Uncategorized

Yesterday, Vicky Christiansen made her first Hill appearance as Forest Service chief, albeit with an “interim” asterisk. Her written testimony focused on fire funding and “active forest management,” aka, logging:

The funding and related work will support between 340,000 and 370,000 jobs and contribute more than $30 billion in Gross Domestic Product. Through the use of tools like the Good Neighbor Authority, with more than 127 agreements in 33 states, 20-year stewardship contracts with cancellation ceiling relief, and other internal process improvements like environmental analysis decision-making (EADM), the Forest Service will move forward to sell 3.7 billion board feet of timber while improving the resiliency and health of more than 3.4 million acres of National Forest System lands through removal of hazardous fuels and stand treatments.

The Forest Service’s FY 2018 Budget is the source for her jobs and GDP data. Here’s what the budget says:

The proposed Forest Service program of work is projected to contribute between 340,000 and 370,000 jobs in the economy and between $30 billion and $31 billion in GDP. A greater share of the economic benefit, up to 70 percent, is anticipated to be generated by resource use effects in FY 2018. While all resource uses are important to the nation, recreation and wildlife visitor use will continue to provide the single largest category of economic contribution.

Guess what she left out of her testimony? Yep, not one word about the importance of recreation and wildlife visitor use.

A couple of months ago, I reported that several west coast wilderness areas remained closed months after their summer wildfires had gone out. I’m pleased to report that the Forest Service has rescinded some of the closure orders in response to FSEEE’s requests.

An email update from the Forest Resources Association….

Yesterday, the House Agriculture Committee released its long-awaited Farm Bill draft titled the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018. The bill is 641 pages and we continue to review its many titles and provisions, but wanted to flag a few areas in which FRA has worked on and will continue to support.

Timber Innovation Act: Research provisions of the Timber Innovation Act were included in the House’s version of the Farm Bill. The legislation directs USDA to conduct performance-driven research and development, education, and technical assistance for the purpose of facilitating the use of innovative wood products (mass timber/tall wood buildings) in wood building construction in the United States.

Federal Forest Management Reform: Following up on several favorable federal forest management reforms included in the recently enacted omnibus spending bill, the House Farm Bill would create several new authorities for the Forest Service to conduct forest management projects on federal lands. Expressly, the bill authorizes a number of new “categorical exclusions” from National Environmental Protection Act or NEPA reviews that will make initiating and completing needed project work easier.

These new CEs are designed to:

§  Expedite salvage operations in response to catastrophic events

§  Meet forest plan goals for early successional forests

§  Manage “hazard trees”

§  Improve or restore National Forest System lands or reduce the risk of wildfire.

§  Forest restoration

§  Infrastructure-related forest management activities.

§  Managing insect and disease infestation.

Community Wood Energy Program (CWEP): The legislation significantly increases the authorization for this program to $25 million to fund grants for installing wood heating systems that run on sawmill residuals—sawdust that is converted to pellets and/or woodchips. In addition to funding wood heating installations, the bill would also provide grants to innovative wood products facilities—those manufacturing cross laminated timber for tall wood buildings or other cutting edge technologies using wood or lignin. This program is viewed as one policy mechanism that could be used to address the sawmill residuals issue that has become a challenge in recent months.

A markup of this legislation is scheduled for April 18 in the House Agriculture Committee.

Mike Archer listed this article in today’s Wildfire News Of The Day email: “California fights wildfires aggressively—but prevention takes a back seat.”

“A 19^th-century California forest would have held fewer than 50 trees an acre. Today the state’s forests have grown to an unnatural 300 to 500 trees an acre, or more. That doesn’t count the 2 million drought-stressed trees a month lost to bark beetles that have killed entire stands.” [emphasis mine]

Mentions the Little Hoover Commission report, “Fire on the Mountain: Rethinking Forest Management in the Sierra Nevada.”

FYI, to subscribe to the Wildfire News Of The Day list, contact Archer at [email protected].

Here’s a link to video that Nick Smith included in today’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities News Round Up email. In the video, Chris French, Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination, gives a presentation on NEPA reform at the Environmental Analysis and Decision Making Workshop in Phoenix, Arizona. French gives examples of the time and money the USFS spends on various planning documents and looks at documents for similar projects from other agencies — BLM, BIA. Nick’s link is an ~8 minute portion of the full video, nearly an hour, which is here. I haven’t had time to watch the whole thing. The 8-minute excerpt is worth a look.

