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Some “best available sound science” to inform forest managers….

Key finding: “Across all fires, 43% of all plots had no conifer regeneration.”

But this comes as no surprise to foresters….

From “Predicting conifer establishment post wildfire in mixed conifer forests of the North American Mediterranean-climate zone,” by Kevin R. Welch et al, Ecosphere, December 2016. Link to full text.

Here’s the abstract.

Abstract. Due to fire suppression policies, timber harvest, and other management practices over the last century, many low- to mid-elevation forests in semiarid parts of the western United States have accumulated high fuel loads and dense, multi-layered canopies that are dominated by shade-tolerant and firesensitive conifers. To a great extent, the future status of western US forests will depend on tree species’ responses to patterns and trends in fire activity and fire behavior and postfire management decisions. This is especially the case in the North American Mediterranean-climate zone (NAMCZ), which supports the highest precipitation variability in North America and a 4- to 6-month annual drought, and has seen greater-than-average increases in air temperature and fire activity over the last three decades. We established 1490 survey plots in 14 burned areas on 10 National Forests across a range of elevations, forest types, and fire severities in the central and northern NAMCZ to provide insight into factors that promote natural tree regeneration after wildfires and the differences in postfire responses of the most common conifer species. We measured site characteristics, seedling densities, woody shrub, and tree growth. We specified a zero-inflated negative binomial mixed model with random effects to understand the importance of each measured variable in predicting conifer regeneration. Across all fires, 43% of all plots had no conifer regeneration. Ten of the 14 fires had median conifer seedling densities that did not meet Forest Service stocking density thresholds for mixed conifer forests. When regeneration did occur, it was dominated by shadetolerant but fire-sensitive firs (Abies spp.), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens). Seedling densities of conifer species were lowest in sites that burned at high severity, principally due to the biotic consequences of high severity fire, for example, increased distances to live seed trees and competition with fire-following shrubs. We developed a second model specifically for forest managers and restoration practitioners who work in yellow pine and mixed conifer forests in the central NAMCZ to assess potential natural regeneration in the years immediately following a fire, allowing them to prioritize which areas may need active postfire forest restoration and supplemental planting.

The following is a guest post by Dick Powell.

I’ve long harped about the American’s disconnect between the management and use of natural resources. This disconnect leads to a question of ethics, a question I’ve raised a number of times on this blog but no one seems interested in addressing that question (certainly not our elected officials or members of the environmental community!).

I recently came across a book, The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise, by Jim L. Bowyer, Professor Emeritus (Univ. of Minnesota), where this question of ethics is raised.

Bowyer quotes from a speech given by Douglas MacCleery, then Assistant Director of Forest Management of the USDA-Forest Service, at the “Building on Leopold’s Legacy” conference in Madison, WI on October 4, 1999.

Though lengthy, what follows is part of what Bowyer quoted from MacCleery’s presentation.

“Over the last two decades there has been a substantial shift in the management emphasis of public lands, particularly federal lands, in the United States. That shift has been to a substantially increased emphasis on managing these lands for biodiversity protection and amenity values, with a corresponding reduction in commodity outputs. Over the last decade, timber harvest on National Forest lands has dropped by 70 percent, oil and gas leasing by about 40 percent, and livestock grazing by at least 10 percent. [Keep in mind, this was presented in 1999.]

Many have attributed the move to ecosystem management or ecological sustainability to a belated recognition and adoption of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” – the idea that management of land has, or should have, an ethical content.

While a mission shift on U.S. public lands is occurring in response to changing public preferences, that same public is making no corresponding shift in its commodity consumption habits. The “dirty little secret” about the shift to ecological sustainability on U.S. public lands is that, in the face of stable or increasing per capita consumption in the U.S., the effect has been to shift the burden and impacts of that consumption to ecosystems somewhere else. For example, to private lands in the U.S. or to lands of other countries.”

MacCleery goes on to tell about how, between 1987 and 1997, annual federal timber harvests dropped from about 13 billion to 4 billion board feet. With high consumption, the effect was to simply transfer harvest to private U.S. lands and to Canada. Those Canadian imports rose from 12 to 18 billion board feet and from 27 to 36 percent of U.S. softwood lumber consumption – much of those imports came from native old-growth boreal forests. [That we strive to “save” our old-growth forests but then blindly consume Canada’s less productive old-growth boreal forests should, all by itself, raise a question of ethics!]

