Chaco Canyon 10 Mile Buffer: The Navajo Side

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I don’t know if this map is accurate, but I got it from Grist

I’ve been reading about the re=evaluation of the Chaco Canyon 10 mile buffer for oil and gas leasing, but the usual coverage by environmental groups doesn’t mention the complexities that there are Navajo families and their elected officials have economic reasons for wanting leasing to occur. I don’t think that that’s really fair coverage although technically true. My concern is that Indigenous people disagree about things, and a person might be left with the impression that groups supported by foundations and ENGOs (in this case, Dine C.A.R.E) somehow represent the overall Indigenous views more than, say, their elected officials. After all people vote for elected officials and they are more or less accountable.. not so much foundations and NGOs.

Back in 2022, though, Dine C.A.R.E. was concerned about off-site effects of the moratorium, according to this Grist article.

“There’s still going to be development going on in that 10-mile buffer, and there’s nothing to prohibit that,” said Carol Davis, director of Diné CARE, a Navajo-led environmental organization. Davis adds that the Interior’s moratorium could push drilling outside the buffer and into communities, “and that’s going to expose people to the adverse health impacts that are a result of oil and gas fracking.”

In fact, the Navajo Nation filed a lawsuit against the Biden Admin, arguing that it violated their mineral rights and that they were not appropriately consulted.

Last week, the Navajo Nation and the Federal government settled the suit, resulting in Tuesday’s dismissal of the case. The settlement directs the government to complete a public consultation and environmental review to decide whether to withdraw the protection within 90 days, which began on March 26.

The most thorough coverage of both sides of this controversy that I have seen was from a 2023 KUNM story. It raises questions about what does Tribal Sovereignty really mean? What Indigenous voices count more than others, and why?

From that story:

FORDHAM: The Department of the Interior says there was extensive consultation on the new rule, including with tribes. But Navajo President Nygren says he personally wasn’t consulted enough.

NYGREN: Tribal sovereignty should be honored, even though it’s tough.

FORDHAM: Plus, he says, fossil fuel has been integral to the history of the Navajo Nation.

NYGREN: So that was the initial development of our government, was based on oil and gas production.

FORDHAM: Oil companies were hugely influential, says University of Arizona historian Andrew Curley, who’s a member of the Navajo Nation.

ANDREW CURLEY: So often people date the origin of our tribal council to 1923. There are these banners hanging up on our solar-powered signposts that say, you know, 100 years of Navajo Nation Council. But the origin of that has to do with oil exploration.

FORDHAM: Oil companies wanted to drill on tribal land, and federal officials set up a Navajo Nation Business Council so there was a body to sign deals. More than 40% of Navajo government income comes from coal, oil and gas. And Curley notes well-paid jobs in mines and plants kept tribal people on their ancestral lands.

CURLEY: So those are some of the benefits, employment and revenues for the tribal government. The detriments are health and environment.

FORDHAM: While the Navajo Nation government opposes the new restrictions, it doesn’t speak for all Navajo people. Navajo activist Mario Atencio campaigned for years to end drilling around Chaco Canyon, worrying about things like contaminated wells.

MARIO ATENCIO: We’re actually protecting the people, but it is environmental and public health, environmental health, environmental justice.

FORDHAM: A lawyer representing some Navajo allotment holders says he plans to sue the federal government to overturn the new rule. Republican Congressmen Eli Crane and Paul Gosar of Arizona introduced legislation to do the same. Meantime, relationships between tribes have suffered. Here’s Gaylord Siow from Laguna Pueblo again.

SIOW: It’s really disheartening, again, that divisiveness that has been caused now between Navajo Nation and Pueblo tribes.

FORDHAM: When Secretary Haaland tried to hold a ceremony in Chaco this summer, she was turned back by angry Navajo protesters.

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Again, I’m just pointing this out to say I think it honors Indigenous people to fairly describe their different points of view.  If various Tribes want to contribute to resources the country uses, and have jobs, and not be poor… it seems just as legitimate to me as protecting cultural resources.  It should be their choice.  And when they disagree.. that’s a problem. But not reporting the complexities of these disagreements doesn’t help, in my opinion. So shout-out to Alice Fordham and KUNM for this reporting.

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Meanwhile, here’s the WEG take at the time (2022)..

There is absolutely zero restraint from the Bureau of Land Management and the Biden administration at this point,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director with WildEarth Guardians. “The mineral withdrawal is good politics — it’s good optics — but it’s not going to turn the tide because there are existing leases within the buffer, and outside the buffer it’s business as usual.”

