A report from a nonprofit institute says forest restoration initiatives generated $150 million dollars for northern Arizona’s economy in 2017. The study was conducted to meet a Congressional requirement for monitoring the results of large-scale restoration projects.

The link goes to a short article with a link to the report by the Conservation Economics Institute. Another report there looks worth reading:

“Forest Density Preferences of WUI Homebuyers”

Today President Trump signed the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and
Recreation Act, which, among many other things, designates the Devil’s Staircase Wilderness. At over 30,000 acres, Devil’s Staircase now becomes the largest wilderness in Oregon’s Coast Range.

In the heart of timber country on the southern end of the Siuslaw national forest, the Smith and Umpqua Rivers define its boundaries. In the 1960s, the Forest Service imposed a moratorium on logging between these rivers pending completion of a soil erosion study. Although the study was inconclusive, the logging moratorium was lifted in 1980.

In 1984, when the Forest Service’s tried to resume logging, a federal district judge ruled the agency had violated the National Environmental Policy Act. The so-called “Mapleton” (named after the affected ranger district) injunction, stopping 700 million board feet of logging, was then the largest in U.S. history, surpassed only by the spotted owl lawsuit.

Speaking of spotted owls, Devil’s Staircase is home to the Coast Range’s highest numbers of these rare birds and the site of one of the decades-long spotted owl demographic studies. These studies provided much of the scientific foundation for the Northwest Forest Plan.

FYI, a webinar of interest:

Structured Decision Making: An approach to solving problems in natural resources management
https://sfec.cfans.umn.edu/2019-webinar-mar

Structured decision making (SDM) is a flexible and robust approach to making difficult choices. It can be used by an individual or as the framework for collaborative decision making, and it can take as little as a few minutes or as much as many months. Most importantly, SDM yields decisions that are more likely to achieve your objectives and are more likely to be accepted by others. I will provide an overview of SDM, including the 5 main components of every decision, and examples of its application in managing natural resources, primarily wildlife. This presentation is designed for natural resource professionals in a variety of roles, from on the ground practitioners to higher level managers.

Date: March 19, 2019 from noon to 1pm
Speaker: Mike Larson, Supervisor & Decision Analyst, Forest Wildlife Research, MN DNR, Grand Rapids
Cost: $20 per webinar or $50 for the entire 2019 series (except for certain free locations in Minn.)

From E&E News today….

Disappointing, but not surprising, reduction: “Funding for wildfire suppression would decline, from $1.5 billion to $1 billion, although a new emergency fund of $2.25 billion would be available to tap if regular suppression funds are exhausted….”

Wildfire management draws budget focus

The Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal 2019 would put money behind officials’ promise to more intensively manage national forests — but doesn’t predict much more timber coming out of them.

That’s one takeaway from the administration’s budget proposal for agriculture and forestry, which would slash some programs popular with lawmakers while boosting other initiatives. Overall spending would decline from the current fiscal year.

The president’s budget calls for more hazardous fuels reduction in Forest Service-managed lands, reflecting officials’ position that those areas have become more at risk for fire because of dry conditions and lack of maintenance over the years.

At least 1.1 million acres of national forest land would be treated for wildfire risk, the Agriculture Department said in budget documents.

But the proposal would maintain the current goal of 3.7 billion board feet of timber sold, a slight increase from the 3.2 billion board feet sold in 2018.

Overall, the proposal represents a mixed picture for forest programs.

The $450 million proposed for hazardous fuels reduction would be about $20 million more than this year, and the $375 million for forest products around $9 million more — both representing record-high levels, the administration said.

But total discretionary funding for the Forest Service would fall from nearly $6 billion this year to $5.1 billion as part of the administration’s plan. Funding for wildfire suppression would decline, from $1.5 billion to $1 billion, although a new emergency fund of $2.25 billion would be available to tap if regular suppression funds are exhausted — an arrangement Congress enacted beginning next year to avert the raiding of non-fire-related accounts by the Forest Service.

