Outdoor Programs for Veterans: Public Land Policies and Practices to Support Therapeutic Opportunities

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Recent paper in the Journal of Forestry. Here’s the citation:Outdoor Programs for Veterans: Public Land Policies and Practices to Support Therapeutic Opportunities
MM Derrien, LK Cerveny, DG Havlick – Journal of Forestry, 2020

IMHO this is a super-interesting paper. Because we’ve been talking about FS culture recently, I excerpted some relevant paragraphs below but there are many other topics worthy of discussion. Here’s the paper.

OPV providers shared accounts of the practical challenges of identifying and interacting with the appropriate people within agency bureaucracies to meet their program needs. One described the “pretty universal struggle to make the right kind of connections with land managers.” Furthermore, some OPV providers described agency biases against group uses, which challenged the opportunities they saw for organized groups to increase access and promote responsible behaviors among new and experienced public land visitors. One interviewee explained:
… when a lot of the federal laws and regulations, and practices were established, through permitting in the [19]60s and ’70s and ’80s, groups were seen as hostile to the outdoors … If you’re a group, you have hoops you have to jump through … That can be an impediment to getting groups outdoors. The sheer amount of paperwork.

Some interviewees pointed to an agency culture that views group activities as a threat to values of solitude and “primitive qualities” on public lands. One land manager contrasted the idea of hosting large groups with land-protection practices favoring individual users: “Our people were hired to protect the land, so there is a reluctance to entertain people … The system is set up to … achieve solitude.” A common practice among land-management agencies is that if there is a program-participation fee, then a special use or event permit (and associated fees) is required of the program organizer. This process was seen as cumbersome, slow, and impractical by some providers. Groups over a certain size also often require different permissions. As one
land manager described his experience in the USFS:
I was a permit administrator earlier in my career, and if the Girl Scouts wanted to go and do something, but there were already too many of them …it’s going to cost them a couple thousand dollars to have a picnic … It’s kind of absurd, but it’s true.
That’s our policy, and sometimes you have a manager that says, “This is ridiculous. I’m going to go let them do it.” And then you have another who says, “I’m not going to let them do it.”
The interaction with these bureaucratic processes can be stressful for OPV providers. As one provider shared:
[The district ranger] appreciates what we do, but she staffs a bureaucracy, and we fall into any other permittee sort of pool … Every time I get an email from her, or heaven forbid a phone call, I start to sweat. It’s like, “My God, I think ultimately she wants to pull our permit, she doesn’t see the value of what we’re doing, she wants only to fulfill the obligatory bureaucratic hurdles that she’s burdened with” … I applied for [another permit], and you know, you’d think I was going to open a strip mine.

According to agency personnel and OPV providers alike, one outcome of these bureaucratic hurdles is that some providers avoid interacting with land managers altogether, and some operate on public lands without going through required permit processes. The lack of agency knowledge or engagement for some OPVs generates a variety of concerns. As one program provider cautioned: “There is a lot of veterans’ groups, and a lot of groups in general that go out to these places and they don’t have a risk management plan. They don’t have an insurance plan … 60–80 percent of these organizations are guiding illegally.” Whether or not this estimate is accurate, interviewees pointed to the need to encourage and enhance relations in the interest of improved program delivery and safety

FS Stories: Background on the Forest Service Folktales Project

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This is from a video by Tom Peters on excellence in the public sector. The Forest is the Ochoco, the person with his back to us is my former boss, Chuck Downen, Chief Robertson, and, if I had to guess, the person to the right would be Joe Meade. Here’s the link to the video. The FS comes in about 3:30.

One of my most fun times in the Forest Service was working on the Ochoco Pilot in the 80’s. My team recommended that the FS be able to write checks. It was a novel idea at the time (I am not making this up). Anyway, the quote from Tom Peters in my email below reminded me.

I was about to post a story this morning and realized that the author’s introduction would make more sense if the reader understood my original Folktales request.
Due to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to access Dave Iverson’s Ecowatch blog and found my original request.

