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This is from Minnesota here thanks to the Center for Western Priorities newfeed. What is interesting to me about it is not this particular topic, but the idea of retirees weighing in by writing letters about projects.  Is this common or rare? Certainly as readers of this blog can tell from just Jon Haber and I, there are probably as many opinions as retirees. It’s definitely worth talking about-when should we speak up?  In different cases, would that cause retirees who think differently to also write a letter to the Secretaries? How would that work out? Certainly retirees know much stuff, and could add to the public discourse, as we do here.

The letter submitted to federal officials this week asks for the federal government to pause that process by completing the study of the proposed 20-year mining ban, and to suspend Twin Metals’ leases until legal challenges to those lease reinstatements are heard in court.

The letter does not mention the proposed PolyMet mine, which earlier this year received the final permits it needs to begin construction. The company is now trying to raise the roughly $1 billion it will need to build the state’s first ever copper-nickel mine.

Brenda Halter, who retired as Forest Supervisor for the Superior National Forest in 2016, helped draft the letter. She said all the signatories have professional experience working on projects related to the Boundary Waters.

Under her leadership, the Forest Service approved a land exchange in which it agreed to trade federal land where PolyMet intends to dig its open pit mine with privately held land elsewhere in the forest. That decision has since been challenged in federal court.

Halter acknowledged the role she played with PolyMet, which she said was to make sure the legal process and the science were followed to help inform the agency’s decision, can seem contradictory with the stance she’s taken on Twin Metals.

“[But] I feel very strongly on a personal and professional level that a copper-nickel mine adjacent to millions of acres of water-based ecosystem is simply an incompatible use,” she said.

Maybe Tony can add some information here.

Last week, federal district judge William Alsup told California’s transportation department (CalTrans) that it had given short-shrift to the fate of several old-growth redwood trees that have the misfortune of living beside a coastal highway. CalTrans wants to widen Highway 101 as it passes through a redwood state park, thus allowing passage by extra-long trucks that currently must take long detours on their way to serve Humboldt County businesses.

The trees at issue “are thousands of years old, and can measure 300 feet tall with a diameter sixteen feet wide.” They are, as a practical matter, irreplaceable. Judge Alsup gets that and, if the final decision were his to make, he would choose trees over convenience for bigger trucks. But, as he is the first to admit, it is not his decision to make. With only NEPA processes on which to hang his judicial robe, Alsup makes the most of them!

And why not? Alsup comes from a long tradition of lawyers and judges who believe that environmental protection laws are intended to protect the environment. As a young lawyer, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas during the 1971-1972 term in which Douglas wrote his famous dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton, which kicks off with a citation to “Should Trees Have Standing,” a law review treatise now enjoying a political renaissance.

[In his 1972 dissent, Douglas noted “the Forest Service — one of the federal agencies behind the scheme to despoil Mineral King — has been notorious for its alignment with lumber companies, although its mandate from Congress directs it to consider the various aspects of multiple use in its supervision of the national forests.” Prescient and accurate, as future events proved.]

In Justice Douglas, Alsup had a good mentor who would be proud of his protege’s sound instinct for putting the public interest ahead of a CalTrans bureaucracy beholden to the trucking lobby.

The following article was written by Los Padres ForestWatch.

Goleta, Calif. – On April 25, 2019, the Forest Service announced its approval of the second of two commercial logging projects in the Los Padres National Forest. The approval of the 1,600-acre project along Tecuya Ridge comes just five months after the agency authorized an adjacent 1,200-acre project allowing commercial logging in Cuddy Valley at the base of Mt. Pinos.

The agency fast-tracked both projects without preparing a standard environmental assessment or environmental impact statement, instead declaring that the projects were excluded from environmental review under a loophole in the National Environmental Policy Act. A full environmental review examines potential impacts to plants and wildlife as well as alternatives to the proposed activities. The normal review process also provides more transparency and opportunities for the public to weigh in with concerns about the project.

The logging area provides prime habitat for endangered California condors. According to condor tracking data provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly fifty condor roost sites occur within a half-mile of where trees will be cut and removed. These roost sites are typically large dead or live trees that are used by condors for resting overnight between long flights. Federal standards require a minimum half-mile buffer from condor roosting sites to protect them from disturbance, given their sensitivity and importance in condor survival.