 

Blast From the Recent Past: New York Times Story “People Still Think Forest Fires Are Bad”

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I’m going to post about a New York Times story on the Forest Service, but thought I’d review some past New York Times classics. This one, from 2017, I would argue has not aged so well. It has been less than 10 years, barely a blink of an eye in forest time..

I still can’t figure out why Hansoniana had occupied so much LA and NY Times space, but perhaps less so recently.

Here are a few quotes from the story and a link to the post.

Scientists at the cutting edge of ecological research, Dr. Hanson among them, argue that the century-old American practice of suppressing wildfires has been nothing less than a calamity. They are calling for a new approach that basically involves letting backcountry fires burn across millions of acres.

Yet that awareness has yet to penetrate the public consciousness.People still think forest fires are bad and expect the government to try to stamp them out, even in remote wilderness areas. Federal and state firefighting costs in some years approach $2 billion.

Imagine! Even people in Santa Rosa and LA think wildfires can be bad.. no mention of climate change and megafires.

“From an ecological standpoint, everything I’ve learned teaches me this is a good idea: Stop putting out fires,” said Jennifer R. Marlon, a geographer at Yale who was among the first to use the term “fire deficit” to describe the situation. “These forests are made to have fire.”

For those of you who say.. “Managed Fires can also be good”, I would agree, but that’s a distinction not made in the story as I read it.

Federal Lands Litigation – special planning edition (March 2026)

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Lawsuits involving land management plans are uncommon, but we have two to look at right now.  Both also involve the interplay between land management plans and the Endangered Species Act.  A district court has decided that the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest LMP violated the ESA’s requirements for consultation on listed species.  At the other end of the court process, the BLM has been sued (again) for a plan that allegedly fails to adequately address the greater sage-grouse, a species for which listing was prevented by agency actions to amend BLM (and Forest Service) land management plans.

Court decision in Defenders of Wildlife v. U. S. Forest Service (W. D. North Carolina)

On March 31, the district court vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion for the revised Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, which violated the Endangered Species Act with respect to four bat species.  This means the forest plan does not comply with the ESA and may not be implemented.  The court said its decision “voids authority for the Revised Forest Plan,” and it appears this means reversion to the prior plan.  The revised plan would have increased the amount of logging.  The opinion can be downloaded from the article.  There is (or was) a second lawsuit pending against the revised plan, discussed here.

The court did not agree with the plaintiffs on all counts.  In particular, it upheld the use of the national forest boundaries as the ESA action area for the forest plan decision, despite some evidence of indirect effects occurring outside of this boundary.  This affects the scope of required analysis.  The court did find the following flaws in the FWS BiOp.

The environmental baseline was inadequate because, even though forest plans are programmatic decisions and may require a “broader scope,” “Other than the general and unexplained conclusions that bats use the Forests and that the Forests contain suitable habitat for the bats, the environmental baseline offers no assessment of the conditions of the bats that are specific to the action area.” The BiOp’s environmental baseline evaluation also failed to account for the actual impacts of any past or present federal, state, or private actions in the action area.

Again recognizing that this is a programmatic decision, the court stated with regard to cumulative effects that, “Even when FWS lacks comprehensive information, it may still determine whether ‘activities in particular areas [are] fundamentally incompatible with the continued existence of the species’ and, in light of that determination, recommend constraints on certain activities in particular areas as needed” (which in the case of a forest plan could be additional protective plan components).  The BiOp also did not address the effects of the non-federal actions that had been identified in the record, and the court construed the overall lack of effort as “an improper wholesale deferral” of effects analysis to future projects.

The court also found the “no jeopardy” determination by the FWS in the BiOp to be arbitrary and capricious because it did not explain how they reached that determination in light of the conclusions in the biological assessment and other facts indicating that the species on the forest were at high risk and important to the species as a whole.  While the court also faulted the Forest Service for relying on this improper jeopardy determination, it determined that the Forest Service BA adequately provided the best available science to the FWS, even if they may have misinterpreted that science.

New lawsuit:  Montana Wildlife Federation v. Burgum (D. Montana)

On March 26, the Montana Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society and Defenders of Wildlife filed a lawsuit against the 2025 amendments to the Montana and Wyoming BLM resource management plans, which modified 2015 plan amendments that convinced the Fish and Wildlife Service to not list greater sage-grouse as threatened or endangered.  The BLM’s 2025 amendments make a number of changes that reduce protection that had been provided to sage-grouse in the 2015 plans. A lawsuit by different parties was discussed here.

This case will focus on oil and gas and mineral development.  According to the complaint, the BLM removed a requirement to prioritize development outside of important sage-grouse habitat, abandoned a provision of the prior plans calling for a mineral withdrawal that would have prevented mining on 10 million acres of the most important sage-grouse habitat, and weakened numerous minimization and mitigation measures.

