No, we can’t — and shouldn’t — stop forest fires: Hanson and Garrity 2017

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Oregon Dept. of Forestry
Air tanker retardant drops helped slow spread of Fir Mountain Fire south of Hood River.

This is a WaPo op-ed from 2017. IMHO it has not weathered (or should I say climated?) well over time. It’s also an example of View 1 from my post here. But if we look at news coverage of fires today, the dominant narrative is catastrophe by climate change. This sentence is probably the least apt for today (although it never was true).

We can no more suppress forest fires during extreme fire weather than we can stand on a ridgetop and fight the wind. It is hubris and folly to even try. Fires slow and stop when the weather changes.

Chad Hanson is a research ecologist with the John Muir Project and is co-editor and co-author of “The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix.” Mike Garrity is executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

The American West is burning, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) tells us in his recent Post op-ed. He and officials in the Trump administration have described Western forest fires as catastrophes, promoting congressional action ostensibly to save our National Forests from fire by allowing widespread commercial logging on public lands. This, they claim, will reduce forest density and the fuel for wildfires.

But this position is out of step with current science and is based on several myths promoted by commercial interests.

The first myth is the notion that fire destroys our forests and that we currently have an unnatural excess of fire. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a broad consensus among scientists that we have considerably less fire of all intensities in our Western U.S. forests compared with natural, historical levels, when lightning-caused fires burned without humans trying to put them out.

There is an equally strong consensus among scientists that fire is essential to maintain ecologically healthy forests and native biodiversity. This includes large fires and patches of intense fire, which create an abundance of biologically essential standing dead trees (known as snags) and naturally stimulate regeneration of vigorous new stands of forest. These areas of “snag forest habitat” are ecological treasures, not catastrophes, and many native wildlife species, such as the rare black-backed woodpecker, depend on this habitat to survive.

Fire or drought kills trees, which attracts native beetle species that depend on dead or dying trees. Woodpeckers eat the larvae of the beetles and then create nest cavities in the dead trees, because snags are softer than live trees. The male woodpecker creates two or three nest cavities each year, and the female picks the one she likes the best, which creates homes for dozens of other forest wildlife species that need cavities to survive but cannot create their own, such as bluebirds, chickadees, chipmunks, flying squirrels and many others.

More than 260 scientists wrote to Congress in 2015 opposing legislative proposals that would weaken environmental laws and increase logging on National Forests under the guise of curbing wildfires, noting that snag forests are “quite simply some of the best wildlife habitat in forests.”

That brings us to myth No. 2: that eliminating or weakening environmental laws — and increasing logging — will somehow curb or halt forest fires. In 2016, in the largest analysis ever on this question, scientists found that forests with the fewest environmental protections and the most logging had the highest — not the lowest — levels of fire intensity. Logging removes relatively noncombustible tree trunks and leaves behind flammable “slash debris,” consisting of kindling-like branches and treetops.

This is closely related to myth No. 3: that dead trees, usually removed during logging projects, increase fire intensity in our forests. A comprehensive study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences thoroughly debunked this notion by showing that outbreaks of pine beetles, which can create patches of snag forest habitat, didn’t lead to more intense fires in the area. A more recent study found that forests with high levels of snags actually burn less intensely. This is because flames spread primarily through pine needles and small twigs, which fall to the ground and soon decay into soil shortly after trees die.

Finally, myth No. 4: that we can stop weather-driven forest fires. We can no more suppress forest fires during extreme fire weather than we can stand on a ridgetop and fight the wind. It is hubris and folly to even try. Fires slow and stop when the weather changes. It makes far more sense to focus our resources on protecting rural homes and other structures from fire by creating “defensible space” of about 100 feet between houses and forests. This allows fire to serve its essential ecological role while keeping it away from our communities.

Lawmakers in Congress are promoting legislation based on the mythology of catastrophic wildfires that would largely eliminate environmental analysis and public participation for logging projects in our National Forests. This would include removing all or most trees in both mature forests and in ecologically vital post-wildfire habitats — all of which is cynically packaged as “fuel reduction” measures.

The logging industry’s political allies have fully embraced the deceptive “catastrophic wildfire” narrative to promote this giveaway of our National Forests to timber corporations. But this narrative is a scientifically bankrupt smoke screen for rampant commercial logging on our public lands. The American people should not fall for it.

With too many people (and feces) it may be time to limit access to protected areas: Commentary by Todd Wilkinson

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Packed trailhead in Southern Oregon. USFS photo.

