Rewilding Earth Podcast: Mapping 50 Years Of Wildlands Decline

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Episode 35 of the Rewilding Earth Podcast, from the Rewilding Institute, looks like it could be of interest to many on this blog. It features Bruce Anderson. Below is Bruce’s bio as well as the topics discussed in the podcast, which you can listen to right here.

Bruce Anderson retired from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in July 2017. During his four years with the DNR he was Assistant Wildlife Manager and wildlife planner where he was involved wildlife surveys, planning, wildlife damage management, habitat assessments, invasive species management and Interdisciplinary support to timber management.

Prior to this, Bruce had a 35 year career with the US Forest Service where he worked in North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and most recently on the Superior National Forest in Northern MN. During his Forest Service career he worked in program management positions for invasive species, wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers, trails, rangeland management, wildlife, fire effects and recreation. Bruce also worked at length within five wilderness areas on wilderness related topics including fire effects monitoring, livestock and recreational grazing, wildlife damage management, invasive species control, motorized use management, and wild and scenic rivers.

Topics

• Effects of mining, timber extraction, invasive species, and development in North America since 1969

• Making an impact on the local level

• Collective effect of taking action where you live

• How to find $50-$100 billion dollars per year for conservation and restoration work from coast to coast

• How “big data” can help make the right management decisions on the ground

Extra Credit

• Reach out to local groups in your area, pick up a shovel, pull invasive species out of the ground on state and federal land, stay active!

• Know what’s been lost in your area in order to understand why taking one more square inch or board foot really does make a difference.

Worst Place to Work in the Federal Government?

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The Forest Service isn’t quite the worst place to work in the federal government, but it’s steadily moving in that direction. According to the latest “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” employee survey, the Forest Service’s ranking has dropped in every category; from leadership to pay to work/life balance, the Forest Service is in the bottom quartile.

Out of 420 federal agencies, the Forest Service 380th place is its lowest ranking ever. Remarkably, but perhaps not coincidentally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture counts four of the Bottom 10 agencies, including the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Economic Research Service, which USDA leadership pissed off by moving their offices to another state.

The gap between the Forest Service and other land management agencies has grown. The BLM, which ranks #311, while still no bed of roses is at least only middling bad in half of the criteria measured. As is the National Park Service, which ranks about the same as BLM. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to rank in the top half of agencies.

Meanwhile, NASA remains the cat’s meow for federal employees.

Let’s Dive Into: Proposed Alaska Roadless Rule

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I’ve told my story before about working on the 95 RPA Program sometime in 93 or 94, 27 years ago, bringing the issue of roadless to the group then known as Chief and Staff, when Jack Ward Thomas was Chief.  Someone at the meeting said “but what about Alaska?” and the idea was dropped. I often wonder what would have happened if someone in the  group had said “well, Alaska is different, we could leave them out and go ahead with the others.”

And so here we are (27 years later) with a draft Roadless Rule for Alaska out for public comment.  Having been involved in Colorado Roadless and the massive misinformation onslaught by many groups and media (a veritable blizzard of hit pieces), I am going to wade in to asking “what’s actually in the draft rule? and how does that relate to how it’s portrayed?”.

I’ve sent a note to the AK Roadless folks asking whether they have information on these topics easily accessible. But perhaps others out there have information to share. This Salon piece aroused my curiosity with the “science” angle. Also the headline seemed a bit over the top “Forest Service moves to open “America’s Amazon” to loggers””.

Trump’s National Forest Service is using a refuted scientific theory to justify building roads in our country’s largest national forest, what some call “America’s Amazon.”
Loggers want to raze trees more than 1,000 years old. 
The Forest Service says guidelines from the United Nations’ climate authority would be followed. Two scientists whose research was cited in the U.N. study says the Forest Service is espousing junk science.
The “more than 1000 years old” link comes from an op-ed in the LA Times authored by Chris Wood and Mike Dombeck.  Reasonable people may well disagree about 2001 Roadless history.
“The final rule allowed for new road construction on a case-by-case basis, for firefighting, forest health, energy development and access to private holdings, but it seriously restricted new timber sales.”
I don’t actually see a clause in the 2001 Rule for roads for “forest health.”  Somehow I can’t read 294.12 and get that. Can anyone help?
The science thing… there are several IPCC reports that talk about climate change and forests. We’d have to look up which one is cited in the FS documents.  Also, having your work cited in a document is not the same as having your thoughts be the same as the consensus.  And, of course,  Salon uses the term “refuted” instead of the more accurate “disputed.” But when are consensus IPCC  findings “junk science”and when not? After Solstice Break we’ll look at this issue in depth as part of a new feature called “Why People Disagree About Forest Carbon.”
The Tongass stores more carbon removed from the atmosphere than any other national forest in the country in its old-growth Sitka spruce, hemlock and cedar trees. It  helps protect Alaska, which is warming more than twice as fast from climate change as our planet overall. The forest holds about 650 million tons of carbon or about half of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2017.

