Assisted Migration and Forest Trees Adapting to Climate Change: NY Times Article

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Julio Cruz on Thursday works on the Forest Service’s plan to plant about 150,000 trees on land ravaged by the Hayman fire in the Pike National Forest. The plan also aims to protect Front Range water supplies. From the Denver Post.

You’ve gotta love this business.  In 1980 at the Fifth North American Forest Biology Workshop, I remember a fellow geneticist talking about how climate change was going to cause trees to die out because they couldn’t move north due to uninhabitable spaces for them compared to post-glaciation (say fields instead of forests in the Midwest). That was 40 years ago. I remember so clearly because I remember thinking “but we didn’t have pick-up trucks then and seeds could fall into the back,  and get moved across those spaces.”  And that’s if we didn’t intentionally move them across spaces and plant them, something people are thinking about and now doing.

Here we are in 2019 and here is an article in the NY Times about moving tree species north, now called “assisted migration.” It’s pretty interesting. Here are a few quotes.

As a cautionary tale, Mr. Riely looks to the forest collapse that struck near Denver some years back. Conditions in the Rockies differ substantially from those in Rhode Island; still, he calls it “a water supplier’s nightmare.”

In the 1990s, dry spells, insects and disease began killing trees there. In 1996 and 2002, ferocious fires tore through. Then the rains came. Flash floods carried dark, ash-filled silt and debris into Denver’s reservoirs, clogging them.

So in 2010, Denver Water began replanting the mountainsides, making the forest more drought-resistant by spacing trees farther apart and reducing competition for water. Opening the forest canopy allowed other kinds of plants, which also prevent erosion, to grow as well.

I’m not sure I would agree that the forest “collapsed” prior to say, the Hayman Fire.  But it certainly makes sense to plant trees farther apart in conditions where other trees are unlikely to fill in, and otherwise planted ones might need to be thinned at some point in the future. I wonder about the idea of  “opening the forest canopy” after Hayman, as it was and is pretty open in a lot of places. Like there are no living trees. See the photo above.

Another interesting thing about this article is that it talks about moving species, and planting species in different microclimates, but not much about using different genetic sources of the same species. That approach would possibly have less disruptive effects on associated organisms in the area.  As the concern is mentioned in the story:

Some worry about the unintended consequences of shuffling plants and animals around and that the approach will become widely adopted. “Moving species is the equivalent of ecological gambling,” said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion ecology and environmental science at McGill University in Montreal. “You’re spinning the roulette wheel.”

In the world of forest genetics, there have been many plantings of different seed sources through time in different places. The last I heard, people were taking advantage of this knowledge where it is available in terms of moving sources.  I also remember the effort to grow eucalypts in Florida for biomass (pre-energy) and the hundred year freezes that knocked them out in the 80’s.. Here’s a link to the history by Don Rockwood at the University of Floriday. You can argue that eucs are a different beast because they’re not from North America but still…things can grow well for a while and then.. not so much.

Matching Eucalyptus species to Florida’s diverse weather and soils is challenging. Historically defined climatic regions based on average low temperatures or numbers of freezes provide some broad guidelines, but annual aberrations such as the three 100-year freezes in the 1980s [11], extended cold periods of the 2010-11 winter, and the abrupt freezes of the “warm” winter of 2011-12 profoundly influence freeze susceptibility of all young eucalypts. Rainfall patterns with unpredictable, extended dry spells make Florida’s summer rainfall climate highly variable and difficult for successful planting and early growth.

Finally, I think it’s important to note that worrisome invasive tree pests continue to be imported and expand in the US. So you’ve got unpredictability of different kinds (and climate and pests can interact) over a period of a tree’s lifespan (a hundred years or more). I can see why people might try some things, or wait and see.

The Different Kinds of “Privatizing” Public (Federal) Lands and CBD’s Most Wanted List

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From Center for Biological Diversity “Public Lands Enemies”

Matthew and I have been having an interesting discussion here about privatizing public lands and the role of various political actors, which I thought I would move to a separate post. It all started as “what’s with Wyoming and Utah ” and originally started with a comment by Jon. I appreciate Matthew’s look at history and I bet there are historic reasons that Utah is the way it is, just like any other state.

First I would like to separate the idea of privatization as any private entity leasing federal land- here is an example in the Summit Daily News by a writer named Jonathan Thompson, a contributing editor to the High Country News.

