What follows is a press release from Friends of the Clearwater.

Moscow—In an ongoing effort to commemorate the 50^th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Friends of the Clearwater released a report today that critically examines the Clearwater Basin Collaborative  (CBC)Agreement and Work Plan. If enacted by Congress, the agreement would put into place provisions that are incompatible with the Wilderness Act, potentially causing a ripple effect throughout the entire National Wilderness Preservation System, too. A copy of the analysis can be found at friendsoftheclearwater.org.

“If passed in its current form, the legislation could have a detrimental effect on the entire National Wilderness Preservation System,” said Gary Macfarlane, Ecosystem Defense Director for Friends of the Clearwater. “Citizens need to be aware that there is a group proposing legislation that would designate a minimal amount of supposedly new Wilderness in the Clearwater basin of Idaho, but that proposal contains provisions incompatible with the letter and spirit of Act. That would be “wilderness” in name only.

The Clearwater Basin Collaborative Agreement and Work Plan could give the Idaho Fish & Game Department motorized access to manage wildlife in newly designated Wilderness.

“The CBC Agreement and Work Plan could give the Idaho Fish & Game Department authority to land helicopters and use motorized equipment in newly designated Wilderness,” said Brett Haverstick, Education & Outreach Director. “This equates to the department running a game farm in what is supposed to be untrammeled and wild.”

Another red flag for conservationists is that the agreement contains language that would grant special rights to commercial outfitters in newly designated Wildernesses. These are rights not enjoyed by the general public or outfitters elsewhere in national forests, let alone Wilderness. Commercial enterprises are generally banned in Wilderness and only a narrow provision for outfitting is allowed so long as the outfitting is necessary and proper.

“As proposed, the potential legislation would grant special rights to outfitters, allowing them to maintain existing permanent structures in newly designated Wilderness, plus give them veto authority over the Forest Service if they are requested to relocate their camp due to resource damage or for any reason,” continued Brett Haverstick. “The Wilderness Act prohibits commercial services but makes a narrow exception for services like outfitting only as long as it is necessary and proper. Permanent structures, which are prohibited, and special rights for outfitters are neither necessary nor proper in Wilderness.

The Clearwater Basin contains 1.5-million acres of unprotected roadless wildlands. A study in 2001 (Carroll, et al.) noted that the basin contains the best overall habitat for large carnivores in the entire northern Rockies, including Yellowstone National Park and the Canadian Rockies. The group also claims that current management direction under the 1987 Clearwater National Forest Plan (as amended by the 1993 lawsuit agreement) provides far better protection than the proposed Agreement and Work Plan, even though the agreement also covers most of the Nez Perce National Forest.

“Out of 1.5-million acres of roadless wildlands, the CBC Agreement and Work Plan would designate 20% of the roadless base as Wilderness, or roughly 300,000-acres,” said Gary Macfarlane. “Areas such as Weitas Creek and Pot Mountain have been completely ignored for Wilderness. Current management direction on the Clearwater National Forest, as per the lawsuit settlement agreement, has over 500,000 acres managed as recommended wilderness.”

The CBC proposal also includes two special management areas, approximately 163,000 acres, with some protection, though one area would be open to some motorized use. Haverstick noted, “Ironically, the proposed western West Meadow Creek special management area on the Nez Perce National Forest, seems to have better overall protection than the proposed wildernesses because this proposal has provisions that would weaken wilderness protections.”

In addition, the Friends of the Clearwater report notes that the CBC proposed protection for wild and scenic rivers would be less than that proposed by the Forest Service and also the CBC agreement would lead to substantial increases in logging, even though many streams are not currently meeting water quality standards.

Gary Macfarlane concluded, “This agreement is a giant step backwards and a net loss for the roadless wildlands of the Clearwater Basin. On the 50^th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, this special place deserves much better.”

Source: Here.

SAN FRANCISCO— New data from California’s Rim fire area shows there are at least 37 occupied owl territories in burned forest that the U.S. Forest Service wants to substantially cut as part of a post-fire logging project. Government surveys conducted this spring and summer in the Stanislaus National Forest, where last year’s Rim fire burned, found 33 owl pairs as well as six single owls. The majority are in the area where the agency has proposed to cut more than 600 million board feet of timber.

In a letter today the Wild Nature Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the John Muir Project told the Forest Service that the owl detection rates in the Rim fire area indicate that spotted owls are using burned forest at rates that are significantly greater than their use of unburned forests in the Sierras.

“I’m not surprised that so many spotted owls are living in the Rim fire area,” said Monica Bond, principal scientist for the Wild Nature Institute. “Recent science and survey results like those from the Rim fire are repudiating the old, outdated assumption that fire is bad for owls. Logging has always been the real danger to spotted owls, not fire.”

