The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views

What IF this was by design and part of the Trump administration’s plans from the beginning? I mean, what IF?

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Contact: Peter Jenkins (202) 265-4189

Special Assistant a No-Show; Two-Thirds of Top Slots Vacant or Acting

Washington, DC — The hallways of the National Park Service Headquarters now open onto empty offices or those filled on a temporary basis. At the same time, a senior official has gone AWOL according to a new complaint filed with the Department of the Interior’s Inspector General (IG) by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Two-thirds of the top NPS slots lack a permanent official — an unprecedented leadership vacuum. While the Trump White House is notably reluctant to submit nominations for Senate confirmation across the Executive agencies, many senior NPS vacancies are for positions that do not require Senate confirmation. Besides having neither a confirmed Park Service Director nor a nominee for that key job, currently –

• Ten of 15 Deputy, Assistant, and Associate NPS Director slots are entirely vacant or temporarily filled by an “acting” appointee;

• Several Superintendent positions at major parks, such as Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Grand Teton, also are filled by “actings” on an interim basis; and

• P. Daniel Smith, who was brought out of retirement in 2018 and given an NPS Deputy slot in which he “exercised the authority of the Director,” then was moved out of that slot last summer to serve as a teleworking special assistant, but he apparently has not been seen at NPS Headquarters since.

“The Park Service is suffering from a multi-billion-dollar maintenance deficit and it can ill afford high-salary ghost employees,” stated PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse. “Keeping so many leadership slots unfilled by permanent jobholders hobbles management and means that major decisions affecting our national parks are increasingly made by political appointees in the Interior Secretary’s office.”

The PEER complaint asks the IG to determine the whereabouts of Smith. He draws a top salary as a Special Assistant to the Director, but there is no confirmed or acting Director. One of the ironies involving P. Daniel Smith is that he appears to be in violation of a restrictive telework policy that was adopted under his aegis when he was still in NPS Headquarters.

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See NPS’s 2/3rds leadership vacancies

Vacant, Director
David Vela, Deputy Director, exercising the authority of the Director
Lena McDowall, Deputy Director, Management and Administration
Shawn Benge, Acting Deputy Director, Operations
Vacant, Deputy Director, Congressional and External Relations
Chris Powell, Chief of Staff
Shane Compton, Associate Director, Chief Information Office
Vacant, Assistant Director, Communications
Joy Beasley, Acting Associate Director, Cultural Resources, Partnerships and Science
Tom Medema, Acting Associate Director, Interpretation, Education, and Volunteers
Charles Laudner, Assistant Director, Legislative and Congressional Affairs
Ray Sauvajot, Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
Mike Caldwell, Acting Associate Director, Park Planning, Facilities, and Lands
Reggie Chapple, Acting Assistant Director, Partnerships and Civic Engagement
Marlon Taubenheim, Acting Associate Director, Workforce and Inclusion
Vacant, Associate Director, Business Services
Louis Rowe, Acting Associate Director, Visitor and Resource Protection

Read PEER’s complaint on Smith filed with Interior IG

Look at checkered history of Danny Smith

This is the beginning of a series in which we will explore current trends in recreation and tourism and their impacts on federal lands.

I’ve noticed that when people write op-eds about Wilderness, they tend to talk about the value of the “recreation industry.” But are those figures really relevant to their argument?

In this recent op-ed in the Colorado Springs Gazette, for example, John Stansfield, of Wild Connections, wrote
“Colorado’s public lands are a major economic driver for the state’s economy with our outdoor recreation industry generating $28 billion annually, supporting 229,000 jobs.”

I tried to find where this figure came from and found this Denver Post article.

The value of Colorado’s outdoor recreation economy has grown to $62.5 billion, almost double what it was just five years ago, and now supports about 511,000 jobs across the state, says a state report released Friday.

Gov. John Hickenlooper joined staffers from several different state and federal agencies, outdoor businesses and conservation groups along the South Platte River in Lower Downtown to unveil the latest survey of the state’s outdoor recreation economy. Hickenlooper noted the big increase in the overall economic contribution — to $62.5 billion from $34 billion in 2013.

“This puts it as one of the top economic drivers of our economy,” Hickenlooper said. “That’s a $35 billion contribution to our GDP (Gross Domestic Product). That’s more than 10 percent.

So I looked into the Colorado Parks and Wildlife report which was based on information from the Outdoor Recreation industry (I’m not criticizing this approach, just pointing out that getting information from industries should not be a “bad” thing or a “good” thing depending on our views about that industry). Also, it’s probably true that CPW is not unbiased either, but that’s OK, because we can read the report.

The DPW study used a broader definition than the OIA study, so that’s why their figures are higher. Here’s a link to the OIA study.

