Putting the Power of Experience to Work!: ACES and BAER Opportunities

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Glenda Goodwyne – retired Forester and certified Silviculturist. She worked for the USDA Forest Service for 36 years and now participates in ACES as a silviculture mentor for Pathways and Recent Graduates in Region 6. USDA Forest Service photo.

 

One of the challenges that the Forest Service faces is the loss of experience and talent due to retirements. Many retirees would like to work and contribute in their area of expertise, but just didn’t want to work full-time and possibly have all the responsibilities and annoyances of full time employment. The ACES program allows hiring of those 55+ and is not limited to FS retirees. Please forward this link folks you know who might be interested.

Putting the Power of Experience to Work!

In 2018, the Forest Service received authority, by way of the 2018 Farm Bill, that gives line officers a new tool for accomplishing work. The Forest Service Agriculture Conservation Experienced Services (ACES) Program provides the opportunity for experienced personnel, age 55 and older, to assist with conservation-related programs executed on or directly impacting
National Forest System land. ACES allows the Forest Service to use the services of 55+ individuals with a process that is simple, efficient, and promptly executed. These individuals do not have to be federal retirees; rather anybody 55+ who is qualified to do the work.

The agency’s objective in implementing the ACES program is to expand capacity to complete conservation work, by filling employment gaps, mentoring and training less experienced agency employees and to complete “short term” surge work. The Forest Service administers the ACES Program through Master Agreements with two non-profit partners, National Older Worker Career Center and Senior Service America, Inc. The ACES program was piloted in 2017, based largely off the ACES program that was already being utilized by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. The pilot was focused solely in Forest Management and had an initial investment of $1M provided by the Washington Office to jump-start program utilization.

Based on the success of the pilot program, the program was expanded in early 2018, with the signing of a new five-year master agreement that allows the expansion of ACES to all eligible program areas. This expansion enables broader program utilization, providing additional means to expand Agency capacity in critical program areas. To date, 80 supplemental project agreements have been executed by the WO, Job Corps, Research Stations, Forest Products Lab, and Regional, Forest and District units across the nation. ACES enrollees are geographically spread across 17 states and over 25 National Forests and Grasslands. Approximately $9M under the national implementation effort has been obligated to ACES agreements for nearly 200 program enrollees.
ACES enrollees work to support a variety of Forest Service programs, including Forest Management, Engineering, Geology, Lands, Hydrology, Archeology, Recreation, Special Uses, Range Conservation, Research Science, Forest Planning, and Fire management. Currently in Region 6 there are 30 enrollees across most forests, research stations and the Regional Office. The jobs include timber sale administrators, land surveyors, lands and realty, research scientist, fire program specialist, engineers and engineering technicians, frontline workers, environmental coordinators and silviculture.

Are you interested in exploring these jobs? Or do you know others who would be great fits? To find more information on the ACES Program, please visit https://www.fs.fed.us/working-with-us/aces-program. Or contact Becki Lockett Heath who is working for NOWCC as a Program Consultant, for the Forest Service ACES Program at [email protected] (NOTE TO READERS- I’ve corrected the email).

NAFSR sent this out about specifically BAER help:

With the current unprecedented fire season creating the needs for additional capacity in post-fire emergency assessments and implementation, there is a need for interested qualified individuals to assist.
The BAER program calls upon retirees frequently through the Administratively Determined (AD) Play Plan for Emergency Workers in accordance with the Interagency Incident Business Management Handbook (PMS902).
Here’s a link to the document that explains the basic steps to the AD process.
Though local units must sponsor retirees through AD sign-up, we are asking folks who have the appropriate skill sets in soils, hydrology, engineering, and interagency/public affairs that are not already in the system to reach out to the National BAER Program Lead, Cara Farr ([email protected]) with their background and experience, so that she can facilitate identifying the best approach to getting them into the system.
With COVID concerns this season, many assessments are being completed using virtual tools and technologies opening up alternative pathways for involvement.
Any retirees that would be willing to assist in person or virtual would be welcome and encouraged to reach out to the National BAER Program Lead to determine next steps.

NFS Litigation Weekly October 9, 2020

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Forest Service case summaries are here:  Litigation Weekly October 9 2020 EMAIL

Links below are to court documents related to each case.