The plaintiffs allege violations of FLPMA, NEPA and the APA.  The FLPMA requirement is to manage for sustained yield of wildlife, and the Fish and Wildlife Service had previously said the conservation measures removed were necessary to prevent further decline and likely listing under the Endangered Species Act.  Alleged violations of NEPA involve failure to acknowledge, based on the best available science, that these amendments would be less protective of sage-grouse and to disclose those adverse effects, and failure to properly evaluate the loss of mitigation measures that were already proving inadequate.  The case also will address the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which was adopted between the final EIS and the ROD for these amendments) on BLM’s discretion to not lease sage-grouse habitat for oil and gas, and the effects on sage-grouse of claimed likely additional development that would be allowed.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

Court decision in  Montana Wildlife Federation v. Haaland (9th Cir.)

(I apparently missed this decision at the time – which points out that my search system isn’t perfect, and if someone feels like I missed something important to federal lands management, they should let me know.)

On January 17, 2025, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals enjoined several leases in sage-grouse habitat conducted under the 2015 sage-grouse plan amendments in response to two separate lawsuits.  The Montana Wildlife Federation case was heard in the Montana district court and the Western Watersheds Project case originated in Idaho (though these appeals to the Ninth Circuit did not involve leases in either state).

The circuit court determined that a BLM “instructional memo,” which interpreted the 2015 plan to require prioritization of oil and gas permits outside of sage-grouse habitat only when there was a backlog in processing expressions of interest, was plainly inconsistent with the 2015 plan (which had no such qualifier) because “IM 2018-026 prioritizes administrative efficiency over the 2015 Plan’s stated purpose of protecting sage-grouse habitat.”  The court concluded, “The agency thus failed to draw a “rational connection” between the backlog requirement and the substantive, conservation-oriented goals of the 2015 Plan.”  While the court did not invalidate the memo, it found that the June 2018 Wyoming lease sales (addressed by the Montana court), which applied the interpretation in the memo, violated FLPMA because they did not conform to the management plans.  The court found this substantive violation of FLPMA warranted vacating the leases.

In the Idaho case, the 9th Circuit concluded that BLM violated both FLPMA and NEPA with respect to five lease sales (677 leases) when it eliminated in some instances and severely shortened in others the various public participation periods without providing an adequate explanation for its change in policy.  The court stated, “BLM failed entirely to acknowledge the potential costs of reducing public participation in leasing decisions, including that shortening the participation opportunity might lead to insufficient consideration of the environmental impacts of its actions.”  The court found this procedural violation to be less severe, and enjoined the relevant sales without vacating the leases in Nevada, Wyoming and Utah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facilities are Not Researchers Are Not Research Programs

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The R&D reorganization story is, at least for me, less easy to imagine- I wasn’t even following R&D Transformation efforts back in 2007. While I’ve worked in FS R&D in DC, on a project briefly, and in various positions as Research-adjacent, I’ve never worked at a Station. I know among the folks reading, there are many with a great deal more time in all these chairs than I have, so I’m hoping you will share your experience and thoughts.

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Background: FS R&D Shares Facilities Budget with NFS

First of all, I think it’s important to compare FS R&D with other in-house (or intramural) research entities. USGS covers much of the same disciplines and topics, and ARS is in the same department as the FS. Both ARS and USGS have their own budgets. Why is this important? You’ll note that Forest Service Operations and Capital Improvement and Maintenance are shared among NFS, SPTF and R&D. If you want to know more about what goes where, there is this internal link. I know people out there know more about this, and work with it every day. My point is that R&D must share this funding with NFS. Which would tend to make the FS want to decrease facilities costs by combining people from Districts, Forests, other NFS entities, and R&D into the same buildings where possible.

Facilities are not people and not research programs. Some people (and many media reports) seem to think that that closing a facility automatically means that the scientists at a location will be RIFed (or moved to Fort Collins) and the research, therefore, not done. The number I mentioned yesterday, which I think to be accurate, is less than 500 people will need to be relocated out of the commuting area and they received their letters. Even when the Reorganization at USDA came up, I think many conflated buildings (facilities) with people and programs.

When I saw the list, I saw some of the units that have been proposed in the past..maybe 20 or 30 years or so?

Note:Be very careful of AI- I remember, and you all remember, many R&D facilities that were closed in the past. The Macon Fire Lab, the Bend Silviculture Lab, Carbondale (moved to the university), Olustee and so on. I couldn’t get a complete list from AI and had to prompt it with each name I remembered (I used Google AI) it would be interesting to see what others come up with. I asked “What Forest Service research facilities were closed between 1980 and 2024?” and at first it told me about today’s proposed closures and basically told me my question was irrelevant. It seemed to get huffy after I asked about Macon, Bend, etc.

