The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views

Here’s a press release from WildEarth Guardians about an issue that has been discussed on this blog before.

Santa Fe, NM – A Federal District Court Judge in Arizona ruled on September 11 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service have shirked their responsibilities to ensure that Forest Service management activities are making progress towards recovery of the Mexican spotted owl, a species protected under the Endangered Species Act. WildEarth Guardians filed the case in March 12, 2013 over the agencies’ failure to ensure the recovery of the owl by collecting basic information, for more than 20 years, about the status of owl populations across the Southwest.

The ruling halts all “timber management actions” on six national forests in New Mexico and Arizona including all the national forests in New Mexico and the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. None of the 11 national forests in the two-state Southwestern Region have adequately monitored owl populations. The lawsuit originally targeted all 11 national forests in New Mexico and Arizona. However the five national forests in Arizona not subject to the injunction on logging completed new forest plans with new Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultations since the original filing of this lawsuit which led the judge to find that the lawsuit was moot on those forests.

“This decision is about agency accountability, to the public and to the recovery of the Mexican Spotted Owl,” explained John Horning, Executive Director of WildEarth Guardians. “With this decision, the agencies will finally be held accountable for ensuring that all forest management practices help, not hinder, owl recovery.”

As the decision explains, the Forest Service was required to implement a population monitoring protocol for Mexican Spotted Owl since at least 1996. It was expected that, within 10-15 years, management activities such as logging and prescribed burning that the agencies claimed would improve owl habitat, supported by monitoring that would show the species recovery, would enable its de-listing from the Endangered Species Act. Yet, as the decision states, “Over twenty years later, delisting has not occurred, and information about the current [Mexican spotted owl] population is still minimal.”

“The judge’s recent decision constitutes the clearest possible rebuke to this foot-dragging, and recognizes that the Forest Service’s failure to monitor Mexican spotted owl populations has enabled the agency to avoid accountability for its failed conservation efforts,” stated Horning. “Thankfully for these national forests and for the Mexican spotted owl, those days have now finally come to an end.”

The decision requires the agencies to initiate consultation pursuant to the ESA “addressing occupation monitoring of the MSO for recovery.” Because timber harvesting and other related activities may cause irreparable harm to the owl, the court has enjoined timber management actions, including timber harvesting, until consultation is complete. This is necessary, the Court recognized, because “It has been demonstrated over the past 20 years that the status quo will not lead to recovery of the listed species.”

“While the Forest Service finally steps up to its conservation obligations and assesses how its management programs affect the recovery of the Mexican spotted owl as a species, certain timber projects will be paused in light of the judge’s decision,” explained Steve Sugarman, the attorney representing WildEarth Guardians. “WildEarth Guardians has already opened up a dialogue with the Forest Service to assure that this pause will be orderly, and that it will not unnecessarily impede the implementation of projects that are truly necessary for the protection of life and property.”

Read the full article about Red Emerson – the billionaire owner of Sierra Pacific Industries – in Forbes. Here are some snips:

From humble beginnings traipsing through California’s vast forests with his dad to salvaging wood from forest fires, Red Emmerson has built a logging empire by being cheaper and more aggressive than his rivals….Nicknamed “Red” as a teen for his hair color, Emmerson is happy to reminisce about the many fires from which his Sierra Pacific Industries has profited….the feisty tycoon, who runs the business with his two sons, George, 61, and Mark, 58, makes more money from logging after forest fires than any person in America. When the government sells contracts to cut down trees after fires in national forests—a controversial practice known as post-fire salvage logging—Emmerson buys in at a steep discount, often paying one half to one fourth the price for traditional wood….Sierra Pacific has little competition, thanks to a 1990 law that prohibits bidding from any lumber companies that export logs. That eliminates rivals like publicly traded Weyerhaeuser and Rayonier as well as big Canadian firms.

While Emmerson’s resourcefulness has helped him climb into the top ranks of the world’s wealthiest, critics say these riches have come at the expense of the environment and taxpayers. More than 250 scientists signed a letter asking Congress to protect forests from post-fire logging, saying that it “can set back the forest renewal process for decades.” That’s because it strips the land of nutrients, preventing it from regenerating. Not only is the carbon stored in the charred tree trunks not reabsorbed by the soil—worse, it is released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gas.

“It’s a degraded landscape,” says Chad Hanson, a scientist who studies post-fire logging and whose nonprofit John Muir Project has won injunctions against four Sierra Pacific post-fire contracts. “Fire is not the thing that’s creating areas of devastation and wastelands. It’s logging, especially post-fire logging.”

