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This recent screen capture off my computer (click to read) illustrates this particular post: it shows one of my principal complaints (#1, below) with this blog and how it functions. Before I go any further, I’d like to make clear that the following complaints are personal opinions and involve things I think could be accomplished to make this a better forum for discussing ideas and airing differences. This post is 100% Guaranteed for the purpose of making this blog a better and more pleasant place to visit, and not at all intended as a platform for spleen venting or passive aggressive insinuations. This post is entirely intended to be a “what’s wrong with me, doctor?” type of query; with the hope that common ailments can be identified and cured for the betterment of us all.

As background, this post was based on a brief exchange between me and Greg Nagle on the Blog Etiquette post: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/10/21/fyi-some-more-thoughts-on-blogging-etiquette-for-this-blog/

The screen capture for the left side of this blog shows entries by regular commenters, Sharon, Matthew, and Gil, and it is in a format a lot of us liked and commented on when the “theme” (?) was being selected and refined. It is the right hand column that I have my worst problems with both the old and new blog formats:

#1. Categories and Tags. What is this stuff? These are two users of space I don’t get. Plus, I think there are other categories that can be removed as well, or else relegated to another page that can be readily linked. I liked some of the old “widgets” (?) that were kind of useful and interesting in the old format, such as “most popular” posts, one, and one or two others that seemed similar.

#2. If I scroll up the right hand column I come to my second complaint on the Homepage: you know the last 50 people who have had something to say (and why not optional links for the past 100, 500 and/or the past 1,000 and maybe even “All”?) — you just don’t know what they are talking about. The Book Review Blog shows the name of the post for each person who is commenting — allowing for great editing of personally uninteresting topics and/or for following specific discussions — and the old blog did, too. We need to get this fixed. Maybe one of us could join a WordPress discussion group and report back to the rest of us how to fix these kinds of problems? Then we could fix it.

#3 Statistics. The old blog had a great set of statistical analyses and graphs to show who was using the blog, how many, by the day-week-month-year-ALL, and what they were paying most attention to at a time — going all the way back to Sharon’s first posts and comments, sometime in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s. The new blog does not. It has one crappy little graph of dubious value covering a short period of time. We are pretty sure we have saved all of the blog back to post #1 and comment #1, but pictures are certainly missing from some of them, and it is definitely hard to find older posts and comments with any ease. If these graphs and tables are only “widgets,” so near as I can tell we should only have to mark them off a list to make them reappear. I hope.

#4 Commenter Access to Statistics. Usually it is Matthew, Larry, or I who will sometimes say something like “wow, we just passed 10,000 published comments”, or “just set a new record of 900-whatever “views” today.” (For the record, we’ve been over 700 views — which is about 2- to 3-times larger number than actual visitors — about 3 or 4 times. We have been averaging 300-450 views a day for the past year or so during weekdays, and about 150-250 a day on weekends, and we have more than 275 regular subscribers). There are about five or six active co-moderators on this blog, with Sharon in the lead, and we can all see whatever stats are available — but nobody else can. I think these statistics should be available to all posters and commenters, if they are interested — or at least those who reasonably identify themselves if they are using a pseudonym for some reason.

#5 The Search Engine. Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a few days ago when I asked Matt for help to find a prolonged and sometimes heated and/or snarky discussion we had on a specific topic (Montana’s Principles, I think). Matt and I occasionally bump heads pretty hard, so it is a somewhat humbling act, at least for me, to publicly ask for his help. I’m guessing he has had as much trouble finding the post as I did (assuming he’s had a chance to read my comment yet)  — and we wrote most of the discussion ourselves and both have access to the slightly-better co-moderator search methods. This is like 1990s Google. WordPress should be able to at least do that good.

So that’s my Top 5 Beefs, numbered accordingly. Anyone else agree with me on these, disagree, or knows Something Important that I’ve missed, please Comment. New whines will be permanently numbered in the order they are 1) received and 2) succinctly stated (one brief paragraph maximum; phrase or short sentence preferred). Then we’ll try and get some of them fixed. I will not be personally involved in any technical work in these regards, but I’m hoping that someone of the general readership has — and is willing to donate — these capabilities.

Other thoughts?

The fur is flying between the Forest Service’s hired-popgun enforcer, Metis Group LLC, and Russian émigré political artist Nadia Khuzina. Like anti-fracking Occupier Lopi LaRue, Khuzina is accused of mis-appropriating Smokey’s iconic image.