State and private forestry programs, which cover a wide variety of areas, from state parks to big-city tree-planting programs, would take a big hit, from $337 million in this year’s omnibus spending bill to $182 million in the president’s budget.

Land acquisition accounts would be eliminated at the Forest Service, and spending on capital projects would fall slightly under the 2020 proposal.

Other programs at USDA are also targeted for cuts, including crop insurance that’s covered in part by the federal government and some conservation programs. The administration proposed cutting the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program by $40 million a year and would eliminate the Conservation Stewardship Program, which Congress renewed in the 2018 farm bill in December after extended House-Senate negotiations.

The proposal contains several revenue-raisers in a handful of USDA agencies, including a new user fee at the Forest Service to cover costs to streamline minerals permitting, the department said. That would generate $60 million in fiscal 2020, according to the budget.

An additional $130 million would come from retaining mineral receipts to pay for infrastructure projects, USDA said.

Here’s the press release from the Southern Environmental Law Center. A copy of the study is available here.

ATLANTA – A study, conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, found strong support for the preservation and expansion of wilderness areas among public land visitors living within a half-day drive of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The new report reveals 89 percent of respondents across the Southeast support the preservation of wilderness areas and 88 percent of those who had visited a wilderness area thought more wildlands should be protected.

“It’s clear from these findings that there’s nothing more valuable in a crowded world than wild, untamed places,” said Sam Evans, Leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s National Forests and Parks Program. “While these places belong to all of us as Americans, when you’re in wilderness, the experience is yours alone.”

The Appalachians are an iconic American mountain range with more than half of the U.S. population living within an 8-hour drive of its southern region. The wildlands located here offer one of the East’s greatest opportunities for escape, exploration, adventure and have been instrumental in shaping the region’s rich history for centuries. Despite this, researchers studying human to outdoor interactions have known little about how Southerners perceive, use, or view these protected areas.

“This research was conducted as an effort to better understand the use and demand for Southern Appalachian wilderness,” said Kyle Woosnam, UGA Associate Professor of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management. “While wilderness areas are important for their ecological, social and economic contributions, little is known about how residents use and perceive these public lands. The intent of this study was to do just that.”

This Southern Appalachian region is also home to nearly 50 wilderness areas that span almost half a million acres, stretching from Alabama to Virginia. Researchers surveyed 1,250 residents in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee who had visited a protected natural area (ex: wilderness, state park, national scenic area, etc.) in the last five years, with questions focusing most closely on residents’ perceptions of and experiences in the Southern Appalachians. The research was funded by a grant from the Southern Environmental Law Center and The Wilderness Society.

Highlights from the study include:

• People most often visit wilderness areas for day hiking, photography, swimming and camping

• Positive perceptions of wilderness spanned across the political spectrum

• Word of mouth was the #1 way people found out about wilderness areas

• Participants expressed a high level of emotional attachment to wilderness areas visited

• The protection of water quality and wildlife habitat were the most important wilderness benefits identified

• The natural qualities of wilderness were considered the most valuable characteristics of these areas

The results of the study come just after Congress’s December 2018 approval of a wilderness designation for 20,000 acres of the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. That designation expanded the existing Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock, Big Frog, Little Frog Mountain, Big Laurel Branch and Sampson Mountain Wilderness areas and created the Upper Bald River Wilderness Area, a new 9,000-acre addition to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Unlike most federally managed forests, which allow for extractive uses like timber production or built facilities for human comfort and convenience, wilderness areas have only a single guiding purpose—to remain in a natural state. Under the Wilderness Act of 1964, areas that receive wilderness designation by Congress are forever protected as wild places, preserving these areas for future generations, protecting wildlife, rare species habitat, and water quality, acting as a buffer against the damaging effects of climate change, providing economic benefits to rural communities and unparalleled recreation opportunities for all that visit.

