Here’s a link to the full article from the Teton Valley News. Below are the first few paragraphs from the piece.
On Sept. 26, Mountain Pursuit, a hunters’ advocacy group in Jackson, filed a lawsuit against the Bridger Teton and Caribou Targhee National Forest for allowing mountain bike use in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area and ATV use in the Shoal Creek Wilderness Study Area.
In August of 2018, after the failure of the Teton County Wyoming Public Lands Initiative to make a recommendation to the Teton County Board of Commissioners on how to manage the local Wilderness Study Areas, Rob Shaul founded Mountain Pursuit to lobby for ethical hunting, wildlife and habitat conservation, and hunter education.
Shaul represented the general public in the WPLI committee, which formed in 2016 to address the question of management of the WSAs in Teton County. While a few different proposals, including one “middle ground” proposal spearheaded by Shaul, came before the committee, none of the plans received a majority vote and the committee ended its work without finding consensus.
“Through my two-plus years of working for compromise on the WPLI it was impressed upon me that in northwest Wyoming, Industrial Recreation is the primary threat to wildlife, and that those pushing recreation, including the mountain bike and motorized recreation advocates and businesses, were unwilling to compromise to protect wildlife,” Shaul wrote in an email to the Teton Valley News.
This is an interesting story (1) because of the unique history of Greenback Cutthroat Trout and the discovery that they had survived in this particular drainage.
After more than five years of research, Kennedy concluded that Bear Creek was historically fishless. The greenbacks had been stocked sometime after 1874 by a man named Joseph C. Jones. Jones had come to Colorado as a prospector during the gold rush and later built an inn for the hordes of tourists that visited Pike’s Peak. There he built a series of fish ponds for guests, where it is believed he stocked the greenback far outside of its native range.
It was human stocking — the same practice that had killed off or pushed out so many of Colorado’s native trout — that had accidentally preserved the greenback. With only 800 individuals left in the entire subspecies, it would be up to humans again to save it.
Here’s an article in High Country News that tells the whole story. Philosophically, it raises interesting questions. Would ecological integrity requirements include moving the Bear Creek fish out, since they had been originally transplanted? How important is “genetic purity” compared to the ecosystem services provided by genetically motlier populations/subspecies of cutthroat trout?
(2) Here’s the Colorado Springs Gazette story on the potential lawsuit with a link to the CBD letter. It’s got everything.. a collaborative group from previous litigation..design disagreements..and it’s about a trail. Perhaps most interesting that it looks like CBD is distinguishing between impacts of hiking, mountain bikes, and motorcycles.
The Colorado Motorcycle Trail Riders Association sent a statement to The Gazette, criticizing the center’s “incessant zeal.”
“The long, thoughtful process that resulted in the rerouting of several popular trails in Jones Park represents a balance between preserving Bear Creek fish habitat and allowing reasonable recreational outdoor access for all users,” the statement read.
For years during the Forest Service’s analysis and reroute negotiations, motorists were barred from the singletrack closest to town. Now roaming the realigned Trail 667 on the north side of Kineo Mountain, they are “the crux” of the center’s concern, said the organization’s attorney, Margaret Townsend.
“If it was just a footpath or even potentially a mountain bike trail, it could have some impact, but not necessarily the same impact a motorcycle trail is likely to have,” she said in a phone call. “Of course we want folks enjoying the forest, and where the trail was going to be originally, that location wouldn’t have affected the greenback.”
So.. what do others think of the “impact” idea?
“We’ve got some concerns with upkeep; the trail’s not holding up the way it was sort of advertised,” said Cory Sutela, with Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates. “But it’s also pretty far from the creek.”
He’s no biologist, he said. “I’m a mechanical engineer, so I look at it technically, and it looks to me like sediment shouldn’t be able to get from the trail to the creek.”
Tim Volken of El Paso County:
The county “would appreciate reviewing any scientific data generated by the center indicating water quality concerns,” Wolken said. “This will be helpful in determining next steps
But to Allyn Kratz, president of the local chapter of Trout Unlimited, the evidence is “overwhelming,” and not in the favor of conservation.
He said he raised concerns about the trail before it was built, noticing at least eight “ravines” on the mountainside while hiking the flagged route — “ravines created by water,” Kratz said, “and the water obviously went to Bear Creek.”
