The Bureau of Land Management is asking its employees for input into how to potentially revamp its headquarters to improve the bureau’s “function” after a massive Trump-era reorganization that included moving the leadership office to Colorado.
BLM, in an internal survey sent yesterday to all employees, asks staffers to gauge, on a scale of 1 to 10, the “Impact of BLM HQ Relocations” to Grand Junction, Colo., and other state offices in the West, on “employee morale” and “the function of the BLM overall.”
It also asks staffers point-blank: “In light of the recent relocation and current distribution of HQ positions in Grand Junction, Washington D.C. and other locations in the West, how should the BLM move forward?” Among the four answers employees can choose from: “Restore all positions to a D.C. location” and “Leave all positions as they are now.”
The survey also seeks employee input on how best to move the headquarters back to Washington, if the Biden administration ultimately decides to do so.
I’m working on a project for a conference in July. My goal is to understand the views of environmental groups who are successful at influencing policy, either via political clout or via litigation, and to see whether there is a zone of agreement that could be imagined. The goal being to increase the pace and scale of “restoration” (including fuel treatments) which is supported by all recent Administration, and to have such groups support the efforts at the least, or to help, at best.
I’m interested in getting feedback on my proposal and will touch base with The Smokey Wire as the project goes forward. Questions at this stage are below.
Here’s part of the writeup I did for a proposal.
“Some groups seem to support prescribed fire, but not mechanical treatment of fuels. While developing markets for woody material seems key to funding this work through time at the scale required, some organizations do not support these efforts. In some cases, they may think that those markets would ultimately lead to environmental degradation (pers. comm.). Many national groups are also active in efforts such as Wilderness legislation, and these designations would have impacts on suppression actions, as well as fuel treatments and, in some cases, the use of prescribed fire.
Where timber industry is active, we seem to have an endless conflict that is reminiscent of the old Timber Wars. Litigation holds up projects. Republicans want to streamline. Democrats argues that the methods used are bad, and that the R’s are in the pockets of the timber industry and want to destroy federal lands and so on. Some scientists chime in with “logging won’t stop fires” and we’re off to the “talking past each other” races.
Meanwhile, other states without a history of Timber Wars simply want to develop some uses for material removed in mitigation efforts so that they can offset some costs, and not release carbon and particulates from burning piles. They may feel their views and needs are not seen at the national level because at that scale, the partisan framing of the issue has sucked all the oxygen (so to speak) out of the policy room. And the fact that Coloradans, New Mexicans, and Californians would like these markets for the material can’t ignite, or fan the flames of partisan factionalism.
To move into the future as we manage fire in a changing climate, we need to identify where we agree, and find national policies that suit both the Timber Wars and the market-free parts of the West.
For the purposes of this paper, I will focus two different kinds of groups. First are the litigators, and second, the national influencers who help set Administration policy and lobby Congress, which tend to be large national environmental groups. I will select five groups in each category.
For example, in the group of litigators would be Wild Earth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC and others.
In the group of influencers would be the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and others.
First, I will conduct a literature review on previous studies of these groups, and see if there has been any work done on their views on fire management. A preliminary review for this proposal has so far yielded nothing relevant.
Second, I will review the organizations’ websites for information on their views. For litigators, I will also use their comments on proposed projects to help understand their views.
Third, based on the website (and project comment) information, I will develop a series of questions and conduct interviews with key people in each organization. These interviews will include questions like “what are your concerns about current and future fire management?“ “do your concerns differ for private and federal lands?” “what does your organization currently contribute to discussions and implementation of fire management policies?” and “what would it take for your organization to support interventions including mechanical fuel treatments, prescribed fire, and developing markets for small-diameter material?”. Other interview questions will be based on information found in the website review.
Fourth, based on these interviews, I’ll suggest some innovative policy ideas to be outlined in the paper.
So what groups do you think I should select and why? Have you run across any documentation of groups’ opinions? Have you seen any studies that examined views of environmental groups on this topic? Any other thoughts?
Grizzly bear sow and young cubs, Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Sam Parks.
Press release from WildEarth Guardians and allies is pasted below, and right here.