Sierra Pacific rejects the scientists’ analysis, arguing that the process can speed up recovery. “It’s about extracting the value we can from a bad situation,” says a company spokesperson.

Regardless, logging in national forests is costly for taxpayers, says Hanson, who estimates they are on the hook for $1 billion a year, at least $500 million of which is directly related to post-fire salvage. That’s the amount the government pays to build roads to remote areas destroyed by fires and for herbicides the forest service sprays prior to logging to make clear-cutting easier, among other costs. Meanwhile, the federal government pulls in about $150 million annually from selling the timber in national forests, about one fourth of which comes from post-fire logging. “It’s a bad deal financially for taxpayers, but it’s a great deal for the mills,” says economist Ernie Niemi, who has studied the impact of forest management since the 1970s. “It’s very hard to justify any salvage logging. It’s like they’re bandits.”

P.S. Below are some images of what Sierra Pacific Industries’ own private lands look like in the area around Paradise, California.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

Washington, DC — A new National Park Service order allowing electric bicycles on park trails violates several federal laws, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which is threatening to sue any park that implements it. Significantly, the acting NPS Director, who issued the order, did not follow the instructions given by the Secretary of Interior.

On August 29, 2019 Interior Secretary David Bernhardt issued a Secretarial Order directing that all Interior Department agencies, including NPS, take steps allowing e-bikes “where other types of bicycles are allowed.” The specific instruction for NPS was to develop a proposed change in the federal regulation (36 CFR § 1.4) to “expressly exempt all e-bikes… from the definition of motor vehicles.” That proposed regulation is supposed to be promulgated pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires public notice and comment.

NPS did not do what Secretary Bernhardt ordered, however. Instead, on the next day, August 30th, acting NPS Director P. Daniel Smith issued a “Policy Memorandum” telling all park superintendents to now allow the use of e-bikes on trails where parks currently allow the use of bicycles. Smith’s memo creates several legal problems, including that Smith –

Cannot overturn a federal regulation by fiat, meaning that any park allowing e-bikes on trails where motorized vehicles are now prohibited would be vulnerable to a lawsuit;
Counseled park superintendents to evade legally required environmental reviews by declaring e-bike openings to be “minor changes” that are categorially exempt from further analysis regardless of actual impacts; and
Lacks authority to issue any such order because he occupies his position in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act which provides that any action by non-compliant officials, such as Smith, have no force or effect.
“Despite this botched attempt, no park may allow e-bikes on backcountry trails or areas outside of developed zones,” stated PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse, a former enforcement attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, noting that the Park Service did no analysis of the effects of allowing e-bikes on trails. “PEER is prepared to go to court to ensure that e-bikes stay off any park trail where they were previously not allowed.”

On top of its legal infirmities, Smith’s order contains some troublesome provisions, such as that riders may only use the electric motor if they are also pedaling; motors may not be more powerful than 1 horsepower; and e-bikes may go no faster than 20 mph. In addition, Smith directed national parks to incorporate state and local e-bike rules.

“This ill-advised order would force overworked park rangers to also serve as bicycle cops,” added Whitehouse, pointing to shrinking park ranger force levels even with record visitation. “Smith’s action only underlines the bankrupt state of today’s Park Service leadership.”

As if right on cue, today the LA Times published a lengthy and in-depth story (full of some pretty cool graphics) titled “Forest thinning projects won’t stop the worst wildfires. So why is California spending millions on them?”

The article features the perspectives of a number of folks and organizations who’ve either participated in this blog, or been highlighted on this blog many times, including Richard Halsey, director of the California Chaparral Institute, Dr. Jack Cohen, a retired Forest Service research scientist, who’s the world’s leading expert on home protection/ignitions and Los Padres ForestWatch. Below are some snips:

Chopping down trees and shrubs is “an easy approach because people think ‘Oh, the thing we can change is vegetation’ … and people want the problem to be fixed,” research scientist Alexandra Syphard said. “But unfortunately, it’s more complex than that.”

Syphard — who conducted one of the few scientific assessments of the effectiveness of fuel breaks in California — worries that the state’s focus on fuel reduction gives “people a false sense of security.”

“Time and time again in my research,” she said, “I find that fuel is one of the least important factors when it comes to protecting the home.”

To stem the escalating loss of life and property, Syphard and other experts argue the state needs to curb development in high fire-hazard zones, help homeowners ember-proof their houses and do a better job of enforcing defensible space regulations….

The state’s 10 most destructive wildfires on record have all been wind driven. They have destroyed a total of 39,440 structures and claimed 170 lives. Seven of the 10 have occurred since 2015, including the Tubbs fire in Northern California’s wine country, and the Thomas and Woolsey fires in Southern California….

