Wyden Bill: Billion$ for the USFS

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PR from Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. Dunno if this bill has a shot, but he carries some weight on Capitol Hill. Ranking Finance Committee member, long-time member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

 

May 11, 2020

Wyden Introduces Bill to Make Major Investments in Public Health, Wildfire Prevention and Rural Jobs as Part of COVID-19 Economic Stimulus Efforts

New Wyden legislation would provide significant investment for wildfire resiliency to protect Americans from wildfire smoke, boost support for rural economies hit hard by COVID-19

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today introduced legislation that would bolster wildfire prevention and preparedness to protect the health and safety of communities during the unparalleled combination of threats posed by wildfire season and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The legislation also would provide relief and job creation measures that equip rural economies to respond to the unique threats they’re facing during this public health and economic crisis.

“A historic global pandemic that’s still raging at the start of wildfire season adds up to a prescription for major problems in the months ahead to public health and rural jobs in Oregon and nationwide,” Wyden said. “This legislation takes that pair of problems head-on with a comprehensive attack that connects all the dots with a 21st century Conservation Corps and more to protect health and save jobs.”

The impacts of COVID-19 on public health and the economy, combined with high levels of drought throughout the West, create unprecedented wildland firefighting challenges in 2020. Those at increased risk for adverse health effects due to wildfire smoke exposure – people who suffer from heart or respiratory diseases – are also particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. The crisis also quickly brought the outdoor economy to a halt. Many forest workers, despite their essential work, were laid off and others, like outfitters and guides who rely on tourism and outdoor recreation, are unable to work during their busy season.

Wyden’s 21st Century Conservation Corps for Our Health and Our Jobs Act will provide significant investment in wildfire prevention and resiliency efforts; programs that can get rural Americans back to work when it’s deemed safe by public health experts to do so; direct relief for outfitters and guides; as well as extensive resources for watershed restoration. The legislation:

  • Provides an additional $3.5 billion for the U.S. Forest Service and $2 billion for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to increase the pace and scale of hazardous fuels reduction and thinning efforts, prioritizing projects that are shovel-ready and environmentally-reviewed;
  • Establishes a $7 billion relief fund to help outfitters and guides who hold U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Department of the Interior special use permits – and their employees – stay afloat through the truncated recreation season;
  • Establishes a $9 billion fund for qualified land and conservation corps to increase job training and hiring specifically for jobs in the woods, helping to restore public lands and watersheds, while providing important public health related jobs in this time of need;
  • Provides an additional $150 million for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the flagship program for community forest restoration and fire risk reduction;
  • Provides $6 billion for U.S. Forest Service capital improvements and maintenance to put people to work reducing the maintenance backlog on National Forest System lands, including reforestation;
  • Provides $500 million for the Forest Service State and Private Forestry program, which will be divided between programs to help facilitate landscape restoration projects on state, private and federal lands, including $100 million for the Firewise program to help local governments plan for and reduce wildfire risks;
  • Provides $10 billion for on-farm water conservation and habitat improvement projects;
  • Provides full and permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which has broad bipartisan support; and
  • Provides $100 million for land management agencies to purchase and provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to their employees, contractors and service workers.

A one-page summary is available here.

A section-by-section summary is available here.

A copy of the legislative text is available here.

Impacts to Ranchers, Oil and Gas Workers and Their Communities in Times of Covid

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For whatever reason, there are two activities/businesses that seem to attract an outsize amount of what feels like hate, especially in federal lands discussions.

In many states, though, these same activities- ranching and oil and gas production also occur entirely on private land. In the Denver Post business section over the past few weeks, there have been articles on the impacts of Coronavirus to these two activities, their employees, and others who benefit from what they produce/ their taxes/ and contributions to communities.  Two are about ranchers and challenges they face (and also opportunities to decentralize).  What I like about these is that the reporters (Judith Kohler and John Aguilar) interviewed the people impacted, so we get a much closer to the ground view of these communities and the challenges they (and others who depend on them) face today. They also put a face on the folks working in and around the “oil and gas industry” (many industries with different interests) and the “meat industry” (also different groups of people with different interests).  Since most media today is generated from the Coasts, these are voices we might not otherwise hear. It’s harder to engage in “othering” when people are sitting across the table, and when you can hear their voices.

There are also people responding to the challenges as in this piece  also in the Denver Post by Josie Sexton about local grocery stores, prices, processors, and ranchers.