WEST YELLOWSTONE, MONTANA— Following a challenge by multiple conservation groups, the U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that it was halting a plan to clearcut more than 4,600 acres of native forests, log across an additional 9,000 acres and bulldoze up to 56 miles of road on lands just outside Yellowstone National Park in the Custer Gallatin National Forest.
In April, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council challenged the South Plateau project, saying it would destroy habitat for grizzly bears, lynx, pine martens and wolverines. The logging project would have destroyed the scenery and solitude for hikers using the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, which crosses the proposed timber-sale area.
“This was another one of the Forest Service’s ‘leap first, look later’ projects where the agency asks for a blank check to figure out later where they’ll do all the clearcutting and bulldozing,” said Adam Rissien, a rewilding advocate at WildEarth Guardians. “Logging forests under the guise of reducing wildfires is not protecting homes or improving wildlife habitat, it’s just a timber sale. If the Forest Service tries to revive this scheme to clearcut native forests and bulldoze new roads in critical wildlife habitat just outside of Yellowstone, we’ll continue standing against it.”
In response to the group’s challenge, the Forest Service said it was withdrawing the South Plateau project until after it issues a new management plan for the Custer-Gallatin National Forest this summer. Then it plans to prepare a new environmental analysis of the project with “additional public involvement” to ensure the project complies with the new forest plan.
“This is a good day for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and for the grizzlies, lynx and other wildlife that call it home,” said Ted Zukoski, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Forest Service may revive this destructive project in a few months, but for now this beautiful landscape is safe from chainsaws and bulldozers.”
The project violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to disclose precisely where and when it would bulldoze roads and clearcut the forest, which made it impossible for the public to understand the project’s impacts, the groups said in their April objection. The project allowed removal of trees more than a century old, which provide wildlife habitat and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide, an essential component of addressing the climate emergency.
“The South Plateau project was in violation of the forest plan protections for old growth,” said Sara Johnson, director of Native Ecosystems Council and a former wildlife biologist for the Custer Gallatin National Forest. “The new forest plan has much weaker old-growth protections standards. That is likely why they pulled the decision — so they can resign it after the new forest plan goes into effect.”
“The Forest Service needs to drop the South Plateau project and quit clearcutting old-growth forests,” said Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Especially clearcutting and bulldozing new logging roads in grizzly habitat on the border of Yellowstone National Park.”
WASHINGTON—Conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service’s 2020 approval of a plan that allows fracking across 35,000 acres of Colorado’s Western Slope. The North Fork Mancos Master Development Plan allows 35 new fracking wells in the North Fork Valley and Thompson Divide areas of the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest.
Today’s lawsuit says federal agencies violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws by failing to fully assess the potential for water pollution and harm to the climate, and by refusing to analyze alternatives that would minimize or eliminate harm to the environment. The plan would result in about 52 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution, equivalent to the annual pollution from a dozen coal-fired power plants.
“This case is about confronting the Trump administration’s complete disregard of law, science, and public lands,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “We can’t frack our way to a safe climate and we certainly can’t afford to keep letting the oil and gas industry run roughshod over Colorado’s irreplaceable and vital public lands.”
“The Trump administration charted a course to destroy public lands and our shared climate,” said Peter Hart, staff attorney at Wilderness Workshop. “This master development plan is a 30-year commitment to the disastrous ‘energy dominance’ agenda which ignored significant impacts on the communities and spectacular values of the North Fork. We are determined to hold our federal government accountable to a more sustainable future for Colorado’s public lands, wildlife, people, and climate.”
“Fossil fuel development and sustainable public lands don’t mix, especially in the roadless headwaters of the Upper North Fork Valley,” said Brett Henderson, executive director of Gunnison County-based High Country Conservation Advocates. “This project is incompatible with necessary climate change action, healthy wildlife habitat, and watershed health, and is at odds with the future of our communities.”
“We are in a megadrought in the North Fork Valley and the Western Slope. The water used to frack in the watershed risks precious water resources and only exacerbates the climate and the water crisis,” said Natasha Léger, executive director of Citizens for a Healthy Community. “This 35-well project is the beginning of much larger plans to extract a resource that should be left in the ground and for which the market is drying up.”
“This dangerous plan promises more runaway climate pollution in one of the fastest-warming regions in the United States,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re suing to force federal agencies to stop ignoring the climate emergency. Like the planet, the Colorado River Basin can’t survive a future of ever-expanding fossil fuel development.”
