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Below is a press release from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.  Seems like this issue might be related to the discussion we had over here about pre-commercial thinning and lynx. -mk

Judge Candy Dale, Chief United States Magistrate Judge  of the United States District Court for the District of Idaho today ruled in favor of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council in their lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Split Creek Pre-commercial Thinning Project which authorized logging 7,000 acres of lodgepole pine forests on the western border of Yellowstone National Park near Island Park, Idaho.   Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies said, “Once again a federal Court had found the Forest Service is in violation of the law.”

In 2005, the United States Forest Service adopted a revised map delineating analysis units for the Canada lynx within the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. The Canada lynx is listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act and the land within the boundaries of Lynx Analysis Units (“LAUs”) is subject to various restrictions, including a prohibition on pre-commercial thinning of trees.  The 2005 map eliminated eight LAUs located within the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and removed approximately 400,000 acres of land previously subject to the restrictions applicable to LAUs.

In December of 2009, the Forest Supervisor for the Caribou-Targhee National Forest authorized the Split Creek Pre-commercial Thinning Project.   The Project authorized the pre-commercial thinning of approximately 7,000 acres of lodgepole pine located within the Island Park and Madison- Pitchstone Plateaus Subsections of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest

“In essence, the Court stated that the Forest Service failed to hold the 2005 map to public scrutiny and peer review, as required by National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA.  Then, they implemented the Project based upon this illegal map, which in turn constituted illegal tiering,” explained Garrity.  “The Court stated that the Forest Service should have prepared an EIS for the 2005 map because it was a significant action affecting a listed species.  The Court addressed one ESA claim, and found in our favor, regarding the Agencies’ failure to reach a jeopardy determination on the 2005 map.”

Judge Dale wrote in her order:

“[T]he Court finds that the Forest Service’s failure to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for a decision that ultimately opened approximately 400,000 acres of previously protected land to precommercial thinning violated NEPA.  Moreover, like a house of cards built on an unsound foundation, because the 2005 map was not analyzed under NEPA, the agency’s analysis under the ESA – which is based upon the validity of the 2005 map – cannot withstand judicial review.”

“The 2005 map removed eight LAUs from the 2001 map.  It eliminated almost 400,000 acres of land that was previously subject to greater environmental restrictions under the Lynx Management Direction.  It opened nearly 400,000 acres of land to precommercial thinning projects – projects that would be prohibited under the earlier map and the restrictions applicable to LAUs.  Although the 2005 map was subjected to public comment prior to the approval of the Project, the map was never subjected to independent NEPA review, which would have required an analysis of the potential affects the removal of the LAUs would have on the lynx, its habitat, and the habitat of snowshoe hare.  Such analysis is absent in this case.  The absence of such analysis violates NEPA’s procedural requirements…

Further, “[t]he Court agrees with Plaintiffs that the failure to analyze the 2005 map under NEPA undermines the Forest Service’s decision under the ESA.  And, although the Court does not reach Plaintiffs’ claims under NFMA, the danger that the Project does not comply with the Forest Plan is a real one.”

The Forest Service also failed to evaluate “whether the … elimination of 390,000 acres of land within the boundaries of LAUs i the 2005 map would adversely affect the lynx or its habitat.  The failure to assess whether the adoption of the 2005 map would jeopardize the lynx or its habitat violated the ESA.”

“There can be no dispute that the Project itself is altering the physical landscape by removing tress on land that was previously subject to restrictions for the benefit of a protected species under the ESA.  In the absence of a valid FONSI and biological assessment, the Court fails to grasp how the Project can continue.”

“Our challenge was based on the failure of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate all occupied and unoccupied areas that are essential to the conservation of the species as required by the Endangered Species Act and to base the this designation on the best scientific data available as required by that law,” said Garrity.

The Canada lynx is comparable to the bobcat in size and particularly distinguished by its long legs and large paws, which make it well-adapted to hunting in deep snow.  It is highly dependent on snow-covered areas due to its specialized predator-prey relationship with the snowshoe hare – a species which, like the lynx, evolved to survive in areas that receive deep snow.

