Suit filed to overturn sale of nearly 41,000 acres of public lands for fracking

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This is sort of a counterpoint post to the one below about “Renewable Energy on Federal Lands.” Consider it an example of “Non-Renewable Energy on Federal Lands.” It’s a press release from a coalition of Tribal, grassroots, environmental and public health advocates.

Santa Fe, NM–A coalition of Tribal, grassroots, and environmental and health advocates today filed suit to overturn the sale of nearly 41,000 acres of public lands in the Greater Chaco region of northwest New Mexico for fracking.

In a complaint filed in federal court, Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, WildEarth Guardians, San Juan Citizens Alliance, the Sierra Club, and the Western Environmental Law Center confronted the Trump administration’s disregard for health, environmental justice, and the climate.  The case challenges a December 2018 sale of public lands for fracking in northwest Sandoval County, which is part of the Greater Chaco region of New Mexico.

“This lease sale will have a direct impact on the Diné communities of Ojo Encino, Torreon and others,” said Wendy Atcitty with Diné C.A.R.E. “Within the nearly 41,000 acres of lease sale parcels are four to five municipal wells that provide water to Ojo Encino, Torreon, Pueblo Pintado, and White Horse Lake. So far, the Bureau has failed to address health concerns, air and water quality concerns, or provide opportunities for meaningful public participation in this whole process. The health of our communities needs to come first.”

The Greater Chaco region has been under siege by fracking for years. With Chaco Canyon at its heart, the region is home to Navajo communities and Pueblo people today hold strong ties to the region.

In spite of its cultural significance, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved hundreds of new oil and gas wells in the region, many near Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Even after a federal appeals court held in 2019 that the Bureau illegally approved hundreds of drilling permits, the Bureau has continued to approve more fracking.

“The Bureau of Land Management continues to run roughshod over the Greater Chaco landscape by sanctioning an unprecedented amount of industrialized fracking having never analyzed the impacts of these activities on communities or the climate,” said Rebecca Sobel with WildEarth Guardians. “In the midst of a pandemic, we are forced back to court to defend Diné communities that continue to suffer from oil and gas impacts and related COVID-19 morbidity–more victims of the administration’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda.”

Today’s lawsuit targets the sale of lands for fracking in northwest Sandoval County, which is part of the Bureau of Land Management’s Rio Puerco Field Office. The suit challenges the failure of the Bureau to address the health, climate, and environmental justice impacts of fracking in the Greater Chaco region.

The Bureau of Land Management sidestepped its public involvement process and also failed to take a hard look at environmental justice impacts. The Bureau also failed to adequately analyze the effects of oil and gas drilling on the health of nearby residents. The agency ignored the disproportionate health and safety risks of fracking and drilling–especially cumulative impacts–to Navajo people and communities in the lease sale area.

“It is both unethical and unlawful for the agency to ignore the inequities and injustices inherent to its oil and gas program,” said Ally Beasley with the Western Environmental Law Center. “These inequities and injustices are not incidental–they are structural, systemic, and part of a historical, ongoing pattern and practice of environmental racism, colonialism, and treatment of the Greater Chaco as an energy sacrifice zone. It has to stop.”

The suit also targets the fact that the management plan for the Rio Puerco Field Office, which was adopted in 1986, never authorized fracking. In 2019, a coalition called on the Bureau of Land Management to halt the sale of lands for fracking in the Field Office.  The agency never responded.

“The Bureau continues irresponsible oil and gas leasing that cuts out public participation and any comprehensive analysis of what would transpire on the landscape and in communities when oil and gas development would occur,” said Mike Eisenfeld of San Juan Citizens Alliance. “We appreciate the commitment of organizations associated with this litigation to address inequities and agency indifference to upholding their responsibilities.”

“Today’s filing underscores the need to hold to account the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management for its repeated illegal actions that bypass thorough environmental reviews and cultural resource assessments, ignore public input, and sideline meaningful Tribal consultation in its oil and gas leasing program,” said Miya King-Flaherty with the Sierra Club – Rio Grande Chapter. “The Greater Chaco landscape continues to be desecrated, and the environmental injustices perpetrated in this region must stop.”

A 2018 U.S. Geological Survey report found that oil and gas produced from public lands and waters contributes to 10 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. And a 2018 report by the Stockholm Environmental Institute confirmed that ending public lands fossil fuel production could significantly reduce nationwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Ending the sale of public lands for fracking would also yield enormous health benefits. In addition to the industry’s climate impacts, the fracking science compendium released in June 2019 by Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York confirmed extensive health risks associated with oil and gas extraction, including cancer, asthma, pre-term birth, and more.

Renewable Energy on Federal Lands: The Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Project

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Green energy and/or “industrialized landscape”? You decide.