“It is past time for the federal government to meaningfully consider climate change in its oil and gas permitting decisions,” said Melissa Hornbein, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “Gunnison and Delta Counties have already exceeded 1.5°C of warming; the project failed to meaningfully analyze impacts to climate, roadless areas, and the agriculture and eco-tourism centered economies of the North Fork Valley. More drilling is projected to harm Delta County’s tax revenue, not help it. These communities need land management that serves the public interest.”
Colorado’s Western Slope is already suffering from severe warming. The Washington Post recently featured the area as the largest “climate hot spot” in the lower 48 states, where temperatures have already risen more than 2 degrees Celsius, reducing snowpack and drying Colorado River flows that support endangered fish, agriculture and 40 million downstream water users.
In January 574 conservation, Native American, religious and business groups sent the then president-elect a proposed executive order to ban new fossil fuel leasing and permitting on federal public lands and waters. In February the Biden administration issued an executive order pausing oil and gas leasing onshore and offshore pending a climate review of federal fossil fuel programs. In June the Interior Department will issue an interim report describing findings from a March online forum and public comments.
Background: Fossil fuel production on public lands causes about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. Peer-reviewed science estimates that a nationwide fossil fuel leasing ban on federal lands and oceans would reduce carbon emissions by 280 million tons per year, ranking it among the most ambitious federal climate-policy proposals.
Oil, gas and coal extraction uses mines, well pads, gas lines, roads and other infrastructure that destroy habitat for wildlife, including threatened and endangered species. Oil spills and other harms from offshore drilling have inflicted immense damage to ocean wildlife and coastal communities. Fracking and mining also pollute watersheds and waterways that provide drinking water to millions of people.
Federal fossil fuels that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential climate pollution; those already leased to industry contain up to 43 billion tons. Pollution from the world’s already producing oil and gas fields, if fully developed, would push global warming well past 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Thanks to University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Chris Jones and partners, for putting on this Biochar Opportunities in the Southwest Workshop, which involved researchers, forest management types, and current and future entrepreneurs, exchanging ideas, information and experiences.
Here’s the link to recordings of all the presentations and report-outs.
My personal favorite was Deb Page-Dumroese of the Rocky Mountain Research Station, one of the founders of, and a current leader in, the woody biochar field. I would call her an “eminence grise.” Her presentation starts 7 minutes in here. Rethinking slash piles, (clip above) is around 29 minutes.
If you’ve been following biochar from woody material off and on, as I have, this seminar is a great way to get up to date. If you have never learned about it, it’s a great introduction.
A giant sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park is still smoldering nine months after it caught fire during last summer’s wildfires.
National park scientists were surveying the damage caused by last year’s Castle Fire when they discovered the burning giant sequoia in the remote Board Camp Grove earlier this week. They said the discovery shows just how dry conditions in the central Sierra have been this year.
“The fact areas are still smoldering and smoking from the 2020 Castle Fire demonstrates how dry the park is,” said Leif Mathiesen, assistant fire management officer for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, in a statement.
“With the low amount of snowfall and rain this year, there may be additional discoveries as spring transitions into summer,” he added.
I hesitate to disagree with an AFMO who is on the scene, but it is not at all unusual for small hot spots to survive a winter, even a heavy winter. It happened in 2018 after the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge, an area that gets 60 to 80 inches of rain a year. I say this is not to downplay the drought in Calif., but to offer some perspective. Holdover and “sleeper” fires are not unusual.
Press release from Western Environmental Law Center.
On the same day as the Trump administration announced the elimination of 3.4 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s top owl expert formally objected to the decision in a document recently unearthed as part of ongoing litigation. The Jan. 15 memorandum, written by Oregon State Office Supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Dr. Paul Henson, found that “it is reasonable to conclude that [the reduction in critical habitat] will result in the extinction of the [northern spotted owl].” The Henson memo references other documents, as yet unreleased, indicating this was not the first warning of the dire consequences of the proposed rule. On Dec. 9, 2020, Dr. Henson likewise warned, “Most scientists (myself included) would conclude that such an outcome will, therefore, result in the eventual extinction of the listed subspecies.”