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, average American family size dropped by 16 percent while the average family home increased 48 percent.

MacCleery continues: “The U.S. conservation community and the media have given scant attention to the “ecological transfer effects” of the mission shift on U.S. public lands. Any ethical or moral foundation for ecological sustainability is weak indeed unless there is a corresponding focus on the consumption side of the natural resource equation. Without such a connection, ecological sustainability on public lands is subject to challenge as just a sophisticated form of NIMBYism (“not in my back yard”), rather than a true paradigm shift.

A cynic might assert that one of the reasons for the belated adoption of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is that it has become relatively easy and painless for most of us to do so … because it imposes the primary burden “to act” on someone else.

The disjunct between people as consumers and the land is reflected in rising discord and alienation between producers and consumers. Loggers, ranchers, fishermen, miners, and other resource producers have all at times felt themselves subject to scorn and ridicule by the very society that benefits from the products they produce. What is absent from much environmental discourse in the U.S. today is a recognition that urbanized society is no less dependent upon the products of forest and field than were the subsistence farmers of America’s past. This is clearly reflected in the language used in such discourse.

Rural communities traditionally engaged in producing timber and other natural resources for urban consumers are commonly referred to as natural resource “dependent” communities. Seldom are the truly resource dependent communities like Boulder, Denver, Detroit, or Boston ever referred to as such.”

MacCleery then quotes Aldo Leopold (1928): “The American public for many years has been abusing the wasteful lumberman. A public which lives in wooden houses should be careful about throwing stones at lumbermen … until it has learned how its own arbitrary demands as to kinds and qualities of lumber, help cause the waste which it decries …“The long and the short of the matter is that forest conservation depends in part on intelligent consumption, as well as intelligent production of lumber.”

Bowyer goes on to quote MacCleery:  “To take off on that theme, … the evidence that no personal consumption ethic exists today is that a suburban dweller with a small family who lives in a 4000 square-foot home, owns three or four cars, commutes to work alone in a gas guzzling sport utility vehicle (even though public transportation is available), and otherwise leads a highly resource consumptive lifestyle is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society. Indeed, her/his social status in the community may even be enhanced by virtue of that consumption.”

Bowyer concludes quoting from MacCleery: “Ecosystem management or ecological sustainability on public lands will have weak or non-existent ethical credentials and certainly will never be a truly holistic approach to resource management until the consumption side of the equation becomes an integral part of the solution, rather than an afterthought, as it is today. Belated adoption of Leopold’s land ethic was relatively easy. The true test as to whether a paradigm shift has really occurred in the U.S. will be whether society begins to see personal consumption choices as having an ethical and environmental content as well – and then acts upon them as such.”

I’ve long understood that a very large part of American society does not like what I do for a living. If they want to put me out of business, the only thing they have to do is to quit buying wood – a very simple matter of economics. However, a forest landowner’s accountant/tax advisor would probably say that, if no one wants to buy wood, the landowner would have no reason to plant or otherwise take care of the forest and they’d be ahead to convert that land to some other use. Further, the consumer would have to depend much more heavily on alternative raw materials – petroleum, concrete, mining, etc. – all things that have far greater environmental cost both here and abroad.

Forest management and wood consumption are so inter-connected that one cannot be looked without looking at the other. To do so creates an ethical question.

If you’re weary of debating USFS policy, here’s a look at National Park Service policy, in a document released yesterday:

DIRECTOR’S ORDER #100: RESOURCE STEWARDSHIP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

The document states that “To achieve the stewardship goal, the NPS will adopt the precautionary principle and adaptive management as guiding strategies for resource management subject to all existing authorities. These strategies will promote science-based decisions, help deal with uncertainty, and promote a culture of learning. Management decisions based on the precautionary principle may often require adaptive management.”

Also, it adds “sound” to “best available science”:

“To fulfill the stewardship goal, the NPS will use a decision-making framework that is explicitly based upon three criteria: (1) best available sound science and scholarship, (2) accurate fidelity to the law, and (3) long-term public interest.”

Does adding “sound” — “best available sound science and scholarship” — make it easier for managers to disregard science that doesn’t support agency goals?