I happened to run across the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Project while driving around the Medicine-Bow National Forest and noted a road that seemed completely out of character for the area (i.e., paved). So I wondered why and discovered the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Project and the associated Transwest transmission line project. I hadn’t seen much about it in the press; I guess getting the 300th of 900 state/federal/county permits is not too exciting for anyone outside of Carbon County. And there isn’t much controversy, and if there were it wouldn’t be along the traditional narrative lines. After all, it is corporate, industrializing the landscape, has wildlife impacts and so on.

From the BLM project page (just for grins I bolded all the documents):

This project represents the largest proposed onshore wind energy facility in North America (my bold); when fully operational; the project will be capable of generating up to 3,000 megawatts of clean, renewable power, enough to power nearly one million homes.

In March, the BLM prepared and released for public review an EA analyzing the potential impacts of constructing and operating 500 wind turbines on mixed ownership land. After reviewing public comments, the BLM has now refined and improved the analysis in the EA, which tiers to a 2012 Environmental Impact Statement that the BLM prepared to evaluate the potential impacts of the project as a whole.

The BLM administers approximately half of the land associated with the project site; the remainder of the site is made up of privately owned and state lands. Only a portion of the total land area would be used for or disturbed by the project. No ground-disturbing activities associated with the turbines can begin until the BLM issues a Right-of-Way (ROW) grant and Notice to Proceed.

The Power Company of Wyoming LLC (PCW), which will develop and operate the project, has consulted closely with the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to design an Avian Protection Plan and an Eagle Conservation Plan for this project. These plans include measures to avoid, minimize and compensate for impacts to avian and bat species. In addition, the project will avoid Sage-Grouse Core Areas and includes a conservation plan that accommodates ongoing ranching and agricultural operations. The developer also will avoid sensitive viewsheds in the project area to protect tourism and outdoor recreation values. Permits to build the project will be contingent on implementation of wildlife protection measures.

In addition, the BLM will coordinate issuance of a Notice to Proceed for Phase I of turbine development with the FWS’s decision regarding issuance of an Eagle Take Permit for Phase I of development. An Eagle Take Permit would allow for the non-purposeful take of eagles associated with construction and operation of the project. To support its decision, the FWS has prepared an Environmental Impact Statement to analyze the potential impacts of issuing an Eagle Take Permit.

A person has to wonder whether some of the federal analyses/permitting might have been combined and/or streamlined. But there are other issues as well:

No turbines have been installed and none will be available for installation for another three years. According to Jacobson, 2022 is being projected as the year when PCW would begin raising wind turbines. Jacobson stated the reason for the turbine’s delay is the project is waiting for transmission lines to be available to carry their power to consumers.

While 2024 is the projected date for the wind farm to start generating electricity, final completion is set to take a further two years, according to Jacobson.
The schedule and delay requests were the same as presented to the Industrial Siting Council earlier in the year.
Should the current dates hold, the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm project will have spanned more than a decade without including the enormous burden of planning the project.

And the transmission lines..?

Besides the TransWest and Chokecherry projects, there are at least two other transmission projects being worked on to carry power from Wyoming westward, including the Zephyr Power Transmission Project, which has been in the works since 2011, and the proposed Gateway West and Gateway South projects from utility Rocky Mountain Power.

About two-thirds of the TransWest route lies on federal land, Choquette noted, and the process of obtaining the federal environmental analysis, rights-of-way, easements and licenses to build on that land stretched from 2008 to last year. Wyoming was the last state in its path to grant approval, and the project now has to secure approval from the counties in Utah and Nevada it will cross before it can be built, she said.

These kind of operational timeframes don’t bode well for climate targets that need large renewable contributions from federal lands to hit 2030 targets.

Influential groups lack agreement on Western NC national forests: Carolina Public Press

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Thousands of people submitted emails and other public comments about the future of the Pisgah National Forest and the Nantahala National Forest. Seen here is a stretch of the Nantahala River in Cherokee County. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press

Lengthy and interesting article by Jack Igelman on the Nantahala and Pisgah forest planning process.  Theirs is particularly interesting because they have two collaborative groups, and because they are in a part of the country with very different history, culture and so on from the West.  They’re fortunate (and so are we)  that they have a reporter with the patience and fortitude to dig into the complexities of the people and the process.
It’s worth reading in its entirety, and I’ve just selected a couple of paragraphs below. There is also a discussion of the “two-tiered” approach.

What were the issues?

According to the comments of the Stakeholders Forum, the key issues are forestry and restoration, special designations, sustainable recreation and wildlife.

While the members agreed on “general values” associated with those issues, they disagreed on the “mechanisms” to achieve a range of conservation, recreational and economic objectives.

“The elephant in the room was the issue of wilderness,” Prater said.