Zinke has repeatedly expressed his opposition to wholesale federal land transfers, but his enthusiasm for leasing adds up to the same thing. The interior secretary is running a de facto privatization scheme.

(my bold) It may seem ironic that the Summit Daily News ran this, given that the largest economic engines in Summit County are ski areas located on leased Forest Service land. Oh well. I think it is intentional, and not very accurate, to conflate selling federal land to “letting people do things on federal land and getting money for it.”

If we talk about “real” privatization, there have been various efforts by Congressfolk to that have been characterized by some as privatization. Not having looked into those bills I don’t know the details.

I don’t pay a lot of attention because there isn’t enough support to do it, so it is just political theater. (I’d be interested in posts as to what the bills contain .. I could be wrong).

It turns out that our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity actually have a most wanted list of Congressfolk. Here’s their 2017 report. Of course it goes without saying that I don’t agree with them. My point is that many western states are represented -even in the CBD version of who are the “bad guys.” If you look at the second list, you’ll even see easterners.

For this report we identify the top 15 members of Congress who have emerged as enemies of public lands.
These federal lawmakers were selected because they:
• Authored and/or cosponsored the largest number of “anti-public lands” bills between 2011 and 2016;
• Put the narrow interests of extractive industries ahead of native wildlife, habitat protection, clean water, clean air and opposing rules or laws that limit the ability of extractive interests to dictate and dominate use of public lands.

The 15 Public Lands Enemies in rank order are:
1. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)
2. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah, 1st District)
3. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
4. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz., 4th District)
5. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
6. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah, 2nd District)
7. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska, At Large)
8. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
9. Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho, 1st District)
10. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah, 3rd District)
11. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev., 2nd District)
12. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
13. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M., 2nd District)
14. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif., 4th District)
15. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.)

The ultimate goal of these Public Lands Enemies is to wrest control of these lands out of public hands and give it to corporate polluters and extractive industries, robbing future generations of wild places. With the West losing to development one football field’s worth of natural areas every two and a half minutes — an area larger than Los Angeles each year — these shared lands are more important than ever. Other legislators should be intensely wary of embracing the extreme views of these Public Lands Enemies.

CBD treads a very delicate line of getting people charged up and knowing at the same time that the dog of “real privatization” or even “state transfer” won’t hunt- and quote the polls in the same paper that indicate it. Oh well, and here are their second order enemies:

• Sen. Michael Crapo (R-Idaho)
• Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
• Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.)
• Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.)
• Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
• Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho)
• Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.)
• Rep. Paul Cook (R-Calif.)
• Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.)
• Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.)
• Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.)
• Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.)
• Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
• Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-Wash.)
• Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas)
• Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.)
• Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.)
• Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.)

Back to my Wyoming point.. Congressfolk there barely show up, perhaps because there are so few Representatives.

I hear the word “extractive” quite a bit. It seems to imply that people who take things away (oil and gas, coal, woody material) are bad, and people who leave things on federal land (ski lifts, trails, dog and people leavings, microwave towers, pipelines, pitons) are good for the environment. I don’t think it’s that simple. Non-traditional forest products? Grazing takes some grass and leaves some deposits.. and so on.

State “primacy” for NEPA documents

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Second maybe to only Utah for creative ways to privatize federal lands, the State of Wyoming has come up with another scheme. This article reports on “a conversation between Gov. Mark Gordon and Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt about how Wyoming could assume a role that’s now the purview of federal agencies.”

“The notion here would be could the state have more of a primary role in establishing the beginning steps of [the] NEPA [process],” Gordon told WyoFile in late March. “In other words, could the state organize the NEPA effort and kind of walk through it and deliver [results]” to a federal agency.

Following Gordon’s lead, the Wyoming Legislature expects to study over the next nine months “state primacy and oversight of environmental assessments and environmental impact statements …”

“The Committee would study enacting a legislative framework to assert primacy over these [environmental impact] assessments,” the Legislature’s assignment reads. The goal is “a memorandum of understanding with the Department of the Interior to assume the responsibilities of these assessments that are currently required under the National Environmental Policy Act,” state documents say.

The states are already given a front row seat in federal NEPA processes, and the federal government can contract for NEPA services; it is the apparently new concept of “primacy” that is going to run into legal problems. It’s not clear from the examples provided whether the issue is decision-making authority, or to get “more of this work done in a timely manner.” If it’s the latter, I’m sure the feds would be happy to have state volunteers or state dollars (but isn’t this the focus of the “Good Neighbor” program?), though increased legal scrutiny of potentially biased NEPA products should be expected. If “primacy” means “the final word” on anything in a NEPA product they should probably spend their committee time elsewhere (like Congress).

