Colorado Wolves: The Natural and the Initiative

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This Denver Post story by Conrad Swanson is a really excellent story on current wolf issues in Colorado, considering a variety of perspectives. For those of you who haven’t been following this issue, there are two things going on. First, there was an initiative on the ballot to reintroduce wolves.. You can see who voted for it, and to whom the negative impacts will occur, in the map above.

Meanwhile the wolves were already moving down from Wyoming, and people are dealing with them. It appears that people have different feelings about “wolves that are imposed by fiat” versus “wolves that made it on their own”, which to me is a pretty interesting twist on the wolf debates.

Gittleson said Jan. 26 that state and federal officials flew out an electric fence special for his property. They set it up in a day or two but then high winds in the area knocked parts of it down. He expressed concerns that wolves could jump over barriers but that wouldn’t make a difference if the fence was stuck on the ground anyway.

……….

Ranchers aren’t paid for injured livestock, Uriarte said. Nor are they paid for the additional animals those killed could have birthed. Or for livestock pregnancies that end prematurely due to the stress of wolf packs living nearby.

Idaho has another $139,000 from that federal grant, Uriarte said, which can supplement ranchers’ efforts to prevent wolf attacks.

Trail cameras, noisemakers, alert systems and even additional hands on the ranch, can qualify for that reimbursement, Edmondson said.

Even more money could be available in Colorado, Malone said. Not only are those federal grants available but the state earmarks more than $1.2 million each year to reimburse ranchers and farmers for livestock killed by wildlife and prevention methods.

In 2019, Colorado Parks and Wildlife received $1.28 million for that purpose and spent just over half at $686,291, budget documents show.

That money can’t currently be used for wolf attacks, Malone said, but a small tweak to the language behind the funding could allow it. In addition, other resources like nonprofits exist to teach ranchers how to be more sustainable and avoid conflicts with wolves, she said.

“Your life has to change a little,” Malone said of ranchers. “It doesn’t have to change that much and it will change for the better.”

With all due respect to Ms. Malone, I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be better for them or their animals. I would have asked her how, exactly, that works.

Conrad Swanson, The Denver Post
Several high-altitude Angus cattle surround a cow wounded in a wolf attack the evening of Jan. 17, 2022, on Don Gittleson’s ranch, outside Walden. Gittleson was forced to put the cow down later that day.

They attacked a pair of cows on Don and Kim Gittleson’s ranch sometime on the night of Jan. 17. One of the black Angus, bred specifically for life at high altitudes, would recover but the other had to be put down later that day. Not by lethal injection, Don Gittleson told The Denver Post. Better, quicker to shoot her.

The pack attacked again the next morning. Kim Gittleson said they heard howling and rushed out to the pasture where they found another dead cow, mostly eaten. The pack had howled, she said, as though they were celebrating the kill.

And they’ll be back, she said.

“The wolves know where our cows are,” she said. “It’s like we’re their grocery store.”

Many other residents in Walden, the seat of Jackson County and its only incorporated town, seem to agree.

Ranchers, business people, barflies and parents say they fear the eight wolves living on the outskirts of town. They shake their heads and tally the dead on their calloused fingers. Three cows and two dogs, most agree. More are sure to follow, they say. Some parents say they’re afraid to let their children wander alone.

Not only do the people of Walden say they feel helpless as the wolves endanger their livelihoods, tourists and their outdoor lifestyle but they also feel ignored by state officials charged with managing the apex predators, which were hunted to near extinction generations ago.

If nothing changes, they say, other small, ranching communities and farming towns on Colorado’s Western Slope can also expect to lose livestock and business when state officials begin reintroducing gray wolves to the forests next year.

Ecologists, scientists and reintroduction advocates say the fears are understandable but rooted in a lack of familiarity with wolf behavior and the data collected elsewhere. But they, too, feel ignored by state officials and insist that the Department of Natural Resources should do more to buffer the people of Walden from the wolves while still protecting the endangered species.

I’m feeling a great sympathy for DPW here, who didn’t actually support the initiative, as  I recall. Now they are blamed by both sides for not doing it right.

