Defining Fuel Treatment Effectiveness: It’s About Time, Thank You Vorster et al. !

by

 

There are three tables of these metrics in the paper, the “ecological” (I would tend to think “biophysical” since are soils and watershed subsets of ecology? Interesting how terminology and associated thinking changes over time) table is posted at the end.

*****************************************

It seems to me that many wildfire/climate studies suffer from a scientific “streetlight effect”.  They correlate area burned with weather conditions or other broadscale data and voila! make conclusions.  I mentioned this in my comments to Steve’s post last week.

So I’d like to give a vigorous shout-out to the authors of this study. Vorster et al., Journal of Forestry 2023.  It’s  called “Metrics and Considerations for Evaluating How Forest Treatments Alter Wildfire Behavior and Effects.”  Just logically, wouldn’t you want to have a common idea of exactly what “fuel treatment effectiveness” means.. effective in what sense? So these folks decided to dig in and actually talk about 1) different things it could mean, and 2) what data is available to address those things.  This seems incredibly obvious and useful, and it’s only surprising to me that no one did it sooner.. otherwise researchers are basically analyzing past each other (like talking past each other only with research studies).

If we were being logical about scientific funding, we’d ask upfront “why are we asking this question? Whom exactly will this knowledge help?”  If we identified a group say, land managers or fire suppression folks, we would ask them what information would help them.  A serious problem to me is (and it has been in the past, and continues) researchers often define the problem their own way and then make a strange left turn at the end of the proposal and paper claiming that this information will be useful to people. Nowhere in the chain does there appear to be a reality check, or an advocate for the people whose work is claimed to have been helped.

What I really like about this paper is that this group of researchers decided to dive into all these questions and laid out a framework for a common language.  It’s great that this effort was funded  (by NIFA, CFRI , NSF and the Forest Service).

Interpretations of forest treatment effects in moderating fire impacts, and whether treatments are deemed effective, can vary widely depending on the audience. Treatment effects are objective measures of the influence on wildfire parameters, whereas effectiveness connotes a human judgment of this effect relative to a value-based goal. News media and the public often ascribe a treatment’s effectiveness to a few metrics: did treatments reduce the number of homes or high-value assets lost? Did treatments contain a fire? In contrast, firefighters may be focused on effectiveness through the lens of their ability to defend structures more efficiently or engage in suppression activities that otherwise would not have occurred (Jain et al. 2021). Meanwhile, land managers might be focused on soil impacts and associated short term watershed risks (i.e., debris flows, flooding, sedimentation, threats to drinking water supplies), as well as longer term ecosystem responses to wildfires, such as forest recovery. Interpretations of effectiveness may also change over time, as different outcomes become more or less important to the management goals of a given group.

Treatments can affect wildfires in a number of ways, including changing fire behavior and intensity, fire size, or footprint, altering impacts to ecological processes, facilitating incident operations, reducing suppression costs, and affecting the number of homes and structures lost (Agee and Skinner 2005; Kalies and Kent 2016; Thompson et al. 2013; Weatherspoon and Skinner 1996). However, quantifying the effect of treatments is complicated by the potentially minor influence relative to numerous other factors driving fire behavior, such as vegetation type, fuel arrangement and load, fire weather, topography, time of day of burning, and fire suppression efforts. In studies that look at these factors combined, the dominant influences on fire severity are often temperature, wind, and vegetation cover type (Birch et al. 2015; Evers et al. 2022; Martinson and Omi 2013; Prichard et al. 2020). Another challenge of quantifying the effect of treatments is the integration of data and processes operating at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Further, the scale of intended treatment effects varies widely. For example, some treatments are designed for local effects (e.g., defensible space around a home) whereas others may be designed for landscape effects (e.g., watershed protection). Fire behavior, typically measured as fire intensity, is commonly reduced following prescribed fire and in areas with previous fuels treatments or basal area reductions (Cansler et al. 2022; Kalies and Kent 2016; Prichard et al. 2020; Ritchie et al. 2007; Symons et al. 2008). Given these interacting factors, treatment effects are hard to quantify yet critical to understand as we are faced with growing costs and losses from wildfires (Bayham et al. 2022; Peterson et al. 2021; Steel et al. 2022; Wang et al. 2021) with increasing size and severity of these fires (Abatzoglou and Williams 2016; Stephens et al. 2014).