COURT DECISIONS

On October 2, 2020 the District Court of Colorado issued an order allowing a mining company to continue its operations using new roads constructed into a designated roadless area to the West Elk Mine on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests.  Road construction in the Sunset Roadless Area was allowed under a lease pursuant to an exception to the Colorado roadless rule, but that exception was subsequently reversed by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.  On remand, the district court did not vacate the lease.

(BLOGGER’S UPDATE:  On October 9, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily barred further surface disturbance by the West Elk Mine so it can consider the legality of that activity. The complicated history of the exception and this case is included in the Forest Service summary.)

On September 29, 2020 the District Court of Montana issued a decision allowing the Darby Lumber Lands Phase II Project on the Bitterroot National Forest to proceed.  The court also upheld a project-specific forest plan amendment to “suspend” an elk habitat effectiveness standard.  While the court invalidated the Forest’s reference to a minimum road system under the Travel Management Rule because the forest-wide Travel Management Plan did not properly establish that, the court did not find that to be a reason to vacate the Project decision.

  • Van McGibney, et al., v. Missouri Department of Natural Resources

On September 24, 2020 the Circuit Court of Oregon County Missouri determined that lands acquired by the state can’t be used as a park because of restrictions in the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers easement, so the state must divest its ownership.  The lands are located near the Mark Twain National Forest.  Plaintiffs also owned land subject to the easement.  (Local reporting here and a viewpoint here:  “… the Judge reasoned that without unfettered public use of the land, it could not be a park. This defies both common conservation practices and common sense.”)

Planting Aspen Trees in Ski Country: Tiny Effort Provokes Maximal Skepticism

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Part of video from Vail Daily News story

In the Sunday Denver Post was a reprint of a story from the Vail Daily. The headline was “should aspen replace lodgepole in local forests?”.

This is about a partnership to plant aspen in Summit County, described by TNC this way:

The partners are testing the potential for increases in aspen trees to act as natural fuel breaks for wildfire at the 46-acre Barney Ford open space site, just outside of downtown Breckenridge. Since aspens are less flammable and have a higher moisture content than conifers, they may act to reduce fire severity. Adding more aspen in forests also has wildlife benefits, as it increases insect and plant biodiversity and creates valuable habitat for elk, moose and deer.

Seems like a small, innocuous project, right?

Back to the news story:

“We were very intrigued with the idea of how can we help establish aspens in Summit County,” Lorch said. “One of the issues we see is that as we do the buffers around our communities for wildfire purposes, most of what’s growing back is the same lodgepole thicket that we had before. So in a short period of time, 20 years or so, we’ll have the same issues with fire concerns as we had prior to the cutting. We’ve done some places where we’ve thinned things in order to try to avoid having such a fuels load, but really aspens, and having a more diverse forest, is a much better plan in the long run.”

One interesting thing was this take (drive-by?) on The Nature Conservancy by Tom Veblen, a professor at the University of Colorado.

It’s true that aspens are less flammable than pine trees. And trying to populate former lodgepole zones with aspens can be a worthwhile cause, says forest ecologist Thomas Veblen with the University of Colorado.

“If the financial resources are available to spend a lot of money on forest management, that’s a worthy goal, to increase the area of aspen, and that’s likely to decrease the spread of fires in the future,” Veblen said.

But The Nature Conservancy’s studies on fire fuels reduction, which includes examining aspen repopulation in areas clear cut of lodgepole pine, may end up helping, most of all, The Nature Conservancy, Veblen says.

“They have a structure of people and resources that can do fire mitigation, they’ve got to keep it funded, so there’s a self interest there,” Veblen said. “They have contracts with the Forest Service to do a lot of forest management, so The Nature Conservancy, from that perspective, has a self interest in promoting fuels reduction.”

I called the folks at TNC about this, and while they were interviewed by Mr. LaConte about the project, they were not asked to comment on Veblen’s assertion, and say that it is incorrect.

University of Montana fire ecologist Richard L. Hutto is skeptical of The Nature Conservancy’s efforts.

“I don’t see wholesale conversion of something to something else in the name of fire safety,” he said. “The thing that determines fire behavior and whether it’s going to get crazy is temperature, humidity and wind, not fuels.”

