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Contributed by Andy Stahl

There are two kinds of Forest Service land use actions. No, I don’t mean “ones I like” and “all the others.” First are those the Forest Service wants to do. Second are actions that someone else puts forward. This second category is called “special uses.”

I have argued previously that NFMA plans must include the planned timber sale program; in fact, that’s all the law requires of forest plans. The timber sale program is an example of the first category of decisions – those proposed by the Forest Service.

So what about special uses? Should NFMA plans zone land or prescribe rules regarding the myriad of uses someone else might propose. The range of special uses is broad. They include every use except noncommercial recreational activities, such as camping, picnicking, hiking, fishing, boating, hunting, and horseback riding. If you want to build a ski area, put a driveway into your in-holding, run a commercial guiding business, film a movie, or bury a natural gas pipeline, yours is a “special use” and requires a Forest Service permit.

Big-league commercial interests have long sought to require that NFMA plans make allowance for their special uses. Energy companies ensured that previous incarnations of the NFMA rules require forest plans to identify corridors along which the companies could string their power lines or bury their fiber optic cables. Ski corporations have worked hard to persuade the Forest Service to zone land to accommodate future ski area expansion. These special interests want first dibs on national forest land by getting their nose under the Forest Service’s planning tent.

If the purpose of NFMA is to comprehensively forecast possible futures, then, by all means, forest planners should anticipate who might want each national forest acre for their own special use, and plan accordingly. I suggest that’s a fool’s errand, and certainly not the mission Congress directed in NFMA.

Here is the Missoulian story. Some of the issues addressed do sound like “traditional forest planning” kinds of things..

Professor Mark Squillace, the Director of the Natural Resources Law Center at University of Colorado Law School brought this to my attention with regard to our interest in a land law review. Check the NRLC website for more details and registration information as the time grows closer.

The Past, Present, and Future of Our Public Lands
Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Public Land Law Review Commissions’
Report – One Third of Our Nation’s Lands
NRLC Martz Summer Conference 2010, June 2‐4, 2010

The Natural Resources Law Center is proud to announce its 31st annual summer
conference, which will examine the past, present and future of our public lands as we
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Public Land Law Review Commission’s Report –One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. Please join us as we bring together past and present
agency officials, policymakers, lawyers, and interested citizens for what promises to be an informative and provocative program.
Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of One Third of Our Nation’s Lands
In 1964 Congress established the Public Land Law Review Commission to review the public land laws of the United States and to determine whether revisions were necessary. The Commission was comprised of six members appointed by the President, six by the U.S. Senate and six by the U.S. House. Congressman Wayne Aspinall of Colorado served as chair. In 1970, the Commission issued its report – One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. This influential report became a blueprint for much future public lands legislation including, most notably, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Forest Management Act.

As we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of this seminal document, it is time to reflect on
the need for a new Commission and a new report to address the challenges for our public
lands in the 21st century. The NRLC’s Martz summer conference for 2010 will offer a venue to consider this important idea.

Here’s a piece by Jack Ward Thomas, former Chief of the Forest Service about Tester’s bill.

A couple of his criticisms are interesting to me..

The “deal” assumes status quo conditions – political, economic, ecological and legal. But, dramatic change is but one insect and/or disease outbreak, one fire season, one mill closure, one appeal, one successful legal challenge, one budget, one new research result or one shift in market conditions away.

But so are forest plans and (in particular) forest plan EIS’s. That was a criticism of the utility of the forest plan EIS that led to the 2005 to use CE’s instead. If you don’t meet your timber target from the plan, if you need to change your standards based on new scientific information, we have a tendency to just not change and just live with a growing deviation between the plan and reality. I don’t think the solution is to do another EIS. I think (perhaps agreeing with Iverson) that standards for wildlife don’t belong in individual forest plans- they belong somewhere they can be updated on a broader scale. JWT has put his finger right on the forest plan conundrum- we need to lay out some kind of future (or do we?) yet conditions change before we actually implement what we have planned. Too many moving parts.

The “deal” hinges upon trade-offs between interest groups.

The interest groups have negotiated their own “deal” as I understand it, rather than the agency responsible official weighing all their views and making a decision. But are the interests of “interest groups” seemingly longer lived than the opinions of one federal official? I don’t know. This reminds me of this piece in the Denver Post over the weekend on Secretary Salazar.

“I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals,” wrote Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, to Salazar this month, criticizing recent changes to oil and gas leasing policy.

“I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process,” Freudenthal wrote.

