UPDATE: Forest Service Rescinds Approval of Chainsaws in Wilderness

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Here’s the latest press release from the San Juan Citizens Alliance, Wilderness Watch and Great Old Broads for Wilderness. It’s an update from the post on May 22, which can be viewed here.

Conservation Groups Applaud Forest Service Decision Rescinding Approval of Chainsaws in Wilderness

For Release: June 11, 2019

Denver, CO – Conservation organizations that filed a lawsuit against the United States Forest Service for their secretive approval to allow chainsaws in two southwestern Colorado Wilderness areas this summer are pleased that the agency has officially rescinded the ill-advised policy.

The Wilderness Act prohibits the use of motorized equipment except for in emergency situations. The groups argued that the inconvenience of obstructed trails did not qualify as an emergency and the policy would set a dangerous precedent, paving the way for future exemptions from the law. Current and former wilderness rangers for the agency spoke out against the policy, stating it was illegal and unnecessary. Heavily obstructed trails have been cleared using crosscut saws for more than 50 years.

“We’re pleased that in light of overwhelming public opposition the Regional Forester decided to withdraw his unlawful decision to use chainsaws in these Wildernesses,” stated George Nickas of Wilderness Watch. “We encourage the Forest Service to use its time between now and next year to develop a plan that comports with both the letter and spirit of the Wilderness Act.”

The groups expect the Forest Service to re-evaluate how it can clear Wilderness trails in a manner that complies with the Wilderness Act and explore available volunteer and community resources to help them succeed.

“The Weminuche and South San Juan Wildernesses are wild and remote landscapes cherished by countless visitors and local residents. We urge the Forest Service to embrace management that elevates the defining wilderness character of these special places,” said Mark Pearson with San Juan Citizens Alliance.

Fire, Erosion, and Floods

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Some folks say forest managers need to focus on thinning in and around communities to protect homes from wildfire. This article reminds us that wildfire effects an be much more widespead than the burned area itself, and shows why active forest management aimed at reducing fire severity may be appropriate in the backcountry.

“Concerns rise about flooding, debris flows in Lake Christine Fire burn scar”

“Local emergency managers are particularly concerned about flood and flow risks from the Lake Christine Fire burn scar.”

…

“Wildfires result in a loss of vegetation and leave the ground charred and unable to absorb water,” said a statement from a consortium of emergency management agencies in the Roaring Fork Valley. “This creates conditions for flooding. Even areas that are not traditionally flood-prone are at risk of flooding for up to several years after a wildfire.”

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“The soils that experienced the greatest burn severity are shedding the water rather than absorbing it, Thompson said. Water was flowing off hillsides in sheets and eroding the road between the main parking lot and the Mill Creek Trailhead, he said.”

Here’s a Debris Flow Probability Map of the 12,500-acre Lake Christine Fire area and surrounding communities in Colorado.

NFS Litigation Weekly June 5, 2019

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Forest Service summaries:  2019_06_05_

COURT DECISIONS

Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands v. Grantham (E. D. Cal.):  The district court essentially reversed itself on enjoining the Seiad-Horse Risk Reduction Project on the Klamath National Forest, staying that injunction while the project is appealed to the circuit court.  The court’s reasoning:

“While Plaintiffs raised substantial questions regarding at least one of their claims, the Court must defer to the Forest Service’s determination that without a stay the harm will become truly irreparable. The crux of this Court’s first order was the fact that only Plaintiffs were in jeopardy of irreparable harm. In light of Federal Defendant’s arguments in their newest motion, it is clear that Federal Defendants will face irreparable harm that — most critically in the Court’s analysis — will threaten the public safety should the injunction remain in place.”

The District of Montana dismissed a complaint filed in 2015, concerning the allotment management plans on 7 domestic sheep allotments on the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest, and the revised forest plan (D. Mont.)

Center for Biological Diversity v. USFS (9th Cir.):  The circuit court held that the district court has jurisdiction to hear an action brought under the citizen suit provision of Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) seeking to require the Forest Service to ban the use of lead shot that poses a threat to endangered California condors in the Kaibab National Forest.

Duhring Resource Company v. USA (3rd Cir.):  The circuit court remanded the case to the Western District of Pennsylvania district court to consider costs incurred due to delay of oil and gas operations on the Allegheny National Forest.  Another facet of this case was discussed here.