Some members were concerned that the proposed plan may open land for timber harvesting that is also suitable for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Alternatively, other members were concerned about overly restricting the ability to harvest trees for restoration or economic purposes.

According to the comments submitted by the Stakeholders Forum, “some members strongly support wilderness recommendations; some are willing to live with wilderness recommendations; and some are not supportive of wilderness recommendations.”

Prater said the Stakeholders Forum fell short on specific recommendations, “but we identified fertile ground for compromise. It’s a process. We admitted to areas that we couldn’t reach agreement that are too volatile or controversial, but acknowledged they exist.”

Lang Hornthal of EcoForesters, a nonprofit forestry organization based in Asheville and a member of both collaboratives, said the Stakeholders Forum’s final comments also helped explain why some interests disagree.

“The narrative on forest planning is that the public hears just one side of the debate within the lens of what’s important to them, whether that’s the need for more wilderness or more active forest management,” Hornthal said. “The Stakeholders Forum served the purpose of helping the Forest Service better understand where conflict lies.”

Whitmire said one barrier to reaching consensus was that many of the participants had constituents to serve, himself included.

“I didn’t want to let sportsmen down,” he said. “Hunters and fishermen are really in tune with the forest, and sportsmen felt like we had a story to tell.”

What was beneficial, he said, was forming working relationships with other interests and demonstrating to the Forest Service what we “can agree on and don’t agree on.”

For example, members did not agree with how to approach old growth in the plan and that “there is no singular definition for ‘old growth’ that is broadly agreed upon across stakeholders,” and there was disagreement regarding the amount of inventoried old growth in the forests.

While the Stakeholders Forum was not as specific as the Partnership’s recommendations, members said the dialogue that occurred over several years was meaningful, especially for sportsmen, whose central concern was that game populations are suffering due to aging forests.

………………………..

For example, he said, the Forest Service should focus future projects in noncontroversial areas of the forests. Specifically, it should tread carefully in places where there is old-growth forest or areas that are recognized in the state Natural Heritage Program for their extraordinary biodiversity.

A case in point is the controversial Buck Project decision to harvest trees and restore forest in Clay County in Nantahala National Forest.

The decision, made in June, infuriated environmentalists, who said the project will harvest trees in sensitive areas of the forest that contain old growth and unique plant and animal species.

“In our viewpoint, it’s not that complicated,” he said. “If there is uncertainty around areas with old growth or unique species, then we need to tread lightly and err on the side of doing less.”

I wonder whether it would make sense to delineate the noncontroversial areas up front as part of the forest plan? Or whether that is part of the plan (perhaps suitable acres are also noncontroversail?)

Investigating the Investigations II. A Deep Dive into the Numbers, Courtesy of Headwaters Economics

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From page 121 in Haggerty’s “Rethinking” paper, link below.

This post relates to an earlier post with regard to this news story from OPB/Oregonian/Propublica and follows up on 2ndlaw’s question about how the federal payment decrease should be calculated here, I contacted Mark Haggerty from Headwaters Economics. Many thanks to Mark for his help and patience in explaining this complex and arcane world.  At the end of this post is a link to a paper that describes the history and also proposes a solution, so if this post is too much in the economic weeds for you, skip to #4.

Framing the Issue of Comparing Losses:

I don’t really know why the reporters decided to compare losses to counties from Severance+ to those from decreases in federal payments.  If the point was to say “Oregon doesn’t tax timber enough compared to other states,” you don’t really need those specific figures, you would just compare the overall tax structures.

Perhaps the point of comparing them was probably to say “people talked a lot about losing income from the spotted owl changes, but hey look, communities are also suffering from having too much private forestland and the current tax structure for forest products companies.”

So maybe the details of “relative badness” don’t matter.

********************************************************************

Nevertheless, rooting around in the weeds with Mark Haggerty of Headwaters Economics produced the information below.  The bottom line from Mark is:

“So the “loss” on the federal side is overestimated in my opinion. That said, there is no question that the loss is significant under any scenario.

2nd Law asked: “How did you (they) calculate revenue loss from federal lands? Did you include all the safety net and SRS payments that are not directly coupled to timber sales? These payments to local govt tend to vastly exceed the flow of economic benefits from private forest land. And they have lasted quite a while.”

1. Mark Haggerty’s response to 2nd’s question:

“The data I shared with Tony* do include appropriated Forest Service and BLM O&C payments including transition payments beginning as early as 1991 for the BLM counties, NW Forest Plan “owl” payments after 1993, and SRS after 2001.

They also include PILT, an acreage-based formula payment adopted in 1976. Counties must subtract prior-year payments from their entitlement amount, so in theory PILT compensates for declining Forest Service payments. But BLM O&C payments are exempt from the PILT formula and many small population counties are limited by the ceiling in the PILT formula so they are largely uncompensated for declining Forest Service payments. Payments for education are not compensated by PILT, which only goes to county governments.