Fletcher said he would prefer to live alongside the wolves. But he understands that they represent a threat to his livestock, pets and potentially his family and said he’d rather take a proactive management approach than a reactive one. As things are, he’s not sure whether he’ll be able to allow his cows to calve in the pasture or if they’ll have to relocate, which would increase costs dramatically.

Earlier this month, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission unanimously gave ranchers permission to haze, or frighten, wolves away from their properties.

Generally, hazing is understood to be anything that doesn’t kill or injure the wolves, said state Species Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell.

Fletcher gave thanks for the commission’s move but said it’s still not enough for him to be able to protect his ranch. Atencio and Don Gittleson said they’re still unclear on what they can or can’t do.

Propane cannons and rubber bullets could scare the wolves off, Atencio said. But one wrong shot could mean an injured or a dead wolf, which could carry with it a $100,000 fine, a year in jail and loss of hunting privileges for life.

Ranchers can’t watch around the clock, Atencio and Don Gittleson said. Nor can they afford to hire more hands.

The Gittlesons work their ranch with their two sons and a grandson. They own fewer than 180 cows. Every lost cow, every lost dollar counts.

But realistically, Phillips said wolf packs don’t represent a problem for the industry at large, though the losses sting more for smaller ranchers like the Gittlesons.

We recognize this argument…”see it’s not really a problem because if you average it out over a lot of other people, people who aren’t you , it’s not a problem!” We’ve heard that argument quite a bit around other issues.

It’s fascinating that because it’s an initiative, it seems like no matter how many wolves establish naturally, DPW will still be required to reintroduce them.. regardless of what they would normally consider.

For those of you who are interested in how such an urban/rural dividing initiative came about, here’s the bucks.

And who contributes to the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund? The usual dark money suspects.   A person might wonder whether sowing urban/rural divisions is a feature or a bug.

 

Cooperating Agencies, the CEQ Report and the BLM Desk Guide

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Jim Furnish made an interesting comment about cooperating agencies here.

Beware of monkey wrenching! Cooperating agency status is generally reserved for other federal agencies, and is ALWAYS discretionary. I recall when numerous western states pursued “Coop” on the Roadless rule, I asked them why. MT rep stated “We want to stop the process” – TRUE! We said “No. Thank you, but no.” Given the nature of planning efforts, counties may not be trying to make the process smoother and outcomes better for all. There are other ways to assure their voice is heard.

Meanwhile, my own experience with NEPA in the WO was that CEQ encouraged agencies to have cooperating agency relationships, in fact, there seemed to be a report required that counted them all for all the agencies, federal, state and local. As CEQ says on its website

To ensure that Federal agencies are actively considering designation of Federal and non-Federal cooperating agencies in the preparation of NEPA analyses and documentation, CEQ requests annual agency reports on cooperating agency status.

Except, they don’t appear to be annual reports, at least not on this website. The last one was 2016.

Well, one of my favorite documents about Cooperating Agency status has always been the BLM Deskguide, which was updated in 2012. I’d like to give a special shout-out here to the authors of this helpful document.

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3 Section 1. Introduction

In any Federal undertaking, harmonizing national, regional, and local governance entails at least three key tasks. As Matthew McKinney and William Harmon noted in The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources (2004), these include integrating the involvement of multiple parties with competing interests and values, removing obstacles to sharing and validating relevant
information, and resolving conflicts among institutions and policies.

• Multiple Parties. State, local, and tribal government officials are often in a better position than are Federal land managers to engage the communities and interest groups most likely to be affected by a plan or proposed activity.

• Complex Information. Effective discussion between Federal agencies and the public is often blocked by deeply incompatible views of the “facts” regarding current environmental and socioeconomic
conditions as well as the effects that a proposed plan or activity may have on these conditions. Resolution of these incompatibilities often requires the lead agency and CA partners to engage in
joint fact-finding and to seek agreement on where to find valid information and how to interpret it.

• Conflicting Policies and Institutions. The challenge of managing public lands can reveal significant disagreements in jurisdictions and mandates, not only among Federal, State, local, and tribal
governments but also among different Federal or State agencies. The CA relationship offers a forum in which to discuss and, if possible, reconcile divergent policies and plans for the common good.
Although challenging, intergovernmental cooperation in the management of lands and resources can yield great benefits for the public. The CA relationship is one tool among many that can advance collective efforts among government partners. Each party may have some lessons to learn—and some practices to unlearn.