He said he was told Trails Unlimited would address this. But he was unsatisfied in the end and remains so.
“I would love to see (Trail 667) closed,” Kratz said.
Conceivably after previous litigation, the trail was designed with sedimentation concerns in mind. Does anyone know of studies about different on-trail users having different sedimentation impacts? This may be time for a field trip…
The district court invalidated the biological opinion on Mexican spotted owls prepared by the FWS for forest plans for the Lincoln, Santa Fe, Cibola, Carson, and Gila National Forests in New Mexico, and the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. Timber management actions on these forests have been enjoined. (D. Ariz.) (See other discussions on this blog here and here.)
The district court issued a preliminary injunction for the Twin Mountain Timber Sale, which is part of the Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis Project on the Tongass National Forest, and involves the newly popular “condition-based analysis.” (D. Alaska) (We have discussed this case here.)
The district court granted the Forest Service’s motion for Summary Judgment regarding its Emergency Situation Determination for its decision to authorize the Cove Fire Salvage Project on the Modoc National Forest. (E. D .Cal.)
The plaintiffs claim HUD violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when authorizing relief funds to the Forest Service for clear cutting activities and construction of a new biomass power plant utilizing the timber as feedstock following the 2013 Rim Fire on the Stanislaus National Forest. (N. D. Cal.)
The parties have notified the Lincoln National Forest and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service of their intent to sue under the Endangered Species Act to reinitiate consultation to protect the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse from grazing activities on two allotments.
Conservationists want a California judge to set aside Placer County’s approval of a 2.2-mile long gondola that would pass through the Tahoe national forest to connect the bases of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows ski resorts. About 20% of the project, including five of the towers, would be located on the Tahoe National Forest near the Granite Chief Wilderness Area. The project won preliminary approval from the Forest Service earlier this year and is awaiting final approval after 12 organizations and individuals objected to their draft record of decision.
Conservation groups and a Native American tribe have sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to challenge a key water permit allowing the PolyMet open-pit copper mine to move forward in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest. Other related litigation was described here,here and here.
Matthew posted the WEG press release here..with links to other posts on the case.
Frankly, I have never really understood ESA litigation. Maybe Jon and others can help me understand via this case.
1. From what I’ve read, this case is about the FS (and FWS?) not monitoring/improving the status of the MSO. But some forests are exempt, because they have a 2012 biological opinion, and it will supposedly take a year for the other forests to get a biological opinion. But if those other forests have a biological opinion, and it says “don’t do these things because of the MSO” then couldn’t another solution be to adopt those restrictions until the new BO is completed? Could that have been the judge’s decision? Would the plaintiff then have to agree? If some forests are exempt from the order due to their BO’s, then is it really about monitoring, or really about having a recent BO? To get back to Jon’s point, does it make better sense to have something like the Southern Rockies Lynx Amendment where a bunch of forest plans are amended at once?
It’s also interesting from the political science point of view. Thanks to the NAFSR twitter feed for this link to a story in the Las Cruces Sun News.
U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, and U.S. Reps. Ben Ray Lujan, Deb Haaland and Xochitl Torres Small — all Democrats — signed the letter, asking Christiansen to “resolve a variety of issues, including, but not limited to, traditional firewood gathering, tribal cultural activities, and forest restoration and fire mitigation projects.”
The affected people and their elected officials can only ask the Forest Service to negotiate. If I remember correctly, it was also an ESA case in Region 3 about which Chief Jack Ward Thomas said:
“In my opinion, and those of my legal advisers, the proposed agreement contained three real clunkers to which we strenuously objected. The Department of Justice is, in my opinion, almost always too eager to settle legal actions, particularly when plaintiffs are of the environmental persuasion. It was a shock to my system to find that the Department of Justice does not consider the Forest Service a client. They have little concerns as to the desires of the Forest Service or any other agency. They set their own course and in doing so are de facto setters of policy. Somehow that seems to be a serious flaw in the system. But for now, at least, it is the system.”
So we don’t know if that situation has changed since JWT’s time, nor how much influence the FS actually has in negotiation.
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in that court case — the Santa Fe-based environmental group WildEarth Guardians — are asking the judge to exclude firewood permits from his order on Thursday.
