Public Lands Litigation – update through February 2, 2024

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FEATURED CASE

Court decision in North Cascades Conservation Council v. U. S. Forest Service (E.D. Washington)

On January 17, the district court granted summary judgment to the Forest Service with regard to the Twisp Restoration Project on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.  The proposed project stated that most of the thinning and prescribed fire treatments would use a “condition-based management strategy.”  The court held that the project complied with NEPA requirements related to the proposed action, alternatives, cumulative impacts, public participation and the significance of effects.  The latter two issues implicated the issue of condition-based management, where the court held:

“At the heart of Plaintiff’s challenge is the Forest Service’s use of condition-based management. Plaintiff has not shown that this approach violates NEPA as a matter of law. Here, the Final EA disclosed detailed decision criteria that will be applied during the TRP implementation to ensure the actual conditions on the ground meet the expected conditions disclosed in the Final EA. If they do, the approved treatment will be applied. If they do not, the treatment will not be applied.

 In this case, the Final EA’s description of condition-based management details the decision criteria for each approved activity, specific prescriptions that will be applied if those decision criteria are met, maps identifying where those prescriptions would be applied, and estimates of the timing of implementation.

The Court finds that the use of condition-based management is not arbitrary or capricious as a matter of law and as applied in this case.”

The highlighted language is why I think “this case” may represent a different kind of “condition-based” management than other project we have seen, some of which have lost in court.  This statement means the action will not be changed from how it has been described (other than possibly reducing the scope of the action and its effects), and it limits the likelihood that unanticipated environmental effects may occur (if they do become evident later, the project would still be subject to NEPA’s new information requirements).  Overall, the specificity of the decision seems to be in greater detail than other projects labeled “condition-based,” and in this regard is more similar to the Ashland Municipal Watershed case upheld by a court and discussed in my comments here (though the project area of 24,000 acres is larger). While the Twisp Project court carefully recognizes that such management is legal “as applied in this case,” this implicitly recognizes that it might not be if done with less specificity or without the limit that was imposed.

OTHER FOREST SERVICE CASES

Court decision in Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Higgins (D. Idaho)

On January 10, the district court held that plaintiffs had waived their right to sue for a violation of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act by failing to object to the intended use of a categorical exclusion for WUI projects during their participation in administrative proceedings.  Qualifying projects are exempt from formal objections; however, there was an opportunity for plaintiffs to notify the agency during scoping of its disagreement about HFRA compliance, which they did not do in their “more than 100 pages” of scoping comments.

New lawsuit:  Chattooga Conservancy v. U. S. Forest Service (W.D. North Carolina)

On January 31, five conservation groups sued the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest over its Southside logging project.  The project was developed under a forest plan that has been recently revised, and the complaint alleges that the project is not consistent with the revised plan.  The revised plan places the 15-acre timber stand at issue in a Special Interest Management Area based on its high ecological values, and also protects the scenic integrity of lands adjacent to the Whitewater Scenic River where the stand is located.  The complaint alleges that the logging contested in the lawsuit, that intends to create “early successional habitat,” does not meet the specific criteria established in the forest plan.  (The article includes a link to the complaint.)

BLM CASE

Withdrawal of the subject of Willamette Riverkeeper v. Teitzel (D. Oregon)

On December 14, the BLM announced the withdrawal of this project following litigation commenced in November “in order to incorporate additional aquatics data and analysis,” likely including the effects on the chinook salmon of concern to plaintiffs.  Plaintiffs then dismissed the lawsuit.

FIRE FALLOUT

Freres Lumber Co. has sued the Forest Service for $33 million for not trying hard enough to put out the 2020 Beachie Creek Fire.  The plaintiff alleges that this case clears the high bar for liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act because of the Willamette National Forest’s “negligent failure to follow its own mandated fire attack plan.”  It burned over 5000 acres of the company’s timberlands.

On January 21, “yet another utility lawsuit” was filed over the 2020 fires in Oregon.  Law firms representing 238 victims who lost homes and property in the Holiday Farm fire sued the Eugene Water and Electric Board, Lane Electric, and Bonneville Power Administration in federal court for their roles in the  fire, which burned both national forest and BLM lands east of Eugene.

A California man has pleaded guilty to setting several fires on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in 2021, including some behind firefighters who were actively fighting the Dixie Fire.  (The article includes a link to the plea agreement.)

An Alaska charter fishing company has paid $900,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. government alleging one of its guides started a wildfire in 2019 by failing to properly extinguish a campfire at a campground on the Klutina River. The funds will help cover the costs incurred by state and federal firefighters to extinguish the fire, which burned about 0.28 square miles.

FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

  • Wolverine listing

Notice of Intent to Sue

On January 26, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service within 60 days if it does not overturn its November decision to list wolverines as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.  The complaint alleges the agency did not use the best available science.  This listing decision followed previous litigation for not listing the species (last discussed here).  Idaho’s Office of Species Conservation filed a similar notice on the same day.  (The articles have links to the notices.)

On February 2, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would reiterate the decision by Congress to delist the gray wolf in the northern Rocky Mountains.  The FWS rejected arguments that hunting initiated by the states where it had been delisted constituted a threat that warranted relisting the species.  At the same time, the FWS announced that it will undertake a process to develop a first-ever nationwide gray wolf recovery plan by December 12, 2025.  A FWS appeal of a district court decision that relisted wolves outside of the Northern Rockies is pending.  The article includes a link to the press release covering these actions.

OTHER CASES OF INTEREST

  • Chevron deference and the 1872 Mining Law

On January 17, the Supreme Court heard two cases against the National Marine Fisheries Service rules pertaining to monitoring on fishing boats, but which could make it harder for all federal agencies to regulate.  The “Chevron Doctrine” is the result of a 1984 case supported by conservatives at that time as a curb on “unelected liberal judges” overruling federal agencies.  It required courts to defer to interpretations of statutes by federal agencies if the statute is ambiguous and the agency interpretation is reasonable.  Now it appears this conservative court would rather make the interpretations itself instead of “unelected federal bureaucrats” who are more responsive to a liberal administration (which was elected).  Here is a short overview of the statements made by the Supreme Court at the hearing.

How might that affect federal land management?  As an initial point, an agency’s interpretation of its own regulations is governed by another court case (Auer) that would not necessarily be affected.  A forest plan’s compliance with the 2012 Planning Rule should be governed by that.  On the other hand, the Planning Rule itself could be reviewed under whatever standard the Supreme Court comes up with to modify or replace Chevron.  There is a question in my mind of whether regulations like this that govern agency actions like planning, rather than directly affecting the public, would be viewed the same way.

