harvests just one piece of forest management
Guest column by JULIE KING | Posted: Friday, December 16, 2011
http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/timber-harvests-just-one-piece-of-forest-management/article_04e78d00-27f9-11e1-8fb2-001871e3ce6c.html

HAMILTON – A fair and adequate amount of accurate information is central to a healthy discussion and reasonable decision-making process. In the U.S. Forest Service, we practice this as a matter of direction under the National Environmental Policy Act when it comes to public involvement and interaction on our land management decisions. I believe it is imperative that communication lines remain open and we work together to find solutions and ways to survive the current economy and poor market conditions of our timber industry.

So it is unfortunate for us all that incomplete information in a recent article in local newspapers claimed that the Bitterroot National Forest, unlike other national forests, was not selling timber. The article went on to suggest that if national forests would sell more timber, local jobs would return, shuttered mills would re-open, and the boom days of the Bitterroot Valley would be back. While I certainly wish all our challenges were this easy to solve, I feel compelled to share some facts and information with you regarding timber sales on the Bitterroot National Forest.

First and foremost, the Bitterroot National Forest is continuing to sell timber. In 2011, 9.6 million board feet were harvested on the Bitterroot National Forest. Trees were cut on more than 2,000 acres, sending an estimated 1,933 truckloads of logs to Montana sawmills. The Bitterroot’s largest timber project, Trapper Bunkhouse (2,700 acres) continues on the Darby Ranger District and is our largest stewardship project in 10 years. There were eight timber projects under contract on our forest this year.

The Bitterroot currently ranks number three among the nine national forests in Montana in total saw log volume. This despite the fact that we have less acreage available for timber as half of our forest is dedicated to the largest expanse of continuous wilderness in the lower 48 states. Perhaps most importantly, all of our current timber projects accomplish needed reductions in hazardous fuels, address wildlife habitat needs and forest health issues. While the timber industry is a valued partner in land stewardship, our timber sales are not offered simply because a buyer desires a certain product like house logs. All timber projects must meet multiple land management objectives outlined in the forest plan.

Some of you may be wondering why timber is not being sold as it was in previous decades when the Bitterroot routinely produced 20 million board feet or more. One of the main reasons is that no one is buying the wood. For example, the Bitterroot National Forest recently offered two different timber sales on land that is easy to access near paved roads, and neither sale received any offers. These were not isolated incidents. In 2011, the forest brought four timber sales to the public that did not receive one bid from an interested buyer. Why is this happening? Much like the housing crisis, the answers can be found in the market.

Many of the problems occurring in the timber market today are not due to a lack of supply, but rather a lack of demand. Logs that were selling for $80 a ton during the housing boom, are worth less than $45 a ton today. This loss of demand has had a significant local impact on acres harvested. Poor market conditions have also forced us to use scarce taxpayer dollars to pay to remove timber to meet our forest fuel reduction goals in areas adjacent to private property.

Here in the Bitterroot, the problem is compounded even more with the recent closure of many sawmills. Logs must now be hauled to the closest operational mills in Seeley Lake or St. Regis, more than doubling hauling distances and costs. Rising fuel prices have added yet another obstacle when you consider that some timber projects on our forest are now located more than 150 miles from the nearest mill. It all adds up to the “perfect storm” and it is going to take all of us working together to find answers and solutions moving forward.

We live in very challenging times, and if we spend energy opposing and not communicating on these issues it will only contribute to our demise. I am open to hearing your ideas or any other issues concerning the national forest. Please contact me at (406) 363-7100.

Julie King is Forest Supervisor for the Bitterroot National Forest.

Bugs, fire, politics threaten western Montana forests: from the Missoulian

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Here’s the link.

