Question about how USAJOBS works. A forestry student of mine applied for a technician job with a federal agency. The student was very well qualified, has a related associate’s degree, relevant work experience, and had done related volunteer work for an NGO (a watershed council) in the same watershed, plus had the president of the NGO as a reference. The student also reached out to the agency’s staffer who would make the hiring decision and was well received. The student now has received an email from “usastaffingoffice” saying that “You are tentatively eligible for this series/grade combination based on your self-rating of your qualifications.” But: “You have not been referred to the hiring manager” for the position, and “If you were not referred, you were not found to be among the most highly qualified for the position.” Naturally, this very well qualified applicant is disappointed not to be selected for an interview with a real person.
Questions:
Did a human being evaluate the student’s application at any point? Or was it completely automated?
Can hiring managers request that USAJOBS re-evaluate the student’s application?
The Chief mentioned the Community Wildfire Protection Program, which reminded me of this article (thanks to Nick Smith!). Bay Nature is sensitive about my excerpting too much from their pieces but the piece is available without a paywall here. There’s also a great chart showing how long it took for different grants to go through.
The Community Wildfire Defense Grants are a brand-new program that was kickstarted by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law last year. Nationwide, the program will provide $1 billion dollars over five years to help communities manage their fire risks. Grants are meant for the communities in greatest need, and applicants are weighed by socioeconomic factors as well as fire risk—work happens on private or tribal trust lands, not federal properties. “Some people might be saying, ‘It’s delayed.’ But on the other hand, it’s a new program that they had to stand up very quickly,” says Evan Burks, spokesperson for the USFS. “And it’s been an absolute game-changer.”
Galleher and his colleagues weren’t the only ones who encountered delays. Elsewhere in Plumas County, the Feather River Resource Conservation District, a nonregulatory local agency that works on post-fire restoration, waited 10 months for its $8.5 million grant. Outside of Plumas, the Forest Service says, three of California’s 33 grantees have yet to receive awards totaling over $10 million—and it’s been a year and counting since that round of awards was announced. These include northern California communities in Mendocino, Trinity, and Kern. On average, grants took about 250 days, or about eight months, to execute.
“High-risk communities have to fret through fire seasons, while they just sort of hope to God that they don’t have a fire come through the neighborhood,” says Hugh Safford, a former regional ecologist who left the Forest Service in 2021. He now works on forest resilience as chief scientist at a tech startup, Vibrant Planet, and holds an ecology research position at UC Davis. “It means that they’re gonna go another fire season without having the work done.”
USFS officials say grants were held up due to small, bureaucratic delays—such as checking signatures were valid, or budget back-and-forths. But Adrienne Freeman, a spokesperson for the grant program, also acknowledges two factors: an agency-wide staffing shortage, and a lack of an external clearinghouse to get the money moving on the beleaguered Forest Service’s behalf. “The Forest Service, [which] has extremely limited capacity, is doing all of these grants. So, fundamentally, it’s gonna be a challenge,” Freeman says. Some states have taken over administering the grants, and CalFire has distributed some federal money originating from the USDA. But for this round of funding, the state of California opted out, putting the onus back on the federal government.
Safford likens the funds to water pouring into these communities—the nozzle that they’re coming through just isn’t big enough. “It has a really big opening where the federal government has poured in billions and billions,” he says. “It’s stacked up and overflowing at the top but there’s nothing coming out of the bottom.”
So all that was interesting, and here’s an interesting on-the-ground perspective about post-fire treatments. Each forest’s condition is different post-fire.
“In a large amount of the areas we work in there is 100% tree mortality,” Hall says. “Just completely cooked.” These are rural areas, at places where dead trees meet with burned-down residences—but despite the lack of green, these areas are presently just as much of a fire risk as the unburned areas—if not more. The ground is dry. The smoked trees, like charcoal at the heart of a hearth, are ready to rekindle at the smallest spark. When a reburn goes through a patch like this, “It’s hotter and quicker,” Hall says. “There’s not a lot of smoldering because the material is so combustible. So [fires] burn quick and move through fast.”
Ideally, Hall says, you take a crew into the dead zone within the first year of a devastating fire. At that stage, you can still use herbicides and hand-held tools to clear the burned trees and young shrubs. But when rot starts to set in, branches will weaken. The canopy becomes a hazard of its own. “After four years, large trees become really dangerous,” Hall says. “Your only hope is to maybe knock them over with an excavator.”
When the federal funds finally arrived in January, the ground in Plumas was snowy, and too wet for tree removal to begin. Hall plans to start the project in the fall instead—a little more than three years since the Dixie Fire. He doesn’t fault the Forest Service for the long delays, saying it’s “pretty darn typical” of a federal agency to be slow, and adds that the conservation district’s been managing fine with other sources of funds.
They’ve done this before: remove dead trees and brush from private property, and then step in to replant the forest with baby ponderosa pine, incense cedar, sugar pine, and Douglas fir. That’s the way to break the burn cycle, Hall says.