The problem now, of course, is that SRS still must be authorized and appropriated on a recurring basis and does not appear to be a permanent solution for counties. I have worked with NACO for years on a permanent SRS fix that would increase payments over time by establishing an endowment financed with commercial receipts. It is introduced as the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act (S. 1643) by Senators Wyden and Crapo. “

  • (From Mark) Note that I didn’t do the calculations, the authors did. The data come from the Economic Profile System which is free to the public. You can find it here: https://headwaterseconomics.org/tools/economic-profile-system/. Run the “Federal Land Payments” report for any county in the U.S. EPS includes all the payments listed.

2. And here is one problem with my  (Sharon’s) simplistic “the more federal west side timberland a county has, the more likely they were to be more impacted by federal decreases than by severance+”.

“To answer your question, the data do include the BLM O&C payments. Note that the O&C payments are not distributed to counties based on where trees are cut. The total value of harvests across all O&C lands are allocated to counties based on the relative taxable value of the O&C lands as of 1916. Multnomah county receives by far the largest share of payments on a per-acres basis, but not total because it has fewer O&C acres overall. Forest Service payments are allocated to counties based on their proportional acreage of each PNF. “

  • (From Mark) The O&C formula described is in use when counties do not receive SRS. SRS has a more complex formula (yes, it’s true) that includes historic payments and adds factors for the number of acres of O&C lands in each county, and an economic adjustment based on relative per-capital personal income in each county. Relatively “poor” counties receive higher SRS payments, and vice-versa. The Forest Service SRS formula is the same, except that it uses historic FS payments and FS acres per county.

3. Reasonable people could disagree on ways of calculating “what might have been” given that no one knows.

“Tony estimated “lost” federal payments by comparing the median payment since the NW Forest Plan to the historic median payment in the three decades prior to the NW Forest Plan, a period that included historically high payments in the 70s and 80s. I would not have done it that way. It assumes that without the NW Forest Plan, harvest levels and timber prices would have remained at historically high levels right up to the current year. I don’t know what the actual harvest value would have been, but I don’t think it would have remained the same given structural changes in the economy and specifically in the timber industry. So the “loss” on the federal side is overestimated in my opinion. That said, there is no question that the loss is significant under any scenario.”

4.  Why other economic activities don’t pay the bills. 

I don’t think that this aspect was touched on in the OPB/Oregonian/Propublica article.  “The other thing that plays importantly here is Oregon’s tax revolt in the 90s. Counties remain dependent on timber (severance, property and federal payments) because other economic activities essentially don’t pay the bills. So economic diversification isn’t a real option from a fiscal perspective. Here’s an article I wrote that dives into that issue in some detail: https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/hjsr/vol1/iss40/12/”

A Closer Look at the Mexican Spotted Owl CBD-Forest Service Agreement

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The distribution of 200 sampling units for the Mexican Spotted Owl occupancy monitoring project in Arizona and New Mexico. The spatially balanced, random sample of sites to be included in the acoustic monitoring program are marked by purple pentagons. Symbols are not to scale.(from monitoring project https://birdconservancy.org/mso2017/)

Many thanks to Jon for finding and linking to this interesting document that describes the Mexican Spotted Owl Leadership Forum notes.  First.. who’s at the table. Looks like CBD, the FS, the USFWS, representatives of Eastern Arizona counties, timber industry, and I’m not sure of the affiliation of the others.  Maybe this is “the room where it happens,” in terms of decisions being made, in the words of the Hamilton musical. The group identified some “systemic issues.” I picked the first 13 to post here. Some of them sound very familiar from other NEPA and collaborative discussions. It’s not clear how much of that is due to the use of CBM (or condition-based management). My comments and questions are in bold.

 The “Systemic Issues” section identifies issues to be addressed to prevent future projects from being challenged. Critical among others:

1. There is a disconnect between the broader scope public documents readily available for review and what actually happens on the ground during implementation. (<em>I’m not sure whether this is a contracting/marking kind of problem, or related to CBM, or ???).

2. Site specific MSO field data necessary to select Recovery Plan recommended treatments is generally not available prior to NEPA analyses. This is likely due to cost constraints, workforce limitations and slow pace of technology deployment (e.g. LiDAR) at a time of accelerated landscape scale restoration.  (I wonder whether this matters if the field data is developed prior to design of projects?)

3. Consistent/standardized templates across projects are not used for data analysis and presentation.  (The idea of templates has been popular with NEPA improvement efforts for years, but has met with resistance from (some) practitioners. This group has a good point IMHO, that individuality and creativity by each unit works for many things, but perhaps not when folks are trying to implement projects across ownerships at the landscape scale.)

