Prescribed Fire Escapes and a Prescribed Fire Dashboard

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This photo is courtesy of Brenda Masek. This is of the Halsey, or Road 203 fire.

 

I promised some posts about what other interest areas are doing with issues related to ours.  Given the discussion about the recent Road 203 fire in Nebraska, an escaped prescribed fire.

The Chokecherry prescribed fire on the Bessey Ranger District of the Nebraska National Forest was declared a wildfire at approximately 4p.m. March 12, 2026. Although forecasted weather conditions were within parameters for the implementation of the prescribed fire, the wind event that took place 36 hours after ignitions ceased caused a spot fire that spread outside the project boundary.

Note: you may be reading about the Nebraska wildfires in general, and the Road 203 fire according to Inciweb as of  2 hours ago was 35, 814 acres with 0% contained.

 Operations were limited yesterday due to cold weather conditions; however, fire managers were able to assess the fire perimeter and evaluate current conditions. While there is snow on the ground in some areas, heat is still present in the duff, and creeping fire behavior has been observed within the fire perimeter. Groups of cedar trees in some areas of the fire are also still retaining heat.

Yesterday, firefighters began utilizing UAS (drones) equipped with infrared technology to identify hotspots. This information is relayed to crews on the ground to quickly access and efficiently extinguish those areas of heat. There will be two UAS platforms in use today to continue this direct extinguishment strategy.

It probably seems weird to people outside the Great Plains but we can have fires with snow on the ground.

Anyway, that is not the big Nebraska wildfire you might read about in the news, which is the Morrill fire which is (from Inciweb as I type this) 572,804 acres.

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We’ve discussed the issue of building trust here several times, and THW talks about trust in this post on his Substack.

The public knows prescribed fire is beneficial and needed, but a small number of mistakes, some which grow to large incidents, leave a yearly bad taste in the public’s mouth for operations like this. And with that, public trust wanes.

The amount of positive and successful burns and prescribed fires that have already occurred this year are in the hundreds if not thousands. But as we know, this does not make national news, and even the agencies sometimes forget to advertise the countless good wins they have. Why? Because they have a job to do, on to the next one.

Insane amounts of good results have been completed quietly in the background of everyone’s daily grind.

Believe me when I say that both wildland firefighters and management do everything they can to prevent things like this from happening. Has there ever been fire put on the ground when there was some apprehension in the air?

Of course, I would be lying if I said otherwise. But this is a workforce that lives and breathes “we can do this.”

There is also pressure from the “fuels and lands” side of the barn to get acres completed. Who makes the final call?

This topic is an elephant in the room, and policy changes are coming to at least some of the agencies. A report is expected soon on the Dragon Bravo Fire from last year, and will hopefully paint a clearer picture of this dynamic.

Of course, when I read this, I thought about the basics of transparency and accountability.  Of course, particularly transparency.  As Tim says, successful prescribed fires don’t make the news.  And then I thought about a PF dashboard, which would have all federal, state, and local (and NGO) prescribed fire acres, seasons, pre-treatments and so on.   Why couldn’t the feds initiate such a thing?

Let’s look at two recent “improving reporting-ease of access” efforts.

One is at FDA:

“The FDA’s previous adverse event reporting systems were outdated and fragmented and made important data difficult to access. These clunky systems also wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and created blind spots in our postmarket surveillance of products ranging from drugs and vaccines to cosmetics,” said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. “We’re fixing the problem through a major modernization initiative. Starting today, the FDA will have a single, intuitive adverse event platform that will better serve agency scientists, researchers, and the public.”

In the past, the agency processed approximately 6 million adverse event reports per year across a patchwork of seven databases, which were expensive and had a poor user interface, making searches difficult. These platforms collectively cost the agency approximately $37 million per year to operate. Given the efficiencies of AEMS, the agency expects to save approximately $120 million over the next five years. The agency also expects the new searchable system to significantly reduce agency FOIA requests for unreleased adverse event reports, given that AEMS will publish reports in real time, rather than quarterly.

That’s improving access to the public (including reporters) as well as making it easier for users to enter information.

Another is at USDA

‘One Farmer, One File’ prevents our farmers from duplicating tasks while increases their productivity and time in the field.”

USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Risk Management Agency (RMA) work with agricultural producers on a wide range of programs and services, from establishing a farm number to reporting acres planted, and from getting capital to recovering from disasters.

The goal of “One Farmer, One File” is to reduce the administrative burden for farmers. Additionally, this effort will make program delivery more efficient, save time for USDA staff, and decrease spending on disparate information technology systems.

The “One Farmer, One File” initiative is part of a broad modernization effort to unify all FSA, NRCS and RMA systems. This uniformed system will retire legacy systems and remove agency silos. USDA began work on this system in 2025 and plans to greatly advance the effort in 2026. USDA anticipates completing the project in 2028.

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To the USWFS folks and the FS:

INCIWeb is great! Why can’t we have a prescribed fire dashboard?

Trees Burn Up: Even Ones Enrolled in Carbon Offset Programs

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I was never a fan of forest carbon offsets.  Too much white collar work (designing, auditing, etc.) and too many opportunities for grift.   And it was always obvious that wildfires would not respect lines drawn on maps.

So it’s not surprising that we have this story on the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs

A forest carbon sequestration project that once generated millions of dollars for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs has ended after wildfire tore through more than half of the enrolled acreage, tribal officials say. The project, launched in 2015 under California’s cap-and-trade program, protected roughly 22,000 to 24,000 acres of tribal forest east of Mount Jefferson. Over several years, it brought in about $25 million through the sale of carbon offset credits, tribal leaders previously said. But the 2020 Lionshead Fire burned much of the project area — killing entire sections of forest and eliminating much of the stored carbon that underpinned the agreement.

Warm Springs natural resources manager Austin Smith described what occurred as a “stand-replacement” fire, a high-intensity fire that kills the mature overstory trees in a forest, initiating a restart in the growth cycle. By the time it was extinguished, the fire had scorched more than 200,000 acres on and around the Warm Springs Reservation. “It was enough of the carbon project that burned up that it triggered conditions for the Tribes to exit out of that agreement,” Smith said in a recent interview.