But he is worried. There’s an eight- to 12-year post-fire window, he says, during which the dead trees and the shrubs growing around them pose a serious threat of reburning—and, with large wildfires coming more frequently nowadays, they are more likely to do so. That’s the real clock they’re up against. “It can burn again,” he says. “It will burn again.”
I earlier posted a piece on the Forest Service’s Keystone Agreements with a variety of NGOs. These agreements are meant to accomplish a wide variety of tasks that would normally be done either by the Forest Service itself or through normal contracting procedures. I said that we had submitted several questions to the Forest Service and we were awaiting their response. Last week, we received that response from the Forest Service’s Office of Communications.
The following shows our numbered questions along with their responses in bold:
(1) We have obtained copies of the Master Agreements with the various NGO’s through FOIA’s. We are interested in the details contained in the associated SPA’s, particularly the financial information. Shouldn’t this information be available to the public? We believe it is important to know how the Forest Service is spending federal dollars through these agreements. Do we need to file FOIA’s to obtain this information or could it just be available online? If not, why not? We realize there would be some proprietary information that would need to be redacted.
Each Forest and Region that has executed agreements that are tied to the Master Keystone Agreements has specific plans to implement those projects. Some are at various stages of implementation and readiness and a financial plan does not depict the context necessary to appreciate the implementation of the agreement goals fully. Due to the constantly changing nature in the status of work, we don’t post this information online, as it is not static. We suggest working with individual units to understand their Forest’s or landscape’s holistic partnership and collaborative goals so that entire project areas and landscape goals from A-Z can be seen rather than a snapshot of one financial plan. Those program managers will also be able to speak to financial planning and other relevant plans and appendices or modifications the agreements have associated with them so that these iterative agreements can be fully understood.
(2) How are accomplishments being tracked through these agreements? Who is providing oversight, Grants and Agreements? Partnerships Office?
Accomplishments are being tracked at a local, regional, and national level through our agency’s authoritative data sources. We are monitoring financial burn rates and programmatic outputs, among other things. Forest staff, program managers, and grants and agreements staff collectively provide oversight to ensure the successful implementation of the agreement with our partners.
(3) What is the process of awarding the NGO’s funding? Do they receive the dollars and then projects are developed? What are the overhead rates of the various NGO’s?
The need to treat hazardous fuels across the United States has been identified in great detail and is addressed in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy outlined by the FS Wildfire Crisis Strategy published in 2022. Regions and Forests with identified needs have received funds to implement project work through contracts and agreements. Some of these agreements are with partners that have a Keystone Agreement, who may have established relationships with the region or forest to address these needs. While the “umbrella” or Master “Keystone” Agreements with partners are held at the Washington Office, the actual project work and funds that are added to the agreements are often done at the regional level, Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscape level, or at the Forest level. The projects are developed at the local level and then appropriate funds for the work, once identified, are awarded to the Supplemental Project Agreements in conjunction with inputs from the partner. Each NGO has its own Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA). Each NICRA is negotiated with the cognizant agency for the partner. The federal agency that provides the most in direct funding is normally the organization’s cognizant, unless specifically assigned by the Office of Management and Budget.
(4) Are the Keystone Agreements being used to avoid Federal Acquisition Regulations and federal hiring difficulties?
No, the Keystone Agreements are not being used to avoid Federal Acquisition Regulations nor federal hiring difficulties. Keystone agreements were developed to implement projects at a pace and scale aligned with the objectives of the Forest Service. The Forest Service is taking this opportunity to achieve our mission in new ways, building on long-standing partnerships and creating large, national-level agreements—or Keystone Agreements—for BIL and IRA implementation. These agreements will allow us to execute priority projects quickly and efficiently while we grow Forest Service institutional capacity. Importantly, these Keystone Agreements facilitate new local agreements or complement existing agreements at the region and unit levels, creating a suite of partnership arrangements that collectively give our national forests and grasslands a range of tools for program implementation. These agreements can increase capacity, to help accomplish crucial work on the ground in an expedited manner.
(5) We are hearing that Forests are having budget difficulties this fiscal year and that it will impact their ability to hire employees. In hindsight, was it wise to put so much funding into the Keystone Agreements rather than into NFS? Could a lot of this funding have been put into IDIQ contracts instead?
The agency has invested a tremendous amount of BIL and IRA funding in the WCS landscapes, high risk-firesheds, and to a much smaller extent, funding for state agencies, tribes and Keystone Agreements. Some of the BIL and IRA funding did go into IDIQ contracts. Due to the significant workload and goals of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, an array of tools were utilized to help accomplish the work. In addition, a large number of new employees were hired within the agency to address the workload.
(6) Are Keystone Agreement accomplishments being claimed when the funding is awarded rather than when the work is actually accomplished?
Accomplishments are recorded when the work is completed. The exception is when timber is sold through a contract or stewardship agreement. The “timber volume sold” accomplishment is recorded when an agreement or contract is fully executed. Funding obligations and are also tracked for budget expenditure purposes.
Understanding that you may want additional documents that are not publicly available, we recommend you request the data through the Freedom of Information Act. This link provides contact information for the WO processing center: FOIA Contact Service Centers | US Forest Service (usda.gov). The more detailed the request the better.