4. Data requirement interpretation varies across project (e.g. post treatment data inclusive or not of post treatment fire).

5. Generally, the NEPA process does not analyze actual stand treatments for the MSO projects but broad ranges of allowable treatments. Actual treatments are decided during field trips prior to project implementation. NEPA analyzes actions at a broad scale and in some cases (e.g. Hassayampa) appears insufficient.

6. Project level documents such as BA, BO, stand inventories, etc. are difficult for the public to access; and data that should be readily available such as project shapefiles are near impossible to obtain. Further, interagency documentations of changes are generally not accessible to the public. Such documents are, with very few exceptions, public documents that must be made available to the public. There is no ‘one-stop-shop’ location for documentation of specific projects. (This seems relatively easy to do on the FS site for the project..at the same time for many projects in many parts of the country, there is not this level of interest (e.g. shapefiles) by most of “the public”).

7. Documents tiering across agencies (from USFS to USFWS) and processes (from NEPA to consultation to implementation), combined with difficult documents access complicates
public understanding of treatments and monitoring that are implemented. For example, one project referring to another project’s monitoring plan is confusing to those not familiar with the other project.

8. Monitoring as a reasonable and prudent measure often lacks clarity and specificity at the NEPA stage and the final plan is not always appended to the BO.

9. There is no clear tool or method in place to account for the cumulative effect across various projects’ actual treatments, and to reconcile the distribution of treatments along the spectrum of intensities (including no treatment) within the landscape, as recommended in the Recovery Plan, to establish an environmental baseline among neighboring projects. (I don’t really understand what this would look like “reconcile the distribution of treatments”? but it’s probably clear in the Recovery Plan).

10. The current management practice of relying on post NEPA field trips by a few select individuals to decide upon actual treatments is not scalable to landscape scale restoration.(This probably is also relevant to other CBM protocols, we’ve discussed this about programmatic kinds of CE’s).

11. Current MSO management appears to be a precursor of the proposed general “Condition Based Management” (CBM) in the on-going NEPA Revision. Lessons learned in the MSO Workshop are likely applicable to CBM at-large, as relates to communicating to the public the treatments and monitoring that are actually implemented.

12. The lack of succession plans and depth of bench for critical resource personnel with unique projects knowledge, compromises the robustness of the USFS and USFWS processes. (I just ran across an old NEPA review in my files that said access to specialists was a problem (at least for one forest, about 20 years ago).

13. A workshop or series of workshops is needed to address the systemic issues.

Public lands are under widespread attack, just when our need for them is greater than ever

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The following guest post was written by Chris Krupp, WildEarth Guardians’ Public Lands Guardian. Chris grew up playing in the fields and woods of his grandparents’ dairy farms in central Wisconsin. He received his J.D. from the University of Washington and his B.A. in Economics from Lawrence University. Prior to joining WildEarth Guardians, Chris was staff attorney for Western Lands Project for fifteen years. He enjoys camping and hiking with his family, as well as vegetable gardening and cooking. – mk

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the importance of wild places in all our lives. Yet the Trump administration is intent on their destruction through unmitigated extractive uses such as oil and gas development, mining, logging, and grazing to benefit private industries.

Wild places—most of which, at least in the U.S., are on public lands—safeguard and improve public health in numerous ways. Studies confirm what is intuitive to anyone enjoying a beautiful day in nature: greater contact with the natural world reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as physical manifestations that often accompany these conditions.

Paradoxically, wild places keep us healthy by limiting our exposure to nature’s ills by creating a physical buffer between human populations and the wildlife that can transfer bacteria and viruses. Covid-19 is not the only recent example of a disease existing in the wild prior to jumping to humans—Lyme disease in the U.S. and the Ebola virus in Africa have been traced to human encroachment upon wild places. Lyme disease, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of ticks infected with a particular species of bacterium, was first diagnosed in Connecticut in 1976. Its current prevalence is thought to be the result of the expansion of suburban neighborhoods into formerly wooded areas and an accompanying reduction in predator populations that control the numbers of deer and rodents that normally host the ticks.

More broadly, wild places support greater biodiversity than places where humans have a heavier presence on the land. And biodiversity gives resilience to the natural systems and cycles that make the planet habitable to humans, as healthy, species-rich ecosystems adapt more easily to stressors such as climate change. It’s no exaggeration to say there’s no humanity without biodiversity.

Wild lands are also carbon sinks that capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—especially forests, though grasslands and deserts store significant amounts of carbon as well. Preservation, and even expansion, of wild places will be crucial in tempering the extent of climate change.

