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According to today’s Missoulian newspaper, the logging slated to begin on the Bass Creek project of the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana has been delayed because Pyramid Mountain Lumber Company’s log yard is too full and they have too much inventory.

An unusually dry spring will keep an extremely popular recreation site open to the public a couple of weeks longer than planned this spring.

Pyramid Mountain Lumber Co. has pushed back the start of its logging operation at the Bass Creek Recreation Area to about June 1 because its log yard is fuller than expected this time of year.

“We didn’t anticipate this very dry spring weather,” said Gordy Sanders, Pyramid Lumber’s resource manager. “Our decision to delay the start of the logging operation has to do with the overall management of our log inventory.”

The drier-than-normal spring allowed Pyramid’s loggers and contractors to bring in more timber than their mill could accommodate.

So the mill’s log yard is full.

Here is an editorial about spotted owl economics that has been going the rounds of a number of email networks since it was published four days ago, on May 3^rd:

http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2013/5/3/the-shameful-and-painful-spotted-owl-saga-shooting-stripes-t.html

This was posted on Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog, and was written by Teresa Platt, who is listed as the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research. I’m guessing “right wing think tank,” by the title of the organization and Ridenour’s history, and note that Platt often blogs about topics regarding our nation’s natural resources:

http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/author/blogplatt

I’d never read this blog before, but apparently some of my wildlife biology, range sciences, and rancher friends do — those are the circles in which this has been making the rounds, including a personal email from Platt requesting a wider distribution.

In general, I am in agreement with Platt’s thoughts – however, I think these animals are more rightly referred to as “hoot owls” (the most common type of owl in North America), rather than “wood owls.” I’m going to stick with Wikipedia on that one, until someone explains to me why they think spotted owls have been here “since the last ice age,” whereas historical evidence indicates they may have arrived just a few decades in advance of the more common striped hoot owl.

The Shameful and Painful Spotted Owl Saga: Shooting Stripes To Save Spots

By Teresa Platt

Posted May 3, 2013 at 1:20 PM

Our federal government prefers spots and is moving forward with a million-dollar-a-year plan to remove 9,000 striped owls from 2.3% of 14 million Western acres of protected spotted owl habitat. Our government is shooting wood owls with stripes to protect those with spots; to stop the stripes from breeding with the spots.

It had to come to this.

The 1990 listing of the Northern spotted owl under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) gave the bird totem status in management decisions.

It didn’t work. Spotted owls declined 40% over 25 years. Timber sales on federal government-managed lands dropped too. Oregon harvests fell from 4.9 billion board feet (1988) to less than 5%, 240 million board feet (2009). Beyond the jobs and business profits from making lumber, the Federal and County governments used to benefit from these harvests too. Harvests down: tax receipts down. Today, with cutbacks in Federal budgets and sequestration, the States are arguing about how much of your tax dollars the Federal government should give them to keep impoverished County governments afloat in timber-rich areas.

Beyond competition from barred owls, and after years of not enough logging, mega-fires fueled by too many trees now threaten spotted owl survival. An exhausted veteran of the spotted owl wars, who lives dangerously close to a federally-“managed” forest that is expected to go up in smoke soon, explained:

“You have to realize that even moving a biomass project forward takes a court battle. No salvage of dead or burned timber — it just rots. Not much thinning or fuel reduction – without a two-year court fight the Forest Service usually loses. Hell, the agency is still fighting lawsuits over the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment started in ‘97 — after four revisions and several court decisions — the Greens just keep suing until they get what they want.”

Taxpayers pay for the conservation plans, recovery plans, and action plans, many stalled in court.

Taxpayers pay for all the lawsuits too, on both sides.

Taxpayers pay the salaries and pensions of government workers fighting fire and those shooting striped owls in order to give, temporarily, an advantage to ones with spots.

All this sacrifice and the spots just keep declining and the stripes just keep on coming.

The Northern spotted owl might very well be the most expensive avian sub-species on the planet.

Invasive or just mobile?

It is theorized that striped and spotted owls were once the same species of wood owl before separating into East and West Coast versions during the last Ice Age. The common striped barred wood owl (Strix varia) has expanded its range westward, establishing itself at the expense of the less aggressive, less adaptable and smaller spotted wood owl (Strix occidentalis).

By 1909, barred owls were found in Montana. They made their way to the coast, taking up residence in British Columbia (1943), Washington (1965) and Oregon (1972).