In some cases, scientists move from FS owned facilities because universities offer better laboratories or a more intellectually or family- desirable location. But it can also work the other way, the FS shuts down a facility and the scientists move to a nearby campus. So programs (lines of research), people, and facilities are three different things. Scientists and other scientific staff are the producers of work, not facilities.

One example, when I spent time at the Bend Silviculture Lab, the Area Ecologist (for four Forests) and his staff were all located there as well as research scientists. The interaction was terrific, and one-stop shopping for many of us. So the closure was definitely sad for those of us working in Central Oregon. Many of us fought it in one way or another. Nevertheless, work at Pringle Falls Experimental Forest appears to be ongoing. Which reminds me of…

Experimental Forests and Ranges

The existence of experimental forests and ranges IMHO is one of the strengths of the Forest Service. The H.J. Andrews for example, is funded by NSF because it is also an LTER (which has mega-science-bucks). It’s also funded by Oregon State University, charitable support and other sources.

Some of these have buildings for researchers to stay; not sure that these facilities are on the block.

Role of Congressional Delegations

In the past, Congressional delegations have pushed back against any facility closures (NFS or R&D). Sometimes that leaves the FS between the proverbial rock and hard place, Congress won’t fund enough to keep them open, but won’t let the FS shut them either. Wending their way through these challenges is a difficult task. I don’t know if this list is pre-Congress or post-discussions with Congress, or an opening gambit in what could be years of discussions.

Structure of Other In-House R&D

ARS has regions…

And so does USGS (unified across DOI apparently, what a concept!)

If I showed you a study, you probably couldn’t guess whether it was the FS or USGS who produced it.. unless it was more minerals, energy and geology (USGS) or timber and wood, tree physiology, genetics, insects and disease. (FS). Birds, animals, watersheds, fish, fire, plants, ecology could be either and likely both.

If I were in charge of creating a better whole USG research portfolio, I’d work to ensure that there are no gaps or overlaps (including NSF, DOE, NIFA (and probably NIH when it comes to wildfire smoke) in addressing questions important to Interior and USDA agencies, States, Tribes, and other landowners. But that’s just me.

What Do Stations Do, and How Would State Offices Be Involved?

Most of us can probably imagine (especially if we followed the Transformation effort) what it would look like to have no regions, but service teams for much of the technical support work instead. For me at least, it’s much harder to think of what work currently at Stations would go to national service teams. Some are easier to think of than others, say communications and statistical services.

Part of what the Stations do is foster relationships with other research entities, management folks, the public, Congressionals and so on. Some forms of accountability are also done at the Station level.

Accountability in R&D has taken different forms even in my time.. at one time we had WO reviews of Stations with recommendations, but then (I think it was the Deputy Chief) decided that “suggestions” was strong enough. Then there was the period when folks were supposed to write up the real-world results of applying their research- that seemed to be a useful exercise, although some Stations tried harder than others. I don’t know what current accountability efforts include.

Sometimes it was hard to work collaboratively as R&D (I remember a Communications Team..) because different Station Directors were trying to maximize their own budgets and helpful relationships. At one time, the WO staff (in my case, Timber Management Research) held budget strings and did reviews, but that changed so that some units saw (some of the WO folks) as irrelevant without the budget responsibility. The point of all this history is that if you look at this effort at reorganization with a wider time lens, parts seem familiar (facility issues) and other parts are truly novel (no Stations).

What Do Scientists Actually Need?

If you take a look at your favorite scientist and look at their publications, many of them involve measuring studies in the field and various kinds of computer modeling and statistics. Some need laboratories for their work. Depending on the nature and costs of the equipment, does it make sense for the FS to buy it themselves (and deal with hazardous waste, etc.) or work with university or other partners? The answer is… it depends. I won’t be second-guessing anyone’s choices,

How Did the Team or Teams Look at the Organization and Why Did They Choose This Approach?

We don’t know if the teams working on this did benchmarking with the other research agencies, or what exactly they looked at and what they came up with. I’m hoping to find out via FOIA.

More Invisible People

We tend to use a shorthand of “scientists” as producers of research and there are many folks out there who do not have the “scientist” title but without whose work scientists wouldn’t be able to conduct their research. So let’s give a shout-out to the often unsung and underappreciated whatever their title and grade!

Other topics, stories, ideas, concerns?

The Three Threads of Forest Service Reorganization: Partisan Politics, Organizational Improvement, and Facilities

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I did say that I would talk about R&D, but in this post I’ll set some relevant context, and next post will be R&D only.