We’ve gotten from diversifying the forest to “wholesale conversion”. I guess that’s building a straw person. We fans of the robust and resilient Pinus contorta know how unlikely that result would be under any scenario. It’s a fairly strong statement to say that fuels don’t “determine fire behavior”.. maybe that’s Hutto’s careful use of language but certainly fuels impact fire behavior.

Another fire ecologist (Baker) says that they should spend money instead on adapting the community and should work with Fire Adapted Colorado (I think it’s likely that they are already doing this). But are fire ecologists good sources of info on what communities “should” spend money on?
Baker also uses the “it doesn’t always work” argument – “in aspen stands many, but not all fires hit the ground.” I’d take “many but not all” over “none” myself.

If Fire Adapted Colorado sounds familiar, it works closely (according to its webpage) with FAC Net, which is of course, a partnership with … The Nature Conservancy.

Fire Adapted Colorado is an independent non-profit organization closely associated and born out of the Fire Adapted Community Learning Network (FAC Net). FAC Net is a national network of people working to build wildfire resilience capacity in wildfire-prone communities. It is supported through a partnership among The Nature Conservancy, the Watershed Research and Training Center and the USDA Forest Service. FAC Net’s purpose is to connect and support people and communities who are striving to live more safely with wildfire. A fire adapted community is a knowledgeable, engaged community that is taking actions that will enable them to safely accept fire as part of the surrounding landscape. For more information about FAC Net, visit www.fireadaptednetwork.org.

I’ve always thought that it is interesting when people get together and do something they think is good, and how these stories are reported. For example, how many inches are devoted to description of the actions compared to critics (in the Denver Post reprint, it was almost 50/50). And why people from elsewhere (Steamboat, Boulder, Wyoming, Montana), academics and not, are thought to be experts on managing areas around Breckinridge. And when the doers get a chance to respond to critics.

Lolo National Forest’s “Wildfire Adapted Missoula” Project

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The Lolo National Forest is working on the “Wildfire Adapted Missoula” project, “a risk-based strategic fuels management project. It proposes mechanized and non-mechanized fuel and vegetation treatments to reduce wildfire hazard and associated risk in strategic locations.”

Location Summary: Project surrounds the communities of Missoula, Lolo, East Missoula, Bonner, Clinton, and Turah (approx. 158,725 acres of National Forest System (NFS) lands).

Scoping documents are here.

IMHO, many areas in the west would benefit from risk-based strategic fuels management projects like this.With limited funding and staff, setting priorities is a must.

Excerpts from an article from the Missoula Current:

Compared to towns in California and Oregon, Missoula was lucky this summer not having any serious nearby wildfires. But with a warming climate, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when,” so the Lolo National Forest is proposing a large treatment project on the suburban forest to reduce wildfire risk in the Five Valleys region.

On Wednesday morning, on the upper part of the Blue Mountain Recreational Area, U.S. Forest Service silviculturist Sheryl Gunn walked along a dirt road pointing up at all the mistletoe infestations in the Douglas fir that grows thicker in the upper sections of forest.

“Where would wildfire hazard be high? It would be high in a place like this,” Gunn said. “We have this forested condition all around Missoula. This forested condition is what we saw in the Lolo Fire. When a fire gets into the crowns of this, nothing really survives. And so we see very, very, very intense fire.”

…

But not all the national forest land will be treated. That would take a lot of time and money. More importantly, it’s more effective to focus on areas of high risk. No point treating a fairly wet or previously burned area farther away from Missoula when there’s a heavily wooded spot right next to town.

Dispersed Campsite Improvement, Charge and Reservation Pilot Program- South Platte RD

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Some campsites are occupied by people who living in the South Platte Ranger District. The Forest Service is testing a new system that converts the 450,000-acre district’s campsites into designated pay campsites that can be reserved. (Courtesy U.S. Forest Service via Colorado Sun)
Perhaps eclipsed by Election Drama and wildfire news, there has been a major Covid-enhanced increase in recreation in the last year, at least on some western National Forests. Here’s an interesting story from the Colorado Sun on how the South Platte Ranger District is responding. The writer, Jason Blevins, interviewed a range of folks and it seemed like everyone agreed that something needed to be done and this approach makes sense.

