Landownership Adjustments: the Eastern Sierra Landownership Adjustment Project

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As I said before, I didn’t think that Senator Lee had made his case that land exchanges and sales of federal land couldn’t be done through existing methods; and that new legislation was needed.  While those provisions are now gone, as I predicted, it made me curious as to what existing methods were out there.   What I heard from BLM folks was that “we can already do those things,” much like what I’d heard about the Public Lands Rule.  In terms of examples of exchanges and sales, Bill Dunkelberger (retired Forest Supervisor of the H-T) sent me the example of the Eastern Sierra Landownership Adjustment Project.  The way it’s structured made me think of ways that communities, agencies and Tribes may work together to do PODs and evacuation routes and other wildfire-related planning.  Anyway, here’s a link to the report.  It would be interesting to get an update from any of you working in the area.

Here’s what they set out to do:

Surrounded by an array of public land holdings, the communities in the Eastern Sierra are uniquely protected from over development even as they are sometimes constrained from logical and sustainable growth. With almost 97% of Inyo County and 94% of Mono County owned by public agencies, the Eastern Sierra lacks private land within and adjacent to existing communities. Administering these vast acreages of public land is a task that is sometimes complicated by isolated private parcels. The goal of the Eastern Sierra Landownership Adjustment Project (LAP) is to examine landownership patterns and exchange opportunities to maximize local resource management efficiency, community planning and expansion potential.

LAP Vision Statement

Federal and state agencies, Inyo and Mono counties, local tribes, interested citizens, organizations, and private landowners will collaborate to explore and develop options to create a landownership pattern in the Eastern Sierra that better complements collaborative regional goals while preserving private property rights F focusing on opportunities to concentrate development around existing communities and infrastructure; provide workforce housing; maintain agricultural opportunities; protect water and other natural resources and open space; and consolidate agency lands.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy funded the LAP in 2008 and an Advisory Committee consisting of representatives from the BLM, USFS, Mono and Inyo Counties, individual citizens, and the Sierra Business Council worked collaboratively to guide the project to completion of its stated goals:

  • Conduct an inventory of all potential agency lands available for disposal and identified for acquisition, and create a GIS
  • Disseminate information pertaining to land disposal policies, constraints, and opportunities, and make the GIS land inventory accessible to the
  • Conduct public workshops to identify community needs that could be addressed through the project, and identify potential landownership
  • Based on the land inventory and community input, work collaboratively to facilitate mutually beneficial landownership adjustments and institutionalize policies to guide future

Now my BLM friends said it was fairly easy to do all this under FLPMA, but weren’t sure about the FS. I’m just going to copy these authorities, and hope that currently knowledgeable people will let us know whether they are still accurate.  There were specifics about the Inyo and HT forest plans, but perhaps they have been revised since then.  But forest plans were important pieces of the puzzle. Apologies for any formatting errors.

2.1.1          U.S. Forest Service

Standards and Guidelines

These  Federal level  policies  and  standards  govern  all  National  Forests.  For  Forest@level  policies  and standards  that provide  more  specific  guidance, see  the  individual sections  for the  Humboldt-Toiyabe and  Inyo  National Forests.

  • Land exchanges are a discretionary and voluntary transaction between the Federal government and a non-Federal party (36 CFR 254.3.a).
  • A determination must be made that the public interest will be well served (36 CFR §254.3.b), which may include:
    • The opportunity to achieve better management of Federal lands and resources;
    • To meet the needs of State and local residents and their economies; and
    • To secure important objectives, including but not limited to: protection of fish and wildlife habitats, cultural resources, watersheds, and wilderness and aesthetic values; enhancement of recreation opportunities and public access; consolidation of lands and/or interests in lands, such as mineral and timber interests, for more local and efficient management and development; consolidation of split estates; expansion of communities; accommodation   of existing    or    planned    land    use    authorizations;    promotion    of    multiple use    values; implementation of applicable  Forest  Land  and  Resource  Management  Plans; and  fulfillment of  public needs.

The authorized officer must also find that (36 CFR §254.3.b.2.):