TO: Everyone
WANTED: Stories That Depict Aspects of Forest Service Culture and Values
WHY: For a book about the culture of the Forest Service — past and present — as told through stories

Stories are important and powerful. As management improvement guru Tom Peters put it: “People, including managers, do not live by pie charts alone — or by bar graphs or three inch statistical appendices to 300 page reports. People live, reason, and are moved by symbols and stories.” (Thriving on Chaos, p. 506)

The stories that leaders tell, and their implied values, are shared widely through the official networks. My interests are with the values and cultural expectations that are shared informally among people not usually heard from — the folk tales that share some kind of message about organizational values and desired and undesired behaviors. I was fortunate to be steeped in such examples through many years of long drives in green rigs and lunches in the woods. By having a variety of such stories compiled, I hope that new people would be able to get a flavor for past and current FS culture — as experienced “on the ground” and from the heart.

Please consider sharing your Forest Service stories that illuminate aspects of Forest Service culture with me for the FS Folktales Project. I would also like a couple of paragraphs from you talking about what the story told you about FS values, and why it is/was meaningful to you. I plan to see what themes come across and arrange them by theme, with an introductory section for each group of stories. I plan to put out the completed work in book form and, hopefully in the future, on the Internet.

Ideally, I would like to have your name, the real names in the story, together with your region and the time period the story is from. I understand that, in some cases, you might not want to use real names and your privacy will be respected and protected. Stories are requested about the Forest Service — but they can be submitted by current employees, retirees, or anyone else who has a story to tell. Please try to limit the length of your story to about 2 pages, single spaced.

Perhaps we will also be able to see the different cultures and styles and to explore the values shared in common and those that are different — not through technical discussions or disputes over management practices, but by what kinds of stories we tell.

Some of the stories may be uplifting or morale building, like a Forest Service version of the series Chicken Soup for the Soul (Elk Stew perhaps?). If your story is humorous, or heartwarming, so much the better. If you have a story, please write it down or tape it on audiotape (videotape, even) and mail it to me at:
(my old home address)
My e-mails are … and S.Friedman:W01C on the DG.

Thank you for listening to this request. Please consider sharing your favorite stories as a gift from you to the Forest Service community and to others who want to learn about the culture of the Forest Service, and distributing this message far and wide..

Sincerely, and greenly, yours

Sharon Friedman

Note:
To clarify my previous message about the Folktales Project:
This is not an “official FS effort”. That means that FS time should not be used. I am doing it as a volunteer, and that’s why my home address and e-mail are on the request.

I’m sorry if there was confusion- I wrote the same request for those outside the FS and retirees and guess I did not get specific enough for current employees.

The other clarification is that I am really interested in collecting stories and anecdotes that reveal some aspect of organizational culture, and please add your own reflections on what you learned about organizational culture from the story.

Thank you for your patience and stories.
Sharon

Practice of Science Friday: We Need a Technology Roadmap for Decarbonization

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Some have argued that decarbonizing is basically an engineering problem. But there are also folks who frame it around human sinfulness. And others, an opportunity to bash other politicians and actors in the energy industry, and thereby gain political power (albeit with the intent of doing Good Things). I’ve written that investigator-initiated research, as random as it is, is not the way to go- that we need something more organized. The fellow who wrote this piece is Professor Michael Kelly, Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge.

Every scientific discipline wants to get its hands into the climate change science pot, which inevitably leads to a multitude of potential solutions. Then as each one is introduced, we conduct research about where or if it will work. In our world, biomass, biochar, leaving forests alone, managing forests, concrete vs. wood as a building material, and so on. And each industry is trying to reduce its carbon impact. New technologies (batteries, CCS, and so on) are developed and are in a horse race with unknown outcomes to see which will work best and be economically feasible.

I didn’t realize that other industries had gotten together and coordinated their work. I wonder what keeps the US from doing something like it for decarbonizing, other than the political downside of picking winners instead of funding everyone.

The world of superfast computing and miraculous hand-held devices that most of us now take for granted did not appear by accident. It was the product of a very clear roadmap, agreed across the electronics industry from 1970 to 2015. An equally clear and widely agreed roadmap will be essential to achieving the target of a net-zero emission global economy in 2050.