As a real example, on January 16, the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals conducted a hearing in Earthworks v. U. S. D. I., a case filed in 2009.  It concerns a 2003 regulation implementing the 1872 Mining Law that allows mining companies to claim an unlimited amount of federal land around a mining site for mining-related activities like chemical processing and waste dumping.  If there is any ambiguity in the statute, the court would have to defer to the Interior Department’s decision, as per the Chevron doctrine.  The issue then becomes whether the statute is ambiguous, and the courts get to decide that (even though the judges know less about the subject matter than the agency expert).  Here’s what the law says:

“Where nonmineral land is needed by the proprietor of a placer claim for mining, milling, processing, beneficiation, or other operations in connection with such claim, and is used or occupied by the proprietor for such purposes, such land may be included in an application for a patent for such claim, and may be patented therewith subject to the same requirements as to survey and notice as are applicable to placers. No location made of such nonmineral land shall exceed five acres and payment for the same shall be made at the rate applicable to placer claims which do not include a vein or lode.”  (30 U.S.C. 42(b))

At the hearing, the parties offered their interpretations of whether this language is ambiguous, and whether it limits nonmineral land inclusion in a claim to five acres, and therefore whether or not BLM’s current regulation imposing no limits is valid.

On January 26, Puckett Land Co. filed a motion to dismiss (and the court granted it) its diligence application for conditional water rights to avoid abandoning water rights that date to 1966.  The conditional rights were associated with the planned construction of a 23,983-acre-foot reservoir on BLM land within the boundaries of an area (Thompson Divide) that the Forest Service and BLM are proposing to withdraw from eligibility for new oil and gas leases.  The reservoir would have been used for shale-oil production in that area.  (The federal agencies had not filed a statement of opposition to the water right.)

POST-LITIGATION FOLLOW-UPS

Two national forest travel management plans were recently completed that respond to prior litigation.

In 2007, a lawsuit resulted in a court order that barred motorized over-snow vehicles from the entirety of the caribou’s recovery zone on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, cutting off access to about 250,000 acres (most recently addressed here).  The Kaniksu Over-Snow Vehicle Use Designation Project won’t go into effect until the Forest Service publishes a final map, which is expected before next winter.  It reopens some areas to snowmobile use, and closes areas earlier in the spring to protect grizzly bears.  On the horizon?  A spokesman for WildEarth Guardians said, “We’re still evaluating the decision and considering our options while trying to balance out a lot of litigation priorities.  Sadly, there are a lot of bad decisions out there. This is one of them, and we’re taking a close look.”

The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest has prepared a Draft Record of Decision and Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Clearwater National Forest Travel Planning Project to comply with the District of Idaho’s December 2022 remand order and prohibition of motorized use of the Fish Lake Trail (most recently discussed here).  It would again amend the forest plan and reinstate summer motorized use on the Fish Lake Trail.

A proposed resource management plan from the BLM in Arizona would limit recreational shooting to 5,295 acres of the 486,400-acre Sonoran Desert National Monument. Currently, target shooting is permitted on 435,700 acres.  The plan is the result of a series of lawsuits and an April 2022 court settlement that required the BLM to reassess how it handled recreational target shooting on the monument (most recently discussed here).

Energy News II: LNG Exports and Met Co-location of Renewables Idea

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LNG Exports

I guess the big news is the Admin’s LNG export infrastructure pause. I think the Admin’s reasoning was climate-related, or at least related to desires of certain climate activist types.  The Admin claimed that the analysis was out of date. Which I think is true, since there has been a war in Ukraine and hopeful a general reduction in Russian LNG exports to them.  Except that those need to be replaced by someone or something.  In the absence of our contribution, would that mean that worldwide supply would go down, which means Russia could make more money.. and our European allies trust us less.  This is all pretty obvious, but what I hadn’t heard in most of the coverage was that if exports are cut off, then it’s a boon to our own domestic gas prices (so will we use more?), and a boon to chemical industries who will make more profits (and produce more? with environmental implications?).  Thanks to Doomberg for that additional information.  Who knows? This seems to me like silly season fire hose flailing to get support from certain quarters (the Bill McKibben/John Podesta/random activists nexus), seemingly more of a political symbolic gesture than actually reducing emissions.  And yet.. wars use a great deal of carbon, so wouldn’t we want to starve Russia of profits?

I guess there are two questions in my mind: 1) will restricting exports have any net impacts on carbon emissions?  2) will restricting exports actually cause more carbon to be emitted due to the actions of other countries? (e.g. continuing to fund war, firing up coal plants)?

The industry association Eurogas was quick to condemn the move:

“Europe is committed to phase out its dependency on Russian gas in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has tied this shift to its 2050 climate goals. In achieving both, imports of US LNG have increased by both volume and importance, and have helped to stabilise gas and electricity prices for European consumers. However, current volumes of LNG coming from the US still leave a supply gap, for which we must continue to increase imports, rather than scale them back, as has been put forward by some interests in the US’ governing institutions.

If additional US LNG export capacities don’t materialise it would risk increasing and prolonging the global supply imbalance. This would inevitably prolong the period of price volatility in Europe and could lead to price increases with the consequent implications that would have for economic turmoil and social impact.”

Now if Europe has economic and social turmoil, it’s possible that they might elect folks who don’t care about energy transitions that much and reduce efforts.. so there’s another potential impact.

So glad, I’m not involved in any EIS’s for these…it’s not clear to me what’s “reasonably foreseeable”.

Musician Has Federal Lands Co-Location Idea

Interesting idea of musician Met: Co-locating O&G and renewables on federal land. 

The idea began a little over two years ago with researchers at Planet Reimagined, a climate-focused nonprofit co-founded by Met. He said they mapped the federally leased oil-and-gas land and then worked with someone from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to determine the photovoltaic potential and the annual wind speeds on those leases. “There’s so much opportunity,” Met said.

New renewable generation can be built more quickly and cheaply on these sites, Met said. For instance, wind and solar applications could reuse the environmental site data collected for the original oil-and-gas project’s approval, cutting years off the environmental assessment process, he said. Sites often already have infrastructure including roads and power grid connections, reducing building costs and time.

Co-locating also avoids adding to the competition for land between conservation, agriculture, renewables, industry and other uses. It can also help transition the business of small, mom-and-pop oil-and-gas producers, their communities and their workers. Independent operators with a median of 12 employees produced 83% of U.S. oil and 90% of its gas in 2019, according to the latest data available from the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Now I don’t remember seeing electric lines to O&G rigs and production equipment out on federal land, which seems like it could be a problem.  So I asked a person online who is familiar with the industry (and if TSW readers know more, please help out.)