Under the terms of the carbon contract, large-scale carbon loss made the project no longer feasible to maintain. After evaluating and measuring the burned acreage, the Tribes determined the land could no longer meet sequestration requirements for the market, Smith said. The affected ground included “conditional use” forestland — areas the Tribes had opted not to log in favor of conservation and carbon revenue. Smith, who served on the Lionshead Fire as a resource adviser and type-two firefighter, said the fire burned especially hot in places that had not been treated or actively managed. “It burned, and it burned hot because we weren’t able to get in there and treat it and manage it,” Smith said.

So perhaps more carbon was lost in areas managed for carbon sequestration?  Seems like a problem.

The loss ended what had been, for several years, one of the largest revenue sources for the Tribes. Payments were made through the California Air Resources Board in multiple tranches, with additional annual residual payments. Some funds were reinvested in forest thinning and health projects, as well as community development and business ventures. Smith said the experience has reshaped how the Tribe think about forest management and carbon markets. “We’re learning that we can’t just leave it alone,” he said. “When wildfire happens, it’s going to burn.” Rather than focus on short-term revenue, Smith said the Tribes are taking a long view, rooted in intergenerational stewardship. That could include pursuing future carbon market projects in different areas — potentially rotating acreage while incorporating more active management to reduce wildfire risk. Other tribes, including the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington, have explored similar strategies. “We’re thinking seven generations ahead,” he said. “We’re not thinking of the now and tomorrow and what our bank accounts look like. We’re thinking about setting up our grandkids’ grandkids for the benefit of the resource.”

Because I’m not a fan of the process (why doesn’t California spend the buck on its own forests if it thinks it’s such a great idea?), there are parts that I haven’t learned about and don’t understand.

I’d appreciate any help from those more knowledgeable.

If CARB paid $x per year for whatever change in management, and they must  assume that y amount of carbon would grow extra each year, and they have been paying for z years.  But if a fire wipes out all the extra carbon, does the Tribe have to give the money back for all  ( the total $x times z times y)  that CARB paid for? Or does CARB just write off the past and stop funding the year after the fire?

 

On Scoping and Standardization: Guest Post by Peter Williams

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Posts from Peter Williams always combine his many years of experience and thoughtfulness, so thanks to him for taking on these topics.

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I’m going to pick up on two discussion threads that have some overlap.  The first is the discussion of scoping and where it comes from.  The other is the discussion of what to standardize in the FS.  I’m going to look at these through a decision process lens.

About 12 years ago I ran what was then called the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution for a few years. Our mission was all about supporting Sect 102 of NEPA. That was after spending many years with USFS focused on collaborative planning.

During my time with USFS, I worked on and with Decision Protocol in the late 1990’s.  It integrated decision-making state of the knowledge and tools, partly to address the idea that NEPA is USFS’s default decision model (it isn’t).  It resulted in an iterative five-cycle process to move from recognizing a problem, diagnosing it, designing a response, acting, and assessing.  Later, I worked on what was called The Safety Journey in the late 2000’s, an effort to reduce serious incidents, including deaths, by improving decisions and accountability.  I helped with rolling out some of the related tools while serving as an Acting Forest Supervisor in about 2012 or so.

Both of those efforts were really about decision making writ large (as opposed to framing decisions only through the lens of NEPA compliance, whether EA, EIS, or even, in some cases, Categorical Exclusions (CEs) like Anon mentions when talking about scoping). I also taught a graduate course on NEPA in the late 1990’s while working on my eventual PhD related to collaboration and decision making.

Scoping, as well as public participation or collaboration, were front and center to all of this.  So was the question of how much process structure is too much and how little is not enough.

Returning to the scoping discussion, something not mentioned yet is that CEQ put out guidance on scoping in 1981 that is consistent with the only use of the term “scope” I find in the 1969 NEPA legislation. The reference in the legislation is to the “…scope, objectivity, and content of the entire statement…” referring to what we now know as an Environmental Impact Statement. It’s in Sec. 102(D). “Scope” originally was about the scope of the document, the scope of the decision, a concept borrowed from project management and dating to pre-WWII. The term scoping, then, refers to the process or processes of determining those scopes, much as is done for project management in so many other circumstances. Is it “in scope” or “out of scope”?

Regarding standardizing process and procedure, at least from a decision process perspective, it seems useful to distinguish between consistent processes that are *rigid* and ones that are *flexible*.

It is possible, for example, for a consistent *design* process to result in somewhat different planning processes tailored to different needs or circumstances. Different Regions or different Forests within the same Region might use a consistent design process to design a tailored collaborative planning process that meets the relevant needs of the Unit, partners, and interested individuals or organizations. That’s an example of a flexible process.  Notice how the NEPA-related concept of tiering fits here. A consistent design process can tier down to planning processes that are appropriately different because they meet different needs.

If done well, projects that are trickier (like coyote, the trickster) can be given more time and attention while less tricky ones can go through faster. That’s the idea of a consistent, yet flexible process that can adjust to circumstances and needs. I often described this as using familiar tools in unfamiliar or varied ways driven by circumstances. A skilled carpenter, for example, can use a hammer in creative ways when faced with challenges the rest of us might just turn into a mess.

In a sense, scoping as a process becomes a way to validate or verify the “trickiness”, an idea that can have aspects like public interest, scientific complexity, or political sensitivity, among others.  CEQ, in 1981, produced a reference document called “40 Most Asked Questions” that includes a question about using scoping prior to a Notice of Intent (NOI), pointing out that scoping after an NOI is only a minimal requirement and that scoping is a useful tool for any number of challenges.