It’s time to do something, what exactly? More money, more enforcement, ?. What should we (jointly) do and who (what organization(s)?) should take the lead? Note: it’s not just National Forests and BLM.

Here’s a link to the commentary (in the Denver Post) and some excerpts, but I encourage reading the whole piece.

When talking with managers of state and federal public lands these pandemic days, two issues popped up: what to do about large amounts of human feces deposited in wild places and how to handle far too many visitors. Both issues have served as a wake-up call to both land managers and environmentalists about the downsides of recreation.

“It’s like we’ve stared into a future that wasn’t supposed to arrive for a few decades,” said Randy Carpenter, who works with the community-planning organization FutureWest, in Bozeman. “The crush of people and the ecological impacts of rising recreation uses is right here, among us — right now — and it’s transforming the character of wild places.”

A paper published in the scientific journal PLOS One reviewed 274 scientific studies completed between 1981 and 2015 that examined the effects of recreation on a variety of animal species across all geographic areas and recreational activities. Kevin Crooks, a conservation biologist at Colorado State University, said given what we know now, “It might be time to establish limits on public access to protected areas and encourage changes in the behavior of recreationists.”

Though conservation groups continue to point fingers at logging, mining and ranching, they’ve been slow to acknowledge impacts from outdoor recreation. Last winter, at a U.S. Forest Service meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, biologists noted that backcountry skiing and snowboarding were harming a dwindling, isolated herd of bighorn sheep. Displaying what can only be called a crass attitude, one skier was heard to remark: “Well, the sheep have had these mountains for 10,000 years. Now it’s our turn.”

I’d argue that it’s long past time to encourage changes in the behavior of recreationists. And it was only a matter of time before the “protected” line is drawn further and further up the Pyramid of Pristinity.

Some recreationists insist on a quid pro quo: They’ll advocate protecting public land only if they’re allowed to use some of it. It’s happened in Idaho over wilderness and recently in debates over how to safeguard wildlife habitat in the Gallatin Range of southwest Montana.

An outdoor industry eager to get its slice of an $800 billion pie helps fuel the rush to the West’s public lands. Farrell says that outdoor-product manufacturers push hard for increased access to public lands in part because more users boost their bottom lines.

Meanwhile, many state tourism bureaus – like those in Montana, Wyoming and Utah — spend millions of dollars advertising national parks and other places that are already uncomfortably overcrowded.

“Critical discussions about recreation are rare because these activities are layered with a thin veneer of innocence,” Farrell said. This recalls a narrative of heedless use that goes back to the 19th and 20th centuries: Exploit a special place until it’s used up and then move on, leaving waste, damage and displaced wildlife behind. The problem is there aren’t many true wild places left to exploit.

I don’t agree with Farrell on the outdoor industry critique- mostly because much of those bucks are for OHV’s and RV’s which already don’t belong in protected areas. Of course, OIA has a political slant, so the whole issue is very complex (outdoor industries and their attitudes to recreation access and other uses of federal lands).

And so it goes, “wild places” must have only few people, using preferred kinds of recreation. As we clamber up the Pyramid of Pristinity, we continually meet new enemies and they are all us. So what is to be done?

What’s the Problem Again? Wildfires, Framing, Climate and Historic Range of Variation

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This was from a fire last year in which 100K people were ordered to evacuate.

I thought we could look back at our old posts about wildfires and see if there is anything new given this Fire year 2020. Of course, firefighters and people evacuating have all been impacted by Covid, but this is looking at the way we think about wildfire.

Here’s one from a year ago, an op-ed from the LA Times:

“We do fuel breaks because the premise is we’ve got a wildfire containment problem” when in fact, Cohen argues, we have a home ignition problem.

I’ve pointed out before that scientists don’t have any more authority to frame problems than anyone else. Here is a old post about framing the “living with fire” issue.

Just in the past few weeks, we can see other problems from fires besides home ignitions. You might be a truckdriver who couldn’t use I70 when it was closed due to wildfire. You might have had to evacuate a recreation site due to wildfire. As I’ve said before, evacuations can be difficult and unsafe.

But I also think that we have a bit of a philosophical conundrum here with these two current views.

View 1: Wildfires are natural and necessary for “the ecosystem”.
View 2: Wildfires are much worse (frequency, difficulty of fighting, acreage) due to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) (therefore unnatural).

