Sierra Nevada Logging Examples

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Back in 2012, I worked my last season with the Forest Service, on the Amador Ranger District of the Eldorado National Forest. In particular, I led the crew in marking the cut trees in this overcrowded unit.

The above picture shows the partially logged unit, as well as the sizes of logs thinned.

This part of the same unit shows a finished portion, and two other log landings.

Here is a link to the larger view.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6022239,-120.3284245,1019a,35y,90h/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

There are also other completed cutting units in the area, which I worked in. Most of those were also cut in 2018, six years after they were marked. The existing plantations were cut back in the 80’s. At least one new goshawk nest was found, and the cutting unit was dropped.

Cal Fire found that PG&E broke laws in 12 California wildfires, prosecutors may not file charges

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The Sacramento Bee has the full story.

Remember, earlier this year Trump’s outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed California wildfires on “frivolous lawsuits” from “environmental terrorist groups.”

PG&E has already been convicted in criminal court for a recent deadly tragedy. Could the utility soon find itself as the defendant in a dozen more cases, charged with breaking state laws?

In the wake of massive utility-caused Northern California wildfires, a handful of district attorneys in flame-scarred counties are pondering whether to charge the utility company in criminal court for misconduct.

Cal Fire, the state’s fire protection agency, sent investigative reports to seven counties this summer saying it believes PG&E likely violated state public resources and health and safety laws in 12 blazes.

Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean said it is up to local prosecutors in Sonoma, Napa, Yuba, Nevada, Lake, Humboldt and Butte counties to make independent decisions on whether to use the fire agency’s investigative conclusions to file criminal charges.

Montana County rains on land deal

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It is a time-tested and popular model.  A private landowner is willing to sell land or conservation easements to the government.  A third party conservation group steps in to provide bridge funding and/or ownership until the government can fund the purchase.  In this case, involving the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation as the intermediary:

“The project, which was in its very early stages, would provide some valuable new access points in the area as well as protection from development along a stretch of Sheep Creek, a tributary of the Smith River, he said. In addition to the 4,000 acres purchased and then resold to the Forest Service, the checkerboard pattern of land ownership would mean access to an additional 7,000 acres of public land.”

While Meagher County (pronounced “mar”) doesn’t have any authority to influence the deal, it is attempting to do so by issuing a resolution opposing it, citing “potential loss of tax revenue, issues with federal land ownership and management, and the question of whether a land swap could open access without expanding federal land ownership.”  The resolution says, “that the commission respects private property rights and supports tourism but continues to oppose expanded federal ownership.”  (Funny that they don’t mention elk hunting/hunters, which has to be a key benefit.)  Their opposition may affect how the project competes for funding, and whether RMEF wants to stay involved.

The Forest Service, to its credit, is looking out for the “greatest good” and not bowing to nimbyism or political ideology.

“We acknowledge Meagher County’s resolution and recognize their position regarding the Holmstrom Sheep Creek proposal,” said Lisa Stoeffler, acting forest supervisor. “We appreciate that our working relationship with the commission allows for open discussions, especially related to increased recreational public lands access and the improvement of crucial fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas within the county. The Forest plans to submit two project requests for LWCF funding, one of which will include Holmstrom Sheep Creek. In our request packet, we will fully disclose the Commission’s resolution regarding the project.”

These have normally been seen as “white hat” projects in the past, but under this Administration, the Forest Service may find out that white is the new black.

Trapping lawsuits

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Neither of these is going to show up in the NFS litigation summaries because the Forest Service is not a party to the litigation (yet), but the trapping at issue occurs on national forest lands, and the Forest Service does have the authority to regulate trapping that occurs on national forest lands.

Two environmental groups have sued the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for failing to ban the trapping of Humboldt martens in Oregon’s coastal forests.  Humboldt martens were proposed for listing as a threatened species in October.  Threats include “loss of habitat, wildfire, changing climate, trapping, vehicle mortality, vegetation management, exposure to toxicants, threats from predators and effects associated with small and isolated populations.”  According to the Center for Biological Diversity news release, “Following the largest mammal survey ever conducted in the state, researchers from Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service recommended eliminating trapping of coastal martens as a first step in rebuilding the state’s imperiled populations.”  Good for the Forest Service.  Their involvement may have something to do with the fact that their “vegetation management” could be curtailed if the species is listed.  Perhaps they will intervene in the lawsuit on the side of CBD et al?  Probably as likely as them invoking their own authority to regulate trapping as a use of national forest lands.  But that may be better than being added as a defendant.