“We were experiencing high volumes of users camping on every single road across the entire district and it was getting to the point where we were seeing huge resource impacts,” said Banks, mirroring an oft-repeated lament of Forest Service officials charged with protecting lands in other heavily impacted locations.

The South Platte District started testing the concept of pay, reserved diverse campsites eight years ago. This fall Banks’ team identified 340 sites that will be converted, with assigned parking spots, pit toilets and fire rings. That number will likely grow. As many as 94 sites will be managed by a concessionaire, Rocky Mountain Recreation Company.

Campers will have to pay somewhere around $15 a night. The concessionaire will have to direct 19% of gross revenues back into those campsites. The cost of the sites will pay for pumping out and cleaning pit toilets, Banks said.

“We are basically at a point on the South Platte where we can’t continue to do things the same way and expect different results,” Banks said. “We have to try something new.”

Other district rangers are keeping close tabs on the pilot program, especially after the deluge of campers across all of Colorado this summer, Banks said.

The traffic during the pandemic accelerated a trend driven by a new generation of campers looking for a different experience than a traditional campground, he said. These new-school adventurers are OK with fewer amenities in exchange for privacy and a wilder feel. They are buying RVs and camping trailers like crazy to get farther afield and off the beaten track.

“Paying a reduced fee for dispersed designated sites is something that is appealing to them,” Banks said.

Not all the campsites in the district are going to be available for online reservations, leaving options open for Front Rangers who make the late call to jump in the car and camp on Friday or Saturday night. But off-highway-vehicle users who travel from across the country to explore the Rampart Range trails have expressed support for the reservation system that enables them to lock in a spot for their vacation before they arrive.

Banks also has heard from district old timers who used to be able to drive into the district and camp and shoot anywhere they wanted. But times have changed, he said, and “change can be really hard and I’m sensitive to that.” He tells them straight: “Our ability to provide for recreation in a sustained capacity is no longer effective under the current system.”

Jim Peasley has been riding dirt bikes and camping in the Rampart Range for more than 50 years. The longtime liaison officer for the Rampart Range Motorcycle Management Committee has shepherded the construction and maintenance of hundreds of miles of trails in the range’s motorized recreation area, deploying his committee’s volunteers with federal and state support.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said.

But over the past five to 10 years, the pace of that change has accelerated. In recent years Peasley has seen more people who are transient setting up semi-permanent camps at spots that once were used by weekend campers. The nonprofit committee that formed in 1972 has traditionally resisted the South Platte Ranger District’s push toward more designated, pay campsites.

“But honestly, in the last few years it’s gotten so bad that even our members can’t find a decent place to camp so we finally as a committee decided to get on board,” Peasley said.

…and

Patricia Cameron founded Colorado Blackpackers in 2019 as a way to get more people of color outdoors. Her nonprofit leads camping trips and outdoor excursions as well as offering free and discounted gear.

She says Blackpackers serves those “at the intersection of economic vulnerability and underrepresentation.” And she’s wary of how fees on public lands can become obstacles for people who want to spend more time outside.

“Anytime you put a cost on something, regardless of the amount, you start limiting people and leaving people out,” she said.

But the new reservation system could make camping trips less intimidating for newcomers, she said, eliminating the first-timer angst that comes with trying to find a campsite in a forest filled with more experienced — and largely white — campers. So Cameron hopes the reservation system, even though it costs money, could lower other barriers that can prevent people of color from getting outside and hopefully sparking a passion that could lead to more outdoor experiences.

If folks have questions about this I’m willing to yard them up and ask. Here are mine.
1. Don’t other forests have paid dispersed sites? I’ve seen designated dispersed sites but they are not reserved/paid for.
2. How did they pick 19% as the percent of gross revenues that comes back?
3. Are employees managing the other campsites (340-95) that the concessionaire is not? Do all the revenues from those return directly to the District?

NFS Litigation Weekly October 2, 2020

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It’s been pretty quiet, so not very “weekly.  Here is the latest Forest Service summary:  Litigation Weekly October 2 2020_FINAL

NEW CASES

Center for Biological Diversity  v. U.S. Forest Service (D. Ariz.). On September 17, the plaintiffs filed a complaint based on recent monitoring by plaintiffs that alleges that livestock grazing on the Prescott, Coconino, and Tonto National Forests has impacted 14 threatened and endangered species dependent on aquatic and riparian habitat, and the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service have failed to reinitiate and complete ESA Section 7 consultation to ensure ongoing livestock grazing does not jeopardize listed species or destroy or adversely modify critical habitat.  (This article provides a local perspective.)