“There is simply no place for commercial logging in condor country,” said Los Padres ForestWatch Conservation Director Bryant Baker. “With approval of this project, the Forest Service is setting a dangerous precedent for shirking environmental review and public input for logging projects that can have significant impacts on endangered species in the Los Padres National Forest.”

The project would remove trees of all sizes along 12 miles of Tecuya Ridge near the northern border of the Los Padres National Forest and allow for a commercial timber sale to be offered to private logging companies. The decision states that the timber sale would make the project cheaper.

The decision—signed by Forest Supervisor Kevin Elliott—describes operations that would remove large trees using feller bunchers and rubber-tired or track-mounted log skidders and loading them onto logging trucks at cleared areas called landings. Up to 95% of smaller trees and shrubs would be mechanically masticated. The leftover slash would be tractor piled along with post-logging machine piling and pile burning. The agency anticipates that these activities would repeat every 3 to 7 years.

A New Low for Public Participation and Transparency

The two commercial logging projects represent a shift in how the Forest Service authorizes large tree removal projects in the Los Padres National Forest. Since 2006, officials have only approved such projects after rigorously evaluating their environmental impacts in an environmental assessment that is made available for public review and comment prior to approval.

One of the many areas along Tecuya Ridge that will be logged and masticated.
Other projects that were aimed at removing trees in the few mixed-conifer areas in the Los Padres National Forest have generally included a limit on the size of trees that can be removed. For example, a Frazier Mountain thinning project that was approved in 2012 only allowed for removal of trees smaller than 10 inches in diameter, or roughly the size of a basketball. Normally, anything larger than this would be left in place as countless scientific studies have highlighted the importance of retaining large, fire-resistant trees to reduce the risk of high-intensity fire. However, the recently-approved project on Tecuya Ridge as well as Cuddy Valley project would allow a timber company to remove massive, old-growth coniferous trees.

Logging Ineffective Against Wildfire Risk

The Trump Administration is billing the commercial logging project as a fire protection measure. However, countless studies have shown that logging is an ineffective or even counterproductive measure for reducing wildfire risk. Similar to many fires before it, last year’s tragic Camp Fire burned intensely and quickly through a large logged area in the Plumas National Forest and across private lands that had been subject to timber harvesting before it devastated the town of Paradise.

“The science is telling us that commercial logging projects like these not only damage critical wildlife habitat, they also usually make wildland fires spread faster and burn hotter,” said Dr. Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist with the John Muir Project. “The Forest Service’s logging proposals will increase threats to local communities from wildland fire,” he added.

Scientists have long-stated that the most effective vegetation management should take place directly around the home and immediately adjacent to communities. The Forest Service followed this model in planning two such projects in 2007 to establish defensible space directly adjacent to homes abutting national forest land and construct two fuel breaks directly adjacent to Frazier Park and Lake of the Woods. ForestWatch formally supported both projects. However, more than ten years later, the Forest Service has still not completed the approved fuel break work.

Research has also repeatedly shown that community-focused measures are more successful and cost-effective than landscape-level vegetation treatment. These measures include retrofitting existing structures with fire-safe materials, improving early warning and evacuation systems, creating fireproof community shelters, and curbing development in fire-prone areas.

Public Opposition Ignored

The Forest Service received over 1,000 public comments before the decision—approximately 99% were in opposition to the commercial logging proposal. ForestWatch submitted technical and legal comments highlighting several issues with both projects in partnership with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity, and another letter requesting that the projects undergo standard environmental review joined by the California Wilderness Coalition, Kern Audubon, Sequoia ForestKeeper, Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club, TriCounty Watchdogs, and Earth Skills. Since the Forest Service excluded these projects from environmental review, there is no formal appeals process, leaving litigation as the only option for the public to seek changes to the project. ForestWatch and its partners at the John Muir Project and Center for Biological Diversity are currently evaluating the best course of action to take to avoid impacts to the area and to endangered California condors.

