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From UC Davis…. We have a Northwest Forest Plan to address northern spotted owls and old-growth. Maybe we need a Western Wildfire Forest Plan that amends forest plans to address wildfire….

Unprecedented Levels of High-Severity Fire Burn in Sierra Nevada Forests

The ‘Wrong Kind of Fire’ Is Burning Compared to Historical Patterns

For the study, published in the journal Ecosphere, scientists analyzed fire severity data from the U.S. Forest Service and Google Earth Engine, across seven major forest types. 

They found that in low- and middle-elevation forest types, the average annual area that burned at low-to-moderate severity has decreased from more than 90% before 1850 to 60-70% today. 

At the same time, the area burned annually at high severity has nearly quintupled, rising from less than 10% to 43% today. (High-severity burns are those where more than 95% of aboveground tree biomass is killed by fire.)

Mike Archer’s wildfire news email today has this item:

The U.S. Forest Service has more than 120 fire-related job openings in the Stanislaus National Forest, paying from $15 to more than $35 per hour, and the agency is hosting an in-person application-assistance and hiring event in Sonora today.
Stanislaus National Forest to host hiring event Tuesday in Sonora for 120+ openings https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_3a99fa0a-9b88-11ed-aab7-33e4233e8071.html

The article says it’s not quite $15:

The job openings represent all aspects of the forest’s fire operations, from basic, boots-on-the-ground wildland firefighters, who start at $14.38 and can earn up to $18.06 per hour; to fuels managers, who start at $27.07 per hour; and assistant forest fuels manager, who start at $39.69 per hour, Forest Service spokesman Benjamin Cossell said Monday.

I’d say $14.38 isn’t going to attract folks. What amount would? $20/hour?

Les Joslin and Fire Patrol Rig

Burning off Forest Service dumps, to which campground and permittee refuse was hauled, was a hazard reduction part of my 1960s Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard job and just about the only part of the job I really didn’t enjoy.

Why not? Well, it started cold and dark, got dirty and smelly, and finished hot and dry. It involved getting up long before sunup, loading a couple five-gallon cans of diesel fuel onto the patrol truck, driving to the dump to be burned that morning, pushing garbage and trash piled up around the sides into the pit, anointing the whole mess with diesel fuel, touching it off with a fusee, watching the surrounding area for spot fires while the dump burned, and making sure the whole thing was dead out by about ten o’clock before the winds came up.

Oh, dump burning had its compensations, like communing with Mono Lake’s seagulls which winged north to forage for tidbit supplements to their brine shrimp diets. Once, at the Virginia Lakes dump, I saw a bear. And once, burning the Twin Lakes dump led to an amusing encounter with some fishermen.

Extinguishing the dump fire had drained the patrol truck’s pumper tank, so I drove to the nearby Timber Harvest Road bridge over Robinson Creek for a refill. Crossing the bridge, I pulled off the road and backed down to the creek. Not long after I had dropped the drafting hose into the stream and reversed the pump, two vehicles halted on the bridge. One was a flashy convertible and the other a battered Jeep. The occupants gestured in my direction, pulled off the road, and parked next to the patrol truck.

At first I thought something might be up. Perhaps they were going to report a fire! But the rapid unloading of fishing gear soon betrayed their misguided urgency. This had happened before.

“Hey! Are they biggies?” a couple blurted in unison as they scrambled past me to peer into the stream where my drafting hose lay. The rest of the pack followed, clutching fishing rods and carrying tackle boxes.

Feigning ignorance, I responded to their question with another. “Big whats?”

“Rainbows! Man, you know! Trout! Fish! You are the fish man, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m not the fish man,” I answered almost apologetically. “Fish are planted by the California Department of Fish and Game. I work for the U.S. Forest Service.” Then, after a pause, I added with a smile and only slightly exaggerated pride, “This is a fire truck.”

“A fire truck?” They looked unimpressed, to say the least. More like disdainful. But the awful truth was beginning to sink in. “You mean…you’re not the fish man?”