At a time when the need for wild places and public lands is so clear, it’s infuriating and illogical that the Trump Administration is pushing hard for the removal of protections for endangered species, clean air and water, and public participation in land management decisions, all while federal land management agencies are ramping up efforts to drill, mine, graze and cut trees on public lands across the West. In Utah, the Bureau of Land Management is plowing ahead with plans to offer more than 100,000 acres of public lands near Canyonlands and Arches national parks for oil and gas leasing. The Trump administration has proposed reopening public lands on the north rim of the Grand Canyon to uranium mining despite a 2012 moratorium imposed to prevent further poisoning of the landscape. In an effort to push projects through faster and with less public oversight, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service announced they will no longer analyze the environmental or public health impacts of vast categories of extractive uses—including fossil fuels, logging and grazing—that generate corporate profits at the expense of public lands and human health. Capitulation to the extractive industries has also had a disproportionate impact on low income, Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities. Every extractive industry seems to be getting a sweetheart deal, while vulnerable communities, wildlands, wildlife, wild rivers, and public health bear the consequences.

In the recent past, we have seen states and extractive industries pushing for the transfer of public lands into private or state hands that don’t have to comply with all the federal environmental laws that protect the lands, waters, species, and neighboring communities. Yet advocates for public lands privatization or “transfer” to the states have been surprisingly silent during the coronavirus pandemic. Maybe they’re self-aware enough to know their perceived grievances won’t register with a country currently grappling with systemic racism, a public health crisis, and economic dislocation.

Or maybe they remember that past efforts to legislate the mass sale or transfer of public lands to states or private industries have been overwhelming failures. In 2012 Utah enacted the Transfer of Public Lands Act, which demanded that the United States “extinguish title to public lands and transfer title to those public lands to the state on or before Dec. 31, 2014.” The federal government has not felt compelled to respond to the absurd demand. Utah later passed a bill to authorize a lawsuit against the U.S. to “take back” those same public lands. It’s amounted to nothing, other than lining some lawyers’ pockets. And in 2017, then-Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), after facing widespread public outcry, was forced to withdraw his bill to sell off millions of acres of public lands across the West.

As a result of these past failures, conservative lawmakers and industry proponents have looked to alternative means to make it easier for extractors and developers to exploit public land resources. That’s largely what we’re seeing now: the effective privatization of public lands by weakening the regulatory safety nets that protect wildlands, waters, species, and public health; as well as the removal of public oversight from agency decision-making. It should come as no surprise the Secretary of the Interior was a long-time industry lobbyist who advocated for privatization, reduced public oversight, and weakened environmental laws. Or that the person Trump finally nominated for Bureau of Land Management Director is a dyed-in-the-wool racist climate-change-denying sagebrush rebel.

Despite the recent silence, we shouldn’t expect those who’ve clamored for privatization or state control to keep quiet for long. The issue is too central for its proponents, and the pandemic’s aftermath may offer new pretexts for privatization and state control: boosting government revenue and restarting national and local economies.

Photo by USFS.

The arguments that environmental laws are too burdensome and that public lands have been “locked up” by “Washington bureaucrats” for too long are as short-sighted as ever. But with states facing budgets in shambles and unprecedented unemployment, privatization or transfer may appeal even to those who normally see this scheme for the plundering of public resources it is. We cannot afford to let down our guard.

Public lands in public hands means we all share in the benefits public lands provide—clean water, clean air, recreation, physical and mental health, hunting, fishing, birdwatching, biodiversity, protection against disease, protection of historic and cultural resources, and moderation of the impacts of climate change. Just as important, public lands in public hands means we can all participate in planning and making decisions for how public lands are managed for future generations, through laws such as the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

For now, we maintain the right to determine whether public lands protect us from disease, or bring it to our doorstep; help us adapt to climate change, or contribute to the crisis; provide refuge for wildlife, or serve as a feedlot for livestock. We must remain vigilant in our defense of public lands against effective or actual privatization by those who seek to destroy them for private gain. Luckily, Guardians, our supporters and our conservation allies are fighting tooth and nail to keep existing environmental safety nets in place. We will continue to do so, and hope you will continue to join us.

Forest Service Stories: An Immigrant and the USDA Forest Service

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Ronnie working in the gardens of Batong Technical College

AN IMMIGRANT & THE USDA FOREST SERVICE

by Ranachith  (Ronnie) Yimsut

(Note from Sharon: I don’t have a date for this story, but it’s probably 1997-ish). Here’s a link to a January 2020 article about him and some of his work.. it begins.  “Ronnie Yimsut – American-Cambodian author, activist, NGO worker, retired senior landscape architect for the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, official influential person, orphan and Khmer Rouge survivor – had a dream.”  He is the author of a book, Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian Journey.  At the end of  his FS story, I added a review of his book.

This is a story that need to be told as part of the celebration of the USDA Forest Service proud culture and tradition.  It is a story that very few can associate with, but certainly understood.