Common Characteristics of Western Resource Disputes
Multiple Parties
• Clash of values
• Competing interests
• Complicated relationships
• Varying types and levels of power

Complex Information
• Lack of information
• Misinformation
• Different views on what information is relevant
• Different procedures to collect and assess data
• Different interpretation of data
• Different levels of comfort with risk and uncertainty

A Briar Patch of Policies and Institutions
• Multiple jurisdictions
• Competing missions and mandates
• Lack of meaningful public participation
• Multiple opportunities for appeal
• A fundamental question of who should decide
From The Western Confluence: A Guide to Governing Natural Resources, by Matthew McKinney and William Harmon. Copyright 2004 by the authors. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, DC.

Experience has shown that there are three primary lessons that can lead to success when working across government boundaries. They are:
1. Federal, State, local, and tribal partners need to recognize that the CA relationship is a forum for sharing information and expertise, not for asserting authority. Engaging in a CA relationship neither augments nor diminishes an entity’s jurisdiction and authority. However, mutual respect for each agency’s authority and jurisdiction is critical.

2. BLM managers and staff should acknowledge that the CA relationship requires new ways of doing business. Engaging with government partners as CAs is a unique form of consultation.
Cooperating agencies expect, and should be given, a significant role (commensurate with available time and knowledge) in shaping plans and environmental analyses—instead of merely commenting
on them.

3. All parties will find the CA relationship most productive when they emphasize mutual, rather than individual, gains and seek solutions that meet others’ needs as well as their own.
Working with other government officials through the CA relationship makes better outcomes more likely and can establish a foundation for long-term cooperation that benefits all partners

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Meanwhile as we talked about in this court decision about the southern California plans, the court said

“The results of the Forest Service’s review of state input should have been displayed in the FEIS, even if part of the discussion would have consisted of noting that the State had not fully engaged in the process established by the 2005 State Petitions Rule, the lawful process at the time.The failure to provide any discussion of input from the State, or at least of the State’s failure to fully engage in the planning process, was a violation of the NFMA. This is more than a merely technical violation, as it significantly inhibits the public’s ability to understand the competing priorities of the Forest Service and the State.”

Legislation With Time Limit to Streamline FACA Approvals?

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Black Hills Federal Advisory Committee 2014

 

Talking about the Black Hills reminded me of their FACA Committee, and this history from their website.

In 2001, then-Senator Tom Daschle hosted a Forest Summit in Rapid City that drew a crowd of over 600 people to air their views on how the national forest is currently being managed. One of the concepts discussed was the formation of a “council” of diverse interests that would work cooperatively to provide advice and recommendations regarding national forest management. In the months following the Summit, it became clear that the public supported this concept and was ready to participate. In response, Supervisor John Twiss made the decision to establish the Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board. The Board was chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA).

Right now, as I understand, the Black Hills folks are trying to get their FACA committee members approved, having been successful at getting their charter approved.  For those who haven’t had the pleasure of working with the Federal Advisory Committee process at USDA, the charters need to be re-upped every two years, but you can’t start the process for approving nominations until the charter is approved.  Each of these processes goes into a mysterious Department black hole (this seems to be regardless of Administration) so that by the time your members get approved, it’s almost time to start the charter approval process again. Unless they didn’t approve the nominees for two years and the charter expired and you have to start over. With the approval of a new charter, which you wait on to be approved before you can send in the nominations.

So this can be frustrating for everyone involved.  But… in reading some recent legislation, I thought I had seen (I think it was for RACs possibly) that if the Department didn’t respond in 30 days, the individuals were considered to have been appointed.  I went through the Infrastructure Bill and couldn’t find it, but that’s not to say that it isn’t there somewhere.

I wonder if all departments have this much trouble, and whether there’s anything to be done, either by USDA or by legislation – to ensure that Advisory Committees are helped to exist rather than hindered. Or just stop them if they’re not useful.

When President Trump tried to reduce the number of advisory committees, he was roundly thrashed in the media. But for decades folks have tolerated the presence of glacial bureaucratic procedures interfering with their function (at least at USDA).  As one of my colleagues used to say, “pick a lane, folks!”

