Public lands litigation news, early July, 2020

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While we (maybe) await further news of what the Forest Service thinks is news, here’s some of what I’ve seen.  Some others we’ve looked at already:

Bi-state sage-grouse

Mexican spotted owl

North Cascades grizzly bears  (see comments)

FOREST SERVICE

In a case that has been discussed here a number of times (such as here) The Montana federal district court found that the Forest Service had acted in “bad faith” on the Ten Mile-South Helena project on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, finding that it would require reconstruction of old roads in an area protected by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.   The judge refused to defer to the agency:

“The matter is not one that involves specialized or expert knowledge,” Christensen wrote. “The problem is basic geometry. A vehicle with a wheelbase 9 to 11 feet wide requires a road similarly wide. The Lazyman area does not contain a network of preexisting roads 9 to 11 feet wide. Therefore, bringing this equipment into the area will require the Forest Service to widen the roads.”

The judge also held that the project would require additional NEPA analysis after changing it to allow mechanized logging equipment, and the Forest would need to consult with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the impacts to grizzly bears of proposed trails that would allow mountain bikes.  Plaintiffs’ takes on the opinion are here and here.

The first week of July, the Friends of the Clearwater and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a lawsuit against the Lolo Insect and Disease Project on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest, which calls for logging across 3,380 acres in 30 harvest units.  The Plaintiffs’ perspective, focusing on the threatened Snake River Basin steelhead, is here (the National Marine Fisheries Service is a co-defendant).

Remember that pipeline that the Supreme Court just said could be built on national forest lands and under the Appalachian Trail (in Cowpasture River Preservation Association v. U. S. Forest Service)?  On July 5, developers of the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline announced they are canceling the project, blaming legal setbacks and economic uncertainty.

OTHER AGENCIES

On June 29, the Center for Biological Diversity and Healthy Gulf filed a notice of intent to sue the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to develop recovery plans for the endangered reticulated and frosted flatwoods salamanders.  (The lack of a recovery plan for the latter was an issue during the Francis Marion National Forest’s forest plan revision, and arguably influenced its ability to contribute to recovery.)

On July 1, WildEarth Guardians and Wilderness Workshop sued the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to take any action in response to a 2016 court order striking down the agency’s exclusion of Canada lynx habitat in the species’ entire southern Rocky Mountain range from designation as critical habitat.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on July 9 in McGirt v. Oklahoma that much of Oklahoma’s tribal lands had never been rescinded, and that the state had no criminal jurisdiction over those lands. However, some Indian law experts believe the ruling may lead to more civil and regulatory oversight by tribal governments on land within historic reservation boundaries.  This article cites an example of Mt. Graham, now part of the Coronado National Forest.

On July 14, conservation and landowner groups filed a new lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s approval of the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline to be constructed on federal BLM lands in Montana. The complaint asserts that the reviews by the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service under the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act are riddled with the same errors and omissions as earlier versions deemed insufficient by a federal court in 2018.

Liberal, progressive — and racist? The Sierra Club faces its white-supremacist history- from WaPo

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I think one of the ways it’s easy to talk past each other is that some people have a philosophy of “letting things alone” (philosophical, abstract). Other people tend to be more concrete (would 15 or 30 snags per acre be better for a species of woodpecker?). Perhaps (this is a hypothesis) collaboration that works from with concrete kinds of people can’t fundamentally work out with philosophical differences. Some people have criticized some environmentalists as being “religious” in the sense of holding strong beliefs that are not based on reason. I think there may be something to the difficulty of successfully mediating philosophical disputes. For example, in religion there are unitarians and trinitarians.. no one has proposed duotarianism as a way for them all to get along. But folks can either burn each other at the stake or agree to disagree. In subsequent posts, I’ll be doing more digging into the philosophies underlying folks’ views.
My bolds.

Anyway, this is an interesting article from the WaPo that touches on John Muir’s philosophy. I bolded the religious adjectives.

No one is more important to the history of environmental conservation than John Muir — the “wilderness prophet,” “patron saint of the American wilderness” and “father of the national parks” who founded the nation’s oldest conservation organization, the Sierra Club. But on Wednesday, citing the current racial reckoning, the group announced it will end its blind reverence to a figure who was also racist.