But is it really fair to argue for Wilderness based on recreation figures from skateboarding, to RVing to snowmobiling, most of which don’t take place in Wilderness? If you were designing an economic study to argue for Wilderness, wouldn’t you want to include ($ paid by people who would only visit if this area were Wilderness) – ($lost by people who could no longer recreate in this Wilderness)? How would you design an accurate estimate? I’d start with a survey that asks “in these specific areas (in the Wilderness Bill under consideration) are you more or less likely to recreate there if it were Wilderness? Then there’s the related impact question of “how much more impact would these recreationists have, both in terms of the land and wildlife, and in the travel to get there?”

These are all the questions that might be asked and answered in an EIS, but Congressional designation is political (in this particular case it appears to be a symbolic political act).

Here’s another quote:
“Frequent surveys show a majority of Coloradans prefer to permanently protect our public lands for present and future generations to enjoy.”
This leaves out “exactly what are we protecting them from? from other members of the public enjoying them?” and “by designating Wilderness, are they adequately protected from recreation impacts?”. What are the mechanics of that? If it is narrowing down the user pool (to only hikers and equestrians) permanently, I guess that makes sense, but of course they have their own impacts, sometimes fairly significant. It’s just confusing to me that there is the “protection from people” language in the same argument as “the outdoor industry makes lots of money.”

The “urban-rural divide” has been discussed for years, especially in the western US. Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions has a new report on the issue. Here’s a press release….

Dividing Lines — and Common Ground — Between Rural and Urban Voters on Environmental Policy

DURHAM, N.C. — Rural and urban Americans are divided in their views on the environment, but common ground does exist, says a new report led by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

“The urban/rural divide on the environment is real, but it centers not on differences in how much people value environmental protection but on divergent views toward government regulation,” said lead author Robert Bonnie, executive in residence at the Nicholas Institute and a former undersecretary for natural resources and environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Rural Americans, across party lines, are less supportive of governmental oversight on the environment than their urban/suburban counterparts.”

The study was conducted over two years by the Nicholas Institute with assistance from the University of Rhode Island, the University of Wyoming, Hart Research Associates and New Bridge Strategy. It involved extensive outreach to rural constituencies, including a national survey of more than 2,000 registered voters, focus groups with more than 125 rural voters and in-depth interviews with 36 rural leaders.

Rural Americans have an outsized impact on national environmental policy, from strong representation in the halls of Congress to management of vast swaths of lands and watersheds, the authors note.

Polling results indicated broad support for conservation and environmental protection among both rural and urban/suburban voters. The study also found rural voters to be relatively knowledgeable about environmental policies and the potential economic trade-offs that come with them.

“Americans living in rural communities showed a powerful commitment to protecting the environment, motivated in large part by a strong place identity and desire to maintain local environmental resources for future generations,” said study co-author Emily Diamond, assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island.

Rural voters significantly diverged from urban and suburban voters over attitudes toward federal regulation, the study found. In the polling, rural voters across political parties expressed more skepticism for government policies. Participants in focus group conversations often voiced strong support for conservation and environmental protection in the abstract but raised concerns about the impacts and effectiveness of specific policies.

Climate change proved to be another dividing line between rural and urban/suburban voters.

“Our focus groups and interviews echoed this sense that rural opposition to climate change policies may be tied to negative experiences they have had with other federal environmental regulations,” Diamond said.

“Climate change is a polarizing issue in rural America, but there is a path forward that can win rural support,” Bonnie added. “Our study shows that engagement and collaboration with rural stakeholders will be important to winning over rural support.”

There is no quick fix to bridging the urban/rural divide on environmental policies, the authors said. They recommend that policymakers, environmentalists and conservation groups engage more with rural communities when developing policies that could affect them. The authors also suggest federal policies — especially for addressing climate change — are more likely to gain rural voters’ support if they allow for state and local partnerships and collaboration with rural stakeholders.

Other key recommendations include:

* Working with trusted messengers, such as farmers, ranchers, and cooperative extension services, to convey information about environmental policies to local stakeholders
* Improving scientific outreach to rural communities
* Offering opportunities to address environmental policy priorities in a way that is compatible with rural economies

Support for the study was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Wilburforce Foundation and the Rubenstein Fellows Academy at Duke University. The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions contributed seed funding through its Catalyst Program to get the project started. The full report, “Understanding Rural Attitudes Toward the Environment and Conservation in America,” is available at nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/understanding-rural-attitudes-toward-environment-and-conservation-america.

The study was led by Bonnie with co-authors Diamond and Elizabeth Rowe, a master of environmental management student at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Jay Campbell at Hart Research Associates and Lori Weigel at New Bridge Strategy conducted focus groups and polling for the study.

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From Science Daily.

Summary: New research reveals that even simultaneous bark beetle outbreaks are not a death sentence to the state’s beloved forests. The study found that high-elevation forests in the southern Rocky Mountains actually have a good chance of recovery, even after overlapping outbreaks with different kinds of beetles. One thing that is slowing their recovery down: Foraging elk and deer.