I also think it’s interesting to equate the total storage of the forest with annual emissions of the US. A person could also argue that if Alaska is warming twice as fast, those trees are in trouble anyway.  But wait, this E&E News story says..

Even though 9.2 million acres of inventoried roadless areas would be freed from the roadless rule, only 185,000 acres would be added to the areas that may be considered for timber harvest, the Forest Service said.

Overall harvest projections remain at 17,000 acres of old growth and 11,800 acres of young growth over the next 100 years, levels envisioned in the 2016 Tongass land management plan.

“The proposed rule does not change the projected timber sale quantity or timber demand projections set out in the Tongass Forest Plan,” the Forest Service said in the documents. “The alternatives examine different mixes of land areas and timber restrictions that would incrementally increase management flexibility for how the forest plan’s timber harvest goals can be achieved, but does not fundamentally alter the plan’s underlying goals or projected outcomes.”

Based on the FS point of view, they are trying to switch around where they get their 28,800 OG and YG acres per year. Wikipedia says the Tongass is 16.7 million acres. Is that .2% of the total acres per year? How relevant is it then, to talk about the carbon on the entire forest as relevant to this decision?

Bill Would Boost USFS Funding

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From E&E News($) this morning….

Fiscal 2020 compromise legislation would boost funding for agriculture and forestry programs, including additional money for wildfire suppression in national forests.

For the Forest Service, appropriators said they would provide a $10.3 million increase toward clearing vegetation and dead or dying trees — known as hazardous fuels — in national forests to cut the risk of catastrophic fire, especially in the wildland-urban interface.

The measure would also boost funding for state and local volunteer firefighting capacity, helping to bring the total Forest Service funding to $7.43 billion, compared with $6.08 billion in discretionary funding in fiscal 2019.

The proposal also would devote an additional $1.95 billion to wildfire suppression as part of a wildfire disaster fund Congress agreed to two years ago. That is the Forest Service’s share of a $2.25 billion budget cap adjustment also devoted to the Interior Department.

Introduction to Solutions Journalism

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Last fall, I attended my first Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference.  One of the presentations was from a person from  the Solutions Journalism Network on.. solutions journalism.

SolutionsU is a source of existing solutions journalism. You can search on a topic.. say “forests” and see what they have. Here’s a link. There looked to be quite a few interesting stories.

Also they have training for journalists learning to write stories from this perspective.. Here it is.

It seems to me that it’s terribly difficult to report on solutions (at least in our world) that each have their own pros and cons relative to other solutions, or just leaving things alone. While much journalism is problem-oriented, it seems to me tht solutions-oriented could suffer from the same problem. Did an intervention “work” or did it not “work”.. well it probably depends on what factors you looked at and how you measured them, and what factors you didn’t look at. Still, the database is a good source for stories we might not otherwise have run across. You can also use dates to search if you are interested in more recent ones. If you find something interesting, please link to it in the comments below.

Documents: USFS allowing Canadian company to write their own environmental report

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It will be interesting to watch how some of frequent apologists for industry, the agency or certain administrations on this blog explain this one and tell us it’s no big deal.

Documents: Mining company writing own environmental report
Source: https://www.idahostatesman.com/latest-news/article238363753.html
BY KEITH RIDLER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DECEMBER 13, 2019 04:40 PM

Documents show the U.S. Forest Service allowing a Canadian company to write a key environmental report on its proposed open-pit gold mines in central Idaho after the Trump administration became involved.

The documents obtained by conservation group Earthworks show British Columbia-based Midas Gold’s lobbying efforts after initial rebuffs from the Forest Service.

The report, called a biological assessment, would typically be written by the Forest Service or an independent contractor. Its purpose is to examine the potential effect the open-pit mines would have on salmon, steelhead and bull trout protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The assessment could sink Midas Gold’s Stibnite Gold Project if it results in habitat restoration work that makes the mines economically unfeasible.