“The Split Creek proposal authorizes extensive pre-commercial thinning in occupied lynx habitat and in snowshoe hare habitat,” explained Dr. Sara Johnson, a former wildlife biologist for the Targhee National Forest and Director of Native Ecosystems Council. “The logging would have driven out snowshoe hare, which are the primary prey of lynx.  Although these federal agencies are required by the Endangered Species Act to try and recover lynx populations, logging 7,000 acres of critical lynx habitat does just the opposite.”

Judge Dale’s order is here.

White Rock fire in red; note fire from couple years ago adjacent to the north. Both headed NE with the prevailing wind and expire when they hit the scant, low-elevation grass.

Aviation accidents account for more wildland firefighter deaths than any single other cause. From 1999 to 2009, 61 firefighters died as a result of air crashes. On Sunday, two more aviators’ names were added to that list when their airtanker crashed while dumping retardant on the White Rock fire. On that same day, tragedy was averted narrowly when another retardant airtanker was forced to make a belly landing because one of its gear failed to deploy.

In 2002, a government-appointed Blue Ribbon Panel concluded that “The safety record of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters used in wildland fire management is unacceptable.” The report noted that “if ground firefighters had the same fatality rate [as firefighting aviators], they would have suffered more than 200 on-the-job deaths per year.” Since the Blue Ribbon report’s publication, aviation-related fatalities have gone up 50% compared to the three-year period preceding the panel’s report – not including this past weekend’s tragic loss of life.

When a firefighter risks his life rescuing a child from a burning home, we applaud his heroism. If he dies in the effort, whether successful or not, we honor his sacrifice, knowing he gave everything to save that child’s life. While we mourn his loss, our society agrees that saving a child’s life is worth the risk and the ultimate price paid.

But, what are we to think when firefighters die trying to save sagebrush and juniper from burning? The White Rock fire threatens not a single home. It poses no danger to any person, save the firefighters themselves. The fire is burning in one of the least populated corners of our nation — the Utah/Nevada border — on federally-owned land inhabited by jack rabbits and coyotes.

Yet our government has thrown everything in its arsenal at this natural, lightning-caused fire. Over three hundred firefighters, including four helicopters, six engines, four bulldozers and three water tenders, continue to battle this fire before it . . . well, before it what? Before it burns itself out, just like an adjacent fire did a couple of years ago. The total financial tab will cost taxpayers upwards of a million dollars, while the cost in human life is immeasurable.

Our society’s aerial war against wildfire will continue to sacrifice lives and money in a fruitless campaign against Nature. Each year, we dump tens of millions of gallons of toxic retardant on fires, with no evidence that these bombings improve firefighting effectiveness. There is no correlation between the amount of aerial retardant used and success in keeping fires small. We know that the best way to protect homes from wildland fire is to keep vegetation clear from around the house and build with fire-resistant roofing. Retardant doesn’t save homes; proper construction and landscaping save homes.

Some in Congress, including Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden, think the solution is to give pilots new airplanes. Half-a-billion dollars of shiny new airplanes will not make aerial firefighting any more effective. Nor will new planes make the job substantially safer. Flying low through smoke on hot, windy days in the nation’s most rugged landscapes is a recipe for disaster no matter what aircraft is being piloted.

Sensible wildland fire policy is less sexy and heroic than the war-like television footage of bombers raining red retardant on burning brush. Avoid building in fire-prone land. If you do build, use fire-resistant roofing, covered gutters, and keep landscaping around your house low and green. We know these Firewise tactics work; and is the only strategy that works regardless of fire intensity or firefighting effectiveness.

Ten years ago, the government’s Blue Ribbon panel said the aerial firefighters’ death rate was “unacceptable.” Today, the government’s fruitless and ineffective aerial war against wildland fire can only be called immoral. Congress should stop pandering to our innate fear of fire and promote sensible fire management policies that save lives and homes.