Two words, and a tiny little creature, strike fear in the hearts of many Colorado outdoor enthusiasts: bark beetle. But new research from University of Colorado Boulder reveals that even simultaneous bark beetle outbreaks are not a death sentence to the state’s beloved forests.

The study, published this month in the journal Ecology, found that high-elevation forests in the southern Rocky Mountains actually have a good chance of recovery, even after overlapping outbreaks with different kinds of beetles. One thing that is slowing their recovery down: Foraging elk and deer.

“This is actually a bright point, at least for the next several decades,” said Robert Andrus, lead author of the study and recent PhD graduate in physical geography. “Even though we had multiple bark beetle outbreaks, we found that 86 percent of the stands of trees that we surveyed are currently on a trajectory for recovery.”

Between 2005 and 2017, a severe outbreak of spruce bark beetles swept through more than 741,000 acres of high-elevation forest in the southern Rocky Mountains near Wolf Creek Pass — killing more than 90 percent of Engelmann spruce trees in many stands. At the same time, the western balsam bark beetle infested subalpine fir trees across almost 124,000 acres within the same area.

If you go skiing in Colorado, you’re usually in a high-elevation, Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir forest, said Andrus.

The researchers wanted to know if these overlapping events, caused by two different types of bark beetles, would limit the ability of the forest to recover. So they measured more than 14,000 trees in 105 stands in the eastern San Juan Mountains, tallying the surviving species and the number of deaths. They had expected that the combined effects of two bark beetle outbreaks would prevent forest recovery, but they found that the forests were quite resilient.

That’s an important contrast from what happens following a severe fire, which can cause forests to convert to grasslands, according to previous research by Thomas Veblen, coauthor of the study and Distinguished Professor of Geography.

“It’s important that we perform these sorts of studies, because we need different management responses depending on the forest type and the kind of disturbance,” said Veblen.

They also found that greater tree species diversity prior to the bark beetle outbreaks was a key component of resilient forests.

Tens of millions of acres across the Western United States and North America have been affected in the past two decades, and Colorado has not been spared. A severe mountain pine beetle outbreak began in 1996, easily visible along I-70 and in Rocky Mountain National Park. Since 2000, more than 1.8 million acres of Engelmann spruce statewide have been affected by spruce beetles in high-elevation forests.

With continued warming there will come a time where conditions caused by climate change exceed the forests’ ability to recover, said Veblen.

Impacts of Ungulates

The study is the first to consider the effects of two different types of beetles that affect two different dominant tree species, as well as the effects of browsing elk and deer in the same area.

Bark beetles prefer bigger, mature trees with thicker bark, which offer more nutrients and better protection in the wintertime. They typically leave the younger, juvenile trees alone — allowing the next generation to recover and repopulate the forest.

But while in the field, researchers noticed many smaller trees were being munched on by elk and deer. Known as “ungulates,” these animals like to nibble the top of young trees, which can stunt the trees’ vertical growth. They found more than half of the tops of all smaller trees had been browsed.

That doesn’t mean that those trees are going to die — ungulates are just more likely to slow the rate of forest recovery.

Avid Colorado skiers and mountaineers looking forward to typical, green forests, however, will have to be patient.

“We don’t expect full forest recovery for decades,” said Andrus.

Story Source: Materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder. Original written by Kelsey Simpkins. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference: Robert A. Andrus, Sarah J. Hart, Thomas T. Veblen. Forest recovery following synchronous outbreaks of spruce and western balsam bark beetle is slowed by ungulate browsing. Ecology, 2020; DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2998

You may recall a paper last year that called for large-scale tree planting as “our most effective climate change solution to date.” And President Trump’s call for planting a trillion trees. An op-ed in today’s NY Times debunks this notion, writing that:

There is no way that planting trees, even across a global area the size of the United States, can absorb the enormous amounts of fossil carbon emitted from industrial societies. Trees do take up carbon from the atmosphere as they grow. But this uptake merely replaces carbon lost when forests were cleared in the first place, usually long ago. Regrowing forests where they once flourished can undo some damage done in the past, but even a trillion trees can’t store enough carbon to head off dramatic climate changes this century.

The op-ed mentions a rebuttal to the first paper in Science (open access), in which the authors state that”

“…regardless of the exact amount of carbon that could be stored via forest restoration, this solution can only temporarily delay future warming. The 205 GtC proposed by the authors is equal to about 20 years of global anthropo-genic CO2 emissions at the current emission rate of about 10 GtC/year (2). Without radical reductions in fossil carbon emissions, forest restoration can only offset a share of future emissions and has limited potential. The only long-term and sustainable way to stabilize the climate at any temperature target is to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions to zero (over the coming 30 to 50 years to meet the temperature targets of the Paris Climate Agreement).”

In any case, maintaining forest health and resilience, and reducing the chances of large, intense wildfires, is still important.