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I certainly appreciate the Office of Communication responding to our questions and I feel that I have somewhat of a better understanding of these Keystone Agreements. However, I think those of us who are interested in Forest Service operations should still have some concerns regarding their implementation.
It’s just my opinion but these huge funding bills have had a really mixed outcome regarding the Forest Service. I remember the National Fire Plan in 2000, which promised a significant increase in funding into the future, but much of that increase dried up after a couple of years. The 2009 Recovery Act provided a lot of money and we were scrambling on how to get it spent. I know some good things were funded, but personally, I saw some projects that had the appearance of just spending money to get it spent.
Is the Forest Service doing the right thing with these Keystone Agreements? I don’t know but if they are resulting in a significant bump in accomplishments, the Forest Service is not doing a great job in telling that story. You would think with all of the money being spent, the Forest Service would have an excellent public relations plan regarding these agreements. It should not be difficult to find out what is happening with them. Do you think the Forest Service has done well at explaining their value? Are they a good use of taxpayer dollars?
New Tahoe Forest Products Sawmill (courtesy of Bloomberg)
There were many interesting things to explore with the hearing on the Westerman Bill yesterday. As we saw in previous posts, it’s a compendium of many different ideas we can explore in greater depth. What I thought was one theme in Chris French’s testimony was what we might call another Wood Wide Web (broader than the mycological one discussed here a few weeks ago), this one of people, workers and organizations making useful products of wood.
Certainly mycorrhizal fungi help trees. But also people help trees, at least around here, by thinning them and protecting them from fires, planting them and so on. And trees provide us with useful products, often more environmentally friendly than those produced from minerals of various kinds. So, in fact, we as humans have some mutualism going on here with trees. And within that mutualism, we have a complex interrelationship of businesses and workers (from sawmills to CLT to paneling to furniture to horse bedding to sawdust to biochar to bioenergy) that depend on each other. And people who depend on the products they produce, plus employment, plus taxes. So indeed people have their own Wood Wide Web, and while Chris didn’t talk about it in those words, he made the point that this Web is important to forests surviving and thriving into the future, come climate change, wildfires and a variety of other stressors. Or at least that’s how I heard it. We are, indeed, all in this together.
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Housing is a crisis in many places in the US. And the US is allowing large numbers of migrants in (at least 2.5 million according to NPR) (not judging, just observing). It seems logical that we would need even more housing. Housing tends to be built using wood for various reasons, including cost. We have lots of extra wood from fuel treatment and restoration projects, but it tends to be small. Will new materials like CLT help us build our way out of the housing crisis? Certainly if we look at the Wood Utilization grants of USDA, there is much effort (and funding) going toward Mass Timber, CLT and other efforts. Maybe the future is small, local mills, with local employees scattered through the landscape. Which is kind of what we had, previously, except in the past they focused on larger dimension lumber.
I’m not a fan of top-down industrial policy, but if the wildfire folks can have a Cohesive Strategy, I don’t see why, given the massive amounts of biomass to be otherwise burned, we can’t have a Coherent (and what the heck, let’s throw in Cohesive also) Strategy.
Current Dimensions Used (from AFRC)
I was curious about the size of material being used by current timber industry (including CLT mills). I know there are university and Forest Service experts out there, so hopefully they will add information here or you all can add good contacts.
AFRC generously provided me with their perspective on dimensions:
Log utilization is an ongoing point of contention between the federal agencies and AFRC. The Forest Service in Region 6 generally classifies minimum specifications for sawtimber as an 8-foot log with a small-end diameter of 5-6 inches for most conifer species. The only exception is ponderosa pine where they use a 16-foot log. AFRC has been advocating that the Forest Service use a 16-foot log for all conifer species for several years since most all of our members assert that 8-foot logs with 5-6 inch diameters do not get processed as saw material, but rather end up as pulp or chip material. Most of our members whose mills are designed to utilize small logs are capable of sawing or peeling down to 5-6 inches, but some minor variations exist. However, when delivered as an 8-foot piece, the economics of doing so becomes marginal—hence our advocacy to change that length.
The CLT facilities that I’m familiar with (Freres in Lyons and DR Johnson in Riddle) do not actually process raw logs—instead they secure veneer that has previously been peeled or boards that have previously been cut at other mills and then manufacture them into larger products by gluing them together. Generally speaking though, the products that are delivered to CLT facilities can be cut/peeled from small, medium, or large logs.
From loggers to end users – all of whom are currently involved in a complex exchange of material and value. Fiddling with a part may cause a series of consequences throughout the web. And 16 foot logs with 5-6 inch diameters are pretty small. With, no doubt, transportation costs being a big thing. Again, the web. Again, the need for a Double C (cohesive and coherent) strategy.
Academic Horsepower and Successful Industry-Chicken or Egg?
If your state has a prominent forest industry, generally (but not always) universities hire experts to help them, and conceivably the rest of us who use wood or want to get rid of biomass. But if your state doesn’t, then they probably don’t have experts. Which could be a problem if you want to support new industries, in that there are no/few experts to help entrepreneurs.
