The subtitle of this Undark article: “Some scientists question whether controlled burns and logging are really the best way to preserve California’s redwoods.”

Looks at both coast redwood and giant sequoia, the effects of fire and the lack of it, and the role of active management (thinning).

FWIW, I came across Undark recently — excellent ‘zine. “Undark is a non-profit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society.”

A press release from the USFS today…. Plenty to discuss. These are the high points. What were the lows?

Episode 35 of the Rewilding Earth Podcast, from the Rewilding Institute, looks like it could be of interest to many on this blog. It features Bruce Anderson. Below is Bruce’s bio as well as the topics discussed in the podcast, which you can listen to right here.

Bruce Anderson retired from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in July 2017. During his four years with the DNR he was Assistant Wildlife Manager and wildlife planner where he was involved wildlife surveys, planning, wildlife damage management, habitat assessments, invasive species management and Interdisciplinary support to timber management.

Prior to this, Bruce had a 35 year career with the US Forest Service where he worked in North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and most recently on the Superior National Forest in Northern MN. During his Forest Service career he worked in program management positions for invasive species, wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers, trails, rangeland management, wildlife, fire effects and recreation. Bruce also worked at length within five wilderness areas on wilderness related topics including fire effects monitoring, livestock and recreational grazing, wildlife damage management, invasive species control, motorized use management, and wild and scenic rivers.

Topics

• Effects of mining, timber extraction, invasive species, and development in North America since 1969

• Making an impact on the local level

• Collective effect of taking action where you live

• How to find $50-$100 billion dollars per year for conservation and restoration work from coast to coast

• How “big data” can help make the right management decisions on the ground

Extra Credit

• Reach out to local groups in your area, pick up a shovel, pull invasive species out of the ground on state and federal land, stay active!

• Know what’s been lost in your area in order to understand why taking one more square inch or board foot really does make a difference.

The Forest Service isn’t quite the worst place to work in the federal government, but it’s steadily moving in that direction. According to the latest “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” employee survey, the Forest Service’s ranking has dropped in every category; from leadership to pay to work/life balance, the Forest Service is in the bottom quartile.

Out of 420 federal agencies, the Forest Service 380th place is its lowest ranking ever. Remarkably, but perhaps not coincidentally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture counts four of the Bottom 10 agencies, including the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Economic Research Service, which USDA leadership pissed off by moving their offices to another state.

The gap between the Forest Service and other land management agencies has grown. The BLM, which ranks #311, while still no bed of roses is at least only middling bad in half of the criteria measured. As is the National Park Service, which ranks about the same as BLM. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to rank in the top half of agencies.

Meanwhile, NASA remains the cat’s meow for federal employees.

From E&E News($) this morning….

Fiscal 2020 compromise legislation would boost funding for agriculture and forestry programs, including additional money for wildfire suppression in national forests.

For the Forest Service, appropriators said they would provide a $10.3 million increase toward clearing vegetation and dead or dying trees — known as hazardous fuels — in national forests to cut the risk of catastrophic fire, especially in the wildland-urban interface.

The measure would also boost funding for state and local volunteer firefighting capacity, helping to bring the total Forest Service funding to $7.43 billion, compared with $6.08 billion in discretionary funding in fiscal 2019.

The proposal also would devote an additional $1.95 billion to wildfire suppression as part of a wildfire disaster fund Congress agreed to two years ago. That is the Forest Service’s share of a $2.25 billion budget cap adjustment also devoted to the Interior Department.

Last fall, I attended my first Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference.  One of the presentations was from a person from  the Solutions Journalism Network on.. solutions journalism.

SolutionsU is a source of existing solutions journalism. You can search on a topic.. say “forests” and see what they have. Here’s a link. There looked to be quite a few interesting stories.

Also they have training for journalists learning to write stories from this perspective.. Here it is.

It seems to me that it’s terribly difficult to report on solutions (at least in our world) that each have their own pros and cons relative to other solutions, or just leaving things alone. While much journalism is problem-oriented, it seems to me tht solutions-oriented could suffer from the same problem. Did an intervention “work” or did it not “work”.. well it probably depends on what factors you looked at and how you measured them, and what factors you didn’t look at. Still, the database is a good source for stories we might not otherwise have run across. You can also use dates to search if you are interested in more recent ones. If you find something interesting, please link to it in the comments below.

It will be interesting to watch how some of frequent apologists for industry, the agency or certain administrations on this blog explain this one and tell us it’s no big deal.

Documents: Mining company writing own environmental report
Source: https://www.idahostatesman.com/latest-news/article238363753.html
BY KEITH RIDLER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DECEMBER 13, 2019 04:40 PM

Documents show the U.S. Forest Service allowing a Canadian company to write a key environmental report on its proposed open-pit gold mines in central Idaho after the Trump administration became involved.

The documents obtained by conservation group Earthworks show British Columbia-based Midas Gold’s lobbying efforts after initial rebuffs from the Forest Service.

The report, called a biological assessment, would typically be written by the Forest Service or an independent contractor. Its purpose is to examine the potential effect the open-pit mines would have on salmon, steelhead and bull trout protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The assessment could sink Midas Gold’s Stibnite Gold Project if it results in habitat restoration work that makes the mines economically unfeasible.

An internal Forest Service document in February 2018 shows the agency deciding to deny Midas Gold’s request to participate as a non-federal representative in writing the assessment because the massive project would likely harm protected fish. But by October 2018, Midas Gold was not only a participant, it had taken over leading the process and writing the document.