Wild Watershed v. Hurlocker (D. N.M.):  The District Court upheld the Hyde Park Wildland Urban Interface Project and the Pacheco Canyon Forest Resiliency Project on the Santa Fe National Forest.  It found that NEPA was not required prior to designation of areas under the 2014 Farm Bill HFRA amendment as insect and disease treatment areas, and the applicable statutory categorical exclusion does not require consideration of extraordinary circumstances or consideration of environmental impacts as would administrative CEs subject to NEPA requirements.  The projects met the HFRA requirements for protecting old growth, for use of best available science (for northern goshawk and Albert’s squirrel and for air pollution from burning) and for consistency with the forest plan.  Forest plan direction applicable to old growth did not apply because the treated stands did not meet the definition of old growth.

UPDATES

Sawtooth Mountain Ranch v. USFS (D. Idaho):  (No FS summary provided.)  Private landowners oppose the proposed Redfish to Stanley Trail on the Sawtooth National Forest (discussed here).

NEW CASES

Idaho State Snowmobile Association v. USFS (D. Idaho):  The Sawtooth National Forest prohibited snowmobile use on 85,266 acres of public land in the Fairfield Ranger District.

Friends of Animals v. Perdue (D. Colo.):  (No FS summary provided.)  Plaintiffs allege violation of Freedom of Information Act requirements to provide documents related to management of wild horses on the Tonto National Forest.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE on the Klamath case

We discussed it extensively on this blog here, mostly regarding snags.  We didn’t discuss another issue in the case about compliance with the Northwest Forest Plan Aquatic Strategy. Here’s this court’s description of what is required:

In demonstrating ACS compliance, the Forest Service “must manage the riparian-dependent resources to maintain the existing condition or implement actions to restore conditions. The baseline from which to assess maintaining or restoring the condition is developed through a watershed analysis. Improvement relates to restoring biological and physical processes within their ranges of natural variability.” (SHAR_E_2158.) “In order to make the finding that a project or management action ‘meets’ or ‘does not prevent attainment’ of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy objectives, the analysis must include a description of the existing condition, a description of the range of natural variability of the important physical and biological components of a given watershed, and how the proposed project or management action maintains the existing condition or moves it within the range of natural variability.”

In the days of the Northwest Forest Plan development, ranges of natural variability were to be determined between the plan and project level, in the case of watershed conditions via a requirement for “watershed analysis.”  Under the 2012 Planning Rule, NRV is a plan-level requirement.  What makes the Flathead forest plan revision litigation so interesting is that the revised plan both omits NRV from its aquatic ecosystem plan components and removes the requirement for any analysis to identify it later (instead merely suggesting that monitoring would be used).  It may be a good way of avoiding problems with project compliance, but it raises serious questions about how well the plan meets its obligation to protect aquatic species.

Civil War Plant Remedies Employed Against Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria : Tulip Poplar and White Oak

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This is such an interesting story- first, how doctors during the Civil War dealt with a lack of medicine; second, that we are still learning from those people and their predecessors (only 160-ish years ago); and third, while sometimes we may focus on the rare (charismatic megafauna, endangered plants), sometimes value also hides in plain sight, with the ubiquitous species that we may take for granted. Here’s a link to an article in Science Daily about this study.

During the height of the Civil War, the Confederate Surgeon General commissioned a guide to traditional plant remedies of the South, as battlefield physicians faced high rates of infections among the wounded and shortages of conventional medicines. A new study of three of the plants from this guide — the white oak, the tulip poplar and the devil’s walking stick — finds that they have antiseptic properties.

Scientific Reports is publishing the results of the study led by scientists at Emory University. The results show that extracts from the plants have antimicrobial activity against one or more of a trio of dangerous species of multi-drug-resistant bacteria associated with wound infections: Acinetobacter baumannii, Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumoniae.

“Our findings suggest that the use of these topical therapies may have saved some limbs, and maybe even lives, during the Civil War,” says Cassandra Quave, senior author of the paper and assistant professor at Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health and the School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatolog

Military field hospitals within the Confederacy, however, did not have reliable access to these medicines due to a blockade — the Union Navy closely monitored the major ports of the South to prevent the Confederacy from trading.

Seeking alternatives, the Confederacy commissioned Francis Porcher, a botanist and surgeon from South Carolina, to compile a book of medicinal plants of the Southern states, including plant remedies used by Native Americans and enslaved Africans. “Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests,” published in 1863, was a major compendium of uses for different plants, including a description of 37 species for treating gangrene and other infections. Samuel Moore, the Confederate Surgeon General, drew from Porcher’s work to produce a document called “Standard supply table of the indigenous remedies for field service and the sick in general hospitals.”

For the current study, the researchers focused on three plant species Porcher cited for antiseptic use that grow in Lullwater Preserve on the Emory campus. They included two common hardwood trees — the white oak (Quercus alba) and the tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) — as well as a thorny, woody shrub commonly known as the devil’s walking stick (Aralia spinosa).

