30 x 30 From Abstract to the Real World: I. CBD Does Not Always Stand For Cannabidiol

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There is a movement, said by its proponents to be growing, with a goal of “30 percent of the planet protected by 2030”. Uh-oh, you might say “protected from what?” or “who is likely to get kicked out where and who determines it?” Where does this idea come from?

It seems to have come from a group called Campaign for Nature, funded by the Wyss Foundation. Mr. Wyss is, perhaps unexpectedly, a resident of Wyoming. The screenshot above says “join the race to save Earth’s wild places.”

Here’s what CFN says:

Scientists agree that to prevent a mass extinction crisis, support a growing global population, and address climate change, we must conserve at least 30% of the planet by 2030.

Specifically, the Campaign for Nature is calling on world leaders to:

*commit to protecting at least 30 percent of the planet by 2030;
*help mobilize financial resources to ensure protected areas are properly managed; and,
*approach biodiversity conservation in a way that fully integrates and respects indigenous leadership and indigenous rights.

They are also granting funding to the Guardian for journalists to tell appropriate stories leading up to the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) meeting next year.

I’ll start with the international level in this first post, the national level in the second, and the state level in the third as we see how these goals become more concretized, who is pushing for these goals, and discuss how it might work on our landscapes.

What’s Goin’ On.. Internationally

It appears that the CBD needed goals for 2050 so they had meetings and came up with some ideas. Apparently 30 x 30 is one of them (note, international groups set targets but don’t always meet them including the previous Aichi biodiversity targets for 2020). Here are the current proposed (not agreed to) goals (Update of the Zero Draft). The goals will be decided on at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Kunming, China. You can look at the comments different groups submitted here.

However, some top world leaders have already gone on record as supporting it. What’s of interest to me is how these leaders talk about science. Frans Timmermans, Executive VP of the European Union is quoted as saying “It is a goal that is firmly grounded in scientific evidence.” This strikes me as highly unlikely. Without knowing what an area is being protected from, where it is located, and how effective the protections are, it seems to me that you, me or anyone can’t possibly know that 30% is the right answer.

The National Geographic blog post has a link to this article from the words “science-based.” Here’s an excerpt:

“Woodley et al. (2019a) argued that, in addition to a focus on quality, a focus on ambitious percentage areas targets was also required to inform decision makers of the scale of conservation required for science-based targets and to drive ambition.”

It sounds a bit more like a poll of scientists’ opinions than what I would call scientific evidence. Conservation scientists telling us we need to conserve more seems fairly predictable. I’m not saying they’re wrong- scientists have opinions like anyone else, but scientists’ opinions are not in and of themselves, scientific information. And our famous friend EO Wilson says that 50 percent is what is needed so clearly they don’t agree.

So, yes, CBD is in a situation where they need to set goals for the meeting next year. As we have seen, there’s no real downside, in this case, to having goals you can’t or don’t meet- but lots of good vibes for saying you support them. But as we see with our own Wilderness, Roadless “protected areas”, the devil is in the details where words become decisions to exclude this or include that.

Next post: 30 x 30 in the US.

20 Years Ago And Today- Center of the American West Wildfire Discussion

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Colorado has three very large fires at the present moment- the Cameron Peak (207K acres) and the East Troublesome (170K) (at the time I checked Inciweb for this pot) with some of the Mullen fire in Wyoming also in Colorado (total 177K). According to Inciweb, “Forest closures are in place for the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests. Rocky Mountain National Park has also issued closure order. There is a area closure on the Bureau of Land Management – Kremmling Field Office lands.” Cold weather has moved in and hopefully this will help.

Anyway, for Coloradans, this may bring back memories of the summer of 2000. Patty Limerick has resurrected this 12 page write-up from that summer, in which she rounded up a bunch of experts from University of Colorado, Colorado State University and other places. It’s interesting to think about what has changed and what is the same- note that blow-ups are predicted, even without anthropogenic climate change, just from “standard” droughts. What’s interesting to me is how, or if, framing the 2020 fire season as being “about AGW” changes how the stories are told, who is an expert (the climatologists or other fire researchers?), and what the solutions are. Pragmatically, we’re not sure we can reverse changes in conditions at all or in the near term, so what is the best way to adapt to an unknown future?