Scoping done well also is a way to engage with interested parties early on so they can better understand what’s being considered and why (like scoping a purpose and need first, and only latter doing a more formal scoping to address significance, effects, and proposed actions or alternatives). Done well, scoping can reduce some concerns while identifying the ones that really deserve attention, that drive an understanding of likely effects or consequences. This seems to be what NEPA means by an interdisciplinary approach that ensures integrated use of natural and social sciences as well as the environmental design arts (Sec. 102(A)).

All this is to say, in answer to the question about where scoping comes from, it has deep roots in various management and planning fields, it has limited appearance in the actual NEPA legislation and much more in CEQ and agency regulations, and agency culture shapes its use even today.  Regarding standardization, it seems helpful to recognize a difference between standardizing a process such that it becomes brittle and using a standard set of concepts to design a locally-relevant, risk-tolerant process.

Do Fuels Still Matter Under “Extreme Conditions”? Black Fire Study

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Jon brought up in a comment the issue of whether fuel loadings matter during extreme weather conditions. Thanks to the Rocky Mountain Research Station, I remembered this recent Science You Can Use that addressed that question using two recent New Mexico wildfires!

“There’s a perception that fuels reduction preceding a fire won’t matter much if the fire is burning under such extreme conditions,” says Gavin Jones Rocky Mountain Research Station Research Ecologist. “But our research shows that the fire treatment history on the Gila National Forest produced a landscape that could accept fire
in a healthy way.”

Now, for sure wildfires and prescribed fires don’t necessarily produce the same fuel loadings and characteristics as thinning.  At the same time, thinning is often in a prescription prior to prescribed fire.

Going back to philosophy, if fuels matter in some places/conditions but not others under sets of extreme conditions, I don’t think it can be generalized.  As to high winds and dry grasses, with which I am familiar, I have seen even the fuel reduction due to grazing have an impact on fire behavior.

Again, it depends on what fuels, where and when.  And what “extreme conditions” you’re talking about and the specific impacts.  For example, high winds blow embers and sparks, but they can also keep air resources on the ground.

Non-Financial Conflict of Interest and a Thinning Paper

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This photo is from the Boulder County Colorado Strategic Fuels Mitigation Grant Program website. https://bouldercounty.gov/news/1-5-million-in-strategic-fuels-mitigation-grants-awarded-to-local-partners-and-agencies/

 

I’ve got some posts saved up about issues and concerns mostly outside our little forest world, but that may also impact our world.  This one is about non-financial conflict of interest.  The idea is that journal articles should include non-financial, as well as financial conflicts of interest, or what I call “ideological” conflicts of interest. It’s a difficult, but important issue in many biological/ecological disciplines.  Even thirty or so years ago, politicians knew that asking Jerry Franklin to testify would likely give different results than asking Chad Oliver.

Or in climate and wildfire, there are scientists who are “climate, climate, climate” and ones who are “climate is one of many things.”  It’s interesting which ones show up more frequently in media quotes.  Those of us who follow these things know exactly what we likely to hear when the source is named.   It seems to me that the identification and daylighting of ideological COI would just make clear to everyone reading what many of us already know.

But back to yesterday’s thinning  paper.

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Some of these authors of are well-known in the California and Oregon world as having definite opinions about forest management.  We can’t really ignore the fact that, for example,  Hanson stated in an objection letter something we can see with our own eyes is not true.

As detailed in our EA comments and attachments, which we incorporate by reference here, the final EA violates NEPA, as amended by the Builder Act of 2023, by failing to take a hard look at the submitted science showing that no removal of trees–not even small trees–is needed before conducting burning, even in the densest and most long-unburned stands, and even in stands with high levels of dead wood. Fire behavior is fundamentally about fire weather, and burning can be safely conducted in any forest if burning is done in mild fire weather during the early or late part of fire season (June or Oct./Nov.).

Law, another co-author on the paper,  stated in Congressional testimony in 2021..

At subregional to regional levels, roughly 1% of treatments (thinning, prescribed fires) experiences wildfire each year, and the effectiveness of treatments is only 10-20 year, so the treatments likely have little effect on wildfire (Campbell et al. 2012, Schoennagel et al. 2017).

This may be true, but again could be a framing issue. Thinning can make trees healthier, and if drought is getting worse, it would seem to be an important consideration.  And shouldn’t we debate what the actual wildfire effectiveness measure should be? For example, we could ask “in how many cases per year did fuel treatment change fire behavior to reduce negative impacts or to assist suppression work?”  Again, to the residents of communities impacted “treatments likely have little effect” doesn’t ring true.  Choosing the framing of an issue is generally thought to be a policy choice.  What knowledge is relevant is also a policy choice- and researchers have a tendency to claim their research is relevant without policy folks (or even management folks) to weigh in with  “that’s not how we define the issue” “we already knew that, so what’s the point of your research” or “you state that your research is relevant, but we don’t think it is for the following reasons.”

It’s pretty clear that over time, some of the authors have an inclination against tree removal.  Which is fine.  But it does, as do the disciplines writing the paper compared to those which we think might have more direct knowledge, influence our expectations for the objectivity of the paper.

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Jessica Weinkle has studied conflict of interest in the climate community, which should probably be discussed more openly among the vegetation research community.

  • This is just your opinion, not research.
    This critique originates from ambiguity about COI within the climate science community (a bit more on this below). It is worth noting that non-financial COI is a current, hotly debated issue in research ethics, and there is no clear criteria for non-financial COI. Some believe non-financial COI goes too far; people have a right to their personal activities, and these do not merit disclosure. However, there are activities that are far cry from volunteering for a local chapter of the Humane Society. These include,4

    • Being a board member to a political and research related NGO
    • Being a founder and/or director of a political and research related NGO
    • Serving as an advisor to political and research related NGOs
    • Serving as an advisor to an election campaign or partisan organization
    • Advising agencies on regulatory actions using your research/methodologies
    • Contributions to amicus briefs and witness testimony.

My co-author David Resnik has argued that uncertainty about non-financial COI calls for open discussion in professional communities:

the appropriate response to this problem is not to dismiss non-financial interests as an irrelevant distraction, but to define them more clearly and provide effective guidance.