Intel founder Gordon Moore’s empirical observation that the transistor count on chips was doubling every two years, while the chips stayed the same size, morphed into an industry-wide target that held for nearly 50 years. By the mid-1980s, a Technology Roadmap became a feature of the whole industry.

Technical people from all parts of the industry – chip manufacture, the fabrication facilities, the circuit design teams, the power constraint teams and so on – met, debated and produced a substantial report every 24 months that looked out ten years in detail and 20 years and more in overview. These reports described, in great detail for the short term and lesser detail for the longer term, what needed to be ready (researched, developed and available for use in production) by when and by whom. Thanks to this approach, Moore’s Law went from being a description of the industry to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The formal ‘International Technology Roadmap for Silicon’ was the bible of the industry and a clear statement of where the industry as a whole, and every part of every supply chain would need to be, in five and more years’ time, and what needed to be invested by whom and when. It is fair to say that the progress across the electronics sector would have been much less smooth and relentless in the absence of the agreed Roadmap.

The target of a net-zero global economy by 2050 is every bit as complex, and on a much greater scale than the silicon chip industry. But as yet, there are no detailed technology roadmaps for this project. In contrast to the electronics sector, we have a positive tower of Babel – many people are doing their own little thing, but with no sense that what others are doing will be coordinated to make an overall successful whole. One cannot even get a national standard, let alone an international one, for the plug for recharging car batteries!

and

What we need now is a set of interlocking targets for each five-year interval from 2020-2050, along with indicative budgets and who-does-what for each interval. The key issue is knitting all the sub-projects into a united and coherent overall project. Piecemeal activities are certain to fail.

Calling it an engineering problem and funding coordinated groups to solve it would certainly take some of the drama out of it. And how many more studies do we need of what plant might not be living in the same location in 2080 based on a set of a thousand linked conjectures?

Wildfires: Find out how and why they’re getting bigger and more frequent

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Mike Archer included this link in his Wildfire News of the Day newsletter today:

Wildfires: Find out how and why they’re getting bigger and more frequent

https://www.yorknewstimes.com/news/national/wildfires-find-out-how-and-why-theyre-getting-bigger-and-more-frequent/article_0c448c71-40dc-5b67-8d04-16e6e5feb580.html

It’s also in The Missoulian.

The first thing that jumped out at me is heat their nice looking charts are for “Continental U.S. wildfires over 1,000 acres, 1984-2019.” Why 1984? NIFC has data back to 1960, and other sources go back much farther.

Biochar Applications

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I thought this brief biochar roundup from the National Association of State Foresters is interesting. Potential positive climate impact?

The benefits of using biochar as a fertilizer and long-term carbon sequestration technique are well-documented. A new study suggests that adding biochar to cattle feed can improve animal health and feed efficiency, reduce nutrient losses and greenhouse gas emissions, and increase soil fertility when applied as fertilizer. Recently the Nebraska Forest Service found that the inclusion of less than 1% biochar into the diet of cattle can lead to a 10% reduction in their methane emissions.

Biochar also holds promise for industrial applications. Researchers at the National University of Singapore have concluded that adding only a small amount of biochar to concrete can increase its strength by up to 20% and make it 50% more watertight. And when biochar is added as a concrete supplement, up to six metric tons of wood waste could be recycled and reused in the construction of a 1,076-square-foot home.

Other research suggests that adding 5% biochar by weight to 3D printing polymers improves tensile strength by up to 60%. And that biochar is an excellent, low-cost method of removing contaminants from water that could prove extremely beneficial to public health (particularly in low-income communities).

 

Range of variation webinar (and more)

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This is a topic that at least Sharon and I like to debate (though for some reason she didn’t weigh in here).  The Western Environmental Law Center is offering this hour and half webinar on July 17.  As far as I know, it’s open to the public.

PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 3: Historical Range of Variability (HRV): Uses and Various Approaches
 
Range of Variability (ROV) concepts – including Natural (NRV), Historic (HRV), Current (CRV), and Future (FRV) – are frequently used by the US Forest Service to help define land management goals. Nathan Poage, Forest Service Ecologist, joins us to provide an introduction to ROV terminology and examples of how the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests in the Blue Mountains have applied ROV concepts during project planning when addressing key requirements of the Eastside Screens. The discussion will include overviews of tools commonly used to conduct ROV analyses. Q&A will follow the presentation.
This webinar will be on Friday, July 17 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Registration is required for this event. Register today by clicking this link.
Note that it also involves the Eastside Screens.  I don’t think I can make it, but I’d be interested in hearing about it.  I also wanted to point out that this is about how to apply these concepts to projects developed under antiquated forest plans that don’t include the concepts.  It was this kind of thinking that drove development of the requirement to do this instead as part of revising forest plans under the 2012 Planning Rule.  Natural Range of Variation (NRV) embraced by the Planning Rule is a required desired condition for ecosystems, which should not change over time, and therefore should not be redecided for each project.  I’d be interested in knowing how, once ROV is determined for a particular project here, it is then documented and used for future projects in the same ecosystem.
But maybe there would be more interest in this one:
PNW Forest Collaboratives Workshop Series Part 2: Collaborative Administrative and Judicial Review Opportunities
In this follow-up webinar to NEPA 101, WELC attorney Susan Jane Brown will give a presentation on and answer your questions about collaborative administrative and judicial review opportunities, and dig deeper into the administrative review process for the Forest Service, judicial review of agency decisions, and how collaborative groups can engage in these processes.
This webinar will be on Thursday, July 9 from 10-11:30am Pacific Time.
Registration is required for this event. Register today by clicking this link.

Coverage of the Great American Outdoors Act- Giving Senator Gardner His Due (or Not)

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Yesterday I posted this asking the question, why 15% of the total backlog $ to the Forest Service? But let’s not lose track that everyone worked together to achieve this, and it made its way through an otherwise divided Congress by amassing support through the work of a coalition and politicians of various stripes doing their legislative thing. So you would think that this would be a time to celebrate! And it is.. and I think the cosponsors in the Senate, Gardner and Manchin, especially deserve to be congratulated.

My favorite story was this one from Outsider Magazine by Frederick Reimers.. I think he got both the celebration for all of us, and the responsibility of Senator Gardner right.

Earlier today the Senate passed the Great American Outdoors Act, allocating billions to support outdoor recreation in two separate ways. The first is by providing $9.5 billion over the next five years to help the National Park Service and other federal land-management agencies address their maintenance backlogs. Federal public lands are suffering from $20 billion in deferred maintenance costs, with $12 billion of that accumulated by the National Park Service. The second is to mandate that the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), widely considered the nation’s single best funding tool for outdoor recreation, be permanently financed to its maximum allotment of $900 million annually. In March the president called for such a bill to land on his desk.

It’s a remarkable breakthrough at a time when the White House has been hostile to federal conservation and land-management agencies and to the LWCF; Trump’s proposed 2021 budget slashed the Park Service budget by $587 million and allocated just $15 million to the LWCF, a mere 1.6 percent of its allotment. The bill passed by a vote of 73 to 25. Proponents, including the bill’s sponsor, Republican Cory Gardner of Colorado, tout the Great American Outdoors Act as a way to get people back to work after millions have been laid off in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Years of bipartisan work have led to this moment and this historic opportunity for conservation,” says Gardner. “Today the Senate passed not only the single greatest conservation achievement in generations but also a lifeline to mountain towns and recreation communities hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

(Sharon’s note: Colorado is full of “mountain towns and recreation communities.”)

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced their version of the legislation in the House of Representatives on June 4, and passage of that version is expected in the coming weeks, clearing the way for the president to sign the bill into law.

“We are going to have to rebuild the economy, and this can be a really big part of that,” says Democratic senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, noting that nationally, outdoor recreation contributes $778 billion in consumer spending and supports 5.2 million jobs, yet “our trails and campgrounds aren’t in the shape that they should be, which directly impacts economic activity on public lands and in gateway communities.”