We do try to be competitive and fair, but it has to be fair throughout the supply chain,” Marczyk says. “Not just fair to my customer, it has to be fair to my producer.”

Brunson agrees. He pays his farmer $2.50 per pound of beef as opposed to the commodity rate of 82 cents, he said. And what he’s getting is the difference between a “BMW or a Pinto” — all Colorado grass-fed, Black Angus beef.

Marczyk says people go to the grocery store and ask for any 80% ground beef, “and (those meats) are just not all created equal. They’re just not,” Marczyk said. “The average consumer out there, they have no idea.”

Marzcyk and Brunson think that consumers will come out of this period with a better appreciation for their food, and especially their meat — where it came from, what’s in it and who got sick while processing it along the way.

“A supply chain based on monoculture is very, very dangerous,” Marczyk said. “There’s all this economy in consolidation, but there’s risk in consolidation.”

Formerly an investment banker, Marczyk puts it this way: “We talk about diversity all the time… and then we do just the opposite in our food system. Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate. Bigger, bigger, bigger.”

Meanwhile, River Bear this year will expand its Denver facility by another 3,500 square feet. And Marczyk says the outpouring of support for his small grocery stores and their workers has been humbling.

The next step now, and something that’s close to both of their hearts, could be the creation of more regional and local USDA slaughter facilities, so that the same bottleneck in the system doesn’t happen again. But each processing plant can cost somewhere between $3 million to $8 million to build.

“So it’s a huge hurdle for small family farms to do that, but if we start thinking like a community…” Brunson said.

And until then, “We think we can keep our prices stable,” according to Marczyk. “If the (farmers’) costs of production increase, of course we’re going to have to charge more, but if they don’t, we’re going to hold that line.”

Here are the other three pieces.

Farm-to-table operations now taking an online farm-to-public approach in the age of coronavirus

Coronavirus-linked problems in meat supply chain could mean shortages, trouble for ranchers

This one is about oil and gas declines in Weld County with associated impacts to other businesses, taxes, and charities.

Colorado’s oil and gas country – and its people – suffer from twin hits to industry

Happy Mother’s Day, Forest Service Moms, Grands and Greats!

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This may be the building in which the story took place (or not). I worked there in the mid 70’s, a bit earlier than this story took place. It is part of the Silas Little Experimental Forest, part of the FS Northern Research Station. It now houses the Pineland Research Center, in a coop agreement with Rutgers.

This is another story from my 1990’s collection of Forest Service stories. It’s by Connie Mehmel, and I tried to track her down and get a photo, but was unable to locate her. It’s been another 20 years or so since she submitted this story, so time enough for another generation.

My name is Connie Mehmel. I’m a silviculturist on the Methow Valley Ranger District of the Okanogan National Forest, tucked in the rainshadow of the North Cascades, where I’m now in my 21st year with the Forest Service. Like most Forest Service folks I started my career as a seasonal employee.

In the 70’s I worked in the northeast hardwood forest, from whence my story comes. In the spring of 1977 my husband, Dale, and I arrived at the Northeast Forest Experiment Station in New Lisbon, New Jersey; a region known at the Pine Barrens, though we had nearly as much oak as pine. It was my second season (and Dale’s first season) on a project designed to study the effects of fly parasites on the gypsy moth. Although New Jersey is a densely populated state the New Lisbon station was surprisingly remote. My project employed six seasonal employees, and we would go for days without seeing another soul. The permanent employees were all stationed in Connecticut. When I had left the job in September of the previous year I was about six weeks pregnant, so when I reported to work in April the change in my shape was quite evident. My supervisor was not surprised, but wanted my assurance that I planned to work through the season. I told him not to worry, that I was committed to counting parasites until winter.

However, the parasites did not seem to be flourishing that summer. During those first four weeks we went many days without finding even one fly. May 9 was our first really good day. Although it was Saturday, we still went out to check our traps (an activity we found mildly entertaining), and actually found five flies. And that was not the end of the day’s excitement. That evening I started labor. The following morning, with a midwife in attendance, my son, Ian, was born in the bunkhouse. My husband cut the cord (a gesture I found highly symbolic), and our roommate Stan, the only other employee to be brought on that early, took pictures. We had met Stan just a month earlier, but he became an important part of our lives.

Monday morning I stuffed Ian into a snuggly pack and brought him over to the office. My supervisor exclaimed in surprise, “Well, you people had a productive weekend! Five parasites and a baby! Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” We did, but that was all the time off we allowed ourselves. Ian rode on my back constantly that summer as we monitored gypsy moth populations and surveyed the various parasites that lived on or in them. We found a metal sign to put on the door of his room that read “Forest Research Experimental Area. Please Do Not Disturb.” It seemed appropriate.