..

“Plants have a great wealth of chemical diversity, which is one more reason to protect natural environments,” Dettweiler says. He plans to go to graduate school with a focus on researching plants for either medical or agricultural purposes. “I’m interested in plants because, even though they don’t move from place to place, they are extremely powerful and important.”

“Town Unites Against Federal Mismanagement to Save Forest”

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Weaverville, Calif., was once torn apart by forest-mananagent controveries (as were nunmerous communities in spotted owl country). This article from KQED, a San Francisco-based public broadcasting station, “Town Unites Against Federal Mismanagement to Save Forest,” says that this has changed.

As trees across the Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers national forests have become drought-stressed and overcrowded, basically all but asking to burn, it’s the forest that has brought people back together. Now, a locally driven partnership forged to make a small community forest healthier is kindling a wider push for resilience and reducing fire risk across the entire county. Community members say a key strategy will be preventing what are often high-intensity wildfires by implementing lower-intensity prescribed burns to eradicate chip-dry tinder and grasses.

“There will be fire on this entire landscape. Do we want it to be controlled or do we want it to be out of control?” said Alex Cousins, a lifelong county resident. “We need to leave these forests ready to accept fire.”

“One of the first federal master stewardship agreements in the country” has helped get work done on the ground. Locals say that thinning and Rx fire has helped:

“The [Oregon] fire ran head on into this thinned and burned unit, and the fire just laid down,” said Nick Goulette, who directs the Watershed Center, a local land stewardship group. “My home was evacuated as a part of that fire, so I was very thankful.”

I reckon many other communities are now interested in such stewardship agreements.

Christiansen: 1 Billion Acres At Risk

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From NPR News today:

1 Billion Acres At Risk For Catastrophic Wildfires, U.S. Forest Service Warns

The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is warning that a billion acres of land across America are at risk of catastrophic wildfires like last fall’s deadly Camp Fire that destroyed most of Paradise, Calif.

As we head into summer, with smoke already drifting into the Northwest from wildfires in Alberta, Canada, Vicki Christiansen said wildfires are now a year-round phenomenon. She pointed to the hazardous conditions in forests that result from a history of suppression of wildfires, rampant home development in high-risk places and the changing climate.

“When you look nationwide there’s not any place that we’re really at a fire season. Fire season is not an appropriate term anymore,” Christiansen said in an interview with NPR at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

 

“Landscape-level” Utah Project

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The Salt Lake Tribune has this story on “a landscape-level program of salvage logging, thinning, prescribed burns and reseeding in a 171,000-acre project area along the crest of the Wasatch Plateau.”

Since 2000, bark-boring beetles have killed nearly 90% of the Engelmann spruce on the plateau separating Sanpete and Emery counties, according to Ryan Nehl, supervisor of the Manti-La Sal National Forest. Other areas have become overrun with subalpine fir, crowding out aspen.

…

Currently spruce occupies 5% of this forest, while fir makes up 85%. The Forest Service’s goal is get that species mix to the 60%-30% range favoring spruce, but it could take decades. Nehl also wants to see aspen stands revitalized because of their importance to watershed health and wildlife and their ability to slow big fires.

“While this project is couched as a timber sale, it’s primarily a hazardous fuels-reduction project to try to stem the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire. It’s overstocked right now,” Nehl said. “Another primary purpose of this is to reduce risk to communities and firefighters, particularly culinary and irrigation water supplies, as well as water supply to the [Huntington Power] Plant.”

Here’s the Canyons HFRA Project Environmental Assessment FONSI.

The Forest Service proposes to salvage dense dead standing and down Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) and implement fuel reduction treatments under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA). These actions are proposed to be implemented on the Ferron-Price and Sanpete Ranger Districts, Manti-La Sal National Forest, in Sanpete, Carbon, Emery, and Sevier Counties, Utah (Figure 2). The project area where treatments are being considered is approximately 171,000 acres.

Grizzly deaths spur bear baiting challenge against USFS in Idaho, Wyoming

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A lawsuit has just been filed challenging a U.S Forest Service policy that grants states authority to allow black bear baiting in national forests, despite knowing that such practices have resulted in the deaths of threatened grizzly bears.

As a hunter myself, I find the practice of ‘baiting’ bears gross, unethical and totally inappropriate on any publics lands, but especially within habitat for threatened grizzly bears. Here’s the press release from the plaintiffs.