The Environmental Protection Information Center has filed a notice of intent to sue the federal USDA Wildlife Services.  According to this article, they allege that the agency’s program for killing beavers harms endangered fish because beavers “benefit salmon and steelhead by building better habitat conditions, including creation of ponds used by salmon and increasing stream flow in summer months.”  They are asserting that the Wildlife Services must consult on the effects of this program with the National Marine Fisheries Service.  While the Forest Service is not mentioned, nor is the geographic scope, this certainly includes practices on national forest lands.  The Forest Service has a Memorandum of Understanding with Wildlife Services, addressing among other things “managing damage caused by indigenous, non-native and feral vertebrates on NFS lands,” in which the Forest Service is designated as the lead agency for NEPA compliance.  While the MOU acknowledges the need to comply with the Endangered Species Act, this responsibility is not designated.  It appears that the Forest Service at least shares any obligation to consult with Wildlife Services and could be named as a party.

 

Idaho and USDA sign agreement to improve forest health

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USFS press release:

Idaho and USDA sign historic agreement to improve forest health

DECEMBER 18, 2018 AT 3:00 PM EST – The State of Idaho and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today entered into a new agreement to improve forest health conditions across Idaho that sets an example of interagency collaboration for other states to follow.

Jim Hubbard, USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment overseeing the Forest Service, joined Governor C. L. “Butch” Otter and Governor-Elect Brad Little in signing the new “Shared Stewardship Agreement” on Tuesday in Boise.

The strategy, announced publicly in August, is called “Toward Shared Stewardship across Landscapes: An Outcome-Based Investment Strategy,” and you can read more about it here.

USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue recently held up Idaho as a prime example of what can be achieved when agencies work together to implement a shared vision of healthy, productive lands that positively contribute to people’s lives.

“By pooling resources, sharing expertise and making decisions together, the State of Idaho and the Forest Service can get more work done in our forests to protect communities and provide jobs,” said Under Secretary Hubbard.

Idaho’s Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) program is a great example of state and federal agencies working together to increase active management and find solutions to challenging natural resource issues. The Shared Stewardship Agreement will take these collaborative efforts to a new level.

“Idaho has proven repeatedly, it is an effective and innovative leader in finding consensus-based, commonsense solutions to complex natural resource issues,” Governor Otter said. “By anchoring to GNA – and keeping our value of stewardship at the forefront of our minds – we are well positioned to implement this shared stewardship plan of action that will get the right results for Idaho.”

“Idaho is leading the nation in implementing new ways to reduce fire risk in our communities and improve the overall health of our public lands,” Governor-elect Brad Little said. “The agreement we signed today commits us to working even more closely with our federal partners so together we can make the biggest impact on the land and in the lives of our citizens.”

As part of the new strategy, IDL and the Forest Service will:

  • Continue to focus on reduction of fuels and wildfire risk to communities, improvement of forest health and watershed conditions and support markets to sustain and create jobs.
  • Plan together, invest wisely and create real outcomes at a landscape scale across boundaries while respecting all ownerships values.

Over the next few months IDL and the Forest Service Northern and Intermountain Regions, along with the National Forests in Idaho, will identify two pilot landscapes – one in northern Idaho and one in southern Idaho. A landscape-scale approach will be used to evaluate recent and upcoming forest restoration projects, communities at risk, and what can be done to complement the work already planned in order to do the right work, in the right places at the right scale.

Prescribed burns on the decline — study

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Recent article from Greenwire:

Prescribed burns on the decline — study

Marc Heller, E&E News reporter

Excerpt:

Use of prescribed burns in areas prone to wildfire has fallen since 2011, according to a study by advocates of the practice.

A total of 11.3 million acres were treated with fire in 2017, down 12 percent from the 12.8 million acres treated in 2011, the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils and the National Association of State Foresters reported today.