What makes this tempest-in-a-teapot even more delicious, however, is that Metis Group CEO Libby Kavoulakis has posted a YouTube video in which she claims to be the real victim. Kavoulakis says said that Khuzina (love that alliteration) is “being investigated for crimes involving art theft, cyber bullying and harassment” and that she “steals protected intellectual property for her amateurish art, then enlists her husband, Woody Deck, a fringe gambler with a checkered past, to attack anyone who points this out to them.” [Since this post was made, Kavoulakis has now removed the preceding link].

“Stop this criminal enterprise,” she implores, calling for a “boycott” of Khuzina’s art.

Meanwhile, Smokey seems unconcerned, as he’s busy “getting his Smokey on.”

I think I figured this out — the real pain in the Zork has been connecting all of the links. Thanks to Dr. Mike Wood for this announcement (no idea about the CONUS or MODIS, though):

(NOTE: pushed back from Oct. 22nd)        <http://www.fs.fed.us/research/landscape-science/>

Predicting long-term wildfire effects across complex landscapes.

Steve Norman<http://www.forestthreats.org/about/who-we-are/asheville-team/bios/steve-norman> – Research Ecologist, U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station<http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/>
USFS Spatial Data Spotlight*:

Ty Wilson<http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/people/wilson>
USFS Northern Research Station

Raster Maps of FIA Survey Data:
Forest Carbon Stocks<http://dx.doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0004>
+
Tree Species Basal Area<http://dx.doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0013>
250 m grid, CONUS

Tune in to learn more!

*Repeated by request due to technical problems in Sept. webinar

ABSTRACT
Wildfires may provide an efficient means to maintain or restore some aspects of fire-adapted landscapes. Yet with the added influence of invasive species and climate change, wildfires may also facilitate or accelerate undesired type conversions. This talk presents a framework for integrating cross-jurisdictional, landscape-scale monitoring and prediction with management objectives using measures of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from MODIS imagery. Measures are both fire and recovery sensitive to contextualize short or long-term change with respect to any actual, potential, or idealized pre-wildfire baseline or desired future condition. This integrative, coarse-filter approach provides land managers with planning tools for efficiently recognizing and prioritizing problems in disturbance-prone landscapes, whether or not they have recently burned.

WHEN?
Tuesday, Oct. 29 from 1 to 2pm Eastern (pushed back from Oct. 22).  Steve will present for 30 minutes, followed by Q&A.  Agenda items listed to the left will comprise the balance of time.

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE?
Federal, state & local land managers; federal and university landscape science and fire researchers; national forest climate change coordinators; GIS & remote sensing application specialists; NGO representatives, land use planners and other interested citizens.

WEBINAR CONNECTION DETAILS
Click here to JOIN THE MEETING<https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usda/join?id=MDF46F&role=attend&pw=b_6dSW%40.p> up to 30 minutes prior.  Audio is exclusively via phone: 1-888-858-2144, passcode 1418655.  Live captioning here<http://www.fedrcc.us/Enter.aspx?EventID=2241699&CustomerID=321>.  First time users please log in early.  Troubleshoot here<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cfZo7MnB6qg7-FSjNBrUG1-m4qdMaeDtqTkFzEQEFzE/edit?usp=sharing&pli=1>.

Occurring monthly on a Tuesday at 1 pm EST – Users may join up to 30 minutes prior to the start of each webinar.  Audio is always via conference line (888.858.2144, passcode 1418655). A detailed flyer with an abstract will be sent for each monthly talk (as above).

Sponsored by U.S. Forest Service, Research & Development<http://www.fs.fed.us/research/landscape-science/>.  Contact:  Amy Daniels<mailto:[email protected]>.

Forest Service Landscape Science<http://www.fs.fed.us/research/landscape-science/> cuts across research disciplines and organizational divisions to understand the drivers and implications of landscape change across land ownerships; to produce spatial data and models that evaluate management alternatives; and to highlight when, where and how partnerships are indispensable to achieving shared land management objectives.

Mike Woods, via Sharon, requested that these ideas be posted for general consideration and discussion. I think there may have also been some Webinars he may have wanted to post, but I am unsure (“incapable”) of how to do that. Here is the discussion piece:

Will you post this to the blog just as an FYI? Not sure if its something you normally do…Just let me know.

I would also like to suggest a modification for the blog site. This might allow for the conversation to stay focused on the ideas people are presenting, rather than being a venue for attempting to discredit discredit the individuals participating. I know you say this problem isn’t wide spread, and I agree. But I still think it would be good if you first had some specific rules like this in place played a bit more a “gatekeeper” role if possible :

1. All posts and responses must say focused on ideas and facts and must maintain a respectful discourse. Comments and posts will not be posted if they are focused on the “messenger instead of the message” and are derogatory in nature.