“We now know what we suspected all along, which is that the Trump administration actively disregarded the best available science when making wildlife and land management decisions,” said Susan Jane Brown, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “Seeing in writing that callous disregard for the continued existence of this iconic species is sobering, to say the least, and revolting at worst. This is a clear example, and unfortunately not the first, of the prior administration giving out gifts to political allies rather than following the law. Thankfully, experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stood up for the northern spotted owl, and WELC and our clients are in court to ensure that the best available science rules the day.”
“We suspected that political favors, not science, guided the last-minute rulemaking change by the Trump administration,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC). “Now we know that it was made clear to the Trump administration that its planned cuts to northern spotted owl critical habitat would result in the owl’s extinction. They knew but didn’t care.”
The Henson memo was written in response to a separate memo, signed by then-U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith, which outlined the legal and scientific justifications for the reduction in critical habitat. The Jan. 7, 2021 memorandum was reportedly not provided to Dr. Henson until the day before the formal rulemaking, making a more timely objection impossible.
This is not the first time that political appointees have personally inserted themselves into controversial decisions. In 2007, Julie MacDonald, then deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the Department of the Interior, was found to have manipulated decisions and agency science to benefit the Bush administration’s political agenda. The Interior Department under Interior Secs. Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt have also been subject to a number of high-profile ethics scandals. Given this history, after the Jan. 15 critical habitat rule, eight Western lawmakers requested a formal investigation as to whether any government official improperly “inserted themselves into the scientific process in order to achieve preferred policy outcomes….”
Timber harvesting in the Northwest has resulted in a widespread loss of spotted owl habitat across its range, which was a main reason for listing the species in 1990. Owls depend on habitat provided by the dense canopy of mature and old-growth forests; unfortunately, those forests are still a target for logging throughout the bird’s historic range. The northern spotted owl is already functionally extinct in its northernmost range, with only one recognized breeding pair left in British Columbia.
In response to a court order, in 1990 the Service listed the northern spotted owl as threatened, citing low and declining populations, limited and declining habitat, competition from barred owls, and other factors in the bird’s plight. Even after its listing, northern spotted owl populations have declined by 70%, and the rate of decline has increased.
The Biden Administration came out with America the Beautiful as an approach to 30×30. I like the Principles (see image above), and I like the idea of getting agencies together, and counting the same things the same way. Here’s a link.
American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas
To develop and track a clear baseline of information on lands and waters that have already been conserved or restored, the U.S. Government should establish an interagency working group of experts to build an American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas. The Atlas would be an accessible, updated, and comprehensive tool through which to measure the progress of conservation, stewardship, and restoration efforts across the United States in a manner that reflects the goals and principles outlined in this report.
The interagency working group—led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and NOAA, in partnership with the Council on Environmental Quality, and other land and ocean management agencies at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and the Interior—would be tasked with gathering input from the public, States, Tribal Nations, a wide range of stakeholders, and scientists to assess existing databases, and to develop an inclusive, collaborative approach to capture and reflect conservation and restoration of lands and waters. The group, for example, could consider how to reflect State- and county- presented information, how to capture conservation outcomes on multiple use lands and ocean areas, and how to protect the privacy of landowners, and sensitive or proprietary information.
The U.S. Government has existing tools to draw from in developing the American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas, including USDA’s Natural Resources Inventory and Forest Inventory and Analysis programs, the USGS’s Protected Area Database (PAD), and NOAA’s Restoration Atlas and Marine Protected Areas Inventory, among many others, but they should be refined, coordinated, and supplemented to better reflect the state of conservation in America. For example, the PAD contains useful, but incomplete, information about the conservation status of Federal, State, and local government lands and private lands subject to conservation easements.28 It is an aggregated database built through contributions from States and partners throughout the nation; however, the PAD does not, for example, currently include information about the conservation strategies of Tribal Nations, and many other effective conservation tools that farmers, ranchers, and other private landowners are deploying to conserve the health of working lands.
The American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas would aggregate information from these databases and others, supplement this information with information from the States, Tribes, public, stakeholders, and scientists, and provide a baseline assessment of how much land, ocean, and other waters in the U.S. are currently conserved or restored, including, but not necessarily limited to:
• The contributions of farmers, ranchers, forest owners, and private landowners through
effective and voluntary conservation measures; …
What’s your favorite and least favorite part of the initiative?
