That’s the title of an article in The Oregonian today. “Faulty” can be debated, but so can the reporting.

“A large-scale barred owl removal program is not in place and officials said the best science shows protecting older forests is critical.”

Protecting older forests from logging? Most of the high-quality older forest is already off limits to harvesting.  But what about protecting them from wildfire?

“The logging industry says the larger, non-native barred owl is a much greater threat than logging.”

Not only the “logging industry,” but the US F&WS and a range of scientists say that the barred owl and wildfire are the main threats.

Here’s a press release about inclusion of the Forest Service Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Program in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which passed both the House and Senate and now awaits President Biden’s signature. The legislation permanently authorizes the Forest Service Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Program and provides $250 million in funding for five years. – mk

WASHINGTON, D.C.—With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, soon to be signed into law by President Biden, national forest roads and trails will finally get much needed attention. The legislation permanently authorizes the Forest Service Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Program and provides vital funding.

Recognizing the need to protect and restore national forest lands and waters so they are more resilient to impacts from climate change, the Legacy Roads and Trails program addresses the impacts from the Forest Service’s immense and failing infrastructure.

The U.S. Forest Service manages twice as many road miles as the national highway system with only a small fraction of the budget. More than 370,000 miles of roads—many built half a century ago during the logging boom—require over $3.2 billion in unfulfilled maintenance needs. Hundreds of thousands of culverts, more than 13,000 bridges, and 159,000 miles of trails are all components of the agency’s dilapidated infrastructure that keep road engineers awake at night with worry.

The implications of decaying infrastructure are severe. Crumbling roads bleed sediment into rivers, creeks, and wetlands, endangering fish and other aquatic wildlife. Failing and undersized culverts block fish—like threatened Chinook salmon and bull trout—from migrating to spawning grounds or reaching cold water refugia. Habitat sliced into small pieces by roads harms wildlife like grizzly bear and elk. As roads close due to storm damage and safety concerns, more people lose recreational access on public lands.

“One obvious key to climate change resiliency is to mend what ails national forests and that is driven by roads,” said Marlies Wierenga of WildEarth Guardians. “Shedding the costly excess of logging roads built over a half a century ago and putting people to work fixing the roads and trails we do need is a common-sense solution for wildlife, fish, clean water, and communities.”

The Legacy Roads and Trails program—established in 2008 and subsequently defunded in 2018—proved to be an effective, no-waste program with demonstrated results. With the passing of this legislation, this program can once again support projects such as fixing roads and trails to withstand more intense storms, decommissioning obsolete roads, and removing or improving culverts under roads to allow fish passage. The program has a proven track record of saving taxpayer money, improving habitat, creating jobs, and guaranteeing safer access for all.

“The Forest Service has a responsibility to protect clean water for the 3,400 communities that rely on national forests as drinking water sources. This program gives the Forest Service a real tool to meet this responsibility and we are grateful for its inclusion in the legislation,” added Wierenga.

“We are thrilled to have this authorization and investment in the Forest Service’s Legacy Roads and Trails Program,” said Thomas O’Keefe of American Whitewater. “For too long the transportation infrastructure on national forests has been neglected with crumbling roads limiting access for recreation and impacting water quality in streams. This program is especially important for climate resiliency and will improve river health while also ensuring access to public lands for all to enjoy.”

“Regular road maintenance improves access to the public lands and trails we love, and funding for trail maintenance keeps paths safer and more sustainable,” said Andrea Imler, Washington Trails Association. “The Legacy Roads and Trails program has proven it works. It reduces the backlog facing public lands and helps ensure trails are well maintained for the next generation of hikers. A future where trails are more accessible to everyone is closer to reality because of programs like Legacy Roads and Trails.”

“This program provides a model of achieving multiple benefits with a few targeted actions,” said Tom Uniack of Washington Wild. “Strategically focusing on road impacts leads to reconnected habitat for migrating wildlife and fish, protected clean water for communities, safer access in a changing climate while saving taxpayer dollars over the long run.”

“It’s a great day for fish and wildlife,” said Dave Werntz of Conservation Northwest, “and the skilled local workforce that will now remove obsolete roads and restore habitat across the country’s public lands.”