  • The resource values and the public objectives served by the non@Federal lands or interests to be acquired must equal or exceed the resource values and the public objectives served by the Federal lands to be conveyed,  and
  • The intended use of the conveyed Federal land will not substantially conflict with established management objectives on adjacent Federal lands, including Indian Trust
    • Exchanges must be consistent with Forest land and resource management plans (36 CFR
    • 254.3.f, the Land Exchange Handbook [FSH 5409.13 Chapter 30]).
    • The non@Federal party must be the owner of the non@Federal land to be exchanged, or be in a position to acquire and convey it prior to initiating the land exchange process (the Land Exchange Handbook  [FSH  13  Chapter 30]).
    • Properties must be equal in value, or either party may make them equal by cash payment not to exceed 25% of the Federal value. Payment may be waived to the non@Federal party up to 3% or $15,000, whichever is less. (36 CFR    254.12)
    • Unless otherwise  provided  by  statute,  the  Federal  and  non@Federal  lands  involved  in  an exchange must be located within the same state (36 CFR §254.3.d, Federal Land Policy and Management  Act  of  1976 [FLPMA]).
    • Exchanges must be conducted with United States citizens (FLPMA).
    • Marketing considerations: The authorized officer has the responsibility to design land exchange transactions that consider the best marketing configuration. See the Land Exchange Handbook (FSH 13 Chapter 30), for examples.
    • Reservations or restrictions on the Federal lands shall be required only when needed to protect the public interest or to satisfy a requirement of law, such as those concerning wetlands, floodplains, heritage sites, and so forth (36 CFR §254.3.h., the Land Exchange Handbook [FSH 5409.13 Chapter 30]).
    • The use or development of lands conveyed out of Federal ownership are subject to any restrictions imposed by the conveyance documents and all laws, regulations, and zoning authorities of State and local governing bodies (36 CFR 3.h.).
    • Lands must be properly described on the basis of a standard survey or as allowable by law (36 CFR 3.j.).
    • See 36 CFR §254.3.i for hazard substance
  • Federal regulations and policy provides for cost sharing and the assumption of costs, and allows for individual Forests to determine the assignment of costs and responsibilities (36 CFR 254.7, the Land Exchange Handbook [FSH 5409.13 Chapter 30]).
  • The authorized officer shall undertake an environmental analysis (36 CFR §254.3.g). See the Land Exchange Handbook (FSH 5409.13 Chapter 30) for a listing of environmental analysis and protection
  • Various exchange configurations can be considered (the Land Exchange Handbook [FSH 13 Chapter 30]) including assembled land exchanges, phased closing, multiple transactions, multiple conveyances (direct deeding), and dual authority exchange.
  • Appraisal requirements are set forth in 36 CFR §254.9. An appraisal is based on fair market value of the highest and best use of the land as set forth in 36 CFR 254.9(b).

General Exchange Act

  • The non-Federal land must be valuable chiefly for National Forest purposes.
  • The National Forest land must be non-mineral in character, or the minerals must be reserved and their value considered in the exchange (with  BLM  approval).
  • Requires that lands acquired be within proclaimed National Forest Service

Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA)

  • Authorizes acquisition  of  land  for  access  across  non-Federal  lands  to  units  of  the  National Forest
  • Requires the Secretary of Agriculture to give full consideration to State and local needs as well as Federal
  • Requires lands exchanged to be of equal value, within 25%.

Exchange for Schools Act (Sisk Act)

  • Allows for the exchange of not more than 80 acres of National Forest System land to a State,  county, municipal government, or public school authority without limitation to the amount of cash equalization payment made by the non-Federal part
  • Lands may be conveyed to a State, county or municipal government only if the entity was using the land on January 12, 1983, and for the same use
Tools
  • Exchanges (the Land Exchange Handbook [FSH 13 Chapter 30]):
    • Land for Land, including  partial  interests  such  as  severed  mineral  estates,  rights-of-way easements, leasehold interests, and long-term or perpetual easements.
    • Legislated Exchanges: Passed by an Act of Congress, and may override the requirements of USFS regulation and
  • Land for Timber: acquisition  of  non@Federal  land,  or  interest  in  land,  in  exchange  for National Forest timber or the value  generated  from  the  timber  harvested  in  accordance  with a National Forest timber
  • Competitive Land Exchange: when the Federal land is unique and similar private party transactions are  limited  or  non@existent  or  there  is  a  known  competitive  interest  in  the Federal
  • Exchange with States and Federally Recognized
  • Exchange through the Bureau of Land
  • Administrative Site Exchange: may facilitate acquisition of new administrative sites, conveyance of sites that are no longer needed to accomplish the Forest Service mission, or both. Resource lands may not be conveyed for a new administrative
  • Limited sale ability to schools via the Sisk Act
  • National Forest Townsites: up to 640 acres of National Forest System lands adjacent to or contiguous to an established community in California may be sold for fair market value if those lands would serve indigenous community objectives that outweigh the public objectives and values of retaining the lands in Federal See 36 CFR Section 254, Subpart B.
  • Small Tracts Act: provides for the resolution of land disputes and management problems by conveying through sale, exchange, or interchange three categories of land: parcels encroached on, road rights-of-way, and mineral survey fractions. See 36 CFR Section 254, Subpart

 

 

USDA Soon to Publish Interim Final Rule with One NEPA Regulation for All USDA

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E&E News had an article that included information about this. There was an interesting quote from our friend Ted Zukoski:

“This proposal will bar the American people from offering input on the vast majority of massive logging projects that will be approved under Trump’s ‘log, baby, log’ plan,” said Ted Zukoski, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, about USDA’s proposal in a statement.
He added, “The public’s ability to hold federal agencies accountable is the crucial foundation of America’s environmental laws and we’re going to use every tool in our arsenal to defend it.”

Here’s a link to the document. I’m hoping that people who are paid to do so, possibly including the people who worked on it,  will provide a summary of the general changes and the changes specific to the FS and what that means now and in the future for agency practitioners, contractors and partners involved in the work.

Please add any analysis you find, as well as your own views, in the comments.

Help Wanted: Interpreting Cut and Sold Report

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Note: I am away but still am the only comment moderator for now. I’ve been told that I’ll have cell coverage when I get to where I’m going this afternoon, so there may be slowness associated with approving comments depending on various factors.

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Help!  I was trying to communicate that only some California forests have timber industry and markets, so that it is unlikely that timber industry will be doing anything to speak of in the future.  So I went to the Cut and Sold Report and tried to interpret it. Here is 2024 for Region 5. I know there are many people out there who can help with this so please speak up.

Some obvious questions..