An internal Forest Service document in February 2018 shows the agency deciding to deny Midas Gold’s request to participate as a non-federal representative in writing the assessment because the massive project would likely harm protected fish. But by October 2018, Midas Gold was not only a participant, it had taken over leading the process and writing the document.

“I think it’s particularly inappropriate for a mining company to be analyzing their own project,” Bonnie Gestring of Earthworks said this week. She obtained the documents as part of a public records request.

Mckinsey Lyon, vice-president of external affairs for Midas Gold, said it’s normal for a company to write the biological assessment for its project, and the company has been holding monthly meetings with federal agencies, state agencies and tribes.

“We will prepare the draft assessment from that collaborative process,” Lyon said. “We are really looking at this to make the process more inclusive and transparent in getting all the voices and input at the table.”

Documents show ongoing lobbying efforts with federal agencies and then a meeting in May 2018 between Midas Gold and Dan Jiron, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s acting deputy under secretary for natural resources and environment. In November, Midas Gold met with Jim Hubbard, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for natural resources and environment.

Meanwhile, Forest Service resistance to Midas Gold playing a significant role in writing the biological assessment crumbled, according to Forest Service internal emails, meeting notes and a memorandum.

“And to be clear,” then-Payette National Forest Supervisor Keith Lannom wrote in a short email to colleagues in October 2018, “Midas will have the lead on fish, wildlife and plants ESA (Endangered Species Act) consultation.”

Lannom, who earlier this year became a deputy regional forester based in Montana and no longer oversees Payette National Forest issues, didn’t return a call from The Associated Press.

John Freemuth, an expert on U.S. land policies at Boise State University, said it’s not unusual for companies to lobby whatever administration is in power. But he said having a company get the OK to write its own biological assessment is something he’s never heard of before.

“It looks like there was a lot of political pressure that Midas brought to bear at higher levels,” said Freemuth, who reviewed the documents. “It wouldn’t pass what people call the smell test.”

Midas Gold says the Stibnite Mining District contains more than 4 million ounces (113 million grams) of gold and more than 100 million pounds of antimony. Antimony is used in lead for storage batteries as well as a flame retardant. The U.S. lists antimony as one of 35 mineral commodities critical to the economic and national security of the country. Midas Gold says the mines will directly create an average of 500 jobs for up to 25 years.

Mining in the area about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of McCall dates back more than a century and has resulted in two open pits, including one that has been blocking a salmon spawning stream since the 1930s. The site also has extensive tailings left from mining operations that are the source of elevated levels of arsenic.

Previous mining companies walked away, leaving cleanup to U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has spent about $4 million since the 1990s restoring habitat.

Midas Gold plans additional mining in the two open pits and to create a third open pit. The work would roughly double the size of the disturbed mining area to about 2,000 acres (800 hectares) and eliminate some previous reclamation work.

But Midas Gold’s plan includes cleaning up tailings by capturing gold with new technologies. Ultimately, the company says, it will restore much of the area when mining is finished.

The Nez Perce Tribe has treaty rights to the area and has come out against new mining amid concerns for fish habitat. Below the mining area is about 80 river miles of habitat for spring/summer Chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout in the South Fork of the Salmon River and its tributary, the East Fork of the South Fork. The Salmon River itself is home to additional federally protected salmon, including endangered sockeye salmon.

The biological assessment will be used to create a draft environmental impact statement expected to be released in early 2020, with a final decision possible later in the year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest Service will have to sign off on the plan.

Midas Gold officials said the draft biological assessment has not yet been written, but an outline of the document has been created.

Freemuth, the public lands expert, said if the project is approved, a lingering question will be whether land and wildlife managers or political appointees made the decision.

“At the end of the day, people are going to sue if they think that the document is insufficient,” he said. “This will be heavily scrutinized.”

UPDATE (12/23/2019): Foreign Mining Firm Writing Its Own Environmental Report For U.S. Forest Service Loses Round In Court

A Canadian gold-mining company allowed by the Trump administration to write its own assessment of the environmental impact of its proposed project on federal lands has lost a round in court against the Nez Perce tribe in Idaho.