Since I was supposed to be off last week, the first I heard about reorganization was the interview with Chris French and Sarah Fisher. Then when I read the information on the web, some old neurons from my R&D past fired up, and I began to see some patterns that made sense. But to understand that, I’ll talk a little about the role of the folks in the WO (whether you call them “headquarters” or not) in interpolating agency career desires with Administration priorities.

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But first, here are two numbers that I heard from sources who usually prove to be correct:
500 or fewer people will have to relocate (they received letters). How can this be? I asked, how can the number include both Regions and the WO? I was told (and I had heard this as it was happening) the during the Big Hire on Soft Money, many folks were hired in various RO’s (to the dismay of field folks at the time) who were working from home (as in a complaint from an RO person “we’ve never actually seen them”). Some RO staffs doubled. When this Admin ordered them to return to the office, many went to local offices which were not the RO building. Last fall, I met some folks who had previously worked in an RO and had already moved to another FS facility “within commuting distance.” That’s an important term. As it was explained to me, if you’re working in an RO and did not receive a relocation letter, it is likely your job will change, perhaps you will work as part of a service delivery team say for NEPA or wildlife or ski areas or lands..but you won’t have to relocate your family.

I had also heard a rumor that the FS needed to lose another 1,000 people to make ends meet, but my sources tell me that normal attrition will account for this.
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Given those numbers, I think that there are three separate threads here that we need to explore. In this case, I like to think of it as a tapestry. The fake silver and gold political threads strike the light and the media.. say, last Admin “old growth,” this Admin “headquarters move, more bucks to the field”. Those threads tend to flake off when the next color of Admin shows up. But the WO magic happens when the career FS folks weave these threads with others.. dealing with long-term improvements in their own views.. and present the completed cloth to the Admin and get buy-off. That way, when the political flakes off, the changes they wanted to make remain and the energy to take out the other threads are unlikely to be priorities in the next Admin.

Thread One: Move Headquarters- The Shiny Thread

Now if the people who are left in DC are the people interacting with Congress and other Agencies (i’ve heard 200), what is a Headquarters exactly? Would a headquarters by any other name attract as much media attention? Is it where the Chief is located? This is a great partisan thing because in my view it’s symbolic, and so each side can proclaim or complain and possibly be distracted by more practical (and meaningful) changes.

Let’s look at the other two threads (there may be more, please add if you know about them). My organizational spidey senses tingled when Chris spoke about the pre-Admin efforts to deal with the FS Fiscal Cliff (the $750 mill or $350 mill according to Chief Moore). That would have been the summer of 2024 when hiring of temps was curtailed. Apparently folks were brought together for a meeting in Salt Lake City for ideas, and then further teams came out with recommendations. I plan to FOIA the results. So just like Transformation (2007) and apparently with some of the same approaches and concepts, employees worked really hard to develop improvements to the way the organization worked. Improvements that seem to be in line with what other teams of employees came up with in 2007. I think that those folks deserve a shout-out! In most news stories I’ve seen, they are invisible. Whose voices are we not hearing? That’s because, in a weird governmental permutation of Lao Tzu’s in the Tao Te Ching:

Those who know (are not allowed to) speak about it.

Those who speak about it do not know it.

Thread Two: Organizational Redesign Focused on Supporting Field and Reducing Layers or Transformation Plus 20 Years

As long as I was in the RO or the WO, field folks complained that too much funding went to overhead. People, external and internal, who worked in different Regions have complained that there are too many apparently (to them) random policy differences between Regions. We know that technical support capacity for forests is not spread evenly across Regions. One idea I heard from one of the team folks was that there are people working on a way to even out budgets and people on Districts based on various metrics of how much work the District is expected to accomplish. In my view, this has been a problem since the Timber Years, when some Timber Regions formerly had big bucks and if you just decrease by the same percentage across all Regions, then they will always have a larger budget and more folks, regardless of current needs. It is definitely time to rethink organizational structure, just as it was in 2007. You can disagree about the outcomes (and we will) but I think the Fiscal Cliff brought home the need and opportunity to try something different.

Further, I have always liked the idea of State Offices (perhaps my experience in R2, Colorado is not Wyoming, and ease in working with BLM) and Michael Rains liked the idea of one executive in an ecological area over NFS, S&PF and R&D. Point being that these ideas for improvement can be easily distinguished from a particular Admin or political ideology.

Thread Three: Facilities, Leases and Maintenance Budgets from Congress

When I read about closures, something clicked in my memory. This has to do with facilities budgets and how changes in programs and where people are working has often led to little-occupied offices. Lease costs have gone up. Costs of maintenance have gone up. If people didn’t get relocation letters, they are probably going to be reassigned to other owned or leased facilities within the commuting area.