The groups attributed the decline to several factors, including weather, access to wilderness, politics, liability and cost. Regardless of the reasons, they said, the report suggests officials should examine the impediments to prescribed burns, which the organizations consider a vital part of managing many forests and prairies.

OSB Plant in California Using Small Diameter Material – Why Not?

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One of the things I like about our world is that you can come back in 40 years and people are sometimes talking about the same thing. In the early 80’s, I worked in south central Oregon, on the Deschutes, Fremont, Winema and Ochoco National Forests. We had a serious mountain pine beetle epidemic. One of our silviculture folks suggested that instead of dealing with all those dead trees, we should just put in a large fuel break around the town of Chiloquin. That idea was certainly thinking outside the box, but at the end of the day many of the dead trees were removed by Weyco (as I recall). The other idea that was much spoken of in those days was getting an OSB plant in Chiloquin. The problem at the time was that the Forest Service couldn’t provide assurances of its share of supply.

Flash forward to today. We’ve talked here before about the difficulties of fuel treatments in California (and elsewhere) because there are small trees to be removed, and there are no markets for small trees. Meanwhile, many environmental groups don’t want big trees removed. The fear is that fuel treatments will take all the big fire-resilient trees or that areas will be clearcut. The solution, perhaps, is to find markets for small trees.

So perhaps it seems like a win-win to establish an OSB plant in California. Having driven through California recently, I see that indeed many Californians use OSB. If we look at the map above of current OSB plants, we can see that these heavy products would have to be transported shorter distances potentially leading to fewer carbon emissions per OSB unit at point of use. And if California’s environmental restrictions on the plant are greater than elsewhere, and if a company can meet those restrictions, wouldn’t that be an improvement over other parts of the country?

Here’s part of the Beck Group’s analysis.

Our raw material supply analysis found that topwood from ongoing sawtimber harvests, small diameter trees from forest health treatments, and sawmill by-products such as lumber trim ends, slabs, and edgings could supply nearly 2 times the prospective plant’s annual raw material requirement. An additional consideration is that the recent wildfires in California, while unfortunate, and tragic may have created a situation where community and political leaders are ready to fully support a large wood products manufacturing facility that can utilize the fuel that has built up in the region’s forests.

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At a production volume of 750 MMSF (3/8” basis) per year we estimate the nearby annual OSB market size is nearly 4 times larger than the capacity of the plant. We also estimate that a Northern California OSB plant would enjoy an average of about a $35/MSF finished product freight cost advantage over other North American OSB producers, which is about 15 percent of the long-term average OSB sales value.

Here’s a link to their blog post. I’m thinking that this sounds like a win-win. What do you think? Thanks to Forest Business Network for this link.

Forest plan promotes “budget-busting suppression spending”

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This article discusses a report from FUSEE (Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology – dutifully described as funded by environmental organizations) on the 2016 Soberanes Fire on the California coast:

In the first week, the blaze destroyed 57 homes and killed a bulldozer operator, then moved into remote wilderness in the Los Padres National Forest. Yet for nearly three more months the attack barely let up.

The Soberanes Fire burned its way into the record books, costing $262 million as the most expensive wildland firefight in U.S. history in what a new report calls an “extreme example of excessive, unaccountable, budget-busting suppression spending.”

The report suggests the Forest Service response was the result of a “use it or lose it” attitude to spend its entire budget, which had been boosted by $700 million because of a destructive 2015 fire season. The agency managed to spend nearly all its 2016 money in a less-active fire season on about half the amount of land that burned the year before.

“They just kept going crazy on it,” report author Timothy Ingalsbee said. “It wasn’t demand-driven. It was supply-driven. They had all this extra money Congress had given them, and they had to justify that.”

An internal Forest Service review produced last year and obtained by the AP reached some of the same conclusions as Ingalsbee.

The review found forest managers didn’t think they could deviate from the “overwhelming force concept” aimed at suppression. It also said the agency’s protocol for managing long-term wildfires “does not sufficiently evaluate and adjust to changing risk.”

One challenge fire commanders faced was an outdated forest management plan for Los Padres that called for full suppression of all wildfires, Ingalsbee said.

