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This is the second part of the second article in a two-part series regarding fire management by the US Forest Service near the towns of Oakridge and Westfir, Oregon. The first article focused on forest restoration and prescribed burning on Jim’s Creek, in the Willamette National Forest, and was linked and discussed here: https://forestpolicypub.com/2024/11/01/jims-creek-restoration-a-burning-opportunity/

This second article regards wildfire management and reforestation planning on the Cedar Creek Burn, also in the Willamette National Forest, is 3500 words, has eight photos, a map, and a detailed table, so I have posted in two parts. Here is Part 1: https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/01/09/the-2022-cedar-creek-fire-the-1897-organic-act-part-1/

Both articles are part of a 13-year series I have been writing for Oregon Fish & Wildlife Journal, and the complete current article can be found here:   http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Articles/Magazines/Oregon_Fish_&_Wildlife_Journal/20250108_Cedar_Creek/Zybach_20250108.pdf

Fig. 5. Industrial Plantation. Following WW II, most reforestation in the Douglas Fir Region has been to industrial standards, with a focus on fiber production and future jobs. Planting seedlings in rows following logging or wildfire, or converting old meadows, prairies, and berry fields to trees, results in a significant loss of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, while creating increased opportunity for deadly crown fires. Russ Sapp and Dave Sullivan in Preacher Creek plantation in Lincoln County. Photo by author, April 5, 2024.

1897 Organic Act

 In 1897 Congress passed the “Organic Act” to manage and protect US public forestlands. The bill was signed into law by President William McKinley and has never been repealed.

The guiding principal of the Act remains fairly well-known to this time, and has been the theoretical basis to all subsequent USFS planning:

“No public forest reservation shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.”

A lesser-recognized portion of the Act also states it was “for the purpose of preserving the living and growing timber and promoting the younger growth on forest reservations” — and, in that regard, authority was given to “designate and appraise so much of the dead, matured, or large growth of trees found upon such forest reservations” for sale at “not less” than the appraised value, under the condition it couldn’t be “exported” to another State or Territory.

In a nutshell, “living and growing timber” was intended to be “preserved,” “younger growth” was to be “promoted,” and a “continuous supply” of “dead, matured, or large” trees were to be sold at market value. “For the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.”

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, working closely with Yale-educated forester and close associate, Gifford Pinchot, transferred management of the Forest Reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture, creating the US Forest Service.

Pinchot became the first Chief of the new agency and wrote that its mission would be: “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

Theoretically, that has remained the mission of the Forest Service to the present time, and all subsequent forest planning laws and regulations are based on this vision and the 1897 Organic Act; including the “expanded purposes” of  the 1960 Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act (MUSY) and the 1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA).

The 1960 Act included the considerations of range, water, recreation, and wildlife, along with timber, as renewable resources, and the 1976 Act changed forest planning by requiring the Forest Service to use an “interdisciplinary approach” to resource management — and to include “public involvement in preparing and revising forest plans.”

Fig. 6. Crevice Creek Plantation. This 60-year-old  industrial-type plantation along Crevice Creek experienced 100% mortality. Despite the relative small size of these snags, they will remain very flammable and an increasing risk of wildfire if they are not removed. Although they no longer have value for lumber production, they can likely be used to produce commercial fuel pellets for several more years. Note the two-year understory of invasive grasses and brush that have replaced the green trees and shaded ground. They will form volatile flash and potential ladder fuels for the thousands of tons of dry, pitchy firewood that has been created. Photo by author, October 28, 2024.

Local Effects: Smoke & Jobs

 Bryan Cutchen is the Mayor of Oakridge, and he says wildfire smoke for the past four years, from the Cedar Creek Fire and others, has done great damage to the town’s recreation and hospitality businesses. Others in the community point to the 2015 and 2017 fire years as a major beginning to these events.

The combination of reputation and reality, smoky air, road closures, and burned campgrounds have kept people away from Oakridge in recent years. The discomfort and poor health associated with breathing smoke and the reduced visibility and public access following the fires has caused serious economic damage to the community.

 Rob DeHarpport was the third generation of his family to live in Oakridge. His grandfather worked for the Forest Service and his father owned a store in town, and that’s where he graduated from High School in 1977 and has lived most of his life. After graduating, he spent a summer fighting fires with the Oakridge Ranger District, and from 2012 to 2015 he became Mayor of Westfir, before retiring and moving east of the Cascades.

During the years he was growing up in town, and for many years after, he can only recall a few times when Oakridge became smoky — typically for a day or two when smoke would drift into town from field burning in the Willamette Valley or from fall slash pile burning in the woods.

In 1975, when Tim Bailey began his career as a Forester for the Oakridge District Ranger Station, the town had eight gas stations, eight bars, two jewelry stores, two florist shops, a movie theatre, bowling alley, skating rink, and 400 people working at the Pope & Talbot Mill. Today there are three gas stations, up from just one a few years ago, and a one-man firewood cutting business.

Bailey’s memories are similar to DeHarpport’s regarding the general lack of smoky summers and falls. At that time Oakridge considered itself  the “Tree Planting Capital of the World” and still has an annual festival to recall those years.

When the 9,000-acre Shady Beach Fire burned in 1988, the 195 million board feet of snags and surviving trees were quickly sold and harvested — creating an estimated 200 local jobs — and the land was then planted. Today, it is a healthy stand of 35-year-old trees nearing merchantable size.