As I was writing the above on transportation costs, I received an announcement of a webinar by Drs. McConnell and Tanger who seem to be forest economics/wood utilization/operations experts.
Wood-using sawmills prioritize availability of raw materials, their accessibility, and associated transportation costs as the main drivers of new mill constructions and financial viability of existing mill operations. One of the major hurdles faced by the forest sector is hauling costs. Hauling costs have commonly been cited as comprising 35 to 45% of the delivered cost of round wood. Join us to learn how road network repairs could benefit both the forest sector and the broader Mississippi economy.
California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force Market Development Program
I don’t know how many economics and utilization professors California has (I know there’s some in Extension) but they have a market development program that’s interesting. They have five pilot programs:
to establish reliable access to forest biomass through a variety of feedstock aggregation mechanisms and organizational innovations. The pilots will develop plans to improve feedstock supply chain logistics within each target region through the deployment of a special district with the authority and resources to aggregate biomass and facilitate long-term feedstock contracts. Each pilot will assess market conditions, evaluate infrastructure needs, and work to enhance economic opportunities for biomass businesses in their project regions. The pilots are distributed across 17 counties in the Central Sierra, Lake Tahoe Basin, Northeast California, North Coast and Marin County.
Their rationale is:
Diverting forest residues for productive use can help increase the pace and scale of forest restoration efforts in California, reducing vulnerability to wildfire, supporting rural economic development, and promoting carbon storage. The Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan identifies the development of, and access to, markets for these residues as a key barrier to conducting necessary treatment activities across priority landscapes in the state. The development of such a market for residues has been hampered by the lack of any centralized broker capable of entering into long-term feedstock supply contracts.
Washoe Sawmill Opens
I posted about this last year, The Tahoe Fund, Tahoe Forest Products LLC, and the Washoe Development Corporation worked together to build a new mill. Here’s a link to a Bloomberg story. Region 5 has a good story about it opening, with some interviews and a historical perspective. Shout out to writer Andrew Avitt!
“The truth is, the forest, it needs our help,” said Serrell Smokey, Tribal chairman for the Washoe Tribe of Nevada & California, at the Tahoe Forest Products sawmill opening Dec. 18, 2023, “Our people have intervened in these areas since the beginning of time, because otherwise, if we don’t take care of it, it will take care of itself.”
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There is a mutually beneficial relationship here – land management agencies need to treat landscapes and the timber industry needs timber. There used to be an old saying of “trees paying their way out of the woods.” That meant the value of the timber would help offset the cost of treating an area. While that’s not the reality on the eastern side of the Sierras, having a mill infrastructure in proximity drastically improves the economics of the type of work that’s needed to restore landscapes in the West.
When timber business makes assessments about when and where to take on a contract, they look at a number of factors — fuel and labor costs, and market prices for timber. But there is one factor that tends to be the most prohibitive — distance.
The further a log has to travel to arrive at the nearest mill increases fuel and labor costs and decreases a business’s profit. Depending on all the variables, the breakeven distance is about 50-80 miles from forest to mill.
Before the opening of Tahoe Forest Products mill in Carson City, the closest mill was in Quincy, California. That’s more than 100 miles from many of the areas that need work on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.
“Since the mill has opened the conversation has definitely changed,” said Monti, “Now contractors are calling and saying, ‘hey, I heard this new mill went in. I’m really interested in doing work on this side of the mountain.’… We have not had that option for the last several decades.”
Note the transportation costs, and the shimmering of the beginning of a new working-wood-wide-web. I always wonder why California seems to be different from Oregon in its appreciation of the Web- maybe the Timber Wars are still resonating.
Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Strategy to Guide Balanced Management, Conservation of Public Lands
Public Lands Rule will help conserve wildlife habitat, restore places impacted by wildfire and drought, expand outdoor recreation, and guide thoughtful development
A skeptic might wonder how the Forest Service could possibly “conserve wildlife habitat, restore places impacted by wildfire and drought, expand outdoor recreation, and guide thoughtful development” without such a rule? Here’s a link to the Rule. There are also fact sheets and other information here.
So let’s take a brief look to see what has changed based on the comments received. Hopefully, paid legal folks will look more intensively at it. Just in case you’re curious, they received “over 200,000 comments, the vast majority of which supported the effort. In response to the substantive comments received, the BLM clarified and refined concepts laid out in the proposed rule.”
Kind of sounds like they didn’t change anything, just clarified and responded.
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I’m not a fan of the temporary ACEC idea, from the FAQS:
If the BLM finds the area meets the criteria for ACEC designation and determines that the relevant and important values could be irreparably harmed if not protected, then the BLM may implement temporary protections that could maintain the condition of identified resources until a potential ACEC can be fully evaluated through land use planning. The public would be notified of any temporary protections.
In response to comments received from individuals, state, Tribal and local governments, industry groups, and advocacy organizations, the BLM clarified that ACECs should typically be evaluated in land use planning because their designation is intended to be a proactive decision made in concert with other considerations that affect the same lands and resources. The Final Rule also refines procedures for ACECs that are nominated outside of the land use planning process, recognizing that the BLM can defer consideration of those areas and, in the rare instances when it may be necessary, can also implement temporary protections.