I’ve excerpted a couple of paragraphs.. Tom Veblen based on fire history research:

In the years 1786 and 1859, there were fires in lots of Front Range forests; “more than 50% of the area was burning.” And this example of two very heavy fire seasons from the past should, Veblen said, leave us “very concerned.” The development of dense stands about the same age meant a synchronicity in outbreaks of budworm infestations, and that, in turn, left dead trees and a greater regional fire hazard. More information on the patterns of spruce budworm outbreaks would thus be very useful to understanding fire regimes.

I think we’ve made a great deal of headway on this:

Designing community assistance and participation offers its own challenges. While we have lots of ecological and technological information available, an understanding of social attitudes is in short supply.

We have done much such research, and communities have done much work. But there are still fires.

But that hardly addressed the more compelling problem: “What to do with existing houses?” “We need a born-again Smokey the Bear,” Phil Tompkins declared, “to tell people what they need to do. This is an urgent matter.” “Terry tells me,” Phil went on to say, with Terry nodding in agreement, “that it is the consensus of the fire establishment that the Front Range is a disaster waiting to happen.” The amount of the interface between human habitation and forest here is simply “amazing.”

” Terry Tompkins said that “blow-up fires are inevitable,” and “we have not yet prepared people properly for this.” Mark Haggerty raised the the crucial question, What are we to do with people moving into rural areas and “moving into harm’s way?”.

Both of these deal with the idea that “people moving into areas” is the problem. But I agree that there are existing houses and towns, and moving people out is unlikely to work.

Since 2000, though another idea has gained traction that isn’t mentioned here.. letting fires burn through communities and somehow hardening the infrastructure so that it survives the fires. Not sure, I think this still would require evacuations for people and animals. Certainly building codes, HIZ management and evacuation planning have all been been part of the efforts of community wildfire associations and insurance companies. But houses and communities still burn down and are likely to be rebuilt, if fires close to me are any indication.

So we’re back to the same old, same old, despite the Fire Plan:
* Need more PB
* Sometimes you need to do mechanical treatments first, or instead.
* No markets for small material (plus some groups don’t want small material sold either)
* Still need suppression
* Folks who build in tree country (and other wildlands) need to take “appropriate” responsibility; with, I’m sure, “what is appropriate?” being somewhat controversial.

Please add your quotes of interest and thoughts in the comments.

NFS Litigation Weekly October 16, 2020

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The Forest Service summaries are here:  Litigation Weekly October 16 2020 Email

Links for individual cases are to related documents.

COURT DECISION

North Dakota v. United States of America (D. N.D.).   The court agreed with McKenzie County that several roads were established as county roads by 20 years of public use under R.S. 2477 and N.D.C.C. § 24-07-01 prior to the federal government reacquiring the underlying lands in the later 1930s.

NOTICES OF INTENT

Three conservation groups have asserted that the Rim Fire Project on the Stanislaus National Forest requires reinitiation of consultation under ESA to address impacts on the Pacific fisher, which was federally listed on May 15, 2020.

WildEarth Guardians and Conservation Northwest are threatening to sue the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service for failure to formally consult on the modification to the vehicle class use designations and the motor vehicle use maps for the Colville National Forest because it authorizes increased vehicle traffic, which would affect listed species.

 

BLOGGER’S BONUS

  • Snake River dams

In late September, federal agencies operating dams on the Columbia River issued a decision on operations that did not include removing the dams.  They had made similar decisions in 2003, 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2016, and they were sued and lost each time.  While another lawsuit is possible, there are signs that governors of Northwest states, particularly Democrats in Oregon and Washington, are looking for a negotiated solution.  In the broader arena of renewable energy, there is a new agreement among some conservationists and hydropower producers to work together on planning for the role of hydropower in mitigating climate change.  Leaving more dams in place in salmon habitat affects national forest management because it puts more of a burden on addressing other threats to salmon, such as roads and logging in spawning habitat.  In fact, part of the broader agreement is to “Advance Effective River Restoration through Improved Off-Site Mitigation Strategies.”

PacifiCorp, one of the Northwest’s biggest private utilities, faces a class action lawsuit for allegedly failing to maintain power lines that caused a significant portion of the catastrophic Labor Day wildfires in Oregon.  An attorney for plaintiffs said the weather and fire conditions across the state amounted to the perfect storm, but PacifiCorp had plenty of time to safely shut off power to prevent sparking more wildfires.  Presumably the federal government will take a similar approach for damages and costs to national forests.