1. What is the sold number?

2. What causes a cut volume to be negative?

3. What causes a cut value to be negative?

4. To get an idea of how much the Angeles and Cleveland’s 100 and 150 MBF is.. I tried using this and made up a 16 inch 80 foot tall tree, which is 34 bf. So if they were all that size it would take 3000 trees to get to 100MBF.   think the cut and sold report may include firewood but I’m not sure if that’s on this table or not, if we’re trying to get at “timber industry” timber products.I guess it wouldn’t matter unless you want to track carbon impacts, and then what it is used for definitely does matter.

Also of interest is the lower value of 3424/141 =$24/MBF versus $66 per MBF on the Angeles or 1705/2230 $.76 on the Mendocino.

I’m hoping that someone out there will be able to interpret these numbers. I’m sure it all makes sense to those who watch these things regularly, but I need a Cut and Sold Report 101.

What the Hell are They Thinking? Post by Jim Petersen from Evergreen Magazine: NAFSR Letter

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This county level map of 2024 General Election results disproves the urban “red state” legend. There are no “red states.” What we have are blue pockets floating in a sea of red. Alaska, which has boroughs, not counties, voted RED but wasn’t included in this map. Source: Reddit

Jim Petersen gives an impassions plea for Forest Service Research and Development.  Thanks to him for taking this out of the paywall for us! Here’s the link and also posted it below.  It’s hard for me to write about what a bad idea it is.. it’s so bad, but thanks to Jim for filling the gap.  Like I’ve said previously, I’m a little worried that the R’s tend to want to reduce everything and some D’s may not care about this kind of research, which could leave a hole of support.

Fortunately for all of us, NAFSR has written a letter of support that you can modify if you want to contact your Representatives and Senators. This is the link (but it didn’t work for me) and I also uploaded it here.

Anyway, back to Jim’s essay.

The U.S. House of Representatives has zeroed out the Forest Service’s entire research budget for Fiscal 2026.

Forest Service research is not code for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or any other social construct currently dominating news cycles and social media.

IT’S SCIENCE for heaven’s sake! The rock solid foundation that gives credence to the Forest Service’s management goals and objectives. The decadal forest plans.

NONE of the lofty goals described in the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act now winding its way through the U.S. Senate can be reached if President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” aka the 2026 Appropriations Act does not include the Forest Service’s research budget.

It is thus up to the Senate reinsert this budget in the 2026 Appropriations Act.

What they hell were House members thinking? The Forest Service can’t magically restore dying National Forests if there is no money for research that supports the Fix Our Forests Act. Do House members realize vetoed their own forestry bill?

Here’s a list of what the House majority defunded – and here’s hoping the Senate restores the Forest Service’s research budget.

Gone: The Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin. A world class facility that includes machines that replicate pulping and papermaking processes on a pilot scale, others that test the compression and tensile strengths of various wood species and a nearby three-bedroom house filled with monitoring gear that tests wall and roof assemblies for mold and moisture levels, concrete foundations poured on the ground versus poured foundations that have vented crawl spaces. Also roofing systems made from tile, asphalt and cedar shingles and non-slip walkways on playgrounds to help handicapped kids get around more easily.

Self-adhering postage stamps were invented at the Madison lab. With special clearance, you can visit the in-house lab that did it. It works under the watchful eyes of U.S. Treasury agents. We’ve hosted several tours at the Madison lab when the late Chris Risbrudt was running it, so we know its work very well.

Gone: The Madison lab’s satellite research facility on the University of Minnesota campus in St. Paul. Only its Forest Inventory and Analysis [FIA] group survives, albeit with a much smaller and still unknown budget.

Charles “Hobi” Perry is Program Manager for St Paul’s FIA shop. When we were working on our FIA: The Gold Standard report in 2019 he spent two days walking us through FIA’s entire interactive map system.

EG FIA QR 1.28
EG FIA QR 1.28.pdf • 2 MB

These dazzling maps are available from every Forest Service Research Station and its satellite facilities in the nation. https://www.fs.usda.gov/ivm/ You are a mouse click away from huge data sets that describe every forest condition on every forest in the nation. The insect, disease and wildfire maps will be of particular interest since reducing wildfire risk at the heart of the Fix Our Forests Act.

Here’s a more complete rundown of the research labs and satellite facilities:

Northern Research Station https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/nrs Madison, Wisconsin, 21 labs in 20 Midwest and Northeast states.

Pacific Northwest [PNW] Research Station, https://research.fs.usda.gov/pnw Portland, Oregon, 11 labs in Oregon, Washington and Alaska

Pacific Southwest Research Station, https://research.fs.usda.gov/psw, Albany, California, with satellite labs in Fresno, Redding, Riverside and Davis.

Rocky Mountain Research Station, https://research.fs.usda.gov/rmrs, Fort Collins, Colorado, and its Fire Science lab in Missoula, Montana https://research.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/labs/locations/missoula-fire-sciences-laboratory and its FIA lab at Riverdale, Utah https://research.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/labs/locations/riverdale-forestry-sciences-laboratory

Riverdale and Missoula have been Evergreen’s go-to labs for 30 years. The Fort Collins lab assembled the prioritized risk maps showing which National Forests in the West were the most at risk from insects, diseases and wildfire.