In May, more than 850 signatories representing conservation organizations, local governments, and state and regional tourism boards urged congressional leaders to support the bill. “The Great American Outdoors Act will ensure a future for nature to thrive, kids to play, and hunters and anglers to enjoy,” they wrote.

Senator Heinrich of New Mexico, in addition to Gardner and Manchin, appears to be a special hero to Forest Service fans:

Heinrich lauds Republican senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Rob Portman of Ohio, in addition to Gardner and Daines, with being tireless champions of the Great American Outdoors Act, which he says was named “to appeal to the White House.”

Heinrich, who most observers credit with driving the effort to expand maintenance funding beyond the Park Service, explains that while the Bureau of Indian Education doesn’t have a recreation mission, it was included in the bill because, by “historical accident,” the agency was placed in the Department of the Interior, and therefore, he says, “time and again their funding levels get left out. Sometimes you have to deal with the history that puts us where we are.”

Disappointingly, IMHO, the Paonia, Colorado-based High Country News reprinted a piece from the HuffPost that focused on the “vulnerable” Republicans and implied that they only supported the bill because they are “vulnerable.” It was part of an effort called Climate Desk, although the link between the GAOA and climate is less than direct IMHO. I recognize that partisan politics is one lens to view the news. It shouldn’t be the only lens, though, even if it’s easier to acquire that reporting from NGO-funded news sources.

“It is a desperate attempt to convince their constituents that they aren’t working on behalf of corporations and that they care about what the American people care about,” said Jayson O’Neill, director of public lands watchdog group Western Values Project.

We discussed the Western Values Project in this post, which also has a link to Dave Skinner’s writing in the Flathead Beacon, and an E&E News story.

I hope every state has an outlet like Colorado Politics. It helps us understand who is funding whom to what end, always of interest.

Based on CoPo stories, the Sierra Club has taken a particular dislike to Senator Gardner, from this CoPo piece from November.

“The organization notes that Gardner has introduced a bill to reauthorize of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but his heart isn’t really in it. “[H]is apparent goal is not to pass full funding for LWCF, but rather to maximize the number of positive press hits he gets talking about full funding of LWCF,” according to the Sierra Club. “He has put forth an amendment he knows will not get a vote and in reality does little to move the ball forward.”

Given the outcome with the Great American Outdoors Act, that statement seems remarkably non-prescient. Or this one from CoPo in December:

“Sen. Gardner sits in the majority in the Senate, sees himself as a leader in his party, so there is no good reason for him not to get full funding completed by the end of this year,” said Emily Gedeon, conservation program director for the Colorado Sierra Club. “He puts himself out as an ardent conservationist, but talk is not enough, and he needs to be calling on Senate leadership to get this done.”

After rolling out five critical billboards around the state — including along the main road to the incumbent Republican’s hometown, Yuma — the environmental advocacy organization announced Tuesday that it has another $150,000 in TV ads on network stations in Colorado Springs, Denver and on the Eastern Plains to run through Dec. 20.

I understand that the Sierra Club must think that a D majority in the Senate would be a good thing for the environment, but can we all just take a deep breath and celebrate something good for a few days? And consider, for a minute, that it’s conceivable that Gardner is representing our state’s and people’s interests, and the idea that it’s a political ploy may be worth a few sentences, but is certainly not the whole story.

Great American Outdoor Act Passes Senate.. Forest Service Gets 15%

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We’ve discussed this bill before, and I think it’s great news for a variety of reasons. Congress worked together through all the Congressy give-and-take to get something important to the country passed.  The effort was co-led by Senators Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Gardner of Colorado. Any bill is complicated, and I’m not sure I got all the relevant pieces, but I did pick out this part of potential interest.  I wonder how they arrived at the percentages for each agency…was it based on their deferred maintenance calculations or ????

“Use Of Funds.—

“(1) IN GENERAL.—Amounts deposited in the Fund for each fiscal year shall be used for priority deferred maintenance projects in the System, in the National Wildlife Refuge System, on public land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, for the Bureau of Indian Education schools, and in the National Forest System, as follows:

“(A) 70 percent of the amounts deposited in the Fund for each fiscal year shall be allocated to the Service.