Forest Service managers have long assumed that fire is the most prominent threat to spotted owls, but current scientific evidence shows these rare birds of prey not only use severely burned forests but prefer it when searching for food.

Burned forests that are adjacent or near to owl sites — such as nests or roosting areas — can be critical to owl survival; published literature has determined that in post-fire landscapes such as the Rim fire area, salvage logging should be prohibited within about a mile of owl sites. The Rim fire logging project has not incorporated such protection for owls despite the exceptional number of owls in the area, and despite the recent published findings showing that spotted owls are in serious decline on Forest Service and private lands in the Sierras.

“The Rim fire area is teeming with wildlife that thrives in burned forests, including these spotted owls living right in the same forests the government wants to cut down,” said Justin Augustine with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We hope the Forest Service heeds the new data and drastically changes its approach so these owls get the protections they need and deserve.”

Spotted owls are not the only forest animals that use burned areas. Species like woodpeckers, bluebirds, deer and bats flourish in post-fire forests. As explained in a recent scientific publication, intense fire in mature forest creates one of the most biologically diverse and ecologically important forest habitat types in the Sierras.

“If the Forest Service continues with its plans to log the Rim fire area, the many owls residing in the post-fire forest mosaic will be harmed,” said research ecologist Dr. Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project. “And let’s not forget that the Forest Service has a conflict of interest because it sells the burned trees to private commercial logging corporations and keeps the profits to enhance its budget.”

The Forest Service proposal in the Rim fire area is one of the largest industrial logging projects in the history of the national forest system. Much of the logging would be concentrated in occupied spotted owl territories. The Forest Service’s final decision on the project is expected to be released on Aug. 28.

Gil is right that we’ve had this discussion, and we agreed to disagree.  He reaffirmed his belief that acres burned is the result of  lower logging levels:

“Your wisdom is so infinitely better than mine, so I must be seeing things when I look at a graph that shows acres burned by year. Naturally, someone who doesn’t understand the scientific principles behind forest ecosystems would say that it is just coincidence that acres burned by year shows a very significant up turn since the 80% reduction in harvest levels.”

Here is the basis for a different belief.  This comparison of acres burned to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation cycle is taken from the Assessment for the revision of the Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest Plan in Idaho.  It led the planning team (who presumably understand scientific principles) to conclude:

“When PDO data are overlaid on the fire statistics an interesting correlation is seen. A period between 1940 until 1980 was in the cool wet phase, which would have limited wildfires while at the same time promoted tree growth, regeneration, and significant increases in forest density. Clearly cool wet trends resulted in lower wildfire occurrence regardless of the fuel loading across the region. Climate is the most controlling factor for wildfire and the one we can least influence.” (my emphasis)

Every scientist knows that correlation is not causation, and there are at least two opinions possible based on these facts.  I was, and am still, asking for some more definitive research results that would justify Gil’s confidence that more logging is the answer.

We hear the term ‘sound forest mangement’ (I’ll use ‘SFM’) a lot around here. I’m not quite sure what it means, though I suspect that others feel confident that they do. I do believe it can mean quite different things to different people, leading to radically different viewpoints on how to get there. And since “getting there” is presumably one reason to even think about a “new century of forest planning” (as opposed to simply recycling the last century), I thought I’d toss this out to get kicked around.

By the way, the accompanying photos from the web are just a semi-random assortment of forestry related scenes, good/bad/ugly/otherwise, and aren’t posted for the purpose of editorializing.

Old school: This represents the bulk of what I studied in forestry school, back in the late 70’s, probably some of you did too: Silviculture, Forest Mensuration, Forest Economics, Wood Technology, Forest Management… etc. I do think the “agronomy of trees” is very well developed and documented. There may be no truly sustainable yield (of timber), but we know how to come pretty darn close. Being able to grow trees indefinitely, with a predictable periodic or continuous yield, with minimal exogenous inputs (fertilizer, herbicides etc.), at some level of profitability, pretty much constitutes what I learned was SFM. Renewable resource, etc. It contrasts with the extreme and unsustainable approaches of “cut out and get out”, and what we used to call “lawnmower forestry” with its often high input requirements.

Wildlife: I didn’t learn much about wildlife in forestry school, though we were departments in the same college, and courses were available to those who had extra electives to fill. Most of my exposure to wildlife was hearing a little in dendrology class how some trees/shrubs (serviceberry, for example) were useless for forest products but were “good for wildlife”. I don’t remember ever hearing about nesting, denning, cover, corridors, etc. Basically, wildlife was a foreign language that I didn’t feel I needed to learn.

I’ve been learning more about wildlife lately, although somewhat unevenly emphasizing ESA-listed species, FS sensitive species, and management indicator species. Wildlife (including fish) issues are hugely important in national forest management issues, controversies, and litigation. The values, goals, benchmarks, and philosophy tend to be quite different from those needed to optimally grow merchantable trees. That’s another way of saying that wildlife and tree people tend to define SFM very differently. As a result, every plan and decision tends to involve a very large measure of compromise.

Soils and microbiology: I had terrible, trivial courses in those subjects as a forestry undergraduate. Those two profs have since left this world, so I don’t feel bad about saying that. Now that I teach courses in soil microbiology and plant pathology, I try hard to get forestry students in my classes and relate the importance of those subjects as best I can to forestry (and ag of course). Mostly I get grad students though, because forestry undergrads have their schedules pretty booked up already.

New School: I’m not sure there is one, probably some universities are doing better now than mine did. Forest Ecology seems to be a popular catchphrase, but it probably downplays the actual growing of trees, which is important, and there are only so many hours in the curriculum. The USFS approach hinges on “muldisciplinarity”, with teams of specialists contributing, but it’s unclear how much those disciplines communicate, or how much the decision-making ranks understand about how all the pieces fit together. Here’s one definition of multidisciplinary research: “Researchers from a variety of disciplines work together at some point during a project, but have separate questions, separate conclusions, and disseminate in different journals.” Kind of the Tower of Babel approach, and hasn’t been all that effective in my opinion.

Another approach, so-called “transdisciplinary research”, seems more promising: Specialists contribute their unique expertise but strive to understand the complexities of the whole project, rather than one part of it. Transdisciplinary research allows investigators to transcend their own disciplines to inform one another’s work, capture complexity, and create new intellectual spaces.

I have a little trouble envisioning the transdisciplinary approach ever permeating the USFS, given its very hierarchical, turf-protective, and quasi-military structure, but one can always hope. It’s a pipe dream, but maybe NCFP can one day serve as a role model…

This is a bit off topic, but…. I happened to notice this caption to a beautiful photo on the USFS’s Managing the Land page (www.fs.fed.us/managing-land):

Bridger Wilderness extends 80 miles along the Continental Divide with seven out of 10 of the world’s largest glaciers. The landscape is breathtaking with hundreds of alpine lakes, glacial cirques and wide sweeping valleys. (U.S. Forest Service)

Can that be true? I’d guess that there are many larger glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, etc.

Interesting item involving feedlots for elk on the Bridger-Teton N.F. Valid arguments of both sides, seems to me. The “feedlots are needed, proponents say, because human activities have reduced the elk’s winter range.” An overpopulation of elk at Mt. St. Helens National Monument also are being fed. There isn’t enough forage to sustain the herd, which has dramatically increased since the 1980 eruption created new habitat for them, but photos of starving elk caused a public outcry. So, the elk get food deliveries in the winter months.

Similar argument can be made for active forest management: Humans have disrupted fire cycles, developed forests, etc., so management is needed to maintain forest health. As opposed to letting nature take its course.

Steve

Wyo. governor wants to help Forest Service fight enviro group’s ‘extreme’ agenda

Clancy-Unionville Project – “Treated” Forest Service segments

All’s quiet here at home, which gives me time to web surf. The Carlton Complex fire in central Washington is heating up again (temperatures > 100 with humidities in the teens). Inciweb posted this picture of aerial fire retardant lines.

Note the fire crossed the retardant lines, i.e., there is burned vegetation on both sides. Note that the fire didn’t burn the metal-roofed buildings and stopped where the private land had been cleared earlier of shrubs and trees.

But at least we tried!

During these Dog Days of Summer, I’ve been reading the Forest History Society’s interview of former Chief F. Dale Robertson. Dale was chief during the height of the spotted owl crisis, 1987-1993. The first region-wide injunction barring owl habitat logging issued in 1989, marking the beginning of the battle, with the Northwest Forest Plan ending the fight in 1994. All of the interview is worth skimming. I was struck with Dale’s recounting of his early days implementing the Taylor Grazing Act in Oklahoma where Dale was told to rein in ranchers who for generations had exercised unregulated, free access to federal forage:

This one guy, Joe Herbert, he was a tough nut. He was mean. He was defying us and he had his cattle out, so we had the U.S. marshals come and they arrested him, took him up to Muskogee to the U.S. Magistrate, and while he was in Muskogee we rounded up his cattle. There was even a shootout. Well, we had his cattle impounded. This was my predecessor, and he came up and shot the lock off the gate and let his cattle out. But anyway, it was tough.

We could use more Dale Robertsons to deal with today’s Cliven Bundys.