According to the Washington Post: “the fossil fuel industry is enjoying a remarkable resurgence as its executives and lobbyists shape President-elect Donald Trump’s policy agenda and staff his administration. The oil, gas and coal industries are amassing power throughout Washington — from Foggy Bottom, where ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson is Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, to domestic regulatory agencies including the departments of Energy and Interior as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Based on the number of Cabinet and upper Administration picks over the past few weeks it would not be a stretch to say that President-elect Trump is essentially building an America government for big oil and resource extraction industries, run by big oil and resource extraction industries.

Just yesterday, President-Elect Trump made his nomination of Montana Rep Ryan Zinke to head the Department of Interior official. If you care about America’s public lands, wildlife and wilderness heritage, the person in charge of the Dept of Interior is a big deal. After all, the Dept of Interior manages 1/5 of the entire land base in the U.S., 35,000 miles of coastlines and 1.76 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Ryan Zinke would be in charge of 70,000 employees and the following federal agencies and bureaus: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, National Park Service, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

In my capacity as director of the WildWest Institute I issued the following statement yesterday:

Rep Ryan Zinke has an established track record of being pro-coal, pro-fracking, pro-logging, anti-science and anti-endangered species act when it comes to managing America’s public lands and wildlife. This has earned Zinke an environmental voting record of 3% from the League of Conservation Voters and a National Parks voting record of just 9% from the National Parks Conservation Association.

Let’s also not forget that Rep Zinke was just hand picked by President-elect Donald Trump, someone who is clearly assembling the most anti-environmental, anti-public lands, pro-oil and gas and pro-wall street cabinet and administration in U.S. History.

To think that Congressman Ryan Zinke is going to be a strong advocate for America’s public lands, our national parks and fish and wildlife species – and not just do the bidding of his boss, Donald Trump and campaign contributors in the resource extraction industry – is simply delusional, and not being honest with the American public.

Simply because someone has stated that they would not sell-off, or give away, America’s public lands, does not in any way make that person a huge public lands champion, or a “Teddy Roosevelt Republican” especially when the voting record clearly exposes the truth.

Here what some of the most mainstream and well-respect conservation, wildlife and environmental groups in the country had to say about Trump’s pick of Zinke:

Defenders of Wildlife says Zinke Poses Serious Threat to Wildlife Conservation (here)

Sierra Club criticizes Zinke nomination, strongly urges Senators to oppose nomination (here)

Natural Resources Defense Council: Zinke’s Record Falls Far Short and Adds to Trump’s Fossil Fuel Cabinet (here)

The Wilderness Society says “Trump Interior Nominee Ryan Zinke Raises Serious Concerns (here)

When President-elect Trump nominated Ryan Zinke yesterday, Trump issued the following statement: “[Ryan Zinke] has built one of the strongest track records on championing regulatory relief, forest management, responsible energy development and public land issues.”

Here’s what that strong track record looks like according to the very mainstream League of Conservation Voters. If you care about America’s public lands, wildlife and wilderness legacy…buckle up folks, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

This is a public service announcement via Kitty Benzar (caveat, I did not check on this, I’m assuming she’s correct here).

SENIOR PASS PRICE SKYROCKETING

On Tuesday December 6, in the lame duck session of Congress, the House passed by unanimous consent a bill (HR 4680) that will eliminate the $10 lifetime Senior Pass (formerly Golden Age Pass) which has been available to citizens and permanent residents age 62 and older since 1965.

In the early hours of Saturday morning December 10, in a nearly empty Senate chamber – most members having already left for the holidays – the Senate approved the House bill by unanimous consent

The bill is now on its way to the President. He is nearly certain to sign it.

The lifetime pass will track with the price of the annual America the Beautiful Pass. That price is currently $80 but can be changed at any time by the federal land management agencies, without further legislation.

For those who prefer an installment plan, a new “Senior Annual” pass will also be established at a price of $20, good for one year from the date of purchase. Four consecutive Senior Annual passes can be exchanged for a lifetime pass.

While there have been a multitude of bills introduced (and programs authorized) aimed at giving new groups free or reduced-cost access to the public lands – 4th Graders, military families, those with disabilities, veterans, volunteers – it is difficult to understand why Congress has taken this opportunity to reduce a long-standing benefit to seniors. The $20-$35 million in anticipated additional revenue (depending on whose estimate you choose) will make little dent in the Park Service’s claimed maintenance backlog of $12 BILLION.