Mike Warren, a retired National Park Service firefighter who reviewed the report, questioned the wisdom of suppressing fires in remote wilderness where flames can help eliminate brush and other flammable vegetation that could fuel a later wildfire.

Of course that highlighted part made me curious about what this 2005 forest plan said.  I assume that interpretation is based on a table of “suitable uses” (Table 2.3.4) that shows that none of the six management areas are suitable for “Wildland Fire Use Strategy.”  I can see how that would lead to an approach of burning money.

I also took a quick look at the proposed final revised plan for the Inyo National Forest, to see what might be different.  There are four fire management zones (p. 75) (Inyo zones).

Wildfire responses include a spectrum of strategies that include full suppression, confine/contain, monitoring, and management to meet resource objectives. The entire spectrum of strategies is available in all the zones and wildland fires will be actively managed in all the zones to meet objectives.

That includes the “Community Wildfire Protection Zone,” where (p. 76):

Wildfire is suppressed under most weather and fuel conditions due to the very significant risk of potential economic loss and public safety concerns posed by a wildfire occurring within this zone.

The article also acknowledges the “pressure from politicians, homeowners, businesses, loggers and ranchers to control the fire.  I suppose that kind of pressure was part of why this forest plan says what it does, and other places have different issues, but the forest planning process is a good place to talk about what the tradeoffs are.

Interior’s No. 2 Man Sees Washington from a Colorado Point of View – from Colorado Politics

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Now that Zinke’s out, but before we hear about a replacement, let’s take a look at a Colorado perspective on his second in command, a fellow named David Bernhardt, a native Coloradan who grew up in Rifle, on the Western Slope. 

This article is by Joey Bunch of Colorado Politics (shout out to them, they gave us a discounted subscription as a not-for- profit). It’s very even-handed IMHO, plus has a number of interesting links.

On his latest return to Colorado, Bernhardt visited with federal workers and volunteers. Then he went to the Western Slope to present an oversized check for $40.1 million for payments in lieu of taxes, the annual allocation that offsets what the local property tax base loses for carrying federal property on its books. Garfield County received $3.2 million.

He’s a key figure in President Trump’s proposed reorganization of federal agencies. One of the Department of the Interior moves most heavily discussed — with the great benefit of bipartisan support from Colorado’s Gardner, a Republican, and Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat — is the potential of relocating the Bureau Land Management federal headquarters outside Washington, and specifically to Grand Junction.

The first thing the department has to do is align the regions of its various agencies so they can better coordinate and augment their often parallel missions while reducing costly duplication and delays, Bernhardt said.

“Where things are overloaded is really in the field,” he said. “Our management has gotten a little heavier and our field organizations have gotten a little smaller, and we need to put that energy and capabilities out on the front lines.” 

We’ve talked before on this blog about the confusion it can cause partners when dealing with the many headed hydra of Interior agencies, responsibilities, and regions.

“It’s very hard for anybody who knows anything to look at our organization and say it’s firing on all cylinders,” Bernhardt said. “Even the Democrats who spend a lot of time with our department, I think at the end of the day, they know that we have room for significant improvement, and why would they not want to be part of that?”

“I know the rules,” Bernhardt said, leaning forward over his coffee cup when asked about ethics and investigations. “I’m going to play by the rules. I’m not going to go outside the rules. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to rigorously adhere to those rules.

“And those rules don’t say I can’t have opinions on certain things.”

He continued, “Everybody in the administration is for clean air, clean water, a wonderful outdoor experience. At the same time, we also believe you can develop energy responsibly. We don’t think it’s an either-or choice.”

One thing I noticed in the article was this quote:

Trump’s executive orders and Zinke’s secretarial orders have pushed the pace of overhauling the agency with brute force — not in ways appreciated by department veterans, environmentalists or others on the political left.

At least in the Forest Service, it would be hard to get a sense of what current employees think about things. I’ve found it to be from one to the other end of the spectrum on almost everything, from the greatest philosophical, to one particular line in a rule (say, ecological integrity, for example ;)). You can see that from the retirees on this blog who are free to speak their minds. You could also think AFSEE and NAFSR may not have the same point of view on things. Anyway, I just pointed it out because it’s an interesting thing to observe.. in what pieces do folks in media cite what agency employees think?, and we might wonder how they get that info.