It seems to me that the only way to incorporate these two perspectives is to use the concept of resilience (to disturbances, including AGW) (view 1), and be specific in what you are talking about- necessary for what part of the ecosystem? (View 2) To reproduce lodgepole pines? To provide habitat for black-backed woodpeckers? How much, where, and how intense do fires need to be to meet those “necessary” goals? Is it possible to achieve those specific ecosystem goals via PB (prescribed burning) or WFU (wildland fire use)?

If you subscribe to View 2, though, that climate is changing everything, then attempting to manage for the past (and leaving things alone as a solution) will not bring back the past (time’s arrow only works one way, but without AGW this argument hasn’t been successful with Historic Range of Variation aficionados) and we as a society are faced with deciding what it is we want, what we can change, and how much we are willing to pay to achieve those goals.

Meanwhile people who live in fire-prone areas (most of the western US) go about their business working on protecting their communities, improving notifications, and so on, as the more academic/media discussions about AGW seem irrelevant. Because most of us know there were fires before, and there will be fires again, even if everyone on the planet changed course immediately with regards to carbon, other GHG (greenhouse gases) land-use practices and other climate-changing activities. Then there’s the question of whether the climate would “change back” and how long that would take. Which we have, as with how much of what about wildfire is due to what aspect of climate change, really, no clue. How to proceed, acknowledging that we don’t and won’t know these things?

So what ideas should guide us forward? Here are some I’d put forward for us to discuss.

1. We’re all in this together. Everyone has a role to play. Let’s not get distracted by folks trying to divide us, e.g. “we can’t log our way out of wildfires” or Trump talking about raking.
2. Local people and governments have responsibility for maximizing firefighters’ chances of protecting infrastructure, through zoning, fuel management around homes, and access requirements.
3. Suppression people should play a key role in telling us what they need to succeed. Somehow I think we need to amplify their voices in the discussion.
4. PB should be increased, and should be guided by needs to protect (through strategic placement) human infrastructure and desired ecological conditions, e.g., endangered species habitat, and to foster resilience in a mix best derived at the local level (because they know what’s where).
5. Resilience should replace HRV and/or “ecological integrity” as a goal (even if it requires a (horrors!) new planning rule); and hopefully be easily integrated with the goals of other landowners.
6. If plant material needs to be reduced for fuels reduction, using it in some way is to be encouraged, rather than burning it onsite.

Sure, there are many moving parts. But as Michael Webber said about decarbonization, “Rather than finding someone to blame, let’s look for who can help.”

Thanks to Firefighters and All Those Helping With Wildfires!

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Evacuations in helicopter, photo from California National Guard.

It’s snowing here, and so hopefully that will give relief to some of the Colorado fires (and firefighters!). It seems simple to thank and honor firefighters (and pray for, for those so inclined) and the people supporting them (working on fires, their families, and people doing their work while they’re on fires). And yet there are more Forest Service (and other) folks to thank and appreciate for their work.

I caught this in an this story about one Forest Service person helping evacuate campers in California.

While some campers were rescued by helicopters, others made a white-knuckle drive to safety. Juliana Park recorded video of flames on both sides of her car as she and others fled down a mountain road.

“A backpacking trip cut short by unforeseen thunder, ash rain, and having to drive through literal fire to evacuate #SierraNationalForest in time,” Park tweeted. “Grateful to the SNF ranger who led us down … wish we got her name.”

If you see other such examples highlighting FS employees please share.

What Would Help Increase Use of Prescribed Fire? Practitioner Interviews: Schultz, McCaffrey, Huber-Stearns 2019

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Prescribed burn Deschutes NF

Thanks to Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today for posting this. What I like about this study is that researchers interviewed people (PB practitioners) working in the field. Well worth reading in its entirety (no firewall). Schultz, Courtney A. ; McCaffrey, Sarah M. ; Huber-Stearns, Heidi R., 2019.

I got the impression of “a lotta things have to go right at the right time for it to work” and “air quality (public or regulators) can or can’t be a major factor. It depends on where you are.” People have to be there at a particular time and there might be a narrow window when conditions are right or none at all that year. Very very difficult to budget and organize for, especially when the trained folks might also be called out on wildfires.