 

BLOGGER’S BONUS

(Court decision in Swomley v. Schroyer.)  On September 3, the district court of Colorado rejected an attempt by 21 residents and landowners to halt the Upper Frying Pan logging project on the White River National Forest, holding that an EA for the project was sufficient.  (The article includes a link to the opinion.)

(Update.)  The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, which had ordered Arch Resources to cease road-building and other surface-disturbing activity in the Sunset roadless area on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forest because it hadn’t shown it had maintained its legal right of entry, partly lifted that order after the Forest Service and BLM indicated Arch Coal is legally allowed to continue such work as it pertains to a road that environmental plaintiffs claim is illegal.  Plaintiffs are renewing their court efforts.  (The High Country Conservation Advocates Case was most recently discussed here.)

(New case.)  Three conservation groups filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service for allowing “excessive” cattle grazing on the Colville National Forest through their 2019 decision to adopt a revised forest plan.

(Court decision, BLM.)  The district court in Colorado upheld a 2009 decision by the BLM, also affecting the White River National Forest, to cancel undeveloped drilling leases in the Thompson Divide area.  (Ex-acting BLM Director Pendley’s Mountain States Legal Foundation represented the lessee.)

(Update, BLM case.)  After the district court issued a preliminary injunction on this project to reduce conifer encroachment into sagebrush habitat, the BLM has withdrawn that part of the decision for lands that had not yet been treated, mooting the case.

(New case, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)  On August 18, three conservation groups sued the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service for deciding to not list the California spotted owl as endangered in November, 2019.  According the complaint (linked in the article), “Since the early 1990s, the volume of commercial logging of mature trees on public land in the Sierra Nevada has declined, but “fuel reduction” in the form of mechanical thinning and salvage logging continue, both of which continue to degrade the owls’ habitat.”  The complaint also says:

“The Species Status Assessment also concluded the California spotted owl may be extirpated from the Lassen and El Dorado regions of the Sierra Nevada in the foreseeable future. See Species Status Assessment 95, fig. 22 (California Spotted Owl Regional Future Scenario 2 Condition). It further concluded that the Plumas, Tahoe, Stanislaus, Humboldt-Toiyabe, Inyo, Sierra, and Sequoia National Forest regions will deteriorate in condition to low or low-moderate condition, id., which means that they will “have low resiliency and may not be able to withstand stochastic events because of significant declines in occupancy, survival, fecundity, or habitat quality.” Id. at 69.”

(New case, BLM.)  On August 19, several conservation groups sued the BLM for its decision on the Uncompahgre Field Office Resource Management Plan for central and southern Colorado, released in April.  They alleged that expanded drilling would hasten climate change and affect endangered species, including the razorback sucker, greenback cutthroat trout and, Gunnison sage grouse.

(New case against a private timber owner.)  On September 15, the Center for Biological Diversity and a local conservation group sued the Gualala Redwood Timber Company in federal district court to protect a private redwood forest near Northern California’s Gualala River.  They allege that an incidental take permit from the regulatory agencies is needed for the threatened and endangered species that would be harmed:  Northern California steelhead, Central California Coast coho salmon, California red-legged frogs, and northern spotted owls.  (This CBD press release includes a link to the complaint.)

(New case and Notice of Intent to Sue CEQ.) On August 28, 2020, a coalition of 23 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Administration’s Final Rule on NEPA procedures.  On September 22, plaintiffs notified the CEQ that they would add a claim that the Final Rule violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to consider the impact on endangered and threatened species or consult with the federal wildlife agencies.

Should the Western Governors Take the Lead in “Living With Wildfires”?

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I spoke with a knowledgeable Legislative Affairs fellow who shed further light on the Daines-Feinstein bill. To paraphrase him, it is nibbling around the edges, and the size of the issue requires a major ramping up of funding but that would involve.. appropriators. Similarly, Susan Jane Brown asked in her comment here “why don’t we all work to get the Forest Service the resources they need?” And of course that would be a solution.