Less than a penny a day: New USFS and BLM livestock grazing fees announced

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If you are a public lands rancher in the American West, what’s the daily cost for your privilege to graze your private domestic sheep on U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management administered lands?  Less than a penny a day.

If you graze cows on federal public lands, the grazing fee per day per cow jumps up to around 3 cents per day.

Keep in mind that livestock grazing is authorized on nearly 250 million acres of federal public lands, including authorized within over 25% of all designated Wilderness acres in the lower 48 states. The cost of livestock grazing on native wildlife and clean water are well documented.

Below is a press release from Western Watersheds Project:

For immediate release: Feb. 1, 2022 

HAMILTON, Mont. – Today, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service announced the fee for grazing on federal public lands in 2022: a mere $1.35 per cow/calf pair per month (also called the animal unit month, or AUM), the lowest possible fee allowed under a Ronald-Reagan-era Executive Order.

“The absurdly low fee paid by commercial beef cattle producers to graze public lands flies in the face of this Administration’s commitments to conservation, biodiversity and addressing the impacts of climate change,” said Josh Osher, Public Policy Director for Western Watersheds Project. “President Biden should immediately rescind Reagan’s Executive Order and establish a fee that reflects the true costs of public lands grazing.”

Despite contributing only 2-3 % of all the beef consumed in the United States, commercial grazing is one of the most heavily subsidized activities on public lands.  The program costs taxpayers a minimum of over a billion and half dollars every 10 years, and the minimal fee recoups just one-tenth of the cost of its administration. The cost to beef producers to feed their stock on public lands is substantially less than the cost to feed a pet hamster each month.

“It’s a great deal for the beef industry, but it’s a horrible deal for the American public because of the compounded costs of plant and animal extinction, fouled waterways, increased risks of wildfire, ongoing predator killing, and the irreplaceable cultural resources being trampled to bits,” said Osher.

The grazing fee is based on a temporary formula set in 1978 and continued through Executive Order in 1986. The fee was $2.31 per AUM in 1981, the highest fee ever charged, which adjusted for inflation would be the equivalent of $7.09 today, more than five times the current fee. Lease rates for private pastureland in the Western U.S. average over $20 per AUM.

“Beef producers on public lands are the only tenants in the country whose rents stay low, year after year,” remarked Osher. “The livestock industry is getting a sweet deal to stay on public lands while many people in the country struggle to find affordable housing.”

Invasive Species Increasingly Threaten America’s Forests: Guest Post by Faith Campbell

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damage to forest caused by emerald ash borer; photo by Nate Siegert, USFS
wood packaging marked with ISPM#15 stamp with a live Cerambycid larva Oregon Dept of Agriculture

For those of you who remember the Four Threats of the early 2000’s, they were fire and fuels, invasive species, loss of open space and unmanaged recreation.  In years since, climate change has sucked much of the air out of the policy room. We still have fire and fuels (as exacerbated by climate change), loss of open space (perhaps 30 x30?) and travel management decisions, but perhaps overwhelmed by Covid visitation.   The invasive species folks still labor on, pretty much unsung, although clearly dead trees, when live carbon-sucking ones are expected or modeled, do have an impact on climate change. Despite the importance of invasive species, somehow scientists and workers in that field seldom or never end up in the limelight.

I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight them and their work.  I asked Faith Campbell to give us an update on what’s going on and how we can help.

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Non-native insects and pathogens are threatening the ecosystem services provided by America’s forests. Already, the 15 most damaging of the circa 500 introduced pests threaten at least 40% of the total live forest biomass in the 48 conterminous states and have caused an additional (i.e., above background levels) tree mortality rate of 5.53 Terragrams of carbon per year (Fei et al. 2019).
To date, hardwood trees have suffered more damage from introduced pests than have conifers. The most damaging insect invader is the emerald ash borer, which has killed tens of millions of trees and threatens a unique ecosystem, black ash swamps. If it escapes eradication efforts, the Asian longhorned beetle would cause even more damage because of its wide host range. On the west coast, oak trees are under threat by the goldspotted oak borer and possibly the Mediterranean oak borer. Introduced diseases include chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, oak wilt, and two diseases hammering beech – beech bark disease and the recently detected beech leaf disease. In the West, tanoaks and oaks are succumbing to sudden oak death; sycamores to the Fusarium disease vectored by invasive shot hole borers.