 

 

Downgrading wildlife in land management plans

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Siskiyou Mountains Salmander, Plethodon stormi, (c) 2005 William Flaxington

 

The Center for Biological Diversity has notified the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue for failure to respond to its petition to list the Siskiyou Mountains salamander as a threatened or endangered species. The species is found primarily on BLM lands, but also on the Rogue River-Siskiyou and Klamath National Forests.   Prior listings were avoided largely because of provisions in the Northwest Forest Plan to protect the species:

Conservation groups first petitioned for protection of the salamander under the Endangered Species Act in 2004. To prevent the species’ listing, the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed a conservation agreement in 2007, intended to protect habitat for 110 high-priority salamander sites on federal lands in the Applegate River watershed. In 2008 the Fish and Wildlife Service denied protection for the salamander based on this conservation agreement and old-growth forest protections provided by the Northwest Forest Plan.

Here’s what’s changed (from the 2018 listing petition):

The Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) which replaces the Northwest Forest Plan, has the express purpose of substantially increasing logging on BLM lands with the range of the salamander and elsewhere (USBLM 2016, p. 20). The WOPR was originally proposed in 2008 and abandoned by the BLM in 2012 after years of litigation. In August 2016 the BLM issued a final Environmental Impact Statement implementing the WOPR (USBLM 2016).

The WOPR presents a substantial new threat to Siskiyou Mountains salamanders in Oregon because it will allow increased timber harvest in late-successional areas, decrease optimal salamander habitat, increase habitat fragmentation, eliminate requirements to conduct predisturbance surveys in salamander habitat, and allow logging of previously identified known, occupied salamander sites. The WOPR removes protections for salamander populations formerly included in species protection buffers on BLM lands. Although some of the reserves on BLM lands have been enlarged in the WOPR, timber harvest emphasis areas will often be subject to more intensive logging, and logging of known, occupied Siskiyou Mountains salamander sites is allowed.

This demonstrates again the value of including regulatory mechanisms as protective measures in forest plans: they can keep species from being listed under ESA. There is already a pending lawsuit against the new WOPR (now officially called the Resource Management Plans for Western Oregon), and the Forest Service should keep this in mind when it revises its forest plans that are now governed by the Northwest Forest Plan (especially the “survey and manage” requirement).

The trend seems to be in the other direction, however (see also greater sage grouse). And when a species is listed, regulatory mechanisms are needed in forest plans to contribute to their recovery and delisting. Yet the Forest Service is removing such mechanisms from forest plans for grizzly bears, lynx and bull trout (Flathead National Forest), Indiana bats (Daniel Boone National Forest: to “provide flexibility to implement forest management activities”), and black-footed ferrets (Thunder Basin National Grassland:  “greater emphasis on control and active management of prairie dog colonies to address significant concerns related to health, safety, and economic impacts on neighboring landowners”).   Since plant and animal diversity was one of the main reasons for NFMA it shouldn’t be a big surprise to see these kinds of retrograde actions ending up in court.

 

Early spring litigation summary

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Rosemont Mine

(Update to Tohono Oodaham v. USFS and two other cases discussed here.)

A FOIA request unearthed EPA comments to the Army Corps of Engineers regarding effects of the Clean Water Act permit. And the mining company response, which is partly to demand a “statistical analysis” of impacts before calling them “significant.”

Mountain yellow-legged frogs, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs, and Yosemite toads

(D. C. District Court decision in California Cattlemen’s Association v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)

Farming and ranching groups were not able to establish standing to sue under ESA by claiming that critical habitat designation led the Stanislaus National Forest to reduce permitted grazing, partly because that occurred before the critical habitat decision. The Regulatory Flexibility Act also did not apply.  Additional information here.

Greater sage grouse

(New lawsuit, Western Watersheds v. Bernhardt, in the District of Idaho.)

Plaintiffs who were already litigating allegedly inadequate protections for sage grouse adopted in BLM land management plans in 2015 (discussed here as Western Watersheds v. Zinke) are now suing the BLM for weakening them. The Forest Service adopted similar measures but has not yet changed them.  Additional information here.

Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument

(District of Oregon court decision in Murphy Company v. Trump)

The court found that the Oregon and California Lands Act, which applied to lands included in an expansion of the national monument, did not conflict with the Antiquities Act and did not prohibit inclusion of O & C ands in the monument.

Badger-Two Medicine

(Update on two lease cancellation cases)

The Department of Interior is withdrawing its appeal of a district court decision favoring leaseholders in one of two cases involving cancellation of oil and gas drilling leases on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest adjacent to Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.   Environmental and tribal intervenors are maintaining their appeal, and the second appeal by all parties remains pending.

Colorado oil and gas

(District of Colorado decision in Citizens for a Healthy Community v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management)

The BLM and Forest Service illegally approved two adjacent natural gas drilling plans in western Colorado, because they did not adequately analyze wildlife and climate impacts.

Mt. St. Helens

(New lawsuit.)

The Cascade Forest Conservancy filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service and BLM over the agencies’ decision to allow exploratory drilling near the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on lands acquired using the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Court fees and costs

The Montana District Court awarded fees based on Endangered Specie Act’s fee shifting provision to two attorneys who litigated Native Ecosystems Council v. Krueger, (see discussion of Beaverhead-Deerlodge forest plan). The award was due because plaintiffs were the “prevailing party” on a claim involving Canada lynx:   “By obtaining an enforceable judgment against the Forest Service that preserved the Court’s 2012 injunction pending consultation under the ESA, Plaintiffs obtained sufficient success for an award to be appropriate for the legal work in its entirety.” (These are the attorneys who frequently represent plaintiffs against the Forest Service in Montana, and you might find the court’s discussion of the value of their services to be interesting.)

The Oregon District Court awarded costs “other than attorney’s fees” to the government and intervenors as the “prevailing parties” in accordance federal court rules in BARK v. Northrop.   They were reimbursed for costs associated with preparing the records needed for the litigation. Courts can deny such costs, but this court was not convinced by these plaintiffs to do so.

Bagley Fire project

(Eastern District of California court decision in Conservation Congress v. U. S. Forest Service)

The court upheld the Bagley Hazard Tree Abatement Project on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. It involves felling and removal of hazard trees along roads in the area burned by the 2012 Bagley Fire. The court held:

  • The EA adequately adequately addressed cumulative effects because it stated, “[a]dditional impacts to the [NSO] and Sensitive species . . . could occur from the disturbance generated during implementation overlapping in space and time with private actions (highlighted to point out that a precedent cited by the court had held, [“g]eneral statements about `possible’ effects and `some risk’ do not constitute a `hard look’”).
  • The EA properly discounted effects on inventoried roadless areas because it characterized them as “substantially roaded” and “having minor roading,” as well as having very small proportions of the areas affected. (This is an example of the difference between IRAs and areas with roadless characteristics, discussed here.)
  • Effects on northern spotted owls in Late Successional Reserves and critical habitat were not significant because the BA states that there would be adequate numbers of snags remaining in treated areas, and, “the [Project] impacts would not affect the function of the habitat.”
  • The Forest was not required to consider an alternative that avoided IRAs and owl habitat because that would have excluded almost all of the project area, similar to no action. While not explicitly identified as an alternative, the EA also considered reducing the distance from roads to be included, which would have reduced the effects on these areas.
  • The Fish and Wildlife Service properly considered the spotted owl recovery plan as one of several pieces of information constituting best available science for its concurrence that there would be no adverse effects.

Pellet Exports from California and the Northwest? Interim Findings and a Blast From the Past

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Figure 3 Chip/Pellet Facilities – Pacific Northwest from Forest2Market article linked below.

It seems like pellets and chip markets might be useful for places like California which have 1) extra small trees to think for fuel treatments (conceivably without “industrial logging”, however that is defined, and 2) access to ports.  BC seems to be taking advantage of these opportunities.

Again logically there are two options if the use is bioenergy (conceivably this material also could be used for higher-value products). The first is to burn this material for bioenergy in California (not developed well due to pollution standards) or sell to others (which as Matthew points out, involves use of (more) fossil fuels currently for transport.)  This might raise all kinds of questions about Asia, for example, and their bioburners’ pollution and climate change calculations.