Mark Allen James, 23, of Twin Falls, Idaho, repeatedly harvested timber from the Deadline Ridge Summer Home area of the Sawtooth National Forest without a lawfully obtained permit to do so. James would sell the illegally obtained timber online. He confessed to harvesting twelve cords of firewood and selling it for $140 per cord.  James was sentenced in U.S. District Court to three years of probation for theft of government property, and was required to pay $1,680 in restitution.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Forest Service for failing to release its audit of Tongass National Forest timber sales, which was requested last year.

  • Wildlife Services

WildEarth Guardians has sued USDA Wildlife Services for failing to prepare an EIS for its activities in New Mexico, which include almost one million acres of national forest lands, and for relying on outdated EAs.  The Forest Service has an MOU with Wildlife Services that discusses NEPA compliance for wildlife damage, invasive species, and wildlife disease management activities.

New Tab on The Smokey Wire: Webinars of Interest

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Since Covid, many seminars and conferences have been moved online. This gives us all who aren’t at universities nor able to afford travel for conferences a plethora of new learning opportunities. This tab on TSW (see above, changed from “web issues the FS needs to fix”, which never had many submissions) is just to let us all know of webinars. You can put ones you hear about in the comments.

Example:
here’s the link to the California Fire Science Webinar Series. And the description.

This new online seminar series will cover the breadth of wildland fire research relevant to California and introduce researchers to new topics and research groups across the state. Topics will include fire weather, wildfire risk, fire ecology, remote sensing, emissions, fire dynamics, fire modeling and public health. Featuring many early-career researchers, this series is aimed at a highly interdisciplinary academic audience but is open to anyone interested in these topics.

The series will be held weekly, every Thursday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm (PST) from September 10 – December 17, 2020. A virtual chat will be held with the speaker immediately afterwards (4:00 – 5:00, PST). Graduate students and early-career researchers are especially welcome to join us for these networking sessions.

Obviously you won’t have comments on all of them, but if you do…

Comments (from me): I have found these pretty interesting, plus the virtual chat, where topics can range from “have you tried randomizing your wood cribs” to “what criteria would you use to salvage burned logs on your property?” can be stimulating and complex. Pus there have been only 30-40 people, so everyone can get their questions in.

If you want to expand on a particular seminar, that’s fine for broader TSW discussion (outside this tab) so email me and you can submit a post. There are so many opportunities out there now, we are very fortunate to be able to learn from many and diverse experts with regard to location, discipline, and so on.

IF you’d like to submit a guest post, here’s the format. Link to the webinar, who presented, link to their bio. What you found interesting and why. Key power point slides or the location of the person saying it in a (linked) saved videofile. I’ll be posting some examples in the future.

Listening to Practitioner Voices: Mountain Pine Beetle Fire Behavior Interviews With Suppression Folks

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The Society of American Foresters Virtual Convention is coming up at the end of the month and it reminded me of a story from early in my career. I attended a breakout session with a professor talking about his research with red-cockaded woodpecker. One of the audience, a field forester, pointed out that he had seen some in an unexpected place, and what did the professor make of that? The professor responded that it was not in the peer-reviewed literature. Unfortunately, that was the end of the discussion. For me that’s where a fascinating discussion might have begun.

As time has gone on, it seems that there are fewer structured or institutional opportunities for a free, frank, and open exchange of views. Researchers fly in, to say, the National Silviculture Workshop, give their talk, answer five minutes of questions and leave. Somehow it doesn’t seem as though our society (except, perhaps, for the the Land Grant universities via Extension) value that the world works better- research can be better focused, and practice improved, via such discussions.

From what I’ve seen, not all practitioners agree with each other, but then neither do all scientists, policy wonks or anyone else. But I would argue that that diversity is just as important to explore with practitioners as with scientists. So I’d like to give a shout-out to the CSU and other folks who actually interviewed fire suppression practitioners in this paper (you can download from Wildfire Today) about surprising fire behavior in Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) affected stands. I noted that the work was funded by the Pacific Southwest Region, not the Station (this means the research was funded by the operational, not the research arm of the FS). Thanks to them all for helping to fill the practitioner/researcher gap.

This paper’s well worth reading to see the diversity of surprising observations:

All 28 firefighter (FF) interviewees worked on multiple fires encompassed by the study (Table 1). The average experience level was 14.6 seasons and interviewees occupied various positions on fires included in the study (Table 2). Information on MPB phase, percent mortality, stand and fuel conditions, topography, and fire weather for each fire were identified using firefighter observations, available reports, and spatial data on vegetation and topography.