Overall, the highest elevation in biomass loss – as measured by Fei et al. (2019) using FIA plot data – was caused by emerald ash borer, Dutch elm disease, beech bark disease, and a major pest of a conifer, hemlock woolly adelgid. The spotted lanternfly https://www.dontmovefirewood.org/pest_pathogen/spotted-lanternfly-html/ might prove even more damaging to hardwood trees; its spread is extremely difficult to prevent.  The threat to carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services is almost certain to increase due to continuing introductions of additional pests. The rising impact of pests, combined with more frequent and severe fires and other forest disturbances, are likely to negate efforts to improve forests’ carbon sequestration capacity (Fei et al. 2019; Quirion et al. 2021).

Insects that attack hardwoods – especially the highly damaging wood-borers – are usually introduced via crates, pallets, and other forms of wood packaging accompanying imports. The United States regulates incoming wood packaging according to a standard agreed to by parties to the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC). How effective is this approach in preventing such introductions? Studies based on decade-old data have found that 1) 75% of containers used in maritime shipments contain wood packaging (Meissner et al. 2009); and 2) one out of each thousand incoming shipments containing wood packaging was infested (Haack et al. 2014). This sounds like a low risk. But in 2021, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach alone received more than 14 million TEUs (a standardized measurement of shipping containers – twenty foot equivalent). Major ports on the East coast – New York-New Jersey, Savannah, and Charleston – received another 7.9 million [data from the ports’ websites]. Calculating based on the Meissner and Haack findings results in an estimate that 15,700 insect-infested containers arrived on U.S. shores last year.

How should USDA reduce this risk? First, the lead agency, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) should boost its enforcement of the existing rules – which have been in place since 2006. APHIS should penalize importers whose shipments don’t comply with the standard’s requirements.

Second, APHIS should clarify the current “approach rate” of pests in wood packaging and take action – unilaterally or in collaboration with IPPC partners – to close loopholes. APHIS has taken one step on this road: it has finally agreed to allow Bob Haack and colleagues to update the earlier study, using data through 2021. We should see the results soon.

Will APHIS act then?
What about detecting pests when they first arrive? APHIS and the USFS manage significant detection surveys. Still, most detections result from citizens noting damage to their trees – usually a decade or more after the introduction occurred. APHIS and the state departments of agriculture are strengthening their collaboration with citizen science projects. However, if the agency takes no action in response to a reported pest, citizens will give up in frustration.

What You Can Do
Educate your colleagues about the impact of invasive forest pests. Educate your member of Congress and senators about the importance of pressing APHIS to use its enforcement powers to deter violations of regulations governing wood packaging accompanying imports.

Faith Campbell is president of the Center for Invasive Species Prevention. She has spent 30 years advocating for more effective policies to prevent introduction and spread of tree-killing insects and pathogens. She posts blogs on these issues at www.cisp.us

SOURCES
Fei, S., R.S. Morin, C.M. Oswalt, and A.M. 2019. Biomass losses resulting from insect and disease invasions in United States forests. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA. 116(35). 17371-17376. doi:10.1073/pnas.1820601116

Haack R.A., Britton K.O., Brockerhoff E.G., Cavey J.F., Garrett L.J., et al. 2014 Effectiveness of the International Phytosanitary Standard ISPM No. 15 on Reducing Wood Borer Infestation Rates in Wood Packaging Material Entering the United States. PLoS ONE 9(5): e96611. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096611

Meissner, H., A. Lemay, C. Bertone, K. Schwartzburg, L. Ferguson, and L. Newton. 2009. EVALUATION OF PATHWAYS FOR EXOTIC PLANT PEST MOVEMENT INTO AND WITHIN THE GREATER CARIBBEAN REGION. Caribbean Invasive Species Working Group (CISWG) and Plant Epidemiology and Risk Analysis Laboratory (PERAL) / CPHST. June 4, 2009