10-year anniversary of northern Rockies wolf delisting comes amid on-going slaughter
Undemocratic move decade ago opened floodgates for widespread wolf killing in Idaho and Montana, paving the way for even more barbaric wolf-killing schemes
MISSOULA, MONTANA—Ten years ago today, federal Endangered Species Act protections were stripped from gray wolves in Idaho, Montana, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and northern Utah because of a rider attached to a must-pass budget bill by U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID).
This undemocratic move a decade ago—which blocked any judicial review of the rider—opened the floodgates for widespread wolf killing in the northern Rockies, including by hunters, trappers, and state and federal agencies. State “management” of wolves in the northern Rockies has included Idaho Fish and Game (IDFG) hiring a professional hunter-trapper to go into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness to slaughter wolves and IDFG conducting aerial gunning operations to kill wolves in some of the most remote roadless federal wildlands remaining in the lower-48 states.
More recently–during a 12-month period from July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020–hunters, trappers, and state and federal agencies killed 570 wolves in Idaho, including at least 35 wolf pups. The state of Idaho also allows a $1,000 “bounty” paid to trappers per dead wolf, including wolves slaughtered on America’s federal public lands and deep within designated Wilderness areas. Right now, a bill currently sits on the desk of Idaho Governor Brad Little that would allow the state to kill 90% of the wolves in the state (up to 1,350 dead wolves in total) by hiring private contractors and allowing unlimited wolf killing by individual hunters and trappers.
The dire situation for wolves in Montana following the 2011 delisting rider is much the same. Fresh off revelations that Governor Greg Gianforte violated state hunting regulations in February when he trapped and shot a collared Yellowstone wolf, Gov Gianforte has since signed numerous draconian bills to slaughter more wolves.
New barbaric laws in Montana allow hunters and trappers to kill an unlimited number of wolves with a single license, allow a wolf “bounty,’ allows trappers to use cruel strangulation neck snares, extend the wolf-trapping season, and authorize night-time hunting of wolves on private lands and baiting of wolves.
“The barbaric situation facing wolves in Montana and Idaho prove that the gray wolf still needs federal Endangered Species Act protections. As we clearly warned ten years ago, the state ‘management’ of wolves essentially amounts to the brutal state-sanctioned eradication of this keystone native species,” said Sarah McMillian, the Montana-based conservation director for WildEarth Guardians.
“WildEarth Guardians and our allies filed a lawsuit ten years ago in an attempt and overturn this undemocratic, spiteful wolf rider because we believed the wolf delisting rider violated the U.S. Constitution. While our lawsuit wasn’t successful because Congress simply closed the courthouse doors, the hateful and on-going attempts to completely decimate wolf populations in Idaho and Montana warrants national outrage and action by Congress to restore wolf protections in the northern Rockies,” said John Horning, WildEarth Guardians’ executive director.
“State ‘management’ of wolves in Idaho and Montana harkens back to an era when people sought to exterminate wolves altogether, and nearly succeeded. These types of actions were not only deplorable in the early 1900s, but they have zero place in science-based management of a keystone species in 2021, especially in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and nature crisis,” said McMillian. “We must not abandon fragile wolf-recovery efforts and allow anti-wolf states, hunters, and trappers to push these iconic species back to the brink of extinction.”
A colleague who works in the Northeast wonders why many folks there object to any sort of commercial timber harvesting, but say little about solar farms, such as a proposed 200-acre solar farm in a forested area of Mass.
From E&E News:
The Biden administration today announced approval of a major solar farm in Southern California, the final green light for a renewable energy project first proposed more than a decade ago.
The Bureau of Land Management record of decision authorizes Sonoran West Solar Holdings LLC to build Crimson Solar, a 350-megawatt power and energy storage project. The project will cover roughly 2,000 acres of BLM land in the Chuckwalla Valley, near the Arizona border.
The project, which can generate enough electricity is expected to connect to the regional electrical grid at a nearby substation operated by Southern California Edison.
…
Some environmentalists have criticized the project, saying it has the potential to harm archaeological sites, migratory birds and other wildlife, including the desert tortoise and the Mojave fringe-toed lizard.