“(B) 15 percent of the amounts deposited in the Fund for each fiscal year shall be allocated to the Forest Service.

 

“(C) 5 percent of the amounts deposited in the Fund for each fiscal year shall be allocated to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

“(D) 5 percent of the amounts deposited in the Fund for each fiscal year shall be allocated to the Bureau of Land Management.

“(E) 5 percent of the amounts deposited in the Fund for each fiscal year shall be allocated to the Bureau of Indian Education.

“(2) LIMITATIONS.—

“(A) NON-TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS.—Over the term of the Fund, within each covered agency, not less than 65 percent of amounts from the Fund shall be allocated for non-transportation projects.

“(B) TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS.—The amounts remaining in the Fund after the allocations required under subparagraph (A) may be allocated for transportation projects of the covered agencies, including paved and unpaved roads, bridges, tunnels, and paved parking areas.

“(C) PLAN.—Any priority deferred maintenance project funded under this section shall be consistent with an applicable transportation, deferred maintenance, or capital improvement plan developed by the applicable covered agency.

“(f) Prohibited Use Of Funds.—No amounts in the Fund shall be used—

“(1) for land acquisition;

“(2) to supplant discretionary funding made available for annually recurring facility operations, maintenance, and construction needs; or“(3) for bonuses for employees of the Federal Government that are carrying out this section.”

Wildlife Advocates Sue Forest Service Over Rising Wolf Body Count in Washington

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Twenty-six wolves killed—including the Profanity Peak Pack—due to agency’s continued preferential treatment for livestock grazing over coexistence with wildlife

Spokane, WA – WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project, and Kettle Range Conservation Group filed a lawsuit today to ensure that the U.S. Forest Service protects endangered gray wolves on the Colville National Forest in northeast Washington where livestock ranching activities have incited conflict. This woeful negligence by the federal agency has resulted in the deaths of 26 wolves since 2012, including the total destruction of both the Profanity Peak Pack and the Old Profanity Territory Pack.

Specifically, the lawsuit challenges the Forest Service’s revised Colville National Forest Plan for failing to evaluate how the agency’s federally permitted livestock grazing program adversely affects wolves—a species eradicated from most of the contiguous United States by the 1920s. The groups are also challenging the Forest Service’s approval of cattle grazing for Diamond M Ranch, which is responsible for the majority of wolf deaths on the Colville National Forest since 2012, without requiring any measures to prevent these wolf-livestock conflicts from recurring.

“The blood of these wolves is on the Forest Service’s hands. Just because the agency didn’t pull the trigger, doesn’t mean the agency didn’t supply the gun and ammunition,” stated WildEarth Guardians’ Wildlife Coexistence Campaigner, Samantha Bruegger. “The Diamond M Ranch livestock grazing allotments, on 78,000 acres of the Colville National Forest, have been notorious as the place where wolves go to die. We want to change that and we think the agency can and should demand ranchers who receive grazing permits must coexist with wolves on national forest land.”

Located in the Kettle River Range and the Selkirk Mountains, the Colville National Forest is mostly comprised of densely forested, rugged terrain—ideal habitat for native carnivores like wolves, grizzly bear, and lynx. Yet nearly 70 percent of the national forest (about 745,000 acres or 1,164 square miles) is allocated to livestock grazing, making the region the epicenter of wolf-livestock conflicts in Washington State.

In its newly revised Forest Plan, adopted in October 2019, the Colville National Forest failed to even acknowledge the gray wolf’s return to the region, yet the plan sets management directives for livestock grazing, wildlife and other uses across all the forest’s 1.1 million-acres for the next 15 to 30 years.

“The gray wolf only began reclaiming its historic habitat in Washington State around a decade ago, yet the Forest Service entirely ignored the management implications of this native carnivore’s return to the Colville,” explained Jennifer Schwartz, staff attorney at WildEarth Guardians. “The Forest Service is legally obligated to explore measures for reducing these recurring conflicts so wolves can hold their rightful place on this forest and carry out their critical ecological role. This deliberate agency inaction is contrary to federal law.”