I noted this article in an Oregon newspaper, “Siuslaw National Forest supervisor moving on”. States that “The longtime head of the Siuslaw National Forest is leaving next month to take a promotion, the U.S. Forest Service announced on Thursday.

Long-time?

Jerry Ingersoll, who has been forest supervisor on the Siuslaw since March 2010, has been tapped to become the deputy regional forester for the agency’s Alaska Region.

Eight years doesn’t seem like a long time, but for the USFS maybe it is.

OSU press release: “CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon could eliminate an estimated 17 percent of carbon emissions from its forest ecosystems in the next century by increasing the amount of forested area and lengthening times between harvests, according to a new study from the University of Idaho, Oregon State University and EcoSpatial Services LLC.”

The full text of the study is online and free, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors consider substitution:

“While product substitution reduces the overall forest sector emissions, it cannot offset the losses incurred by frequent harvest and losses associated with product transportation, manufacturing, use, disposal, and decay. Methods for calculating substitution benefits should be improved in other regional assessments.”

One of the things we do on this blog is help journalists find information.. I had a request..

Here’s an article from Outside Magazine:

But firefighting is still a men’s club, and for many women in the trenches, little has changed. Women make up 39 percent of the Forest Service’s workforce, but hold just 11 percent of permanent wildfire jobs. In other agencies that fight fire—the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—the figure is as low as 6 percent. Even the U.S. military has done a better job of recruiting and retaining women.

What is a current source for data from the Interior Agencies number of women in firefighting? Answers can be posted here or sent to my email. As an aside, I wonder what are similar numbers with state agencies, including CalFire?
Also, are there figures on temporary employees compared to permanent employees?

Thanks, all!

Just received a press release from the Forest Resources Association:

Omnibus Legislative Overview- (Passed House awaiting a Senate vote and the Presidents signature)

H-2B Cap Relief

 We have succeeded in attaining nearly the same language as last year related to raising the cap of the H-2B program.

·         The bill allows the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Labor, the authority to raise the H-2B cap when he determines that there is an economic need. 

·         It limits the total number of H-2B workers to that may enter the U.S. during fiscal 2018 to 129,547, the number of new and returning H-2B workers admitted to the U.S. in fiscal 2007(the highest year).

·         Once the bill becomes law, we must work with the Administration to encourage the Secretary of Homeland Security to implement this provision more quickly than last year and to consider authorizing a much larger number of visas than they did last year. 

Fire Funding/Federal Forest Management Reform

 ·         The $1.3 billion FY 18 omnibus spending deal includes provisions that would establish a fund of more than $2 billion a year, which would increase modestly over a 10-year period. The fund could be tapped when the cost of wildfires exceeds the 10-year average cost of wildfires, which would be set at the 2015 level — an approach pushed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).

·         That arrangement wouldn’t take effect until 2020, however, meaning current law would remain in effect through 2019.

·         On the forest management side, the deal includes categorical exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for hazardous fuels reduction on areas up to 3,000 acres. Lawmakers also opened the way to more 20-year stewardship contracts, in which the Forest Service collaborates with states on forest management projects.

·         Timber companies would also see an easier process for repairing and rebuilding access roads in some areas of national forests.

·         The agreement also includes language to limit the effect of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2015 ruling in Cottonwood Environmental Law Center v. Forest Service. That case forced the agency to consult more closely with the Fish and Wildlife Service on forest projects that might affect endangered species.

Biomass Carbon Neutrality

The wording maintaining the definition of forest biomass as carbon neutral was approved and extended through September 30, 2018.   This is good, but we continue to seek language that will preserve the concept of biomass carbon neutrality in perpetuity.  

Last summer, I suggested that cross-laminated timber was unlikely to make a dent in small wood supply. Even at full build-out, the market niche for this engineered wood product is just too small.

It may have just gotten smaller. Oregon State University’s School of Forestry (I’m a proud alum) suffered an “oops” moment in the construction of its new flagship replacement for the venerable Peavy Hall: “A large section of subflooring made of cross-laminated timber gave way between the second and third stories.” The panel “delaminated,” a catastrophic form of collapse not suffered by steel.