Southern Research Station, https://research.fs.usda.gov/srs, Asheville, North Carolina. SRS deals mainly with private forest landowners because federal forests in the 13 state region account for only 6 percent of all forestland in the South. Forest diseases, prescribed burning, T&E species and product marketing are big deals at SRS.

Gone: The annual U.S. Forest Service/National Woodland Owner survey completed annually by Brett Butler, an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Department of Environmental Conservation. (www.fia.fs.fed.us/nwos/)

We’ve learned a great deal about private landowner management objectives from Butler’s annual survey. When we last interviewed him he told us that the woodland owners that he randomly surveys name three interlocking management objectives they pursue: growing and harvesting trees, fish and wildlife habitat conservation, forest health and protecting the beauty of their Tree Farms.

These objectives might seem to be mutually exclusive but they aren’t where woodland owners are concerned. These are our nation’s truest forest stewards. Their management objectives are much different from those of publicly-traded Real Estate Investment Trusts that annually pass their profits to individual shareholders. REIT’s harvest their trees between ages 20 and 40.

Woodland owners typically hold their trees for much longer periods before harvesting. The time cost of money principles observed by REITS mean next to nothing to woodland owners. We have pictures of woodland loggers sitting on logs at lunchtime reading their Bibles.

There are close to 10 million woodland owners in the U.S. This link https://www.stateforesters.org/timber-assurance/legality/forest-ownership-statistics/ leads to a National Association of State Foresters website loaded with information concerning all of our nation’s forest owners, including those who participated in Butler’s 2021 survey.

One of the many things you will discover from reading this survey is that timber is a byproduct of wider woodland owner commitments to forest stewardship. They are huge consumers of the research legacies that Forest Service scientists have developed over the last 90 years.

Prerequisite to this body of work are more than 350,000 survey plots located on public and private land from coast to coast – each inspected every 10 years. The “how to” instruction check list that surveyors pack with them is 96 pages long.

Many of the surveys are done by biologists or silviculturists who live in the woods for days at a time, cook on the tailgates of their pickups and sleep under the stars.

Some of the survey plots date from the 1930s but the first plots were laid out in 1909 by Thornton Munger, a Yale Forestry School graduate. Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the Forest Service, sent him west in 1908 to investigate a ponderosa pine insect infestation in Central Oregon. He was subsequently named the first director of the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland.

Gone: The U.S. Forest Service’s Fire Sciences Lab in Missoula, Montana – one of only two like it in the world. Dick Rothermel, who developed the Rothermel Fire Speed Model, is rolling over in his grave.

His analyis of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in which 12 smoke jumpers and one ranger were killed is titled The Race that Couldn’t be Won. You can find it on the Internet. It has probably saved hundreds of wildland firefighters from fiery deaths.

Gone: The Forest Service’s Priest River, Idaho Experimental Forest, founded in 1911. Its earliest scientists studied fire behavior and silvicultural practices but its present day research program includes forest ecology, tree genetics and diseases and forest hydrology.

Harry Gisborne led this lab in its early years. To understand the impacts of wind on wildfire, he built a wooden platform atop a tall fir tree at the station so he stand there and measure wind speeds and monitor shifting wind patterns.

Gisborne died with his boots on walking down the trail that led from the Mann Gulch Fire to the Missouri River. He had hiked to the site in November 1949 to test his theory of what caused strong wind gusts to push the wildfire up a grassy slope where it swept over 14 smoke jumpers. A heart attack killed Gisborne on the same trail that rescuers used to carry the charred remains of 13 who were killed by the fire He was 56.

Gone: Funding for every research station and project in the nation. Their websites describe research programs that the House has zeroed out of the big but not so beautiful bill.

Why is this history important and why did the Forest Service’s research labs fall into the cross hairs of flinty-eyed House budget hawks?  Because they see their actions as a cheap and easy way to polish their election year bonafides. What the hell are they thinking?

The next general election occurs Nov. 23, 2026. It will be a day of reckoning for the GOP. If Democrats retake the House, a common occurrence in midterm elections, there won’t be any more happy talk about “fixing” our National Forests because Democrats living in urban and metropolitan areas don’t much care what happens in the rural West where most federal forestland is located

Budget hawks beware. You are practicing your bonafides on the backs of millions of RED state voters. But the nearby county level map reveals there is no such thing as a red state. There are only pockets of blue floating in a sea of red that stretches from sea to shining sea.

The red areas hold more than 90 percent of the nation’s public forestland. The Forest Service’s research lab customers live there. Most vote.

Voters in the blue pockets are the ones who are dying by the thousands from breathing carcinogenic wildfire smoke.

And the lesson? First, do no harm.

The Facts About Rescinding Rules and Some Other Roadless Ruminations

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The Secretary announced that she is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule.  However, what I forgot to mention before is that Admins can’t willy-nilly get rid of regulations.  If that were the case, the USG would be even more of a cluster than it is.  Fortunately, George Washington University has a Regulatory Studies Center, which explains all the processes that can be used.. and previously I had skipped ahead to the pain of doing a new rule, without explaining that they need to do one.

To modify or overturn a regulation that does not fit any of the above circumstances, an agency would have to go through all the procedures required to issue a new regulation. These steps are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 and include developing a legal record justifying the proposed change (including technical and economic analysis), and seeking public comment on that record and the proposed regulatory (deregulatory) action. The agency would have to respond to public comment, which may lead to modifications to the draft regulation, before it issues a final rule. These steps generally take at least a year, but the story won’t likely end there.