Let’s just vision here.. we’re looking at an integrated effort (call it Living with Fire or whatever) across states, feds, counties, a push to harden homes, get better at evacuating, and strategically reducing fuels. We already have many people in communities working on the problem. We have State air quality folks involved. We have researchers who’ve analyzed the barriers. There are Prescribed Fire Councils. Insurance companies. County planners. And so on.. heck we don’t even know how much we are already spending working on this, and what all the different groups are doing. It would have to be an effort that is coordinated and comprehensive, and would require a great deal of funding over a long period of time. But perhaps we already tried that..

Vision: To safely and effectively extinguish fire when needed; use fire where allowable; manage our natural resources; and as a nation, to live with wildland fire.

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy is a strategic push to work collaboratively among all stakeholders and across all landscapes, using best science, to make meaningful progress towards the three goals: Resilient Landscapes Fire Adapted Communities Safe and Effective Wildfire Response.

Perhaps the Cohesive Strategy wasn’t wide enough in the diversity of groups represented, or didn’t have the right kind of political clout to make things happen? Maybe the next Administration could set up some kind of bipartisan working group to review and improve/initiate a new strategy and budget requests. I am thinking of the Western Governors as leaders based on this Patty Limerick essay Where Bipartisanship Finds a Refuge: A Rendezvous with The Western Governors Association . Here’s the Lunch with Limerick recording with Patty interviewing Jim Ogsbury. For me it was a fun policy-geeky lunch.

“At WGA, ‘consensus bipartisan policy’ has not had a restful time of it. The Western Governors do not evade or avoid the hard issues that would fracture any conventional organization. Wildfire, water supply and drought, the divisions between the rural West and the urban West, the allocation of authority between the federal government and the states, and the reform of the Endangered Species Act: these are all issues that, in other venues of discussion, produce a high pitch of partisan noise. But when the Governors deal with these issues, they do not storm out of the room enraged with each other; instead, they stay in the room and figure out responses to these challenges that they can agree on. And then during breaks and during meals, they circulate and mingle and laugh at each other’s jokes (though, as with any human population, the jokes do vary a little in quality), and you cannot tell Democrats from Republicans.

“That insightful Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that the states are ‘the laboratories of democracy.’ So if you pay attention to the work of the WGA, you will see that Justice Brandeis got that right, and a good share of the experiments conducted in these laboratories have been maintaining democracy’s heartbeat.”

Conceivably, the bipartisan recommendations of the Western Governors could give those in Congress some political cover. Nevertheless, the problem IMHO with being US Congress-budget centric for problem resolution is that it tends to get bogged down in partisanship, and then disempowers the rest of us. And if we look at the FS and BLM recreation budgets.. asking for more money from the federal budget doesn’t necessarily work as a strategy.

It would be interesting to see what a diverse bipartisan group (with the requisite political clout) might come up with.

Owls and Megafires

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This article from Audubon is well worth reading. It sheds light on questions we’re discussed at length here.

Recent ‘Megafires’ Imperil Even Fire-Loving Forest Birds

Many birds, such as owls and woodpeckers, thrive in forest habitats created after fire. But the hotter, bigger, more destructive megafires out West might be too much even for them.

An excerpt:

After the King Fire, Jones returned to his research site to see how California Spotted Owls responded to the devastation. The massive fire swept through more than 97,000 acres, which included 44 percent of the study area and 30 of the owl’s 45 known nesting sites within it. Jones tracked the owls, which had already been outfitted with GPS receivers and colored leg bands, and found that a year later the birds had abandoned the most severely burned areas where more than 75 percent of trees died. These severely burned areas represented 50 percent of the fire’s total burn area.

It’s not that California Spotted Owls avoid all severely burned areas after fire—just the largest patches. They rarely venture more than 325 feet deep into a severe burn, Jones found in follow-up research at the King Fire site. But do they recolonize smaller patches that burned severely? To find out, he also studied owls in three western national parks in the Sierra Nevada where forest managers intentionally set small fires, and let natural ones burn, to maintain healthy, historical wildfire regimes. He saw that the California Spotted Owl returned to smaller patches even if they burned intensely, while avoiding larger ones—maybe because wide expanses with fewer trees are home to less prey or offer less cover from predators, such as the Great Horned Owl. “To us, that suggests again there’s this adaptive response,” Jones says. “Owls are adapted to frequent, low-severity fires,” not intense megafires.