2. If you are responding to an individual with a disagreement that pertains to a narrow topic, then please write the person directly via email or otherwise communicate outside the blog site.

Just some thoughts. I know this may put you in a the place of making “judgement calls”, but I would trust your judgement and others could adjust over time too…

Mike

Michael Wood, PhD
Affiliate Faculty, Society and Conservation Department
& Leadership Program Director
College of Forestry and Conservation
University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812
(928) 607-6356

A news brief from the National Association of State Foresters. The Continuing Resolution wasn’t “clean,” but this is a good thing.

Pointless at this point?

Judge issues order lifting federal suspension of logging sales

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, October 17, 2013

A federal judge in Oregon today issued a restraining order blocking the Obama administration from enforcing its earlier suspension of timber sales during the government shutdown.

The order by Judge Owen Panner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon came the same day the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service directed regional staff to begin allowing timber contractors to resume operations with the shutdown over.

The order follows a lawsuit filed this week by the American Forest Resource Council and three wood products manufacturing companies in the Pacific Northwest that argued the administration’s suspension of timber sales during the 16-day government shutdown was illegal (E&ENews PM, Oct. 15).

Tom Partin, president of AFRC, today said the judge did not rule on the merits of the suspensions but issued the order so individual contractors do not have to wait to receive approval to return to work.

“It will take a few days to get those out to the folks in the forest,” Partin said. “We greatly appreciate the judge’s [temporary restraining order] today.”

The industry had argued in the lawsuit that the suspensions were illegal because the supervision of logging activities is not “critical” and therefore activity should have continued in the absence of appropriations.

It remains to be seen whether any companies will file breach-of-contract claims against the government for lost production during the shutdown, which came at a critical time for loggers after the wildfire season and before the onset of November rains.

Here is a post from another blog demonstrating: 1) the lack of media attention to such a significant event in the Age of Global Warming, and 2) the growing power of bloggery in communicating and discussing important ideas and events in this Age of Internet Communications. 1152 comments and counting!

The Blizzard that Never Was – and its Aftermath on Cattle and Ranchers

http://dawnwink.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/the-blizzard-that-never-was-and-its-aftermath-on-cattle-and-ranchers/comment-page-19/#comment-2411

October 8, 2013 by dawnwink | 1,152 Comments

The worst blizzard in recorded history of South Dakota just swept through the state. Tens of thousands of cattle are predicted dead and the much of the state is still without power. The Rapid City Journal reports, ”Tens of thousands of cattle lie dead across South Dakota on Monday following a blizzard that could become one of the most costly in the history of the state’s agriculture industry.”

The only reason I know this is because my parent’s ranch, the setting for Meadowlark, lies in the storm’s epicenter. Mom texted me after the storm. “No electricity. Saving power on phone. It’s really, really bad….” She turned on her phone to call me later that day. “There are no words to describe the devastation and loss. Everywhere we look there are dead cattle. I’ve never seen so many dead cattle. Nobody can remember anything like this.” Author of several books and infinite numbers of articles, Mom said, “I can’t imagine writing about this. I’m not going to take photos. These deaths are too gruesome. Nobody wants to see this.”

I searched the national news for more information. Nothing. Not a single report on any of major news sources that I found. Not CNN, not the NY Times, not MSNBC. I thought, Well, it is early and the state remains without power and encased in snow, perhaps tomorrow. So I checked again the next day. Nothing. It has now been four days and no national news coverage.

Meanwhile, ranchers on the plains have been dealt a crippling blow the likes that has not been experienced in living memory. The Rapid City Journal continues, ”Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, said most ranchers she had spoken to were reporting that 20 to 50 percent of their herds had been killed. While South Dakota ranchers are no strangers to blizzards, what made Friday’s storm so damaging was how early it arrived in the season. Christen said cattle hadn’t yet grown their winter coats to insulate them from freezing wind and snow. In addition, Christen said, during the cold months, ranchers tend to move their cattle to pastures that have more trees and gullies to protect them from storms. Because Friday’s storm arrived so early in the year, most ranchers were still grazing their herds on summer pasture, which tend to be more exposed and located farther away from ranch homes.”

In addition to the financial loss, when a rancher loses an animal, it is a loss of years, decades, and often generations within families, of building the genetics of a herd. Each rancher’s herd is as individual and unique as a fingerprint. It is not a simple as going out to buy another cow. Each cow in a herd is the result of years of careful breeding, in the hopes of creating a herd reflective of market desirability, as well as professional tastes of the rancher. Cattle deaths of this magnitude for ranchers is the equivalent of an investment banker’s entire portfolio suddenly gone. In an instant, the decades of investment forever disappear.  It is to start over again, to rebuild, over years and years.