As Confederate statues fall across the country, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an early morning post on the group’s website, “it’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history.” Muir, who fought to preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Forest, once referred to African Americans as lazy “Sambos,” a racist pejorative that many black people consider to be even more offensive than the n-word.

While recounting a legendary walk from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, Muir described Native Americans he encountered as “dirty.”

Muir’s friendships in the early 1900s were equally troubling, the Sierra Club said. Henry Fairfield Osborn, a close associate, led the New York Zoological Society and the board of trustees of the American Museum of Natural History and, following Muir’s death, helped establish the American Eugenics Society, which labeled nonwhite people, including Jews at the time, as inferior.

The Sierra Club isn’t the only organization that is shaking its foundations. Leaders of predominantly white, liberal and progressive groups throughout the field of conservation say they are taking a hard look within their organizations and don’t like what they see.

African American and other minority employees are pointing out the lack of diversity in green groups and the racial bias that persists in top and mid-level management.

…..

The roots of American environmentalism are grounded in a reverence for nature and racism. Muir’s contemporaries at the turn of the last century included Madison Grant, a co-founder of the Bronx Zoo who wrote “The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History,” an argument for white supremacy in which he decried the decline of Nordic people.

Former president Theodore Roosevelt, who created the first national parks, praised the 1916 book, which helped shape the views the future leader of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler, who would go on to write the anti-Semitic autobiography “Mein Kampf,” called Grant’s book, “my bible.”

Within mainstream environmental groups, diversity is lacking

Given the troubled history of the groups, black and brown activists who have long complained about unfair funding and lack of attentions to their communities weren’t impressed.

“The big white green groups have all issued racial justice statements — a good first baby step,” said Robert Bullard, a Texas Southern University professor and activist who helped restart the National Black Environmental Justice Network this month.

“In my opinion, none of them have taken a strong stand in the way their white privilege sucks up damn near all the green dollars from foundations and donors, away from people of color.”

Environmental and climate justice groups work in communities with the greatest need, said Bullard, a founder of the environmental justice movement that started when African American, Latino, Native American and other environmentalists gathered for the first time in D.C. in 1991 and vowed to fill the gaps big green groups missed.

For more than 30 years, environmental justice groups have deployed paltry budgets to fight big battles over power plants, refineries, landfills and other projects that foul the air and land around black and Latino communities. Ludovic Blain, who attended the second environmental summit a decade after the first, said activists often worked without pay.

“If you’re very used to not getting funded, people are used to doing it free,” Blain said. “The environmental movement has a lot of philanthropic money, there’s enough money to go around.”

According to its tax filing, the Sierra Club had assets of more than $106 million in 2018, and the Union of Concerned Scientists had nearly $40 million. One group, the Nature Conservancy, had assets and grants that totaled more than $1 billion that year. Another, the Natural Resources Defense Council, had more than $350 million.

A view of Yosemite Valley from the Tunnel View lookout point in Yosemite National Park in California. John Muir’s activism helped lead to the creation of the park.
A view of Yosemite Valley from the Tunnel View lookout point in Yosemite National Park in California. John Muir’s activism helped lead to the creation of the park. (Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images)
That compares to about $2 million for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in New Orleans and $2.5 million for West Harlem Environmental Action in New York. Los Jardines Institute, another environmental justice group, had about $300,000 in revenue in 2018.

“If you had told me two decades ago that millions of dollars would be going to Latino environmental justice work, I would never have guessed it would have been through Natural Resources Defense Council,” Blain said.

The nation’s biggest philanthropies have traditionally given to established environmental groups. The Hewlett Foundation, for example, has given about half a million dollars a year to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s lands program for a quarter-century, but last year it informed the organization that it would be giving that money to more-local groups such as Outdoor Afro, GreenLatinos and the Hispanic Access Foundation.