The owls, striped or spotted, are so closely related they successfully interbreed and their fertile offspring, “sparred owls,” are hybrids that look just like spotted owls. The ESA does not protect the hybrids or their offspring so the birds are breeding their way out of the ESA!

Says Susan Haig, a wildlife ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, is exasperated by the interbreeding:

“It’s a nasty situation. This could cause the extinction of the Northern spotted owl.”

The ESA measures and categorizes, then stands steadfast against change. It is attempting, by shotgun, to separate the birds.

Are these kissing cousins from the East invasive and unwanted when they turn up out West? Or just mobile and happy to mix it up with their spotted relatives?

Whatever, and wherever, they are, striped and spotted owls are not the only birds moving around.

111 species, almost 20% of the total bird species in North America have expanded into at least one new state or province with 14 species expanding into more states and provinces than the barred owl. Changing climates and habitats are the cause of 98% of range expansions. The birds go where the food is. 38 states or provinces have gained at least 10 new bird species, some moving into a niche inhabited by an ESA-listed avian cousin.

Beyond birds, the last Ice Age killed off the North American earthworm. It’s since been reintroduced, only to be labeled — by our government scientists — as an invasive species, an undesirable. And — oh no! — earthworms are beating millipedes in the game of survival.

The policy we embrace today for striped and spotted birds can be transferred to other birds and other animals, even earthworms. If this continues, will we be reduced to digging up and killing earthworms to save millipedes?

The ESA is written thus and lawsuits by “green” groups — many paid for by our tax dollars — are herding us in this direction.

Stripes, spots, species, subspecies and stocks

In the Kingdom of Animalia, the Phylum of Chordata, the Class of Aves, the Order of Srigiformes, are two Families of birds of prey: the typical owls (Strigidae) and the barn owls (Tytonidae).

The Strigidae Family is the larger of the two Families with close to 190 species, covering nearly all terrestrial habitats worldwide, except Antarctica. 95% are forest-dwelling; 80% are found in the tropics.

The Strigdae Family includes 11 species of the genus Strix, characterized by a conspicuous facial disk and a lack of ear tufts. They are known as screech owls, wood owls, the great gray, the chaco in South America. The Ural wood owl alone boasts 15 sub-species in Europe and Northern Asia.

Within this Strix genus, in North America, the barred wood owl is broken into three sub-species (the Northern varia, georgica in Florida and helveola in Texas), with a fourth (Strix sartorii) found in Mexico.

The spotted owl species (Strix occidentalis) is broken down into three sub-species ranging across the western parts of North America and Mexico. The “threatened” Strix occidentalis lucida of Arizona and Mexico, the California spotted owl subspecies, Strix occidentalis occidentalis, and the endangered Northern spotted owl, Strix occidentalis caurina, the sub-species of greatest concern. The Northern spotted owl ranges from California, through Oregon and Washington, and up into Canada.

You can break this down even further, if you’d like, into regional sub-stocks of sub-species. If you have the time (our government does) and the money (our taxes), you can follow family units, individuals, and all the new hybrids, the result of striped owls breeding with spotted ones.

The Wise Old Owl Asks, “Who Pays?”

This summer there will be more megafires in our overstocked Western forests, often followed by mudslides from the denuded hillsides next spring.

Another “green” group will file suit to stop another timber sale or attempt to stop government workers from shooting stripes to save spots.

Since the spotted owl wars resulted in the export of so many timber jobs, Northwest timber communities contribute far fewer tax dollars to the communal treasury, so the costs of megafires, mudslides and lawsuits will be borne by Eastern and urban taxpayers. That’s where the people—and the taxes—are.

The striped owl may be relentlessly working its way West, but its costs are steadily moving East.

——————————————————————————
Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Press release from Tester’s office. Note the mix of Rs and Ds.

(U.S. SENATE) – Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are leading a bipartisan coalition warning the President against reducing timber sales on U.S. Forest Service lands.

The Senators are joined by Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), and Mark Udall (D-Colo.).

The Forest Service’s budget proposal for 2014 would cut timber sales by 15 percent. The Senators say the plan threatens jobs in rural communities and is inconsistent with the agency’s forest restoration goals.

“At a time when we need to be increasing timber harvest, the Administration’s blueprint sets us even further back,” the Senators wrote President Obama. “The cuts would have serious consequences for counties and businesses in our states and across the country. We urge you to reconsider proposed cuts in timber sales and instead find new ways to boost timber supply in a responsible manner.”

The Senators note that in addition to boosting the market’s timber supply and creating jobs, increasing the timber harvest will help to mitigate wildfires. Dead trees combined with historic drought to burn a near-record 9.3 million acres nationwide in 2012.