So the response to the comments was to state that they expect it to be used rarely? And so some group of whatever location and funding could nominate the area, and the public would be “notified”.
This does not sound like a robust public involvement process with considerations of Tribal view; I guess that would be OK because it’s “temporary” only until the next RMP.. and what is the RMP schedule, again?
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I also wonder about the offsite mitigation idea. It doesn’t sound like there’s a role for both sets of communities to weigh in. Of course, the communities near the siting will weigh in, but what about the community receiving the mitigation lease?
Appropriate places for restoration and mitigation leasing on public lands include degraded habitats in need of restoration, as well as intact landscapes and functioning ecosystems that can serve as compensatory mitigation for a particular action. For example, as part of authorizing a renewable energy project on public lands, the BLM and the project proponent may agree to compensate for loss of wildlife habitat by restoring or enhancing other habitat areas on public lands. A mitigation lease could be used to protect the restoration and enhancement actions.
But who and what are the lessees protecting the “restoration or enhancing” from, other than existing users? Just logically, if the project doesn’t need to be protected from existing users, why do you need a lease? If it does need to be protected, then from whom or what exactly? Some other new use such as another solar or transmission line? This puzzles me. But if it’s a new use, it would have to go through permitting and perhaps the “restored or enhanced” area could have been avoided (or mitigated elsewhere, perhaps via chains of mitigation..).
The Bird Example
The environmental analysis for an interregional transmission line finds the project would have unavoidable impacts on a bird species that is managed as imperiled by the BLM and by state governments where the transmission line is proposed. The authorizing agencies determine that compensatory mitigation is warranted to address impacts to the species, and the best remaining habitat is found on BLM-managed public lands.
In this case, the BLM could consider an application for a mitigation lease to conserve the bird’s habitat on public lands. The lease would identify conservation measures that address the unavoidable impacts to the bird species and would help ensure that these measures remain effective for the duration of the transmission line’s impact. The mitigation lease could be terminated or modified in response to changing habitat conditions.
Why would a lease be preferred to something more flexible? Suppose BLM goes to all the work of doing a lease for an area for some bird. But then the area is burned over. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have something more flexible and robust to change? Or maybe it makes more sense to make one intervention for a species in one place, and then make that same intervention in another place as opposed to making a series of interventions in the same place.
I am reminded of my first run-in with ideology. I was working in US Congresswoman Carrie Meek’s (17th District Florida) office in the mid-1990s. The issue was deregulation of power in Florida. No matter what questions I asked, deregulation was always the answer. It was impossible to engage with the proponents in a down-to-earth way- it was like pragmatism vs. ideology. Deregulation is great. Deregulation is better than sliced bread. Deregulation will only have positive effects. If you point out negatives, let me assure you the positives will outweigh the negatives. No, we don’t need those protections included because… Deregulation is great. It is better than sliced bread…
I have the same feeling about these leases, even if they changed the name.
This is under the tab for “other”. I think most of them are rural schools funds but maybe not. NFF seems to have two $100 mill ish and one 50 mill ish all started in 2023.
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Also the Great Basin Institute is not a Keystone but did get 59 mill. Looks like that was for some NEPA, perhaps:
In recent years, GBI has scaled support for several post-fire planning needs for the US Forest Service. In 2022-23, the Sequoia, Inyo, Eldorado, Plumas, and Lassen National Forests have entered into agreements to provide specialist support and scoping services for Categorical Exclusions, Environmental Assessments, and Environmental Impact Statements to address post-fire needs after the Castle, Beckworth, Dixie, Caldor, French, Windy, KNP Complex, and Mosquito Fires, many of which comprise some of the largest wildfires in the history of the region.
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Anyway, back to the Keystone Agreements. I think a diversity of groups with a track record of on-the-ground accomplishments is the way to go to spend BIL-IRA bucks. That being said, let’s look at this E&E News story:
The story provides a list of the groups with agreements:
The Nature Conservancy, American Forests, Trout Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Foundation, the Mule Deer Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Student Conservation Association, and the National Forest Foundation. Officials anticipate further agreements, including with tribes and tribal organizations, French said.
What all of these folks have in common (except maybe American Forests, which has tended to be more focused on urban and community forestry) is a track record of accomplishing things on the ground on National Forests.
The organizations, including hunting groups, have relevant experience and an interest in maintaining healthy forests, said Tony Wasley, president of the Wildlife Management Institute, a nonprofit conservation group representing organizations such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Pheasants Forever. “It’s a proven track record by these organizations,” Wasley said, adding that projects funded through the agreements are still subject to National Environmental Policy Act reviews. “It isn’t just a blank check and you’re walking away from it.”
So it seems like a broad diversity of groups with different interests and affiliations, but also with a working track record.
In some cases, the organizations partnering with the Forest Service don’t see eye to eye with the Biden administration on forest policies, or they advocate for approaches such as an increased use of prescribed fire that remain contentious in Congress. The National Wild Turkey Federation, for instance, has cautioned the administration against aspects of its old-growth forest plan and has a history of supporting forest clear-cutting to create wild turkey habitat. The group was the Forest Service’s fourth-biggest buyer of timber in 2019, based on volume.