Below is a press release that was issued today by a coalition of conservation groups in regards to to lawsuits filed against the Forest Service today over its newly revised land management plan for the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado. – mk

DENVER—Today, Defenders of Wildlife, The Wilderness Society, the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, San Juan Citizens Alliance, WildEarth Guardians and the Western Environmental Law Center filed two lawsuits against the United States Forest Service over its newly revised land management plan for the Rio Grande National Forest. Over the past six years, conservation groups provided science-based recommendations and concrete solutions for protecting species and their diverse habitats in the Forest.  But in the face of these needed steps, the Forest Service’s plan slashes protections for the threatened Canada lynx and the endangered Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly in violation of the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act and the Forest Service’s own regulations.

The lawsuit filed by Defenders of Wildlife challenges the rollback of critical protections for lynx habitat in the Rio Grande National Forest. The Canada lynx relies heavily on the Rio Grande National Forest in the Southern Rocky Mountains, which contains more than half the locations in Colorado where lynx are consistently found. But the population is in dire straits, and federal scientists predict that the lynx may disappear from Colorado altogether within a matter of decades. The Forest Service’s new plan has now opened the extremely important lynx habitat in the forest to logging, one of the biggest threats to the cat.

“Scientists are saying the Canada lynx population in the Rio Grande National Forest is in the ‘emergency room,’ but the Forest Service refuses to provide this species with the care it needs,” said Lauren McCain, senior policy analyst for Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s baffling that the Forest Service chose to weaken protections for lynx on the forest. They left us no option but to sue to help recover the species in the Southern Rockies.”

The lawsuit filed by The Wilderness Society, the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, San Juan Citizens Alliance, WildEarth Guardians, and the Western Environmental Law Center challenges the forest plan’s failure to adequately protect habitat for species including the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly, or to regulate recreational uses appropriately. The Rio Grande National Forest is also home to five of the 11 colonies of critically endangered Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly. The species can only be found fluttering above 12,000 feet and in just a small area of Colorado. Despite identifying threats to the species, including trampling by humans and livestock and climate change, the Rio Grande’s revised forest plan fails to do anything specific to protect this species,  much less contribute to its recovery.

In addition, the plan missed a key opportunity to connect important habitat areas so species can move from summer to winter habitat, and to assure that recreation avoids key habitat areas. Both of these factors are crucial to ecological and resource protection.

“This plan encourages a crisis-management response,” said Christine Canaly, director of the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council. “After years of public meeting participation, providing substantive comments and reviewing hundreds of letters from concerned citizens – who clearly support the management of healthy forests, ecosystem services, and protection of critical habitat – the Final Forest Plan instead renders a hands-off approach, abdicating responsibility for providing upfront baseline analysis. Standards and guidelines have been removed, leading to less comprehensive, more reactive decision making.

“The Rio Grande Revised Forest Plan took a completely wrong turn by omitting protections for a range of imperiled species,” said Adam Rissien, ReWilding advocate with WildEarth Guardians. “We were hopeful the Forest Service would have reversed course, but this plan still fails to restore or maintain habitat, not only for Canada lynx, but also the Rio Grande cutthroat trout, river otter, western bumblebee, bighorn sheep and the endangered Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly.”

“The Rio Grande National Forest finalized an incredibly inadequate plan that fails to protect the values of the forest we all know and love, like important wildlife habitat and opportunities for people and families to enjoy our shared public lands,” says Jim Ramey, Colorado state director for The Wilderness Society. “Unfortunately, the Forest Service ignored years of community input and scientific analysis, resulting in a plan that doesn’t work hard enough for us to hand down a healthy forest for future Coloradans. We must hold the Forest Service to a higher standard for protecting critical wildlife corridors like Spruce Hole and Wolf Creek Pass. The Forest Service should prioritize locally-driven, conservation-focused plans to help us meet the national goal to protect 30% of lands and waters by 2030.”

“New Forest Service rules gave Rio Grande National Forest managers the chance to vastly improve how they oversee the many uses of these important public lands,” said John Mellgren, general counsel at the Western Environmental Law Center. “Rather than seizing the opportunity to restore ecological integrity to these lands, the Forest Service instead ignored unambiguous requirements for ensuring the sustainability of our national forests.”