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What seems to have happened is that the FS folks have woven the three different threads into a Reorganization cloth that was bought off by the political folks. I think we owe them a debt of gratitude. I’m sure that all the folks working on the teams were thoughtful and did hard work, work that wasn’t easy to do or sell to others, and seems to be mostly invisible in the media I’ve seen.

One more point that seems lost in some media coverage, but is certainly not lost on forests and districts and their partners… if Congress allocates the same budget, and less is taken off the top, then more must go to forests and districts. If you are a member of the public and want better road maintenance, maybe you can have that as well as a team somewhere who has expertise in road design. Maybe the folks who worked on the teams think we can have both.

Finally, this current effort is a bit of a “Big Gulp” of reorganization and getting more bucks to the ground. But the opening for such a Big Gulp was created by the Fiscal cliff. This may remind you of the story of the Chinese farmer. When folks are really sure that what is going to happen in the future is good or bad.. well I’d say, “maybe yes, maybe no.”

Chag Pesach Sameach and Happy Easter!

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The violet patches on the three petals of the mariposa lily serve as nectar guides to its many pollinators, especially beetles. (Photo by Gene Yates)

For those in the Jewish faith community,

פֶּסַח שָׂמֵחַ לְךָ וּלְמִשְׁפַּחְתְּךָ

And for Christians, may your Holy Week be filled with grace and peace.

In my own tradition, the Triduum starts this evening, so I will be off until Monday.

I will still be approving comments, so please leave your comments and questions, and hopefully we can get the questions answered by the FS. FS folks: “we don’t know yet” is a valid answer.

Reorganization… The Beginning of the Journey: What’s In a Headquarters?

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Yesterday I was out and managed to post the interview with Chris French and Sarah from my phone.. I listened to it, and so it set a bit of context for reading the documents and trying to understand all the complexities, which will become more clear as time goes on. I feel the same way about the Reorganization as I did about the new Admin.  Some things will turn out badly and some things will turn out well, perhaps the things we least expect, for unpredictable reasons.  Think energy policy and the shale revolution and data centers.  The best we can hope for is an organization that goes for continuous monitoring and adapting what is working. and fixing what is not.  Across Administrations. Continuous improvement, instead of random attention to random specifics.

There is some apocalyptic thinking out there.  My views are based on my experience working on forests, a region, the WO, and in shared services (employed directly by four forests as an Area Geneticist, and as a national resource in the NFGEL Lab), in R&D, NFS and the reorganized-away Programs and Legislation Deputy Area.

If I were to summarize the key points of the interview…

1. Several teams of Forest Service employees were involved in developing the alternatives, and the teams spoke with at least some key externals.

2. It is important to have an organization that doesn’t go over budget (is sustainable).

3. The FS started thinking about this in the previous Admin when it became clear that they were $750 mill (or Chief Moore said only $350 mill -over budget).

4. The changes should not affect employment at the Forest, some RO and WO people might end up working on a forest (adding folks) and ultimately there should be more budgets reaching the field.

5. Chris and key staff (in terms of relations with Congress) would stay in DC.

Did anyone else pick up anything important from the interview I didn’t mention?

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Here’s a link to the Reorg website. Here’s the press release. Folks are going to paint this as “Bad Trump Admin Hates FS, Wants to Give Land Away to Private Owners” and so on. I don’t think that it’s that simple.  Also, I’d have trouble arguing against State Offices since I’ve supported in the past, because States have intertwined responsibilities (think wildlife) plus the FS budget has lotsa bucks going to States, plus it is likely to make it easier to coordinate with BLM.

Remember when the thinking by some was  “sure they have to downsize, but they should do it thoughtfully and involve stakeholders.” This seems to be that.

I also think there is a broad-brushiness to media and to the concept of “headquarters” in the announcement.  Some of you may remember that at one time hardly anyone was in the Yates Building (or some RO’s) because everyone was working at home.  No doubt it’s important that some employees are in DC.  At the same time, I spent 14 years in DC as an underling, and it was very difficult to hire the best people because who would want to uproot their families and move there for GS-13 and 14 salaries?  I think that with dual career couples being so predominant, it makes sense to move the staffs out of DC.  In fact, the Minerals folks did that as part of Transformation and it seemed to work well.. as I recall, the Director had offices in both places. Also, as an underling RPA, R&D, and NEPA sub-SES level, I mostly briefed other people who would attend important meetings. Could easily have briefed my superiors via Zoom.

My point has always been that the term “Headquarters” is thrown around by both the Admin and by anti-Admin types, but what are the actual details?