Condition-based project in Georgia

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We’ve discussed “condition-based” NEPA analysis and its legal implications – mostly thinking about timber management.  Here’s the Foothills Landscape Project, affecting 157,000 acres on the Chatahoochee-Oconee National Forest.  It raises the usual concerns about  NEPA sufficiency (it’s an EA, which was a key factor in the Tongass case injunction).  Here’s how it works, according to the EA:

The locations and timing of treatments would continue to be selected and prioritized using a systematic process that evaluates restoration needs, determines appropriate treatments to address those needs (through use of decision matrices) and balances implementation of those activities with operational feasibility, agency capacity, and social considerations, to the extent possible.

But apparently no further consideration of environmental impacts.  Here’s a statement that caught my eye, because the whole point of NEPA (as stated in many court opinions) is to analyze effects before you take action, whereas it sure looks like their intent is to act and then see what the effects are:

If, as a result of monitoring, the effects of activities require management or maintenance treatments that fall outside of the treatment toolbox options assessed within this EA and the forthcoming decision, additional analyses could be warranted.

I’ve also got NFMA concerns if what they are doing is establishing new long-term management direction (which should be in a forest plan) without going through the forest planning process.  How are “project design” requirements different from forest plan standards?

But what was new to me was the application to developed recreation sites, as described here:

On the recreation side, the project looks to make strides to improve the visitors’ experiences by enhancing existing trails and campsites that are used heavily while closing those that are not rarely used and no longer sustainable.
“We don’t have any specific proposals in any specific campground, but we are going to look at the conditions in areas that make sense … “We don’t have a lot of hard proposals, but basically we just want to make investments in areas that have high resource protection and high visitors’ satisfaction,” Grambley said. “We’re proposing reroutes to properly layout trails because we realize that a lot of our trails go straight up a ridgeline and we don’t want that because it causes erosion and it’s not fun to hike quite honestly. So we want to make the trails more sustainable and more-friendly layouts.”

These sound like the kinds of priorities that a forest plan should establish.  But when we want to implement them?  Just trust us to know what “makes sense.”

 

Winter motorized recreation planning – behind the curve again?

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The trend continues – technology makes it easier for more people to get farther into the less trammeled  parts of public lands.  Good planning would project future changes in technology over the life of a plan and – plan for it.  I haven’t researched this question directly, but my impression is that winter travel planning (required by Forest Service regulations) mostly responds to the current state of technology.  I’ve even seen statements like, “we don’t need to worry about closing these areas,” or at least “we don’t need to worry about people complaining if we close these areas,” because people can’t get to them.  What happens when that is no longer true?  NEPA requires consideration of new information relevant to environmental impacts, which may lead to changing a decision.

“Snowbikes” – I imagine there are some national forests that ought to be thinking about going back to the drawing board on their winter travel management plans (and maybe forest plans).  Especially where there are snow-dependent species like lynx and wolverine that are listed under ESA (where new information must be consulted on) or at risk of being listed (and regulatory mechanisms are a consideration).

“After Polaris bought Timbersled in 2015, that’s when things took off,”

“The snowbike market is in its infancy right now, but it’s exploding,”

“It’s a riot,”  “You can make your own line wherever you want to go.”

 

“They’re so agile,”  “You’re able to get into places you never would get into with a snowmobile.”

“It’s just like riding a dirt bike in the woods,”

“For those who have never ridden a snow bike, the best analogy I can think of is this; it is like riding a Jet Ski on sand dunes. There is a freedom unlike anything else I have ever done.”

 

Brown’s Canyon Monument Planning, BLM’s Use of the Online Story Map, and the “Sustainable Alternative”

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I hope that this is a correct map.

I received an email from the Colorado Mountain Club this morning asking me to weigh in via public comments on the Brown’s Canyon management plan, which is joint between the BLM and the Forest Service. The Sustainable Alternative is interesting from the “how local collaborative work should be considered” perspective, and also “what people disagree about when there is no oil and gas nor fuel treatments, and grazing is off the table based on the legislation.” This is the message from CMC about what our comments should say.

Main messaging:

The Sustainable Alternative was developed through a collaborative process by a group of over 20 local Chaffee-county based citizens and organizations who represent decades of use and close observation of the area now designated as Browns Canyon National Monument. The Sustainable Alternative has broad community support from over 100 local businesses, residents, and decisionmakers, as well as various regional and national organizations. The Sustainable Alternative also has local government support, including the City of Salida, the Town of Buena Vista, Chaffee County Commissioners, and the Town of Turret.