Bailey wasn’t directly involved in the Shady Beach Fire but was the silviculturist for the subsequent Warner Creek Fire. The starkly different histories of the two fires characterized the dramatic change in USFS management philosophies that took place with the arrival of spotted owls in the Douglas Fir Region in 1990.

This Table with shows all Air Quality Index (AQI) numbers and PM25 measures for Oakridge, Eugene, Sisters, and Bend during the smokiest days for those communities during the Cedar Creek Fire. All days that reached an AQI of 100 are listed; those above 200 are bolded; and all above 300 are also made red.

The highest PM25 readings for those days are also given, and because Sisters was only impacted for a few days, progressive fire sizes are also listed in that column.

These data were provided by Ryan Porter, who authored the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) report on Oregon statewide air quality for 2022. DEQ AQI numbers are based on a scale of 0-50 (Good); 51-100 (Moderate); 101-150 (Unhealthy for sensitive groups); 151-200 (Unhealthy); 201-300 (Very Unhealthy); and 301-500 (Hazardous).

Compare these numbers to those given earlier for September 10 in Seattle and Portland to better understand the localized severity of this problem.

PM25 numbers represent particulate matters in the air that are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. Readings above 35 are considered “unhealthy for short-term exposure,” and the National Institute of Health states that “people with respiratory diseases” account for a “large proportion” of “non-accidental deaths” in the US. The stated reason is because PM25 pollution “causes asthma, respiratory inflammation, jeopardizes lung functions, and even promotes cancers.”

A recent public health study concluded that more than 10,000 people a year in the US die from wildfire smoke pollution, and recent University of California research indicated PM25 exposure from wildfire smoke likely killed 55,000 Californians alone in the 11 years from 2008 to 2018.

Fig. 7. Second-growth Douglas fir progeny competing with ancestral old-growth for sunlight, water, and soil. The original wide-spacing of the older trees is indicated by the large stobs that remain from lower limbs lost to competitive shading along their trunks. These remaining old-growth are now at increasing risk of a crown fire, in addition to direct competition from younger trees. Removing the second-growth to protect the old-growth could be accomplished at a good profit, as well as greatly reducing risk of crown fire and resulting loss of remaining old-growth. Photo by author, April 5, 2024.

Recommendations

What can be done to fix this deadly, costly mess? It took 35 years for the Willamette National Forest to transform itself from an increasingly unpopular actively-managed clearcutting marketplace to a seasonal inferno, causing massive air pollutions for weeks, killing millions of wildlife and old-growth trees, bankrupting local businesses, ruining the scenery, ending recreation, blocking our public roads with gates, and charging US taxpayers billions of dollars to make it all possible.

Even though significant fault can be found with the design of previous timber sales and reforestation projects, a course correction rather than a complete reversal would have been a more reasonable approach to spotted owl politics. Subsequent planning processes and environmental lawsuits have been allowed — and even encouraged through favorable rulings and legislation — to transform our once beautiful and productive National Forests into ugly, costly, and deadly firebombs. How to fix?

These photos, and millions of others, clearly show the problem. Passively managed conifer forestlands and plantations don’t somehow magically transform themselves into “critical habitat” for obscure animals, or into 400-year-old stands of trees teeming with “biodiversity.” No, some grow old, they die, and if nothing is done, they burn and are replaced with a new generation of plants, often the same species, but in different configurations.

The real problem began in the 1970s and the deep ecology movement, when the woods became “wildlands” and people were pathogens and the enemies of “nature.” Then the academic myth of the “healthy forest” containing “big, dead, standing trees,” large logs scattered around on the ground, and a “multi-layered canopy of diverse species” was invented.

To these “New Forestry” ecologists, life appeared to exist in a terrarium, where the ideal was a “non-declining, even-flow, naturally functioning ecosystem” teeming with endangered species and incredible biodiversity. Their computers “proved” this ideal could be achieved “again” — if only we’d eliminate people, their matches, and their wildlife-disturbing road systems.

Environmental activists, their lawyers, and politicians attempted to transform this fiction into a vision for our public lands, and it has never worked. Instead, death, fire, smoke, and poverty has resulted — as clearly predicted by actual foresters and knowledgeable residents.

If this fire had happened 40 years ago, in 1982 instead of 2022, many things would have been different. Tens of thousands of fewer acres would have burned; millions more wildlife would have lived; thousands more old-growth would have survived; there would have been only a fraction of the smoke for far fewer days; and the wood would have been immediately salvaged — and at a profit to local families and to American taxpayers. Then the land would have been reforested as well as possible, based on the best intentions at that time.

A concerted effort to return to the common sense purposes of the 1897 Organic Act, Pinchot’s fundamental mission statement, the 10:00 AM Policy, and the 1962 MUSY would be wonderful. That would be my best recommendation.