According to an E&E article by Phil Taylor (sorry, no link) published today:

Researchers at the University of British Columbia are concluding that trees are interacting with one another in a symbiotic relationship that helps the trees to survive.  Connected by fungi, the underground root systems of plants and trees are transferring carbon and nitrogen back and forth between each other in a network of subtle communication.  Similar to the network of neurons and axons in the human brain, the network of fungi, roots, soil and micro-organisms beneath the larger ‘mother trees’ gives the forest its own consciousness.

“Some of the forest practices that we have done pay no attention to the role of these ‘mother trees’ or that trees actually will move some of their legacy to the new generation. We didn’t pay attention to it.  Instead what we did is we went and cut down those trees after they died so that we could make 2 x 4’s out of them. And we didn’t give them a chance to give back to the community, I don’t think. So what those dying trees will do is that they will also move resources into living trees, to the young ones coming up, before they go, before they completely collapse. So it’s a transfer, like a passing of the wand from one generation to the next, if we allow it to happen.”

– Forester Suzanne Simard, a professor at the University of British Columbia

This statement was release yesterday:

The Center for Biological Diversity is a founding member of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative. The Center co-founded, participates in and supports the Initiative as a vehicle for corrective ecological restoration treatments that lead to the re-establishment of climate-entrained fire regimes and native biological diversity across landscapes dominated by ponderosa pine forests in northern and eastern Arizona.

The Four Forests Restoration Initiative envisions deploying a patchwork of ecological restoration treatments in ponderosa pine forest landscapes to create conditions that reduce the potential for large-scale, stand-replacing fires, that sustain native biological diversity, and that, across much of the landscape, allow natural fire to safely resume its keystone role of regulating ecosystems structure and composition over time.

The viability of such an effort hinges in large part on the ability of a contractor to deploy a range of high-quality, cost-efficient treatments. That contractor must process small diameter trees in an economically viable way, and it must be financially and operationally capable of adjusting treatments to avoid unforeseen or undesirable ecological impacts, like population-scale losses of canopy-dependent species. The viability of ecological restoration also depends on the Forest Service’s ability, in cooperation with its collaborators, to detect, adjust to and avoid unforeseen, undesirable ecological effects. This requires a robust, transparent and responsive monitoring and adaptive management program that, despite legal requirements, has so far proven elusive in southwestern national forests.

For these reasons, the Center for Biological Diversity has long supported the economic model proposed by Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP). Grounded in proven technologies and markets, the AZFRP proposal was focused on the economically viable utilization of small-diameter trees and promised the financial capacity to deploy a full range of treatments, as ecologically appropriate. The strategic partnership developed by AZFRP with the most proven northern Arizona restoration thinning professionals promised high-quality woods work. AZFRP’s proposal included a substantial financial commitment for ecological monitoring and up to $500,000 per year for 10 years. AZFRP’s long-standing engagement in the collaborative process for more than six years has demonstrated a commitment to forging agreement, building new partnerships among traditional adversaries, and ensuring the overall success of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative’s ecological goals.

On Friday, May 18, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it had awarded to Montana-based Pioneer Associates a stewardship contract to cut mostly small-diameter trees across 300,000 acres of national forest land in northern Arizona. The tree-cutting is intended to implement part of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative. In light of the above-described rationale, and for reasons listed below, the Center for Biological Diversity believes the U.S. Forest Service made the wrong decision. Little is known about Pioneer Associates’ plan, but what little is known points to a strategy that, from economic, ecological, socio-political, and ethical standpoints, raises serious questions about its merits relative to competing bids.

A $9-million loss to taxpayers
The Forest Service walked away from $9 million in its award to Pioneer Associates. Pioneer offered the Forest Service $6.3 million; Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) offered a total of $15 million. This $9 million loss to taxpayers comes at a time when many funding needs for Four Forests Restoration Initiative are likely to remain unmet. This may for example come at the cost of activities critical to biodiversity conservation, like ecological monitoring, and riparian and spring restoration that have traditionally been difficult to fund.