Cattle have a very real money amount that ranchers and their families depend upon. This is also true of acreage and the size of a herd. This why you never, ever ask a rancher, “How big is your ranch?” or “How many cattle do you have?” These are the equivalents of, “So, how about you tell me the amount of money in your bank account?” With these losses, it is up to the rancher to divulge, or not, the number of head lost. It is not polite to ask, again the equivalent of asking, “So, how much money just evaporated from your bank account?” People outside of the ranching world often ask these questions with the best of intentions. They have no idea how these questions are experienced by the rancher.

People have asked me, “What can we say then?” On this occasion, a heartfelt, “I’m sorry for your loss,” goes a long, long way.

Here are two excellent pieces, written by local newspapers, on the loss and devastation to the living landscape:

Tens of Thousands of Cattle Killed in Friday’s Blizzard, Ranchers Say The Rapid City Journal

October Blizzard Taking Toll on Livestock, Ranch Radio KBHB

To ranch is not a job, it is a life. In Meadowlark, which takes place on my parent’s ranch, the main character, Grace, studies the economic situation of the ranch, “By lamplight, Grace pored over the columns of numbers that represented the ranch. The sound of the pencil against the paper rose from the page and drifted into the corners of the room. She studied rows and numbers, written and erased, then written and erased again…This was all this ranch was to the bank: Expenses and income—the quantities of the former far outnumbering those of the later.

Nowhere was there space for the things that represented the ranch’s true value. Headings such as Life, Hope, Dreams, and God-It’s-All-We’ve-Got did not exist. Nor was there room for Memories, Legacy, and Blood-and-Sweat. No item reflected the scent of the prairie grass after a summer rain. No place for the times Grace had rocked James and prayed that the land would sustain him through a lifetime. “

The prairie is a place of extremes, where the weather and land always take primacy, because they must. In Meadowlark, Grace writes in her journal, “The beauty. The bitterness. Not a land of mediocrity but of stunning beauty and brute force.”

The prairie experienced a summer of beauty, with rain we hadn’t seen in years. The prairie was lush with grass and cattle fat and glossy in the pastures. Now, we experience the brute force of the prairie, with tens of thousands of cattle dead and ranching families and communities left reeling. All of this death and destruction from The Blizzard that Never Was.

Mom just wrote, “As the days warm, more and more carcasses are exposed. So many have lost so much.”

I invite you to lift prayers and light to the people and animals of this region. When I told Mom there were so many people sending love, she said, “We feel it. It helps.”

If you’d like to leave your words of encouragement and prayers in the Comments section if this piece, I will make sure they get to those who most need to hear them now.

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I don’t know if this has been discussed, it was filed a year ago so maybe I’m just late to the party. It’s certainly an aggressive litigation effort that’s definitely not from one of the “usual suspects”. Here’s the link, the first place I saw it was on CBD’s website so here it is, I’m sure it’s available elsewhere too if you don’t want to patronize their site:

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/forests/pdfs/industry_lawsuit_8-13-2012.pdf

A few enviro groups have joined in on the USFS side as defendant-intervenors (something about politics makes strange bedfellows…?)

I haven’t yet waded through all the relevant documents. But basically, the FFRC et al (a consortium of forest industry groups) is very unhappy with several provisions of the 2012 Planning Rule, as I read it they believe that:

1) They believe that the Planning Rule, 36 C.F.R. §219.8(a), creates an unprecedented new requirement that every forest plan “must provide for social, economic, and ecological sustainability.” (in other words, they don’t like that “sustainability” language)

2) They claim that the Rule violates MUSYA by unlawfully mandating extra-statutory “ecosystem services”, in  addition to the five statutorily-designated purposes of national forests. They say that providing “ecosystem services” is not a permitted purpose of national forest management under MUSYA.  As I understand it, they feel that these goods and services are traditionally viewed as free benefits to society, or “public goods” – wildlife habitat and diversity, watershed services, carbon storage, and scenic landscapes, for example.

3) A big one: They claim a violation of NFMA by unlawful mandate to maintain viable populations of plant and animal species of conservation concern before meeting multiple use objectives.

4) Another big one: they claim the Planning Rule unlawfully limits decision-making information by requiring decision-makers to “use the best available scientific information for every forest management decision.”   This one sounds kind of goofy at first glance, I think their (debatable) point is that scientific information shouldn’t be allowed to trump “commercial information” (I’m a little vague on what that is, exactly).

Anyway, thought I’d post this, it seems to fit into previous discussion on the “greatest good” in forest planning. The case is still going on (well, probably on hold right now for fed shutdown), they still hadn’t finalized the full briefing schedule as of a couple weeks ago.