That was twenty years ago. Last year I had the thrilling experience of taking a fire crew to eastern Oregon with Ian as one of the crew members. While we were there, I met a young woman from New York who told me that she had a six year old daughter. She said this was the first time she had left her daughter for an extended time, and she was surprised how much she missed the little girl. I told her I knew exactly how she felt, since I’d been through it too. I also told her about my son being with me now. “On fires you sometimes see fathers and sons, and I once saw a father and daughter” I told her. “To my knowledge we are the first mother and son. Next I would like to see a mother and daughter.” She shook my hand warmly after we talked, and told me she was happy we’d had this chance to talk. Maybe she and her daughter will be the first, but I expect it will happen before her daughter is old enough to swing a pulaski.

The 96 percent versus the 1%

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Federal public lands belong equally to all Americans. Will we see democracy in action on the Tongass National Forest regarding the Roadless Rule? I’m positive that we can expect some of the typical USFS and timber industry apologists to chime in here and defend whatever the USFS will end up doing. I do wonder, however, if anyone can share an example of where the USFS got 96% letters and comments in favor of a timber sale, or a coal lease, or an oil and gas lease, but then decided to side with the 1% of commenters who were opposed to the resource extraction? I know, I know…”It’s not a vote.” (Except for all the times the “vote” favors what the USFS was going to do anyway, then they will just be following the “will of the people.”).

According to the Daily Sitka Sentinel:

After months of hearings, analyses, and meetings, the U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday released an official summary of public comments in the rulemaking process that would exempt the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Rule.

All told, 96% of the 267,000 letters and comments received were in favor of keeping the Roadless Rule in place in the Tongass, and one percent supported exempting it from the rule, the summary report said.

Comments were accepted from around the nation. For reference, the population of Southeast Alaska as of the 2010 census was just short of 70,000.

“This is now a litmus test to the state of our democracy,” Sitka Conservation Society Director Andrew Thoms said in an interview today.

“We will see if the government makes decisions guided by the people or if we have descended to the level of corruption that would be a tragedy for what Americans expect from their country and their government,” he said.

The Roadless Rule, in place since 2001, prohibits road building activities in 9.4 million acres of the 16.9 million-acre Tongass National Forest. Project exemptions are possible under the rule.

Fire History and Human History in the Sierra Nevada: Taylor et al. 2016

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Figure 2 from Taylor et al., 2016: “Regime shifts in time series (1600-2015 CE) of Sierra Nevada fire index, summer moisture (i.e., PDSI), and summer temperature (i.e., WANT). A switch to new regime (fire or climate) is shown by a vertical line … The number of tree-ring sites recording fires in each year for the 1600-1907 CE period shown by a dashed line. The fire regime periods are indicated by color shading: 1600-1775 CE (green), 1776-1865 CE (orange), 1866-1903 CE (blue), and 1904 CE to present (pink).”

This is the second of the two papers on how past human activities have affected current conditions. This is relevant to our understanding of what we see today, as well as any reference points for Historic or Natural ranges of variation. What I really liked about this 2016 paper is that it tackled the history of the Sierra Nevada specifically related to fire.

I first found the description of the study in this post by Leny Quinn-Davidson of the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network.  Here is a link to the original paper, which is also worth reading, especially for those who don’t know much California history and/or find it interesting. The excerpts below are all from the Quinn-Davidson post.

The authors identified four major fire regime periods since 1600, which they were able to link to patterns of human activity. The first regime shift occurred in 1776, triggering a 90-year period of enhanced fire activity. During that period, the mean fire index was almost twice what it had been before 1775. The paper shows that this regime shift was coincident with the timing of Native American contact with Spanish missionaries in the region, which occurred in 1769. It’s not exactly intuitive, but the authors explain that the decimation of Native Americans—and a subsequent reduction in light burning—allowed for an increase in fuel continuity and wildfire activity during that period. This connection is further evidenced by the increased sensitivity of fire activity to climate—a relationship that was relatively weak when Native Americans were conducting widespread burning.

The second regime shift occurred in 1866, at which point fire activity dropped back to pre-1776 levels. The authors attribute this shift to major land use changes across the region—mostly associated with intensive livestock grazing, which denuded herbaceous vegetation and had notable effects on fuel continuity and fire spread. During this period, fire activity was also less sensitive to climate than it had been during the previous period because of a lack of fuels.