“Sorry,” I shrugged. They probably had been looking for a “fish man” with a “fish truck” all morning. “I’m just filling the tank on this fire truck.” I slapped the hose reel affectionately. Then I informed them of the days on which the Department of Fish and Game usually planted fish in Robinson Creek. Needless to say, those fishermen—a dismayed “that’s a fire truck” look on their faces—didn’t hang around very long.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

This sounds like it could have an impact of USFS and BLM NEPA analyses for timber harvesting and other forest management projects. The new guidance is explained in the Federal Register. Legal firm Perkins Coie has an analysis here.

ClimateWire (subscription):

How NEPA guidance could favor climate projects over ecosystems

That’s because the guidance includes for the first time a monetary test to measure the costs and benefits of a project. And it’s weighted toward lowering emissions, due in part to the Biden administration’s soaring damage estimates from carbon dioxide.

…

The NEPA guidance, released earlier this month, stressed that agencies must consider indirect and cumulative greenhouse gas emissions associated with a proposed project, not only on-site emissions. Add that to an updated social cost metric, and the premium associated with avoiding greenhouse gases could be astronomical.

In contrast to the previous NEPA guidance on greenhouse gases finalized in 2016, it gives agencies very little wiggle room to claim that a project’s aggregate contribution to climate change can’t be estimated. In the “rare instance” that tools and methodologies aren’t available to allow a permitting agency to quantify all the direct, indirect and cumulative greenhouse gas consequences, the guidance states, the agency should offer a range of values instead.

Once the greenhouse gases are known, it states, monetizing them using the social cost figures should be a “simple and straightforward calculation.”

That prompts some experts to wonder whether this step toward cost-benefit analysis as a feature of NEPA review might cause other priorities like forest preservation, waterways or biodiversity to suffer by comparison — and perhaps to be sacrificed for projects that promise large climate gains.

Press release — from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture:

I live in one of the “gateway communities.” IMHO, we don’t need a plan or a toolkit, we need the USFS to aggressively address the recreation facility and road maintenance backlog and expand/add rec facilities to meet demand that has increased dramatically in recent decades.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2023 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced that it will create a plan to expand recreation economies to help people thrive across rural America.

Through a Memorandum of Understanding, Rural Development, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the US Forest Service will partner to develop an annual plan to expand economic opportunities related to recreation in communities surrounding America’s national forests.

The annual plan will outline the ways the agencies will partner to conduct program outreach, host informational sessions and workshops, and develop toolkits to help people access the resources they need to thrive in recreation economies. The agencies will also:

• Provide technical and planning assistance to help local, state and Tribal leaders develop regional economic development plans that advance recreation economies.
• Provide funding under Rural Development and National Institute of Food and Agriculture programs to help US Forest Service gateway communities expand resilient recreation infrastructure and business development projects that create jobs.
• Develop and maintain strategic partnerships, and more.

Today’s announcement supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s interagency effort, known as the Federal Interagency Council on Outdoor Recreation

, to create safe, affordable and equitable opportunities for Americans to get outdoors.

For more information, visit: https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/USDA-Interagency-Outdoor-Recreation-Economy-Memorandum-of-Understanding.pdf.

To subscribe to USDA Rural Development updates, visit GovDelivery subscriber page

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Here’s an informative Storymap about the road system in the areas burned by wildfires (176,000+ acres) on the Willamette National Forest in 2020. It explains the damage and dangers from falling trees and looks at the recovery and rehabilitation of roads.

One page in the Storymap has links to photos at various points in the burned area, such as this one:

Thanks to Mike Archer for the link in his free WIldfire News of the Day email today.

This January 2022 article in The Atlantic was recently mentioned in an email from the magazine to subscribers. A quandary: the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner fuels — and electric cars — requires metals such as cobalt, and thus mining.

Excerpt:

The Salmon-Challis sits atop what is known as the Idaho Cobalt Belt, a 34-mile-long geological formation of sedimentary rock that contains some of the largest cobalt deposits in the country. As the global market for lithium-ion batteries has grown—and the price of cobalt along with it—so has commercial interest in the belt. At least six mining companies have applied for permits from the U.S. Forest Service to operate in the region. Most of these companies are in the early stages of exploration; one has started to build a mine. In Idaho, as in much of the world, the clean-energy revolution is reshaping the geography of resource extraction.