“I think it’s particularly inappropriate for a mining company to be analyzing their own project,” Bonnie Gestring of Earthworks said this week. She obtained the documents as part of a public records request.

Mckinsey Lyon, vice-president of external affairs for Midas Gold, said it’s normal for a company to write the biological assessment for its project, and the company has been holding monthly meetings with federal agencies, state agencies and tribes.

“We will prepare the draft assessment from that collaborative process,” Lyon said. “We are really looking at this to make the process more inclusive and transparent in getting all the voices and input at the table.”

Documents show ongoing lobbying efforts with federal agencies and then a meeting in May 2018 between Midas Gold and Dan Jiron, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s acting deputy under secretary for natural resources and environment. In November, Midas Gold met with Jim Hubbard, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for natural resources and environment.

Meanwhile, Forest Service resistance to Midas Gold playing a significant role in writing the biological assessment crumbled, according to Forest Service internal emails, meeting notes and a memorandum.

“And to be clear,” then-Payette National Forest Supervisor Keith Lannom wrote in a short email to colleagues in October 2018, “Midas will have the lead on fish, wildlife and plants ESA (Endangered Species Act) consultation.”

Lannom, who earlier this year became a deputy regional forester based in Montana and no longer oversees Payette National Forest issues, didn’t return a call from The Associated Press.

John Freemuth, an expert on U.S. land policies at Boise State University, said it’s not unusual for companies to lobby whatever administration is in power. But he said having a company get the OK to write its own biological assessment is something he’s never heard of before.

“It looks like there was a lot of political pressure that Midas brought to bear at higher levels,” said Freemuth, who reviewed the documents. “It wouldn’t pass what people call the smell test.”

Midas Gold says the Stibnite Mining District contains more than 4 million ounces (113 million grams) of gold and more than 100 million pounds of antimony. Antimony is used in lead for storage batteries as well as a flame retardant. The U.S. lists antimony as one of 35 mineral commodities critical to the economic and national security of the country. Midas Gold says the mines will directly create an average of 500 jobs for up to 25 years.

Mining in the area about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of McCall dates back more than a century and has resulted in two open pits, including one that has been blocking a salmon spawning stream since the 1930s. The site also has extensive tailings left from mining operations that are the source of elevated levels of arsenic.

Previous mining companies walked away, leaving cleanup to U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has spent about $4 million since the 1990s restoring habitat.

Midas Gold plans additional mining in the two open pits and to create a third open pit. The work would roughly double the size of the disturbed mining area to about 2,000 acres (800 hectares) and eliminate some previous reclamation work.

But Midas Gold’s plan includes cleaning up tailings by capturing gold with new technologies. Ultimately, the company says, it will restore much of the area when mining is finished.

The Nez Perce Tribe has treaty rights to the area and has come out against new mining amid concerns for fish habitat. Below the mining area is about 80 river miles of habitat for spring/summer Chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout in the South Fork of the Salmon River and its tributary, the East Fork of the South Fork. The Salmon River itself is home to additional federally protected salmon, including endangered sockeye salmon.

The biological assessment will be used to create a draft environmental impact statement expected to be released in early 2020, with a final decision possible later in the year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest Service will have to sign off on the plan.

Midas Gold officials said the draft biological assessment has not yet been written, but an outline of the document has been created.

Freemuth, the public lands expert, said if the project is approved, a lingering question will be whether land and wildlife managers or political appointees made the decision.

“At the end of the day, people are going to sue if they think that the document is insufficient,” he said. “This will be heavily scrutinized.”

UPDATE (12/23/2019): Foreign Mining Firm Writing Its Own Environmental Report For U.S. Forest Service Loses Round In Court

A Canadian gold-mining company allowed by the Trump administration to write its own assessment of the environmental impact of its proposed project on federal lands has lost a round in court against the Nez Perce tribe in Idaho.

From High Country News, Dec. 6 — open access, I think. I’m a subscriber.

NEPA transformed federal land management — and has fallen short

A look back at the ground-breaking legislation on its 50th anniversary.

At the heart of the legislation lay an optimistic belief that economic growth, environmental protection and human welfare might align without sacrifice or rancor. The law highlights the need to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” It clearly takes a long-range view, incorporating tomorrow’s environmental fate into today’s decisions.

These values, though, tend to be forgotten, overshadowed by a procedural hurdle that changed business-as-usual for federal planning and decision-making. Before undertaking “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment” — offering timber sales on federal land, for example, or building an interstate highway — federal agencies and their partners now had to submit “a detailed statement.” That environmental impact statement, or EIS, needed to be interdisciplinary and thorough, detailing any environmental problems likely to result from the proposed project and listing alternatives, including more costly ones. Then, the public was invited to comment. The procedure significantly lengthened and complicated federal land-use planning and politicized it like never before.

Lots to discuss here, and add….

That’s the title of a Greenwire article today ($).

As many as 80% of the 159 BLM staffers in D.C. who are being moved to the new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., or to other state offices from Alaska to Arizona, plan to reject the reassignment orders and either retire or find another job at the Interior Department or other agency in Washington, the sources told E&E News.

BLM handed out formal relocation notices to almost all of the 159 employees on Nov. 12, giving them 30 days to decide whether to move to the bureau’s new headquarters and other state offices (Greenwire, Nov. 13).

That means the 30-day deadline for most ends today.

Chad Hanson get the first quote and a photo, but this story also includes quotes from John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resources Center, and Scott Stephens, “UC Berkeley’s chief fire science expert.” Overall, it’s a good encapsulation of the issue.