I do think that working on the Hill is valuable experience and makes important connections, but that could be a year-long assignment and not a permanent move.

I just have a feeling that those teams that Chris speaks of in the interview probably have discussed all this.  I’d really like to see the documentation supporting each alternative. I suppose I have to FOIA it.

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People

Conceivably there will be those who will be better off.. with more excellent formerly WO and RO folks working in key positions now vacant.  Forests and districts should have more direct access to expertise, even that they don’t currently, because different RO’s have chosen to hire different arrays of experts.

Some employees will be worse off.  They may have to change jobs, get downgrades, move, or all of the above.   The oldsters among us will remember this happening previously during RIFs, and generally, as certain programs get less funded or popular. It can be fun (for some of us) to learn new things and do work that people appreciate instead of more nebulous jobs.

As I recall, when a downgrade happens, employees get to keep their salary for three years? This may not be true, so please correct me.

The hardest and most disruptive part would be having to move.. if it were up to me I would give folks five years and have them work from home until then, with some required presence and travel to the unit’s location.  I’m thinking some of the RO and WO types are that good that I would want to keep them-  whatever it takes.

Chief Thomas had the idea that excellence in professional skills should be rewarded by increasing grade on site without having to move.   I think that this restructuring effort, including, as it does, refocusing on the field level, should bring back discussion of that idea. We did post about it at one time here at TSW but I can’t seem to find it.

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Next post: What About R&D?

 

 

 

Backcountry recreation area is a silver lining for wildfire concerns in Frisco: Denver Post

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Trees cut down at the intersection of Bill’s Ranch trail and Masontown trail located east of Rainbow Lake in Frisco, Colorado on Thursday, March 19, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

With a sample size of two.. Tahoe and Frisco, it seems like communities with well-resourced inhabitants have less controversy over wildfire mitigation and possibly other topics.The other possibility is that many folks are getting along better than we think- across the country- but perhaps the media universe does not share those accounts equally.

This is a comprehensive article worth reading but may have a paywall. For those of you interested in the project documents, they are here.

People in the small Summit County town of Frisco used to call heavily wooded federal land adjacent to town “the asbestos forest,” because it seemed impervious to wildfire. That illusion went up in smoke, though, after nearby wildfires in 2005 and 2017 threatened homes and persuaded them they needed to address the threat on their doorstep.

Since then, state and federal agencies have joined them to discuss ways to reduce dead trees and other potential wildfire fuels in the forest nearby, not only for the threat they pose to Frisco, but also to the Dillon Reservoir bordering town to the east. Wildfire runoff could contaminate the reservoir, which represents about 40% of Denver Water’s supply to the metro area.

Earlier this month, Frisco — which measures less than two square miles and has a population of about 3,000 — and those agencies worked out a plan for wildfire fuel reduction on national forest land. But in doing so, they also took that opportunity to expand recreation opportunities in a 3,000-acre area south and east of town, colloquially known as Frisco’s “Backyard.”

Tying it all together

The work will begin this summer, when Frisco begins construction of a 1.3-mile summer hiking trail and a 1.4-mile Nordic ski trail connecting the Peninsula Recreation Area, which is north of Colorado Highway 9, with the Backyard on the other side of the highway. In late summer, the town plans to begin rebuilding, improving or re-routing an additional 12.3 miles of trails.

It also hopes to begin construction of 4.7 miles of new trails and adopt 14.3 miles of “social trails” — unofficial pathways that have been created by human traffic — for addition to the existing forest service trail network.

“We’re looking at them together, trying to make a logical system where we’re not duplicating routes and where we’re considering how the trails and the recreation experience interact with the proposed fuels treatments,” Massman explained.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit Summit Huts Association plans to build an overnight hut at the Peninsula Recreation Area in partnership with the town. Summit Huts already operates five backcountry huts in Summit County and will fundraise to build the Frisco hut.

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Wildfires are a “legit concern”
But it was the fire mitigation plan that paved the way for the recreation improvements.

While Frisco is small, it acts as a sort of gateway town for the Breckenridge and Copper Mountain ski areas, and to some degree for people heading over Vail Pass to the ski resorts further along I-70. As a result, it boasts an assortment of stores, restaurants and other businesses that generate sales tax revenue, enabling the town to pursue ambitious projects despite its small size.

That includes more than $780,000 the town spent on the National Environmental Policy resource management study (approved this month) regarding the wildfire risk they face and ways to mitigate it. It was a direct reaction to those fires in 2005 and 2017.

“We were all like, ‘It’s a legit concern, we actually need to do more around fire mitigation, we have a real problem,’” said Agee, the town spokeswoman. “It’s not that we were dumb and didn’t think that fire danger was legit, but that really made us think harder.”