…

Johnson’s group, which has fought for decades to protect the state’s forests and streams from mine pollution, is watching the new and proposed cobalt mines closely, evaluating them on a case-by-case basis. “Do we have a moral obligation to mine cobalt here in the U.S.?” asks Idaho Conservation League Executive Director Justin Hayes. He suggests that the answer is yes: He’s well aware of the human-rights abuses documented in the Congo, and of the need to secure a reliable supply of cobalt in order to reduce the threat of climate change. Still, he emphasizes that “sustainable mining,” a term used often by industry insiders, is a misnomer; the best anyone can hope for is “environmentally responsible mining.”

Cattle graze on Buckeye Meadow allotment.

Among the many challenges of my 1960s seasonal Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard job was explaining multiple use management practices to citizen-owners of the National Forest System.

One afternoon in Buckeye Canyon, for example, I met a family of four backpackers returning from a several-day trek into the Hoover Wilderness high country. They’d had a great time, the prosperous-looking head of the family told me, but he wanted to talk about cattle. The round tin cup hanging from each family member’s belt gave me more than a hint of his opinion on the subject.

“Why are all these cattle here?” the man demanded to know, waving his arm toward Big Meadows, well outside the wilderness boundary.

“This is a national forest grazing allotment,” I answered. “The rancher who owns those cattle holds a grazing permit and pays a fee to graze them here.”

“They’re ruining the country,” he countered. “They shouldn’t be here. Why are they allowed to be here?”

I didn’t get far with my explanation of the multiple-use concept under which our district range conservationist labored to manage cattle and sheep grazing allotments in a way that would maintain the quality of the forage resource as well as the integrity of the watershed, wildlife, and recreation resources. He didn’t care that some ranchers depended on national forest range to stay in business. He just wanted those cattle out of there, pronto! And, although there were no active timber sales on the district, he wanted national forest timber cutting stopped, too. Basically, he wanted national forests to be national parks.

So I took a different tack. After assuring him I shared his concerns for proper public land management, I used the next few minutes of our conversation to find out more about him. I soon knew this gent was a corporate executive who lived the good life in Palo Alto. He and his family resided in a rambling redwood house and dined on steaks at fashionable restaurants college students such as I certainly couldn’t afford.

“You know,” I suggested, “the resources that make the way you and millions of other Americans live possible have to some from somewhere.”

“Look, I see what you’re driving at,” he responded. “But they don’t have to come from places that should be wilderness areas.”

“Places like California’s redwood coast? Places like public rangelands?”

“Exactly….” Just for an instant, his eyes showed he had made the connection, he had recognized the conflict between his affluent lifestyle and his environmental convictions. But only for an instant. He wasn’t ready to accept—or concede to me—the fact that he couldn’t have it both ways forever.

“The Forest Service should get those cows out of here!” were his last words to me. But he sounded more thoughtful, less arrogant, less certain.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

This article from the American Bar Association has this section: Tribal Co-Management Between the Karuk Tribe and the U.S. Forest Service in the Klamath National Forest (thanks to Nick Smith for the link).

Excerpt:

A short-lived co-management arrangement between the Karuk Tribe and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in the Klamath National Forest illustrates both the potential possibilities and challenges of co-management arrangements between tribes and the USFS in National Forests. The “Ti Bar Demonstration Project” was a co-management arrangement between the Karuk Tribe and the USFS relating to management of “cultural areas” within the Klamath National Forest in the latter half of the 1990s. This arrangement aimed to demonstrate culturally appropriate management techniques and “develop effective processes to jointly undertake projects.”

Karuk tribal land managers served as project co-leads and were empowered to propose restoration treatments for this area within the National Forest. Notably, the USFS appointed a tribal member to the interdisciplinary team that was developing a new Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) for the Klamath National Forest. This allowed the Karuk Tribe to successfully lobby the USFS to “address several cultural resource management concerns,” and include within the LRMP a land use designation for Cultural Management Areas that included a memorandum of understanding between the USFS and the Karuk Tribe to support management activities that are “consistent with [the tribe’s] custom and culture.” Tribal inclusion on the interdisciplinary team enabled “agency managers to work with tribal managers as a new kind of expert,” and was the main method through which the Karuk Tribe participated in the formal decision-making process. This allowed Karuk tribal members to take on an authoritative position in implementing their own chosen restoration projects, such as a novel “eco-cultural” restoration strategy that included prescribe burns.