A letter from the senators is here:

http://www.tester.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2883

On February 12, I asked the Forest Service to make the NFMA rule FACA committee meetings accessible to the on-line public. It didn’t happen for the 2/20 meeting.

With the next meeting scheduled for 5/7, I reiterated the request on 5/1. Once again, no go for the May meeting.

However, despair not policy wonks, the FACA DFO (that’s “designated federal official”) says that the FS isn’t opposed to the idea. He says that by the time of the June meeting, which hasn’t yet been scheduled on the committee’s calendar, the FS hopes to have some kind of real-time electronic access for the public.

In the meantime, if you just can’t get enough after having read the proposed directives, you can see what the committee has been perusing here.

That’s the title of a High Country News article from April 29. It is subscription only and very long. A couple of excerpts in which Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson’s version of “ecological forestry” is discussed:

Along with his old-growth research, Franklin pioneered a “new forestry” that revolutionized federal logging practices in the ’90s — setting basic standards like leaving dead snags and legacy trees for habitat after a clearcut.

Franklin’s more recent “ecological forestry” goes further. Larger patches of the best habitat — 20 to 40 percent of the stand — are left undisturbed while the rest is cleared to let smaller trees and shrubs fill in, creating “early seral” habitat that’s high in biodiversity, with leafy plants for deer and elk, and flowers and fruit for birds and butterflies. Franklin is concerned that there’s not enough of this habitat in the Northwest because clear-cuts on state and private land are managed more like plantations than forests: Almost everything is mowed down and sprayed with herbicide so that only replanted trees will grow — an industrial model that shortcuts natural development.

The new method tries to mimic natural disturbances like wildfire and lets the forest recover more naturally. “It’s an evolution in what we were thinking about under the Northwest Forest Plan,” Franklin says. Back then, the focus was on saving the old growth; now, he says, it’s the young forest that needs help, in part because there’s been so little traditional logging on federal lands over the last decade.

Under the Northwest Forest Plan, clearcuts — “regeneration harvests” in forester terms — left more trees than an industrial cut but still provoked strong protests. In response, the BLM tried to meet timber targets by thinning crowded plantations to restore forests. But thinning provides less wood per acre and less return to agencies and county budgets. And some fear that the BLM will simply run out of forest to thin within the next couple decades. That’s why Franklin wants to begin again with higher-volume, regeneration harvests.

“We need a dedicated land base for sustainable wood production on the federal lands, and this is part of it,” Franklin says. The White Castle sale would produce 6.4 million board-feet of timber, slightly less than if it were cut under the normal standards of the Northwest Forest Plan, but 20 times more than if it were simply thinned. A recent study by Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office shows that ecological forestry could satisfy the Northwest Forest Plan’s target of 203 million board-feet for the O&C lands into the future, while continued thinning would fall short and eventually dry up.

However, some environmentalists are not buying this approach (which is not surprising, but how long will the public buy crying wolf about clearcutting and old growth?).

“The White Castle project is a cynical attempt to pass off clear-cutting century-old trees as restoration,” said Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild in a press release. “In reality, the true focus of this project is providing cheap timber to old-growth dependent logging mills at taxpayer expense.”

Environmentalists fear that this project could clear the way for more of this sort of “active management” in old-forest owl habitat. They say mature forests on their way to developing into old growth should not be sacrificed especially when impacts to struggling spotted owls are unclear. In December, the BLM dismissed the protest, but the groups appealed.

“Orwellian doublespeak, my ass,” Franklin retorts. He accuses his critics of distorting the terms of the debate. Under more traditional definitions, the project is neither a clear-cut nor is it in old growth, generally said to be at least 180 years old. Yet with all of the ancient stands essentially off the table, the new fight in Westside forests is over the 80- to 160-year-old future old-growth forests. “This is really where the battle is going to be fought out,” Franklin says.

Meanwhile, industry groups say the pilots don’t provide enough timber to satisfy the O&C lands’ promise of logs to support the counties.

“Of all the issues I’ve worked on, this particular one has angered the widest spectrum of people — just about everyone,” Johnson says. He sees the pilot projects as a policy test for a new management paradigm that challenges the divide between forest reserves and timber harvest areas. That schism, he says, harkens all the way back to the split between John Muir’s preservationist ideals and Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian forestry, which laid the foundation for federal land management.