Anonymous hypothesized here that maybe the answer is availability of supply.  If this sounds like a blast from the past, some of us remember the mountain pine beetle infestation in the 80’s in Central Oregon and trying to do something with the dead trees (forty years ago).  One idea was to get a waferboard plant in Chiloquin, Oregon.  This idea foundered on the shoals of .. supply dependability.  It seems like a bit of a theme.  I think it’s important not to just conflate this with “litigation about projects”, although that may be a piece of the puzzle.  Again logically, a deal could be reached to say (if material x is removed, in y kinds of places, with practices such that z does not happen, to a total amount of a per acreage b, then we will not litigate).  Even so, if I were considering investing, I would be very dubious, given our track record.  It is interesting to think how Canada can provide adequate assurances for investment but we cannot.

I haven’t yet found an expert on this topic, and am still searching, but a forest economist friend pointed me to this piece that compares the Pacific Northwest to the US south and other sources. First, the authors note that a preponderance of forest land is public compared to the Southern U.S..

One notable difference between the US South and the Northwest is the seasonal (but frequent) occurrence of severe, large-scale wildfires. This is related to a combination of climatic conditions in the PNW, ownership/management intensity and harvest restrictions, all of which have allowed for the build-up of excessive fuel loads in many forest stands. One method proven to be effective in reducing wildfire loss is through the use of fuel-reduction thinning operations, especially on public lands.

Due to this lack of forest management, one analysis estimated that up to 12 million green tons of biomass could be harvested via fuel-reduction thinning over the course of a decade. If this management practice is promoted and implemented, the increase in small log and residual material availability could spur a growth in both wood chip and pellet production.

 

Ownership/Supply Chain Characteristics

With forestland ownership being primarily public (federal, state and municipal), the fiber supply chain in the US Northwest is somewhat different than in other regions. Public land management is governed by different sets of rules and procedures, and harvesting is conducted at a reduced level compared to private land.

A large portion of private forestland is owned by timber investment management organizations (TIMOs), real estate investment trusts (REITs), and other large landownerships that supply a majority of the timber in the region. Because of the TIMO/REIT influence in the region, tract sizes are generally much larger and small tracts (under 20 acres) are less prevalent than in other regions. There are small-scale landowners as well, but they comprise a much smaller piece of the available volume.

As a result of this fragmented ownership situation, there is not a robust timber dealer/broker network. Large landowners generally negotiate delivered contracts directly with the mills, and they then pay loggers for harvesting services and transportation from the woods to the mill. While there are some stumpage sale contracts in the region, it is not a common practice as it is in the US South.

 

So there are structural problems compared to the US South (not a robust dealer/broker network) which makes it more difficult to get this material from private land, but this article doesn’t mention the “relatively assured supply” problem from public lands. Seems like if it were a good idea to sell material removed from fuel treatments that California economic development would be on it. Maybe they are.

Can She Do That? Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Goals and Oil and Gas on Public Lands

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Elizabeth Warren addresses the crowd during an organizing event for her 2020 presidential campaign, April 16 in the hangar at the Stanley Marketplace in Aurora.
Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado

This is one of those topics on which I’m looking for a little help from our more legally knowledgeable Smokey Wire folks.

Here’s a story from the Western Wire.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) launched a public lands debate this week after unveiling her plan to prohibit drilling for new oil and gas development on federal lands both onshore and offshore in order to “end our public lands’ contribution to climate change.”

“I want to make you a promise—that is, on the first day of a Warren administration—on the first day, I will sign a moratorium that our public lands there will be no more new drilling or mining,” Warren said in Aurora, Colo. Tuesday evening.

On Monday, Warren announced her plans for public lands on Medium, outlining her goals on eliminating natural resource development on public lands, expanding renewable electricity generation on public lands, and restore two national monuments in Utah to their Obama-era boundaries.

“It is wrong to prioritize corporate profits over the health and safety of our local communities. That’s why on my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that says no more drilling — a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases, including for drilling offshore and on public lands (emphasis in original),” Warren wrote.

It seems to me that an Executive Order can’t override federal laws that allow activities on public lands. But I could be wrong.  Legal opinion?

I also think it’s kind of interesting that she assumes that wind and solar’s impacts are not deleterious, or that those impacts are OK and we can figure out the places that it won’t be a problem.  But most interesting is the idea that producing oil and gas “prioritizes corporate profits over health and safety” but corporate profits are OK when they involve wind and solar.  Personally, as a user of oil and gas, I prefer any corporate profits from production that I use to be generated in the US… otherwise I’d be supporting the corporate profits of Saudis or Canadians. Not that there’s anything wrong with either country (well OK, the Saudis are not my favorites) , but I’d rather be getting the jobs and taxes here.  I’m more inclined to support policies that reduce our use of oil and gas, not so much production.