The development of the Sustainable Alternative was very intentional in prioritizing the protection of Monument resources, objects, and values, while balancing increased need for recreational access and conservation. The vast community support signifies the balanced and reasonable approach put forth. The Sustainable Alternative seeks to ensure the Monument is protected for generations to come. We believe local residents, businesses, and cities should have a voice in creating reasonable management for Browns Canyon National Monument – we are asking the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service to adopt recommendations put forth in the Sustainable Alternative, rather than a top-down from political voices in Washington, DC.

OK then, but I don’t think that those are the only two alternatives. From the text of the Sustainable Alternative:

In general, the BLM and USFS, in collaboration with cooperating agencies, should provide enough professional staff and law enforcement officers to ensure compliance with BCNM regulations and pertinent laws. The monument should be managed to accommodate current and future uses. Most importantly, the agencies should be careful not to invite more activity than can be sustainably managed, such as by providing maintenance-intensive infrastructure, developments requiring frequent staff patrolling, and by undertaking high-visibility programs to promote visitation to the Monument.

It does seem like folks pursue a Monument designation hoping to get more management bucks. Then they are many times disappointed by not getting more bucks,  and also having more visitation due to the enhanced visibility.  This could lead ultimately to a net loss in funding per visitor.   But has anyone ever seen the BLM or FS spending money to promote visitation to a spot? It seems to me that that is usually the role taken by local businesses and governments, whom I’m guessing are not going to do that, given what they say in these comments.

They also suggest that it’s more efficient for the PSICC to do the monument plan under the 2012 Rule than to do an amendment regarding this piece of land. It’s hard for me to agree that it would be either efficient or particularly straightforward.

As an alternative approach and as previously stated in Friends of Browns Canyon and The Wilderness Society’s comments on the Planning Assessment, submitted in September 2018, it is much more efficient and straightforward to develop the monument management plan under the USFS 2012 planning regulation rather than trying to stitch 2012 rule amendments into a 1982 rule plan.

So I read on and in the Sustainable Alternative there were some surprising (to me) thoughts about roadless:

Similar to recent Federal legislative initiatives to release on WSAs, there are currently state-based pressures to remove roadless area protections. For example, Utah Governor Herbert recently petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to revoke and rewrite the national Roadless Rule as applied to The Aspen Ridge Roadless Area provides a uniquely undamaged landscape with wilderness qualities. Utah’s forests to open these lands to development. (See https://governor.utah.gov/2019/03/01/utah-submits-request-to-the-department-of-agriculture-regarding-federal-land-maintenance and https://ourforests.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/UtahRoadlessRulePetition_28Feb2019.pdf.) In light of these known and anticipated pressures, as well as the need for clear management prescriptions to be outlined in the RMP for future agency officials, it is important for the USFS to consider proactive management to preserve the wilderness character of the lands within the Aspen Ridge Roadless Area, such as those suggested in the following recommendations.
2. Recommendations
• The USFS should use the current planning process as an opportunity to recommend wilderness for the entirety of Aspen Ridge Roadless Area within the monument.
• The USFS should include language in the RMP, providing commitment to manage the Aspen Ridge Roadless Area under the same protections even if the roadless area designation were to be removed.

Holy Smoke! The folks who wrote this either didn’t know that the FS and Colorado had spent a great deal of in developing our own State Roadless Rule and that that is currently the law of the land in Colorado, or are generally promoting Utah-phobia just for the heckuvit.

Anyway, I did think that the BLM’s use of the “online story map” was interesting, and the webinar. The webinar seems like a great idea so many people can easily participate. Maybe FS plans have something similar, but I have not been keeping up. Check it out!

NEPA at 50

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From High Country News, Dec. 6 — open access, I think. I’m a subscriber.

NEPA transformed federal land management — and has fallen short

A look back at the ground-breaking legislation on its 50th anniversary.

At the heart of the legislation lay an optimistic belief that economic growth, environmental protection and human welfare might align without sacrifice or rancor. The law highlights the need to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” It clearly takes a long-range view, incorporating tomorrow’s environmental fate into today’s decisions.

These values, though, tend to be forgotten, overshadowed by a procedural hurdle that changed business-as-usual for federal planning and decision-making. Before undertaking “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment” — offering timber sales on federal land, for example, or building an interstate highway — federal agencies and their partners now had to submit “a detailed statement.” That environmental impact statement, or EIS, needed to be interdisciplinary and thorough, detailing any environmental problems likely to result from the proposed project and listing alternatives, including more costly ones. Then, the public was invited to comment. The procedure significantly lengthened and complicated federal land-use planning and politicized it like never before.

Lots to discuss here, and add….