This is the second article in a two-part series regarding fire management by the US Forest Service near the towns of Oakridge and Westfir, Oregon. The first article focused on forest restoration and prescribed burning on Jim’s Creek, in the Willamette National Forest, and was linked and discussed here: https://forestpolicypub.com/2024/11/01/jims-creek-restoration-a-burning-opportunity/

This second article is 3500 words, has eight photos. a map, and a detailed table, so I’m going to post in two parts: the timeline and extent — with opinions — on the 2022 Cedar Creek Fire; and the health and economic impacts of the fire on local communities as compared to historical Forest Service responsibilities — with recommendations. Both articles are part of a 13-year series I have been writing for Oregon Fish & Wildlife Journal, and this current article can be found here:   http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Articles/Magazines/Oregon_Fish_&_Wildlife_Journal/20250108_Cedar_Creek/Zybach_20250108.pdf

Fig. 1. Cedar Creek Fire Smoke Plume, September 9, 2022. Plume is from the west side of Maiden Peak, viewed from the south end of Davis Lake about 4:00 PM. Foreground snags are mostly ponderosa pine from the 2003 Davis Fire, which burned 23,000 acres. Some salvage logging had taken place but was stopped by litigation. Reproduction is mostly ponderosa and lodgepole pine, with some Douglas fir, which may have been planted among the natural seeding. Plume is blowing toward Bend. Photo by Rob DeHarpport.

The 2022 Cedar Creek Fire in Lane County and the Willamette National Forest in western Oregon, burned 127,311 acres. This number included 11,709 acres of so-called “critical habitat” (which the Forest Service calls “CH”) for spotted owls (“NSO”), as defined by college professors (PhDs), litigation (EAJA), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Local towns of Oakridge and Westfir were severely threatened by the wildfire, were blanketed with unhealthy smoke for nearly six weeks, and forced to evacuate entirely for four days while power was shut down.

This didn’t need to happen. The wildfire was said to have been poorly managed by the Forest Service (“USFS”) for an entire month before predictably exploding on an east wind in early September. By the time it was fully extinguished on November 22, taxpayers had spent more than 132 million dollars to employ more than 2500 firefighters that had operated dozens of helicopters and heavy equipment for the previous three months..

I visited the Cedar Creek Burn a few months ago with three friends to view the results of two years of Forest Service projects following the fire. We had to get a special permit to pass a locked gate that was installed to keep the public away from the site. That seemed to be it: approximately two billion-plus feet of standing timber, rotting in place, primed to burn again — only much hotter next time — no apparent response, and the public is locked out.

The November, 2022 USFS BAER (“Burned Area Emergency Response”) report doesn’t mention the obviously increased risk of deadly wildfire, but states instead that: “Threats include additional loss of habitat in the fire area due to blowdown, mass soil movement, flooding, and insects and disease.” But not wildfire?

Further: “A secondary issue includes determination if the proposed BAER stabilization treatments could affect spotted owl nest sites or result in disruption of nesting if conducted during the critical breeding season from March 1-July 15.”

Say what?  More than 125,00 acres of trees are dead, nearly 12,000 acres of so-called “CH” has been destroyed, and yet the government can’t do anything about it for half the year because of SWO “critical breeding season?” How can this be written, reviewed, and publicly distributed, much less taken seriously?

Speaking in metrics and acronyms and producing voluminous busy-work reports seems to be the effective strategy. Also, the apparent NSO CH “critical breeding period” has apparently now been extended to the entire year, as there was no evidence at all of either USFS or spotted owl occupation at that time — just a locked gate.

Cedar Creek Fire Timeline

The Cedar Creek Fire started by lightning strikes on August 1, 2022, on the Willamette National Forest, about 15 miles east of the towns of Oakridge and Westfir. According to the BAER report, it couldn’t be extinguished as it “grew rapidly” in “inaccessible terrain,” and then was “held at control features for around one month” until the east winds arrived — as generally expected — in early September.

It is currently unknown why smokejumpers weren’t sent to extinguish the fire, but a helicopter with two “rappelers” flew over at 4:45 PM and reported it was about two acres in size and “burning in heavy timber midway up a 40% slope on a significant cliff with limited options for egress.”

At that point the rappelers turned down the assignment, reporting the terrain was “too hazardous for safe access.” Instead, a plan was developed to hike firefighters into the fire “during the next shift,” while helicopters performed bucket drops to limit its growth. The fire was estimated to be about five acres on August 2 and grew to an estimated 500 acres on August 3.

 By August 15, the fire had grown to 4,422 acres with 0% containment. All recreational trailheads and dispersed camping were closed both west and north of Waldo Lake. The following day, August 16, the Forest Service posted this statement, along with a three-minute video on its new Facebook public information page:

“Since it started on August 1st, the Cedar Creek Fire has been slowly getting bigger, moving east into wilderness and roadless areas, and south towards the bottom of Cedar and Black Creeks. Hundreds of firefighters have been deployed around the fire, creating primary and backup firelines. This effort is guided by a strategic planning process that combines the latest fire science with on-the ground observations and years of firefighting experience. To learn more about the strategic planning process and why it is being used at Cedar Creek, watch this short video.”

Fig. 2. “Nature’s Clearcut.” View of increasing risk of wildfire the longer these snags remain in place. What had been large, growing plants filled with water were transformed in minutes by fire into massive amounts of pitchy, air-dried firewood. Unless something is done with these dead trees, the next fire through here — as with all predictable Douglas fir reburns — will be much hotter and cause more widespread damage than this fire. When snags fall before they reburn, they can also cause far  more damage to the soil. Mark Cosby and Rob DeHarpport provide scale. Photo by author, October 28, 2024.