“The Rio Grande National Forest incorporates much of Colorado’s most important wildlife habitat, and some of our state’s largest expanses of wild and undeveloped habitat,” said Mark Pearson, executive director at San Juan Citizens Alliance. “The public deserves a management plan for the next 20 years that we can count on for protecting the very essence of the Rio Grande National Forest.”

The Rio Grande National Forest is a 1.8-million-acre gem in the middle of southern Colorado and includes the headwaters of its namesake river. The forest boasts a diversity of ecosystems from lower-elevation sagebrush and grasslands to the dominant high-elevation spruce-fir forest and fragile alpine areas. Proper management of this expansive area is key to preserving critical habitat and biodiversity in the Southern Rockies and to buffering against the stresses our native wildlife are experiencing from climate change.

This is a bit off our standard topics (yet federal employees need housing as well and many of these resort communities are neighbors to National Forests), but it is a really thorough and comprehensive post-election review by reporter Jason Blevins in the Colorado Sun of a variety of policy tweaks that different communities are trying to deal with the affordable housing problem and short-term rentals.

“What we learned … is that the animosity — the us-versus-them, winner-take-all philosophy — that does not work,” Minardi said. “Communities across Colorado are trying to experiment with different solutions and ultimately the answers will come through consensus.”

Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue told the task force last week that while her county’s tourism economy is dependent on the nearly $80 million impact of short-term rentals, “the burden on our infrastructure is unfathomable.”

“We have entire neighborhoods in Summit that have gone from being owned primarily by locals to being owned by people who do not designate their primary residence as Summit County,” said Pogue, whose county is building workforce housing, leasing hotels for local workers and offering up to $24,000 to owners of short-term rental homes who ink year-long leases with locals. “As a county we simply do not have the tools to mitigate the financial impacts. We can’t keep up with building at the pace that it would take to mitigate the impact on our workforce housing that short-term rentals have created for us.”

We don’t usually have position advertisements here, but there aren’t that many positions specifically in forest policy, either.  It’s an entry level position so please forward widely to the appropriate folks you know.  Check it out here.

The Specialist, Natural Resources Policy is responsible for supporting SAF’s efforts to educate and engage policymakers, partner organizations, and SAF members on policy issues impacting public and private forested landscapes across urban and rural settings. Through organizing educational events and crafting messages for diverse communication channels, this position helps advance policies and partnerships that promote sustainable forest management and empower forestry and natural resources professionals.

The Specialist, Natural Resources Policy will report to the Director of Policy & Public Affairs.

The position would be a terrific learning experience working for the talented and amazing Danielle Watson. No better way to learn how the DC advocacy business works.

Nick Smith has a link in his Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities news roundup about a lawsuit filed against the Sage Hen Integrated Restoration Project on the Boise National Forest in Idaho. The project would include timber harvests on up to 19,900 acres and 11,200 acres of fuels reduction and non-commercial thinning in a 67,800-acre project area over 20 years.

The plaintiff’s petition is here. The forest’s planning docs are here. A Dec. 2020 Letter of Objection from the Boise Forest Coalition is here.

This project involves a topic we’re discussed here on Smokey Wire: Whether an EA is adequate or if an EIS is needed. In this case, the Boise Forest Coalition says an EIS is needed.

Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest Plan nears completion

Bill Gabbert at Wildfire Today recently posted a USFS video on the Caldor Fire. This scene from the video illustrates the fuels problem in the Sierras. Larry might tell us if this amount of fuel is as widespread as I think it is. In any case, the image shows so many piles that burning them might kill some of the green trees. If the fuels had been left in place, a prescribed fire might have killed even more trees, and a wildfire might kill all of them. The material could be removed mechanically, but at what cost? There’s no easy or cheap solution.