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Again, it’s not that scientists shouldn’t participate in these kinds of activities. In our own small communities of interest we know about these conflicts and can take that into account when reading papers.  Not so much for other people.  For example, which of us, if we don’t follow Prof Weinkle would understand the close relationships between researchers, for-profit modeling entities, and insurance companies insofar as it affects wildfire risk modeling? Of course, those involve financial COI, and we need better definitions and guidance for non-financial COI.  We also need scientists and scientific institutions to accept their responsibility for transparency around it. This could ultimately help all of us develop trust in research and research institutions.

Four Thinning Propositions and the “Ecological Trade-offs” Perspective

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Four Thinning Propositions

At the risk of boring everyone else, we are having an interesting discussion about thinning, so continuing that… do people agree with the four propositions below, or have more to add?

1. The best thinning prescription is site-specific.  It depends on purpose, stand structure, species, moisture regime, soils, bug and disease issues (incipient or existing in the stand), and a variety of other factors, as Jim Z. has pointed out from his experience across the country.

2. Many fuel treatment prescriptions include reducing ladder fuels and reducing overall stocking.  To complete the prescription, the fuels intended to be removed have to be moved offsite, either by wheelbarrows (in fact, I’ve seen this about 30 years ago at Lake Tahoe,  because the landowners didn’t want smoke), or other kinds of equipment or by pile  or broadcast burning.

3. Many studies and experience show that time post-treatment can also influence outcomes.  The involved mechanism seems to be.. plants grow back.

3. So structuring the question, we have a) is the prescribed treatment the right treatment for the site, given the purpose? b) was the prescribed treatment carried out as prescribed? c) was the removal of fuel, as described in the prescription,  accomplished?

I think it’s fair, as well as self-evident, to say “fuel treatments don’t work if people don’t remove fuels”.  And some wildfires get there before that happens but post-thinning.  But as we can see by driving around or watching Forest’s Facebook or X feed, there are many folks working assiduously burning fuels.

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Lindenmeyer et al Perspective-  Ecological Trade-offs

So let’s move on to the recent Lindenmeyer et al. paper. Now I called the “perspective” an “op-ed with citations.”  Yes, it’s a literature review, and the 10 common questions paper was also a literature review, although it was categorized by the journal as an “invited feature.” In the abstract, the authors define “mechanical thinning” “as the partial removal of stand basal area using tracked or wheeled machines.”  This doesn’t seem like a particularly precise definition to me, as my neighbor could be lifting bucked sections into a truck (wheeled) or folks could be using this gizmo.  Is it about “how it gets to a landing” or “how it is moved from the landing” or just “when some thinned material is moved offsite?”

The title of their paper is “Ecological trade-offs of mechanical thinning in temperate forests.”  As I said above, for me the ecological trade-offs, as well as any other trade-offs that might evidence themselves, are invariably functions of a specific site, and current and future expected site conditions and practices.

As in one of the images from the paper

There are many things of interest, even in this summary.  If you think of thinning in terms of group selection, you might in fact create “important early successional environments” instead of degrading them.  But fundamentally, all of the above elements except perhaps economics and water yields are specifically addressed in specific decision documents.

If we were going to look at thinning (within specific temperate forests), we would probably want to ask scientists with experience in thinning (silviculture or applied ecology of trees), fuels experts, and forest entomologists and pathologists.  That is if our question was “when does thinning work and for what purposes?” with the purposes being improved tree health and wildfire resilience.

If we asked the question “are the benefits worth the environmental costs?” we would have to look, as the FS does in their environmental documents, at the impacts on air, carbon, soils, water and various species of wildlife and fish and ask the relevant disciplines (and comparing with the impacts of not thinning). Plus conceivably exactly how trees were removed and cut would make a difference to impacts.  If my neighbors buck and carry material to their chipper, that would have different impacts than tractor logging with (later) ripped skid trails? Will any specific thinning lead to more invasives..? The answer is always, “it depends on the site and the prescription.”

If we asked the question “is the investment worth it economically?” we would have to ask.. economists, silviculturists, fuels and forest health practitioners in the west. What can we expect to happen with or without a specific thinning prescription?

But how about thinning and PF vs. wildfire in terms of public health (smoke, evacuation stress, and others)?  We would probably need some kind of human health expert.

As it turns out, the backgrounds of all these folks is restricted to ecology (and fire behavior in Australia).

Lindemayer is a professor of ecology and conservation biology from Australia. DellaSala is a global biodiversity and climate change scientist. Elle Bowd a plant and fungal ecologist,   Beverly Law has worked on forest carbon, Philip J. Burton is a botanist and plant ecologist, Chad Hanson is both a lawyer and an ecologist, with, shall we say, a well-known point of view, Philip Zylstra,a bushfire behavior modeler , William Ripple an ecologist whose expertise in in trophic cascades.

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The language in the abstract about trade-offs is interesting..

While the benefits of mechanical thinning for fire management and drought resilience have been extensively discussed (Chagnon et al., 2025; Davis et al., 2024; Kalies and Yocom Kent, 2016), the negative environmental and financial impacts of, and carbon emissions associated with thinning are often not fully appreciated.

This may mean that trade-offs among the ecological, climate change, and economic effects of thinning are not quantified or appropriately considered in policy and management debates. Given this, we discuss impacts associated with large-scale mechanical thinning in temperate forests and the degree to which they depend on intensity, scale, and frequency of removals as well as environmental context (Fig. 1).

Apparently, to fully appreciate environmental and financial impacts.. you can do it with only the aid of ecologists, one fire scientist and no economists at all.  Count me skeptical.

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The conclusions are not very surprising considering the authors..