Quirion BR, Domke GM, Walters BF, Lovett GM, Fargione JE, Greenwood L, Serbesoff-King K, Randall JM & Fei S (2021) P&P Disturbances Correlate With Reduced Carbon Sequestration in Forests of the Contiguous US. Front. For. Glob. Change 4:716582. [Volume 4 | Article 716582] doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2021.716582

For an extensive overview of invasive species’ impacts in American forests, see Poland, T.M., Patel-Weynand, T., Finch, D., Miniat, C. F., and Lopez, V. (Eds) (2019), Invasive Species in Forests and Grasslands of the United States: A Comprehensive Science Synthesis for the United States Forest Sector. Springer Verlag. Available for download at no cost at https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/61982

A study focused on the West: Barrett, T.M. and G.C. Robertson, Editors. 2021. Disturbance and Sustainability in Forests of the Western United States. USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-992. March 2021

Apologies for Firewall Problem

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Many folks have been unable to comment in the last few days. We had a security problem and so got more secure.. in fact too secure, so people have been unable to comment or post. Right now our web gurus are on it. I’ll let you know when it’s fixed.

Friday Science Snippets and Bighorn Update

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From article in New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831770-200-treeconomics-how-to-put-a-fair-price-tag-on-urban-forests/

I was cleaning out my office (people who have worked with me will know what a monumental task this is) and ran across many New Scientists from the past five years or so, and other snippets of interest from Bighorn Expert Melanie Woolever to Pliny the Elder.

Bighorn Followup
Also one followup on our earlier question of “why are bighorns in the Tetons so sensitive to human presence when ones around Mt. Evans are not?” Sadly, I can’t seem to find the notebook with my notes from my interview with the lovely and talented bighorn expert Melanie Woolever. This is what I recall from memory, so might have lost something, but she said that formerly, the Teton bighorns had a migration pathway and spent the winter somewhere else. But this has been cut off. So they have to make it through the winter on the rocky, windswept ridges in the Tetons. Which barely has enough food for their survival, so they are on the edge. And people recreating can push them off the edge by disturbing them when they are trying to eke out a living. If anyone has any further clarifications/corrections on this, please chime in.

And I also learned from Melanie that moose are not indigenous to Colorado, so it wasn’t reintroduction so much as introduction. And they seem to be doing very well here. Some wildlife folks did not think that introduction was a good idea.

Grazers and Fire: Megaherbivore Edition

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/november/extinction-of-mammoths-led-to-more-wildfires.html

This differing effect, however, does appear to vindicate our early ancestors of being totally responsible for the higher level of fires. While they are still likely to have hunted the megaherbivores and started fires, the effect would be the same for all environments if humans were the main cause.

The researchers hope that their research will help mitigate modern climate change by ensuring more is done to support grazing animals, which can reduce the risk of serious fires.

Co-author Professor Carla Staver says, ‘This work really highlights how important grazers may be for shaping fire activity. We need to pay close attention to these interactions if we want to accurately predict the future of fires.’

Trees cool the land surface temperature (not air) by up to 12 degrees C in Europe. Study here.

Farmer adaptation: although hops are not woody, they can grow to 10 meters tall, and are of cultural interest. Did you know (1) that hops are in the Cannabinaceae family? ithat the scientific name Humulus lupulus.. comes from the Latin lupus (wolf) “because as Pliny described in his Naturalis Historia, “when the plant is produced among osiers, it strangles them by its light, climbing
embraces, as the wolf does a sheep”. See this interesting pdf

Anyway, back to climate change.. I don’t know if there’s a paywall for this New Scientist article.

Hop growers may have no choice but to up sticks. “Michigan now has a small hop-growing area. The whole northern hemisphere industry is likely to go north” to Alaska and Canada, according to Nielsen – and also to extend its range in Australia and New Zealand in the southern hemisphere.

This wouldn’t be unprecedented. While the European heartlands may have been pretty much unchanged for hundreds of years, “the US hop industry has a history of moving to get away from disease and pathogens”, says Nielsen. “One hundred years ago, it was in upstate New York; 70 years ago, it was in California; 30 to 60 years ago, it moved to the Pacific Northwest. There is no guarantee it will stay there,” he says.

That was mainly to escape mildew, a fungus that, once established in a hop-growing area, is nigh-on impossible to get rid of. Will climate change prove to be a more implacable foe? We can only hop for the best.