On August 27, the fire had grown to 7,632 acres with 0% containment. The “strategic planning process” involved possibly the very first use of USFS “PODs”:

“The District identified a contingency line based on a fuels assessment known as PODs (Potential Operational Delineations) well west of the incident. This line would provide a reliable fuel break in the event of a major east wind as well as any future fires that may threaten the communities of Oakridge and Westfir. While fire modeling and seasonality during the early stages of the incident did not indicate a strong likelihood that this line would be utilized, all the teams assigned continued to work on this contingency option.”

On September 4 the fire began burning through the 1996 10,400-acre Charlton Burn in the Wilderness along the north side of Waldo Lake. The fire had never been salvaged or treated and was covered with fallen snags that burned very hot and sterilized the soil in much of the area.

By September 8, the fire had grown from 27,000 acres and reached over 73,000 acres according to news sources — however, the government reported an increase to only 33,000 acres, and growing to 52,000 acres on September 10.

On September 9, the USFS official online information source for wildfires, “InciWeb,” reported the “Current Situation” as: “East winds, low humidities, and high temperatures will cause the fire to be active today. The highest activity will occur where lichen is present in trees and there is a high concentration of down wood. Where winds align with slopes, tree canopy fire and fire spotting are anticipated. E winds 15-20; gusts to 50.”

Given this report, the Lane County Sherriff’s Department made the decision to move Oakridge and Westfir into a “Level 3” evacuation, where residents are asked to leave by a given time and access roads are typically blocked. Powerlines were “de-energized” throughout the wind event and the duration of the evacuations, which were ordered for the following day.

Smoke from the fire moved into southwest Washington on September 10, and Seattle recorded the worst air quality of any major city in the world, with Portland coming in third out of the top 90, and Lahore, Pakistan sandwiched between the two. Seattle’s “AQI” was 170 and Portland’s was 152 (more on this later).

Fig 3. Blair Lake. This was a popular recreation spot for fishing and boating before the Cedar Creek Fire. It is now gated off from the public and surrounded by dead trees. In earlier times the lake would have formed a natural firebreak, and it is unlikely that the large amount of second-growth trees that crowned would have been present in such large numbers. A few trees that survived the fire might be good as a seed source for future reforestation efforts. No information on reopening. Photo by author, October 28, 2024.

Sometime at this point the fire began burning into the infamous 1991 Warner Creek Fire scar, which had made national news for several years due to threatened legal actions and active anti-logging protests by “concerned environmentalists.”

The 8,973-acre fire had cost $10 million to control and killed an estimated 180 million board feet (mmbf) of timber. Of this amount, only 35 mmbf were scheduled for sale, but two years of protests reduced that number to nine mmbf. Five years of protests and litigation later, no salvage had been completed, and the proposed sales number became only two mmbf. Then, 540,000 board feet were finally sold, and then the sale canceled. In September 2022, it all burned up.

By September 11 the fire had grown to 86,000 acres, more than 2,000 homes had been evacuated, and all highway access to the towns was blocked. Two days later the power was restored, and residents were allowed to return to their homes.

On September 12 the wind had shifted to the northwest and smoke began affecting air quality in Sisters and Bend, while clearing the air in Oakridge for a few days.

Fig. 4. Spring Prairie. There are numerous oak trees, huckleberry patches, and beargrass meadows in the Willamette National Forest in the vicinity of Oakridge. These are strong indications the land was regularly occupied and burned by Molalla and Klamath people during early historical time — and likely for many generations before. Several of the surviving trees around the prairie’s perimeter might be good seed sources for future reforestation efforts. Photo by author, October 28, 2024.

On September 16, the Central Oregon Daily News reported the fire had grown to 92,596 acres and videotaped Joan Kluwe, the “Public Information Officer for the Alaska Incident Management Team,” saying: “We have 92 engines, 39 crews, 113 types of heavy equipment, and 19 helicopters working on the fire.”

The total cost to “fight the fire, maintain and operate the machinery and take care of the personnel” to that date was given as $57,946,000.

On September 25, the fire had grown to 114,104 acres with 20% containment.

By October 27, the fire was 127,283 acres with 60% containment. Due to seasonal dropping temperatures and rising humidity, fire progression had nearly stopped, and the workforce had been reduced to two crews, one helicopter, two masticators. and four engines.

The following day, Fall rains and snow began, and finally, on November 22, the Cedar Creek Fire was declared “out.”

NEXT: Part 2.

Many thanks to Taylor, who submitted a very helpful comment that answered many questions in my post yesterday. I’m reposting it here to highlight it for people who don’t read the comments. Again, I think making the government work as well as possible and holding everyone to the same standards builds trust in government. So here are Taylor’s observations and key links. Many of you will be in meetings with new and former government employees, so this tell you what to look for, and to whom you should report violations.

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From Taylor:

As a former career SES who is now in private industry, I was required to have a conversation with the USDA Office of Ethics before I left and was provided a letter of my restrictions. (I was actually required to notify the Office of Ethics when I was initially approached about the job and had to recuse myself from that point on any matters having to do with my prospective employer). My employer asked for that letter before I received a final offer.

It is pretty complicated (it is law after all) but basically, I was not allowed to have ANY contact with anyone in the Executive or Judicial Branches of government for one year (personal friendships excluded). I was not allowed to represent an entity before the USDA on any matter completed or pending while I was at USDA for the second year. I am restricted from representing an entity FOREVER on most anything I was involved in while at USDA. However, I was able to provide “behind the curtain” guidance during those two years without any restrictions.