Familiar Story in California: Clearcuts and Wildfire

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Like Morrissey said in the late 1980s…”Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before.”A familiar story in playing out California. The 12,000 acreHog Fire in California is ripping across clearcut lands owned by Sierra Pacific Industries and racing east towards the city of Susanville. From the website of Sierra Pacific Industries:

Fires are a part of the forest ecosystem. Plants and animals have evolved in the presence of fires but after decades of fire suppression and “hands-off” management policies, public land has unnaturally dense forests, which are prone to catastrophic wildfires. These crowded forests contribute to fires that race through the crowns of the trees making them nearly impossible to fight, worsen the soil due to the higher than normal heat intensity, and unnecessarily put human lives, animal habitats and water quality at risk.

At Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), we use modern forest management techniques to reduce the risk of wildfire without damaging the health of the forest. The key to effective fire prevention is removal of dry brush and careful thinning of overgrown forests.

We prepare ahead of time to reduce the threat of fire and to specifically:

Sierra Pacific makes a special effort to give our forests defensible fire space. Our foresters intentionally thin out the forest in strategic spots to help stop wildfires. Typically, these spots are along ridges, near towns, and along major roads – areas where firefighters can make a stand against a raging wildfire. These thinned areas usually have some trees, and are called “shaded fuel breaks.”

SPI actively works with our neighbors, conservation agencies, and fire fighters to make fire awareness a community issue. We curtail our woods operations on high fire danger days. We train all of our woods workers in the use of fire fighting equipment. And we fund and maintain a private road system that is mapped and accessible for fire fighting agencies

After a fire, SPI quickly moves in to restore the forest and prevent environmental degradation. SPI analyzes the fire site to determine impact on soil erosion, water quality, and plant and wildlife habitat. Then, professional foresters develop and implement a plan to replant the forest and restore environmental balance often using a technique known as “subsoiling” to break up the fire-hardened surface and create furrows to catch water before it flows downhill. This allows the water to soak into the furrows and stay on the land.

SPI maintains an extensive “seed bank” that stores seeds collected from the conifers growing on Sierra Pacific lands. After a major fire, we use these seeds to replant the burned area with trees native to the site.

We’ve talked about Sierra Pacific Industries, their clearcuts and (their?) wildfires before.

Clearcutting and Fuel Treatment in California: Will the California Forestry Association Call out Sierra Pacific’s Clearcuts?

A Billion-Dollar Fortune From Timber and Fire

A Wildfire of Corruption

Of course, we all know how this familiar story will end. The timber industry and politicians will blame these wildfires on environmentalists (or “environmental terrorist groups” or “environmental radicals” as Trump’s (disgraced) Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did in 2018. And this familiar blame game will be followed by more calls to “fast track” logging on national forests by categorically excluding timber sales from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (even though pretty much the entire U.S. Forest Service timber sale could be logged via Categorical Exclusions to NEPA right now). As the Talking Heads said in the early 1980s…”Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.”

UPDATE: The 14,500 acre Gold Fire, burning just north of the Hog Fire, has now made it to this nice patch of “forest.”

Stanislaus spotted owl plan amendment

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Photo of female and juvenile California spotted owl courtesy of University of California Cooperative Extension (http://ucanr.org/sites/spottedowl/).

We recently looked at the Biological Assessment of Northwest Forests, and the options for proceeding with revising forest plans currently governed by the Northwest Forest Plan. Some of those options involved amendments to existing plans prior to plan revision. I voiced support for amendments that would provide the ecological conditions needed for at-risk species. I thought this might be an example to look at for how that might go.

The Stanislaus National Forest is not in the area covered by this assessment. Its forest plan was originally completed in 1991, but it was amended by the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment (or Framework) in 2004, which is roughly analogous to the Northwest Forest Plan in that it had its origins in the work done to protect the California spotted owl (it has its own complicated political and legal history). Now the Stanislaus is proposing an amendment for a part of the Forest in conjunction with what it calls the Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape (SERAL) project.

The Forest has identified a need to change the forest plan based on new information about the California spotted owl, as published in 2019 by the Forest Service in the “Conservation Strategy for the California Spotted Owl in the Sierra Nevada.”