For the past 10 years I have been writing a semi-regular series of article/editorials for the quarterly Oregon Fish & Wildlife Journal. This popular outdoor magazine is now in its 43rd year of publication and has a circulation of about 10,000, including all elected Oregon officials and most rural Oregon barbershops. Founder Cristy Rein still remains firmly in charge as the magazine’s publisher and conservative editor. My writings for her have mostly focused on forest restoration, wildfire history and forestry education and can be found here:

http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Articles/Magazines/Oregon_Fish_&_Wildlife_Journal/

My most recent entry, published in early October, is an article about the risks posed by North Umpqua River basin snags in the aftermath of the 2020 Labor Day Fires. The North Umpqua is in Douglas County, in Oregon’s western Cascades.

This article is the first in a two-part series and details the relative risks posed to people, property and wildlife by leaving snags on the landscape. The next article will suggest mitigating forest restoration strategies for each of the four major landownerships (USFS, BLM, industrial tree farm, rural residential) in dealing with snags created or reburned by these fires. Both articles are directly derived from a commissioned report I wrote last summer for Douglas Timber Operators (DTO) under the direction of Matt Hill, DTO Executive Director.

The topic of North Umpqua snag management became suddenly controversial last week when lawyers for three environmental organizations filed a legal action against plans to remove “too many” snags along Umpqua NF roadways and recreation areas: https://www.nrtoday.com/news/environment/douglas-county-to-intervene-in-hazard-trees-lawsuit/article_4c5dc369-3a29-54e0-a9d4-a2097b473f8c.html

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The following pages contain the 10 images, two maps and table from my article, along with their captions. These give an idea as to the scope of the snag problem as it has developed during the past 20 years, and particularly on Umpqua NF lands within the North Umpqua basin. First, some background, starting with the basics:

A snag is a dead, standing tree. When it falls to the ground it becomes a log. Once a snag is created, the question becomes whether to leave it standing, or turn it into a log.

In western Oregon the most common tree is a Douglas fir. It typically grows in vast stands of even-aged trees numbering dozens or hundreds per acre. Contiguous stands and individual trees can grow and survive for centuries, even when surrounding stands have been decimated by windstorms, floods, landslides, insects, spot fires or other means. However, when a “crown fire” goes through a stand of Douglas fir, nearly all (or all) of the trees are killed and instantly become snags.

The September 8-10, 2020 Labor Day Fires in western Oregon burned nearly a million acres of land — mostly Douglas fir forestland — killed 11 people, destroyed more than 4,000 homes, polluted the air with toxic smoke for nearly two weeks and killed millions of native wildlife.

Of this amount, the Archie Creek Fire, along the North Umpqua River, was responsible for one human death, more than 150 people losing their homes, and over 131,000 acres, mostly forested, being burned. Due to its large size and rapid spread, mortality of native plants — including extensive stands of Douglas fir — and animals approached 100% within much of the fire’s perimeter (see Figures 1 and 2).

Beginning in 1987, and accelerating after 2002, the number of large-scale fires has increased dramatically on the North Umpqua, and particularly on the Umpqua NF (see Table). Immediately following the Archie Creek Fire, the USDA Rapid Assessment Team (RAT) noted:

“Over the past 20 years, 28% of the Umpqua [NF] has burned in wildfires, with the total acreage being higher due to several areas being burned two to three times over the past 20 years. Less than 1% of these past fires in total have been salvaged, with the majority of snag loss occurring along roadsides as danger tree mitigation to keep open public access. Therefore, snag abundance at the landscape level will likely be above the 80% tolerance level on the North Umpqua and Diamond Lake Ranger Districts for quite some time.”

The important statement in this quote is that “several areas [have] burned two to three times over the past 20 years.” Following the 2020 RAT report, the 2021 Jack Fire, Chaos Fire and Rough Patch Complex have burned more than 75,000 additional North Umpqua acres on Umpqua NF lands; much of which already had snags from earlier fires.

Summary: Almost all major wildfires on the North Umpqua during the past 20 years have taken place on the Umpqua NF. Almost all of the snags resulting from these fires have been left in place, many burning a second or third time since they were initially created. Snags provide a continuing and documented threat to burn again; to kill and harm people and wildlife; to disrupt travel, power and communications corridors; to accelerate erosion; and — compared to living trees by most people — are ugly and unsightly. Their value as ephemeral wildlife habitat is open to interpretation.