Abstract from a new paper in Ecosphere, “The missing fire: quantifying human exclusion of wildfire in Pacific Northwest forests, USA.” Full text is online, free:

Western U.S. wildfire area burned has increased dramatically over the last half‐century. How contemporary extent and severity of wildfires compare to the pre‐settlement patterns to which ecosystems are adapted is debated. We compared large wildfires in Pacific Northwest forests from 1984 to 2015 to modeled historic fire regimes. Despite late twentieth‐century increases in area burned, we show that Pacific Northwest forests have experienced an order of magnitude less fire over 32 yr than expected under historic fire regimes. Within fires that have burned, severity distributions are disconnected from historical references. From 1984 to 2015, 1.6 M ha burned; this is 13.3–18.9 M ha less than expected. Deficits were greatest in dry forest ecosystems adapted to frequent, low‐severity fire, where 7.2–10.3 M ha of low‐severity fire was missing, compared to a 0.2–1.1 M ha deficit of high‐severity fire. When these dry forests do burn, we observed that 36% burned with high‐severity compared to 6–9% historically. We found smaller fire deficits, 0.3–0.6 M ha, within forest ecosystems adapted to infrequent, high‐severity fire. However, we also acknowledge inherent limitations in evaluating contemporary fire regimes in ecosystems which historically burned infrequently and for which fires were highly episodic. The magnitude of contemporary fire deficits and disconnect in burn severity compared to historic fire regimes have important implications for climate change adaptation. Within forests characterized by low‐ and mixed‐severity historic fire regimes, simply increasing wildfire extent while maintaining current trends in burn severity threatens ecosystem resilience and will potentially drive undesirable ecosystem transformations. Restoring natural fire regimes requires management that facilitates much more low‐ and moderate‐severity fire.

IMHO, Restoring the historic role of fire will require prior mechanical fuels reduction in many areas where fuel loads are higher than historically. That means commercial and non-commercial harvesting, and paying for it, and that spells controversy.

This is one of those topics on which I’m looking for a little help from our more legally knowledgeable Smokey Wire folks.

Here’s a story from the Western Wire.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) launched a public lands debate this week after unveiling her plan to prohibit drilling for new oil and gas development on federal lands both onshore and offshore in order to “end our public lands’ contribution to climate change.”

“I want to make you a promise—that is, on the first day of a Warren administration—on the first day, I will sign a moratorium that our public lands there will be no more new drilling or mining,” Warren said in Aurora, Colo. Tuesday evening.

On Monday, Warren announced her plans for public lands on Medium, outlining her goals on eliminating natural resource development on public lands, expanding renewable electricity generation on public lands, and restore two national monuments in Utah to their Obama-era boundaries.

“It is wrong to prioritize corporate profits over the health and safety of our local communities. That’s why on my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that says no more drilling — a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases, including for drilling offshore and on public lands (emphasis in original),” Warren wrote.

It seems to me that an Executive Order can’t override federal laws that allow activities on public lands. But I could be wrong.  Legal opinion?

I also think it’s kind of interesting that she assumes that wind and solar’s impacts are not deleterious, or that those impacts are OK and we can figure out the places that it won’t be a problem.  But most interesting is the idea that producing oil and gas “prioritizes corporate profits over health and safety” but corporate profits are OK when they involve wind and solar.  Personally, as a user of oil and gas, I prefer any corporate profits from production that I use to be generated in the US… otherwise I’d be supporting the corporate profits of Saudis or Canadians. Not that there’s anything wrong with either country (well OK, the Saudis are not my favorites) , but I’d rather be getting the jobs and taxes here.  I’m more inclined to support policies that reduce our use of oil and gas, not so much production.

A few other interesting quotes from the WW piece:

We can achieve this goal while prioritizing sites with low impact on local ecology but high potential for renewable energy generation. My administration will make it a priority to expedite leases and incentivize development in existing designated areas, and share royalties from renewable generation with states and local communities to help promote economic development and reduce local dependence on fossil fuel revenues,” Warren wrote.

At a separate event earlier Tuesday, Warren suggested opening more public lands for recreation in a “sustainable manner.” That includes concessions for the sale of food in order to boost local economies, the AP reporter Nick Riccardi tweeted.

Despite her plan for public lands, other Democrats were less enthusiastic. Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska promised “release a public lands plan that will make Elizabeth Warren look like Ryan Zinke,” his campaign manager told E&ENews.

But whether Warren or any other presidential candidate could implement a halt on drilling without conflicting with federally mandated quarterly lease sales would likely trigger questions about legality and a raft of lawsuits.

In Western states like New Mexico, the end of quarterly lease sales would threaten a revenue stream that drove more than a billion dollars to education alone in 2018, endangering progress for a state that has only recently seen dramatic improvements in many educational benchmarks due to increased revenues and investments thanks to oil and gas development in the state.

I also wonder what she means by “opening more public lands for recreation”. Aren’t they pretty much all open unless closed?

WaPo article via SF Chronicle…. No, not The Onion.