In order to fully adopt and implement the management direction described in the Conservation Strategy and increase landscape resiliency as guided by NRV the Stanislaus National Forest’s forest LRMP must be amended. The proposed forest plan amendments would allow the SERAL project’s proposed landscape restoration treatments to best meet the purpose and need of the project and implement the guiding principles of the 2019 California Spotted Owl Conservation Strategy. The proposed amendments include standards and guidelines which will provide some immediate stability for individual owls while allowing forest management the ability to conduct treatments designed to help develop resilient habitat conditions that provide CSO conservation in the long term.

Unfortunately, the CSO Conservation Strategy was apparently written for a narrower purpose than its name implies:

The California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) Conservation Strategy is a strategic framework for active conservation of the California spotted owl on National Forest System lands in the Sierra Nevada.

It appears to be something less than a scientific strategy. By limiting the focus to “active conservation” it has failed to address the central debate about managing spotted owl habitat regarding when active management should even be used. Passive management is one obvious alternative to this amendment that the Forest is going to have to address in its amendment process. But I looked at some of the proposed changes in the forest plan.

The current plan designates spotted owl Protected Activity Centers (PACs) as management areas in the forest plan (which could be changed only by amending the forest plan). This proposed amendment would replace current management areas with guidelines to designate PACs later “in advance of any management activities that would reduce CSO nesting and roosting habitat quality.” The guidelines include criteria for delineating and changing PAC boundaries.

My opinion: This is not a coarse filter management strategy based on vegetation because it depends on actual owl presence based on surveys, or one might call it “condition-based.”  If owl presence is the kind of thing that changes frequently, this may be a reason to not designate permanent management areas at the plan level.  However, this creates the risk of cutting the public out of the part of the process that actually determines the locations for management.  The plan is no longer saying, “here is where we’ll manage for owls,” but instead, “we’ll manage for owls where we think we need to manage for owls, trust us.”  The criteria must be explicit and objective enough to fully evaluate at the plan level, and the decisions about whether and how to apply them at the project level must include the public. Given the importance that surveying would take on, there is no excuse for these being guidelines rather than standards. It seems to me that the certainty of owl protection, and therefore the viability of the species, is going to be reduced.

There are a lot of new plan components in the amendment, and the CSO Conservation Strategy is page-referenced for most of them. That’s how any conservation strategy should be used, so maybe this is a good example of that. Except that it strikes me that this “conservation strategy” may have actually been written as a “drop-in” amendment to be used this way (which makes that kind of cross-referencing a lot easier). This is similar to what would happen if plan amendments were developed that could be later “dropped in” to forest plan revisions. The problem is that if the “conservation strategy” is already a management-influenced document and not a science document, there would still need to be a reference to the actual scientific basis for these conservation recommendations that are being adopted.

Anyway, this project/amendment will be worth watching as it applies the 2012 Planning Rule diversity requirements to California spotted owls. And it may be setting some precedents for what could happen regarding how to plan for management of spotted owl habitat on other national forests.

PERCs Take on Strategies for Eastern Washington Wolves

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At one of the WGA (Western Governors’s Assocation) Working Lands meetings, I remember a speaker saying “some people think of ranchers as the enemy, what if we thought of them as partners?”. A number of years ago, I worked with environmental lawyers and others on the regulations around releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment. It seemed like people who have worked in the polluting chemicals kinds of environmental issues wouldn’t think of Monsanto as a partner. The act of regulating industries should be more or less arms-length (you have to understand their processes, or you can’t be good regulators). But maybe natural resources-related environmental conflicts call for a different, more inclusive, and less adversarial approach. We see that with fisheries management, the sage grouse initiative, and so on.

I was thinking of #EnvironmentWithoutEnemies when I read this summary of a report by PERC. The whole summary and report can be found here. I bolder a few of my favorite statements.

The governor’s letter demonstrates the difficulty of managing the political pressures associated with wolf recovery. Wolf populations have been steadily increasing and are not dispersing across the state as initially expected, creating a high-conflict zone where wolves and ranchers are both heavily concentrated. The weaknesses in the state’s approach to managing this conflict are being magnified, and there is a need to adjust the existing management strategy.

Additionally, as WDFW begins planning for post-recovery, there is an opportunity to examine the current strategy and determine what changes should be made to protect the livelihood of ranchers while ensuring that wolves continue on their path to full recovery and delisting throughout the state.