Here are the key findings:

*Findings support previous survey work that found that capacity is a major limitation for applying prescribed fire. We found less support for previous findings that air quality regulation is consistently a significant barrier, except in specific locations.
*Interviewees emphasized that owing to a lack of incentives and the prevalence of risk aversion at multiple agency levels, active prescribed fire programs depend on the leadership and commitment of individual decision-makers and fire managers.
*Successful approaches rely on collaborative forums and positions that allow communication, problem solving, and resource sharing among federal and state partners, and that facilitate dialogue between air-quality regulators and land managers.
*Although not a focus in the present work, interviewees also discussed other barriers to burning, like drought conditions, short burn windows, and the presence of challenging landscape conditions, such as the presence of invasive cheat grass (Bromus tectorum), that limit their ability to conduct prescribed fire.

I think it might be splitting hairs to say “We found less support for previous findings that air quality regulation is consistently a significant barrier, except in specific locations.” It’s one of those things we often see where findings are dependent on the spatial scale the researchers choose. It could be consistently a significant barrier in Washington State but not in Nevada and in this case it’s hard to think how you could average the various hassles across the western States to arrive at a western state-wide conclusion. I’d say that peoples’ experience and this research both show that both can be problems, and both need to be solved in some way, for PB efforts to be more successful. Again, perhaps splitting hairs, but another both/and thing.

One thing I thought was interesting was a characterization of fear of escapes. I’d think that would be an important factor, especially with people living near the PB (and of course we had three deaths in Colorado from the North Fork PB escape) but maybe that’s more of a localized concern?

There’s a bit of a mention in the Leadership section.

Leadership, riskaversion, incentives
‘There’s always disincentive. If you have the potential for putting your whole career on the line and all your people and everything else, why would you do that? What is there that gives you points for that? Really, nothing.’
‘While we intellectually recognise the need and value of prescribed fire, our culture is that of ‘firefighter’. And we are also pretty risk-averse organisation that really gets scared by the possibilities of a major escape.
We have plenty of opportunities to draw on negative experiences of others.’
‘I mean the personality of the person that’s talking to the burner, the person signing the permit, all the way up to the commissioner of public lands, who’s an elected official, [those things all matter]… If the elected official is extremely risk-adverse, that pretty much shuts down burning. If the [decision-maker] is a very proactive, forest health-[focused person], we can have a little bit of risk, and maybe a [smoke] intrusion and learn from it moving forward.’
‘We had the projects lined up. The burn window looked great, actually, for our region. But the politics of it… [an agency leader] asked me to cancel the event, for one because of the resource draw-down, but also just the optics of doing any kind of prescribed burning while people are losing their homes and people are losing lives and stuff. And I understood thaty But I did have this feeling like… when we start cancelling the good work that needs to happen because bad things are happening somewhere else, we’re just getting farther behind.’

I wonder if these risks feel the same for WFU vs. PB? Also how does AQ regulation work for WFU compared to PB?

Slaughtered Wolf Pups and Maimed Wolves in Idaho Demonstrate the Effects of Federal Delisting

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Here’s a press release issued today by Western Watersheds Project. Keep in mind that much of what is taking place is happening on National Forest System lands and also within federally designated Wilderness areas. Blog readers may recall that in April we featured and discussed an oped written by Wilderness Watch titled, “Time for USFS to Curtail Idaho’s Wolf Slaughter in Wilderness Areas.” This is, unfortunately, what state management of native predators like wolves looks like in places like Idaho.

BOISE, Ida. – Newly obtained records from Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) reveal that between January and September 2020, recreational wolf hunters, the IDFG and USDA APHIS Wildlife Services killed 35 wolf pups and juveniles in Idaho, some weighing as little 16 pounds, and likely only four to six weeks old. The new records show that, in total, over 256 Idaho wolves have already been killed in Idaho in 2020—and the wolf hunting season, which runs for 11 to 12 months in much of the state, is not over yet.

Wolves in Idaho were removed from the Endangered Species list in 2011 by congressional decree, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week that the removal of wolves from Endangered Species Act protection nation-wide is “very imminent.” The recent records from Idaho show what state wolf management really looks like, and it’s ugly.

“They are killing whole litters of nursing wolf pups,” said Talasi Brooks, Staff Attorney for Western Watersheds Project. “It just puts the lie to the narrative that IDFG is ‘managing’ the species.  What they are really promoting is slaughtering native predators for no other reason than Idaho’s anti-wolf, pro-ranching agenda. Putting wolf management in the hands of the states is a recipe for disaster.”