“It is the responsibility of National Forest leadership to protect, restore, and maintain wildlife habitat, but it has abdicated its authority,” said Timothy Coleman, director for Kettle Range Conservation Group. “Whether you love wildlife, like to hunt and fish, or enjoy beautiful trails free of manure, putting one cattle corporation’s profits ahead of all other interests is a blatantly outrageous waste of our Public Land.”

“Washington’s wolves deserve better than to be cast aside for private business profits,” stated Jocelyn Leroux of the Western Watersheds Project. “The Forest Service has ignored its charge to protect wildlife and instead relinquished power to a wolf-hating private livestock operation. By failing to consider the impacts of cattle grazing in the Colville National Forest on Washington’s native wildlife, the Forest Service has all but guaranteed the wolf slaughter will continue.”

The Forest Service’s inaction is symptomatic of a larger problem within the institutions charged with “managing” wildlife on these federal public lands. Much like the federally-funded wildlife killing program, Wildlife Services, the Forest Service has also chosen to blatantly ignore the changing values of the public and scientifically-backed coexistence practices that can proactively avoid and reduce conflicts between native carnivores and livestock. In fact, for the last 5-10 years, environmental groups have engaged in a relentless and tenacious effort to reform the reckless ways of Wildlife Services and those efforts have resulted in significant steps forward, like in WildEarth Guardians’ most recent settlement in Montana.

“Unfortunately, it takes litigation to force these federal agencies to fulfill their legal duties when it comes to dealing with conflicts between livestock and gray wolves, and this case is just another example,” stated Laurie Rule, senior attorney with Advocates for the West who is co-counseling the case.

Historically, the Forest Service has largely escaped intense scrutiny for its practices. Yet, it is this agency’s actions, through the permitting of livestock grazing, that are driving the killing of wolves, grizzly bears, and other carnivores on public lands across the West. With cattle just turned out for the 2020 grazing season on the Colville National Forest, wildlife advocates don’t want the fate of a new wolf pack in this territory—the Kettle Pack—to similarly hinge on whether one of them attacks a cow, wandering unattended, in this vast, heavily wooded expanse.

NFS Litigation Weekly June 12, 2020

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The Forest Service summary may be found here:  Litigation Weekly June 12_2020_Email

COURT DECISION

On June 3, 2020, the District Court of Montana issued a favorable decision in Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Marten on the consolidated challenges against two Healthy Forest Restoration Act categorical exclusion projects—Willow Creek Project on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the North Bridgers Project on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest.

 

BLOGGER’S BONUS (since there’s some space to fill this week)

(Court decision, this article includes a link to the opinion.)  On May 27, 2020,  in Montana Wildlife Federation v. Bernhardt, the District Court of Montana held that a 2018 Instructional Memorandum (IM) implementing the 2015 sage-grouse amendments to BLM resource management plans (RMPs), as well as oil and gas leases, in Montana and Wyoming were inconsistent with the RMP requirements to prioritize leases to protect sage grouse, and therefore violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

The RMPs at issue included the following language:

“Priority will be given to leasing and development of fluid minerals outside of [priority and general habitat]. When analyzing leasing and authorizing development of fluid mineral resources in PHMA and GHMA, and subject to applicable stipulations for the conservation of [sagegrouse], priority will be given to development in nonhabitat areas first and then in the least suitable habitat for [sage-grouse].”

The Record of Decision for the amendments and a 2016 IM emphasized the importance of encouraging new development in areas that would not conflict with sage-grouse. The 2018 IM dispensed with that priority, except when there was a leasing backlog.  The court held determined that the 2018 IM violated the FLPMA requirement for agency actions to conform to land use plans because it conflicted with the plain language of the RMPs. The court then held, “The lease sales either explicitly, or in effect, follow the same rationale as the 2018 IM and thus also violate the FLPMA,” and it vacated the lease decisions:

“The Court sees no reason to leave the 2018 IM in place. BLM’s errors undercut the very reason that the 2015 Plans created a priority requirement in the first place and prevent BLM from fulfilling that requirement’s goals. As for the lease sales, the errors here occurred at the beginning of the oil and gas lease sale process, infecting everything that followed.”