When the final rule is issued, two records will exist, one developed to support the original regulation and a second that supports its elimination or modification. The revised rule will almost certainly be litigated, with parties that supported the original rule pointing to the earlier record to defend their objections. This legal process may take years to resolve.

I can see why the media uses the expression “rescinds Rule”, at least in the headlines, because the Admin did.. but we can imagine a new Rule.  It’s somewhat predictable.  It will be a massive donation generating device for ENGOs,  97% of public comments will be against it no matter what’s in it. In fact, the ENGOs can probably reuse press releases from previous State rulemakings.  By the time it’s done, it will either go to court and be overturned, or there will be a new Admin who will redecide and select the no-action (keep the 2001) alternative.  As I recall, that’s what happened in Alaska.

My idea since so much of this is repetitive and would benefit from knowledge gained from previous efforts, that this Admin call back retirees and find the folks who worked on Alaska, so hopefully no one else will have to spend their time learning about this fairly arcane topic.

Now the argument could be made that the 2001 Rule didn’t take climate change into account and therefore the increased risk of catastrophic wildfire- climate-induced megafires..requires attention to different issues in the analysis.. and it would indeed be interesting to see this Admin make that argument.

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For those of you who don’t remember, the Bush era State Roadless effort was for States with Roadless Problem Children to step up to the plate and do a state-specific rule. Only Colorado, Idaho and Alaska (longer story) ever stepped up.  I infer from that that no one else (even the much- maligned Utah) really cared. Of course, as I can attest from experience, doing a Rule is a great deal of work and I suppose getting someone else to do it (like the Feds) doesn’t carry the same burden. Nevertheless..

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The media coverage has been interesting.. once again the LA Times continues its deference to Chad Hanson as a mouthpiece for “many of the scientists”. Their virtual rolodex of California fire scientists must be sparse. What’s up with that?

Experts say decades of suppressing fires in California has enabled a buildup of vegetation that is fueling larger and more frequent conflagrations. However, many of those same experts have warned that clearing brush is not the same as large-scale logging or clear cutting — which can eliminate fire-suppressing shade and moisture and lead to new growth of more combustible non-native plants and grasses.

So I guess the reporter assumes that the FS will embark upon “large-scale logging and clearcutting” as part of fuel treatment projects.. regardless of forest plans, and other restrictions. Looking on the bright side, perhaps they’ve moved from “fuel treatments don’t work” to “they might work, but the FS won’t do them properly.”

I agree with Chris Wood here:

Chris Wood, who helped develop the 2001 Roadless Rule when he worked at the Forest Service and now serves as chief executive of the conservation group Trout Unlimited, said the policy is “one of the most significant and popular conservation achievements in the history of the United States.”

“Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the Forest Service, once described conservation as ‘the application of common sense to common problems for the common good,’” Wood said. “Let’s hope common sense prevails and the administration reconsiders its proposal.”

At the same time, I recall that Chris has also been quoted as saying “the 2001 Rule was not written on stone tablets.” Both things are true, it is popular and a general good thing.. and it, like anything else, could probably be improved by better mapping, consideration of PODs, and climate change.

And so it goes.  I just hope the Admin minimizes the impact of this rulemaking on the current workforce.

Trump Admin is Planning to Try to Rescind Roadless Rule: Deja Vu All Over Again

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Sigh. Here we go again.  We could have a contest for most over-the-top statement on an email.. and I think the Western Environmental Law Center would win hands down.  I didn’t even know that WELC was all that metaphysical.

Trump to unleash Hell on crown jewels of undisturbed public lands by rescinding Roadless Rule

Sorry, as a certified Roadless Geek and veteran of Colorado Roadless, I think this effort follows the Generational Law of Bureaucracy.. which is:

Wait until everyone’s retired who knows about how to do something (preferably over five years)… and then start the same process all over again.

This seems like a mostly symbolic waste of government time to me.. kind of like the Trump Admin equivalent of the MOG work.

Here’s the announcement, it’s pretty straightforward.

Here is there argument for why it is needed.. to help with wildfire.

Here’s what I’d do instead.. 1. stop doing plan revisions. 2. Get plan amendments done with prescribed fire, managed fire, PODs and evacuation routes.  If it turns out that a critical area is in a Roadless Area,  the problem is not cutting trees (we went through this in Colorado, the argument was that you could do fuel reduction treatments because.. (this was the ENGO argument for not needing tweaks to the 2001 Rule)

Fuel treatments other than PF (not restricted in RR) would be infrequent, remove “generally” small diameter material and might fit the “uncharacteristic.. range of variability” verbiage.  Here’s the exact wording:

(b) Notwithstanding the prohibition in paragraph (a) of this section, timber may be cut, sold, or removed in inventoried roadless areas if the Responsible Official determines that one of the following circumstances exists. The cutting, sale, or removal of timber in these areas is expected to be infrequent.

(1) The cutting, sale, or removal of generally small diameter timber is needed for one of the following purposes and will maintain or improve one or more of the roadless area characteristics as defined in § 294.11.