Tropical forest recovery. Study here and . article in New Scientist

The team found that after 20 years, the average secondary forest that had grown from farmland that was used with low to medium intensity had recovered 78 per cent of old-growth forest attributes. “It goes way faster than we thought,” says Poorter.

But the researchers found significant variation between the recovery time for the different forest attributes. Soils were the quickest to bounce back, with most recovery happening within 10 years. It took between 25 to 60 years for plant species diversity to recover, and they projected it would take over a century for the forest biomass to mostly recover.

Despite the enormous amount of deforestation that has and continues to occur, there is hope that these forests can bounce back naturally, says Poorter. Secondary forests currently make up over 28 per cent of tropical forests in central and south America, and are important for locking up carbon which is crucial to tackle climate change. In addition, they attract mammals, birds and insects back to the area, which is important for ecosystem restoration. They can also be vital for the livelihoods of people who live close by.


Health news of a less than encouraging nature... more than half of cancer biology lab findings cannot be replicated. Here’s the link to the New Scientist article and the link to the original paper.

“Just trying to understand what was done and reported in the papers in order to do it again was really hard. We couldn’t get access to the information,” he says.

In total, the 50 experiments included 112 potentially replicable binary “success or failure” outcomes. However, as detailed in the second study published today, Errington and his colleagues could replicate the effects of only 51 of these – or 46 per cent.

The experiments were all in-vitro or animal-based preclinical cancer biology studies, and didn’t include genomic or proteomic experiments. They were from papers published between 2010 and 2012 and were selected because they were all “high-impact” studies that had been read and heavily cited by other researchers.

The results are “a bit eye-opening”, says Errington.

The investigation’s findings do, however, align with those of earlier reports published by the big pharmaceutical companies Bayer and Amgen. C. Glenn Begley, who recently co-founded US biotech Parthenon Therapeutics, was a senior cancer biologist at Amgen and an author of its report, which was published in 2012.

“We looked back at the papers that we had relied upon at Amgen and found that we could only reproduce 11 per cent of the studies,” says Begley.

It’s interesting to me that replicating studies does not seem to be an aspect of our usual scientific fields. The only example I can think of is many years ago with FIA, there were industry folks in the South going over the data with a fine tooth comb. I wonder whether there are other examples out there?

Thought we could avoid mining for low-carbon technologies on the land? Not so fast.. Race to start commercial deep-sea mining puts ecosystems at risk

Helen Scales, a marine biologist and author, says two years isn’t long enough to draw up a robust code. She wants to see a moratorium on deep-sea mining. “Nobody knows with any kind of certainty how we could go ahead extracting and exploiting these deposits in the deep sea without environmental harm,” she says. “All of the science we have so far is pointing towards significant long-term and largely irreversible damage.” The damage could stem directly from machines extracting nodules and from plumes of sediment generated by mining. Hundreds of marine researchers expressed their concerns in a statement earlier this year.

This is not a science snippet per se but an interesting book review about a book called The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative. Here’s a link to a review. It’s interesting to think about the similarities and differences between South American forests and their inhabitants, and North American forests and their inhabitants, history, culture and so on.

Simultaneously, explorers, traders, and missionaries were exposed to tropical diseases, but also to botanical cures employed by locals. This is the kernel of truth at the heart of this narrative. One of the success stories was the discovery of cinchona or fever-wood, a plant that contains the alkaloid compound quinine that effectively combats malaria. Voeks here highlights several more flaws in our narrative. Ironically, most medicinal plants are not associated with pristine rainforest. Careful ethnobotanical study has shown that most of them are found in disturbed habitats such as home gardens, trails, swiddens (areas cleared for cultivation by slashing and burning vegetation), or secondary-growth forest, and often derive from weeds and domesticated food plants. Furthermore, the cliché of the mystical (male) shaman completely overlooks the role of women, whose knowledge often overlaps, complements, or outshines that of men.

And a somewhat cheery story about the Immaculate Heart Sisters in Mexico breeding an endangered axolotl.