Ensuring there continues to be a healthy ranching economy is a matter of fairness, economic strength, and environmental sustainability. The counties most affected by the return of wolves have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state, nearly double the state average. Ranchers, range riders, and hunters are also good partners in caring for the land and in funding wildlife stewardship. Successful wolf management that protects the livelihoods of ranchers and farmers while helping wolf populations grow is economically, morally and environmentally responsible.

Based on the history of wolf recovery in Washington and other western states, the best path would combine (1) improved non-lethal management approaches, (2) more rapid lethal removal of problem packs, and (3) expanded compensation programs designed by ranchers and others in the community where conflict is occurring. Some of these tactics are already being used but are not as effective as they could be for a variety of reasons. Additionally, since wolves have not dispersed across the state, the state should delist the species in Eastern Washington, as the federal government has, and focus its recovery efforts on other regions where wolf recovery is proceeding more slowly. The state can also pilot post-recovery strategies in Northeast Washington where the density of the wolf population is at a level that justifies delisting. Those pilot strategies should be developed primarily by the interested parties representing ranchers, conservation groups, and others in the affected communities. The state will always act as a backstop to any agreement, but it should encourage and be guided by a collaborative solution. Doing so would encourage groups to engage cooperatively rather than appealing primarily to the agency or to judges to intervene, which would increase conflict, mistrust and animosity. There is no quick solution, but as the experiences of other western states demonstrate, wolf recovery can be successful while providing ranchers with fairness and adequate levels of protection.

“Climate scientists increasingly ignore ecological role of Indigenous peoples”

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From Penn State. I question the “increasingly ignoring” bit, but we ought to consider what we can learn and do, based on “the profound role that Indigenous peoples played in fire and vegetation dynamics.” Some foresters have advocated that view for many years. Bob Zybach, for example.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In their zeal to promote the importance of climate change as an ecological driver, climate scientists increasingly are ignoring the profound role that Indigenous peoples played in fire and vegetation dynamics, not only in the eastern United States but worldwide, according to a Penn State researcher.

“In many locations, evidence shows that Indigenous peoples actively managed vast areas and were skilled stewards of the land,” said Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology. “The historical record is clear, showing that for thousands of years Indigenous peoples set frequent fires to manage forests to produce more food for themselves and the wildlife that they hunted, and practiced extensive agriculture.” 

Responding to an article published earlier this year in a top scientific journal that claimed fires set by Native Americans were rare in southern New England and Long Island, New York, and played minor ecological roles, Abrams said there is significant evidence to the contrary.

…

Guest Post: Let the Santa Fe National Forest Heal

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Photo of the Santa Fe watershed that was thinned in the early 1990’s and subsequently had prescribed fire applied twice. According to Sarah Hyden, you can see from the photo that the understory has not been allowed to return except for a few grasses, and the ecosystem does not appear to be healthy at all. Photo by Dee Blanco

The following guest post was written by Sarah Hyden.  Sarah is the editor of a new website in development, focused on protection of the Santa Fe National Forest called The Forest Advocate. Sarah describes herself as “one of a growing number of citizen advocates deeply concerned about the severity of fuel treatments in our national forests and the very bad ecological effects of such treatments.” – mk

A transformation is taking place in our forest.

It’s changing by the year as the climate becomes warmer and dryer. Existing vegetation in many areas is becoming more marginal. Those of us who live by and with the forest can see it happening. Some years we wonder if the trees will even make it, and then the rains come and they look healthy again. But they don’t seem to be able to tolerate even relatively small impacts.

The forest is resilient in its own way when left free of human interventions. It’s evolving into the healthiest forest possible given current conditions, even if it doesn’t always look that way to us after natural forest processes such as wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks. There will likely be major shifts in vegetation types.

It appears to be difficult, or even impossible for our forest to recover ecological balance and function after fuel treatment projects — extensive thinning followed by periodic prescribed burns. We can see this in the Santa Fe watershed which was thinned and first burned two decades ago. Many treated areas still look like a forest wasteland, not functional forest.