No money for monitoring
The Forest Service walked away from ecological monitoring funds. AZFRP specifically offered the Forest Service $5 million for monitoring across 10 years. Pioneer apparently didn’t even address monitoring funding. Concurrent with its rejection of AZFRP’s offer, the Forest Service continues to cite a lack of funding for its ongoing failure to monitor threatened and endangered species populations in Arizona national forests. Since the Mexican spotted owl’s recovery plan was issued in 1995, the Forest Service, despite clear legal obligations, has routinely refused to monitor owls to understand of population trends and responses to management. As regional forest cover losses accumulate with mega-fires and ecological restoration, the need for that knowledge is more important than ever; yet, consistent with its past behavior, the Forest Service in this case has squarely rejected an opportunity to finally begin collecting that critical information.

Unproven technology for the worst fire hazards
Pioneer’s strategy relies on being able to convert small trees, branches and tree tops into cellulosic bio-diesel. Cellulosic bio-diesel technology is experimental and unproven; we are aware of no examples where it has ever been shown to be feasible in commercial applications. Small trees, tree tops and branches are the least valuable and most flammable material to be removed from the woods, and the contract is expected to generate hundreds of thousands of tons of it annually. Failure to address this material will sharply increase fire hazard and saddle the public with resulting treatment or fire suppression costs; by betting on Pioneer’s unproven, experimental bio-diesel technology, the Forest Service is gambling with exactly that outcome.

Risky business, global markets
Pioneer’s strategy also relies on being able to compete in global markets against Asian furniture manufacturing that uses high-grade timber and third-world wages. The demise of America’s southeastern furniture industry, even with its reliance on plantation wood and minimum-wage labor, illustrates this challenge. We are skeptical that making products from high-cost, low-yield, small-diameter ponderosa pine with federally-mandated wages can compete against Asian imports or, as a business prospect, attract necessary investment. In contrast, competing bids relied on proven technologies in well-established markets. At stake is the ability to deploy restoration treatments; here, the Forest Service again bets on a risky utilization scheme rather than proven business models.

No commitment to collaboration
Representatives of Pioneer have occasionally attended Four Forests Restoration Initiative monthly meetings, but have largely avoided engagement in difficult negotiations about key issues whose resolution has turned the Four Forests Restoration Initiative into an actual program. Pioneer’s actions suggest that they view the Four Forests Restoration Initiative as little more than a vehicle affording access to large-scale timber sales not previously offered by the USFS. Ecological restoration appears to be an afterthought and collaboration a procedural box to be checked on the way to a wood contract. By selecting Pioneer, the Forest Service undermines the social license that it demanded from members of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative and casts even more doubt on the agency’s willingness or ability to engage in collaborative ecological restoration.

A federal-industry revolving door
Pioneer is represented by Marlin Johnson, a retired regional silviculturalist for the Forest Service in Arizona and New Mexico. In his federal capacity Johnson was a liaison to Pioneer’s timber sale inquiries. Within a year of retirement, Johnson was representing Pioneer’s inquires to the same office in which he earlier worked. In his federal capacity Johnson was also privy to the business plans of bidders that Pioneer would later compete against. Finally, over the concerns of staff and other agencies, Johnson, during his time at the Forest Service, advanced a “reinterpretation” of regional wildlife rules that sharply increased the amount of mature and old forest that can be logged while in some cases reducing stand-scale forest cover to below 20 percent—a methodology that has since caused regional timber sales to crumble under internal review prompted by administrative objections from the Center. The Forest Service is now using that same “reinterpretation” to justify old-growth logging — logging that Johnson and Pioneer could profit from if awarded those timber sales. This revolving federal-industry door in the Forest Service’s southwestern region raises several additional ethical questions about the merits of the agency’s award to Pioneer.