All of this is being done in the guise of celebrating the centennial of the National Park Service, although why making the Parks more expensive to visit constitutes a “celebration” remains a mystery.

BENEFITS
The benefits of the Senior Pass include entrance to all National Parks and Wildlife Refuges that charge entrance fees, for the passholder and everyone accompanying them in the same vehicle. Where an NPS unit or a Refuge charges a per-person fee, the passholder can bring in three companions age 16 or older. (Those under age 16 are free anyway.) The Senior Pass also covers Standard Amenity Fees at most Forest Service, BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, and Army Corps of Engineers sites. In addition, Senior passholders are entitled to a 50% discount on campground fees for the site they occupy, including any younger friends and family members who accompany them.

These benefits are grandfathered- (and grandmothered-) in for existing passholders. So if you have attained the age of 62 and have not yet purchased your lifetime Senior Pass, you should do it IMMEDIATELY. Passes are sold at National Parks, Forest Service, BLM and Bureau of Reclamation offices, National Wildlife Refuges, and Army Corps of Engineers recreation sites. Passes can be purchased online at the USGS Store, but online purchases will incur a $10 service charge in addition to the (for now) $10 price of the pass. Your pass is good for the rest of your life unless lost or stolen. Many people buy an extra to keep in a safe place. Doing so at this time is something to consider because buying a replacement in the future could cost you much more.

ACT QUICKLY!
It will likely take some time for the agencies to update their pass sales locations with the new pricing structure, so if you are close to turning 62 you should act as soon as you are eligible and you may be able to slide in under the wire.

Several comments on this blog argue that the U.S. depends on forest products imports to satisfy its consumption. That’s half correct and misses the point.

In 2014, the U.S. bought forest products from other countries to the tune of $42 billion. We buy wood products from Canada, China, and the EU.

But, wait, there’s more! In 2014, the U.S. forest products industry also sold $41 billion of wood products to consumers in other countries — Canada, China, with the EU and Mexico tied for third. In other words, we buy as much wood stuff from other countries as we sell to other countries, and to and from the same countries, too.

It’s also worth noting that “Timber demands—not timber supplies—currently limit production growth in the United States” (quoting the abstract). The U.S. has seen a long-term decline in paper and pulp demand associated with decreasing manufacturing (less demand for cardboard boxes to package the stuff we aren’t making so much of) and increasing use of computers that replace paper to record and store information.

The U.S. forest products industry depends on trade. It depends on international trade agreements. It depends on interest rates, currency exchange rates, and other macroeconomic factors that serious people think about. Those people don’t care about national forest logging levels.

The group described in this article sounds like the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership.

I continue to fine some nuggets of good information in the Missoulian’s big series on the timber industry in Montana, even though none of the Missoulian articles (to date) have bothered to reach out to anyone in the environmental community and get our perspective on the timber industry, public lands management and the reality that we’re pretty much always blamed for all the timber industry’s woes.

The title of this post is a direct quote from Paul McKenzie, the resource manager for the F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company in Columbia Falls, Montana, and is taken from this article.

Let the substance of that acknowledgement from Stoltze Lumber sink in for a second. Essentially they are admitting that when they mechanized their lumber mills half their employees were let go, but they still produced the same amount of lumber. And yet, despite this fact, the timber industry in Montana still gets away with blaming all the timber industry worker layoffs on environmentalists? How is that even possible?

Previous Missoulian articles documented the Montana timber industry’s “old-growth forest liquidation” strategy, which dominated the scene in Montana from 1970 to 1990. During those two decades corporations like Champion International tripled logging levels on their own lands – most of it via logging of old-growth forests. But other timber mills in Montana also took part in that old-growth logging frenzy of the 70s and 80s.

As the timber industry was pretty much mowing through all their own old-growth, they turned to the U.S. Forest Service and started pressuring the agency (and politicians) to open up vast swaths of public national forest lands – including old-growth forests and roadless areas – to large-scale logging and roadbuilding schemes.

Apparently, if you believe the timber industry lobbyists and mill owners story now, they actually had no idea that what they were during in previous decades was bad for forests, fish, ecosystems or long-term sustainability.  Of course, I don’t buy that argument for a minute. And you shouldn’t either.