Thinning prescriptions normally call for the vast majority of trees to be removed from large areas of forest. This can involve heavy machinery, damage to trees left behind both above the soil and below, and roads built or improved out in the forest which can cause erosion and wildlife fragmentation. These roads carry the impacts of the public further out into the forest — including increased fire risk. Thinning slash creates increased fire and insect outbreak risk.

Existing research from the US Forest Service and its partners estimates that our local forest historically burned every 5 to 15 years, and prescribed fire regimens often follow that general framework. Newer studies by independent researchers estimate that fire came to our forest much less frequently — one study (W. Baker, 2017) estimates it came at an average of every 55 years for dry mixed conifer and ponderosa pine in the Santa Fe watershed. The too-frequent prescribed fire is not allowing a healthy understory to return, and along with too-intensive thinning, is in many cases leaving our forests too open, barren, dry and ecologically brittle. And sometimes prescribed fire actually causes fires, such as the Cerro Grande Fire.

There have been many detrimental human impacts to our forest ecosystem over the years — logging, livestock grazing, off-road vehicle use, mining, road-building, excessive fire suppression, and human caused fires. The forest needs to heal. Another massive intervention in the form of widespread thinning and prescribed fire is just another man-made solution to a man-made problem. Is it really going to work this time?

The forest has its own intelligence. It can heal itself, in time, likely much better than any treatment we humans can apply. Natural fires in our forest of all intensities help the forest to renew itself and promote biodiversity.

We know how to protect our homes in the wildland/urban interface — fireproof structures and land 100 feet surrounding homes. This has been proven, including by US Forest Service researcher Jack Cohen.

There are careful forest restoration projects we can undertake — to de-commission roads, restore riparian areas, build earthen dams to reduce flooding risk and to re-introduce beavers. Some very limited and light-handed thinning and burning may be needed, but only for strategic and site-specific reasons. This requires open-minded utilization of newer forest and fire ecology research. It also requires new local research that is not based on the assumption that widespread thinning and burning are necessarily a benefit in the cost/benefit analysis. And it requires just slowing down the process.

It’s time to embrace a new paradigm for the forest. Instead of imposing the framework of our limited ecological understanding and perspective onto the forest, let’s be allies of the forest, to help support its inevitable transformation. Let’s respect and honor life. First do no harm.

Forest Service Stories: Bruce and the Handheld

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I couldn’t find any photos of archaeology crews with handhelds from the 90’s; but here’s Central Oregon Initial Attack Crew 4 Crew Boss Trainee Kira Santulli Leads Training Simulation at the Deshka Landing Fire on August 30. Photo: Mike McMillan – DNR from Alaska 2019.

This story comes to us from Steve Marsh, then (1997) Archaeologist on the Groveland Ranger District of the Stanislaus National Forest.
From: Steve Marsh:R05F16A
Date: ## 03/18/97 11:44 ##

There are certainly joys and heartbreak about working with seasonal crews. I had a summer archaeological survey crew that included Bruce, a good hearted guy but who sometimes did not quite have a firm grasp on life’s details. One day we were surveying a mountainside. The crew was spread out in a line on the slope below me, with Bruce at the far end. When we reached the drainage at which we were going to end the survey line, I called Bruce on the H.T. (handy talkie, hand held radio) to tell him to stop at the drainage and wait for me there. I headed downhill, gathering other members of the crew, going toward Bruce.

This hillside was covered with thick brush, and I could not see Bruce. During surveys, our habit was to locate each other by yelling, “YO!”, so when I got to where I thought Bruce should be, I called out, “YO, BRUCE!”

He answered back, on the radio, “I’m over here, Steve”.

Even after working with Bruce for awhile, this dumbfounded me. Thinking he’d get the idea, I called out again, louder, “YO! BRUUUUCE!”.

Again he answered back on the radio, “I’m over here, Steve”.

Although the rest of the crew was giggling wildly, I was very calm as I got on the radio and told Bruce, “I can’t find you….I need you to YELL to me”.

To my chagrin, Bruce yelled back, on the radio, “I’M OVER HERE, STEVE!”