Given there are ecological and financial costs associated with thinning and roads, it should be prohibited in high-conservation value forests because such forests: (1) act as “controls” in active management experiments; (2) provide habitat and/or climate and wildfire refugia for old forest and complex early seral forest species, especially imperilled ones; (3) can be managed as intact, connected blocks of unaltered forest that provide connectivity for climate-forced wildlife migrations and wildlife movements; and (4) can be managed in a manner consistent with climate mitigation (e.g., carbon stored mainly in large trees and soils) and water conservation goals involving reserves and protected area networks (Law et al., 2022) (especially roadless areas). Outside protected areas, thinning can impact larger trees, forest carbon storage and carbon emissions, soils, and water, and result in the accumulation of post-thinning debris. In those situations, assessing the costs of thinning and ways to mitigate those costs, is critical to comprehensive forest management. Assessments are also necessary to determine the extent of roads needed to access sites and other areas where road closure and road removal are needed for restoration purposes. Proper cost accounting would determine when thinning reaches a cost threshold and where it is infeasible or inadvisable ecologically and economically. Recognizing self-thinning as a natural and cost-free process that enhances both carbon storage and biodiversity can help redirect management investments toward restoration of degraded forests and protection of intact forests, while ensuring significant areas act as refugia where active management impacts are absent. We encourage land managers, decision makers, and conservation groups to incorporate comprehensive analyses of the effects of thinning operations before widespread adoption of practices that are otherwise inappropriate or ineffective in certain conditions.

Hmm. “proper cost accounting” as opposed to “improper?”..”Recognizing self-thinning as a natural and cost-free process that enhances both carbon storage and biodiversity can help redirect management investments toward restoration of degraded forests and protection of intact forests, while ensuring significant areas act as refugia where active management impacts are absent. ”

Considering that the conclusions mention roadless areas (is the roadless issue relevant to the timing of this piece?), it’s interesting that the 2001 Rule itself has no prohibition against thinning.

 

Does the Forest Service Need a Permitting Dashboard?

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I’d like to thread together ideas from our Permitting Bro friends,  and Jon Haber and Anonymous.

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Permitting Dashboard

Let’s start with the Sam Roland’s work at the Foundation for American Innovation and  Recoding America.  His experience with the State of Virginia suggests that the very existence of a dashboard increases the speed of approval.  I was skeptical but that’s what the report showed.  Now that difference between Permitting Reform as currently envisioned (mostly for energy infrastructure and strategic minerals) is that there are external developers.  This is true for some FS projects, but the FS also has many (think vegetation management) that don’t have external proponents.  So the Permitting Reform folks tend to look at costs to the developer, as well as difficulty of implementing and uncertainty about project outcomes in a different way than the FS does.

Anyway, here is a link to the report, and  below is “what worked” there.  There are elements that the FS has tried at various times.  You can say “all of this is just basic management”, which is true.  I do think, especially when so much traditional in-house work has been outsourced to States and grantees, in addition to the work traditionally contracted, it makes it more important to be transparent about accomplishments and timelines.  You may note that that was my pet peeve about the Keystone Agreements, I had to do FOIAs to get their accomplishment reports.  It also reminds me a bit of what my former boss (2000’s). Fred Norbury used to say: “we run NEPA like an artisan cobbler shop and it should be more like a NIKE factory.”  There are many cultural factors that we looked at at the time (during the Process Predicament) effort.

WHAT WORKED IN VIRGINIA
A Case Study
From Virginia DEQ’s experience dealing with other state agencies and multiple NGOs, these seven elements were Director Rolband’s keys to success:

1. START AT THE TOP
Agency directors and top managers must check permits and progress. Make it explicit that results matter; when leadership looks, the organization moves.

2. USE A COMPLETENESS CHECKLIST
Publish a clear checklist and return incomplete applications. Do not start a review until every required item is in. This stops staff from bouncing among half-done files, deters “get in the queue” tactics, and curbs serial data requests that cause delay. The culture will resist; apply constant attention until the habit sticks.

3. FIX THE PROCESS
Map the steps. Remove steps that add no value. Run steps in parallel where possible. Assign an owner and deadline for each step (including consulting agencies and the applicant). Automate where feasible: one permit stream with 1,000 annual approvals moved from 35 days to same-day turnaround and no longer needed tracking in PEEP.

4. SET TIME GOALS AND TRACK THEM
Establish an overall agency time goal and a goal for each permit type. Track actuals vs. goals and display results publicly. Post daily on the website, include in the weekly report, and make it the first agenda item at every executive and leadership team meeting.

5. REPORT PERFORMANCE PUBLICLY
Show performance on the website using simple dashboards (graphics, numeric scores, or color grades). Use the data to drive action: more training for consultants and staff; tests and credentials to fast-track clean applications by certified professionals. Transparency is a performance tool.

6. MONITOR INTERNAL PERFORMANCE
Track staff and team performance and share it agency-wide, not publicly. Use it to spot issues, rebalance workloads, and tune processes. Compare relative effort by permit type and rebalance weekly (e.g., via “One DEQ”) so help goes where it’s needed.

7. PRACTICE CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT
Treat improvement as routine work. As adoption grows, keep pruning steps, tightening checklists, refining goals, and expanding automation.

I’d only add that a dashboard should include litigation, since the way we find out about it now is that different entities do different studies on different subsets, and reach different conclusions.  I can’t think of a reason that what can be the most lengthy part of the process should be excluded.

Yes, the feds do have a permitting dashboard already, but I think it could be improved in many ways for all kinds of FS (and BLM (?)) projects. That would help everyone see what the total project workload of a District/Forest is.

I posted a screenshot of that one at the end of this post.

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Maybe Someone Else Could Do It if the FS Doesn’t Want To

Jon commented:

As for finding out that there is a project, maybe that’s a good job for AI? If the Forest Service puts it in any public internet location, there should be a standardizable way of finding it. A standardized way of storing and displaying it would be nicer, but maybe that could be done by the AI “viewer” now.

That’s pretty brilliant, and one of our NGOs could easily hire someone to do that.  On the other hand,  I like the idea that IFP had “transparency is a performance tool.” It seems to me that it could help resolve misunderstandings, such as why some projects are priority and some are stuck.  It could also help regulatory agencies of various persuasions prioritize their work or ask for more resources.  Actually it’s hard for me to imagine why everyone looking at the same dashboard would be a bad thing.