Three things will combine to radically transform Montana forests in the next 50 years: bugs, fire and politics.
Mountain pine beetles have killed millions of acres of lodgepole pine trees. Those dead stands, combined with a progressively drier climate, will likely burn in wilder, more intense fashion. The biological aftermath should bring a wider mix of tree species, open areas and wildlife habitat, according to new computer models.
How humans tinker with that progression remains a wildcard. During this month’s Society for Conservation Biology research symposium at the University of Montana, several scientists demonstrated a technique called landscape simulation modeling. They’ve built software that juggles invasive weeds, weather patterns, logging plans, road removal and a lot of other factors to see how a forest will change over time.
“We see more of a natural sequence of events that could result in a more normal habitat distribution,” Michael Hillis of Missoula’s Ecosystem Research Group said of his model for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. “But the forest will look much different.”
The “B-bar-D” forest covers 3.4 million acres of southwest Montana, bigger than Glacier and Yellowstone national parks combined. Hillis said most of its spruce and Douglas fir stands were logged a century ago for the state’s mining industry. The resulting lodgepole stands grew up and matured at the same time, producing what Hillis called the “forest demographics of a rest home” at the perfect age for a beetle epidemic.
Many of those dead trees will then fuel forest fires. While the research is mixed whether a beetle-killed stand burns more dangerously than a green canopy, Hillis said the certain result is more fire scars on the landscape. Those scars in turn will eventually hobble later fires with a matrix of burned and unburned patches. Burned areas may return as new lodgepole stands, which regenerate best after a fire. But the unburned zones could see a return of fir, spruce and other tree species that get a chance to grow without the lodgepoles’ choking shade.
Assuming that model is correct, what do humans do with the information? Hillis, a Forest Service researcher before he moved to private practice, said his analysis helped inspire the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership, a coalition of conservationists and loggers who proposed a new way of managing the national forest. Their plan eventually became a cornerstone of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.
That legislation has also drawn critics who warn that tinkering with the forest’s natural process could produce bad results.
“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”
***
Tester’s bill would designate about 1 million acres of new wilderness and recreation areas in Montana. It would also require the Forest Service to open at least 100,000 acres of timber over 15 years to logging, thinning or other mechanical treatment in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Lolo and Kootenai national forests. Last month, the senator successfully got it inserted in the Interior Department’s spending bill, which is awaiting congressional action.
Nikas and other opponents have objected to the bill’s mixing of land protections and land management orders. The forest treatment requirements “devolve public lands into local fiefdoms, allowing individual senators to write management plans into law for national forests,” he said.
But Nikas further argued actions like thinning hazardous fuels around the edges of communities is a waste of taxpayer dollars at the forest’s expense.
“If the problem is a risk of fire on the wildland-urban interface, then we need to put zoning restrictions on building, or adopt policies that say if you want to do it, good luck,” Nikas said. “You can’t manipulate forests because of decisions people are making to build in the forest. It’s just like not encouraging people to build in the floodplain.”
John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association is one of Nikas’ regular debating partners. His organization was one of the founding members of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership. He said the Forest Service’s inability to get either logging or habitat work done helped form the compromise.
“There were 106 watershed projects backlogged on the B-D that were not happening,” Gatchell said. “When you look at the landscapes and the condition they should be in, you start seeing all the work that needs to be done.”

Hillis’ research looked into some of the treatments, such as fuels thinning and prescribed burns. His conclusion was that where work took place, the result was better habitat connectivity, a more varied mix of trees and a 50 percent reduction in fire incidence and severity.

“Opponents who don’t like selling trees say this is wrong,” Hillis said. “But the objective research shows thinning provides long-term benefits for forest health.”

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at [email protected]

************

Note from Sharon: I thought this paragraph was particularly interesting..there are different ways of dealing with uncertainty. Some are arguing for managing based on down-scaled model results (the “best available science”?), and some admitting we just don’t know. Admitting we don’t know can also lead us down a number of different paths, though, at least partially depending on our previous predilictions.

“I’ve read a lot of the stories and research on climate change coming out, and one constant is we’re constantly being surprised by the results,” said George Nikas, director of Wilderness Watch and an opponent of Tester’s bill. “Changes are occurring more rapidly than expected, and how they’re expressing themselves on the landscape is different than we expect. If you think you’ve struck on a model or scenario that looks likely today and start acting on it, I’m almost certain in a couple years it will look very different.”

Guest Post from Derek Weidensee on the 2011 Cut and Sold Report

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The FY 2011 USFS “cut and sold” report just came out. At the risk of sounding to “Rain Man” like, here’s a couple stats some may find interesting.

–In Colorado, in 2011, the total “commercial timber harvest” was TWICE that of 2005. 2011= 69-MMBB vs. 2005=33-MMBF. Who would have expected that in the great recession!(The USFS includes “personal use firewood permits” in total volume sold. I arrived at “commercial” by subtracting the firewood volume from total).For being bankrupt, Intermountain must be cutting a lot of timber. I do believe I read that Intermountain doubled their capacity in that time. Without that mill(and the two pellet mills) no fuels treatments would have occured on either public OR private lands.
–In 2003, which was the low point in the Colorado timber sale program, the USFS sold a “total” of 32MMBF. In 2007, when the MPB alarm bells went off, the USFS sold 100 MMBF. That level has held steady with a five year average of 98 MMBF sold/year. Firewood permits went from 10 MMBF in 2003 to 20 MMBF in 2011.

–In Colorado, the average price for Lodgepole pine stumpage was $6.00/MBF. In Montana it was $50.00/MBF. In Montana somewhere aroud 50% of the “sold volume” was classified as “non-sawtimber”. That’s trees 7″-9″ diameter. “Sawtimber” is trees greater than 9″. In Colorado, around 85% of the sold volume was sawtimber. The above comparison tell me a couple things. First, Montana still has a timber industry that competes by “bidding up” timber sale prices. Second, the fact that Colorado offers so much “sawtimber” tells me the USFS is desperate to keep the last sawmill open and is desperate to reopen the mill at Saratoga. It’s intriguing to ponder what dire straights Colorado would be in now if Intermountain would have closed 6 years ago for lack of USFS timber like the mill in Saratoga.