The key to the Ethics issue once you are outside the government is WHO you are representing and to WHOM. Generally, TSM can’t represent the Wilderness Society for at least one year before anyone in the Executive or Judicial Branches. Can’t be in a meeting, on the phone, cc’d in an email. NO mention of her name by the Wilderness Society for one year for most situations (obviously there are some exceptions).

In general, Executives and SES have much stricter restrictions than GS. If you are a GS employee leaving to work for a company that wants to do business with the government or influence it, I highly recommend you reach out to Ethics before you leave just to be safe. And if you had anything to do with contracting decisions (whether on an evaluation team, contracting officer or program manager), be sure to ask them about the Procurement Integrity Act restrictions you may be under!

This makes me wonder about grants versus contracting in terms of choosing grantees compared to contractors.  Also, do ethics concerns about contracting go away if the contracting is actually done by a grantee?

As for how this is monitored-we all know that federal employees are moral to a fault, so there shouldn’t be any issues, right? But, when necessary, Hotline reports to OIG or employees who report contact to their leadership are the most likely methods for enforcement. (For me, it is the fear of jailtime!) There will be an investigation, possible fines and even jail time depending on the situation.

There simply isn’t any other way for Ethics to monitor all of the former employees without a little help from current employees. During my time at USDA, I had a few reports from my staff of contact by prior SES/political appointees and I took the appropriate actions.

I think that this is worthy of note for employees.

The USDA Office of Ethics has some great information on all of this at https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/staff-offices/office-ethics/rules-road
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/staff-offices/office-ethics/training-resources
There is even “an app for that”!

Here are some basic references:
Post-Employment Representation Prohibitions: 18 USC § 207
The Post-Employment Restrictions Limit Communications and Representations Before the Executive Branch and the Federal Judiciary.
One Year Restriction on Communications by Senior Officials –
18 U.S.C. § 207(c)
Permanent or “Lifetime” Prohibition on Representations Concerning Party Matters – 18 USC § 207(a)(1)
Two Year “Official Responsibility” Restriction – 18 USC § 207(a)(2)
18 U.S.C. Section 207(b) and 207(f): Additional Legal Restrictions Which Include Prohibitions for Representing Foreign Entities and Concerning Foreign Trade Agreements and Treaties.

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Thanks again to Taylor.

This post is in the interest of holding all Administrations to account for the same set of ethics and conflict of interest rules.  First I’ll tell a story.

Once upon a time I worked for the Forest Service. Part of my job was working on a project with a State.  It turned out that my boss’s boss decided to apply for a job with the very same State.  It also turned out that due to my project, I happened to be in meetings where various applicants were discussed.  In retrospect (attention current employees!) my teasing this individual via text about their prospects while I was in these meetings was not a good idea, although quite fun at the time.  He did not recuse himself from working on this project.  This seemed like a problem to me of ethics, so I brought it to one of the next level above me (below this individual).  She told me that other governments don’t count when it comes to conflict of interest.  This struck me as questionable since the State and the Feds do not always have the same interest.  Other things were going on, so I didn’t pursue it until much later, when, as I recall, the USDA Ethics folks told me that this individual should have recused themselves, but it was too late to do anything.

So what is the point of this story?  The point is that long-term, knowledgeable career folks may not be up on all the details of ethics.  It’s one of those (many) topics which make total sense to you when you take the training, but sometime in your career you develop questions, and the online training or write-ups on the internet don’t help, you need an expert. Who can be hard to reach, and since you don’t know them, they could get you in trouble.

But actually there are two topics here.  The first is “do we all understand what the rules are” and the second is “are these rules actually enforced?”.    This is important right now because career feds have one set of rules (actually I think SES folks have different rules than the rest of us) and political appointees have another set of rules.  Especially politicals are of interest, but SES and other folks may well be coming and going, applying for jobs or entering the federal workforce.

The most obvious example of this in terms of politicals is the Director of the BLM. From E&E News:

Tracy Stone-Manning’s planned exit as director of the Bureau of Land Management next year highlights the looming change in public land policies coming as President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The Wilderness Society announced Tuesday that Stone-Manning will take over as president of the prominent conservation group starting Feb. 24. The organization touted the move as a natural fit after Stone-Manning’s tenure at BLM, where she has prioritized renewable energy development and making conservation a greater priority on BLM land, along with grazing, oil and gas drilling, and recreation.

Now for me, it’s hard to imagine anything that BLM does that TWS isn’t involved with.  Is Tracy recusing herself from everything? How would we know?  There would have to be some kind of whistleblower, and a press who is interested in these kinds of problems with a D Admin.  And they would both (whistleblower and press) have to understand the rules.

From the outside, the problem appears similar for incoming political appointees.   Chris Wright has been nominated to be Secretary of Energy.  He’s pretty much said how he feels about things. From Doomberg here.

Things get even more promising when one studies Wright’s policy positions on energy. In early 2024, Liberty Energy published a 180-page policy document titled “Bettering Human Lives,” and we are hard-pressed to find anything to disagree with. The ten “Key Takeaways” from the summary page read as follows:

1. Energy is essential to life and the world needs more of it!

2. The modern world today is powered by and made of hydrocarbons.

3. Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized seven billion people who aspire to be among the world’s lucky one billion.