Grizzly deaths spur bear baiting challenge in Idaho, Wyoming

Today, wildlife advocates challenged in federal court a U.S. Forest Service policy granting states authority to allow black bear baiting in national forests, despite knowing that such practices have resulted in the deaths of threatened grizzly bears. Hunters have killed threatened grizzlies attracted to bait stations, typically stocked with human food intended to lure black bears. Currently, only Idaho and Wyoming allow bear baiting in national forests. The challenge comes as Congress considers a bill to enact expanded protections for threatened grizzlies.

“Bear baiting not only violates ‘fair chase’ hunting ethics, it has caused deaths of iconic grizzlies,” said Lindsay Larris of WildEarth Guardians. “Federal agencies are bound by the law to recover threatened grizzlies, and knowingly allowing bear baiting flagrantly violates that duty.”

Until 1992, the Forest Service required hunters and guides to obtain a special use permit to use bait to hunt black bears in national forests. Documents defining the terms of the policy change prohibits any grizzly killing (“take”) due to bear baiting. Should any grizzly bear deaths occur, “the [Forest Service] must reinitiate consultation with the [Fish and Wildlife] Service and provide the circumstances surrounding the take.” The decision’s biological opinion also stated there was only a “remote possibility that a grizzly bear may be taken as a result of black bear baiting.”

After the Forest Service allowed states alone to decide whether bait could be used, the grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem increased. Since 1995, at least eight grizzly bears have been shot and killed at black bear bait stations in national forests in Idaho and Wyoming, and more have been killed at bait stations on other public and private lands.

Vague agency record keeping prohibits certainty about the extent of grizzly mortalities at black bear bait stations. However, in 2007, a grizzly was killed in the Bitterroot ecosystem on public land managed by the Forest Service, the first grizzly known to inhabit the area in over half a century.

“Grizzlies are making their way to the vast, wild country of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and they’ll get there if we let them,” said Dana Johnson of Wilderness Watch. “Unfortunately, the many bait stations scattered along that path are death-magnets for dispersing bears. It’s past time for the Forest Service to do something about it.”

Also since giving states the power to allow bear baiting in national forests, scientists have established a significant body of research showing baiting causes harmful and irreversible grizzly bear conditioning to human food and disrupts grizzlies’ behavioral dynamics.

“The confirmed grizzly killings at bait stations are more than enough to trigger the Forest Service to reevaluate its policy delegating these decisions to states,” said Pete Frost, attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “Safe passage for grizzlies to the Selway Bitterroot ecosystem is critical to their recovery, and the Forest Service is required to reassess whether to allow states to control bear baiting in our national forests.”

Given bear baiting’s harmful effects on threatened grizzly bears, the groups involved in the case want the Forest Service to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service to re-evaluate whether bear baiting decisions should be up to states, and whether baiting is too harmful to threatened grizzly bears.

NEW STUDY: CO2 released from wildfires in western U.S. is being overestimated, leading to poor land management decisions

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File this one under “the more you know.” It can also be cross filed under “we told you so.” Also, there’s plenty of scientific evidence and research out there that would refute much of what Idaho State Forester David Groeschl says below.

From the Associated Press:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere from forest fires in the U.S. West is being greatly overestimated, possibly leading to poor land management decisions, researchers at the University of Idaho said.

Researchers in the study published last week in the journal Global Change Biology say many estimates are 59% to 83% higher than what is found based on field observations.

Healthy forests are carbon sinks, with trees absorbing carbon and reducing the amount in the atmosphere contributing to global warming. Forest fires can release that carbon.

“Part of the reason we’re talking about this is that there’s a narrative that has circumvented science,” said Jeff Stenzel, the lead author and a doctoral student at the university. “What that can lead to is management decisions that can exacerbate rather than mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.”

The study used field data from a 2002 wildfire in southern Oregon and a 2013 wildfire in central California that, the authors of the paper said, included one of the largest pre- and post-fire data sets available.

Typically, the study found, about 5% of the biomass burned in a forest fire as opposed to other estimates of 30% and public perceptions of 100%.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in late 2018 cited carbon released from forest fires as a result of poor forest practices on federal land and a need to increase various management practices.

Forest fires usually leave behind standing dead trees, the study said, that could be mistakenly counted as releasing carbon in other estimates. The carbon remains in those trees and is slowly released over decades. Even then, the study found, much of that carbon is recaptured in new growth following the forest fire.

Overall, the study found, forest fires in the U.S. West in the last 15 years have emitted about 250 million tons of carbon, about half of many estimates.

Idaho State Forester David Groeschl said carbon emissions are a consideration when it comes to making decisions about forests on the 2.4 million acres (987,000 hectares) the state manages, but so are other factors.