In making its contract award decision, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the Forest Service did not adequately consider criteria relating to (1) cost, (2) technology reliability, (3) economic or market viability, (4) the ability to conduct ecological and endangered species monitoring, or (5) collaboration and a commitment to maintaining a social license. With so many obvious problems and ethical questions outstanding — and given the consequences of failure that may well attend the wrong contract award decision — not questioning the Forest Service’s contract award to Pioneer is, in our view, foolish. While we are keenly aware that “best value” tradeoffs allow the government to award to other-than best-priced or most technically advanced proposals, best value in this case appears to have been assigned to whichever proposal best insulated the Forest Service’s bureaucratic discretion from perceived threats arising from a “social license” forged at the request of the Forest Service between communities, environmental groups, local governments and locally-based industry. There are very real, rational and disturbing problems plaguing the award process. These problems inescapably point to the primacy of political motives in the Forest Service’s selection process and, given all that’s at stake, they demand immediate transparency, third-party investigation and corrective action.

Some of you may remember that a few years ago the superintendent of Glacier National Park, Chas Cartwright, was very proactive in pushing for Wilderness designation. This is a snip from an article in the fall of 2009:

Cartwright said wilderness inside Glacier, and all national parks, is not a new idea. He said park managers were asked decades ago to identify possible wilderness areas within Glacier’s boundaries. “That went to President Nixon 35 years ago,” he said. Nixon recommended to the Congress to affirm those designations, but Congress has not acted on that recommendation in almost two generations. “Thirty-five years is a long time to wait,” he said. His comments were the second time in two days that Cartwright has publicly pushed for park wilderness.

Shortly after these statements supporting Wilderness designation for portions of Glacier National Park, all of a sudden, the effort just seemed to evaporate and Superintendent Cartwright stopped talking about the idea.  Well, a forest scientist that I work very closely with might have found the reason why.

When this forest scientist talked with some Glacier National Park staff last year, this topic came up and their understanding was that Senator Tester had directly approached Superintendent Cartwright and “asked” him to stop pursuing the Wilderness idea because Senator Tester felt it would complicate his efforts to push the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act through Congress.

Is this perhaps yet another example of where politics – especially election-year politics – get in the way of good public lands policy? I mean, who could seriously be against Wilderness designation for the wildest, most spectacular parts of Glacier National Park?

Ecologist and former hunting guide George Wuerthner has a new piece on the Lolo National Forest’s Colt Summit Timber Sale over at The Wildlife News.   Below is a snip, but make sure to give the entire article it a read.  We’ve also debated the substantive issues related to this timber sale numerous times on this site.

The Colt Summit timber sale on the Seeley Lake Ranger District is the first logging proposal on the Lolo National Forest to be challenged in five years.  It has become symbolic of a bigger fight over logging in the Northern Rockies. It is the proverbial line in the sand. It is actually typical of the may timber sales now being promoted by the Forest Service based on flawed assumptions about fire ecology and exaggerated public benefits, so in a sense is worthy of scrutiny since it is representative of what environmentalists around the West are encountering these days.

The Colt Summit Timber sale is being challenged by the Friends of the Wild Swan, Native Ecosystems Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and Mountain Ecosystems Defense Council. They have filed a law suit to stop the timber sale arguing that the logging may jeopardize endangered grizzly bear, lynx and bull trout. Also, Wildwest Institute filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs (they are members of the Lolo Restoration committee).

Wuerthner also recently got some new pictures of the Colt Summit timber sale area from the air.  You can also take a Google Earth tour here. As anyone can clearly see from the aerial images, the surrounding area (including the portions of the Lolo National Forest and private lands) have already been heavily logged and roaded, significantly compromising critical habitat for lynx, grizzly bears, bull trout and other critters.  In fact, these images makes it pretty clear that the Colt Summit project area is smack dab in the middle of one of the only wildlife corridors in that part of the valley.  Really, most of the valley has been clearcut, logged and roaded from the border of the Mission Mountain Wilderness on the west to the Bob Marshal Wilderness on the east.   Yet, despite tremendous fragmentation of the landscape, The Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation, Yaak Valley Forest Council and others joined up with the Montana Wood Products Association and Montana Logging Association to file a brief in support of more logging in the area.