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To What Extent are Deregulation/Consistency and Transparency At Odds?

Anonymous commented:

The agency has relied on a complex set of regulations and policies to compel consistency, but a January 2025 Executive Order established a “10-to-1” goal for deregulation, aiming to cut ten regulations for every new one introduced. Additionally, existing regulations are being revised to provide local decision makers greater discretion by reducing requirements.

We are ultimately back to the question of what should be local decisions, and what kinds of consistency are necessary for good governance? Certainly deregulation and transparency can go hand in hand.

I think it’s all about sideboards and boxes.  It seems to me that (just taking NEPA projects for example) the WO could say “you forests have discretion over which you pick for a project, CE, EA or EIS” and “whichever you pick, here are the pieces that you need to (consistently) put on your (consistent with others) website.”  Local discretion and fluffiwuffiness (or “hide the project”) are not the same thing in my mind. Anything that reduces trust, ultimately reduces good governance and efficiency, as in “go slow to go fast” with partners, or as Chief Schultz has referred to, the cost of low-trust organizations in Covey’s The Speed of Trust.

As to forest plans (as Jon brought up), other than their general lack of utility (in my view),  it seems to be common sense for forest to consider neighboring forests’ standards or maps or whatever in their deliberations. In Region 2, we noticed those, but I don’t recall ever suggesting the forests agree.  For one thing, for any new agreement forest 1 would have to amend to agree with what they agreed on with forest 2 (or possibly neighboring 3).  What should neighboring forests agree on? What should they agree on with neighboring BLM managers?

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As promised, screenshot of federal permitting dashboard for an FS project.

What to Standardize in the FS? How About Project Information?

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First, I’d like to lay out a couple of organizational thoughts.. ones that haven’t changed over time. I would guess that these are things that FS leadership must be mulling over. Both things are true:
Decentralized decision making is a strength of the FS  AND the public can get confused when neighboring forests and regions have different ways of interpreting regulations and practices.

The question is always, and has always been, “what should be standardized, and what left to local choices, and what criteria should we use to determine which is which?”

Somewhere, in some document or someone’s head, shouldn’t there be some thought given to this?  With input from the public?

If we go a layer (or two)  up from that, why shouldn’t the BLM and the FS try to harmonize their NEPA approaches, public outreach, and so on FOR THE GOOD OF THE PUBLIC AND THE TAXPAYER? I’m also thinking recreation maps. They don’t have to be combined into one department to do things the same way.. think NIFC. It just seems like effective public administration, and aren’t we all in favor of that?

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Anyway, here’s an illustration of diversity of approaches. Certainly few people would compare the PSICC and the Mendocino. Earlier this week, I posted about the Salida Ranger District and its scoping-like effort on the Bald Mountain project. It strikes me that, at least for vegetation projects, it’s fairly simple to have an outline of what is proposed, at some level of detail, and ask for comment.  The rest is “how to”.  The simplest is to scope and post info on the project website. Maybe even simpler to have a forest project dashboard with links to the project websites (SOPA like, but perhaps updated in real time). I just don’t think it’s good for the public, nor public trust, nor the agency itself to have apparently random approaches across districts and forests.  For example, on the Mendocino, they had to involve the public affairs office to answer my questions- which would have been posted on the web in a scoping document! This is not a good use of the public affairs officer’s time, the project folks’ time, my time, or anyone else’s who wants to know about the project.

Here’s an example of  the Parramore and Elder Creek Projects, which were brought to my attention by Denise Boggs. I wrote to the Forest and received a quick reply, so shout-out to them for that! My questions are in bold, and the answers in italics.

For the Parramore Project, a A USDA spokesperson said:

Where is it located? Can you provide a map?

The Parramore Project is located near the Penny Pines campground, about 10 miles north of Upper Lake in Lake County. The attached map shows the project broken out into North and South areas.

What treatments are proposed?

Targeted vegetation treatments- including thinning, prescribed fire, and removal of accumulated dead and down fuels. The intent of these treatments is to restore appropriate stand conditions, improve growing conditions, reduce fuel loads, improve habitat for biological diversity and foster a more resilient forest landscape.

How large is the analysis area?

The total project area is approximately 2155 acres.

Will scoping be conducted. if so, when do you estimate that will happen?

No, scoping will not be conducted. Under the updated 2025 regulatory framework (7 CFR 1b), this project is being developed under a Categorical Exclusion (CE) rather than an Environmental Assessment. Public scoping is optional for CE-level actions and was not selected for this project. We are engaging with Tribes, partners and FireScape Mendocino.  If through the development of the project it is determined there is an extraordinary circumstance, then the project may be moved to an Environmental Assessment.

 Project milestones with expected dates of completion are posted online on the Parramore project website. However these timelines are estimated and subject to change. Regarding the Parramore project, a decision is postponed and will not likely happen in February. We do not have an updated timeline yet, but as soon as we do, it will be reflected on the project website.

Did you send out an announcement about the project via the “sign up for proposed project updates” button on your project website?

No, the sign-up list is a new tool that we are planning to use to distribute quarterly updates.

We would welcome those who are interested in our projects to subscribe.

Will the decision document be posted on the website?

 Yes, the NEPA finding will be posted on the project website when completed.

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For the Elder Creek Project:

 Where is it located? Can you provide a map?

The Elder Creek project is located north of Whitlock Campground and approximately 12 miles northwest of Paskenta in Tehama County, California. A map is attached.

 What treatments are proposed?

The project proposes a combination of fuels reduction, green tree thinning, and reforestation activities. The purpose of these activities would be to restore forest structure and function while reducing impacts and losses due to uncontrolled wildfire.

 How large is the analysis area?

The total project area is approximately 1,192 acres. The fuels reduction and selective green-tree thinning would be carried out on approximately 935 acres. Reforestation activities would be implemented on about 257 acres. These activities would occur in high severity burn areas where natural seed banks are inadequate.

 Will scoping be conducted. if so, when do you estimate that will happen?