What follows is an action alert from Friends of the Wild Swan. Looks like this is just another proposal (in a long line of similar schemes) to have states and counties take over management of federal public lands, which belong equally to all Americans.

The Lake County Conservation District (LCCD) in Montana has been working on a novel approach to take over management of Flathead National Forest land in the Swan Valley. The Swan Resource Management Study vaguely outlines a plan to take control of 60,000 acres in the Swan Valley in Lake County which then would be managed by the Montana Dept. of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) for logging over the next 100 years.

The LCCD seems to believe that these federal lands represent a cash cow for the county to use for various unnamed projects even though most federal timber sales lose money and DNRC doesn’t have an adequate accounting system to track its costs to see whether they make money from timber sales.

There are obviously flaws with the whole premise of controlling just the timber output on federal lands but the LCCD has been moving along with this since 2014 and is soliciting public comments about whether to proceed with asking Congress to authorize the transfer of management. These are federal public lands and they belong to everyone in the U.S. not just Lake County or Montana residents.

The Swan Valley is rich in wildlife and biological diversity. These wild lands are critical habitat for lynx, bull trout, grizzly bears and other fish and wildlife. Allowing the County to have management jurisdiction for purely logging and its associated roads will adversely affect the habitat for many imperiled animals and fish as well as water quality.

According to their website “LCCD residents, especially those with property in the Swan Valley, will be asked their opinion. LCCD wants to know if there is adequate local community support to request Montana’s governor and legislature to begin working on State legislation that would support the establishment of the proposed Conservation Forest. Conversely, LCCD wants to know if the study should be suspended and the idea of a Conservation Forest tabled.”

In an undated letter on the website it says that environmental groups, Lake County residents, legislators and others have been notified of the public meeting on December 7th at the Swan Lake Clubhouse at6:30 pm. However, even though Friends of the Wild Swan attended the previous meeting in 2014 and submitted comments we have not been notified nor have Lake County residents.

Please attend this meeting if you are able or send a letter to the LCCD and Lake CountyCommissioners — tell them:

• This is a bad idea and no more taxpayer funds should be spent on it,

• These wild lands are too valuable for their clean water, fish and wildlife and must be maintained for those values,

• These are federal lands that belong to everyone in the United States, not just Lake County residents. Any activities on Forest Service land must be in compliance with federal laws like the Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

We need to let them know loud and clear that their proposal is not a viable option for our precious public lands.

For more information go to: www.swanforestinitiative.org

Send comments to the LCCD at [email protected] or by mail to 64352 US Hwy 93, Ronan, MT  59864 and to the Lake County Commissioners at [email protected] or by mail to CountyCourthouse, Room 211, 106 4th Ave E., Polson, MT. 59860

1993 was also the year Champion completed its “accelerated old-growth liquidation” strategy. Over the previous 20 years, Champion had tripled its harvest. Much of that took place in the mountains around Primm Meadow.

“That’s why Champion divested,” explained Peter Kolb, Montana State University extension forester. “They said they’re going to convert value on the land that’s not producing a rate of return that’s fair. Once we’ve liquidated that investment, the remaining land has a rate of return that doesn’t meet our business model. They over-harvested their own lands, or from a business perspective, converted it to money for the company.”

The companies then turned to the Forest Service, seeking access to federal timberlands. University of Montana forest economist Alan McQuillan recalled Corrick announcing that Champion needed to buy 60 percent of the Forest Service’s available Montana timber after 1992 or the company wouldn’t be here to stay.

Congress also began receiving reports of “phantom forests” of greatly exaggerated tree inventories and underestimated costs of timber sale preparation and road construction. A General Accounting Office study in 1994 found the Forest Service failed to consider factors like wildlife habitat, sensitive plant species, or recreation in estimating its available timber production area. In one example, the study reported that between 1991 and 1993, costs of preparing timber sales on the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon climbed 147 percent.

But by then, the agency had plunged into its own rethinking of its mission. After selling around 12 billion board-feet of timber a year in the 1980s nationally, the Forest Service reduced its Allowable Sale Quantity, or ASQ, to about one-third that amount by 1993.

Locally, forest supervisors were also cranking back the spigot of federal timber. Lolo National Forest Supervisor Orville Daniels whacked his ASQ from 120 million board-feet to 50 million.