Note from Sharon.. I think that many fuel treatments are done by service contract and not actually sold to mills, therefore not on this report. Anyone that knows more is encouraged to add their knowledge on this.

Wood Products, Bioenergy and Climate: Lippke et al. Study

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Here’s a link to the new paper Sustainable Biofuel Contributions to Carbon Mitigation and Energy Independence

Here’s the UW news release.

Proposals to remove the carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuel from the atmosphere include letting commercially managed forests grow longer between harvests or not cutting them at all.

An article (http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/2/4/861/) published in the journal Forests says, however, that Pacific Northwest trees grown and harvested sustainably, such as every 45 years, can both remove existing carbon dioxide from the air and help keep the gas from entering the atmosphere in the first place. That’s provided wood is used primarily for such things as building materials instead of cement and steel – which require more fossil fuels in their manufacture – and secondarily that wood wastes are used for biofuels to displace the use of fossil fuels.

“When it comes to keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, it makes more sense to use trees to recycle as much carbon as we can and offset the burning of fossil fuel than it does to store carbon in standing forests and continuing burning fossil fuels,” said Bruce Lippke (http://www.cfr.washington.edu/SFRPublic/People/FacultyProfile.aspx?PID=11), University of Washington professor emeritus of forest resources. (http://www.cfr.washington.edu/)

Lippke is one of eight co-authors of the article in Forests. It is the first to comprehensively calculate using woody biomass for bioenergy in addition to using wood for long-lived products. The article focuses on the extra carbon savings that can be squeezed from harvesting trees if bioenergy is generated using wood not suitable for long-term building materials. Such wood can come from the branches and other debris left after harvesting, materials thinned from stands or from plantations of fast-growing trees like willow.

For the article, the co-authors looked at selected bioenergy scenarios using wood from the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Southeast and Northeast.

They considered two ways of producing ethanol from woody biomass – gasification and fermentation – and used what’s called life cycle analysis to tally all the environmental effects of gathering, processing and using the resulting fuels. Considering everything that goes into it and how it burns when used as fuel, the researchers found ethanol from woody biomass emits 70 percent to slightly more than 100 percent less greenhouse gases than producing and using the equivalent energy from gasoline.

Achieving slightly more than a 100 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is possible using fermentation during which ethanol is produced and enough electricity is generated to offset the fossil fuel used in the fermentation process.

In contrast, producing and using corn ethanol to displace gasoline reduces greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent on average, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s fact sheet (http://tinyurl.com/EPAFactSheetAltFuels) “Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Expanded Renewable and Alternative Fuels Use.”

While biofuels from woody biomass are carbon friendly, Lippke cautions that the U.S. should not use tax breaks or other incentives that inadvertently divert wood to bioenergy that is better used for long-lived building materials and furniture.

“Substituting wood for non-wood building materials can displace far more carbon emissions than using the wood for biofuel,” the article says. “This fact creates a hierarchy of wood uses that can provide the greatest carbon mitigation for each source of supply.”

Lippke said using wood for products and bioenergy can be considered carbon neutral because the carbon dioxide trees absorb while growing eventually goes back to the atmosphere when, for instance, wood rots after building demolition or cars burn ethanol made from woody debris. With sustainably managed forests, that carbon dioxide is then absorbed by the growing trees awaiting the next harvest.

The co-authors aren’t advocating that all forests be harvested, just the ones designated to help counter carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Older forests, for instance, provide ecological values even though they absorb less carbon dioxide as they age.

In the article the authors also urge policymakers and citizens to consider not just carbon mitigation but to also find ways to weigh the importance of energy independence from fossil fuels when considering how to use woody biomass for bioenergy.

“Simply burning woody biomass to generate heat or electricity makes sense for carbon mitigation, he says, but there’s no energy independence gained,” Lippke said.

Carbon efficiency is however only one part of the equation, the authors wrote. Transportation fuels depend heavily on imported oil and therefore biofuels that replace them make additional contributions to the domestic economy, including energy independence and rural economic development, the authors said.

Other co-authors are Richard Gustafson and Elaine Oneil with the UW, Richard Venditti with North Carolina State University, Timothy Volk with the State University of New York, Leonard Johnson with the University of Idaho, Maureen Puettmann of WoodLife Environmental Consultants and Phillip Steele with Mississippi State University.

The publication integrates findings across many previous reports generated by a consortium of 17 research institutions that have been involved in life cycle analysis of wood products for more than 15 years through the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (http://www.corrim.org/), based at the UW. The recent biofuel life cycle research was funded with a grant from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory.