The essay below mentions a new generation of tree-sitters, such as those at the White Castle Variable Retention Harvest, a Demonstration Pilot Project designed “for the purpose of illustrating the principles of ecological restoration developed by Drs. Jerry F. Franklin and K. Norman Johnson,” according to the EA. 187 acres, with “78.4 aggregate retention acres.”

www.blm.gov/or/districts/roseburg/plans/files/WhiteCastleDR.pdf‎

In September, the BLM initiated a Temporary Area Closure for up to 2 years: “The purpose for this proposed action is to quickly implement a temporary closure of the area to public use during active logging operations. The need for action results from the danger to timber sale protesters within harvest units of an active timber sale; risks to personnel engaged in timber harvest operations; and potential damage to roads, vehicles, and equipment.”

Anyone know what’s going on at present with the sale and the protesters? Are the protesters using the same techniques, aside from occupying trees, such as leaving steel “jumping jacks” on roads to puncture tires?

Just background for the essay, from High Country News’ Writers on the Range:

Protesters still take to the trees

By Robert Leo Heilman/Writers on the Range

If you think that sitting high up in a tree to block a timber sale is a thing of the past, then you should have come with me recently to what’s called the Whitecastle timber sale in southern Oregon. There’s a new generation of protesters up in the trees there, and in many ways they’re more sophisticated than the Earth First! radicals I interviewed back in the mid-1980s.

Today’s tree-sitters are much more likely to have been involved in other movements, such as Occupy, or in environmental struggles against coal, tar sands and power plants. There are also a lot more women involved.

Not surprisingly, the sitters can seem abysmally ignorant about some things; they’re young, in their 20s for the most part, and largely raised in cities. Most of them believe that the century-old second-growth forest they’re camping in is old-growth dating back to Shakespeare’s day. But like the folks who blocked roads and chained themselves to logging equipment during the Reagan administration, they are idealists, willing to put their freedom on the line for what they believe in.

Probably the most interesting generational change is that the “old guard” were often elitists, college-educated folks who thought timber workers were too stupid and ignorant to know what was good for them. The kids nowadays want to ally themselves with the workers and take on the bosses alongside them in a fight for both ecological and labor justice.

This is not such a far-fetched notion. When the Reverend Jesse Jackson came to Roseburg, Ore. — which calls itself the timber capital of the nation — at the height of the “Timber Wars” of the early 1990s, he received an ovation from a mixed crowd of timber workers and environmentalists. He brought them to their feet when he said: “This is not about workers against environmentalists; this is about workers and environmentalists against the greedy and the wasteful.”

This change of attitude can be traced back to Judi Bari and Gene Lawhorn. She was an Earth First! activist from the redwood country of Northern California, and he was a mill worker employed by the Roseburg Forest Products Co. After they met in the late 1980s, at the University of Oregon’s annual Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Lawhorn persuaded Bari to renounce tree-spiking and other activities that could harm loggers or mill workers.

She, in turn, was able to convince her fellow protesters that their struggle was against the bosses, not against the workers. Endangering workers was both morally reprehensible and stupidly playing into the hands of the very folks who were cutting too much timber too fast, even as they cut the wages and benefits for their employees.

Bari went on to become the victim of a bombing attack, surviving that only to die of cancer a few years later. Since her death, she has become something of a saint in leftist radical circles, her name invoked reverently by this new generation. But Gene Lawhorn has been largely forgotten. He had complex views about logging old-growth forests, and he had the courage to voice his opinions. For this he received death threats, beer bottles were smashed in his driveway and the windshield on his pickup was shattered. After he lost his job with Roseburg Forest Products Co., he couldn’t find employment anywhere in Douglas County. Neither could his wife, who found that job offers disappeared as soon as prospective employers heard her last name.

When the local daily newspaper finally published an article about the so-called “timber wars” and the death threats circulating around the county, Gene Lawhorn’s predicament was exposed right in front of God and everybody. Yet not one leader in Douglas County — no politician, preacher, member of law enforcement or of the court system, and no teacher, mill owner or government agency head — spoke out against neighbors threatening to kill their neighbors. There was a letter to the editor of the local weekly, but the writer said that Gene Lawhorn was a traitor who deserved whatever he got. By then, Gene and his wife had already fled to Portland.

The tree-sitters I talked with recently had never heard of this former neighbor of mine, a man who reached out to people whom he’d been told were his enemies. Nevertheless, these kids are now making his argument for him.

Robert Leo Heilman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is an award winning essayist, author and journalist living in Myrtle Creek, Oregon.

I don’t usually make a deal of it, but thought I’d send out the wish.  I spent most of my four active duty years cruising around the Atlantic and Mediterranean on a carrier, so no real hardships for me, and it paid my college tuition afterwards,  but lots of other folks from the Nam years and more recent wars paid some heavy dues. My late Dad jumped at D-Day with the 101st, something I can’t really imagine.  So I raise my coffee cup to all of you vets, whether still with us or moved on, best wishes,  -Guy

This came in on Halloween from our noted environmental scientists (and environmental activists), Dominick DellaSala and Chad Hanson and a number (248) of interesting cosigners. Apparently this is Part 3 in a Developing Series: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/09/27/osu-forestry-saving-our-planet-by-letting-us-forests-burn-and-rot/

Press Release

MEDIA ADVISORY – October 31, 2013

Contact: Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist, Geos Institute  541/482-4459 x305 or 541/621-7223

In an open letter to the U.S. Congress, 250 scientists request that Congress show restraint in speeding up logging in the wake of this year’s wildfires, most notably the Rim fire in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.

The scientists raised concerns that currently proposed legislation (HR1526, which passed in the House in September, and HR3188, now before the House) would seriously undermine the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems, setting back their ability to regenerate after wildfires.

The letter also pointed to the numerous ecosystem benefits from wildfires and how post-fire landscapes are as rich in plants and wildlife as old-growth ecosystems.

Click here to see the full text of the scientists’ letter to Congress.

Click here for a Nov. 2, 2013 Associated Press article about the scientists’ letter.

Here’s how the Associated Press handled this, (with author unidentified, but likely based in southwest Oregon):

Scientists oppose two logging bills in Congress

Two firefighters watch trees burn while battling the Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park, Calif., in August. (The Associated Press)

The experts say two measures pushed by pro-logging interests ignore a growing scientific consensus that the burned landscape plays a critical role in forest regeneration and is home to many birds, bats and other species found nowhere else.

“We urge you to consider what the science is telling us: that post-fire habitat created by fire, including patches of severe fire, are ecological treasures rather than ecological catastrophes, and that post-fire logging does far more harm than good to the nation’s public lands,” they wrote in a letter mailed to members of Congress Friday.

One bill, authored by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., would make logging a requirement on some public forestland, speed timber sales and discourage legal challenges.

The House approved the legislation 244-173 in September and sent it to the Senate, where it awaits consideration by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The White House has threatened a veto, saying it would jeopardize endangered species, increase lawsuits and block creation of national monuments.

Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said wildfires burned 9.3 million acres in the U.S. last year, while the Forest Service only harvested timber from about 200,000 acres.

Hastings’ bill includes an amendment by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., which he also introduced as separate legislation specific to lands burned by this year’s Rim Fire at Yosemite National Park, neighboring wilderness and national forests in the Sierra Nevada.

“We have no time to waste in the aftermath of the Yosemite Rim Fire,” McClintock said at a subcommittee hearing in October. “By the time the formal environmental review of salvage operations has been completed in a year, what was once forestland will have already begun converting to brushland, and by the following year, reforestation will become infinitely more difficult and expensive.”

The Rim Fire started in August and grew to become one of the largest wildfires in California history. It burned 400 square miles and destroyed 11 residences, three commercial properties and 98 outbuildings. It cost $127 million to fight.

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee remain optimistic the Senate will take up Hastings’ bill before the end of the year, said Mallory Micetich, the committee’s deputy press secretary.

“We have a lot of hazardous fuel buildup, and it will help alleviate some of the threat of catastrophic wildfires,” she said.

The scientists see it differently.

“Just about the worst thing you can do to these forests after a fire is salvage-log them,” said Dominick DellaSala, the lead author of the letter. “It’s worse than the fire itself because it sets back the recovery that begins the minute the fire is out.”

DellaSala, chief scientist at the conservation group Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., was on a team of scientists that produced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s final recovery plan for the spotted owl in 2008.

Many who signed the opposition letter have done research in the field and several played roles with the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service in developing logging policies for the threatened northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.

“Though it may seem at first glance that a post-fire landscape is a catastrophe ecologically,” they wrote, “numerous scientific studies tell us that even in patches where forest fires burned most intensely, the resulting post-fire community is one of the most ecologically important and biodiverse habitat types in western conifer forests.

“Moreover, it is the least protected of all forest types and is often as rare, or rarer, than old-growth forest due to damaging forest practices encouraged by post-fire logging policies.”

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today praised President Obama’s intent to nominate Neil G. Kornze as Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). … Kornze has led the BLM since March 1, 2013, as Principal Deputy Director, overseeing its conservation, outdoor recreation and energy development programs. …

http://tinyurl.com/nbx9ued

He has a lot of policy experience but not, apparently, any actual land management experience.

Any thoughts about how this may (or may not) affect the BLM?

Steve

I admit, it’s a rhetorical question. Of course they don’t. Never have, probably never will.

Just to illustrate . . . On April 9, 2012, the Forest Service released its new NFMA planning rule. Remember? It was a big deal.

Two months later, on June 20, the fire folks released their new “Fire Management Manual,” FSM 5100. According to the Chief, this was also a big deal. In fact, the manual’s new doctrine is “relevant to everything we do.”

The new fire manual cites four sources that “authorize and guide fire management activities for the protection of National Forest System lands and resources,” including the NFMA rules:

Regulations at Title 36, Part 19 of the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR 219.27) specify that, consistent with the relative resource values involved, management prescriptions in forest plans must minimize serious or long-lasting hazards from wildfire.

But, there is no 36 CFR 219.27 in the 2012 NFMA rules. In fact, there is no current rule that requires forest plans minimize serious or long-lasting hazards from wildfire. Instead, the 2012 NFMA rules emphasize restoring “fire adapted ecosystems.”

Nor will you find any such fire rule in the version that preceded the 2012 rules. In those old rules, 36 CFR 219.27 had nothing to do with fire — they were about “special designations,” like wilderness.

You gotta go back to the 2000 rule to find the latest mention of the [cf Haber below] provision the Forest Service’s fire dogs cite in 2012.

On March 1, 2013, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell issued an anti-harassment memo to all FS employees:

I reiterate my strong commitment to maintaining a harassment-free and respectful workplace. Harassment or discrimination in any form will not be tolerated in the Forest Service.

His memo explains that Sexual harassment is behavior of a sexual nature that is unwelcome and offensive to the person or persons it is targeted toward. Examples of harassing behavior may include unwanted physical contact . . .

Today, Chief Tidwell made serial sexual harasser Arnold Schwarzenegger an “honorary forest ranger.”

Would someone just turn out the lights in the WO? That would be more climate saving than anything Herr Gröpenfuhrer has ever accomplished.

PS: Leo Kay is the Forest Service’s director of communications and the presumptive genius who came up with this foolishness. Here’s what Leo was before 2010:

Leo spent the previous three years as a political appointment to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Communications Director for the state’s landmark climate change program.

Recent discussion on this blog has regarded the restrictions governing recent and proposed changes in planning for our National Forests. Some concern has been raised that current regulations have veered far from the intended path of the original founders of the National Forest System. The “Organic Act of 1897,” for example (30 Stat. 34-36; codified U.S.C. vol. 16, sec. 551), stated that the purpose of the forest reserves was for “watershed protection and timber production.”  The Act further states (note: the following quotes, bold texts, and legal citations are mostly courtesy of the “Family Guardian” website):

“…but it is not the purpose or intent of these provisions of the Act Providing for Such Reservations to authorize the inclusion therein, of lands more valuable for the mineral contained therein and for agricultural purposes, than for Forest Reserve purposes…”

Settlers were allowed to cut firewood, fencing and building material, and mining and prospecting were specifically authorized within forest reserve boundaries, but grazing was not mentioned. Statutes at Large, vol. 30, p. 36; U.S.C. vol. 16, sec. 478 provided that nothing in the act would “prohibit any person from entering upon such national forests for all proper and lawful purpose, including that of prospecting, locating and developing the mineral resource thereof . . . such persons must comply with the rules and regulations covering such national forests.” The section also provided that the Secretary of the Interior to “make such rules and regulations . . . as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction.”

Less than one month after passage, the General Land Office “promulgated regulations” that allowed grazing in reserves. In 1896, restrictive Forest Rules regarding sheep grazing were challenged in United States v. Tygh Valley Co., 76 F. 693. The Forest Rules were upheld on the basis that closely herded sheep were damaging the resources; (see also Dastervignes v. United States, 122 F. 30; 1903; and Dent v. United States, 76 P. 455, reversing 71 P. 920; 1904.) According to Colorado Judge Ethelbert Ward, The Legal Aspect of the Grazing Problem, these were essentially civil cases by injunction to prevent damage to property “and would apply as well to the individual as to the United States. They are founded on the law of the land, and do not depend on rules and regulations.” (Forest Service Law Office Correspondence RG 49, Drawer 16, National Archives.)

The grazing system devised by the Bureau of Forestry in 1902 issued the first grazing permits for sheep. A circular issued by the department of Interior on January 8, stated livestock on the forest reserve would receive preference in the following order: 1) Stock of residents within the reserve; 2) Stock of persons who own permanent stock ranches within the reserve, but who reside outside of the reserve; 3) Stock of persons living in the immediate vicinity of the reserve, called neighboring stock and 4) stock of outsiders who have some equitable claim.

So, we can see from the outset that the Forest Reserves were intended entirely for “watershed protection” and “timber production” — excluding all lands better suited for agricultural and mining purposes — and the principal issue of the day seems to have been livestock grazing. Is any of this still relevant today in regards to current National Forest planning efforts?

We can also see a very specific attempt to define “local” in regards to pre-automobile livestock owners; was that perspective still accepted during the construction of the 1905 “Use Book”?

The following article and photographs were published earlier this month in the LA Times and received virtually no public commentary. A few days ago an environmental group, Natural Resources Defense Council, released a study in which it was claimed that more than 200 million Americans were subjected to wildfire smoke in 2011. USA Today reported this news under the headline “Wildfire Smoke Becoming a Serious Health Hazard”: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/24/wildfires-smoke-climate-change-harm-health/3173165/

Is human health just one more reason to restore regular prescribed burns to fire-prone forests, shrublands, and grasslands in the western US?

Trees burned by the Rim Fire in the Stanislaus National Forest. The Rim was the largest Sierra Nevada wildfire in more than a century of record keeping. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / September 13, 2013) Scientists call for more controlled burns in West’s forests By Bettina BoxallOctober 3, 2013, 4:14 p.m.

“Fire policy that focuses on suppression only delays the inevitable, promising more dangerous and destructive future forest fires,” wrote the authors, who include Scott Stephens of UC Berkeley, James Agee of the University of Washington, William Romme of Colorado State University and Thomas Swetnam of the University of Arizona.

The authors also made a couple of suggestions that are bound to be more controversial than stepping up managed fire rates.

Some forest lands may be so fire-prone, they wrote, “that building should be prevented, discouraged or removed” through regulation, insurance rates or tax incentives.

They also said significantly more federal money for restoration work could be available if state and local authorities picked up more of the firefighting tab in wildland areas bordering development.

In ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests that are adapted to frequent wildfires that burn at low and moderate severity, Stephens said the past century of fire suppression and logging has set the stage for more damaging blazes.

Timber harvest removed most of the largest, fire-resistant trees, while the government’s anti-fire policies promoted dense regrowth and fuel buildup. Now rising temperatures are lengthening the fire season.

“Those forests are so vulnerable,” said Stephens, the paper’s lead author. A key concern is that more severe wildfires in a warmer, drier climate can kill such large patches of conifers that the tree seed bank is lost, thwarting forest regeneration and leading to permanent conversion to shrub fields.

Land managers need to conduct widespread prescribed burns and manage wildfires to reduce forest fuel loads, the authors said.

National parks and a few national forests with huge, remote wilderness areas in Arizona and Idaho have done that. But in many California forests, large-scale managed burn programs have been hindered by air quality regulations and concerns about endangering neighboring rural communities.

If it’s not possible to conduct extensive managed burns, then mechanical thinning of smaller, dense tree growth can help, Stephens said. “This is not,” he emphasized, “cut the big trees.”

The still-smoldering Rim Fire in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park is an example of the kind of fire the authors are concerned about. The largest wildfire to burn in the Sierra Nevada in more than a century of record keeping, the Rim killed big forest patches thousands of acres in size.

Stephens, who conducts research on plots in the Stanislaus, recently  returned to a spot where he had earlier come across towering pines and incense cedar several hundred years old. He wanted to see whether the big trees had survived the Rim’s flames.

“I got to the exact plot,” Stephens said. “Unfortunately all the trees died. It was really a kind of sad day.”

I think having the Campbell Group as the subcontrator on the Four Forests Initiative stewardship contract is a very good thing, and answers critics who noted that Good Earth Power has no experience with forestry in the US (it had focused, so far, on Africa.

Article from Greenwire:

Major forest-thinning project switched to billion-dollar international company

“There are people who use the term bullying ‘to get what they want. They use it as professional victims to gain power and control,’ says Ben Leichtling, founder of BulliesBeGone.” This morning, the House Natural Resource Committee heard from a panel of such folk, all complaining of “Threats, Intimidation and Bullying by Federal Land Managing Agencies.”

The star witness, Wayne Hage, Jr., and his parents before him, helped ignite the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion in response to new environmental laws that threatened the century-long hegemony ranchers hold over the arid West’s public lands. Federal employees, charged with ensuring the new legal rubber met the road, became the objects of scorn and derision by those who believe federal land (ab)use is their right.

Today, social conservatives are trying to undercut the pro-gay rights anti-bullying campaign by playing the “we’re bullying victims, too” card. It’s no surprise that Congress’ Sagebrush Rebels have joined the bigots chorus.