A few other interesting quotes from the WW piece:

We can achieve this goal while prioritizing sites with low impact on local ecology but high potential for renewable energy generation. My administration will make it a priority to expedite leases and incentivize development in existing designated areas, and share royalties from renewable generation with states and local communities to help promote economic development and reduce local dependence on fossil fuel revenues,” Warren wrote.

At a separate event earlier Tuesday, Warren suggested opening more public lands for recreation in a “sustainable manner.” That includes concessions for the sale of food in order to boost local economies, the AP reporter Nick Riccardi tweeted.

Despite her plan for public lands, other Democrats were less enthusiastic. Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska promised “release a public lands plan that will make Elizabeth Warren look like Ryan Zinke,” his campaign manager told E&ENews.

But whether Warren or any other presidential candidate could implement a halt on drilling without conflicting with federally mandated quarterly lease sales would likely trigger questions about legality and a raft of lawsuits.

In Western states like New Mexico, the end of quarterly lease sales would threaten a revenue stream that drove more than a billion dollars to education alone in 2018, endangering progress for a state that has only recently seen dramatic improvements in many educational benchmarks due to increased revenues and investments thanks to oil and gas development in the state.

I also wonder what she means by “opening more public lands for recreation”. Aren’t they pretty much all open unless closed?

USDA orders scientists to say published research is ‘preliminary’

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WaPo article via SF Chronicle…. No, not The Onion.

USDA orders scientists to say published research is ‘preliminary’

Ben Guarino, The Washington Post Published 9:30 am PDT, Friday, April 19, 2019

Researchers at the Agriculture Department laughed in disbelief last summer when they received a memo about a new requirement: Their finalized, peer-reviewed scientific publications must be labeled “preliminary.”

The July 2018 memo from Chavonda Jacobs-Young, the acting USDA chief scientist, told researchers their reports published in scientific journals must include a statement that reads: “The findings and conclusions in this preliminary publication have not been formally disseminated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.” A copy of the memo was obtained by The Washington Post and the USDA confirmed its authenticity.

Litigation and Mediation: Exploring the Gendering of Touchy-Feely Options

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I ran across an interesting paper here on the gendered aspect of mediation compared to litigation. I think that it gets at some of the vibes I received when I was working for the Forest Service in litigation. I also think it’s germane to the Forest Service in that cooperators would like it if FS individuals had better “people skills.” In some cases, in the past at least, working and leading NEPA efforts have not been as highly valued by the FS as other kinds of work. Could some degree of gendering be one reason? I think it’s worthy of discussion. Of course, it is not about that men can’t be as good as women at any of these things.. it’s just that there might be underlying and unconscious thoughts that might make a person think “hey, she’s good at leading people on NEPA efforts, but that doesn’t translate to becoming a line officer because…” Or if NEPA and collaboration are unconsciously less valued, then men who do those jobs are also undervalued.

The authors make it easy to read this piece even if you don’t keep up with the field of gender studies. The lead author, Dr. Jennifer Schultz, is a law school professor at University of Manitoba and the second author Jocelyn Turnbull, is a lawyer in private practice.

Jennifer Coates examined gender-differentiated language and the role it plays in the continued marginalization of women in the professions. Her study found that men are socialized to be more competitive and to use competitive discourse throughout discussion, whereas women are socialized to use cooperative discourse.  Men in the study were more individualistic, while women often define themselves and understand their world with reference to their relationships. Mediation mirrors this genderization of goals by focusing on cooperation, consensus, and the parties’ relationship. Litigation, on the other hand, takes a masculine approach through competitive discourse and individualistic understandings of relationships. This is because the goal of litigation is best described as winning.

David Berg, an American trial lawyer, recalls the chief justice at his call to the bar telling the new lawyers, “You worry about winning. Let us worry about justice.”  Of course, he acknowledges that winning also “includes great settlements, especially in an age of alternative dispute resolution. But you can’t get great settlements without the credible threat that you will go to trial.”The goal of litigators is to use threats and intimidation to win their cases at the expense of their opponents. This winner-takes-all approach, which pits one party against the other, is conventionally masculine.

And..