Fuels treatment means reducing materials that could readily burn and spread wildfire. The Backyard has a lot of lodgepole pine trees that were killed by the mountain pine beetle. Fuel reduction work will focus on removing dead and live lodgepole pines.

“The aspen trees, the spruce trees and the fir trees, those will all stay,” said Massman, adding that they are immune to the pine beetle. “The area is steep, there is no real road access, so most of the treatments will occur with hand crews cutting with chainsaws and then hand-piling logs for future pile burning. It’s not like a prescribed burn. We’d make these piles and then we’d burn them in the winter when snow is on the ground.”

Reimagining Directives: Is Potential Bias-Wielding by Local Units a Two-Edged Sword?

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Jon raised an interesting question from the management perspective..

Did someone (like the public) say that more consistency (not less) would be a good thing? Does anyone think that this is really about “rightsizing,” and not a partisan deregulation effort (getting rid of the things that get in the way of their marching orders)?

It reminds me a bit of some media outlets. Trump Admin proposes something.  It must be bad. Even if a previous D Admin proposed the same thing.  If that is pointed out by someone, there are a couple of responses,  they don’t really mean to do it  If the Admin does it, they won’t do it right. Then the media outlet finds people who will prognosticate about all the things that could possibly go wrong.

If we put the partisan lens aside and just think about management, I’m sure every organization faces (some of ) the same challenges.  If we were rational (ha!) we might ask the same question about the directives as we might ask about the current state of NFMA planning…  what good does it do? to whom? And ask a variety of folks with direct experience, inside and outside the agency, to make suggestions for improvement.  After all, we have 14 years or so of revisions under our belt, and they aren’t happening exactly as projected in the regulation.   Sometimes I wonder whether partisan views are getting in the way of a reasoned approach to improving the way the US government works.

Some directives serve a purpose both to folks inside and outside, as a compendium of current info on how the agency does things.  Like current CEs in the NEPA directives for example.  I had to go outside the FS to find a spreadsheet with them.. so this is an example of “keeping important info in a format that is updated as needed.”

There are “required ways to do things based on statute and regulations and national interpretations” which is likely where the Timber Manual fits in.

Again, we get to “both things are true”: (1) the folks on the ground know best, as the Chief says and

(2) without any sideboards from headquarters, or shared learning, there can be much reinventing the wheel, at the taxpayers’ expense. (I think the Frenchian effort to centralize some aspects of plan revisions was in response to the forest’s “once in a career” amount of learning and creativity.)

Psychologically, I have seen forests and districts unwilling to change their practices when other forests and districts are more successful with a different approach.  Stodginess, or a careful internal or external political (small p) sensibility? “Not invented here” or “line office fiefdom” or “real world differences at that unit”? Who knows?

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Jon asked “Did someone (like the public) say that more consistency (not less) would be a good thing?”.  I only have two data points… yes-  wildland firefighters think more consistency would be a good thing.  Also the Service First effort (based on my own experience, at least in SW Colorado) showed the public preferred some consistency between the FS and the BLM.

There are legitimate disagreements about how to do things.. for example, I think selecting planting stock on the basis of computer models of future climates is silly. Others think differently.  Is diversity of practices (the results of success won’t be known for 50 years at least) a good thing or a bad thing?

So I think that there are different threads here to untangle…

1. Consistent availability of key information on data important to the public (like recreation sites, fuels accomplishments and so on- the People’s Database).  Probably consistency with the BLM would be handy. But this is not directive.

I remember when the BLM and the FS were doing expensive and to me, not all that different kinds of “assessments” on neighboring pieces of land in Colorado.  Most of the topics seemed to be the same.. but no one could say “hey, why don’t they draw a line and do it together?”  We did try to do an RMP and Forest Plan together and that did not founder on the shoals of regulations, but it seemed, on lack of support from Regional and State leadership, which might have traced back to perceived losing some degree of control.  It’s not easy stuff.

2.  Conscious discussion of what needs to be consistent direction and what doesn’t and why (statutes, regulation interpretation).

3. Within the regulatory framework, discussions of best practices (perhaps this should be organized as a learning discussion online rather than an agreed upon document).

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But back to Jon’s “deregulation” and “marching orders” aspect.. freeing up locals, it seems to me would work both ways.  Patrick has pointed out that the predilections of  some line officers against OHVs seems to  influence their decisions.  If we assume that most FS employees are more allied with the D-ish inclinations (which may or may not be contested, but I’m fairly certain there is evidence) perhaps this would ultimately free them to do more bias-wielding in the future?