I emigrated to the U.S. from a refugee camp on the Thai‑ Cambodian border in early 1979 as a young 15 years old‑‑orphaned, lost, and alone.  I first arrived in Washington, DC.  Within a few weeks, I got to meet the Chief of the USDA Forest Service, whose name I can’t recall, during a tour of the Washington Office.  Of course, I did not speak English then and the Chief did not know Khmer, my native tongue, either.  So a translator was brought in to get our communication going more effectively than just body language.

For about an hour we communicated through a translator on wide-ranging topics.  I did most of the asking as I was very curious.  I recalled asking the Chief if I, as an Asian immigrant, can be the Chief of the Forest Service some day.  My simple question stunned him momentarily, but he quickly responded with a great big smile “NO!”  Then he quickly added, “Not unless you are a U.S. citizen first!”  I told him that I would be happy to just working as a “Ranger” (an employee) of the prestigious and world renounced USDA Forest Service.

By the winter of 1987, while I was spending my fifth year at the University of Oregon, I met a Hispanic employee of the Willamette National Forest.  He was on a recruitment drive for the Forest Service.  I met him accidentally on the campus ground and got his business card, which eventually led to an interview. After the first interview, I was a “perfect” candidate (being a minority student) for the Forest Service’s Cooperative Education Program; so he said. We met five more times after that first interview.  The wheels were in motion, my dream of working for the Forest Service was becoming a reality.

At the same time, I did not at all want to leave school as I was about to finish and get my hard-earned science degree.  The man essentially had to drag me into the Forest Service system through this innovative program.  He must had called me a hundred times in his attempt to recruit me.  With his persistence and compromise, I gave in and I eventually was hired as a Coop Student.

I worked part of my time for the Willamette NF and continued my schooling in between.  The Forest Service paid for my school tuition and salary, what a great deal!.  I thought I got a great deal until I ran into all the acronyms that I had to learn and learn well.  At first, I couldn’t tell the term “WO” from an “RO”, the term “DR” from an “SO” and so on.  Eventually, I mastered almost all of them.  However, as I learned one acronym others were being introduced or invented faster than I could absorb.  It was overwhelming and still is today.  There should be a guide book about Forest Service acronym for all new employees!

After graduation and a full year of practical work with my mentor, Mr. Frank Hunsaker, a Forest Landscape Architect, I was more than ready.  I was later hired by the Deschutes National Forest, a neighboring forest to the east. With the new job and title, I was at last became a full-fledged USDA Forest Service employee, if not a “Ranger” or the “Chief” as I had dreamed very earlier on.

Central Oregon was well known for its harsh winter and “Redneck” country.  I understoond “harsh” winter, but I did not know what  the term “Redneck” meant.  I learned very quickly.  Being one of only few Asian‑American in the area, both the community and Forest Service were a very hostile place.  The acceptance was not there and I felt rejected.  My resignation letter was prepared and ready to turn in to my boss (now called Team Leader), but my immigrant and Asian stubbornness keep me going and going despite of everything.

I worked very, very hard to gain acceptance within the Forest Service and eventually succeeded.  I later got involved with just about every aspect of community activism in Central Oregon.  I felt like I was a pioneer struggling through a harsh and difficult environment, but by golly, it  got better and better after more than seven years later.  Today, I can’t really complain as I and my family (four and all) are well known, respected, and accepted within both the Forest Service family (no longer just a community) and the Central Oregon community itself.  I am no longer a pioneer but in fact a full-fledged, proud, and productive member.

I have come a long way from my native Cambodia to be a successful professional in the USDA Forest Service.  And yes, I now speak English well enough and became a proud American citizen since 1984.  I know that I won’t be a “Ranger” (let alone a Chief) anytime soon, but the possibility is there, if I really, really wanted and willing to work extra hard toward it.

The Forest Service gave me ample opportunities for both personal and professional growth, but there is always room for improvement especially in the Civil Rights area.  And that is where my next concentration shall be.  As an American citizen, it is my utmost duty make the rough road that I had traveled on a much smoother one than ever before; so that others like me can traverse it with less difficulty.  It should be every American utmost duty to make the road smoother for ALL Americans, in my humble opinion.

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And here’s a quote from a book review…

“Facing the Khmer Rouge is beautifully written, informative and heartbreaking. Ronnie Yimsut’s prose reads like poetry, vivid and captivating; and chock full of crisp details and imageries. With each turn of the page, Yimsut pulls readers deeper into his emotional and spiritual journey through his years of war and horrors. Yet, his story of love, family, and country, told in a soft, meditative voice—also breathes of forgiveness and healing. Facing the Khmer Rouge is a courageous memoir, and one that undoubtedly will leave Yimsut’s readers believing in the best of man’s humanity to man.”