The article also discusses black-backed woodpeckers:

Even the Black-backed Woodpecker, long-considered a bird that thrives after intense fires, apparently has its limits. The woodpecker flocks to burned-out forests to feast on beetle larvae that infest dying and dead trees. However, Andrew Stillman, an avian ecologist at the University of Connecticut and Tingley’s student, made a surprising discovery when he attached radio transmitters to adult and juvenile birds over the course of seven years. 

As expected, adult woodpeckers primarily kept to severely burned areas. “But the juveniles were a different story,” Stillman says. “Right after leaving the nest, these young birds flew to areas with live trees remaining after fire.” He suspects they preferred these areas because the living trees provide protection from predators. This species, too, needs pyrodiversity.

“Our conventional thinking was that more severe fires might be good for certain species that thrive in burned forests,” Stillman says. “But our research shows that even fire-loving species need variation in burn severity to survive.”  

— Thanks to Nick Smith for including the link to this article in his Sept. 30 Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities email.

Let’s Discuss: The Feinstein-Daines Wildfire Bill

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When I googled this bill, I found many voices for and against but very little analysis. Now it seems to be a rarity for any House of Congress to produce bipartisan bills (let alone both) (or they are not so much covered in the press), so I thought it was worth us taking a look at the specifics. My comments are in italics.

According to Senator Feinstein’s website:

Earlier this month, Senators Feinstein and Daines introduced the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act, a bipartisan bill to help protect communities from catastrophic wildfires by implementing critical wildfire mitigation projects, sustaining healthier forests that are more resilient to climate change and providing important energy and retrofitting assistance to businesses and residences to mitigate future risks from wildfire and power shutoffs. The House companion bill is being led by Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) and Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.).

Here’s a link to a cpan link https://www.c-span.org/video/?475867-1/senate-hearing-wildfire-forest-management you can go to Feinstein’s remarks.
Here’s a section by section from Feinstein’s site, which includes more info on each section than I posted here.

Section 101 – Three new landscape-level, collaborative wildfire risk reduction projects:
 Requires the Forest Service to conduct three landscape-level, collaborative wildfire risk reduction projects in the West proposed by a Governor. Projects would be subject to a streamlined environmental review process and certain litigation protections.

Section 102 – Encourages the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to increase the use of wildfire detection equipment.
 Directs the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to expedite the placement of wildfire detection equipment such as sensors and cameras and expand the use of satellite data to assist wildfire response.

Section 103 – Wildfire risk reduction activities near existing roads, trails, and transmission lines
 Establishes a new 3,000-acre categorical exclusion to accelerate management near existing roads, trails, and transmission lines.
 Background: According to the Pacific Biodiversity Institute, nearly 90% of wildfires begin within a half-mile of a Forest Service road.

I wondered about that and found this 2007 report from PDI.

Section 104 – Accelerating Post-Fire restoration and reforestation
 Establishes a new statutory tool to accelerate post-fire restoration and reforestation work on Forest Service land. Based largely on the Forest Service’s existing Emergency Situation Determination authority, this provision specifies that the agency must do environmental analysis only on the proposed post-fire project and the scenario of not doing any project, so long as the treatment area is not larger than 10,000 acres.

Section 105 – Codifying “New Information”
 Specifies that the Forest Service is not required to reinitiate plan-level consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service following the finding of “new information” related to a listed species unless the “new information” is publicly available, peer-reviewed, and consistent with longstanding federal guidelines for scientific information. Allows for the agency to conduct informal, formal, or no consultation as appropriate and allows projects to continue during plan-level consultation.
This is known as the “Cottonwood Fix” relating to a court case which others here know much more about.

Section 106 – Hazard Mitigation Using Disaster Assistance

 Allows FEMA hazard mitigation grant funding to be used to install fire-resistant wires and infrastructure as well as for the undergrounding of wires.

Section 201 – Biomass Energy Infrastructure Program
 Establishes a new Department of Energy grant program to facilitate the removal of biomass from National Forest areas that are at high risk of wildfire and to transport that biomass to conversion facilities.
 Biomass conversion facilities located within areas of economic need and seek to remove dead or dying trees are prioritized. Grants are limited to $750,000.