Unfortunately, after the first management treatments under the Ti Bar Demonstration were initiated, USFS leadership changed, and the new forest supervisor was not supportive of this arrangement. The planned restoration was canceled, and the interdisciplinary team including both USFS and Karuk Tribal members fell apart. Nonetheless, the Ti Bar Demonstration project represents the first time the USFS formally recognized the rights of tribal managers to manage cultural resources within federal forests.

Available here — thanks to AFRC’s newsletter for the link — abstract below.

AFRC’s take on the report is worth a read:

The report determined that wildfire remains the leading cause for older forest losses on federal lands, accounting for about 70 percent of all losses since 1993. Naturally, those losses have not occurred evenly across the range of the NWFP. The most significant losses occurred in the eastern Cascade Ranges of Washington and Oregon, and the Klamath provinces in Oregon and California. Those losses were partially offset by old forest recruitment through stand growth in the Oregon Coast Range, Olympic Peninsula, and western Cascade Range in Washington, where catastrophic wildfires have been less common.

Despite being a minor component of overall losses, it is important to understand precisely what “losses” refers to in the context of timber harvest. A likely assumption is that a loss of old forest from timber harvest is a function of a regeneration treatment (clearcut, shelterwood, etc.) However, the data in the report suggests otherwise. The graphs below illustrate old forest losses (black line) on top of disturbance intensity; note that the two datasets are not graphed across equivalent acreages on the y-axis. The data shows that some moderate intensity fire causes a loss of older forest, and some does not; the same applied to timber harvest. What is noticeable is the complete absence of high intensity timber disturbance–the kind that would result from regeneration harvest. Instead, nearly all the losses are a result of moderate timber harvest such as thinning or intermediate harvest to restore historic open forest conditions or to reduce the likelihood of high-intensity wildfire.

I’d add that LSOG harvesting virtually stopped in 1993 and shortly after, and that future large fires are likely to change the equation in a significant way.

LSOG = late-successional and old growth forests

Abstract

This is the fourth in a series of periodic monitoring reports on the status and trends of late-successional and old-growth (LSOG) forests since the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) in 1994. The objective of this monitoring is to evaluate the success of the plan in reaching its desired amount and distribution of LSOG forest on federal lands within the range of the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) in the United States. We began our assessment in the years shortly preceding the NWFP, but primarily focused on how LSOG forests have changed as a result of disturbance and forest succession since 1993, the year of the assessment that led to the implementation of the NWFP. We developed an annual time series (1986–2017) of LSOG maps based on an “old-growth structure index” (OGSI) using two age thresholds: ≥80 and ≥200 years. These ages represent when forests commonly attain stand structure associated with late-successional forests (OGSI 80) and old-growth forests (OGSI 200) in this region.

Maps showed a slightly increasing trend in LSOG forests (OGSI 80) on federal lands with a 0.3-percent net gain between 1993 and 2017. Forest Inventory and Analysis plot data from two measurement/remeasurement periods (2000s and 2010s) were used to corroborate mapped estimates. For OGSI 80 and OGSI 200 forests, we estimated gross losses from wildfire at 6.2 and 6.9 percent, respectively; timber harvest losses at 1.9 and 2 percent, respectively; and loss from insects or other causes at 0.7 and 0.9 percent, respectively. This indicates that, at the NWFP scale, processes of forest succession compensated for losses. The NWFP anticipated a continued decline in LSOG forests for the first few decades until the rate of forest succession exceeds the rate of losses. Decadal gross losses of about 5 percent per decade from timber harvesting and wildfire (combined) were expected. Over the extent of the NWFP, observed losses from wildfire generally met expectations, but losses from timber harvesting were about one-third of what was anticipated. Results were consistent with expectations for OGSI 80 abundance, diversity, and connectivity outcomes for this period of time. For OGSI 200, these outcomes were slightly degraded. Given that we are only one quarter into a 100-year plan, nothing in these findings suggests that desired outcomes are unattainable over the next 75 years. However, observed increases in frequency and extent of large wildfires, and expected additional increases owing to climate change, provide reasons for concern.