4. Hydrocarbons supply more than 80% of global energy and thousands of critical materials and products.

5. The American Shale Revolution transformed energy markets, energy security, and geopolitics.

6. Global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal are all at record levels and rising – no energy transition has begun.

7. Modern alternatives, like solar and wind, provide only a part of electricity demand and do not replace the most critical uses of hydrocarbons. Energy-dense, reliable nuclear could be more impactful.

8. Making energy more expensive or unreliable compromises people, national security, and the environment.

9. Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.

10. Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero 2050.

Wright appears to be a fan of “all of the above.” Is that conflict of interest or not- as far as I know he is the CEO of an energy company and is also invested in nuclear?  It seems like much of our “conflict of interest” thinking is based on salaries or stock options.  That’s fine as it goes, but as we have seen with Covid origins, there are other factors like disciplinary hegemony, or professional rear-end covering, that can also lead to conflicts of interest.  Or even, as we have seen in 20th century history, purely ideological motives can lead to the most horrendous outcomes.

Time for a C.S. Lewis quote:

 Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

So here’s the way I see it.  Tracy and Chris have their own earnestly held views.  They are hired by organizations that support their views, when they are not working for government, promoting their previously and futurely held views.

Some readers of TSW have been political appointees so they know what the rules are.  Do these rules seem to work? Are they even enforced? I’m thinking no one would necessarily risk speaking out during a person’s employment, and no one is watching post-employment.  Even though the ethics rules are different for politicals, SES, and ordinary employees, do we think that they are working in practice?

To circle back, I think that applying for jobs outside your current government job should lead you to recuse yourself from involvement in related projects.  Because that can be an obvious COI between a) what the applied-to entity wants, b) your career goals, and c) the good of your current employer.   And it comes down to specific projects to me, rather than an inclination, which political appointees (and in fact, all of us) have.  TWS litigates project X, person from TWS comes into government and gets involved in project X.  No. Or Energy Company supports project X and person from Energy Company comes in and gets involved.  It seems they should both be “no”, but if no one is watching? And I think the “no gifts and monetary bribes” is  a good thing, but is enforcement dependent on whistleblowers?

What do you think? Please link to any documents about federal employee, SES or political COI and ethics requirements.

No federal natural resource agency has been more successful than the U.S. Forest Service in increasing its budget. Since adoption of the National Fire Plan in 2000, the Forest Service has enjoyed an unparalleled increase in its appropriations. Unlike its DOI cousins (FWS, BLM, and NPS), only the Forest Service has been able to increase spending above the rate of inflation, as shown in the graphs below.

The Trump administration Version 1.0 tried to staunch this spending growth, but to no avail. Congress repeatedly ignored Trump’s proposed Forest Service budget cuts and kept the FS’s money flowing. The Forest Service’s war on fire proved an implacable foe to Trump’s green eyeshade crowd.

Will Trump 2.0 have more success? Or will DOGE decide that the Forest Service’s bi-partisan congressional support for its 25-year-old war is too powerful to fight? My guess, for what it’s worth, is that DOGE will suffer the same fate my beloved Oregon Ducks did in the Rose Bowl. 😩

PS: In response to comment #1, here is a graph showing the wildland firefighting/fuels treatment percent of the Forest Service’s appropriations.

PPS: In response to Bob’s comment, here is a graph showing the Forest Service’s total (i.e., sum of appropriated plus K-V dollars) reforestation budget from 2000 to 2024 in real and nominal dollars. In the old timbering days (circa 1950s-1990s), most reforestation costs were associated with clearcut logging. Fire has replaced clearcutting as the major reforestation need. But the linkage between a fire and its reforestation is no longer as transparent as the old timber sale K-V plans.

Happy Holidays to everyone, and I’ll see you back here January 6.

I did run across some new holiday stories of interest. From our fungal friends:

The Influence of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms on Christmas

Robert Gordon Wasson, an ethnomycologist, and anthropologist John A. Rush have investigated fungi, the religious and ritualistic perspective and also their psychotropic properties. In their research, both came to the conclusion that the Amanita muscaria mushroom is closely related to the Christmas imaginary.

‍Hundreds of years ago, it was found that the winter solstice ceremony of the indigenous people of the North Pole, especially the Koryaks of Siberia and the Kamchadales, had similar traditions to the ones of the last century’s Christmas Eve.

‍In the ancestral communities of the Arctic, the winter solstice, which occurs on December 21st, was a ceremonial and festive date. Rituals were conducted that were guided by shamans who collected the Amanita muscaria mushroom, also called fly agaric, which has powerful hallucinogenic properties.

Going down the chimney, flying through the sky, red and white colors.. I never made this association before.

For tree people:

O Cedar Tree

O Cedar Tree by Rainbow Medicine-Walker includes a link to the Lummi Song “O Cedar Tree.”  She discusses the Utah junipers of her youth (called cedars) and other tree species called cedars.

I have always loved the “O Christmas Tree”/“O Tannenbaum” carol, which speaks so eloquently of the beauty and symbolism of the evergreen tree. So it was perhaps inevitable I would strongly resonate with the Lummi Cedar Tree song when I relocated here to the Pacific Northwest several decades ago.

This deceptively simple song expresses the essence of the western red cedar to the Coast Salish tribal peoples. One need only take a moment to watch a cedar dancing with the wind, its dangling green fronds clapping together like multiple hands, to understand that Cedar reaches out in all directions to share healing gifts—all we need do to receive them is reach back.