In deciding where to log, Groeschl said, the state considers weather and climate, insect and disease, fire frequency and severity, milling technology, and local, regional and global economics.

When a forest is logged, the resulting wood products retain that carbon, he noted. When a fire moves through state-owned forests, he said, salvage logging removes standing dead trees and trees likely to die and so captures that carbon in wood products rather than allowing it to be slowly released over several decades.

He also said that forest restoration efforts following logging or a fire speed up the return of a forest that otherwise could take decades.

“We get carbon sequestration going as quickly as possible,” he said.

Wildfires have become more frequent and more severe in the last 20 to 30 years, Groeschl said, which is also a factor when it comes to logging state lands.

“The longer we grow it, the greater the risk of loss and carbon emission happening,” he said.

Sequoia ForestKeepers Weigh in on HUD Grant for Stanislaus National Forest Salvage

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Volunteer from Tuolumne River Trust working on Rim Fire restoration.
Ara Mardosarian of Sequoia ForestKeeper posted this as a comment on an earlier thread. Since it is specific and about something new, I am posting it here to get more discussion.

On 31 May 2019, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy held a field trip regarding a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Redevelopment (HUD) funding application by Stanislaus National Forest for $70 million, through the National Disaster Resilience Competition, to salvage log burned areas of the 2013 Rim Fire FOR BIOMASS BURNING – A DESTRUCTIVE CLEARCUTS-FOR-KILOWATTS SCHEME. This field trip was attended by 80 persons, including members of more than 20 environmental organizations in opposition to post-fire salvage logging, including Sierra Club and Sequoia ForestKeeper. Dr. Chad Hanson, John Muir Project Fire Ecologist, and Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Geos Institute Director, lead the effort to defend the position to not salvage log recovering burned forest habitats. Brandon Collins, USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station, said there was little to no conifer regeneration within the Rim Fire. We saw seedling regeneration at multiple sites. And the Forest Service saw the seedlings growing in the Rim Fire snag forest habitats as fuel, when we see this as biodiverse habitat. Besides providing habitat for Black-backed woodpeckers and other cavity nesting species, standing burned dead trees/snags provide cooling shade that helps hold the moisture in the ground for the already-growing, natural tree seedling regeneration and for eventual delivery of that retained drinking water to communities below the forest. At no time did the Forest Service acknowledge the value of the standing burned dead trees/snags for sequestering carbon in the forest or counteracting the climate crisis. The agencies would not even address the repeated queries about the emissions from biomass power generation that the project would cause. The blatant climate science denial and antipathy toward nature by the Forest Service and its supporters (John Buckley, Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center), (David Edelson, The Nature Conservancy), and (Craig Thomas, Fire Restoration Group) of this clearcuts-for-kilowatts scheme was stunning. Why is $70 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Redevelopment (HUD) disaster funds going to log federal forests (creating unnatural flammable conditions) when those funds should be spent on community disaster relief? This $70 million of HUD funding should, instead, be applied to the real disaster of the Camp Fire in Butte County, to help the victims in Paradise, California who lost everything.

Note: I think we should be consistent about calling people Drs. or not.. it appears that Brandon Collins is arguably just as much of a Dr. as Hanson and Della Salla, plus his research is equally, or more, relevant, depending on your point of view. Here’s a link to his papers.

Mardosarian makes several claims in this comment that are interesting and worthy of discussion:

1. Collins said there was little or no regeneration (did he say this? is the first question and “is it true?” is the second question).
2. The Forest Service saw seedlings as fuel (in my history with the Forest Service we didn’t think this way, but perhaps times have changed).
3. Standing dead provide shade and reduce moisture loss. I don’t know if this is true but it sounds plausible. But of course dead trees ultimately fall down and dry out, and when burning can potentially damage soil.
4. The shade of standing dead treese provide better microenvironments for seedling establishment and/or growth than open areas.
5. Standing dead sequester carbon in the forest (is that better than being turned into wood products? I think this depends on assumptions)

I am interested in the mechanisms by which people think that standing and fallen dead trees “counteract the climate crisis.”

6. Emissions. If Californians are worried about emissions from biomass energy (unclear whether particulates or CO2), then the obvious answer would be to sell the material to other markets, like our friends in BC, or for CLT, or to turn into biochar or …? To what extent does the ultimate use matter.

In my own experience with a broad range of individuals in the FS and TNC, as we worked on climate change and other issues, they were not “climate deniers” nor have an “antipathy to nature”. Certainly, as Dr. Tom Mills used to say, “reasonable people could disagree” about salvage logging in a specific place at a specific time.

This seems to be the agenda for the tour. If someone has a photo