(i) To improve threatened, endangered, proposed, or sensitive species habitat; or

(ii) To maintain or restore the characteristics of ecosystem composition and structure, such as to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire effects, within the range of variability that would be expected to occur under natural disturbance regimes of the current climatic period;

So if you follow that (and I don’t know if there’s case law in which a fuels treatment project didn’t meet the criteria), the only problem is temp roads.  And sometimes that can be a problem, because there are (some, few?) places that material may need to be removed for fuels reasons and can’t be burned onsite because of the forest conditions.  We also ran into problems with powerlines and dams in roadless areas. Powerlines obviously need maintenance, and equipment was allowed to get to dams based on “imminent” threat.. how immanent is “immanent.”

The point of what we did in Colorado was to locate the specific 2001 Problem Children and deal with them.  As part of deal-making, acres that had roadless characteristics but had not been included in the original mapping (low-tech compared to now) were added.  If I were in the Admin, I’d ask the Governors (except for Alaska, Idaho and Colorado) to identify any Problem Children and work changes to the reg from those.  This has the added advantage of dealing with real world issues so that it doesn’t end up being just another sucker of employee time with the result ending up in a courtroom, being decided by someone who decided if the right words are on paper.  This is not to diss my legal friends, but I think there is a better way.

In my meanderings, I  wondered:

Why is Colorado Roadless Rule litigation not on the FS webpage? 

Nor apparently the actual rule itself, but you can find it here.

Finally, just a note to folks unfamiliar with the 2001 Rule.. there are roads in roadless areas (original mapping issues) and there are pre-existing rights, and there is grazing and recreation (in fact part of a ski area was in a Roadless Area), so it’s not accurate to equate Roadless with “pristine” or “undisturbed.” There are powerlines and pipelines and OHV trails…

The Amenity Migrant/Second Home/Short Term Rental Housing Conundrum: Solutions?

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I’ve said before that I don’t think “selling federal lands” is going anywhere.  Nevertheless, the topic has drawn attention to the plight of some western communities (specifically) with regard to affordable housing.  Chelsea Pennick’s recent post on her All Things Public Substack is a case in point. It’s worth reading in its entirety, and I’ll just excerpt a few paragraphs:

If you’ve read the Senate ENR’s bill text or my summary, you know that the purported motivation for selling off public lands is to enable housing development or provide infrastructure needed to create more housing.

Housing and housing affordability are challenges in Idaho, as in most western States. Idaho ranks among the top 5 states in the country with the largest affordability gap, where middle-income earners can afford the fewer than 12 percent of the houses on the market. Most analysts agree that more houses need to be built to reduce the affordability gap. But where and how these houses are built, and for whom, matter.

Danya Rumore, founder and co-director of the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region Initiative at Utah State University, explained why in a piece in High Country News last year:

In scenic places like Vail, Colorado or Bozeman, Montana, often referred to as “gateway” communities, Rumore said that increasing the housing supply doesn’t necessarily result in affordability. “If you build more housing and your community is a very popular place to visit, then often that housing gets consumed by short-term rentals” or second homes, she explained. Unless new projects are “very carefully protected for the local workforce,” Rumore fears they won’t make a dent in the housing crisis.

Looking to federal lands to help ease the housing crisis brings its own set of complications. First, most federal lands are located far from urban or town centers. And in much of the West, these lands tend to be mountainous and not suitable for development. Second, even in cases where they are located closer to cities or towns, they likely do not have access to basic infrastructure like water and sewer, the cost of which is placed on local governments and tax payers. Such development would also expand the wildland urban interface, increasing the resources necessary to mitigate and/or respond to wildfire threats.

The high cost of developing such parcels increases the likelihood that they will be sold to wealthy purchasers that can afford to foot the bill for such infrastructure, leading some to call these legislative proposals “McMansion Subsidy Acts”.

And lest you argue that attracting wealthy landowners might benefit rural economies, research across the West on amenity migration has shown that the increased demand for community services like fire suppression, safety, road maintenance, etc. associated with new residential development often surpass any increase in property tax receipts, placing greater burdens on the tax base while reducing federal payments to public lands counties.

I am curious as to why if that is the case, why communities don’t appropriately charge new residential development? Also why would more development reduce federal payments (which federal payments exactly?).   So amenity migration has downsides currently.

Then if more homes are built, amenity migrants and others buy them for short-term rentals.  Either way, it could happen that  local people and workers are priced out of housing.  Of course, this happens in other areas when housing costs increase as well.  So amenity migrants, second home owners, and short-term rentals have cumulative impacts.  But  it’s not just the US nor even the western US, as we have seen in the recent tourism protests in Europe. According to the Guardian:

For the most part, protesters are calling for a total overhaul of a model of tourism that, they argue, drives up housing costs, harms the environment and creates low-paid, unstable jobs – while concentrating profits in the hands of a few.

When I read Justin Farrell’s book Billionaire Wilderness, I wondered why workers put up with the bad housing conditions, long dangerous snowy drives,  and didn’t just leave for other areas. Especially folks who had immigrated from another country in the first place. Then, I guess the community would be forced to do something about housing or raise workers’ pay or both.  It would be interesting to round up what communities have done to deal with this, especially successful interventions.

Let’s Talk More About: the Proposed Wildfire Agency and Related Topics and Concerns

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This is what Microsoft AI thinks a wildland firefighter in full gear at a desk (working on NEPA docs, naturally) looks like.

 

Mike Edrington wondered what we are thinking about the Wildfire Agency EO and the President’s budget and why we haven’t had more discussion. I know I’m not a Fire Person so haven’t wanted to wade in too much, but on the other hand I have been listening to different fire people and others’ views, questions and fears. So I’m going to touch on some random thoughts I’ve had about the situation and please add your own.