“These unique public lands allow us to experience and create memories in some of the country’s wildest places,” said Jill Gottesman, The Wilderness Society’s Southern Appalachian Conservation Specialist. “These areas are some of the most valuable, intact lands in the continental U.S. due to their connectivity, biodiversity and sheer remoteness. This study shows that Southerners are ready to work together to protect our Southern Appalachian wildlands for future generations.”

Folks, here are a few brief excerpts from a lengthy (552 pages) report, “AB 1504 California Forest Ecosystem and Harvested Wood Product Carbon Inventory: 2017 Reporting Period, FINAL REPORT.” The report was “completed through an agreement between the U.S. Forest Service…, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection…, and the University of Montana.”

http://bof.fire.ca.gov/board_committees/ab_1504_process/

“The 2017 reporting period annual rate of carbon sequestration for just the forest ecosystem pools is 29.2 MMT CO2e per year. This value is down by approximately 2.2 MMT CO2e per year from the 2016 measurement cycle. This reduction in carbon sequestration is the result of several factors including improvements in inventory methodology but is also being driven by two complementary factors; an increased rate of tree mortality and decreased gross growth rate on live trees during the most recent measurement years. Tree mortality regardless of cause, accounted for an additional 2.5 MMT of CO2e converted to dead wood annually. Gross growth on trees measured 10-years earlier declined by 1.2 MMT CO2e annually further reducing the net rate of sequestration.”

…

“In many forest types, current stocking levels reflect over a century of fire suppression and may not represent stand densities that are resilient to disturbances common to California forests such as fire or pest outbreaks. Additionally, as the forests age in unharvested stands, growth rates slow. Older forests tend to store more carbon, but they might not accumulate new carbon as quickly as younger, fast-growing stands. Consequently, the stocks and flux represented in this report may not be sustainable into the future without forest management given the uncertainty in potential effects from climate change, the current level of forest disturbances from wildfire and pests, and aging of forests on federal lands. From the 2015 reporting cycle, we are already beginning to see drought effects on tree growth and mortality. Forests provide many other services beyond carbon sequestration and storage, so there are many other considerations beyond forest carbon dynamics when developing management actions.”

…

<<Selected bullet points that reference National Forest lands, from Section 1, Executive summary and key findings:>>

• The national forests account for 35% of the statewide annual flux at a rate of 10.3 ± 2.8 MMT CO2e per year (figure 4.1).
• Only on reserved forest lands managed by the Forest Service is live tree growth not currently estimated to exceed carbon losses from the live tree pool due to tree mortality (Figure 4.4a, Table 4.4a).
• Annual gross growth per acre on live trees is currently exceeding all other carbon losses from the live tree pool due to mortality or harvest on unreserved timberland for all ownerships including lands managed by the Forest Service.
• The Shasta-Trinity National Forest has the highest net annual carbon sequestration rate for all forest pools at approximately 2.7 ± 0.9 MMT CO2e per year (Table 4.6b).
• There are four national forests in California currently experiencing a net loss of carbon based on all pools; San Bernardino (-0.3 ± 0.3 MMT CO2e per year), Los Padres (-0.3 ± 0.4 MMT CO2e per year), Angeles (-0.05 ± 0.2 MMT CO2e per year, and the Lake Tahoe Basin (-0.07 ± 0.2 MMT CO2e per year) (Table 4.6c).

Thanks to David Beebe for reminding me that I had not kept everyone up to speed on how the Smokey Wire renovation project was coming.

First, I’d like  to thank all of our contributors.  I have not gotten a chance to thank each one personally, and some of you have offered to give more.  I appreciate that greatly but have been waiting for others to step up before I accept your generous offers.

The story is a bit confusing because we had a general goal (renovate website), and got caught up in crises (WordPress 5.0 transition and site being shut down due to malware). Between the asterisks** are the technical details.