The records reveal the brutal effects of wolf trapping. One trapped wolf had only three legs with a trap still stuck on one leg. Two wolves had cracked teeth to the bone or shattered teeth trying bite traps. One wolf trapped by Wildlife Services in July died of hyperthermia, and one wolf was found dead in a private trap. A number of wolves were gunned down by Wildlife Services in “Aerial Control Actions.”

“The slaughter of wolf pups is cruel on its face, but these records are still more disturbing because they demonstrate the agony that even so-called nonlethal traps can cause,” said Brooks. “Idaho’s 72-hour trap check time leaves wolves and other animals to languish for days, causing intense suffering and gruesome deaths, and there’s just no excuse for such cruelty.”

About 400 wolves have been killed each year in Idaho for the past several years, and 2020 seems to be on track to set records. With only about 1,000 wolves in the state, this means about 40 percent of the wolf population is removed each year. This level of population disruption leads to population-level effects among wolves, including population decline, a younger, destabilized population, and ultimately more livestock conflicts.

“This is why wolves need to be listed and protected by the Endangered Species Act,” said Brooks. “Science needs to guide decision-making, not just state-by-state hostility towards native predators.”

IDFG is accepting comment on a proposal to further expand wolf-killing in Idaho by allowing wolves to be trapped near dead animal carcasses—reviving an effort to allow wolf-baiting that previously failed following overwhelmingly negative public comments.  Comment is due by September 23.

Will Revised CEQ NEPA Regulations Speed Decisions? Guest Post by Joe Carbone

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If you’ve been following this in a casual way, you might have heard “this is the best thing since sliced bread” or “the Trump administration has eviscerated NEPA.” But what’s really in it? I asked Joe Carbone, one of the most wise, thoughtful, and experienced NEPA experts I know, to give his views and to kick off a discussion.

According to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), their revision to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) regulations (40 CFR 1500-1508) “updates, modernizes, and clarifies the regulations to facilitate more efficient, effective, and timely NEPA reviews by Federal agencies.” Multiple organizations have raised complaints about the revised regulations undercutting NEPA’s goals.

We can engage in many discussions about the pros and cons of the CEQ revisions; however, as a long-time NEPA practitioner and policy wonk, I am first asking whether the revisions will meet CEQ’s intended outcomes. While the 2020 regulations are somewhat more modern, I do not understand why the administration and industry groups are cheering the changes as an accomplishment for future infrastructure projects requiring Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). Although contrasting flowcharts at the regulation rollout in Atlanta showed a dramatic change under the revised regulations, the changes will fall short of CEQ’s goals when it comes to EIS efficiency.

The regulatory impact analysis for the rule is qualitative, attributing savings to the same efficiencies in the 1978 regulations (reduce unnecessary paperwork, reduce delay, improve coordination, focus less on non-significant impacts). The greatest reduction seems to be based on the now required presumptive time limit for EISs (58% reduction assuming a 2-year completion time).

Generally, some of CEQ’s changes merely reorganize the regulations and incorporate modern technology, current agency practice, CEQ guidance, and case law. These have little to no impact on future efficiency since they are already used today. However, other changes remove requirements that were already based on case law (i.e. cumulative and indirect effects) and add many new requirements [i.e. notice of intent request for potential alternatives, information, and analyses [1501.9 (d)(7)], summary (1502.17), comments on the summary [1503.1(a)(3)], and a certification in a record of decision [1505.2(b)]. The uncertainty surrounding eliminated requirements originally based on case law and new requirements will surely extend the cost and time needed to prepare an EIS.

Removing previous requirements that were based on case law such as indirect and cumulative effects leaves the impression these types of effects no longer need to be considered. This poses uncertainty for Federal agencies as they debate the merits of whether to include them. This is a change the environmental community and the courts are not likely to ignore. In the end, agencies will still need to consider indirect and cumulative effects; however, the uncertainty, debate, and resulting litigation will undermine timely decisions and implementation.