No, scoping will not be conducted. Under the updated 2025 regulatory framework (7 CFR 1b), this project is being developed under a Categorical Exclusion (CE) rather than an Environmental Assessment. Public scoping is optional for CE-level actions and was not selected for this project. We are engaging with Tribes, partners and FireScape Mendocino.  If through the development of the project it is determined there is an extraordinary circumstance, then the project may be moved to an Environmental Assessment.

Project milestones with expected dates of completion are posted online on the Elder Creek project website. However these timelines are estimated and subject to change. Regarding the Elder Creek project, a decision is postponed and will not likely happen in February. We do not have an updated timeline yet, but as soon as we do, it will be reflected on the project website.

 Did you send out an announcement about the project via the “sign up for proposed project updates” button on your project website?

No, the sign-up list is a new tool that we are planning to use to distribute quarterly updates.

We would welcome those who are interested in our projects to subscribe.

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So the Mendocino approach seems to be like scoping notice with more work.  Finding out about a project, in my view, should be standardized across Forests (and Regions).  It shouldn’t be a game of “find the project.”

Where Do Scoping Practices Come From, Statute, Regulation, Agency Culture or Some Combination?

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Jon asked a great question about scoping..

To your bigger question (I think), would this meet the needs of scoping (for NEPA purposes) – isn’t the purpose of scoping to seek information about potential environmental impacts (so the agency can tell whether an EIS process is necessary)? I don’t see anything like that here.

I decided to search the statute, and could only find one “scoping”. It seems like the statute requires a report that asks when the agency started scoping for EAs and EIS’s.

So it is difficult to discern what parts of scoping are 1) in the statute, 2) in individual agency regulations (which probably recently changed due to the court case and actions thereafter), 3) part of case law? and 4) standard but non-regulatory cultural practices. A brief internet journey suggests that individual agencies vary quite a bit in what kinds of projects they scope, and how they go about doing it.

So what do our legal folks think about all this? It seems like the statute doesn’t mention it for CE’s, but it seems like a matter of convenience or practicality to do some kind of public outreach.

Those of you who remember the Decision Protocol effort, I thought part of that was that the FS needed a model for decision-making that wasn’t so NEPA regulation-dependent. In other words, the FS might want to take public comment on decisions that weren’t “NEPA” decisions.

Federal Lands Litigation – update through February 28, 2026

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FOREST SERVICE

Court decision in Freres Timber, Inc. v. U. S. (9th Circuit)

On February 9, the circuit court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of this case involving the Beachie Fire on the Willamette National Forest.  Plaintiffs had alleged that the Forest Service likely “chose to utilize it for natural resources purposes,” because using prescribed fire to achieve restoration goals is more “burdensome” for the agency, and the Forest Service has a “perverse incentive” to allow wildfires to burn even when it knows the weather conditions are “extremely dangerous.” The court held that the firefighting decisions were discretionary and could not be challenged in a negligence lawsuit.  Evidence that the Forest Service disregarded a “full suppression” mandate for this fire was considered not relevant to the question of whether its actions were discretionary.  The opinion is here.

New lawsuit

On February 10, Native Ecosystems Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and WildLands Defense filed a lawsuit against the Forestwide Prescribed Fire Restoration Project on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.  The Forest Service plans to cut trees and burn 30,000 acres per year for the next 15 to 20 years, based on an EA, which allegedly does not inform the public of where these actions would occur.  Plaintiffs mention concern for pygmy rabbits, the Sierra red fox and pinyon jays.  The area also includes the Jarbridge River watershed, which is designated critical habitat for bull trout, and plaintiffs have notified the agencies of their intent to sue under the Endangered Species Act.

Court decision in Tobin v. Rollins (E.D. California)

On February 20, the district court denied plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and upheld a Forest Service and BLM March 7, 2025 decision to conduct the removal of wild horses outside the Montgomery Pass Wild Horse Territory near Bishop, California.  The court found no violations of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, NEPA or the APA.

New lawsuit

On February 24, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council on Fish & Wildlife sued the Forest Service for eliminating the requirements for protecting Canada lynx on areas of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.  They are challenging both an amendment to the forest plan that reduces the amount of lynx habitat, and the Greenhorn Project, which was shelved after a prior challenge until the amendment was complete.

Partial court decision (D. D.C.)

A district court has ruled that provisions of the Alaska National Interest and Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) governing access to private inholdings apply to federal lands outside of Alaska.  The ruling, which echoes others elsewhere, rejects this one claim in a lawsuit against the White River National Forest decision to allow a 2.4 mile paved road to a parcel that would be developed into 19 homesites.  This case involving Berlaimont Estates was discussed here.  The court has not yet addressed NEPA and FLPMA claims.

BLM

New lawsuit:  Grandmothers Growing Goodness v. Burgum (D. D.C.)

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. Alaska)

On February 17, Grandmothers Growing Goodness and The Wilderness Society filed a lawsuit seeking to block the cancellation of a protective right-of-way easement, which would allow oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and a proposed March 18 lease sale.  This case involves the impacts on Iñupiat communities.  Also on February 17, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth filed a motion to amend a prior complaint filed in 2020 based on recent decisions for the Reserve by the BLM.  They say an updated 2025 management plan for the Reserve underpinning the lease sale “unlawfully removes lands from the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area and eliminates the Colville River Special Area” and violates NEPA.  They intend to add ESA claims related to effects on polar bears.  The article includes links to both filings.  Two similar cases were filed in January and discussed here.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. D.C.)

On February 10, Plaintiffs challenged a decision by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to not release a gray wolf recovery plan that it had agreed in a previous lawsuit settlement to produce.  Instead, the agency is in the process of proposing to delist the species where it is currently listed outside of the northern Rocky Mountains.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (N.D. California)

On February 12, the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety, sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to force officials to set a binding date to finalize federal protections for monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act.  The monarch was proposed for protection in December 2024, making the final listing decision due in December 2025.  Instead of issuing the final listing at the end of 2025, FWS delayed the decision as a “long-term action,” with no definitive date for issuance provided. The federal assessment of the monarch’s status found that in the next 60 years western migratory monarchs have up to a 99% chance of going extinct and eastern monarchs have up to a 74% chance.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

Settlement in Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. D.C.)