It seems to me that if (1) models are funded and (2) are funded based on the idea that they will be useful to someone, then (3) there should be a formalized approach also funded by which the predictions are checked against observations. I’m not sure that this happens all the time, possibly due to lack of specific funding for it. Certainly this paper contains information relevant to modelers.

Such observations are consistent with some predictions of increased crowning potential in the red phase [7,8,11,12], but are counter to other studies [5,56,57]. As suggested by Hicke et al. [7], Hoffman et al. [8,12] and Stephens et al. [58], these differences may be due to variability in canopy and surface fuel characteristics, the level of mortality or the spatial and temporal variability in mortality rates.

If they could get this much info from 28 practitioners in a relatively localized area, it sounds as if there is a vast informational harvest to be reaped elsewhere.

Given current fires in MPB country in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado, I also thought this part of the discussion was interesting, after a paragraph discussing how MPB conditions could lead to favoring indirect attack, the authors state:

This scenario is potentially at odds with wildfire managers’ preferences and societal expectations that wildland fires receive active fire suppression, although specific situations where homes, communities, and high-valued resources and assets such as water supplies that are in imminent danger may warrant more direct attack actions. In Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming, with the exception of the 2012 High Park Fire, the MPB fires in our study occurred fairly distant from population centers and communities. In the future, in this region and in other areas throughout Western North America affected by MPB outbreaks, fires in MPB fuel complexes may pose a challenge to direct attack strategies and affect societal expectations. Such fires have the potential to become extreme wildfire events or “megafires”—i.e., fires that resist control, rapidly grow in size, last for many weeks, threaten large numbers of highly valued resources and assets, and incur high financial costs [54,55].

I don’t think I’ve read before how MPB effects could favor indirect suppression strategies.

Judge Opens Door to Lawsuits Challenging Pendley Decisions Spanning 30 Million Acres of Public Land

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Here’s a press release from WildEarth Guardians, Western Environmental Law Center, Western Watersheds Project and Center for Biological Diversity. A link to the federal judge’s motion is here and more information about the Pendley decisions the groups will seek to overturn and invalidate is here.

HELENA, Montana — A federal judge denied a motion from conservation groups late Friday to support a lawsuit involving William Perry Pendley’s unlawful tenure as acting director of the Bureau of Land Monument, opening the door to new lawsuits challenging Pendley’s decisions on land management plans and other policies. The plans allow fossil fuel extraction, mining and other industrialization across millions of acres of public lands in 11 states, including within the former boundaries of Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

In September the judge ruled that Pendley’s tenure was unlawful, in response to a lawsuit by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, and asked Bullock and the federal government to list public-lands decisions made by Pendley during that tenure. The same judge today denied a motion by the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Environmental Law Center, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians to file an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit and submit a list of Pendley decisions that should be invalidated.

“Pendley never should have been allowed to set foot in the building, much less approve these disastrous plans that industrialize our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “His corrupt, illegal anti-public-lands agenda was a train wreck for the climate, wildlife and our spectacular wild places. We’ll go to court to make sure Pendley’s illegal decisions end up in the dumpster where they belong.”

The groups will seek to overturn and invalidate Pendley’s decisions approving at least 16 resource-management plans and other projects that open 30 millions of acres of public lands to oil and gas drilling, mining and grazing in Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Idaho and Utah. The plans include expanding coal mining in Montana and open-pit copper mining in Arizona and allowing fracking across more than 1 million acres in California — the first leases since 2013.

“During his illegal tenure as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, Pendley has wreaked havoc on public lands,” said Sarah McMillan, conservation director for WildEarth Guardians. “He, and the administration that kept unlawfully giving him authority, need to be held accountable for the damage they have done, if not in this lawsuit, then through another lawsuit or some other enforcement of the law.”

Under Pendley the Bureau of Land Management has amended resource-management plans to enable decades of fossil fuel expansion and climate pollution on public lands across the West.

“Judge Morris’s September 25 decision articulates the rationale for invalidation of an untold number of reckless decisions that were approved on Pendley’s watch,” said Melissa Hornbein, staff attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “While we hoped to have the opportunity to introduce a subset of those decisions into the current litigation, the denial of our motion in no way undermines the fundamental unlawfulness of those agency actions or narrows the Court’s original decision.”