Climate Scenarios in Forest Plans

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This essay by Roger Pielke Jr. offers an unusual and welcome take on Climate: “Is the World Ready for Good News on Climate?” Subhead:
“A new assessment of plausible futures suggests reasons for considerable optimism on climate policy.” Optimism on the climate? That’s virtually unheard of in the media.

Part of the subtext is that much of the scientific literature on climate change continues to base projections on implausible models, RCP 8.5 and its newer version, SSP5-8.5. Pielke and two coauthors of a paper on the topic in Environmental Research Letters (open access) suggest that the use of the more plausible scenarios “suggests that the world thus sits in an enviable position to take on the challenge of deep decarbonization.”

With this in mind I looked at the revised forest plan for the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests released this month. Here’s how they approached the scenarios:

Future climate: The modeled future climate projections are Localize Constructed Analogs (LOCA) downscaled from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model realizations. This includes the hindcast (historical) and the projected (future) climate for the RCP4.5 (low) and RCP8.5 (high) emission scenarios. Each year, the range is defined by the highest and lowest model values for that year across all 32 models, and the central line represents the weighted mean across all models (Taylor et al. 2012, Sanderson et al. 2017).

This seems like a valid approach, and I commend the planners for not relying solely on RCP8.5 and for using RCP4.5, which is in the middle of the range of scenarios (1.9, 2.6, 3.4, 4.5, 6.0, 7.0, and 8.5). It would be interesting to know why they used RCP8.5 at all, since it is widely viewed as an implausible — not merely “high” — emissions scenario.

FWIW, here is a discussion (for climate nerds) of the relationship of the RCPs and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5).

In any case, the plan’s “futurecasting” of conditions on the forests is highly useful for forest managers. For example, the FEIS includes charts that provide “Projected temperature variables for the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains – M221Dc under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 for (A) average daily maximum temperature, (B) average daily minimum temperature, (C) days per year with maximum temperature above 90°F, and (D) days per year with minimum temperature below 32°F.”

Anyone know how this has been is will be handled in other plan revisions?

Let’s Co-Design and Co-Produce a NEPA Study! II. What Are Your Questions?

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Forrest asked the question yesterday , “how can a research project be designed to provide input that might actually be used in a productive way by the agency.  Perhaps co-production is part of the answer to that, but there might be other factors (e.g. perhaps we should focus on some variables that are more amenable to change?).”

My thoughts on that are we have more than 100 years of land grant institution experience about how to link users and producers of knowledge.  Researchers need to be in dialogue with practitioners and understand their needs. I’ve found this to vary by type of school (land grant or liberal arts), the specific school and sub-school culture, discipline and individual professor’s interests (and their kind of appointment, research, teaching and extension percentages).  Plus of course what there is research funding for.  Which is a whole other study that could be done: Factors that Influence Faculty/Practitioner Interaction. To get at that, we could take the forest-related faculty at a variety of schools and survey to what extent they interact with people in practice.. and through what virtual or physical places, meetings, whatever.  I remember a prof at Oregon State (was it Tom Adams?) saying he learned as much from teaching at Silviculture Institute as he taught (or maybe it was CEFES).   But I digress.

Anyway, in terms of questions, it’s  OK to be simply curious but also OK to be focused on practical outcomes.  So in the broadest context of the “NEPA” ecosystem (NEPA-system) we have these actors:

Directly Involved:

Forest Service- line officers, NEPA folks, specialists

Parties Who Want to Do/Benefit From Projects-  communities, industries (recreation, powerlines, etc.), wildlife interests and so on

Parties Who Do Not Want or Want to Change Projects – ENGOs  and/or local groups of various kinds, with or without legal representation

OGC

DOJ

Judges

Observing:

Media

Politicians

Researchers

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What questions do you have about anything within the NEPA-system?

Here’s one example, if you’re the kind of person who needs ticklers… like me.  Chief Moore mentioned in his talk at SAF that he thought BLM in some cases, was more efficient with NEPA (can’t remember his exact words off the top of my head).  That would bring up the question for me.. what would we find out if we surveyed a bunch of bi-agency folks (with experience in NEPA in both agencies) on the topic of “what works best for one that the other agency might try?”.

If you can’t think of any right now, please feel free to come back to this thread as we discuss more and put your questions (and proposed ways of getting at them, if you’d like) in the comments.