The pilot harvest model demands that foresters abandon plantation forestry but requires environmentalists to accept that some types of logging — beyond thinning — can be ecologically beneficial. “We’re asking people to look at that and not see forest destruction but see forest renewal — and that’s hard,” says Johnson. “This is really fundamentally rethinking our philosophy of how we conserve and manage forests.”

Well, federal forests. It’s a middle ground, say Franklin and Johnson, between intensively managed private timberlands and reserves on federal ground. I support this approach, though I’d still like to see at least a pilot trust established to oversee harvesting and management of Matrix areas.

Good work from High Country News. In his Editor’s Note, Paul Larmer says the “Historic Northwest Forest Plan needs a careful overhaul.” I think this is open access:

https://www.hcn.org/issues/45.7/historic-northwest-forest-plan-needs-a-careful-overhaul

Steve

I was just getting ready to respond to Sharon’s public database idea (I’m all for it) and to the HRV modeling crowd (they are NOT historical ecologists — but that’s what is really needed) after checking my email, but came across the following news release first.

My pet peeves are the insistent references to “principles of ecological forestry” (which all of the agencies have apparently bought into, or been required to adopt, whatever they might be) and to the claim that these efforts are “science-driven” and represent the “latest science,” apparently based on “new scientific information.”

These are social value problems, and the scientists who need to be involved are cultural anthropologists and historical ecologists — both sadly underrepresented in the literature and in funding. Once common values and objectives can be established, then experienced resource managers need to become involved. So far, it looks like the whole thing is continuing to degenerate in closed door meetings at the hands of high-level bureaucrats, lawyers, and ivory tower theorists — not locals, and not skilled managers. And certainly not the public.

Have these “principles of ecological forestry” ever been independently peer reviewed, or is it just more in-house stuff? How did they change, given the recent influx of “new scientific information?” And — most importantly — where can American taxpayers review these documents?

Other thoughts?

NEWS RELEASE

U.S. Department of the Interior Contacts:
BLM, Jody Weil, (503) 808-6287
U.S. Department of Agriculture
USFWS, Jason Holm, (503) 231-2264
USFS, Larry Chambers, (202) 205-1005

For release: April 26, 2013

USFWS, BLM, USFS Leadership Travel to Pacific Northwest to Discuss Northern Spotted Owl Recovery, Forest Health

Washington, D.C.

As part of the Administration’s on-going commitment to improving forest health in the Pacific Northwest, recovering the northern spotted owl, and supporting sustainable economic opportunities for local communities, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, Bureau of Land Management Principal Deputy Director Neil Kornze, and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell this week travelled to California, Oregon and Washington to meet with employees from both the U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture in an effort to underscore what they see as an historic opportunity for forest ecosystem progress.

“In the past two years, the Service has used the principles of ecological forestry and the latest scientific information to revise and update the recovery plan and identify habitat essential to the survival and recovery of the spotted owl,” said USFWS Director Dan Ashe. “With all three agencies aligned around these principles, we have an historic opportunity to accelerate the protection and restoration of healthy forest ecosystems that will support owl recovery and sustainable timber supplies.”

The USFWS , BLM and USFS have been working together for two decades on recovery of the northern spotted owl, protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The four employee meetings held in Olympia, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Eugene, Oregon; and Redding, California provided an important opportunity for agency leaders to articulate a common vision and intent, and address questions from the people who will play a key role in achieving that vision. The visit emphasizes the importance that sustainable forest health plays in the social, cultural and economic viability of communities in the Pacific Northwest.

“Balance is the key to our success,” said BLM Principal Deputy Director Kornze. “We are
working collaboratively with our partners to develop a sustainable path forward and a long-term solution to the complex forest management challenges in western Oregon and throughout the Pacific Northwest.”

In December 2012, the USFWS finalized a science-driven proposal identifying lands in the Pacific Northwest that are essential to the survival and recovery of the northern spotted owl. The USFWS identified 9.29 million acres of critical habitat on Federal land and 291,570 acres on state land.

“Our National Forests in the Pacific Northwest are a great national treasure, not least for all of the values they provide to local communities,” USFS Chief Tidwell said. “We are working with partners and communities to apply the latest science in maintaining and restoring habitat for spotted owl and other wildlife.”

The agencies have worked closely in developing the revised critical habitat designation and recovery plan. The plan embraces active forest management by applying principles of ecological forestry to target and achieve forest health. This will allow forests within the range of the northern spotted owl to be managed for conservation of the species, ecosystem health and economic opportunities for local communities.