Resource-management plans are 20-year management blueprints for public lands that govern every activity across the landscape, including which lands are open to fracking and drilling and which areas are protected for their ecological and wildlife values. The Bureau of Land Management director has sole decision-making authority over administrative protests that raise concerns about these plans.

In his September decision saying Pendley had served unlawfully, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ruled that any duty that Pendley performed during his 424 days as acting director of the Bureau “would have no force and effect and must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious.”

“Judge Morris got it right when he declared Pendley’s appointment to head the BLM illegal, and pointed out that decisions made under Pendley’s direction were likewise unlawful,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project. “We’re going to keep working to overturn these illegal decisions through other legal filings.”

FSC to Revise US Stewardship Standard

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FYI… US-wide standard, all lands. However….

“This draft includes the “base indicators” for Principle 1 through Principle 10, and associated
annexes, that will be applicable to almost all certified Organizations, but does not include the
Scale, Intensity, and Risk Indicators (i.e., SIR Indicators: family forest indicators and plantation
indicators), nor the supplementary requirements for US Forest Service lands. These additional
materials will be consulted through a separate first public consultation, and then all materials will
be combined for the second public consultation in 2021.”

 

Public Consultation Open for Revised FSC US National Forest Stewardship Standard

Thursday, 15 October 2020

On October 5th, FSC US opened a 75-day public consultation for the first draft of a revised FSC US National Forest Stewardship Standard.

Due in large part to the quality and rigor of our forest management standards, FSC is widely recognized as the world’s most trusted certification system. Draft 1 of the revised Standard offers further refinement of the respected existing standard for the United States, aligning it with the FSC Principles and Criteria Version 5 and the International Generic Indicators.

Our goal is to deliver a standard that is both best-in-class and achievable by streamlining the existing standard and addressing a number of priority issues, identified below. To help achieve this goal, we will need clear, actionable input from an informed and diverse set of stakeholders during this consultation.

Guided by the FSC US Board of Directors (the Standard Development Group) and a technical working group of experts, the Standard reflects the social, environmental and economic values that underpin FSC’s approach.

While much of the Draft 1 revised Standard remains consistent with the existing US Forest Management Standard, the Standard Development Group identified a set of priority issues to address in the revision process, including:

 

  • Climate Change
  • Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Local Communities’ Rights, and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)
  • High Conservation Value Areas, Representative Sample Areas, and the Conservation Area Network
  • Forest Workers
  • FSC US Regions and Regional Requirements

 

FSC US will be hosting a series of three webinars related to the priority issues.

Visit https://www.engage.us.fsc.org/ to register for the webinars, review the Draft 1 revised standard, read the supporting overviews about the consultation and priority issues, and access the consultation platform to comment.

The public consultation closes on December 18, 2020.

If you have questions, please email them to [email protected].

ESA update

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National Audubon Society Field Guide

There’s a lot of news recently, mostly about litigation, all with implications for public land management.

(Notice of Intent.)  The Forest Service litigation weeklies seemed to have missed this one involving the Forest Service.  On September 23, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project notified the Forest Service, BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service of their intent to sue over the effects of livestock grazing on the Gunnison sage-grouse.  They allege, “failure to reinitiate consultation in light of the species’ decline and the best available science, their failure to implement the BiOp’s (biological opinion) conservation measures, and the likely exceedance of the BiOp’ incidental take statement…”

Note:  The decision challenged appears to be a “Candidate Conservation Agreement” made when the species was proposed for listing, and the “conference” on that for the proposed species which was adopted as the biological opinion after it was listed.  In it the Forest Service and BLM agree to adopt “conservation measures” for the Gunnison sage-grouse.  The CCA says that, “The GUSG CCA is not a decision document …,” but, “The GUSG CCA is consistent with the 1992 BLM Gunnison Field Office Resource Management Plan; USFS Land and Resource Management Plan for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests …”

The reason why there was consultation under ESA on this “non-decision” (rather than the forest plan and/or project-level grazing authorizations) is because it would provide a “programmatic” consultation and opinion on types of federal actions that may be taken in the future that “are likely to have insignificant or discountable effects to the species or habitat,” such as fences and small-scale water developments for grazing (and other activities related to recreation and other developments).  The CCA should have no force or effect except between the action agencies and the FWS, and I understand the primary benefit of consulting on it is to streamline subsequent consultation on individual future actions that it covers.  It would be interesting to see what a court would do with this without an actual “decision” by the action agencies.