“It was never our intention to affect firewood cutting,” said Executive Director John Horning, who claimed Forest Service personnel have been telling people to call WildEarth for the permits.
“That was the U.S. Forest Service … inciting fear in all sorts of ways and frankly scapegoating us,” he said. “It’s unprofessional for a federal agency that has broken the law and been held accountable by a judge to direct people to our organization.”
3. Note that in this news story, WEG is saying that they are asking the judge to exclude firewood permits from the order. To me, this implies the judge developed the order without the plaintiff’s desired sideboards. Is that a natural consequence of taking something to court.. the decision can be what neither party wants?
4. If WEG took the FS to court, and the judge makes a ruling, doesn’t WEG share some responsibility for that? Is WEG accountable for that decision going to court, even if the results are not what they intended? Not that it wouldn’t be unprofessional, in some sense, if the Forest Service directed them to call WEG. What would it look like, though, for people to hold groups accountable for actions that affect their activities. Note that these folks (say, people who want fuels projects done) can’t force the FS to monitor either.
5. Wouldn’t it be terrific if all of the ongoing communication between the attorneys (DOJ and plantiffs’) and the judge were available to the public? Then we would know who was being reasonable, if anyone.
The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management over the last several years have been developing long-term Resource Management Plans for more than 3 million acres of BLM lands in Eastern Colorado and the Uncompahgre Plateau and in the Rio Grande National Forest. According to this article, the state and local communities are not happy.
The Trump-driven shift toward more oil and gas development on public lands worries Colorado politicians and conservation groups that are steering the state toward increased protections. Agencies within the same department seem in conflict. Long-studied plans are changing between between draft and final reports, with proposed protections fading away and opportunities for extraction growing…
“What we are seeing is the full effect — in proposed actions — of the 2016 election at the local level,” Ouray County Commissioner Ben Tisdel said.
The article goes into detail about the effects on the Uncompahgre Field Office’s proposed plan:
County commissioners from Gunnison, Ouray and San Miguel counties have filed protests with the BLM over the Uncompahgre Field Office’s proposed plan. The counties have been involved with the planning for eight years. In 2016, the counties submitted comments on the plan outlining concerns for the Gunnison sage grouse and listing parcels the agency should protect and retain as federal lands.
“Alternative E proposed doing all the things we specifically asked them not to do,” said Tisdel, the Ouray County commissioner, adding that lands his county wanted protected were listed in the 2019 plan for possible disposal by the agency. “We thought we had a pretty good product in 2016 and now we have this new alternative, Alternative E, that goes way beyond anything we had seen before and is awful in ways we never thought of before.”
With regard to the Rio Grande National Forest revised forest plan:
The move from that September 2017 Draft Environmental Impact Statement to the final version released in August has riled conservationists and sportsmen. Goals established for air quality, designated trails, fisheries management, fire management, wildlife connectivity and habitat were scaled back in between the draft and final versions.
Colorado’s governor has weighed in on the BLM plan (in language consistent with the Western Governors Association policies):
The resource management plan’s “failure to adopt commitments consistent with the state plans, policies and agreements hinders Colorado’s ability to meet its own goals and objectives for wildlife in the planning area,” Polis wrote.
The BLM had an interesting response:
“There is room to adjust within the RMP, which has a built-in adaptive management strategy,” he said. “We are ready to respond as the state’s plans are complete.”
So they plan to do whatever the state wants them to do later? “Room to adjust within the RMP” appears to mean that they don’t have to go through a plan amendment process with the public, which seems unlikely to be legal for the kinds of changes the state appears to want. (It definitely wouldn’t work for national forest plans.)
The Western Energy Alliance blames the governor for being late to the game:
It doesn’t get a complete do-over just because something new happens, like Gov. Polis issues a new order.”
But it does apparently get a complete do-over because a new federal government administration says so. There may still be some legal process (e.g. NEPA) questions this raises.
For the first time in nearly three decades, the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois has proposed a commercial timber harvest of mostly native oaks and hickories. And environmental activists whose high-profile fight against logging in the 1990s led to a 17-year moratorium are once again raising alarms.