Section 301 – California Exemption to Prohibition on Export of Unprocessed Timber
 Allows the export of unprocessed in timber of dead and dying trees in California. The exemption only applies after domestic mills have refused the unprocessed timber.

I tried to find out more about this but the U of Calif, my own alma mater, (sadly) does not seem to have anyone that I could identify as a forest economist. Any help locating a knowledgeable person on timber markets and the possibility of exports would be appreciated.

Section 401 – Innovative Forest Workforce Development Program
 Creates a competitive grant program to provide funds to non-profits, educational institutions, and state agencies to assist in the development of activities relating to workforce development in the forestry sector. Funds can be used for education, training, skills development, and education.

Section 403 – Western Prescribed Fire Center
 Establishes a Prescribed Fire Center in the West to train individuals in prescribed fire methods and other methods relevant to the mitigation of wildfire risk.

I like the idea of a Prescribed Fire Center but I’d want it to 1) understand and coordinate existing state, federal and NGO efforts, 2) identify gaps and solutions in a biennial report to Congress, and 3) commission research. Probably other things as well but I don’t think training by itself will overcome all the obstacles to increasing PB.

Section 403 – Retrofits for Fire-Resilient Communities
 Amends the Weatherization Assistance program to make materials that are resistant to high heat and fire and dwellings that utilize fire-resistant materials and incorporate wildfire prevention and mitigation planning eligible for funds.
 Increases the level of available funding to $13,000 and allows for increases with inflation.

Section 404 – Critical Infrastructure and Microgrid Program
 Establishes a new Department of Energy grant program to improve the energy resilience, energy efficiency, and power needs of critical facilities.
 Prioritizes rural communities with access to on-site back-up power and installation of electrical switching gear

For whatever reason, this seems to be more of a California problem.

What do you think of these? And what do you think is missing?

Rural Forests Markets Act

by

Just received a press release from the American Forest Foundation in support of the Rural Forests Markets Act, which would:

  • Establishes the Rural Forest Market Investment Program that offers guaranteed loans up to $150 million for nonprofits and companies to help small and family foresters create and sell forest credits for storing carbon or providing other environmental benefits.
  • Provides a climate solution by encouraging forestland owners to adopt voluntary land management practices that draw carbon out of the air and stores it in forests.
  • Creates new revenue streams for small-scale, family foresters by making it possible to generate innovative credits they can sell in established environmental marketplaces.
  • Brings investment into rural communities by reducing the financial risk to private investors who can contribute the upfront financing that makes these projects possible.

The press release:

Dear Senator Stabenow and Senator Braun,

The undersigned organizations are writing to offer our sincere thanks for your leadership in introducing S.
4451, the Rural Forests Markets Act. Together, we represent organizations with diverse backgrounds in
forest and forest products, large and small private forest owners, conservation and wildlife groups,
landowners, academics, and carbon finance experts, all proud to produce and support natural climate
solutions from our forests and forest products.

Even though our interests are diverse, the Rural Forests Markets Act benefits us all. For example, this bill
will help unlock capital investment that will allow America’s family forest owners to participate in
markets for carbon and other values. This bill will not just benefit family forest owners, but will also
support a diverse set of private forest owners seeking to participate in market opportunities that have high
up front costs but an abundance of environmental and economic benefits especially in rural areas.
Most importantly, we urge you to add the Rural Forests Markets Act to any year end package moving
through Congress to help stimulate rural economies by opening carbon and other markets, bringing
billions from the private sector and generating additional landowner income from their land.

Once again, we appreciate your dedication in ensuring investment to rural forested communities is
leveraged and access to carbon and other environmental markets are available to amplify our conservation
efforts.

Sincerely,

American Bird Conservancy
American Forest Foundation
American Forests
American Wood Council
Arkansas Forestry Association
Arkansas Tree Farm Program
Domtar
Finite Carbon
Hardwood Federation
Land Trust Alliance
Michigan State University Department of
Forestry
National Alliance of Forest Owners
National Association of State Foresters
National Wildlife Federation
Oregon Tree Farm Program
RenewWest
Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine
Society of American Foresters
The Lyme Timber Company
The Nature Conservancy
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
Western Landowners Alliance
Westrock