I’m not sure how much “prescribed fire” is contentious in Congress. We can ask “should there be a policy litmus test for federal grants?” “wouldn’t we be suspicious of a quid-pro-quo if these groups suddenly parroted everything that (some factions in) the Admin wanted? And “clearcutting?” yes, groups of people who like wildlife who like openings… tend to like openings.
The National Wild Turkey Federation’s agreement raises another question: How does the Forest Service, over a 20-year period, work hand in hand with organizations that don’t necessarily share Washington’s approach to managing forests?
It seems to me that given the list of organizations, and possibilities of future Admins, there will always be some who are more or less aligned with any given Admin. But it shouldn’t matter as not everything is political. There, I said it. Of course, E&E News was bought by Politico Pro so that might be their filter on the world.
While the story focuses on NWTG, and their potential alignment with R’s..
The federation has supported Republican-led legislation to step back environmental reviews of forest-thinning projects and to create larger categorical exclusions from NEPA reviews, calling a proposal by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) to do so a “huge step forward in protecting the nation’s forests.”
Some of us, of course, recall that TU’s Chris Wood was a political appointee in a D Administration:
“It is heartening to see the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s resources being put to good use,” said Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited. “This agreement builds on a long and productive partnership between the Forest Service and Trout Unlimited. Together over the years, we have already restored more than 400 miles of important fish habitat, reconnected more than 700 miles of habitat by removing barriers to fish migration, and improved hundreds of thousands of acres of National Forest System lands. We are excited to continue and expand on this work over the coming years.”
Also, the Senior Vice President, Policy at American Forests is Leslie Jones. Here’s what it says on the American Forests website:
*Leslie is on a full-time detail to USDA Natural Resources and Environment, effective February 2022 through February 2024.
Leslie Jones oversees our policy team’s collaboration with agency partners and the development of legislative solutions with federal congressional champions. Jones has over 25 years of experience in shaping conservation policy. Prior to joining American Forests in 2020, Jones served as deputy undersecretary and chief of staff for natural resources and environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where her work included overseeing the U.S. Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service on a variety of natural resource issues, including management of the 193-million-acre National Forest and Grassland System, and implementation of Farm Bill conservation programs on America’s farms, ranches and forests. Jones was also chief of staff at the global ocean conservation organization, Oceana, and general counsel for The Wilderness Society.
Not surprisingly, given that they seem to be the same people, American Forests tells us that “the Biden Administration continues to deliver as champions of America’s Forests”:
The Biden-Harris administration continues to deliver as champions of America’s forests, helping to conserve and steward the nation’s old growth forests and the vast amounts of carbon they store. For too long, irreplaceable old growth forests have lacked a consistent and adaptable policy to support their conservation and management, but today’s announcement by the USDA Forest Service offers a needed new course.
One can wonder about potential conflict of interest here. Suppose in an R Admin, someone was detailed to an office and that the organization they were from was given a large grant from the agency they were detailed to.. seems a bit revolving door-ish. But maybe I’m missing something.
But what does CBD think?
Still, some environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, say they worry that the government is shifting too much of its own responsibility to contractors and, in some cases, handing forest management to groups more prone to cutting big trees than saving them.
“There are plenty of clearcuts on private and state lands that provide habitat for turkeys,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director with the CBD. “These agreements should not allow damaging logging on national forests in the name of ‘restoration’ when really, they are just clearcutting national forests to benefit a special interest group.”
What I sense from CBD is the concern that a bias of the organization could overwhelm the usual agency accountability procedures. Still since CBD is litigatorily inclined, and all projects will go through the same NEPA and litigation process as usual.. I think we’d have to dig a bit deeper into their concerns.
But NWTF is doing plenty of work of a non-clearcutting nature, as we shall see tomorrow. And from Andy Kerr, NW Timber Wars veteran -about Eastern forests.
Kerr said he believes federal forest managers and some conservation and hunting groups have united over the years to keep Eastern forests in an artificially young stage to protect hunting grounds — an allegation buttressed by a January 2023 article in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.
Unfortunately, the link to that paper did not come through from my source and I couldn’t find it looking at the journal. If anyone knows where I can find it, please send me the link. I am a bit skeptical as there is relatively little federal forest to be found among the Eastern forests, but we’ll see.
In general, it seems like the people quoted in this article are concerned about some of the groups and the nature of their fieldwork. I’m more concerned about some of the more nebulous or planning or strategy aspects of the agreements and how it might be that some NGOs are perhaps tasked with more thinking and writing work, with less expertise, than the Forest Service. With its own Research arm, and thousands of practitioners spread across the US, I don’t think they need help figuring out what “climate-smart” is. And there are accountability questions, which I think everyone from CBD to me and probably Congress, share. What are your concerns?
The above is a screenshot from USAspending.gov. You can click on it to make it easier to read.
Update on Questions From Last Week
Dave Mertz has heard back that the Forest Service will answer the questions he posed last week. So we can look forward to that.