**Bluehost is the hosting service and charges $155.88 per year, plus $15.99 per year for the domain forestpolicypub.com. There has been a site redirect every year with WordPress, for our “old stuff” to be linked to the site. This is $13.  So it used to cost $184 (not $300, that was before we switched to WordPress.org, and I never changed the widget). We have never received more than $100 a year in donations, prior to this year.

However, this year, we discovered that we needed to switch to WordPress 5.0, and our theme was no longer supported. I could see the handwriting on the wall that we needed a renovation.  I called a few people and got the estimate of $3K for updating, getting a better search function, and other tweaks.

Here’s where the urgency began.  While Gil and I were on a WordPress 5.0 seminar, we figured out that we needed a separate backup to the Bluehost backup (so that’s $40/year for Jetpack/Vaultpress).  I also tried to do some troubleshooting with Bluehost and coincidentally (I try to not be suspicious) they discovered the site had malware and shut it down (first shutdown in nine years). I wasn’t in a good negotiating posture, as the site was down, and I had no idea how to clean out the malware, so signed up for Sitelock malware protection, which is $40 a month.  You’re right that’s $480 a year, and I had to sign up for a year.  That’s more than twice the cost of the whole rest of the $184 plus $40 for Jetpack.

After the crisis blew over, we needed to copy our site onto another location so we could test it with WordPress 5 to see if it would work.  At that point, I decided that we needed a pro, so we hired one to do the minimal fixes to test the website on WordPress 5 and make sure it worked, then get us a new theme (a free one) and a donation button.  This cost $292.50 but is a one-time thing.**

So here is how much it is going to cost this year, and possibly recurring if I can’t find something cheaper and as good as Sitelock. $224 plus $480 or $704.

Right now, it has cost $704 plus $292.50 or $996.50. And we have brought in $515.

I’d like to get a donation widget that shows when we are in the hole, but that would cost more for web design 🙁 , unless I updated it by hand).

I would still like to redesign the website, get a better search capability for most users (contributors have a pretty good one), and have the old content moved from WordPress so we don’t have to pay the $18 per year to store it there.  I would also like to apply for 501c3 status, which is $275, as we might be able to bring in grants for specific purposes. Or, at least, those of us who contribute could write it off.

Bottom line, the above, albeit perhaps TMI, was offered in the spirit of transparency.  If you would like to contribute, contribute more, or have cost-saving suggestions, those would all be appreciated.  We depend on the community not only for content, but for keeping the electrons flowing.

Pasted below is a press release from PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility). At this link to the release, you can find more detailed information. Since so much of the current discussion on this blog has focused on Wilderness, I should point out that approximately 10 million acres of Wilderness is open to private grazing by cows and sheep.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Cliven Bundy’s cows are STILL illegally grazing on federal public lands and Bundy STILL hasn’t paid his federal grazing fees, owing the American people over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. How in the world can he get away with this?

Bundy was also in the news yesterday, sort of, as news broke that a self-described White Nationalist (and would-be terrorist) named Christopher Paul Hasson was planning to kill (assassinate is really the correct term) a number of progressive political leaders and journalists.

According to the New York Times Christopher Paul Hasson, who was also a Coast Guard lieutenant, “mused about taking advantage of some already tense issue, like the standoff in Oregon in 2016 between [heavily armed Bundy Militia] protesters and the Bureau of Land Management.”

Washington―The U.S. Interior Department has reduced fees for grazing cattle and sheep on federal public lands to the minimum allowed under federal law, $1.35 an animal-month. Yesterday’s announcement applies to grazing in national forests and on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

The 41-year old formula has been a boon for livestock operators whose animals graze on federal public lands, but a large proportion of BLM grazing land fails to meet the BLM’s own rangeland health standards. The new $1.35 monthly fee, down from $1.41 a month, is for each cow with a calf, or five sheep or goats. A large proportion of BLM grazing allotments are failing to meet Rangeland Health standards.