On February 13, the Fish and Wildlife Service stipulated in a settlement agreement to reconsider whether a freshwater mussel called the brook floater warrants Endangered Species Act protections by Aug. 30, 2029.  It was found not warranted for listing in 2019.  The species is found in smaller rivers and stream in the eastern U.S., including on several national forests.  The article has a link to the agreement.

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (D. Arizona)

On February 17, the Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failure to issue a final listing rule for the eastern hellbender, a large salamander found from New York to Georgia, which would complete protection of all three subspecies of hellbenders.  In December 2024, the agency proposed a rule to list the hellbender as endangered.  The USFWS was then required to have finalized the listing by December 2025, but failed to do so.   According to the USFWS, the primary threats hellbenders face include stream sedimentation, poor water quality, disease, habitat loss, and pet trade collection.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. D.C.)

On February 24, the Center filed a lawsuit to secure an overdue listing decision for the coastal (Wayne’s) black-throated green warbler.  It is found only in coastal plain wetland forests of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, including at least the Croatan National Forest, where alleged threats include “commercial logging on private and public lands.”  It has been more than two years since the Service received the petition to list the coastal black-throated green warbler as threatened or endangered under the ESA.  The complaint is here.

Preliminary injunction in National Wildlife Federation v. National Marine Fisheries Service (D. Oregon)

On February 25, in this lawsuit with nine plaintiff organizations (and as many intervenor defendants), which began in 2001, the district court ordered increased spill levels at eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers to protect endangered salmon species, rejecting claims that doing so would impede power generation.  The case now concerns an environmental impact statement and a biological opinion from 2020 that the court ordered the federal agencies to prepare for the Federal Columbia River Power System.  The parties resumed litigation after President Donald Trump upended a prior settlement by the Biden Administration, and plaintiffs moved for an injunction.  Though the court granted the plaintiffs’ injunction to increase spills, it granted defendants’ request to keep reservoir levels at the 2025 operating levels and declined to implement a series of nonoperational conservation measures.  The article includes a link to the order.  The court summarized its rationale:

“First, the BiOp’s jeopardy analysis improperly considered the environmental baseline, resulting in a flawed analytic approach that is both impermissibly comparative and unacceptably limited in its evaluation of the Proposed Action’s anticipated impacts. Second, the BiOp’s jeopardy analysis impermissibly relies on uncertain benefits. Third, the BiOp does not properly account for climate change in its jeopardy analysis. Finally, the BiOp fails properly to engage in a recovery analysis as required by the ESA.”

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Nesvik (D. Montana)

On February 26, the Center filed a second lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service for their failure to designate critical habitat for the wolverine, which was listed in April 2023.  The article includes a link to the complaint.  The prior lawsuit by multiple other parties was described here.

OTHER

New lawsuit:  Michigan v. BP P.L.C. (W.D. Michigan)

On January 23, the Michigan Attorney General filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against several large oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute, alleging a decades-long conspiracy to suppress renewable energy competition, in violation of the Sheman Act, the Clayton Act and a Michigan law.  The complaint alleges that the oil companies executed coordinated efforts to suppress electric vehicle and renewable energy technologies that would have otherwise competed with gasoline and fossil fuels. Specific allegations include Exxon shelving market-ready hybrid vehicle prototypes developed in the late 1970s, Chevron acquiring and blocking nickel-metal hydride battery patents through restrictive licensing and litigation, and the defendants collectively refusing to install EV charging stations at retail locations, as well as abandoning commercially viable solar ventures.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

New lawsuit

On February 18, a Job Corps employee of the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest claimed in federal court that the Department of Agriculture had used “intentional age discrimination” during a deferred resignation program in 2025, in violation of the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act.  He was denied the benefits of that program, and he claims that the Department knew it was “taking steps to render his position redundant” while simultaneously preventing him from taking the buyout by defining his position as “mission critical.”

  • National park historic displays

New lawsuit:  National Parks Conservation Association v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. Massachusetts)

On February 17, six organizations (including the Association of National Park Rangers) sued the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service over actions taken to implement the new policy of removing information that “inappropriately disparages Americans.”  The complaint, which alleges violations of various laws is linked to this article.

Court decision in a related lawsuit

The City of Philadelphia had also sued regarding removal of exhibits documenting slavery at the President’s House site in that city.  The court ordered the Park Service to restore the President’s House to the way it appeared before the removal of the exhibit titled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation.”  The plaintiff alleged that the parties took these actions without consulting the city as required under a cooperative agreement developed in 2006.

The executive order bemoans the “widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”  This court said, “Each person who visits the President’s House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery receives a false account of this country’s history.  (It sounds like this Administration’s actions are replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology.)

PLANNING NOTES

On February 18, the Tongass National Forest formally initiated its forest plan revision process with a 30-day public comment period ending March 19.  The article includes a link to the Federal Register notice of initiation of the development of a proposed plan revision and notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement.  The revision will replace a plan that was revised in 2016.  The agency noted that a long-term timber demand analysis underway at the Pacific Northwest Research Station will inform projected timber sale quantities.

In December, the BLM released final land-use plan amendments concerning sage grouse habitat across eight western states. While determined to be eligible for protections under the Endangered Species Act due to its declining population, the species has not been listed.  Instead, the federal government adopted a land management plan for sage grouse habitat in 2015, which limited where mining, oil and gas, transmission lines and other heavy industry could operate within priority habitat areas.  They specified limits on the amount of permittable disturbance within these habitat areas, which were designated to protect the sensitive birds and their mating grounds.  The BLM asserts that its changes would continue to protect habitat across around 65 million acres of sagebrush lands, while making more acres available for development.  Its news release is here.   The Center for Biological Diversity says it intends to sue the Trump administration over the new plans.