The requirements associated with a new summary in the draft and final EISs (this is in addition to the required executive summary) will take more time and documentation to implement as this requirement spans from the notice of intent to file an EIS through potential litigation after a decision. This problem starts with one of the four new requirements in a notice of intent to file an EIS. Agencies must now include “a request for identification of potential alternatives, information, and analyses relevant to the proposed action.” This information ties to the new requirement for including a summary in the draft EIS that identifies “all alternatives, information, and analyses submitted by State, Tribal, and local governments and other public commenters during the scoping process.” This summary then ties to the new requirement for a draft EIS, to “invite comment specifically on the submitted alternatives, information, and analyses and the summary thereof.” The final EIS must also include a summary of “all alternatives, information, and analyses submitted…in developing the final environmental impact statement.” This summary then ties to the new requirement for a record of decision, to: “certify in the record of decision that the agency has considered all of the alternatives, information, analyses, and objections submitted by State, Tribal, and local governments and public commenters.” All of this is tied to judicial review, where “Comments or objections of any kind not submitted, including those based on submitted alternatives, information, and analyses, shall be forfeited as unexhausted” [1500.3(b)(3)]. As the regulatory impact analysis states: “CEQ expects the exhaustion requirement to reduce the litigation costs that NEPA generates.” As I see it, this is a typical approach to fix NEPA litigation – add more documentation. How does this shorten timeframes and speed decisions?

Agencies already receive thousands of comments on draft EISs, including articles, research, photos, and other information – relevant or not. You can bet they will receive many more comments covering a wide spectrum of “alternatives, information, and analyses” along with traditional comments on alternatives and effects during scoping and the draft comment period just to cover commenters’ potential litigation needs. Agencies will need to track every comment related to each commenter, prepare the summaries for the draft and final EISs, certify in the record of decision that the comments were considered, and review standing eligibility in case of a lawsuit.

With new regulatory interpretations and requirements, there is an added burden of showing the agency took a hard look and was not arbitrary and capricious in its findings, decisions, and certifications. This will take quite a record. While agencies are compiling records they will also be counting pages to keep the EIS under the now required 150-300 pages (1502.7), marking time to get to a decision within two years [1501.10(a)(2)], and tracking EIS costs to put on the cover [1502.11(g)]. Perhaps those are the requirements designed to speed the process, but they are more likely to be distractions and agency time-sinks on top of the new summary requirements.

Do those who are cheering the revised NEPA regulations see something to speed agency decisions or have they been fooled by messaging and optics? I do not understand how more process and documentation requirements will shorten timelines, but I am open to hearing how others see these changes playing out if the revised rule is implemented.

Joe Carbone, Carbone Consulting, LLC

Joe Carbone is a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) consultant and trainer. He retired after 37 years with the U.S. Forest Service where he oversaw the agency’s NEPA policy in Washington D.C. and Atlanta. He served as Deputy Associate Director for NEPA at the Council on Environmental Quality in 2016.

UPDATE: Reporting on timber lobbying prompts Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to call for audit of state institute

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Here’s an update in the Oregonian on a story we’ve been following here on this blog.

Reporting on timber lobbying prompts Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to call for audit of state institute

The Oregon Forest Resources Institute worked to undercut academic research and acted as a lobbying and public relations arm for the timber industry. Now, the governor has asked for an audit.

By Tony Schick (OPB) and Rob Davis (The Oregonian)

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown this week requested an audit of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute after an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive, OPB and ProPublica revealed that the tax-funded agency worked to discredit academic research and acted as a lobbying and public relations arm for the timber industry.

In a letter dated Aug. 31, Brown’s office asked Secretary of State Bev Clarno to conduct a thorough audit of the agency, pointing to a need for an investigation in light of “facts recently disclosed” in public records and media reports that “allege a variety of statutory and ethical concerns.”

“An audit is necessary to bring transparency to whether OFRI conducts its mission in keeping with its statutory authority, including the clear prohibition on OFRI influencing, or attempting to influence state policy,” Jason Miner, the governor’s natural resource policy director, wrote in the letter. He added that the audit should also determine “whether there is any public benefit to OFRI.”

The Oregon Forest Resources Institute, known as OFRI, was created in 1991 to educate the public about forestry and to teach landowners about logging laws and sound environmental practices. Lawmakers established a tax on logging to pay for the institute while cutting taxes paid by the timber industry that helped fund schools and local governments.

By law, OFRI is prohibited from attempting to influence policy.

Thousands of records obtained by the news organizations found the agency targeted university climate change research and spent millions of dollars on advertisements that promoted Oregon’s logging laws as strong, even as federal biologists said they did not do enough to protect coastal rivers from pollution. Its leaders also sat in on a lobbying group’s deliberations about attack ads against Brown during her 2018 bid for reelection.

“The revelations recently uncovered by OPB, the Oregonian, and ProPublica — that the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) engaged in activities seeking to influence campaigns and legislation and interfere with university climate research –– are deeply concerning,” Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Brown, said in an email.