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The original “O Tannenbaum” (of the German carol) refers not to a cedar, but to the European silver fir (Abies alba), which is closely related to the fragrant Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) here in my area. The strong aroma exuded by our local silver fir is an effective mood elevator. I find it impossible to be glum when I have a branch in close proximity. So while it is not one of the sacred ‘cedars,’ it is still a powerful evergreen sentinel of a wild forest chock full of abundant healing.

Evergreens in general have come to symbolize the hope of rebirth and the everlasting renewal of life. At what time and for whatever reason the first humans brought evergreen branches and even whole trees inside of their dwellings, the practice has stuck. In Western culture, in modern times, we mostly do this during the Christmas season: a perfect time to remind ourselves—with the help of the fragrant evergreen Tree People—that even in the midst of darkness and uncertainty, life continues on.

Light, love, peace and joy to all!

From High Country News:

The aftermath of the Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon Fires

Devastation is hard to face, but turning away is harder.

“”The fire — the largest in New Mexico’s history — burned 341,725 acres, and it’s been a significant blow to the remote agricultural communities affected by it and an already precarious way of life.”

A few months ago I posted about the ongoing and informal National Wildfire Institute (NWI) and its current efforts in context to its past history: https://forestpolicypub.com/2024/10/02/burned-out-us-forest-service-is-destroying-our-western-towns/

One of these efforts is the “National Wildfire Emergency” project envisioned and spearheaded by Lake Tahoe writer, Dana Tibbitts, whose current and former homes have been subjected to evacuations, wildfire threats, and deadly smoke pollution several times in the current and recent years.

A cornerstone to this effort has been three recorded Zoom meetings with 16 prepared statements by 14 participants — including a dozen national and regional experts on wildfire management and forest restoration. I have been working with Dana and Nadine Bailey and Luke Van Mol by developing transcriptions of the various statements in order to better document these events and contribute to the video editing process.

One of the experts contributing to this project is Phil Aune. His statements are very much in accordance with recent discussions on this blog regarding the abrupt departure from proven reforestation methods and research by the US Forest Service and others in the 1980s:

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My name is Phil Aune. I have a 50-year career in the forestry arena — 37 years with the U.S. Forest Service, and with my last assignment as 13 years as a research program manager. After that I served six years as Vice-President of the California Forestry Association, and since I flunked retirement after we moved to Spokane, Washington, I went to work as a consultant for the American Forest Resource Council.

We’ve lived in Spokane, Washington for the last 20 years, but I constantly go back to California [to] see my grandchildren, and on the way I usually take time to look at some of the wildfires. It’s easy to see —  they’re everywhere.

I’m also on the Board of Directors of the Evergreen Foundation, that’s Jim’s [Petersen] foundation, and I’m also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Museum of Forest Service History.

What I’m here to talk about today is what I call “the legacy.” The legacy of wildfires. And I’m primarily talking about Oregon, Washington, and California, where I have some experience. I also see it in Idaho and Montana, in my travels around those States.

The first point I see is the vast majority of the dead trees are not being salvaged. The first legacy that we’re going to see is thousands and thousands of acres of black, standing trees, as long as they’re standing for the next 20 to 30 years.

Meanwhile, trees will ultimately die and fall to the ground and become fuel for the inevitable next wildfire, making it even more difficult to control and, more importantly, all that fuel will now be on the surface, and that surface fuels will concentrate the heat on the upper end of the soil profile, severely damaging the soil.

So it’s a long-term productivity effect that no one has really researched extensively — to follow up exactly what’s happening to these wildfires, especially the reburns that have occurred in wildfire areas.

Very little of the ground in the legacy is being reforested, and we’re developing a huge reforestation backlog. Keep in mind that in 1976, in a National Forest Management Act portion, Congress dictated us — to the Forest Service — to develop the reforestation background.

And here’s what the National Forest Management Act said, in Section 4 (d)(1): “It is the policy of Congress that all forested lands in the National Forest system shall be maintained in appropriate forest cover . . .”

“Shall be maintained in appropriate forest cover!” Where in the heck is that going on?

“. . . with the species of tree, degree of stocking, rate of growth, and conditions of stands designated to secure the maximum benefits for multiple use and stained yield concepts in the land management, according to the land management plans.”

So why aren’t they reforesting these lands? That’s a big question.

Congress even developed the funding mechanism necessary to reforest all the lands in the backlog. It was called R and I Fund: “Reforestation and Stand Improvement.” The money came from offshore oil receipts. It wasn’t even a problem in getting the funds — and if we start looking at our resources in total, we can expand our oil production, expand our revenues from that. It all works together to making life easier for everyone.

The real reforestation backlog that was declared in 1976 has grown substantially. And if you look at the last 20 years, that’s where the bulk of the backlog is growing.

Well, what’s going to happen to all of these lands?

The lands that are not actively reforested will change into brush and hardwood communities for the next 75 to 100 years. Yes, they will naturally regenerate, but how much time do you have? How much time do our children have?How much time do our grandchildren, our great grandchildren? This is a real issue. We’re leaving black forest and brush fields in what once was magnificent conifer forest . . . that’s the condition that our grandchildren will receive.

Next point I’d like to make is we don’t have to do that. We have the knowledge and skills from science-based reforestation. And I can speak personally from that, as a research program manager whose mission was to look at the entire reforestation cycle for the last . . . 13 years of my career — plus the practical experience I had during the time Iwas in active management.