“Why don’t you address the fires that are killing all the people?” said Richard Halsey, director of the nonprofit California Chaparral Institute and a fuel break critic. “Would you tell me how any of [the thinning projects] would have saved Coffey Park?”

The state, he says, is focusing on the wrong thing.

Use the money to retrofit houses with fire-resistant features, such as ember-proof vents, and “you would save more structures than any fuel treatments,” Halsey says….

In a research paper published in 2011, Syphard and her co-authors analyzed 30 years of data on fuel breaks and wildfires in Southern California’s four national forests.

Many of the fires never hit a fuel break. When they did, the percentage that stopped ranged from 22% on the San Barnardino forest to 47% on the Cleveland forest. In every instance that a break halted a fire’s progress, Syphard found it was because firefighters were on it.

“The only reason a fire ever stops at a fuel break, regardless of the weather conditions, is that a firefighter is there, using the fuel break to fight the fire,” said Syphard, who is affiliated with the Conversation Biology Institute and is chief scientist at Sage Underwriters, a homeowners insurance company….

Jack Cohen, a retired Forest Service research scientist who studied ignitions and wildfire spread, said he’s been asked to explain the “unusual pattern of destruction” in Paradise.

His response: “It’s not strange and unusual — it’s typical. Every investigation I’ve done comes up with that pattern.”

“We do fuel breaks because the premise is we’ve got a wildfire containment problem” when in fact, Cohen argues, we have a home ignition problem.

A new paper, just published by Dominick DellaSala and Chad Hanson, may be of interest to some on this blog. Check it out here. Pasted below are the abstract and the conclusions. -mk

ABSTRACT: High-severity fire creates patches of complex early seral forest (CESF) in mixed-severity fire complexes of the western USA. Some managers and researchers have expressed concerns that large high-severity patches are increasing and could adversely impact old forest extent or lead to type conversions. We used GIS databases for vegetation and fire severity to investigate trends in large (>400 ha) CESF patches in frequent-fire forests of the western USA, analyzing four equal time periods from 1984 to 2015. We detected a significant increase in the total area of large patches relative to the first time period only (1984–1991), but no significant upward trend since the early 1990s. There was no significant trend in the size of large CESF patches between 1984 and 2015. Fire rotation intervals for large CESF patches ranged from ~12 centuries to over 4000 years, depending on the region. Large CESF patches were highly heterogeneous, internally creating ample opportunities for fire-mediated biodiversity. Interior patch areas far removed from the nearest low/moderate-severity edges comprised a minor portion of high-severity patches but may be ecologically important in creating pockets of open forest. There was ample historical evidence of large CESF patches but no evidence of increases that might indicate a current risk of ecosystem-type shifts.

CONSLUSIONS: Our findings have specific management and policy relevance. In particular, we counter claims made by some researchers, and often used by decision-makers, to justify large-scale forest “thinning” and post-fire logging projects—specifically, the assumption that such logging projects are needed to prevent type conversion in response to a perceived increase in CESF patch sizes and conifer regeneration failures in “megafires” (see [6,18,20,22]). Lack of a biodiversity perspective has created underlying tensions among researchers over the role of high-severity fires in maintaining CESF, and we hope that our findings will now inform this ongoing discussion. Additionally, contrary to assumptions made by land managers in the course of proposing extensive post-fire logging and creation of artificial tree plantations following large fires, we found ample evidence of patch heterogeneity–and presumably natural conifer establishment–in large severely burned patches, in addition to the occurrence of large high-severity patches in the historical record. This finding has key relevance to current forest management policy, since the assertion that current large CESF patches are unprecedented is not substantiated by our data but is being used to justify legislative and regulatory proposals to severely weaken environmental laws on U.S. federal lands.

Notably, numerous studies have found high levels of native plant and animal richness and abundance in large fires of mixed severity that produce CESF patches in severely burned areas, see [3,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,70,74,75]. Such fires facilitate high levels of beta diversity at landscape scales, providing a broad suite of habitat for both fire-seeking and fire-avoiding species [25], including many early seral birds that have been declining due to a lack of “diverse early seral habitat” [76]. Thus, far from being indicative of “catastrophic” (or “megafire”) ecosystem shifts, large CESF patches have consistently been found to support a unique ecological community that is otherwise most often post-fire logged because of perceptions that this forest type has limited wildlife value, see [25,75]. Instead, we found that large CESF patches are extremely infrequent at landscape scales in ponderosa/Jeffrey-pine and mixed-conifer forests of the western U.S., and whether high-severity fire that produces this important seral stage is increasing in western USA forests remains debatable, e.g., [4,9,10,11,13,14,15,16,19,21,23].

Regarding the human implications of our findings, we recommend that land managers focus limited resources on community fire safety and defensible space of homes as a means of getting to coexistence with wildfire [77,78,79] and for managing wildfire under safe conditions for a myriad of ecosystem benefits.

NOTE: Previously on this blog we’ve discussed a report that timber harvesting is by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 10, 2019 9 am EDT

NEW REPORT: Logging is North Carolina’s Third Largest Carbon Emitter

New report outlines the impact that industrial logging has on our climate and the need for change if we are going to address the climate crisis; Governor Cooper can ensure his climate legacy by taking action and stopping further forest destruction

Asheville, NC – A new report from the Center for Sustainable Economy and Dogwood Alliance puts a spotlight on North Carolina, and shows just how big of a climate catastrophe logging is in the state. The report finds that industrial logging is the state’s third most carbon intensive sector, just after electricity and transportation and for the most part goes completely unaccounted for. For example, North Carolina’s recently released Greenhouse Gas Inventory fails to accurately account for a significant amount of emissions from logging, forest degradation, and the biomass industry.

Forests are a critical climate solution. They store enormous amounts of carbon in their trees and soils, and buffer communities from climate impacts like flooding and storms. With Hurricane season here and North Carolina already witnessing the flooding, property destruction, and loss of life from Hurricane Dorian, this is now more critical than ever. But they are being destroyed and degraded at an alarming rate — and even shipped overseas to be burned for electricity. The US South is ground zero for destructive industrial logging, and North Carolina is the largest wood pellet exporter in the country.

“Our latest research is conclusive proof that now more than ever, we need to be protecting forests, not cutting them down and burning them,” said Danna Smith, Executive Director of Dogwood Alliance. “Governor Cooper should see this as evidence that forest destruction in North Carolina is contributing to the climate emergency that must be addressed. If North Carolina can turn their serious logging problem around, it will send a huge signal to leaders across the region and around the world.”

In addition to finding that logging in the state is a climate catastrophe, the report shows that compared to natural forests, tree plantations are far inferior at mitigating climate change and storing carbon. The report authors also looked at the best path forward and propose adopting climate smart forestry practices that eliminate clearcutting and instead focus on protection, restoration and lighter impact logging. This research replicates findings from a report on the Oregon forest products industry by the Center for Sustainable Economy that found that the logging industry is the most carbon intensive sector in that state.

According to Dr. John Talberth, lead author of the report, “Contrary to the timber industry disinformation, conventional wood products are very carbon intensive. And just like fossil fuels, we need to dramatically reduce our consumption. But the good news is that climate smart forest practices – like long rotations and alternatives to clearcutting – can meet all of society’s demands for wood products while capturing and storing the equivalent of over twenty years of North Carolina’s greenhouse gas emissions. To make climate smart practices the norm and not the exception, lands owned by clearcutting corporations should be transferred back into the hands of skilled foresters who know how to log and leave a climate resilient forest behind.”

The report found that because of short rotation timber plantations for paper, pellets, and low-quality timber, 7.5% of North Carolina (2.6 million acres) is a carbon sequestration dead zone. When forests are clearcut, instead of removing CO2, they release it for up to 13 years and even when left standing, plantations store 50% less carbon than native forests. Essentially, natural forests catch and store carbon, and even in a best-case scenario, plantations catch and release it.

Key findings include:

• Logging in North Carolina releases 44 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, making it the state’s third most carbon intensive sector.

• North Carolina forestlands store far less carbon than the natural storage capacity of native forests, with plantations storing 50% less carbon than native forests.

• A focus on protection, restoration in places like wetlands and forests along rivers, and climate smart forestry that ends the most destructive practices have the potential to remove nearly 3 gigatons of CO2.

• 2.6 million acres of North Carolina’s forestland — or 7.5% of the state — are carbon sequestration dead zones because of short rotation tree plantations.

• 500,000 truckloads of timber are removed from North Carolina forests every year and clearcutting releases the CO2 equivalent of 582,900 tanker trucks of oil each year.

“The world has been watching North Carolina. Last year, Governor Cooper pledged to make the state a climate leader, and recently made headlines with the release of the state’s Clean Energy Plan,” continued Smith. “The Governor can be a national leader on forests and climate, setting an example for the entire country. But instead forest destruction is on the rise as his administration continues to greenlight the rapid expansion of Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet producer.”

Download and read the full report here.