The great majority of Federal O&G leases are in remote areas and most are probably are not connected to the grid. The drilling rigs have their own electric generation equipment, which moves on with the rig after the well is drilled. Most production equipment do not require electric service. However some centralized facilities serve multiple wellsites, and those sites generally source their electrical need from small onsite generators, or if they happen to be near a municipal infrastructure, they will connect to local utility lines. In many cases, production equipment can operate on a small amount of electricity produced by a small solar panel with battery backup. The point being, not much electricity is required for the average operating site.

It seems like it might be a good idea, but we run into the need for those pesky and expensive transmission lines again.  Perhaps building them along existing roads would not be so bad.  Anyway, it’s a novel and interesting  idea from an unusual source.

Energy News I: Western Solar Plan Public Meetings: First Virtual Session Tomorrow February 5, 2024

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Once again, I’m grateful for reporting by Sammy Roth of the LA Times.  Interesting that for this particular piece, he’s a columnist not a reporter.  I hope you can read the whole thing.  It’s interesting that Sammy says “the western solar plan sounds scary. But it’s better than climate change.” In my view, there are a variety of other decarbonization options.  Are renewables the only answer? No. Are renewables on federal lands the only way to get renewables? No. Could anthropogenic climate change occur even if the US were net-zero? Yes.

Members of the public can still weigh in. Before finalizing the Western Solar Plan, the Bureau of Land Management will host eight public meetings to gather input, including two Zoom meetings, the first of them this Monday at 10 a.m. PT.

Federal officials are also finalizing a regulation that would dramatically reduce the fees paid by renewable energy companies with projects on public lands. Another regulation nearing completion would put ecosystem protection on an equal footing with energy development — one more effort to strike the right balance between clean power and conservation on federal lands.

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The Biden administration released its long-awaited Western Solar Plan last month, laying out a vision for where sprawling solar farms should be allowed — and where they should be blocked — across 11 Western states, including California. The plan covers 162 million acres overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and tentatively concludes that companies should be able to propose solar projects across 22 million acres — an area roughly the size of Maine.

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Note: that’s only solar, not solar plus wind.

Weiner also described the federal government’s maps as “grainy,” saying they offer “more of a 30,000-foot view than a ground-level view” of which public lands are suitable for solar. It will be up to developers to study specific sites themselves.

Federal officials “don’t have the resources to do that level of planning,” Weiner told me.

I was intrigued to hear a similar observation from one of the most vocal critics of solar on Western public lands.

That would be Patrick Donnelly, who lives near Death Valley National Park and is Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group. He told me his biggest problem with Biden’s plan is that it’s a “desktop exercise” that uses “a pretty arbitrary set of criteria” to determine which lands should be closed off to solar. Federal officials, he said, failed to take advantage of “on-the-ground knowledge” to more precisely map out appropriate development zones and protected areas.

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The federal government’s criteria for deciding which areas should be off limits to solar — including endangered species habitat, popular hiking spots and places sacred to Indigenous tribes — “didn’t flag areas that should be obvious,” Donnelly said.

As I talked with Donnelly, Weiner and others, I kept thinking back to something that Tracy Stone-Manning, the Bureau of Land Management’s director, told me when I interviewed her at an environmental journalism conference in April.

To speed up solar and wind development on public lands, she said, her agency needs a lot more money from Congress to hire additional staff members, who can more thoroughly map out the best spots and conduct environmental analyses.

“The biggest problem is having enough people to do the work,” Stone-Manning said.

At the time, that sounded to me like a bit of an excuse. Now I find myself nodding along.

As long as Republicans retain at least partial control of Congress — they currently run the House — more money for clean energy isn’t likely. It almost certainly won’t happen if Donald Trump returns to the White House. Elections have consequences.

What I thought was interesting about this is the idea that more staff can “thoroughly map out the best spots”.  If that were the case, then, wouldn’t it be letting leases and companies bidding on them rather than developers picking sites? I’m not sure how that currently works.  It could be like an oil and gas leasing decision, then someone leases it, then an APD-equivalent kind of analysis for the specific site.  But then that might be three levels of NEPA, this programmatic, a “leasing decision-like” level and an “APD-like” level.

I also wonder about what Stone-Manning says about “enough people”.. if the FS can have contractors do NEPA work funded by proponents (with ultimate authority and review by Feds) why not the BLM?  Maybe someone understands these legal underpinnings.

Also it almost sounds like Sammy is saying “vote for R’s if you want pristine federal landscapes..”

The Bureau of Land Management estimates that over the next 20 years, solar projects will be built across nearly 1 million acres under its jurisdiction in the West — the 700,000 acres I mentioned above, plus an additional 280,000 already open to solar developers in the California desert under an Obama-era federal plan. That’s three times as many acres as the agency estimates will need to be dedicated to solar on all other lands, public or private, in the 11 Western states included in the new plan.

Does that make sense? Should public lands be responsible for hosting three-quarters of the West’s solar farms?

As a lover of those gorgeous landscapes — some of my most cherished memories include backpacking Wyoming’s Teton Crest Trail and camping in Death Valley — my gut reaction is, “No.” Even the federal officials behind the Western Solar Plan seemed to agree, writing that the amount of public land they assumed would be needed for solar was “likely an overestimate.”

For some conservationists, those questionable numbers are one of several reasons the idea of opening 22 million acres of public lands to possible solar development “doesn’t really pass the laugh test,” in the words of Matt Kirby, senior director of energy and landscape conservation at the National Parks Conservation Assn., an advocacy group.

“Why open up all that land and let industry choose?” he asked.

Kirby would prefer to see the Biden administration ditch its current “preferred alternative” — the one with the 22 million acres — and instead select Alternative 5, which would limit solar applications to 8 million acres of previously disturbed lands.

“We’re now in a situation that essentially puts industry in the driver’s seat,” Kirby said.

Members of the public can still weigh in. Before finalizing the Western Solar Plan, the Bureau of Land Management will host eight public meetings to gather nput, including two Zoom meetings, the first of them this Monday at 10 a.m. PT.

I also thought that it was interesting that John Podesta is the “senior advisor to the President for clean energy innovation and implementation.”  It seems like more and more, effort which have a substantial technical component are led by people with no technical background.  This seems to me as if it could be a problem, since there are many pathways to decarbonization, and choosing among them would tend to have a technical element.  I’d be for an open discussion and analysis of all alternatives, including costs, social and environmental impacts, technical feasibility, availability of needed material, national security and domestic job implications, and including the fact that different technological horses in the race will have unknown success (uncertainties and scenarios).  It’s kind of funny that none of this is done, and yet all the analysis is done by someone at a BLM Field Office on a particular piece of ground.

For the record, I don’t think it’s pay-offs to CAP by solar and wind purveyors.. or that nuclear hasn’t paid enough into D coffers.  I think some super-important people have “all renewables” as an ideological bent, no matter what the outcome and to whom.  And I think that the lack of rationality makes people suspicious, which makes them suspicious of “the climate change issue.”

Anyway, back to Sammy.

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I wrote in the fall about “Uncommon Dialogue,” a Stanford University initiative that produced a first-of-its-kind agreement in which a dozen prominent developers and environmental groups pledged to work together to limit ecosystem damage from solar farms. Their dialogue continues, with six working groups crafting development guidelines and policy recommendations.

One of their goals is to come up with incentive programs that encourage companies to build fewer solar farms on pristine public lands and more on already disturbed areas such as Superfund sites, landfills, former mines and water reservoirs — places where it’s typically more expensive to build. The “Uncommon Dialogue” partners also hope to promote solar development on farmland, which helps save water in drought-stressed regions but can provoke opposition from neighboring farmers.

Dan Reicher, the Stanford University researcher and former Clinton administration official who launched and leads the initiative, told me he expects most solar projects in the United States to be built on private lands, rather than public lands.

“The vast proportion is going to be on private agricultural lands,” he predicted.

President Biden’s solar plan forecasts a different outcome, at least for the American West.

A Three Sisters Wilderness Trailhead Presence: As Summers Went By

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With apologies to Les and to readers, Les had sent me a series and I got them out of order.  He recently sent me the correct order, so here goes…-Sharon

By Les Joslin

I often reflect on the variety of people and predicaments experienced during my Green Lakes Trailhead summer duties. A few anecdotes make one believe just about anything could happen there. That, of course, meant volunteer information specialists and I had to be ready for just about anything.

A Couple Wilderness Old-Timers

On July 7, 1995, Forbes W. “Buck” Rogers of Spokane, Washington, and John Barton of Bend, Oregon, visited the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station. Mr. Barton had been the Sparks Lake recreation guard in the summer of 1964 and Mr. Barton the first Bend Ranger District wilderness guard in the summer of 1965. I enjoyed their stories of those days, particularly when Buck told me part of his job in 1964 was to bury the garbage visitors left behind in the Green Lakes basin—before the Wilderness Act of 1964 had been signed that September, and John told me part of his job in 1965 was to dig it up and pack it out. In those days, they told me, the parking area and trailhead were across Fall Creek from their current location, and both had stayed in the old Fall Creek Guard Station cabin just a few hundred yards north of the current trailhead. We ambled up that way, poked around in the pumice, and actually found a small piece of green-painted wood from the structure.

A Shooting Incident

On July 29, 1995, I heard gunshots to the west of the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station. Within a couple of minutes, visitors drove in and reported a man indiscriminately shooting at the Devil’s Garden not far west of my location.  I reported the incident to Central Oregon Dispatch, and within fifteen minutes a Forest Service law enforcement officer arrived, arrested the person at gunpoint, and took him to the Deschutes County Jail.

A Fire on Devils Hill

My daughter Wendy, who served 17 days as a volunteer wilderness information specialist in 1996, was staffing the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station on July 26 when a violent lightning storm ignited a fire on Devils Hill just over a mile to the northwest. In response to her report of the smoke to Central Oregon Dispatch, she watched eight smokejumpers jump the fire about 30 minutes later. I often wonder if this experience influenced her toward studying forestry at Oregon State University.

A Los Angeles Times Writer

On August 23, 1996, John McKinney, Los Angeles Times hiking columnist, visited the Green Lakes Trailhead Information Station. He was researching his book Great Walks of North America: The Pacific Northwest, published by Henry Holt and Company in 1997, for which I provided him information and photographs and in which he profiles my wilderness service and my wilderness education project. “When hikers meet a helpful wilderness ranger, it adds to their experience and makes their trek all the more special,” he quoted me.

A Controversial Fee Program

In 1997 it fell to me to help implement the Pacific Northwest Region’s controversial Trail Park Pass program mandated by the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act of 1996. By that act Congress permitted—and, for all practical purposes, required—federal land management agencies to charge fees to cover recreation facility operation expenses previously covered by appropriated funds. In the Pacific Northwest Region of the National Forest System, wilderness visitors in “participating national forests” paid a parking fee at wilderness trailheads.

Public protests resulted and cost my project some good trailhead volunteers. I couldn’t blame them for not wanting to be targets of the more vitriolic protesters. Others stuck, helped explain that Congress had required the Forest Service to charge user fees in lieu of reduced appropriated funds to maintain recreation facilities including wilderness trails, and we sold $6,337 worth of the passes at the station that summer. Those receipts increased to $7,975 in 1998 but decreased to less than a third of that sum in 1999 as more visitors purchased annual passes prior to visiting and day passes became available at self-service pay stations. Although the public increasingly accepted the fees, protests continued as the system evolved pursuant to subsequent acts and programs.

 

FIA is National Treasure; Eastern Forests are Thriving in Current Climate

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Story worth reading by journalist Gabe Popkin, including a journalistic shout-out to FIA:

To my mind, the FIA is a national treasure, like the James Webb Space Telescope. There’s probably no comparable public dataset in the world, yet unlike the James Webb, most people have never heard of it.

It’s long been known both from FIA and other data that eastern U.S. forests are soaking up carbon dioxide as they rebound from a near-total deforestation that started in the early 1600s and ended only in the early 1900s. One shocking photo I came across recently shows what is now the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.

A view of Fort Bunker Hill and a military camp in what is now Washington, D.C.’s Brookland neighborhood. See here for more details. Source: Library of Congress

Sidenote: I’ve been reading a memoir by an Alexandria native who describes the Union Army cutting their woodlands for firewood and structures, so I imagine that’s part of what happened to this area as were farm fields.

This desolate scene is hard to square with the lush, green city D.C. is today, especially in outlying neighborhoods like Brookland. Yet around the time of the Civil War, large swaths of the District were apparently nearly as treeless as a western desert — as, indeed, was much of the eastern half of the country.

The scientists found, unsurprisingly, that American forests have bulked up as they rebound from the deforestation that created scenes like the one captured in the photo. While this regrowth will eventually taper off as forests mature, so far it seems to be going strong.

More remarkably, the researchers also found that regrowth alone cannot explain the blistering pace at which our trees are putting on wood. By examining forest growth rates while controlling for age-related differences, the scientists determined that something else is supercharging growth.

And while the study did not directly answer what that something is, the authors highlighted one likely explanation: Trees are gobbling up some of the excess carbon dioxide we’re putting into the atmosphere. Essentially, by burning fossil fuels in our cars, buildings and factories, we are fertilizing nature. And nature is responding.

Many studies have speculated about carbon fertilization using computer models, experiments and theory. It’s clear that all things being equal, plant leaves respond to higher carbon dioxide levels by ramping up photosynthesis (the biochemical process plants use to turn carbon dioxide into sugars), which could cause plants to grow faster and ultimately store more carbon.

But in nature, many things can affect how fast trees grow. Experiments have pumped high levels of carbon dioxide into young forests and found that trees initially grew faster than in unfertilized control plots but eventually leveled off, presumably as nutrient limitations or other factors throttled trees’ growth rates.

The new study is among the first to provide clear evidence that real-world forests over a vast landscape are indeed able to use the extra CO2 to bulk up. And our trees are feasting on carbon dioxide, those in other places with moderate temperatures and ample moisture, such as northern Europe and eastern Asia, likely are too.

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Now, “carbon fertilization” might sound like a wonky scientific abstraction. But for the 180 million of us who live in this part of the world, it has had real, measurable benefits. The trees in our neighborhoods and parks, and even our own yards, have grown faster than they otherwise would have. That means more shade, more storm protection, more wildlife habitat — and, not least of all, more wood. We have all benefited, in multiple ways.

Now, on to the western US:

In the western U.S., unfortunately, the data tell a different story. Forests there are growing less and less robustly, as heat and drought limit trees’ ability to benefit from high CO2 levels. (Interestingly, the Forest Service has reported this for years based on FIA data, but I suspect their reports rarely get read.)

The plight of western forests has gotten plenty of coverage, so I won’t dwell on it here except to note that the fact that some forests are benefiting from high CO2 levels does not mean we can simply assume that all forests will — and certainly does not suggest we don’t need to worry about climate change.

I asked Lichstein and his colleague Aaron Hogan what implications their research has for natural climate solutions — the idea that natural ecosystems like forests can soak up some of the carbon dioxide we humans emit by burning fossil fuels. Their answer, perhaps surprisingly, was not much. In fact, they said that at the global scale, the strength of the carbon fertilization effect is probably exaggerated in most of the computer models scientists use to forecast climate trends.

In other words, as future warming stresses forests, they will probably absorb a smaller and smaller fraction of our total carbon dioxide emissions. Right now that fraction is one quarter, so the strength of the carbon sink diminishes, we could be in real trouble.

This aligns with my view, based on years of reporting on forest science, that at a broad scale, forests and other ecosystems are probably already doing about as much as we can hope for to slow climate change. The idea that we’re going to jam tons of additional carbon into trees or soil strikes me as more aspirational than realistic.

It seems to me that there are three things going on here (which may be investigated somewhere, hopefully commenters will point this out).  1. Western forests are very different from each other, and some (like the Black Hills) are supposed to be getting wetter based on climate models. 2. Fire suppression allowed many more trees (increased density over time)  in some spots, so competition for water would cause them to grow more slowly. 3. After cutting trees for railroads, firewood, and lumber in various places, at various times from in the 1800s and 1900’s trees are growing back and age might be an important reason that growth slows down.  I don’t know how well the study adjusted for those factors.

It’s also worth noting that most of these fast-growing forests are not in parks or preserves, but on private land. That means they can legally be cut down, but it also means that millions of people have a stake in them. The public ownership that’s more common in the West — and that’s often assumed to be more protective — can also be more neglectful, especially when governments don’t have the resources to properly care for vast tracts they’ve been tasked to manage.

While private ownership is not a panacea either, when a lot of people live among forests, there are a lot of people with reasons to keep an eye on them and care for them. Technologically speaking, we could easily cut down every tree in the eastern U.S. — as far fewer, less technologically advanced people once did. Yet instead, we’ve allowed them to grow at the same time that our own population has grown.

This pushes strongly against what I would describe against the prevailing narrative that people are simply bad for trees. This kind of simplification has even been embraced by the august New Yorker, a publication I would expect to do better.

It’s time to ditch simplistic morality tales for a more nuanced and reality-based view of the relationship between trees and humans. After all, we need trees to thrive in places where people actually live. I’ve argued previously that the densely populated Mid-Atlantic could be a climate refuge, in part because our cities and towns are embedded within what, so far at least, appear to be remarkably climate-resilient forests. The new study suggests the same might be said about much of the eastern U.S.

From The Hotshot Wakeup: The Story of the Beachie Creek Fire and Team Prescribed Fire Tabletop

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OK, I get it.. permitting reform is not everyone’s favorite topic.  So I thought I’d highlight some interesting stuff on Wildfire, before I get back to permitting.

The Hotshot Wakeup Person had a couple of interesting items on Substack.  If you’re interested in this stuff, please consider subscribing to The Hotshot Wakeup Substack. I always learn something from his posts and often I find myself laughing out loud as well.

The Story of The Beachie Creek Fire: Put It Out, Or Let It Burn? Both Have Consequences.

I know some TSW readers are very interested in Oregon fires.  I  like how Tim explains to us non-Fire folks some of how pre-planning is done and MIST techniques and what I like best of all is that he can see both sides.  I do think we get better reporting from people who can understand different points of view. Anyway, I recommend it.  The PG&E part is a little depressing, especially since, as I’ve pointed out before, the Princeton study say to meet net zero by 2050:

“The current power grid took 150 years to build. Now, to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, we have to build that amount of transmission again in the next 15 years and then build that much more again in the 15 years after that. It’s a huge amount of change,” said Jenkins.

And PG&E can’t afford to bury the lines they have..  oh, well.

Here’s his summary of the podcast contents.

  • The story of the Beachie Creek Fire in Oregon.
  • Multiple lawsuits on how the fire was handled by the Forest and $1B demanded from the power company.
    The Beachie Creek Fire
  • MIST tactics V.S. full suppression. Safety V.S. engaging. What’s the cost in the end?
  • PG&E come to a settlement on the Dixie Fire trial.
  • Did PG&E just pay itself as a result? Where does the money actually go?

I’ve never heard anyone report on this PG&E stuff before..

Team Prescribed Fire Tabletop Exercise

A lot of Region 5 folks were involved in the large-scale Team Prescribed Fire out on the Stanislaus National Forest last year, as California’s weather allowed for it. It was a live-action “sand table” that a lot of people in the D.C. office were watching. A full ICP was brought in, caterers, loads of crews, and drones.

A lot of kinks were worked out during this operation. It was new to a lot of those involved, and things like overtime limits, R&R issues, people on crews timing out before others, and more arose. It wasn’t expected to go off without a hitch, and plenty was learned from this operation. Now they can implement those lessons learned going forward.

Just last week, the Forest Service put out their Strategy to Expand Prescribed Fire Training in the West. This new report lines out what federal firefighters, contractors, NGOs, tribes, and tech folks can expect as policy and money flow into prescribed fire across the nation.

The announcement, made by Alex Robertson, Director of Fire and Aviation Management, looks to expand the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center into the Western United States.

The National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center is currently operating out of Florida; however, this new policy and working group aims to expand its operation and reach into the western United States.

The three key elements for building out PFTC-West include:

  • increasing staffing
  • establishing focus groups to explore new curriculum and prescribed fire modules, including unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)
  • expanding the PFTC Steering Committee.

The current committee is comprised of national leadership from the USDA Forest Service, DOI agencies, TNC, the Florida Forest Service’s State representative for the National Association of State Foresters, and a Tall Timbers Research Station representative. The committee is looking to add representatives from the western states into the mix.

While there are many stated goals, one is to increase training and qualifications for prescribed fire across the West and bring in operators from the private, state, and local sectors.

They are also looking to create a new “drone division” in this expansion, bringing on new tech, pilots, and operators.

The National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center is currently operating out of Florida; however, this new policy and working group aims to expand its operation and reach into the western United States.

The three key elements for building out PFTC-West include:

  • increasing staffing
  • establishing focus groups to explore new curriculum and prescribed fire modules, including unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)
  • expanding the PFTC Steering Committee.

The current committee is comprised of national leadership from the USDA Forest Service, DOI agencies, TNC, the Florida Forest Service’s State representative for the National Association of State Foresters, and a Tall Timbers Research Station representative. The committee is looking to add representatives from the western states into the mix.

While there are many stated goals, one is to increase training and qualifications for prescribed fire across the West and bring in operators from the private, state, and local sectors.

They are also looking to create a new “drone division” in this expansion, bringing on new tech, pilots, and operators.

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So what does this all mean for the future?

It means lots of new positions, career paths, large-scale Team ignitions, completely new divisions for UA S platforms, pilots, and operators, and hopefully, plenty of good quality acres burned across the American West.

What Do We Think? BPC Goldilocks Report on Permitting Reform: 1. Public Engagement

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Reminder: why we are interested in “permitting reform”? 1. BLM and FS authorize energy projects, 2. think tanks involved have really smart people and more political clout than traditional forest groups, but 3) my experience with Coastal think tanks is that may not be talking to NEPA practitioners. So they have fun and novel ideas that may actually get implemented, and maybe we can contribute by some ground-truthing.

As I’ve pointed out (yes, I know, tediously) before, there seems to be a thread of “if only agency practitioners did their jobs better” that I first noticed at CEQ.

CEQ: your documents are too long.  Agencies: but case law requires it.

CEQ: programmatics should be used more.  Agencies: they generally don’t do much in practice.. suck up a lot of time and go out of date readily.

(Note that recently the Biden Admin said it had to redo an LNG analysis as it was out of date after five years (not sure it was a NEPA analysis, but still); if it takes three years to do a programmatic.. you do the math)

CEQ: if you only did better public involvement, you wouldn’t have litigation.

What these views have in common is a kind of punching down on the lowest ranking people in the system, and not looking at the problem as real-world policy disagreements that need to be ultimately settled through political processes.

Anyway, let’s check out what BPC has to say.

The Bipartisan Policy Center recently published “Finding the Goldilocks Zone for Permitting Reform.”  and if TwitX is to believed, folks from there are currently making Hill visits.

How does BPC characterize the “permitting reform” quest?

A more efficient permitting system for energy infrastructure would reduce energy costs, increase energy reliability, increase quality of life, and reduce emissions.

One could argue that “a more efficient permitting system for fuel treatment projects and prescribed burns would reduce risks of catastrophic wildfire and associated safety, health, watershed, wildlife and infrastructure impacts.” So maybe these would be relevant to other kinds of FS and BLM work?

They used stakeholder roundtables to help develop and rate the recommendations across two dimension: Effectiveness and Controversy.  Let’s see what they came up with.  It’s kind of a neat approach.  So let’s see what we think of these.. I’ll post each set of recommendations in a separate post.  We can discuss and I’ll give feedback to the BPC.

It seems to me that the question facing energy infrastructure is “why do we have to have this here and impact my community and wildlife and so on?” It doesn’t seem to me that any of this really answers the question of “why here and not there?”

If we are talking about energy infrastructure (onshore and offshore wind turbines, solar installations, transmission lines), it looks like their most promising is:

Conduct and provide resources for extensive community information hearings that address public comments and concerns of the community .

Which to me is a bit like “do public involvement better”.. which is good, but hard to say it increases efficiency in any way.  Some people just don’t want projects no matter how they are educated.  I’ve had grumpy people turn around with more information, but at the end of the day that’s not what delays projects.

I also thought it was interesting that BPC thought that this.. which sounds a bit like the successful Blue Mountain Partners in our world:

Establish a monitoring committee for individual projects, comprised of local stakeholders, that ensures standards are met and provides an avenue for continued public engagement for the life of the project [Pg. 21]

Here are their 3’s..

Require or incentivize agencies to engage stakeholders before developing a public notice of intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement [Pg. 23]

This is interesting. Right now it seems a bit random.  Like the FS probably does before an EIS for a large vegetation project; and maybe that counts for the national OG EIS, but I don’t think it helps increase “efficiency”.

The underlying idea seems to be “if only agencies had better public involvement processes, there would be less resistance and projects that are unpopular in some quarters will move forward readily.” I think good public involvement processes are important, and I also know that the FS and BLM have pretty robust ones,  and there are still disagreements about the project at the end of the day.

The funniest one to me was this one, which they fortunately rated as “not worth discussing”.

Establish commissions to advise agencies on the design, implementation, and evaluation of public participation processes [Pg. 24]

Increase efficiency by .. establishing commissions!

These ideas seem to reflect the “if practitioners only did it right, there wouldn’t be a problem” school of thought.

Next: Linear Infrastructure

Committee Hearing on Various Federal Lands Bills, and Root and Stem Bill Testimony from PERC

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TSW could really use someone to report on legislation.. there was a Committee Hearing today on several bills that may be of interest. Here’s the FS testimony.

 

Here’s Hannah Downey’s written testimony.

The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act
The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act (H.R. 674) is a bipartisan proposal to add more resources to advance forest restoration projects through the often-cumbersome environmental review process. For projects on Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land that have been collaboratively developed and meet local and rural community needs, a sponsor can front the funding for an approved outside contractor to complete the NEPA analysis for the project and be repaid through any receipts generated by the project that would otherwise go to the federal treasury.

The “A to Z” Project
The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act builds on the “A to Z” pilot project in the Colville National Forest in Washington.
This innovative project was highlighted in PERC’s 2021 Fix America’s Forests report as a way to leverage the value of timber to reduce bureaucratic burdens.
Several years ago, the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, a collaborative group of public and private partners, was looking to advance a forest project, but the Colville National Forest did not have the financial or staff resources to complete environmental reviews for the project. The coalition proposed allowing timber contractors who would perform the harvesting and restoration work to also bear the costs of doing the NEPA analysis. This “A to Z” project—so named because the winning bidder would be responsible for the entire process from initiating the project, to environmental review, to implementation—presented the opportunity to use the commercial value of harvested timber to advance the project and fund forest restoration.

A local sawmill, Vaagen Brothers Lumber, won the 10-year Forest Service stewardship contract in 2013 to test the privately funded, publicly managed NEPA process. It subcontracted with a third party to plan and perform the environmental analysis. To avoid any conflict of interest, the subcontractor’s performance was overseen by agency personnel rather than Vaagen Brothers. The NEPA analysis was completed in 2016, and the Vaagen Brothers began commercial thinning operations on more than 4,500 acres of national forest lands that contain excess wildfire fuels.
With a mill that can process small-diameter trees and nearby processing facilities that can turn that timber into laminated building products, the contract provides Vaagen Brothers with a supply of merchantable wood products. In exchange, the terms of the stewardship contract also require that the private company rehabilitate streams, replace culverts, restore roads, and control noxious weeds, leaving the forest ecosystem more resilient to insects and disease, enhanced wildlife habitat, and a substantially reduced risk for severe wildfire.

How It Works
The Root and Stem Project Authorization Act establishes a formal process for a project sponsor to provide the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management upfront funding to hire an approved contractor to conduct the NEPA analysis for a collaboratively designed restoration project. It also adds the requirement that receipts generated by the project can be used to repay the sponsor instead of being deposited into the general fund of the treasury. Building on the success of the “A to Z” project, this approach could substantially speed up needed activities while freeing up agency resources and personnel for other projects.  The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management can currently contract with non-federal parties for environmental analysis and accept outside funds to pay for that review, as demonstrated by the “A to Z” project.

The significant reform that the Root and Stem Project Authorization Act would make is to allow a project’s timber revenues to reimburse the party who funds the environmental review. This improvement would create more opportunity and motivation for forest collaboratives, conservation organizations, timber companies, and other entities who would benefit from the restoration project to provide the initial funding.
Under this proposal, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management would maintain an approved list of non-federal, third-party contractors in each state that the agency can hire to complete NEPA analyses and any consultations required under the Endangered Species Act. For forest restoration projects that have been collaboratively developed on federal lands, a project sponsor could propose a stewardship contract and provide the federal land management agency with the funding to hire one of the approved contractors to conduct the necessary project analysis. Once the project was approved, the federal land manager would have to solicit bids to carry out the project and use any available receipts generated by the project to repay the sponsor.
Though outside parties would be providing upfront funding and completing the environmental review documents, the federal land management agency would still retain authority over the environmental review and the project. Additionally, the relevant secretary would still be required to determine the sufficiency of any documents and authorize the project to proceed.

Improving Forest Restoration
At a time of great need for more forest restoration activities, the Root and Stem Project Authorization Act would bring more resources to the table to get important work done. Bringing in outside funding will not only benefit the collaborative projects reviewed under the Root and Stem authority but will also allow limited Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management resources to be spent on other priorities. Ultimately, more needed forest restoration projects—both ones that do and do not generate revenues—will make it through the environmental review process so that work can begin on the ground to reduce fuel-loading and protect our forest ecosystems from catastrophic wildfires.

 

More on the Nez Perce-Clearwater-Lolo revision (and the Great Burn)

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Here’s a little more (added to this) on the Nez Perce-Clearwater revised forest plan.  Mostly I wanted to share this graphic of how they are “reaching out” to the public.  They ask an important question:  “What can you do?”  The obvious meaning seems to be what can you do about the forest plan, and the answer for most people is “nothing.”  They say that the plan is in the objection period, but don’t tell us that the only people who can participate are those who have already done so.  They invite us to “learn more,” about this nearly-done deal, which they misleading label as a “draft Forest Management Plan.”  (At the draft EIS stage, the Planning Rule refers to it as the “proposed plan,” and at the objection stage it is just the “plan.)   While they have must have included similar outreach at earlier stages in the process, for those encountering this for the first time, it’s almost disingenuous.

But while I’m at it , there was also another article recently that focused on the State Line Trail, which runs through the Hoodoo Recommended Wilderness Area in the Great Burn between Idaho and Montana.  (I’ve been there but haven’t been directly involved in the planning, so know only what I read.)

“It used to be a marquee backcountry ride for mountain bikers, too. That ended in 2012 when the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest, which controls the Idaho side of the trail, approved a new travel management plan that barred bicycles from its portion of the trail. On the Montana side, the Lolo National Forest has long allowed bicycles on the trail.”

A new revised forest plan for the Nez Perce-Clearwater could change that, by determining that bicycles are an appropriate use in the portions of Idaho around the trail, which would mirror access on the Montana side. If the changes in the plan are finalized, possibly later this year, that would set the stage for the Nez Perce-Clearwater to revisit and alter its 2012 travel plan to formally re-allow bicycles on the trail.”

The rationale behind these changes, according to the forest supervisor, don’t seem to include consistency (more on that later):  “We have these types of very primitive, amazing, out in the middle of nowhere experiences that you can get to no matter what your matter of conveyance is.”  No apparent agency recognition that the conveyance is part of the experience for those who encounter it, and for some it makes it feel unpleasantly more like “somewhere.”

One of the supporters added, “It’s a small segment of the sport that this is going to appeal to,” he said. “It’s not that close to Missoula. It’s hard. The trail’s in deteriorating condition. But this opportunity is, for certain people, something they really, really want.” That small segment of certain people (who apparently want to deteriorate the trail even more) must be pretty special to get this kind of personalized attention.

“Some mountain bikers are drawn to remote, rugged, and challenging backcountry trail experiences on wild and raw landscapes,” a group of supporters commented. “These are places where it is uncommon to see other trail users, and where riding requires a high level of physical fitness and technical skill — in many cases it involves pushing a bike instead of riding at all.”  That would be like hiking, wouldn’t it?  So, it’s not like closing the area to this use would exclude these physically fit people from these wild and raw landscapes.  I’ll admit that I don’t understand the rationale of wanting to experience a “wild and raw landscape” on a machine, which (to me) reduces the rawness and wildness of the experience.

The aura of personal opinion and politics behind these wilderness debates is why I focus my energy on other things.  Here there is also talk about snowmobiles and mountain goats, and why mountain goats are treated differently in adjacent national forests.

As for the effects of snowmobiles on mountain goats, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game blamed them for disappearance from one part of this area, but the founder of the Backcountry Sled Patriots says otherwise (citing other research).  The Lolo National Forest cited the negative effect of motorized over-snow machines as reason for designating them a species of conservation concern.  The Nez Perce-Clearwater is not concerned about mountain goats.  The Forest Service minimizes the importance of the areas at issue to mountain goats (though they apparently used to be some places they are not found now).

About the Lolo, Marten, the regional forester, who determines which species are SCC, wrote:

“Compared to other ungulates, the species appears particularly sensitive to human disturbance. Motorized and non-motorized recreation, as well as aerial vehicles, are well documented to affect the species, particularly during winter and kid-rearing season, with impacts ranging from permanent or seasonal (displacement), to changes in behavior and productivity.”

The regional director for ecosystem planning said that she didn’t see the different listing decisions as being in conflict with each other. Rather, she said, they reflect that mountains goats are doing better overall on one forest than the other.  This may be technically/legally possible since SCC are based on persistence in an individual forest plan area.  However, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to manage one national forest to increase the risk to, and to contribute to SCC designation on, another forest.  Moreover, the Planning Handbook states that “species of conservation concern in adjoining National Forest System plan areas” should be considered by the regional forester in making this designation.  This all has kind of an arbitrary ring to it.

As for consistent management across national forest boundaries, The Nez Perce-Clearwater plans to change the shape of the Hoodoo RWA to remove the key snowmobile areas from it, so that boundary between the national forests becomes a boundary for the RWA.  The Forest Service points out that the plan revision process in the hands of forest supervisors, not the regional office.  The forest supervisors disclaim any obligation for consistency, and even suggest that travel planning may produce a different result, and “forest plans and travel management plans are continually updated and amended” so they could change again.  That doesn’t square well with history.  The every-third-of-a-century Forest plan revision should be the time to get it right.  Even if the regional forester doesn’t want to say what the plans must do, that person could simply order them to be consistent along this boundary.

Flowers Grow in Openings in Ponderosa Pine Forests: Bees Like Flowers; Thinning Good for Biodiversity

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This is an interesting and pretty comprehensive story from the Colorado Sun. Kind of a bee-centric take on desirable vegetation structures. Ecology is a funny thing in that there are all kinds of ecologists interested in all kinds of critters who may not prefer the same kinds of vegetation. So what is the “ecological work” that needs to be done- and what variety of ecologist decides?

The more-than-decadelong effort to thin Front Range forests to reduce fire danger has brought more bees, more flowers and increased resilience to climate change, new research shows.

The raw number and the diversity of bees and plants exploded a few years after ponderosa pine forests were restored to a “pre-European” state, researchers from Colorado State and Utah State universities found.

“We found that if you cut trees and open up the canopy, between three and 10 years later, you see a pretty good response,” said Seth Davis, associate professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University and co-author of a study recently published in “Ecological Applications.”

“Forest restoration and forest thinning is one of the ways that we can conserve our native communities.”

I like that reporter William Allstetter provided the historical context for how these particular forests came to be.

For thousands of years, natural fires have been an integral part of healthy forest ecosystems in the West. Small fires that clear out underbrush every five to 30 years as well as more devastating fires that can raze the forest to the ground every 50 to 100 or more years clear the way for new growth. Native Americans were known to set small fires to clear out undergrowth for better hunting and regeneration of valuable plants, but did not cause major changes in the ecosystem. Then, beginning in 1859, Euro-Americans flooded into Colorado seeking gold and silver.

I’m not sure that’s accurate; not sure that we can know whether larger pre-European fires were set intentionally. Larger fires did occur.

“Suddenly, in a span of decades, the Colorado Rockies were engulfed by this new, highly unpredictable world of commodity capitalism, of smelters and railroad investment, of boomtowns and sudden busts, of landscape changes so fundamental that they dwarfed the modest human impacts made over the prior 10 centuries,” historical geographer William Wyckoff wrote in his book “Creating Colorado.”

Vast swaths of the Front Range forests were cleared to obtain wood for mining, construction and railroads. Extensive fires also surged across the landscape, fueled by accidental and intentional fires.

To combat the rampant and unregulated logging of these forests, the federal government in the early years of the 20th century created the White River, Pike, and Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests along the Front Range and high into the Rockies. At about the same time, firefighters began trying to suppress all fires.

As a result, over the past century, dense forests with thick undergrowth have grown up across the Front Range and the entire West. Many of the plants that thrived in the pre-European forests disappeared from the now shady forest floor. And with them went many of the animals that ate and pollinated them. You end up with a rather homogeneous landscape that doesn’t have a lot of flowers in it,” Davis said. “You end up with a situation where you can’t have a lot of native bees there.”

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They found an impressively richer, more dense and resilient web of life. While the bee population roughly doubled, the number of interactions between bees and plants rose eightfold and there were five times as many unique connections between specific bee species and plant species.

The researchers illustrated the interactions in a diagram, which visually depicts a richer, more complex web of life.

“Yeah, it’s kind of mind-blowing,” Davis said. “You just see there’s just far more diversity or more complexity.

“You get the idea that if you lost one or two of the flowers or one or two of the bees out of this system, the whole network doesn’t just collapse and fall apart. Whereas on these control plots, if you remove one or two things, you just got a lot more vulnerable ecosystem.”

“This paper is a strong piece of evidence for the ecosystem benefits of forest thinning in areas where fire has been suppressed and the canopy is overgrown,” said Amy Yarger, director of horticulture at the Butterfly Pavilion. She was not involved in the research. “With climate change and biodiversity loss posing existential threats, mindful forest management is key for conservation and for preserving our way of life in Colorado.”

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“Here are some really key species for supporting a lot of biodiversity of pollinators, which in turn supports biodiversity of plants,” said Julian Resasco, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado. “Things that maintain the integrity and the diversity of these ecosystems make them more robust to other threats, like climate change.”

The researchers recommended that forest managers seed ponderosa pine forests with these plants to promote a robust pollinator network. They also could be good plants for people to plant in their gardens. “These are good choices for planting because they’re going to support the bee-flower interaction network,” Davis said.

He believes the environmental benefits extend beyond bees and plants. “We’re sort of measuring one little component of the overall food web here,” Davis said. “By bolstering their abundances, you’re also bolstering the abundances of things which prey upon them, like predators, which could be birds and other animals.” Another study from 2020 suggests that the thinned forests also benefited bird populations.

Not every scientific paper reminds me of an old pop song.. birds, bees, flowers, trees, this paper has it all.