I am being a bit of a devil’s advocate here, but is a deal between interests who have honestly met and hashed things out “worse” than pendulum swings between administrations?

Finally, JWT says..

Clearly, the governance of national forests is dysfunctional due to numerous, overlapping, contradictory laws continuously and variously interpreted by the courts. That is the problem. These bills are “sick canaries in the mine shaft” – indications that something is dangerously amiss.

Would it not be better to recognize and comprehensibly address that dysfunction?

One path would be a law review, as suggested by many.

Question: Could a planning rule help with this “dysfunction”? And if so, how, in advance of such a comprehensive review of laws?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

see the whole article:
Tester’s forest bill not a feasible, long-term solution

Andy Stahl, in a comment below on Forest  Planning #2, mentioned the Forest Options Report that he had worked on with others.  A cursory glance suggested to me that it would be good if some of us took the time to read it and came up with what ideas from there we think are still valid today, and why.  They may not strictly have to do with forest planning, but that’s OK in my view. So let’s meet back here in this space next Wednesday or thereabouts-I’ll post what I think and we can talk about it. See you then!

Sharon

here is the pdf of the noi.

All are welcome to contribute entries, as well as comments, to this blog.
Entries and comments can include links to the web, documents, photos, etc.

Please contact Martin Nie or Sharon Friedman for more information.

Here’s the press release and the website..
also the FS website for the new rule is in the blogroll in the right column
Release No. 0620.09
Contact:
Forest Service Press Office (202) 205-1134

USDA FOREST SERVICE LAUNCHES COLLABORATIVE PROCESS FOR NEW PLANNING RULE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2009-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today
announced that the USDA Forest Service is beginning an open,
collaborative process to create and implement a modern planning rule to
address current and future needs of the National Forest System,
including restoring forests, protecting watersheds, addressing climate
change, sustaining local economies, improving collaboration, and
working across landscapes. The Forest Service will publish a notice of
intent (NOI) in the Federal Register tomorrow, December 18, to prepare
an environmental impact statement (EIS) to develop a new planning rule
that will provide a framework for management of national forests and
grasslands.
“Our National Forests and Grasslands are great natural treasures
that we must conserve and restore for the benefit of future
generations,” said Secretary Vilsack. “Developing a new planning rule
provides the opportunity to manage national forests and grasslands for
the benefit of water resources, the climate and local communities.”
The Forest Service is seeking public involvement in developing a
new direction for local land managers. A 60-day comment period on the
NOI will begin upon publication in the Federal Register on Friday,
December 18, 2009. Comments will be used to shape the focus of the
collaborative dialogue and creation of a proposed rule.
To begin the conversation, the Forest Service has included in the
NOI a set of potential principles that could guide development of a new
planning rule. The potential principles include an emphasis on
restoration, conservation, and the improved resilience of ecosystems;
watershed health; climate change response; species diversity and
wildlife habitat; sustainable National Forest System lands; proactive
collaboration; and working across landscapes.
The Forest Service will use state-of-the-art new media tools in
conjunction with face-to-face interaction to facilitate wide public
participation throughout the nation. Please visit
www.fs.usda.gov/planningrule to participate in our web-based planning
rule blog, and to learn more.
The 2000 planning rule, which allows the Forest Service to use
provisions of the 1982 planning rule, is currently the rule that is
legally in effect. As an interim measure, the Department will republish
in the Federal Register the 2000 planning rule as amended in order to
make it available to the public in the Code of Federal Regulations.
This action will facilitate its use by forests and grasslands in the
National Forest System to revise and amend plans while a new rule is
being developed.
The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health,
diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to
meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency manages
the 193 million acres of National Forest System land, provides
stewardship assistance to non-federal forest landowners, and maintains
the largest forestry research organization in the world.
#
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To file a
complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Director, Office of Civil
Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call
(800) 795-3272 (voice), or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1RD?printable=true&contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/12/0620.xml

The University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation and the Forest Service are initiating a blog focused on the new forest planning rule. Our goal is to solicit broad participation from a cross-section of interests in a respectful atmosphere of mutual learning.  We seek to hear from academics of all stripes, scientists, practitioners of planning and other past, current and future agency employees , lawyers, members of interest groups, and members of the public who will be working with local forest plans.

We believe that ideas will be stronger and choices clearer if developed through such a multidisciplinary, multi-perspective dialogue. 

The blog is administered by Sharon Friedman (USFS) and Martin Nie (University of Montana).