Suggestions for the Forest Service in Communicating
I’d put out a table that shows the agreements thus far, and how much has been obligated over what time period. Once specific agreements for each project are approved, I’d have each funded project with a project description, how much money, timeline, and accomplishments when they are finished, located somewhere they can easily be searched (not USAspending.gov). (the above link is to American Forests, which appears to be $50 mill for Urban and Community Forestry, which also appears to be already obligated, that’s also the screenshot above). It would be great to have maps also for specific projects, so we can see where the $ are going. I’m sure Congressionals and others will be curious. Maybe like the GAOA site.
My Apology to the Forest Service and to Dave Mertz:
I’d like to apologize to Forest Service folks and Dave Mertz. When Dave and I were working up our list of questions, I added:
(4) Are the Keystone Agreements being used to avoid Federal Acquisition Regulations and federal hiring difficulties?
It wasn’t until I read it in his post that I realized how it might have come across as their ill intent, which I never meant. I meant it in a broader sense (which I could have expressed more clearly) “are there specific aspects of the FARs and hiring that make it difficult to fulfill the intent of Congress in the BIL and IRA?” Now, I haven’t heard about contracting, but I continue to hear about issues with USAJobs and the Albuquerque Service Center. On the other hand, vast infusions of money are probably not best used with temporaries, so perhaps the real question is about contracting vs. grants and agreements.
My intent was to see if there were obstacles that could be removed in order to proceed with success in meeting the goals of IRA and BIL, and maybe use that Congressional energy to make some fixes of a generally positive nature beyond BIL and IRA, but maybe that’s a question for Congress to ask. Or maybe they should have asked before sending the money out. Or maybe they realize that Federal hiring and contracting are cans of worms that they don’t want to get involved with. Easier to send out the money and hope for the best. Gee, I sound a little like Andy.
What I Think About All This
Partners are very important and can be critical to the Forest Service carrying out its mission. This is nothing new, about 15 years ago I recall a Region 2 Regional Foresters Honor Awards banquet with a video entirely composed of the Regional Forester (Rick Cables) talking about “partners” and “partnerships”. The SERAL project on the Stanislaus, as we covered here, was successful due to master agreements with the County and others.
As I said about SERAL partnerships, “Various master agreements, including with the County, enabled finances to be transferred and work to be done without federal hiring or FARs difficulties. Counties and others can hire locally, so that issues like housing affordability may be less pressing.”
It makes perfect sense, in my view, for the Forest Service to have larger scale agreements so that each Forest doesn’t have to reinvent the grant-making wheel. Also, because of the temporary nature of BIL and IRA, the Forest Service couldn’t actually add people. And these agreements provide handy ways to stash the funding so that Congress can’t get it back (at least that’s how it appears).
Still, two things raise questions for some of us.. transparency and accountability, and that’s what the rest of our questions were about. Some of us are also curious about whether work contracted versus granted have to follow the same rules and have the same degree of oversight and accountability. Folks with differing perspectives are equally curious about this, as we shall see in the E&E News story.
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While I was exploring the USAspending.gov website, I looked under the contracts tab by accident and found an $89.4 million contract to Sierra Tahoe Environmental Management, LLC. for stewardship work on the Plumas. So large-scale contracts are also possibilities. As one Anonymous pointed out, though, both contracting and grants and agreements shops might be overwhelmed by the influx of funding.
If you watched the Forest Service budget hearing, a few of the Senators brought up Mass Timber and CLT (cross-laminated timber). The National Museum of Forest Service History had an excellent explanation (with photos) in their newsletter. They are also having an auction until April 15, I’ve bid on a couple of places to stay and there’s other good stuff as well. The below and attached newsletter is reprinted with the permission of the National Museum. I thought this was a great article, so shout-out to the Museum and to Tom Chung! I just excerpted the introduction below, and the article itself is here.
By Tom S. Chung, FAIA, Principal, Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Many of us may have heard of the term “Mass Timber” but are not sure of what it is, although I would say that many, if not all, of us know what a “wood building” is and have been inside one from log cabins to solid heavy timber office buildings to curved wood structured churches. A Mass Timber building is in one sense, simply a wood building that uses large pieces of wood instead of smaller pieces of wood like lumber (2x4s and 2x6s) that we see being used for single family houses and multifamily housing 5 stories tall or less, all over the country for the past sixty plus years.
Mass Timber as the name implies is made of heavier (or larger) pieces of wood and its earliest examples are the solid heavy timber buildings that were built with old growth trees that made possible large cross sections of columns and beams often greater than 1’ x 1’ and more from a single tree trunk just debarked and cut to size.
But Mass Timber today is a highly engineered product that is assembled into even larger building elements with just lumber (2x4s and 2x6s) or even smaller laminations. Unlike
solid heavy timber that relies much on the characteristics of a single tree and a large safety factor since no two trees are the same, mass timber today is much more predictable and precisely engineered to meet the necessary loads with material efficiency. It is also fabricated in a factory in a highly automated way using digital technologies and equipment and assembled on site quickly and quietly, instead of being constructed piece by piece on site with lots of construction time and material waste.