Boyle noted there have been only two other audit requests during the governor’s five years in office. He said the institute’s use of tax dollars merits further examination, particularly at a time when the economic impacts of the coronavirus have forced the state to weigh difficult budget decisions to preserve health care, education and senior services.

“OFRI’s work and stewardship of tax dollars have escaped public scrutiny for more than a decade,” Boyle said. “In this fiscal climate, it’s worth asking the question whether those tax dollars are needed elsewhere.”

Erin Isselmann, OFRI’s executive director, said in an email that the institute welcomes the audit from the secretary of state. She has previously said that, under her leadership, the institute has operated “under the highest ethical standards.”

“We look forward to working with the audit team and learning from their analysis and recommendations,” Isselmann said.

The institute has not been audited since 1996, according to the secretary of state’s office. The office’s Audits Division said it would begin its work soon, but it is unclear how long the probe will take.

“Our independent auditors look forward to working with the Governor’s Office, OFRI leadership, and stakeholders to review how the agency can best deliver on its mission,” Kip Memmott, the secretary of state’s audits director, said in a statement.

Brown’s request comes as several Democrats in the Oregon Legislature, including the chairman of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee and a high-ranking House member, said there would be legislation in the upcoming session in response to the yearlong investigation by the three news organizations.

A citizens group of 70 teachers, nurses, water managers, foresters and others last week also announced plans to introduce a ballot initiative, citing the investigation’s findings. In its current form, the initiative, which would need to gather more than 100,000 valid signatures before qualifying for the ballot, would redirect OFRI’s budget to support outdoor education programs and rural job training. It also would reinstate timber severance taxes, which are based on the value of the trees that are logged.

In a story published in June, the three news organizations found that the state’s largest timber companies received billions of dollars in tax cuts since the 1990s. The investigation, which analyzed data from the state Department of Forestry and Department of Revenue, found that without the tax cuts cities and counties would have collected about $3 billion in severance taxes from the timber industry during the past three decades. Instead, they got about $871 million.

State Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, who leads the Senate environment committee, said lawmakers would take a hard look at the institute when the Legislature convenes in February. He said details on how lawmakers will address concerns related to the institute, including plans to redirect its budget, would emerge during committee hearings in December.

Golden also expects lawmakers will more seriously debate reintroducing the state’s severance tax for timber companies. He said the investigation generated significant interest among lawmakers and constituents.

“I can’t tell you how many people wrote me after those, sent me the links and said, ‘Did you know about this stuff?’” Golden said. “It really brought things that have been on the back burner to the front burner.”

Among the measures already being drafted, state Rep. Marty Wilde, D-Eugene, said he is crafting legislation that would increase property taxes for industrial timberlands and give forest owners incentives to allow trees to grow older before cutting them down. State Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Lake Oswego, said she would file a bill to restore severance taxes. The measure would offer tax breaks for ecological forestry that would promote selective tree logging instead of clearing large swaths of forest at once.

Democrats have a supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature, allowing them to pass laws without Republican support, but efforts to reform forest policies have stalled in recent years.

State Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, has been pushing legislation unsuccessfully to revisit timber taxes since 2014. Holvey said legislative action feels closer to reality than in previous years.

In 2018, Holvey tried to shrink OFRI’s budget by 60% and use the savings to help combat wildfires. His bill died after the timber industry opposed defunding the institute. Holvey also previously attempted to introduce a new severance tax that would fund the state’s wildfire response.

“I think people are much more concerned about it now, which has kind of elevated the conversation. And I think the industry has come to the realization that the conversation is going to happen so they need to be in it,” Holvey said. “But at the end of the day, I’m not seeing everything through rose-colored glasses, because the political power of that industry inside the state of Oregon is very strong.”

APHIS Public Comment Period Open for Deregulating Transgenic American Chestnut

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A birds-eye view of the American chestnut forest restoration site. (from Cornell Alliance For Science site).

 

And now for something completely different…

For the last 30 or so years, the Chestnut People (people who want to restore American Chestnut) have been engaged in such a horse race. There were backcrosses to Chinese chestnut, which is resistant to Chestnut Blight.  There were folks trying to breed apparently resistant American Chestnuts to each other.  Finally, there were folks trying genetic engineering. At some point, they all got together to form what The American Chestnut Foundation calls 3BUR  :Breeding, Biotechnology and Biocontrol United for Restoration.