“BLM’s own records reveal that much of the sagebrush West is in severely degraded condition due to excessive commercial livestock grazing,” said PEER’s Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade. “Lowering already ultra-low grazing fees only encourages more abuse of public rangelands.”

Costs to administer the grazing fee program exceed the money collected, resulting in taxpayer subsidies of about $100 million per year. Grazing fees were initially based on a “fair-market value” set at $1.23 per AUM in 1966. If the federal government adjusted the fee annually to keep pace with inflation, the current rate would be $9.47. In addition, cattle sizes have increased markedly over the years: In 1974 an Animal Unit Month provided forage for a cow weighing 1,000 pounds; today the average slaughterweight for an adult cow is 1,400 pounds. A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service shows the average monthly grazing fee for livestock leases on private lands in 16 western states was $22.60 per animal unit.

“These rock-bottom prices don’t even cover the cost of administering the permits, so the American taxpayers are footing the bill for a massive welfare program that degrades our public lands,” said Erik Molvar of Western Watersheds Project. “Even with the low fees, our western mountains and basins are typically so arid or fragile that federal land managers have to sacrifice the health of the land to authorize grazing levels that are profitable for commercial livestock operations.”

Half of the federal grazing fees pay for “range improvements” on public lands. These include fences, corrals and cattle troughs that benefit and subsidize livestock operations while causing further environmental degradation. Barbed-wire fences are a major cause of death for sage-grouse and scientists have termed the denuded areas around livestock troughs “piospheres,” which become hotspots for the spread of invasive weeds.

“Federal grazing policy caters to a tiny fraction of the livestock industry and the fees don’t begin to cover the costs,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Indirect costs include the killing of important native predators, such as wolves and bears, and trampled landscapes and rivers. It’s a bad deal for wildlife, public lands and American taxpayers. The federal grazing program is long overdue for an overhaul.”

The fee structure charged to livestock operators on America’s public lands has remained unchanged since Congress passed the 1978 Public Rangelands Improvement Act (PRIA). A three-tier formula dictates federal grazing fees based on market indicators but is not indexed to inflation. A 2015 study by the Center for Biological Diversity, Costs and Consequences, the Real Price of Livestock Grazing on America’s Public Lands, found that federal grazing fees were just 7 percent of what it would cost to graze livestock on similar state and private lands.

“Federal agencies should be charging fair-market value for commercial livestock grazing on western public lands, and only allowing livestock at levels and in places where major environmental impacts can be prevented,” said Chris Krupp of WildEarth Guardians. “With the fee formula set by statute, Congress must step in to reform public lands grazing. It must revise the PRIA’s fee formula as the first step in ending a subsidy that damages more public lands than any other federal program.”

Greenwire article, “‘Highly unusual’ push aims to transfer income, not ownership”

Arizona received nearly $40 million in federal payments in fiscal 2018 to offset the Copper State’s more than 28 million acres of non-taxable public lands — but for critics like state Rep. Mark Finchem (R), that isn’t nearly enough.

Instead, Finchem is leading a push to establish a new state Department of Public Land Management that would become the first collection point for fees from all land-use agreements such as grazing fees and rights-of-way grants.

“This is one solution to see to it that PILT [payments in lieu of taxes] is reset so the state of Arizona might take its portion — depending on the agreement that’s negotiated with the Department of the Interior — and then send whatever the residual is on to the secretary of the Interior,” Finchem, chairman of the state House Federal Relations Committee, explained at a hearing on his bill, H.B. 2547, earlier this month.”

The following piece, which ran today in the Montana Standard, seems like a timely post based on recent debates and discussions on this blog. The authors of the following piece are listed at the bottom. – mk

The Gallatin Forest Partnership represents a failure of its members to recognize the crucial importance of the Gallatin Range for the future of Montana’s precious wildlife populations, and a willingness to gamble away this resource by promoting development in prime wildlife habitat.