Lisa Helmig, acting forest supervisor with the Shawnee National Forest, said the plan is rooted in the best available science about how to maintain the keystone oak ecosystem that is native to the Shawnee foothills. “The oak ecosystem has been in place here in the central hardwood region for 5,000 years,” she said. But Helmig said the ecosystem is at risk due to a lack of natural or man-made disturbances, such as fire, storms and, yes, even logging. Without these disturbances, non-native, shade-tolerant sugar maple and beech trees sprout up and fill in the forest’s midstory, she said.
The activists have filed an objection, based largely on their past experience with timber harvest on the Forest.
The trees that have grown up to replace the harvested oaks and hickories are mostly 28-year-old stands of “undesirable” beeches and maples. “When you think about how many oaks were here, it’s heart-wrenching,” Wallace said “Had they not cut the oaks, we’d have oaks here,” Stearns added. In addition to the Farview site, in their letter they write that we also returned to the North End Ecological Restoration project logged in Pope County in the late 1990s. “Little to no oak and hickory have been visibly restored.” They cited other examples, as well.
This is the root of their concern: What the Shawnee National Forest’s leadership claims is happening isn’t.
Asked about their concerns, Helmig said that her “gut reaction” is that the Forest Service likely didn’t follow through with what should be a multiphase treatment. Helmig said she’s confident that the Forest Service is committed to seeing (this) project through… “We have a wonderful silviculturist on staff now,” Helmig said. “He’s been here five years and is absolutely fantastic.”
Hopefully we can assume that there has been a science-based determination that ecological integrity requires regenerating some young oaks and hickories. But implementation unfortunately still boils down to “trust us,” and “we’re different now.” (But then the Forest evicted the media from the objection meeting, wrongly according to the Washington Office.)
This is a photo I found of a Weminuche trail. but this is rather minimal deadfall compared to what I’ve observed. Other photos invited.
I thought I’d repost Cindy Chojnacky’s comment as I think she made a number of points that added to the original topic here. I would only add that I have also noticed, specifically in the Weminuche Wilderness which was the topic of our early discussions, the phenomenon she describes of “”social trails” around down trees, spaghetti paths through boggy areas and/or trampled mud around broken/unrepaired bog bridges” in areas blocked by deadfall.
Here’s what she wrote:
Ironically I was backpacking in a wilderness study area (Pioneers) this week and missed the post until now. Some good thoughts on wilderness and trails although I am only responding to the original opinion piece from a policy and a visitor (heavy wilderness user) standpoint.
I agree with George Nickas that wilderness is “commitment to humility” and his critique of the Forest Service leaving its wilderness management work to volunteers. However, opposing chainsaws in wilderness to clear trails and—for that matter—much of Wilderness Watch emphasis is based on a wrong policy interpretation of the Wilderness Act that misses the purpose of Wilderness. Let’s look at the 1964 Act policy statement in its entirety:
“In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System to be composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as “wilderness areas”, and these shall be administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness.”
Wilderness exist for the purpose of public use and enjoyment. Perhaps wilderness should be preserved for its own sake but that is not the purpose of the Wilderness Act. Even the management requirement to leave wilderness unimpaired is for “future use and enjoyment.”
Now, why is the Forest Service proposing to use chainsaws in the Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness? Nickas doesn’t say but I imagine trails are blocked by deadfall. So the Forest Service wants to restore public access to wilderness. By the way, only the Forest Service rigorously restricts chainsaw use in wilderness; Park Service does not always. This is not law but an agency policy or at best interpretation of law.
With climate change increasing forest health issues and expanding fire size, fewer trails in wilderness are accessible to the public. That channels more people onto fewer trails in already heavily used areas, creating more “trammeling” of wilderness. Here are examples:
Ramsey’s Draft Wilderness, Virginia—Beautiful canyon trail Jerry’s Run used to be green meadow now full of shrubs and down eastern hemlock thanks to exotic hemlock wooly adelgid. Perhaps Forest Service has fixed this now but last time I talked to recreation staff, they could not get certified sawyer to clear trail.
Mazatzal Wilderness, Arizona—Has fairly well-cleared Arizona Trail (by volunteers) on the crest but venture west into large network of rangeland trails no longer maintained by permittees and never restored after 2004 Willow Fire—and you battle miles of desert vegetation, dense woodland regrowth or down trees if you want to visit the state’s largest national forest wilderness.