That was probably more than anyone else was interested in, but here’s some more straightforward ESA actions that may affect public management.

(Settlement of Center for Biological Diversity v. Bernhardt, Eastern District of North Carolina.)  The Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to complete a revision of the recovery plan for the red wolf by February 28, 2023.  The few remaining wild individuals are found near the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but CBD has provided a report on potential reintroduction areas that include the two national forests in Florida, four national forests in Virginia and West Virginia, three national forests in Arkansas and Missouri, five national forests in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, and the Talladega National Forest in Alabama

(New lawsuit, Fish and Wildlife Service.)  On September 29, three conservation groups filed a complaint in the federal district court for the Northern District of California against the decision to not list the bi-state sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act.  The challenge focuses on the failure of “voluntary” mechanisms to stem the decline of the species.  The complaint does not mention the Forest Service, though the species occurs on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, which amended its forest plan in 2015 to adopt conservation measures.  (AP article here.)

(New lawsuit, Fish and Wildlife Service and BLM.)  On September 29, the Center for Biological Diversity alleged in the Nevada federal district court that the Fish and Wildlife Service “unreasonably delayed” a decision on a petition to make an emergency listing decision for the species, and that the BLM failed “to protect the wildflower in accordance with FLMPA and BLM policies, as the Center’s petition requested.”  The species is found only in an area coveted by mining companies seeking lithium and boron (previous litigation was discussed here).  The emergency circumstances arose from the recent mysterious physical removal of 40% of the remaining individuals, discussed in this article.

(New lawsuit, Fish and Wildlife Service.)  On September 30, several organizations and individuals challenged the removal of the Louisiana black bear from the list of threatened and endangered species in 2016.  The suit says that the FWS is attempting to pass off non-native bears (introduced from Minnesota in the 1960s) or hybridized black bears as true Louisiana black bears to claim that recovery goals have been met.  The species is found on the Kisatchee National Forest.

(Notice of Intent to Sue the Fish and Wildlife Service.)  Following prior litigation requiring it to reconsider its decision to not list the wolverine, on October 13 the FWS withdrew its current proposed rule to list the species as threatened.  On the same day, Earthjustice submitted its NOI to the agency.  The FWS states that the wolverine is expanding its range and would be less affected by climate change than previously thought (discussed in this article.)

  • New species listings

On September 29, the Fish and Wildlife proposed to list the Wright’s marsh thistle as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.  Two of the eight known locations are on the Lincoln National Forest, but involve less than an acre.  They are mostly threatened by the effects of climate change on water availability since these areas are not being grazed.  (Here is a local article.)

On September 29, the Fish and Wildlife Service also proposed to list two species of eastern mussels as threatened, and designated critical habitat on the Allegheny and Daniel Boone National Forests. Habitat for both the longsolid and round hickorynut mussels is threatened by timber operations (among many other things), is widely distributed, and is likely found on other national forests.  (Here is a local article.)

Using Social Media Data on Recreation: For Managers and Recreationists

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In the study, they used trip report info from this group.

 

I came across a very interesting research paper from 2018 by Fisher et al. here. The title is: Recreational use in dispersed public lands measured using social media data and on-site counts.

Basically it says that user-generated data from social media can be used to get information about recreation use in dispersed areas  and supplement NVUM. It potentially sounds like a great source of detailed information on recreation use, although I suppose we couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle, or not, they are using. Unless you got trip reports from different kinds of user groups.

*Note: this is not what the authors did but… As a recreationist, it would be cool to have GPS of where recreationists are in real time (not sure this is possible technically or due to privacy concerns).  Would people opt in?  Folks could get information on where other people are.. and could go elsewhere, maybe reducing crowding at the more popular sites, and getting people to spread out (good for Covid). I’m not sure about the environmental benefits of spreading out vs. crowding. It would also be very cool if GPS from phones could be used to alert recreationists to forest fires as well. But maybe this is already happening as part of evacuation notifications.*

Back to what the authors did. Social media potentially sounds like a great source of detailed information on recreation use. It seems like an interesting possibility to explore, especially since  recreation patterns and numbers seem to be changing due to Covid- even as travel management decisions are being made that consider patterns of use.

If anyone knows more about either real-time data collection and notification, or other folks who have used social media data, please add your comment.