While most civilizations began building with wood, as it was plentiful and easy to shape with simple tools, our modern society and its need to build bigger and taller buildings over the late 19th and 20th centuries in urban centers, coinciding with the results of industrial revolution which began a century earlier resulted in wood being displaced as the main building material by steel and concrete.
Though wood remained throughout the past century as a building material for smaller structures such as single family homes and small multi-family housing, the emergence of mass timber today makes possible the use of wood as a building material previously reserved for steel and concrete, allowing us to build these larger, taller and more complex buildings now in wood, with a renewable building material with less carbon emissions that helps address the building industry’s responsibility towards climate change.
In addition to being a solution to build more responsibly with less carbon footprint, mass timber buildings, unlike light-frame wood construction often expose the wood since it doesn’t need to be covered up by painted white drywall. This allows for the inherent biophilic attributes of wood to be experienced; visually appealing color and grain, the warmth to touch, the fresh pine scented smell with the humidity and moisture regulating properties of mass timber provides a full tactile experience that enrich the daily routines of those who live and work in these buildings.
Products
Among the commercially available products in the mass timber category are Cross-laminated Timber (CLT), Naillaminated Timber (NLT), Dowell-Laminated Timber (DLT), Mass Plywood Panel (MPP), Glue Laminated Timber (GLT) and glulams, Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) and Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL). They range in costs, appearance
and applications.
Nail-Laminated Timber or NLT are simply lumber (2xs) nailed together in a one way span between beams to make solid floors and usually require a layer of plywood on top for lateral stability. They are simple to build, do not require expensive factories and are on the less expensive end of mass timber product costs. But since there are nails, they cannot be cut with CNC machines
and are more limiting structurally and architecturally in general. Dowell-laminated Timber or DLT can be seen as an evolution of NLT in that the steel nails were replaced by hardwood dowels so that it could be CNC cut and made in a highly automated factory like other mass timber products. It appears similar to NLT and also spans one-way between beams but also with increased
structural and architectural possibilities at a higher cost.
Glulams, similar to NLT as mass timber products have been around for over eighty years. They have been used mostly as beams and columns (linear elements) and can be seen in many old churches and gymnasiums as large curved or arching elements. But they can also laid flat on their sides and with successive pieces become floor assemblies, similar to NLT or DLT.
In this configuration as floor panels, they are called “GLT.”
Seen often in combination with glulam beams and columns are Cross-laminated Timber or CLT panels It is the most well known and most talked about mass timber product today given its versatility. It was first commercially developed in Europe with factories in Austria, Germany and Switzerland about 25 years ago, then to Canada and now gaining traction in the US over the past 5-7 years. CLT arranges lumber laid flat, with each successive layer in a perpendicular direction such that unlike NLT, DLT or GLT the grain of the wood is oriented in perpendicular directions rather than a single direction. This allows for a greater dimensional stability and a two-way span capability and possibility of being point-supported with just a column and without beams. However, most CLT floor panels are still used as primarily one-way systems in conjunction with beams and columns given the simpler engineering involved and greater spans and column spacing that it enables. But the two-way structural capacity of CLT panels also makes it ideal not only as floor or roof (horizontal) panels but also as wall (vertical) panels. Many buildings utilize CLT in this way as load bearing walls and even as building cores for egress stairs, elevators and mechanical, designed to also take on lateral loads such as wind and seismic loads.
As versatile as CLT but very different in appearance is Mass Plywood Panel or MPP. MPP are simply layers of plywood (usually 4’x8’ and ~1” thick) laminated on top of each other to make thick, wide and longer panels of 8’ x 40’ or greater and from 4” to over 1’ thick, similar to CLT, NLT and DLT. Like CLT, MPP can span in two directions, be point supported with just columns and are dimensionally more stable. It can also be used as floors or walls and take on lateral loads. But unlike CLT in which each layer is made of 2x boards which can be seen, it’s made of plywood and one can see the whole or partial pieces of the 4’x8’ plywood in its appearance.
Although CLT precedes MPP, as plywood preceded CLT and as they both can span in two directions as they have the grain of wood oriented in perpendicular directions, CLT is sometimes referred to as “plywood on steroids.” Similarly, as CLT, like DLT and MPP are made in a highly automated factories with multi-million dollar investments in the production equipment-such as presses, CNC machines, glueing, dowelling, sorting and finger jointing machines with butterfly tables and vaccum lifts-all with associated costs. NLT has been referred to as “poor man’s CLT” given its relatively low cost and low production factors.
Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) and Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL) are veneer or strand-based products with much higher glue to fiber ratio and mainly used for their additional strength properties as compared to lumber, often as columns or beams in conjunction with light frame wood construction where stronger members are needed. Though they can be exposed to view, they are often hidden behind drywall just like light frame wood construction. Though they are technically in the mass timber category, they are less associated with mass timber as they are not used for large floor or wall panels or columns or beams that support them as described earlier with with CLT, NLT, DLT, MPP, GLT and glulams.
Senate Committee Hearing on Budget on now with Chief Randy Moore. If you have questions that you would like to know more about, please put in our comments and we will try to dig deeper. Here’s a link to the Chief’s written testimony.