Sawtooth Wilderness, Idaho—We hiked a lightly used trail (in this heavily used wilderness) connecting popular Hell Roaring and Redfish Lakes that was a mess of down trees —until we left the wilderness near Redfish and found a lovely trail nicely cleared by chainsaw.
Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho—Friends of mine were turned back on epic trip through central Idaho with llamas because deadfall on famous Middle Fork of Salmon trail was not cleared. This trail contours on steep granite slopes high above the river—it would be life threatening to try go around the logs; after several days of hand-sawing they gave up on hiking Middle Fork.
Wilderness Act restrictions are not about banning technology for the sake of banning technology. If so GPS, lightweight backpacking gear, satellite phones, etc. should also be banned. Furthermore—the Wilderness Act allows exemptions for existing uses that includes technologies. In the “Frank”, for instance, fly-in airstrips and lodge in-holdings with hydro-electric power dams were included in its enabling wilderness legislation. In some western wilderness areas, range permittees are allowed to improve water developments with a bulldozer! Many “wilderness” roads are routinely exempted or cherry-stemmed.
Many legacy trails in premier wilderness areas like Zion, Sawtooth, Frank Church were built using dynamite, chainsaws and any other available technology.It seems that in an era where trails will not be cleared and public access lost in many log-jammed areas, that specific exemptions of chainsaws is actually in keeping with Congressional precedent. Good constructed, well maintained trails are probably the “lightest touch” possible for wilderness management. The alternative seems highly eroded overused trails, new game or “social trails” around down trees, spaghetti paths through boggy areas and/or trampled mud around broken/unrepaired bog bridges—a huge problem for dozens of national forest wilderness areas that I’ve visited in last decade since Forest Service stopped supporting routine trail crews.
Nickas rightly notes that the Forest Service (and other wildland fire agencies) can pull together a firefighting force at a moment’s notice—but the agency’s fire focus is driven by politics and money. Hear the local Congressmen, ranchers and small communities start screaming if the feds don’t come to the rescue when wildfire threatens.
Yes, it’s sad that the agency that launched the career of Aldo Leopold, named the first wilderness (Gila) and founded much of the philosophy in the Wilderness Act has so little commitment to wilderness today (except for some very zealous folks at the field level). But I would like to see the Non-Governmental Organization’s wilderness zeal going into creative solutions to disperse visitor use throughout our vast wilderness system and perhaps even pursue a new entity dedicated to wilderness management, rather than fighting the Forest Service in court and tying up what little effort is out there to keep wilderness available for public use and enjoyment.
From the Cohesive Wildland Fire Strategy newsletter:
Oregon is the latest state to enter into a Shared Stewardship agreement with the US Forest Service to collectively set priorities and increase the scope and scale of critical forest treatments that support communities and improve forest conditions. In addition to the Oregon agreement signed this week, in recent months Idaho, Montana, Washington and Utah have signed on to these historical agreements that allow for mutual prioritization and implementation of landscape-scale projects for forest and watershed health, timber values and catastrophic wildfire prevention without the conflict of boundary lines. The agreements also allow for the use of new tools and technology such as the Scenario Investment Planning tool that helps land managers assess where investments will have the best outcomes based on specific priorities and achievement rates.
The Scenario Investment Planning Project (SIPP) web site says:
The scenario planning project is a US Forest Service initiative to improve investment strategies in landscape treatments. The tool will help explore tradeoffs and assess progress towards nationally identified priorities and targets. The tool fills a gap in current planning by providing a way to understand how priorities such as reducing wildfire impacts to communities at the national scale lead to outcomes on the ground. This project is integrating existing Forest Service models and data into a simulation framework to explore system-wide management scenarios and associated tradeoffs. The system will provide a method to analyze tradeoffs among land treatment investment strategies aimed at improving forest conditions and reducing wildfire risk. In contrast to typical assessments of forest conditions, this framework provides a way to optimize treatments at the stand scale to meet larger scale objectives and constraints (Watersheds, Forests, Regions), providing a linkage between national policy and on-the-ground implementation. This interdisciplinary project brings together scientists from landscape planning, fire ecology, operations research, and economics, to build linkages between science and operations that heretofore have not existed.