The Forest Service has this background, and it includes the following necessary steps:

Collection and storage of the seeds — the cones and the seeds that we’re going to need to reforest the land. It’s a no-brainer. We have to establish nurseries to grow these seedlings. We don’t have to have bare-root nurseries. We can go with container nurseries. But the Forest Service has to start expanding if they’re ever going to get back on top of thereforestation backlog.

Here’s probably the most critical point: you need prompt salvage of the wildfires. Roger [Jaegel] spoke about that at length. That what’s happening — if you don’t salvage them, those trees are still going to be there, and they’re fuel. And then, from a common-sense point of view: does it make sense to cut green trees when you got thousands and thousands of dead trees to cut that are still utilizable?

We need to do proper site preparation. We’ve got to have planting crews available. It’s a temporary work job, and we definitely need to provide for common-sense planting crews and have that workforce available.

The biggest point we have to do is prepare to reduce plant competition after planting because, as we live in most of the California, Oregon, and Washington, in the dry Mediterranean type of environments, the seedlings have to survive with the moisture that’s left in the soil, and unless you control the grass and the brush — competing plants — all of your planting efforts will be for nil, as many, many of the trees die. I’ve investigated thousands of acres of dead seedlings, and the biggest factor that you find after planting, and you go look at why they die, is we didn’t control plant competition.

Reforestation is a commitment to all of these processes — and just as much as not reforesting is a commitment to understanding and recognizing that it’s going to take centuries for all these forests to eventually regenerate naturally.

Joe [Reddan] mentioned the Organic Act of 1897. When Congress [passed the Act, it had as] one of the key purposes to provide for the protection and maintenance of our National Forests [ . . .]. How can we look the public in the eye and say: “we are providing for the protection and maintenance?”

The second major factor was: protect the headwaters of navigable streams. Where, on God’s Green Earth, have theyever protected the headwaters of navigable streams with using concepts like “managing wildfires for resourcebenefits,” which is just a euphemism for not fighting fires promptly.

The last one was that they — after they provide the protection and maintenance — the third purpose was to provide for continuous supply of timber for the citizens of the United States. Good luck on that one! Thank you very much.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I’ll be off until next Monday.

I am grateful to all of you at TSW, official contributors, guest posters, and commenters.  I’m thankful for Forest Service (and BLM) folks of all geographical areas and kinds of jobs, both for how they help us at TSW , and more generally for the great work that they do.  I’m calling out some of the less-appreciated folks here, special uses, including recreation; lands and minerals, and engineering. I’m thankful for FS partners and volunteers of all sizes and descriptions.

And, of course, the folks at Cloud Nine Web Design, WordPress, and all the folks keeping energy going to the various servers.

Roger Pielke, Jr. had some applicable quotes  from early 20th century American pragmatist, journalist and political commentator for our work here in his Thanksgiving post this morning.

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“Lippmann recognized that intellectual hospitality is easy to call for but difficult to achieve. In The Public Philosophy (1955), Lippmann observed presciently that achieving disagreement is not so easy:

[T]he modern media of mass communication do not lend themselves easily to a confrontation of opinions. The dialectical process for finding truth works best when the same audience hears all the sides of a disputation. . . Rarely, and on very few public issues, does the mass audience have the benefit of the process by which truth is sifted from error – the dialectic of debate in which there is immediate challenge, reply, cross-examination, and rebuttal.

Today’s legacy and social media, rather than ushering in an era of healthy democratic debate, have arguably made it easier for those so motivated to avoid encountering — and to prevent others from encountering — a diversity of legitimate views necessary to sift truth from error. Echo chambers, epistemic bubbles, block lists, partisan media, censorious content moderation, cancel culture and so on are dynamics that many of us are familiar with — some of us a bit too familiar, ahem — and that get in the way of the discourses that make democracy healthy and effective.

Lippmann argued that freedom of speech and genuine debate go together — each depends on the other. Politics best serves common interests when ideas are subjected to genuine debate.

Lippmann argues that genuine debate offers a check on what some today call “misinformation” and, perhaps ironically, the lack of genuine debate motivates calls for censorship by the most strident amongst us (emphases added):

[W]hen genuine debate is lacking, freedom of speech does not work as it is meant to work. It has lost the principle which regulates and justifies it – that is to say, dialectic conducted according to logic and the rules of evidence. If there is not effective debate, the unrestricted right to speak will unloose so many propagandists, procurers, and panders upon the public that sooner or later in self-defense the people will turn to censors to protect them. . .

For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Gresham’s law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate.

(Roger’s bold)

Here at THB, the core values of intellectual hospitality and genuine debate mean that we share a commitment to learning together and also, to figuring out how to live together. These values also underly the foundation of the American project — If there is American exceptionalism, it no doubt lies in the belief that an incredibly large and diverse collection of people desire to figure out how to live together, acknowledging the realities of differing values, opinions, and beliefs.

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I’ve been reading FDA nominee Marty Makary’s book “Blind Spots”.  In it he relates what researchers (in their appointed silos) work on, and relates that to his personal experience as a doc in a hospital.   Both practice and research inform his thinking and questions.

I’ve always intended TSW to be a place where practitioners and academics of all stripes, from legal to natural resources, can place their views and experiences in conversation.  So again, thanks to you all for your contributions.