USDA orders scientists to say published research is ‘preliminary’

Ben Guarino, The Washington Post Published 9:30 am PDT, Friday, April 19, 2019

Researchers at the Agriculture Department laughed in disbelief last summer when they received a memo about a new requirement: Their finalized, peer-reviewed scientific publications must be labeled “preliminary.”

The July 2018 memo from Chavonda Jacobs-Young, the acting USDA chief scientist, told researchers their reports published in scientific journals must include a statement that reads: “The findings and conclusions in this preliminary publication have not been formally disseminated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.” A copy of the memo was obtained by The Washington Post and the USDA confirmed its authenticity.

According to the AP:

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has a new job: a more than $100,000-a-year post with a gold-mining firm that’s pursuing project approvals involving the federal agency that Zinke left fewer than four months ago.

Zinke told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his work for Nevada-based U.S. Gold Corp., which focuses on mining exploration and development, would not constitute lobbying. But that company’s CEO cited Zinke’s “excellent relationship” with the Bureau of Land Management and the Interior Department in explaining his hiring.

“We’re excited to have Secretary Zinke help move us forward” on two pending mining projects, in Nevada and Wyoming, Edward Karr, head of U.S. Gold Corp., said by phone.

Karr said one of the mining projects is on land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, which is under the Interior Department.

A 2017 executive order by President Donald Trump says executive-branch appointees cannot lobby their former agency for at least five years after leaving their government post.

Separately, criminal statutes impose one and two-year bans on various kinds of communications between senior federal officials and their former agency, said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit ethics-watchdog.

Interesting lecture coming up. If anyone here can go, please post a report on what you see and hear.

Restoring pattern to frequent fire forests with variable-density thinning: implementation and initial outcomes

Thursday, May 2, 2019
1:00 PM 2:00 PM

University of California-Davis Asmundson Hall “Big Hannah” (Room 242) Davis, CA

In the abstract for the lecture, I highlighted text that demonstrates the outcomes of such thinning. These treatments are needed throughout the west, including spotted owl habitat. I am mystified why anyone would oppose such management and claim it is “industrial logging” designed to line the coffers of timber companies.

Abstract: Historical forests shaped by fire were highly heterogeneous at the within-stand scale, with dense groups of trees and individual trees interspersed with numerous small gaps. Stem maps from research plots on the Stanislaus National Forest dating to 1929 show that prior to any logging, canopy cover was 45% and over 20% of the area within stands was in canopy gaps where shrubs were abundant. As a result of past logging and fire exclusion, the contemporary stands were denser and more homogeneous, with no gaps and very low shrub cover. To improve resilience to disturbances such as wildfire or drought, while better balancing the needs of associated plant and animal species, we utilized the historical structure as a guide to a ‘variable density’ thinning prescription, comparing this with a standard thinning to an even tree crown spacing, and an unthinned control. Half of the units were then treated with prescribed fire. Mechanical thinning removed 40% of the basal area, and by favoring pines over fir and cedar, produced a species composition similar to the historical reference condition. Variable thinning enhanced within-stand structural heterogeneity and did so at spatial scales similar to heterogeneity found in historical stands. Both thinning treatments experienced significantly less tree mortality during the recent drought than unthinned controls. In addition, understory shrubs and grasses are already much more abundant, especially where thinning was followed by prescribed fire. While still early, it is our hope that the variable density thinning with prescribed fire treatment will not only be more resilient to future wildfires and droughts, but also produce conditions suitable for a greater diversity of species. [emphasis added]

Greenwire today: “Efforts to clear fire-prone Calif. forests face hurdles.” Excerpt:

Forest treatment projects must obtain approvals under the California Environmental Quality Act. Butte County Fire Safe Council Executive Director Calli-Jane DeAnda said the environmental review process typically uses up 10 to 15 percent of grant funds local fire agencies receive for forest management projects. The reviews can take years.

The state has been working since 2010 on an environmental impact report that would cover all vegetation treatments in California under one overarching environmental document. It would identify environmentally sound processes for various natural landscapes. Then, if a project were proposed that met the guidelines for its landscape, it could be approved through a “checklist scenario,” according to Board of Forestry and Fire Protection Executive Officer Matt Dias.

Some projects wouldn’t fit the template, he said, and would require more review, but the idea would be to get projects approved and moving forward in a matter of weeks instead of years. A goal has been set to complete the document by the end of the year.

Maybe we need a western US EIS for fuels management projects on federal lands.