In order to foster good communication in mediation, adroit facilitation is essential. Facilitation skills, generally known or understood as “soft skills”, include good communication skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal adeptness, and are explicitly gendered female, as is obvious by the reference to “soft”. It is often assumed that women more naturally possess these soft skills, and therefore it is simply taken for granted that these skills are traits of women, and not truly mediation skills. Soft skills – communication to assist and understand others – are highly feminized, focusing on listening, caring, dealing with emotions, and thinking creatively, all in the context of a privately facilitated process, and can be contrasted with the advocacy skills required for litigation.

Successful litigators realize that “much in the way of preparation, imagination, ingenuity, and oratorical skill is required to mount the most persuasive presentation” before the court in an effort to win their cases. Litigation skills focus on the individual litigator and his or her ability to manipulate, coax, and persuade a particular view point, in a public forum, to benefit one party at the expense of the other. Litigation skills are generally assumed to come more easily to men, whereas the “soft skills” of mediation come more easily to women. As a result, mediation becomes gendered female to allow for the appropriate worker pool to be established. When those who do the work are “naturally” suited to work in
that area, the work becomes devalued due to the lack of knowledge and training that is thought to be required for those working to accomplish what comes “naturally”. These differences contribute to the gendering of both processes.

Of course, the most important avenue to pursue is the much more complicated process of revaluing gender. The devaluation of mediation would be rectified if as a society, we overcome our prejudice against all female processes. If we valued female mediation as much as male litigation, we would not need to write this article. Revaluing gender is a crucially important, long-term goal that cannot begin without better education. Unless and until mediative, problem solving approaches become the focus of legal education, mediation will continue to be devalued and viewed as a secondary process to litigation by law students and society alike. Most importantly, it will mean that many who might benefit from the wonderful process of mediation will never be offered, or will not embrace, the opportunity.

Our Wooden Future- Cool New Technologies: New Scientist

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Toyota’s Setsuma roadster (not planned for production)

I thought this article was interesting because it rounded up a variety of new technologies using wood in one place, and also it focuses on European research. There is also a video of a wood laser.

Here are some of the technologies discussed:

CLT (cross laminated timber):

Shah says the skyscrapers are raising awareness, but the real action is in mid-rise buildings. An eight-storey wooden building can be prefabricated off-site and put together in a few days. The material can be grown in sustainably managed forests and, given how many of those there are, it is as if the wood for a single apartment takes just 7 seconds to grow. And while CLT costs a bit more than steel and concrete, it makes construction quicker. Rather than spewing carbon dioxide, it locks carbon away for the lifetime of the building, typically 60 to 70 years. This carbon storage can be a small but useful brake on climate change. According to a 2017 report on greenhouse gas removal by the Royal Society and the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, switching to timber in construction could instantly wipe a billion tonnes off the world’s annual carbon emissions. That is 2.3 per cent of the total – not a huge amount, but in a world where we have to do everything, immediately, it isn’t to be sniffed at. 

To replace petrochemicals:

Wood is also being developed as a source of raw materials to replace the oil-based compounds that dominate today’s chemicals market. This is where wood as we know it starts to disappear, and its integral components come to the fore.

Wood is a complex mixture of organic chemicals. About 40 per cent of it is nanocellulose, bundles of long, strong fibres that are like a natural version of Kevlar, the synthetic material used in bulletproof vests. “It’s a very strong fibre with excellent mechanical properties,” says Lars Berglund, director of the Wallenberg Wood Science Center. A further 30 per cent is lignin, a rich mix of organic compounds not dissimilar to crude oil. The rest is a starch-like substance called hemicellulose. These three components work together to create wood’s material properties, and they can all be extracted and processed into useful – and valuable – compounds.

Of course, the question remains with all these new chemical uses, and as wood is substituted for other building materials, will there be enough trees to go around?

But according to Himlal Baral, a senior scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia, there is plenty of land to go around. “Certainly, there is competing demand for land,” he says. “On the other hand, there is a huge amount of degraded and underutilised land available globally, between 1 and 6 billion hectares.” We could use such land, he says, to grow trees to make chemicals, structural materials and biofuels without competing with land needed for food or nature conservation. “Use of degraded and underutilised land for these products and services provides win-win solutions to mitigate climate change, and support rural livelihood and land restoration.”

Berglund also sees little to worry about. “In the Nordic countries, this is absolutely not a problem. If you look at annual growth and how much is harvested, we are not using all our sustainable forests.”