The starting point for any discussion of the Gallatin Range should be this: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is universally recognized as the best intact ecosystem in the lower 48, and is considered to be the best functioning temperate ecosystem in the world – with the full complement of wildlife that was here in pre-Columbian times. There is no other place in the lower 48 that has such an intact, wildlife-rich ecosystem, and we shouldn’t gamble with its future! Gallatin Forest Partnership is proposing mechanized recreation (mountain bikes, motorcycles, ATVs) in the best wildlife habitat in the lower 48!

The Gallatin Range provides a migration corridor that connects the abundant wildlife of Yellowstone National Park with the Bangtail/Bridger ranges, northward to the Big Belts, and finally to the wildlife-rich Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, allowing crucial genetic mixing among wildlife populations.

The gaping flaw in GFP’s proposal is its willingness to sacrifice the Porcupine/Buffalo Horn area, immediately north of the Yellowstone boundary. This is an area of low relief, low elevation wildlands that is the best wildlife habitat north of the park. It’s the go-to place for wildlife migrating out of northern Yellowstone during harsh winters. It is home to grizzlies, wolverines (only 300 remaining in the lower 48), and an elk-calving area in the spring. We advocate that Porcupine/Buffalo Horn be designated as Wilderness — the gold standard of protection — because of its importance to wildlife. Recognizing the its quality habitat, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks manages ten sections of land there, with strong habitat-protecting restrictions.

Six of the thirteen members of the GFP are mountain biking advocacy groups, but no wildlife advocacy groups were invited as participants. Many of us ride mountain bikes, but we don’t agree that the best wildlife habitat in the Gallatin Range should be promoted as a mountain biking playground at the expense of wildlife. Studies show that mountain bikes significantly disturb and stress wildlife, almost as much as motorized vehicles. It’s especially disturbing that The Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association, and Greater Yellowstone Coalition are throwing their full weight behind the GFP when we would expect these conservation groups to, first and foremost, protect wildlife habitat. With climate change and explosive growth, Montana’s wildlife will encounter challenges whose magnitude is difficult to anticipate, therefore – to ensure future security for wildlife- we must manage our remaining wild places prudently and conservatively, with permanent protection through Wilderness designation.

Included among the GFP’s mountain biking members are groups that are affiliated with the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), an industry-sponsored trade group whose funders profit from the sale of mountain bikes. Disturbingly, IMBA promotes redrawing wilderness boundaries to allow mountain biking, it opposes any new wilderness designation that disallows bikes, and it supports widespread use of electric-powered mountain bikes (e-bikes). The exploding popularity of e-bikes has the potential to massively disturb wildlife, resulting in more bikers, traveling at faster speeds, and penetrating deeper into remote wildlife habitats.

A perfect example of the shortcomings of the GFP plan can be found in the quality wildlife habitat of the northern Elkhorn Mountains, south of Helena. This area is a Forest Service designated Wildlife Management Area, identical to the designation that GFP proposes for the PBH. Over the last several years, rogue mountain bikers have created a vast network of unauthorized, illegal trails, in many cases using existing game trails, alarming local wildlife advocates and hunters who recognize that designation as a “wildlife management area” has proven ineffective for protecting wildlife. The Forest Service does not have a budget for enforcement. There is no basis for believing that management would be any better in the Gallatin National Forest, to the detriment of wildlife.

It’s increasingly clear that the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Montana Wilderness Association, and Wilderness Society are not making the decisions we would expect them to make to protect Montana’s treasured wildlife.

As the Forest Service releases its new Management Plan, we urge support for Alternative D, which provides maximum wilderness protection for 230,000 acres in our world-class wildlife habitat in the Gallatin Range.

Nancy Schultz and Joe Gutkoski are Gallatin Wildlife Association members. Glenn Monahan and George Wuerthner are Western Watersheds Project members. Nancy Ostlie is volunteer leader of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. Howie Wolkie and Phil Knight are with Montanans for Gallatin Wilderness.