The SIPP website has lots of background info and a story map.
USDA Forest Service proposes changes to address land management challenges
WASHINGTON – September 23 This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service will publish proposed changes to two regulations to implement new authorities the Forest Service received through the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018—also known as the 2018 Farm Bill—and the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act. The legislation gives the USDA Forest Service direction and new tools to improve forest conditions, services, and safety on and around national forests and grasslands. The Forest Service is proposing several regulatory changes to use these new tools and authorities. The proposed regulations will be open for public comment for 60 days following their publication in the Federal Register.
“These new authorities help us face land management challenges by accelerating and broadening management efforts to work across boundaries” said Chief Vicki Christiansen. “These regulatory reforms represent a small part of the wealth of tools and authorities granted to us by the 2018 Farm Bill and the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act but will undoubtedly help us in our mission to improve the value and benefits of national forests.”
The proposed changes to the two rules are as follows:
The proposed rule regarding Vegetation Management in Utility Corridors would establish options and incentives for more effective and collaborative vegetation management between the Forest Service and utilities. These utilities operate more than 3,000 transmission lines in and around national forests and grasslands. Management focus would be to remove dead and dying trees that threaten these transmission lines and power structures. Removing these hazards would reduce fire risk as well as increase the reliability of energy delivered to more than 70 million American homes.
The proposed rule regarding Communication Sites Management aims to expedite application processes for individuals and companies that want to build communication sites on national forests and grasslands. These changes would help connect rural communities as well as improve customer service to those applying for and operating under special use permits for communication sites.
Communication sites on national forests and grasslands supports more than 10,000 wireless uses. These sites support critical communications, including emergency services, railroads, utility companies, and companies that provide personal communications services as well as television and radio broadcasts.
The proposed rules can be found on the Forest Service website and in the Federal Register at https://federalregister.gov/d/2019-20741 for Vegetation Management in Utility Corridors and https://federalregister.gov/d/2019-20742 fr Communication Sites Management.
Seneca Jones CEO Todd Payne, with Jeff Glor, at an Oregon tree farm that has been clear-cut for the second time. Photo: CBS NEWS
In the CBS News series “Eye on Earth,” “CBS This Morning: Saturday” co-host Jeff Glor looked at the debate over what to do with America’s ancient forests. You can watch the entire segment here.
I thought the following part of the news feature was particularly interesting, especially in the context of many discussions on this blog.
When asked why clear-cutting, Payne said, “We’re mimicking what Mother Nature’s done for billions of years.”
“But this looks traumatic for a lot of people when they see something like this,” Glor said.
“I actually look at it quite different,” said Payne. “I think it’s somewhat aesthetically pleasing.”
“You think that looks aesthetically pleasing?”
“I do. Maybe I’m somewhat biased, but when I look out, I see sustainability and rejuvenation,” he said.
“Not every company like yours is willing to talk about their story or take us to places like this. Why do you do it?”
“I think we as an industry have not done a very good job historically of telling our story,” Payne replied.
Timber companies have also traditionally used a practice called aerial spraying, in which chemicals are dropped by helicopter to kill any vegetation other than trees used for lumber.
Glor said, “A lot of people are concerned about spraying.”
“Well, I think people are just not informed well on that subject,” Payne replied. “We use it once or twice in a 50-year cycle.”
“It ultimately flows somewhere, though?”
“No, it doesn’t. No, a lot of times this stuff doesn’t flow off the landscape. The product will adhere to the vegetation that it’s targeted for, and stay there.”
Nancy Webster, who lives up the coast in Rockaway Beach, Oregon, is worried those chemicals seep into her drinking water: “This affects the fish, the wildlife, and we are up against large corporations. To even counter it, we need science and legal help, and it’s really difficult for small communities.”
Today, the situation may be reaching a critical point, because the federal government wants to suspend a public review process, which logging companies say needlessly ties them up in court.
Glor asked Payne, “Should there be a public review process when logging takes place on public lands?”
“Well, we have professionals in place in our federal agencies that are managing these lands, and I think we need to let them do that work,” Payne said.
In other words, he wants groups like Oregon Wild to stay away.
Aerial herbicides are sprayed on recently clear-cut land to kill vegetation that would compete with trees. Photo: CBS NEWS