There seem to be many moving parts, the EO, the President’s Budget and a Senate bill.

1. What we think we know about the “coordination” of wildfire work in the EO as opposed to “reorganization” efforts seems to be that it is more Service-First-y than reorganization. So I think there are a bunch of people over the summer working to figure out how to fix coordination problems. There have been news stories that have not been accurate about that.. Marc Heller of E&E  News caught the nuance in the new EO, so shout-out to him.

2. Everyone (but me) seems to be fan of joining forces via a Wildfire Intelligence Center. I am dubious of placing shark agencies in the pool with minnow agencies like FS R&D- the ones who are doing a great deal of useful work. Plus there’s the NOAA- NASA- military contractor axis. Plus zeroing out FS R&D in the President’s budget.. it could be a rare case of partisan alignment, but not necessarily in the interests of people currently doing the heavy lifting in the wildfire R&D space nor those benefitting from their work.

3. I don’t this we know where the linkage with land management agencies would be in any proposed reorganization. Some have said that prescribed fire and mechanical treatment would go with the new agency. As I’ve said before, I think this would be problematic as trust is key to successful prescribed fire programs and many local folks are getting involved in prescribed fire. Plus I don’t think any new agency really wants to do NEPA, plus the Interior Solicitors probably don’t want to have the FS PF and MT workload. Plus many projects I look at tend to be combos of activities that would fall in and out of fuel-ish purpose and needs. Finally, I don’t think the work of doing NEPA and the organizational culture of wildfire suppression are necessarily compatible. See the AI image above.

4. Suppose you left everything else with the land management agency, and just took prescribed fire and gave it to the Wildfire Agency. A District finishes a NEPA doc and is ready to go. Perhaps it takes a ticket and gets in a virtual line to get a PF crew.. but by the time their number comes up conditions are not good. It just doesn’t seem very realistic.

5. I’ve suggested that a possible linkage would be “if a fire needs full fledged suppression stat, then call in the new agency”, but someone said that that’s kind of the way it works now.

6. Keeping PF and MT in the land management agencies would lead to two sets of people who work with fire and have fire knowledge. I don’t see this as a problem, perhaps it’s a strength? If the Fire Agency gets overwhelmed, it would be able to tap into those folks, and maybe other state and community folks working in PF if appropriately certified.

7. I find any ideas about fire decisions being changed from what they are now and put under Interior to be of concern. What do we know about Interior compared to Ag? It seems to me that they can be comparatively partisan. But don’t take my word for it.. Here’s the Wyoming D Governor Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming as noted in 2010 for the BLM in a letter to Secretary Salazar:

Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. seems to go from pillar to post to placate what is perceived as a key constituency. I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. With the changes announced yesterday, I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process.

My experience is that there is something about USDA that tends to buffer partisan political drama. Think of Jim Hubbard compared to Tracy Stone-Manning. My argument for either party would be “fix the broken parts, but do you want to risk politicizing wildfire response?” Or maybe I’ve just made an argument for moving BLM to USDA? After all, there’s lots of grazing on BLM, and who does research on cows, diseases, nutrition and so on?

8. Well-meaning folks like those at MegaFire Action probably look at the situation and logically say “these agencies are similar so let’s put them in the same department.” Of course factions in Interior would like to acquire more land, budget and power. But centralizing power further, in an overtly politicized agency, may have negative consequences. Not to put too fine a point on it, and welcoming new philanthropic, technology and other entities into this space, many of these new folks are Coastals of one coast or another with associated views, which can diverge from interior kinds of views. And where is fire country, generally?

9. Certainly wildfire decisions have some political overtones (remember air tankers to Long Island during the Clinton Admin?), yet I think trust in government institutions, and their working well for everyone is something that both parties can agree on. So I would hope that these more touchy-feely cultural and trust considerations make their way into the dialogue.

10.  Remember Service-First? I think that that’s more the way to go.  See this GAO report from (sigh) 2000:

The colocation of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) units provides the best opportunity for the agencies to jointly serve the public, effect operational efficiencies, and improve land management. The Service First Initiative is designed to improve the operations of these two agencies by combining resources and providing “one-stop shopping” services for the public. Since the initiative has been in operation, the number of shared projects between BLM and the Forest Service has increased from 15 in fiscal year 1996 to 272 in mid-fiscal year 2000. Many of the projects involve shared personnel, shared equipment, and joint training projects. Although there have been some successes in achieving efficient government operations, there are many legal and regulatory barriers that prevent the full integration of the agencies’ resources. The full integration of the agencies’ operations depends on resolution of these barriers.

Where would we be today if it hadn’t gotten derailed? Maybe  hiring would have been centralized with the most effective agency. We can imagine all kinds of possibilities.. harmonizing regulations that apply to both agencies, like FOIA. We actually did one joint review of the San Juan Public Lands Center with FS and BLM, and had a joint LMP/RMP going for awhile.  Perhaps coordinate assessments and measurements? So many possibilities broader than Fire.

11. I haven’t heard this discussed much, but I recall that sometimes Fire people could do things that the rest of us couldn’t do because it was an “interagency” decision by NIFC. So perhaps in reality NIFC could act more as “one fire agency” in other key areas without reorganization (I’m really out of my depth here.)