Here’s the abstract:

Outdoor recreation is one of many important benefits provided by public lands. Data on recreational use are critical for informing management of recreation resources, however, managers often lack actionable information on visitor use for large protected areas that lack controlled access points. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential for social media data (e.g., geotagged images shared on Flickr and trip reports shared on a hiking forum) to provide land managers with useful measures of recreational use to dispersed areas, and to provide lessons learned from comparing several more traditional counting methods. First, we measure daily and monthly visitation rates to individual trails within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (MBSNF) in western Washington. At 15 trailheads, we compare counts of hikers from infrared sensors, timelapse cameras, and manual on-site counts, to counts based on the number of shared geotagged images and trip reports from those locations. Second, we measure visitation rates to each National Forest System (NFS) unit across the US and compare annual measurements derived from the number of geotagged images to estimates from the US Forest Service National Visitor Use Monitoring Program. At both the NFS unit and the individual-trail scales, we found strong correlations between traditional measures of recreational use and measures based on user-generated content shared on the internet. For national forests in every region of the country, correlations between official Forest Service statistics and geotagged images ranged between 55% and 95%. For individual trails within the MBSNF, monthly visitor counts from on-site measurements were strongly correlated with counts from geotagged images (79%) and trip reports (91%). The convenient, cost-efficient and timely nature of collecting and analyzing user-generated data could allow land managers to monitor use over different seasons of the year and at sites and scales never previously monitored, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of recreational use patterns and value

 

 

Curry: How We Fool Ourselves

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This list may help us examine our own biases and beliefs. I reckon each of us has employed one or more of these biases, whether we realized it or not…. Curry invites contributions to the list….

From a post by Judith Curry on her blog, Climate Etc., October 4, 2020.

How we fool ourselves

 

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person too fool.” – physicist Richard Feynman

Cognitive biases relate to self-deception that leads to incorrect conclusions based on cognitive factors, including information-processing shortcuts (heuristics) (Tversky and Kahnemann 1974). Cognitive biases can abound when reasoning and making judgments about a complex problem such as climate change.

Cognitive biases affecting belief formation that are of particular relevance to the science of climate change include:

  • Confirmation bias: the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions
  • Anchoring bias: the tendency to rely too heavily on one trait or piece of information, such as the mean or previous results.
  • Framing bias: using an approach that is too narrow that pre-ordains the conclusion
  • Overconfidence effect: unjustified, excessive belief
  • Illusory correlations: false identification of relationships with rare or novel occurrences
  • Ambiguity effect: the tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown
  • Self-serving bias: a tendency for people to evaluate information in a way that is beneficial to their interests
  • Belief bias: evaluating the logical strength of an argument based on belief in the truth or falsity of the conclusion
  • Availability heuristic: The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater ‘availability’ in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be

A fallacy is logically incorrect reasoning that undermines the logical validity of the argument and leads to its assessment as unsound.  There are many different classifications of fallacies. Below are some fallacies that I’ve seen used in arguments about climate science:

  • Begging the question is a fallacy occurring in deductive reasoning in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises.
  • Correlation implies causation is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are claimed to be cause and effect.
  • Fallacy of distribution occurs when an argument assumes that what is true of the members is true of the class (composition), or what is true of the class is true of its members (division).
  • Hasty generalization is the logical fallacy of reaching an inductive generalization based on too little evidence.
  • Statistical special pleading occurs when the interpretation of the relevant statistic is ‘massaged’ by looking for ways to reclassify or requantify data from one portion of results, but not applying the same scrutiny to other categories.
  • Fallacy of the single cause occurs when it is assumed that there is one simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.

The category of intentional fallacies is not about how we fool ourselves, but how we try to fool others. Examples of intentional fallacies used routinely in the public debate on climate change include:

  • Diverting the argument to unrelated issues with a red herring(ignoratio elenchi)
  • Ad hominem fallacy: asserting that an argument is wrong because of something discreditable/not authoritative about the person
making the argument.
  • Appeal to motive: challenging a thesis by calling into question the motives of its proposer.
  • Asserting that everyone agrees (argumentum ad populum, bandwagoning)
  • Creating a ‘false dilemma’ (either-or fallacy) in which the situation is oversimplified
  • Selectively using facts (card stacking)
  • Making false or misleading comparisons (false equivalence and false analogy)
  • Appeal to consequences of belief (argumentum ad consequentiam): an appeal to emotion that concludes a hypothesis or belief to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences.