How Does The Forest Service Scope Today, and What is Required? : Draft NEPA Regs

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I’d like to thank Susan Jane Brown, Anonymous, and others for engaging deeply and thoughtfully on the proposed NEPA regs. They’ve brought up many good points, which I’m going to try to separate into different threads. This one is about scoping. I’m hoping we can all get on the same page about what is required by the current scoping, and what practices are actually used.

One of the main talking points against the proposed reg is reducing public involvement. So we can look into exactly what happens now, and how that might change. I found this helpful information in the Forest Service (2012) NEPA Handbook. Note: my understanding of why the Forest Service developed their own NEPA regs in 2008 was so that they would have more legal oomph. The Forest Service’s sister agency in multiple use, the BLM, does not have NEPA regs but operates from a Handbook.

Here’s what the Handbook says about scoping:

Although the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations require scoping only for environmental impact statement (EIS) preparation, the Forest Service has broadened the concept to apply to all proposed actions. Scoping is required for all Forest Service proposed actions, including those that would appear to be categorically excluded from further analysis and documentation in an EA or an EIS (§220.6). (36 CFR 220.4(e)(1))

A reasonable argument could be made that (all) other agencies scope without it being a requirement. Agencies like the BLM, for example. So the idea that the Forest Service would never scope without the requirement seems, to me, to be unlikely. Why did the Forest Service decide to do this when no other agencies do? Maybe someone out there knows that history and would share their knowledge.

So what does the scoping requirement require exactly? Here’s what the Handbook says:

The process of scoping is an integral part of environmental analysis. Scoping includes refining the proposed action, determining the responsible official and lead and cooperating agencies, identifying preliminary issues, and identifying interested and affected persons. Effective scoping depends on all of the above as well as presenting a coherent proposal. The results of scoping are used to clarify public involvement methods, refine issues, select an interdisciplinary team, establish analysis criteria, and explore possible alternatives and their probable environmental effects.

The methods and degree of the scoping effort undertaken for a given project vary depending on scope and complexity of the project (see the CEQ scoping guidance).
Scoping shall be carried out in accordance with the requirements of 40 CFR 1501.7. Because the nature and complexity of a proposed action determine the scope and intensity of analysis, no single scoping technique is required or prescribed. (36 CFR 220.4(e)(2))

Selection of scoping techniques should consider appropriate methods to reach interested and affected parties. For example, a project with potential localized effects to a small community might consider posting fliers at locations where they are likely to be seen.

This is all very interesting, as when CEQ talks about scoping, they are not thinking about the Forest Service, but are thinking about EIS’s, so it is the first step of a very long and complicated process with lots of requirements (doing an EIS).

At the same time, there don’t seem to be any specific requirements in the Handbook, other than “no single scoping technique is required or prescribed.” If it is “use your common sense” then what difference does it make to have the requirement? Note: I could argue this either way, if there’s a requirement to “use your common sense” versus just “using your common sense.”

(1) I could argue that having the requirement is suitably innocuous, so why get rid of it? How many court cases have there been about scoping? (I have no idea). The other point of view would be “why have an extra requirement that no other agency has?”. I couldn’t tell what the rationale was from the discussion on page 27545 of the proposed Rule, so we can only assume that it was to simplify the requirements. While this has been portrayed by some as being about “more logging” there are many CE’s that are much less likely to cause concern (and some, like the oil and gas one that we seldom hear about in op-eds) that might cause more concern.

(2) Given that, one could have another alternative in which scoping could be kept for some subset of CE’s, especially the new restoration CE (26) since the 3000 acre legislative CE’s require collaboration.

(3) It seems to me that there are solutions that could actually be better than just scoping. It seems like the idea of putting a project on the SOPA, with a name to submit comments to is seen to be not enough, but I think it may be just right for something like “shoulder widening or other safety improvements within the right-of-way for an NFS road.” But maybe the whole SOPA could be made more user-friendly. For example, people might fill out a form so that they could be notified of all projects and an email sent to them. And it might be handy for regional or national groups for this to be made so that they could sign up for all the relevant forests. We discussed these kinds of things about 15 years or so ago when the E-gov initiative was going on and the PALS database developed. It makes sense to me that notification and commenting could be streamlined and that responsibility for giving input could be shared somehow between the agency and interested parties.

IPCC and Sustainable Forest Management

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The IPCC’s “Summary for Policy Makers” of its “Climate Change and Land” may offer guidance to the USFS and other forest managers:

B 5. Sustainable land management, including sustainable forest management, can prevent and reduce land degradation, maintain land productivity, and sometimes reverse the adverse impacts of climate change on land degradation (very high confidence). It can also contribute to mitigation and adaptation (high confidence). Reducing and reversing land degradation, at scales from individual farms to entire watersheds, can provide cost effective, immediate, and long-term benefits to communities and support several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with co-benefits for adaptation (very high confidence) and mitigation (high confidence). Even with implementation of sustainable land management, limits to adaptation can be exceeded in some situations (medium confidence). {1.3.2, 4.1.5, 4.8, Table 4.2}  [Emphasis IPCC]

 …

 B5.3. Reducing deforestation and forest degradation lowers GHG emissions (high confidence), with an estimated technical mitigation potential of 0.4–5.8 GtCO yr. By providing long-term livelihoods for communities, sustainable forest management can reduce the extent of forest conversion to non-forest uses (e.g., cropland or settlements) (high confidence). Sustainable forest management aimed at providing timber, fibre, biomass, non-timber resources and other ecosystem functions and services, can lower GHG emissions and can contribute to adaptation. (high confidence). {2.6.1.2, 4.1.5, 4.3.2, 4.5.3, 4.8.1.3, 4.8.3, 4.8.4}

B5.4. Sustainable forest management can maintain or enhance forest carbon stocks, and can maintain forest carbon sinks, including by transferring carbon to wood products, thus addressing the issue of sink saturation (high confidence). Where wood carbon is transferred to harvested wood products, these can store carbon over the long-term and can substitute for emissions-intensive materials reducing emissions in other sectors (high confidence). Where biomass is used for energy, e.g., as a mitigation strategy, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere more quickly (high confidence). {2.6.1, 2.7, 4.1.5, 4.8.4, 6.4.1, Figure SPM.3, Cross- Chapter Box 7 in Chapter 6}

 

No Market for Small-Diameter Wood? Ship it Overseas

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NAU pilot project tests exporting wood products via railway (and ship) to speed forest restoration

A pilot project at Camp Navajo has the potential to unlock a critical bottleneck in forest restoration and wildfire prevention efforts across northern Arizona by creating markets for restoration byproducts like wood chips from small-diameter trees.

The pilot project, led by Northern Arizona University, will test the logistics and efficacy of chipping and shipping wood products via railway transportation with the goal of expanding forest product markets domestically and internationally and accelerating forest restoration efforts.

“This collaboration is an opportunity to address forest health issues facing our region and create renewable sources of energy,” said NAU President Rita Cheng. “It is another example of the innovative ways our researchers are working together to solve critical issues facing our region, state and the world.”

The first phase of the project will take place at the Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (DEMA) Camp Navajo Training Center over the course of eight days. It includes chipping 1,300 tons of small-diameter logs extracted from forest restoration projects like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, which has struggled to find markets for the low-value wood removed from its thinning efforts. The wood chips will then be loaded onto 60 shipping containers bound for South Korea via railway and cargo ships.

 

Planning spurs worries for Hispanic ranchers

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An AP article viua Greenwire:

Planning spurs worries for Hispanic ranchers

Hispanic ranchers in New Mexico are asking President Trump and top federal officials to ensure the latest round of forest management planning considers traditional values that have helped shape the use of mountain ranges and pastures in rural communities for 500 years.

Members of the Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association are accusing local forest managers of dismissing their comments while drafting a proposed management plan for the Carson National Forest.

“Our concerns about protecting valid existing rights and traditional and historic uses have been ignored in this entire process as we witnessed in the many meetings attended and correspondence submitted. We have been treated like second-class citizens,” said Carlos Salazar, president of the ranchers’ group.

…

Salazar said grazing in northern New Mexico has been reduced by more than 70% over the last eight decades and language in the proposed plan threatens to push more Hispanic ranchers from the land.

He called the plan a “train wreck,” while other ranchers in the group said the proposal amounted to a “green deal” that would hurt communities in a region where poverty and dependence on the land for subsistence is still high.

Salazar warned that without intervention, ranchers are worried the Forest Service could eliminate grazing in the area over the next five to 10 years.

This marks the latest fight between Hispanic ranchers and the Forest Service, as efforts to get the Obama administration to address discrimination and civil rights violations went unanswered.

Spotted Owls Declining in Mt. Rainier National Park

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E&E News has an article today about a study in the American Ornithological Society’s journal The Condor: Ornithological Applications, which shows that “over the past 20 years, northern spotted owls have disappeared from half the areas they once occupied in Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park.”

“This study demonstrated that even when high-quality habitat was readily available, the presence of Barred Owls was negatively correlated with the dynamics of Spotted Owls,” the authors wrote.

“Barred Owls are now competing with Northern Spotted Owls for food and space, and increased Barred Owl densities are associated with declines in Northern Spotted Owl populations across their range,” said Katie Dugger, a co-author of the report and a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.

…

“In 1994, a conservation plan covering the owls’ territory was put in place. Since then, the spotted owls in Mount Rainier have lived with no significant threat from logging, wildfires or other human-related dangers that may be present in other spots across the species’ range from California to British Columbia.

“Along with significant territorial changes, the authors found that the population of spotted owls in the Mount Rainier region appears to be shrinking. They wrote that the park contains “some of the oldest intact forest habitat available to Northern Spotted Owls in the Washington Cascade Range, yet only 18 adult owls were detected on the study area in 2016, down from a high of 30 owls in 1998.”

Is the Forest Service Trying to Evade the Public?

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NY Times op-ed today: “Is the Forest Service Trying to Evade the Public?” by Sam Evans, National Forests and Parks Program Leader for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“If the Forest Service has its way, visitors won’t know what’s coming until logging trucks show up at their favorite trailheads or a path for a gas pipeline is cleared below a scenic vista.”

That’s hyperbolic, to say the least.

Discussion?

The Sage Grouse Story:III. Lessons Learned From Collaboration

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Aspects of the sage grouse story are fairly commonly observed at a more local scale. This is one topic on which I hope Peter Williams will lend his wisdom.

What happens when you establish a task force, get it going, support it, and then change the ultimate decision? Is there a “trust envelope” that political decisions can exceed? Personally, I can see both sides. Elected officials have the authority to make decisions. So they can’t just hand over decision-making authority to another group. At the same time, why would people spend years working on something just to have some higher-level people change it or change the “must-haves”? What happens when key decision makers change positions (in this case it was Secretary Salazar, but it could be your local district ranger).

This Lessons Learned From the Greater Sage-Grouse Collaboration was well done (with great photos) and talks about some of the same themes we’ve discussed for smaller collaborative efforts.

Ironically, many of the limitations mentioned by respondents were also the same things that made the sage-grouse collaborative response so unique in the first place. Time was mentioned by most as the biggest limitation – the fact that there was a firm deadline for appreciable action, the number of hours required for meetings and planning, the time required to establish relationships and trust – all of these elements played in to the challenges faced during the collaborative efforts. In addition, the challenge of the scale and the variety of perspectives was seen as a limitation while also being essential for the collaboration to work.

Beyond these broad themes, other specific limitations mentioned include:
• Adequate technical capacity to provide services to landowners.
• Maintaining consistency across states with disparate challenges faced in different states; associated with this was expectations of “one size fits all” requirements when using federal funds for conservation projects.
• Maintaining agency staff continuity for work on the landscape and in planning negotiations.
• Regulatory process required through the National Environmental Policy Act (for implementation of restoration projects).
• Endangered Species Act interpretation that had typically focused on regulatory limitations, but lacked a way to measure voluntary conservation partnerships
• Politics (between states and federal agencies; between Washington DC leadership and field staff, etc.) and egos that impacted negotiations and undermined trust.
• Last minute changes and lack of transparency that undermined long-term negotiations because they were not part of the discussion throughout the process. As one person mentioned, 11th hour “gotta haves” will prevent durable long-term solutions in a collaborative process.
• Reverting to top down decision-making and not listening to comments and recommendations from the collaborative teams that had worked together to develop solutions

Two quotes from the Lessons Learned paper:

“I’ve learned to recognize that there is a wide spectrum of collaborative processes. What I’ve experienced and witnessed these past twenty-plus years is a process of creating deeper more meaningful communication by cultivating respectful listening, which leads to respect and trust among participants. It’s a deep human need to be listened to, valued and to feel a sense of purpose and belonging. Collaboration creates community in a larger context, it can bring people together and give them the opportunity to build the trust that is required to hone durable solutions for resource issues. It is an example for the broader world.”

–Robin Boies, Stewardship Alliance for Northeast Elko

“Maintain transparency and work on trust every day – that’s easy to say but it takes a lot of energy. Benefits are collaborative outcomes that are durable. Top down solutions are only good as long as you’re there to enforce them. Solutions that are collaborative and durable are supported by the communities that have to live with those outcomes long after decision makers are gone.”

–Tim Murphy, Bureau of Land Management Idaho State Director (retired

So decision makers who ask for collaborative efforts have a problem. How best can they negotiate ever-changing political currents, with ever-changing personnel at all levels, while maintaining trust? I’m hoping TWS readers will have examples of collaborative leaders and decision-makers successfully at doing this, and perhaps we could contact them and ask them their thoughts.

The Sage Grouse Story, A More Complete View: II. No Enemies Here: One Source’s Perspective

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Credits clockwise from top: Jeremy Roberts, Conservation Media, courtesy of Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI); Jeremy Maestas, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service/SGI; Tom Koerner, courtesy of the USFWS, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0; courtesy of Intermountain West Joint Venture (IWJV); Michael Brown, Capacity Coordinator for SGI, courtesy of SGI; Jonathan Moor, courtesy of the BLM; Mick Thompson, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/; courtesy of IWJV. Cover: courtesy of IWJV

For this part of the story, I am basically quoting my source. Any errors are due to my misunderstanding of what my source told me.

Back when the Obama administration came in, they settled litigation for making listing decisions and developed a schedule.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Governora Mead (WY), Hickenlooper (CO), Gary Herbert (UT) and Sandoval (NV) at the Western Governors’ Association sat down with ID and MT (Schweitzer). They agreed to get a plan together to keep the sage grouse from being listed. They formed the Sage Grouse Task Force, which included representatives from BLM, FWS, USGS and state agencies.

Salazar told us that 95% right was going to be good enough, they were not going to go for perfect.

Note: Secretary Salazar had been a DNR Director in Colorado, Senator, and Attorney General in Colorado. and grew up in a ranching community. He had a background of being able to work with others to get compromises made, had relationships and knew the people and how things work, both federally and at the state level.

In the process, two tech teams (science) informed the Conservation Objectives Team, which included the State Wildlife Agencies, so people who really knew those areas and those birds.. Then each State developed a separate plan. Some of the differences among states are that in the Great Plains, for example, they have a four-mile radius around the lek. In Wyoming, grouse can be in hilly terrain so that oil rigs in the draw may not affect them. The groups also identified grassland fire as a problem.

The States turned in their plans to the Fish and Wildlife Service. They included incentives for land conservation and conservation easements, but individuals within the US Fish and Wildlife Service questioned the legal status of conservation easements as regulatory mechanisms, even though those are legal agreements.

So there were all these State plans, and Sarah Greenberger, Jim Lyons (whom FS people may remember from the Clinton Administration), and Dan Ashe had to try to “roll them up”- to write up something coherent for why the diverse landscapes and approaches would add up to a successful national strategy. As part of that effort, some new additional ideas were added to the mix.

Folks from Garfield County, CO did a FOIA and found out that the changes were associated in time with meetings with various environmental organizations, including Pew. One particular idea added during these last changes was the idea of “focal areas”. The States went ballistic.

The Governors sat down with Secretary Jewell and tried to negotiate.

Some continued to feel wronged. Remember, at that time, no one thought that the Republicans would win the Presidency. So when there came to a new administration, some states sent Zinke a letter asking for it to be re-opened. So Zinke announced a review, and a chance to change the plans.

Bernhardt got it right away and we worked with him. After a year and a half of meetings, Colorado decided to weigh in and make a proposal.

So a couple of thoughts..(1) if the politicals hadn’t added new ideas to the collaborative work, folks wouldn’t have “gone ballistic” and ultimately made the changes that are included. I wondered if Ashe, Lyons, and Greenberger might have rethought doing that, in retrospect. I wrote Dan Ashe and Jim Lyons to get their perspectives, but didn’t get replies.
(2) Would Salazar have been more hesitant to add things to the collaborative efforts because of his level of knowledge and trust with the States?
(3) Elected officials and their appointees do get to decide at the end of the day. Some media seem suddenly surprised and horrified that it works that way. As Gov. Freudenthal once said, in some administrations it’s environmental groups influencing, in others it may be the oil and gas folks. Many of us westerners (including Freudenthal) don’t really like the federal abrupt pendulum shifts.
(4) Most importantly, many people you’ve never hear of have been doing the tedious ground work on grouse conservation all these years. At that level, they are the unsung heroes in the background, who try to keep working together and arrive at conclusions that everyone, including the species, can live with. All of us who care about species owe those folks a great debt of gratitude. Note my source’s tone.. there are no enemies, only people and governments to work with for the common good.

Final note: my source said he had given interviews to the WaPo and other major outlets and they never used what he gave them. The stories ended up being all about Trump.

The Sage Grouse Story, A More Complete View: I. Not All About Trump

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Credit: Scott Root, Utah DWR, courtesy of Intermountain West Joint Venture

The Center for Western Priorities sent this out in their newsletter this morning:

The Trump administration released more details on its updated sage-grouse management plan. The previous plan, created in 2015, was a collaborative effort between a variety of stakeholders, from industry to environmentalists. As a result, it was popular throughout the West, with two-thirds of Westerners opposing changes to it.

Conservation of the sage-grouse and the sagebrush ecosystem is vital as industry encroaches on the habitat. In response to the changes to the management plan, a letter written by a collection of scientists stated, “failure to take into account large-scale dynamics when managing sage-grouse will likely lead to an overall loss in habitat quantity and quality resulting in population declines.” Sage-grouse populations have declined for the third consecutive year, with 2019 marking the lowest year since tracking began in 2011.

The link to the scientist letter went to this interesting WyoFile story, but I didn’t see a link to a scientist letter (can someone help and check this? if it’s not just me, I’ll contact them and ask).

I’m going to tell the story of my efforts to arrive at an even-handed description of the sage grouse saga. The CWP mention above simply fits it into the usual Bad Trump Administration overrules Good Obama Administration narrative. One of the many problems with seeing things through this partisan filter is that you miss much of the depth and complexity, not to speak of the contributions of people- state employees, feds, landowners, and so on, who do all the proverbial “grunt work” working with each other, jointly figuring things out, discussing the implications of scientific information, and so on. Of which there were a great many folks, who did this for a long time, for the sage grouse, and are still doing it. Also, it underplays the contributions and intricate political processes and choices at the state and federal levels which are of interest.

My instinctive hairs first went up when changes to the 2015 plan were portrayed as an R vs. D thing. At the same time, I saw stories that D Governors, including Colorado’s supported some changes.. see in this BLM pres release.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval also supported the BLM’s effort to incorporate state feedback, noting “The State of Nevada is pleased the final EIS is finished. We appreciate the opportunity to have worked closely with the Department of the Interior on our concerns, and thank them for incorporating our input into the final plan amendments.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: “Collaboration is hard work, and I appreciate the efforts by our stakeholders, state agencies and the Department of the Interior to craft an agreement to protect the sage grouse. Balancing sage grouse habitat protection and economic development requires mitigation of negative impacts. This agreement is a critical step that marks a shift away from planning toward active conservation and landscape management to protect this iconic species. Oregon’s bounty is beautiful and worth continuing to protect and fight for.”

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper: “We worked with the Bureau of Land Management and our stakeholders to produce a plan that maintains protection for the sage grouse while balancing the potential impact on local economies. This is a significant step that closes out the planning phase and allows us to begin to see the true conservation efforts that safeguard the sage grouse in Colorado.”

So what was the “real” story? Can we even capture that, as opposed to bits and pieces of information from peoples’ different experiences at different levels? When I attended the Western Governors’ Association Working Lands Roundtable in April, I attended a work session on At Risk Species Conservation and spoke to some people there about their experiences with the sage grouse effort. I even asked a nice WGA staff person “is there an article that presents the history of the sage grouse issue fairly?” so that I could post it on The Smokey Wire. He didn’t know of any, but referred me to a person who might be a good source, if I wanted to hear a balanced perspective. So I spoke with him. More on what I found out in my next post. If any of you have found an even-handed representation, please post a link in the comments.