So here we are.. there is a specific tree called Darling 58  which is in a public comment period to be deregulated by APHIS, so that it can be planted like any other tree.  The idea is then to cross the GE trees with local chestnuts to develop regionally adapted and diverse populations.  Meanwhile another horse has entered the field called CRISPR , who might ultimately beat them all. If the last 30 years have taught us anything, it is that intervention is required to restore the Chestnut and the transgenic horse is the only one likely to finish (not just win) the race.

There’s a lengthy and interesting NY Times Magazine article by Gabriel Potkin on the history and development here:.  I thought it might be interesting to look at the arguments against deregulation.

But Brenda Jo McManama, an organizer with a group called the Indigenous Environmental Network, points to a 2010 agreement in which Monsanto licensed two gene-modifying patents to the New York chapter of the chestnut foundation and its collaborating institutions. (Powell says that industry contributions, including from Monsanto, have amounted to less than 4 percent of his work’s total funding.) McManama suspects Monsanto (acquired by Bayer in 2018) surreptitiously seeks to patent future iterations of the tree by supporting what appears to be an altruistic project. “Monsanto is evil,” she says flatly.

Powell says the patents in the 2010 agreement have since expired, and by publishing the details of his tree in the scientific literature, he has ensured it can’t be patented. But he realizes that will not allay all concerns. “I know some people are going to say, You’re just a Monsanto shill,” he says. “What can you do? You can’t help that.”

About five years ago, leaders at the American Chestnut Foundation concluded that they couldn’t achieve their goals through crossbreeding alone and embraced Powell’s genetic-engineering program. That decision has caused some rifts. In March 2019, Lois Breault-Melican, the president of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island chapter of the foundation, resigned, citing arguments made by the Global Justice Ecology Project, an anti-genetic-engineering organization based in Buffalo; her husband, Denis Melican, also left the board. The couple is particularly concerned that Powell’s chestnut could prove to be a “Trojan horse” that clears the way for other commercially grown trees supercharged by genetic engineering, Denis told me.

Susan Offutt, an agricultural economist who served as chair of a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine committee that produced a 2018 study of biotechnology in forests, noted that the government’s regulatory process focuses on narrow questions of biological risk and almost never accounts for broader societal concerns like those raised by anti-G.M.O. activists. “What about the intrinsic value of the forest?” she asks, as an example of a question the process does not address. “Do forests have their own merit? Do we have a moral obligation to take that into account when we make decisions about intervening?”

Most scientists I spoke with see little reason to fear Powell’s tree, given the profound disruptions forests have already endured: logging, mining, development and a relentless influx of tree-destroying insects and diseases, among which chestnut blight has proved to be a kind of opening act. “We’re introducing new whole organisms all the time,” says Gary Lovett, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. The transgenic chestnut “would have less of an impact than that.”

Donald Waller, a forest ecologist recently retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, goes further. “I sketched out a little balance with risks on one side and rewards on the other, and I just kept scratching my head over the risks” that this transgenic tree could pose to the forest, he told me. By contrast, “the side of the page under the rewards is just spilling over with ink.” A blight-resistant chestnut would finally notch a victory for the embattled forest, he says. “People need hope. People need symbols.”

So there are two forest ecologists who are OK with it.

An ag economist who was the Chair of an NAS panel (on Forest Health and Biotechnology? Well, OK)  raises questions about the APHIS regulatory system which fall into the realm of  moral philosophy.

Folks who think the  (possibly bad) “commercial forest industry” is using this as a Trojan Horse.  For the last twenty years, I’ve been saying transgenic  trees just aren’t practical for forest industry and perhaps I’m right -as none have shown up.

and “Monsanto is evil”? It’s hard to think of TACF-chestnut restoration enthusiasts- or professors at SUNY ESF for that matter, as evil.

It’s really hard for me to see any bad guys here.  If you don’t want them, fine. But there seems to be some needless enemizing going on.

I’m with the forest ecologists here, and will be submitting my comments. Here’s a link to further information on how to comment via TACF.

 

‘Timber Wars’ Podcast

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Oregon Public Broadcasting will begin a 7-part ‘Timber Wars’ podcast later this month.

“OPB’s seven-episode podcast “Timber Wars” (launches Sept. 22) tells the behind-the-scenes story of how a small group of activists and scientists turned the fight over ancient trees and a bird no one had heard about into one of the biggest environmental conflicts of the 20th century.”