By this time, the crew is rolling on the ground, and I’m red faced and spluttering. I was still very calm, though, as I got back on the radio (praying that nobody anywhere was also receiving these transmissions) and said, “Bruce, I need you to turn off your radio, and yell to me with your voice, so that we can find you”.

Needless to say, it was hard to be mad because the whole episode was just hilarious, and when we finally did find Bruce, he had realized what he was doing, and was giggling, too. Also, needless to say, someone else carried the radio after that.

Modernizing Planning Discussion in R-6/R-5 Bioregional Assessment: Which Would You Pick and Why?

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Many, many thanks to folks who write the RVCC newsletter for finding this in the voluminous Bioregional Assessment Steve posted here pp. 37-38.

This discussion touches on many topics that we talk about.

Simultaneous Plan Revision—All 19 forests and grasslands in the BioA area would complete plan revision at the same time. This approach, like the landscape-level approach used during the NWFP, would ensure consistency and compatibility among the plans and would contribute to standardizing the formats of land management plans to help develop a common understanding of management direction. Completing simultaneous plan modernization presents significant capacity and coordination challenges across 19 responsible officials and their staff; however, efficiencies might be realized if phases of the process are streamlined and expected timelines are met. If, during simultaneous plan updating, the required analyses are integrated and conditions change significantly on one national forest or grassland requiring different or additional analysis, all 19 units would likely be impacted. Finally, this strategy might present a challenge to meaningful engagement with the public in the planning process because of the amount and complexity of information and the breadth of the geographic scope.

Incremental Plan Revision—We would revise three to six land management plans at the same time based upon similar challenges and geography. As an example, we could start with five units in the southwestern BioA area based on growing departure in desired ecological conditions, vulnerability to fire cost and behavior, and dependency of local communities on benefits from national forests and grasslands. The planning effort on the next group of units would begin approximately 1 year before the process is complete on the first group, and so on until revisions for all 19 units are complete. This option would allow the Forest Service to focus on the units with the most urgent needs for modernization first and would support our ability to learn as we go, which will help us continually improve land management planning efficiencies. Budgeting and staffing needs would be extended across a longer period than under the simultaneous plan revision option but would be lower per year and therefore, potentially more sustainable. Under this approach it would take at least 12 years to complete revision on all 19 units and would maintain the outdated condition of many plans for a longer time. Ensuring consistency and compatibility between plans that are in different groups would require close coordination between planning teams as one group of plans is finalized and updating is started on the next group.

Amendment(s)—Under this option, we would complete a range-wide amendment of all or a subset the land management plans to address one or more of the topic areas identified as needing change in the BioA. For instance, this option could be used to develop up-front, standardized agreements on range-wide management for listed species such as the northern spotted owl. This method could specifically address issues like northern spotted owl habitat connectivity throughout its range and facilitate Engendered Species Act consultation on future plan revisions. Amendments could also be used to better align late-successional reserve boundaries with late-successional habitat. An amendment process, even at a large scale, would be shorter than full plan revisions, and might take only 2 years to complete. This approach would allow the Forest Service to focus on the most immediate needs within the BioA area and might be a more streamlined option for creating direction that is compatible with the various ecosystems and conditions. Opportunities for public engagement would be more focused on specific areas and issues, which might allow for more robust public involvement. A drawback to this approach is that it would not completely address the problems associated with overlapping management direction. In addition, while this approach would focus on the most urgent issues within the BioA area, it would not be a comprehensive modernization of all plans; plans would remain outdated and many important updates would not be completed.

Individual Forest Plan Revision—Historically, land management plans are revised or amended by individual national forests or grasslands. However, many of the ecological and socioeconomic conditions in the BioA area span many forests and grasslands and are therefore, best addressed at a landscape scale. Completing individual land management plan modernizations wouldn’t meet the agency’s goal of reducing the time and cost to produce efficient, effective, and high-quality land management plans to accomplish more work on the ground and be more responsive to our public.