The third shift is the one we’re all most familiar with: the beginning of the fire suppression era in the early 1900s. During the fire suppression period, in which we’re still operating today, fire activity has been 4–8 times less than in any other period in recent history. Likewise, the fire-climate relationship has been weak for most of this period; the 20th century has shown increased warming trends, yet fire activity has largely been squelched by human activity. Only in recent decades have we seen a strengthening of that relationship, as a perfect storm of high fuel accumulations, longer fire seasons and drier conditions enables fires of unprecedented severity and size, appearing to override the moderating effects of human management.

But the really valuable thing about this new paper by Taylor et al. is that it gives us a larger context to work within. Yes, recent decades have had increased fire activity and increased sensitivity to climate—we’ve all seen it. But let’s remember that our collective frame of reference is relatively short; for most of us, our vision of what’s natural or normal in terms of fire comes from the mid to late 20th century—the height of our fire disconnect. This paper allows us to look back and see that the human relationship to fire is enduring and powerful, and that our biggest mistake in the last century has been to deny ourselves that intimacy—to value “nature” over nurture. History tells us that we should be able to buffer climate effects, but only if we actively engage at a grand scale. I think we’re ready.

NEPA for the 21st Century Papers: Mortimer et al. 2011- Environmental and Social Risks

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If you look at the history of the need for NEPA improvements (currrently EADM), we need to look at the results of the NEPA for the 21st Century project.  It was an effort funded by the Forest Service specifically to look at NEPA improvements.  Since it can be difficult to find all of the papers,   I thought it might be useful to post them and discuss them again in light of the  recent Fleischman et al. paper and ongoing NEPA discussions.  Dave Seesholtz was the leader of this effort, and also produced a very useful annotated bibliography of the journal articles, so many thanks to him for this work.

Let me make my point of view perfectly clear here.  There can be many improvements to the way NEPA is done, as evidenced by the suggestions in the EADM process, and by my own experience with Process Predicament (a previous NEPA improvement effort). Nevertheless, litigation and litigation prep is one of many factors that can slow projects, especially certain kinds of projects, in certain places.  To me there is a difference between what we might call NEPA  “a”  involve the public, assess the impacts, and tell people why you made the decision, or  “b” make a document that is legally defensible.  For me, once you go down the road that “a  group with a litigation history has expressed serious concerns” you are inevitably into “b” which tends to take much extra work.  Your target audience has shifted from the broader public to a judge, and your required level of explanation expanded mightily.  And finally, if litigation didn’t slow down or stop projects, why would people keep spending money on doing it?

So I think the time has come, at the risk of boring everyone else who isn’t interested in discussions of improving NEPA, to post each paper in the N21C collection and have a discussion about each. We can include the approaches, how that fits with our own experience, and so on. If you want to skip these discussions, just avoid posts withe the N21C title.

I’ll start with Dave’s summary of the 2011 Mortimer et al. paper.

Mortimer, M. J., Stern, M. J., Malmsheimer, R. W., Blahna, D. J., K, C. L., & Seesholtz, D. N. (2011). Environmental and Social Risks: Defensive National Environmental Policy Act in the US Forest Service. Journal of Forestry, 27-32.

This article presents findings from three research efforts—interviews with federal land agency employees; an online survey to USFS ID team leaders; and an analysis of federal court cases—that suggest USFS leaders base project decisions more often on process-related risks than on the likelihood of significant environmental impacts. CEQ regulations state that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) should only be triggered by possible significant environmental impacts; however, this research demonstrates that potential socioeconomic and cultural impacts are just as likely as environmental impacts to trigger an EIS process instead of an EA process. The authors point out that these represent two different types of risk: resource risk, those impacts that threaten the natural resource, and process risk, which threaten the USFS’s work through increased public opposition. The latter should not be considered as a reason to do one type of NEPA process over another, and yet, this research shows that the choice to do an EIS process might be driven by perceived process risks. From the 106 ID team leader respondents, 72% ranked “degree of public interest/controversy” and 49% ranked “likelihood of litigation and appeals” as one of their top three reasons for having chosen to do an EIS process instead of an EA process. Only 31% ranked “likely environmental impacts” as one of their top reasons to do an EIS, despite the fact that statutorily this is supposed to be the primary, if not only, reason to do an EIS instead of an EA. The authors also confront the prevailing perception that EISs are more defensible in court due to their more thorough level of analysis. Evaluating the outcome of lawsuits against the USFS in which the plaintiff alleged that the agency had violated NEPA in land-management projects from 1989-2006, the authors found that the EAs are no less successfully defended than EISs. Pulling these findings together, the authors note that USFS personnel might be losing sight of the forest for the procedural trees as they base their decisions on perceived process risks rather than furthering NEPA’s underlying purpose to generate more environmentally sound decisions. Pragmatically, this excessive risk aversion is likely leading to excessive and unnecessary analysis, which, in addition to being time-consuming and expensive, causes “unintelligible” documents that are more likely to obfuscate than disclose decision making.