If I had a single critique of the FS and government agencies that I’ve known, it would be the lack of consistent approaches to improvement through time. One Admin will think of something (e.g. Service First) employees will assiduously work on it and then it is slowly attacked and removed by organizational antibodies to change. And politicals tend to be interested in pleasing constituents (can’t argue with that) so improvement efforts tend to fall by the wayside. I think we can do better.

Land Sales, the Shifting Language in the Senate Bill, and the TWS Map

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This is what TWS thinks
“Map and analysis by The Wilderness Society using source data from BLM, USFS, USGS, NPS, and SENR reconciliation bill text as of June 16th 2025.”Check out your own area and compare with bill text. You can see the communities on my area on the map and compare them to the green (“potentially for sale”).

I was hoping not to write about this, at least until the language in the bill was settled, but there is so much lack of clarity around it right now, I thought I’d take a stab at it. I am generally against selling federal land (trades are better IMHO), and at least BLM has the authority to dispose of land anyway under FLPMA, but the House didn’t pass the sales section, so to me, it passing both houses still seems unlikely.

Let’s look past the more apocalyptic framings and start from a rational wonkish basis.

What is the problem as stated by proponents? Are there alternative ways to solve the problem?

Some towns and cities are surrounded by federal land and are growing in population.  So the federal land could be used potentially for housing, especially for building lower cost housing.  Now I’m sure that there is a think-tank somewhere that has analyzed leasing versus selling.  I suppose leasing would run into ongoing administrative costs, plus maybe legal liability?  But if you can permit a resort or a camp, why not housing?

Like I said about the Public Lands Rule, if you plan to change laws or rules to do things the agencies can already do, it would be helpful to have a rationale.  Sadly, political actors don’t seem to need rationales.  Maybe in a backroom somewhere a Senate legislative staff person is asking these questions and getting answers, but we aren’t (similar to the Public Lands Rule, again).

But what happens when this occurs (they already have tools to do this) is that people lose trust in that actually being the rationale and wonder if it’s really something else.  It could be that Senator Lee simply has a bug in his bonnet about federal lands due to the long history of his state and this is the current bug-effluence? Or is there something deeper.. millions of acres will be sold for other purposes and somehow when the other purposes are revealed there won’t be litigation?

Anyway, if they were policy folks and not pols, there would be problem framing and various options with pros and cons to solve the identified problem.

So here we are.  I think the Wilderness Society maps and numbers are questionable based on a need for housing because… I’m not sure the acres are crosswalked with proximity to communities which seems to be a requirement. Check out your own area. I can safely say there are no communities in proximity to many of the acres shown green in the area I know best.

Here’s the current language:

the extent to which the development of the tract of Bureau of Land Management land or National Forest System
” land would address local housing needs including housing supply and affordability)  or any associated infrastructure to support
local housing needs.”

and priorities:

(A) are nominated by States or units of  local governments;
(B) are adjacent to existing developed  areas;
(C) have access to existing infrastructure;
(D) are suitable for residential housing

Here’s what I like about it:

1. If sales are going to happen, which they do,  have an open process to nominate parcels (not smoke-filled rooms), everyone gets a chance

It’s a bit of a social justice issue for me. For example, it appeared that powerful political figures (Senator Harry Reid) may have existed in Nevada who designed not only sales but exactly where the money would go and got it passed in Congress (and why did money from the sales go to Lake Tahoe, which doesn’t seem close to Las Vegas?).  Is that fair to communities without powerful politicians?

2. Local governments and States do the nominating (no extra work for feds)

What I don’t like about it:

1.Targets (why?) (the agencies have enough to do, with fewer employees and smaller budgets)

2.Understanding why selling is better than leasing or permitting, or why this bill is needed instead of other ways of tweaking existing authorities.

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There’s an interesting article in the Cowboy State Daily about the validity of the Wilderness Society map (caution, I think the checkerboard idea is gone from the current text, linked above, at least I searched on the word and couldn’t find it).

For example, the map shows nearly all of the Bridger-Teton National Forest could potentially be sold, as well as a huge chunk of the Bighorn Mountain Range in northern Wyoming.

In my experience, there are many acres in both areas that do not fit the bill’s requirement of “addressing local housing needs.” I think it would be much more difficult to map.  First you’d have to identify communities by some density or other cut-off (maybe the existence of a post office?). Then figure out if they have an affordability problem.  Then say take some amount say 50 acres? for each of these, if there happened to be NFS or BLM land “adjacent to developed areas.” We’d have to figure out how to define “developed areas” and maybe “adjacent” although that seems pretty clear. That’s how I’d do it, anyway.

Many groups have come out against what’s in the bill, or the general idea, including hunting groups, I think based on the generic idea of sales.  Hopefully people aren’t hunting “adjacent to existing developed areas.” I went down a side trail on this and found that 500 feet from homes is a general shooting rule. But across the country these distances vary greatly.

So it appears that a) the House rejected this. 2) The Senate is still working on language, 3) TWS posted a map which doesn’t IMHO address the language in any substantive way, 4) people react strongly to the map.

Like I said, I am not a fan of the current bill for my wonk-ish reasons. But I also think there’s something weird about how people believe.. maps.. perhaps more than words. I also get the “camel’s nose under the tent” view. But given that, could we still go back to “what is the problem?” and “what are potential solutions?”