Incremental Plan Revision and Amendment—We would begin modernization on a prioritized group of units, as in the incremental plan revision option, and simultaneously complete amendments on other units that are facing some of the same urgent issues. For instance, as a group of plans are updated to include refined and improved direction associated with the natural role of fire in frequent-fire dependent ecosystems, all other plans on units with similar ecosystems could be amended to incorporate the same language. This approach would allow for a broad-scale modernization of plan components to meet immediate needs without the complexity of updating many plans at the same time. The approach would contribute to consistent management of similar issues across the landscape as well as management that is compatible with the varied ecosystems. Potentially, this approach would contribute to more robust public involvement related to the specific issues on which amendments were focused. However, comprehensive modernization of most plans would still be delayed and amending plans rather than revising them would still result in overlapping layers of management direction.

Many of the identified opportunities for modernizing the land management plans in the BioA area cross multiple national forest and grassland boundaries. Some management opportunities on some national forests and grasslands are more urgent than others, while other
challenges experienced across several national forests and grasslands would benefit from a consistent approach. Some forests have a more urgent need for restoration activities to improve the resiliency of the landscape than others (figure 2-6). The need for management consistency arises when multiple national forests and grasslands face the same management challenge; an example is managing habitat to facilitate the recovery of the northern spotted owl across that species’ range (figure 2-7). We gain efficiencies by combining modernization efforts around similar management needs.

(In the document is this sidebar)

Combination approach—An Example
Relevant direction from the US Fish and Wildlife’s Conservation Strategy for Grizzly Bear in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem 2019 63 has been incorporated as amendments to the land management plans for the Helena, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, and Lolo National Forests. The Flathead National Forest incorporated the relevant direction into its land management plan revision. This combination of revision and amendments ensures that habitat for this wide-ranging species is managed consistently and appropriately across all affected national forests.

I wish they had specific examples of why there is an “urgent” need to change, that might help us compare the different approaches. How urgent is urgent and why? Anyway, which would you pick and why? And how did they manage to do so many in 1990?

It’s National Forest Week – so let’s think about forest planning for tribal areas

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But we all knew that, right?  Here’s the National Forest Foundation link.

But here’s the rest of the story:

It’s National Forest Week, and members of the Crow Tribe are celebrating recognition of a special place in Montana.

In the U.S. Forest Service’s final draft of its Custer Gallatin National Forest plan released last week, the agency recognized the cultural and spiritual significance of the Crazy Mountains, designating it an “Area of Tribal Interest.”

The Custer Gallatin plan recognizes only the southern part of the Crazies. The Forest Service did not include the cultural significance of the northern part in its Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest plan from May.

Ideally, Doyle (a Crow tribal member) said, the tribe would like to see both sections recognized, but he noted that the region in the Custer Gallatin National Forest is most significant.

Why?  If there was one thing that everyone involved in developing planning regulations agreed on, it was that management direction should not change just because of an administrative boundary with a different staff member in charge.  And now this.  Two adjacent forest plan revisions, on roughly the same schedule, and different ideas about what?  Maybe there’s some legitimate resource reasons, but here’s the extent of the plan components for this area (and they don’t require much):

Desired Conditions (BC-DC-TRIBAL)

01 The Crazy Mountains embody a tribal cultural landscape significant to ongoing traditional cultural practices of the Crow Tribe.

02 Research, education, and interpretation of the Crazy Mountain tribal cultural landscape provides public benefits and enhances the understanding and appreciation of Crazy Mountain’s natural environment, precontact, contact, and Crow traditional cultural values.

Goals (BC-GO-TRIBAL)

01 The Custer Gallatin National Forest protects and honors Crow treaty obligations, sacred land and traditional use in the Crazy Mountains through continued consultation with the Crow Tribe.

This is not the only “area of tribal interest” on the Custer-Gallatin.  The Helena-Lewis and Clark plan has plan components for “areas of tribal importance,” but does not identify them (other than the Badger-Two Medicine area).  The plan dedicates one descriptive sentence to the tribal history in the Crazy Mountains.  So, again, how does the Forest Service explain the line they have drawn here?

(Related to the consistency idea, there was a lot of debate about whether plan decisions should be made by forest supervisors or regional foresters.  The Forest Service went with the former (I was told so the Chief wouldn’t be involved in objections), and this is the kind of problem they created.)