Main Finding: USFS decides to do Environmental Impact Statements because of potential public controversy and perceived litigation threats, not because of potential environmental impacts. Court decisions show that EISs are not more legally defensible than EAs—suggesting that decision making around NEPA processes is misguided and is causing unnecessary project expenditures and delays.

Recommendation: continued research on how ecological and social risks are used to make decisions

Methods: amalgam of three research efforts; interviews, survey, and court records review

Research Perspective: analysis type

Themes: document creation, litigation avoidance, risk management

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Sharon’s thoughts: if you read the paper itself, there’s a lot to discuss. But here are some quotes from interviews: “25 respondents in the US Forest Service
(n = 8), the National Park Service (n = 6), the Bureau of Land Management (n = 9); and the US Army Corps of Engineers (n =2) in the winter of 2006-2007. ”

Reasons for doing an EIS

• The threat of litigation and the ability to withstand legal challenges:
Our solicitors push us to, they would much prefer us to do an EIS because it’s easier to defend in court.
The decision with sometimes doing an EIS is whether it’s going to litigation or not …

• The desire or ability to incur or demonstrate significant environmental impacts on the landscape with an E1S:
If you really want me to have an EIS, then 1’m going to go for the gusto and have some significant impacts.
We had no idea what the outcome was going to be, hut with an EI5 you can have a significant effect. And we wanted to have a significant effect on the landscape.

• The level of public controversy:
If you have more than a 30% suspicion t.�at if you try to go the EA route someone is going to stop you or threaten to sue you, you’re better to … put your Notice of Intent out, circulate a draft EI5.

How many times have we heard “the FS should have done an EIS for this project.” Most recently, Jon said this about the Crystal project on the Mt. Hood.

“Under NEPA, evidence of scientific controversy requires an EIS to fully explore how the use of that science may be important to determining environmental impacts.” As I said in comments on that thread, if that’s the criterion “scientific controversy” then every controversial project will need an EIS.

What do you think of the ideas in this paper?

 

NEPA Study, Western Environmental Law Center Letter

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The Western Environmental Law Center recently sent this letter to the USFS, regarding a study in the Journal of Forestry on agency NEPA processes. The letter stats that “The conclusions of Fleischman et al. support the analysis and conclusions in our comments on the Forest Service’s proposed rule. The root causes of “delays” with NEPA analysis and completion are not due to the regulations or the law itself, but rather the way in which the Forest Service staffs, trains, and retains (or not) its employees, as well as declining congressional funding levels for mission-critical work.”

Greenwire has an article on this topic today:

A new study takes aim at the idea that environmental reviews take too long for timber and other projects in national forests.

Forrest Fleischman, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Forest Resources, said his research largely shows the opposite: that the Forest Service completes environmental reviews faster than other federal agencies and that the vast majority of projects on land the service oversees proceed without a major hitch.

The real problem, Fleischman told E&E News, is staffing or funding shortages or both, and the difficulties seem to vary from Forest Service region to region.

“I think the main story is budgeting,” said Fleischman, who added that he had long accepted that the National Environmental Policy Act is a roadblock to forest management — a narrative popular with many Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration. “That really doesn’t seem to be the case.”

 

New USFS Data on Forest GHGs

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The USFS Northern Research Station has a new report, “Greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest land, woodlands, and urban trees in the United States, 1990-2018,” that offers national and state-level data.”Forest land, harvested wood products (HWPs), and urban trees within the land sector collectively represent the largest net carbon (C) sink in the United States, offsetting more than 11 percent of total GHG emissions annually.”

Here’s a summary national table:

We’ve discussed C stocks in Oregon forests here. In the report’s appendix, Table 370: C Stocks in Forest Land Remaining Forest Land (MMT C), Oregon, the C stocks are shown increasing slowly and steadily, from 2,860 MMT in 1990 to 3,186 MMT in 2019.