–Loung Ung, activist and author, First They Killed My Father

 

Notes from the Greater Gila Bioregion

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Deep in the heart of the American Southwest lies the Greater Gila Bioregion, a place that is larger and more biodiverse than Yellowstone, as rich in cultural history as Bears Ears, as wild as the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, and the birthplace of the wilderness ideal. WildEarth Guardians believes that the Greater Gila can and should be America’s next, great protected landscape. Photo by Leia Barnett.

The following piece was written by Leia Barnett, Greater Gila Campaigner with WildEarth Guardians. – mk

Last week, I fell in love with country. Not This Country. Not Our Country. Simply country. I perched atop peaks above 10,000 feet and peered out across distances incomprehensible. I squatted beside rivers that swayed and snaked for hundreds of miles, wild from source to sea, flexing their hydrologic muscle to carve canyons and move mountains. I star-gazed, open-mouthed and full of wonder, remembering what’s small and what’s precious and what’s worthy of protecting. I saw black hawks and blue jays and arching sycamores and barking elk and trundling bears and trotting wolves. Yes, trotting wolves! Three of them to be precise. Yipping and stalking and howling and moving something inside me that once was wild and fiercely free.

All in the Gila, that seemingly eternally unfolding expanse of hills and vales and mountains and vistas and wild silences that spread themselves across southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona, what we at WildEarth Guardians refer to as the Greater Gila Bioregion. This is a landscape long inhabited by the Mimbres and Mogollon cultures, and later the Apache, Navajo, Acoma, and Zuni. This place is anciently sacred, humming with the footsteps of Native Ancestors seeding Indigenous Knowledge Traditions deeply prescient for their time. This is a place ecologically abundant, tending to a biodiversity greater than that of Yellowstone. This is a landscape that has known a fire regime and management practices more progressive than anywhere else in the West, where the long-lived cycle of over-grow-burn-regenerate has been allowed to persist with minimal human intervention. This is country wild, where humans have come since time immemorial to travel softly and fit themselves snuggly into the astounding web of living selves, to rest beside Mogollon Death Camas and Mimbres Figwort, to gaze upon Gila chub and Loach minnow, to become, once again, quiet dwellers rather than raucous extractors.

This is the country we need. It requires no undiscerning patriotism, no flaring bias or political unilateralism. It only asks that we give our attention to a greater sense of self, that we assume our membership in this grand community of bipeds and four-leggeds and root-growers and wing-flappers, and that this membership rise to the top of our list of things to be tended to. You may leave your flag and your fearful ideologies at home. Come with me to the Gila, where we may all, once again, fall in love with country. 

Practice of Science Friday: Challenges of Ideological Diversity in the Science Biz

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I ran across this opinion piece from October in EOS (the science news journal of the American Geophysical Union or AGU). It’s called “Does our Vision of Diversity Include Social Conservatives?” and is authored by three professors at Brigham Young University.  The original controversy deal with whether professional science societies should handle ads for private universities with honor codes and hiring preferences to members of its religion as discriminatory. But what I thought was valuable, and related to The Smokey Wire, were their arguments for the practice of dealing with those with whom we disagree. Which is what we do here, and sometimes it’s difficult (at least for me)  to explain to others why we think it is important work. They also have some interesting citations on the social science of ideologies and political differences.

Their argument is that if people practicing science are not diverse (and people who decide funding what topics are researched), then scientific information is not as useful or trustworthy as it could be.

Diversity supports our moral values and practical goals. It gives us a glimpse into ways of living and thinking that were invisible or inaccessible to us. It humanizes our ideological and practical competitors and encourages compassion and concern. It ratchets down identity divisions that otherwise short-circuit exchange of ideas and values. It improves the accuracy and innovation of formal and informal research on political, social, and scientific issues [Duarte et al., 2015; Shi et al., 2019]. Liberals and conservatives alike have been shown to dismiss scientific evidence based on political allegiance, meaning that our public credibility depends on good science from diverse scientists [Ditto et al., 2019]. Perhaps most important from a community perspective, diversity favors equal representation and creates crucial opportunities for disadvantaged and discriminated-against individuals.
However, diversity is more than just looking different or even being different. Tolerance at arm’s length will not bring about the many benefits of diversity. Active relationships among deeply different individuals are needed to unlock the power of diversity to improve our science and our society [Holvino et al., 2004; Stevens et al., 2008]. Diversity is difference and disagreement in a context of community and collaboration.
LDS folks, like other religious folks, have great goals that are difficult to live up to:

An alternative response is to engage in discussions and develop relationships with those we perceive as adversaries. In our religious tradition, this diplomatic approach to enforcing norms and influencing others is required by a 19th century scripture: “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of [authority or majority], only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile.” Though our faith community falls short of this ideal often, it suggests that the way to persuade people of the validity of our worldview is not to silence theirs.