The BLM is revising its resource management plans for 2.5 million acres of forest lands across six BLM Districts in western Oregon in order to address new scientific information related to forest health, the USFWS’s recovery plan and proposed critical habitat designations for the northern spotted owl. The plans will supersede those completed in 1995.

Good thing AAAS didn’t take me off their email, even though I stopped my membership. Otherwise I’d miss things like this webinar on the 24th…

The focus of this webinar is on the use of Tet technology in transgenic insects, in the context of a synthetic biology approach to rational development of novel engineered phenotypes. The tet system provides a regulated switch well suited to a modular design approach. Dr Alphey will also discuss his experience of taking such engineered insects through to successful field use.

About the speaker

Dr. Luke Alphey is the Chief Scientist at Oxitec Ltd. Oxitec aims to control insect pests by use of engineered sterile males of the pest insect species (‘RIDL males’). Oxitec successfully conducted the world’s first outdoor experiments with a GM insect in the USA in 2006, and in 2010 showed that a wild mosquito population could be suppressed by this genetics-based method. Dr Alphey’s earlier career focused on basic science, using Drosophila as a model system, latterly at Oxford University where he is now a Visiting Professor. He has published extensively in the field of insect genetic engineering and contributed to the development of international regulations. Dr. Alphey and Oxitec have won a number of awards for this pioneering green technology.

For some reason, I couldn’t find the EIS for the 2006 release (of bollworms as it turns out) easily.. but did find one for Genetically Engineered Bollworm in 2008. It’s 334 pages.. and I guess it wasn’t litigated.

Meanwhile this NY Times piece says..

Authorities in the Florida Keys, which in 2009 experienced its first cases of dengue fever in decades, hope to conduct an open-air test of the modified mosquitoes as early as December, pending approval from the Agriculture Department.

I tried to find if it was an EA or an EIS supporting this decision but ran into a broken link on the APHIS biotechnology website here. Where it says “find biotechnology environmental documents.”

Also “jobs I’m glad I don’t have” include:

Also, the sorting of male and female mosquitoes, which is done by hand, can result in up to 0.5 percent of the released insects being female, the commentary said.

Too many years ago, I served on a timber industry committee charged, among other things, with figuring out whether it was better to advocate the calculation of “allowable sale quantities” in board or cubic feet. Board foot measure estimates how much lumber can be sawn from a log, with allowances for saw blade width (“kerf”), slabs (the left-overs after squaring off a round log), and sawing strategy. Cubic foot measure is the geometry-based volume of a log.

Ceteris paribus, the number of board feet equivalent to one cubic foot is proportional directly to log diameter. For example, a small-diameter log has a bf/cf ratio of about 4, while a large-diameter log’s ratio is about 6.

Today, almost all serious measures of timber are made in cubic feet, except for pulpwood and biomass, which are measured by weight. That’s because cubic foot measure is widely regarded as a more accurate representation of total wood volume, less subject to the vagaries of milling technology and scaling judgment.

Which measure one chooses makes a difference in how one sees the world of wood production and supply. “Everyone” knows that Oregon’s timber harvest has dropped precipitously since the early 1990s. And, so it has, measured in board feet (the blue-line curve).

But a funny thing happens when Oregon’s harvest is measured in cubic feet (the red-line curve). Not nearly so dramatic a decline. The reason is pretty simple. Oregon’s plantation forests grow a whole lot of wood, producing much more growth annually than the old forests the plantations replaced. Cubic foot measure, which is much less sensitive to tree diameter, more accurately captures that volume than does board foot measure.

For those of you interested in the NSO, there’s a fine article in the new edition of the Western Forester, an SAF newsletter:

“Potential for Silviculture to Contribute to Conservation of Spotted Owls,” by Larry L. Irwin and Jake Verschuyl

Here’s the concluding chapter (spoiler alert!):

Efforts to model forest succession and likely NSO responses in dry forests under several management scenarios suggest a bleak scenario for owl habitat within the <10 yr window described by the 2011 revised recovery plan. In the short-term or at small spatial scales it is argued that forest-health type thinning would likely result in a decrease in available owl habitat even when compared to habitat lost through catastrophic wildfire during the same time period. After several decades, however, the forests treated silviculturally were considered to have more NSOs than those not treated. A majority of federal scientists now caution, despite acute short-term pressures facing NSOs, that successful management and restoration of dry forests will require a long-term, landscape or eco-regional perspective that involves active silviculture.

The entire article is worth a read. So’s the rest of the same edition.

http://www.forestry.org/northwest/westernforester/2013/