Evaluating treatment performance relative to stated or implicit objectives and how landscapes should be managed are topics of active research and discussion (Hessburg et al. 2021; Hood et al. 2022; McKinney et al. 2022; Sánchez et al. 2019). We add to these conversations by identifying a range of metrics to measure treatment effects on wildfire outcomes and considerations, challenges, and recommendations when evaluating and communicating about treatment effects. Here, we (1) present a framework to define metrics of treatment effects on wildfires that can be used to evaluate effectiveness of forest treatments for mitigating wildfire behavior and socioeconomic and ecological outcomes and (2) discuss important considerations and recommendations for evaluating these effects of treatments on fires. We draw on experience and literature primarily from the western United States and use the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire in Colorado, USA, as a case study to illustrate these considerations and evaluate the multiple modalities of treatment effects. Quantifying wildfire outcomes in treated areas provides better data-driven rationale for assessing effectiveness, which can aid in setting realistic expectations for how treatments will fare when confronted by extreme fire behavior and thus inform treatment prioritization and justify costs. This framework and these considerations can guide evaluations of treatment effects and assist managers, researchers, policy makers, and the general public in developing a common language for communicating about treatment effectiveness.

I really like this.. this is the opposite of the “streetlight effect”.. these folks actually are asking for the right info to address the question, including firefighter observations. And noting that data collected for different purposes may not be all that helpful for this purpose.

The treatment effects on wildfire metrics (Tables 1–3) fit into frameworks for characterizing cross-scale cumulative forest treatment impacts, such as the fuel management regime presented by Hood et al. (2022). Conversations about treatment effectiveness are prone to oversimplification and bias by highlighting certain cases to demonstrate a point while ignoring counterfactual evidence. A risk of having so many metrics of effects (Tables 1–3) is that every treatment can be deemed effective or ineffective post hoc by some metric rather than matching postfire metrics with pre-fire intentions for that treatment. We provide the following recommendations for advancing evaluations of treatment effects on wildfire:

  • Consider multiple treatment effects metrics and consider local context to give a more holistic view of treatment interactions with wildfire and to account for regional differences such as vegetation types, fire regimes, and management practices. Although it is important to align these metrics with the treatment objectives, additional metrics may reveal unintended consequences of treatments and can be just as valuable to adapting treatment methods.

  • Explore and communicate the range of treatment effect outcomes across burn conditions, treatment characteristics, spatial and temporal scales, and treatment effects metrics.

  • Improve documentation of suppression activities and firefighter observations, as they are critical for assessing many of the metrics and for attributing the effect of treatment or other drivers of fire behavior.

  • Improve treatment databases by providing more details and complete attribution of treatment prescriptions, adding historical treatments, providing regular updates, and working towards standardization across agencies so that data can be more readily used during wildfires by incident management teams and firefighters and so effects can be more accurately and efficiently measured.

  • Advance capabilities to evaluate treatment effects by improving methods for evaluating landscape-scale treatment effects, integrating diverse data streams, and targeting effects that have been difficult to quantify (e.g., watershed impacts, wildlife impacts, fire suppression and postfire recovery costs).

These recommendations can help to better characterize and communicate treatment effects on wildfire, but determining what is effective incorporates additional considerations, such as value systems, management goals, and treatment costs.

Here’s the figure with the ecological indicators..

Roger Pielke Jr.: 10 principles for effective use of math in policy research

by

Interesting read from Pielke’s blog! Ought to be required reading for scientists. Excerpt below….

Against Mathiness, Part 2

10 principles for effective use of math in policy research

  1. Use real-world variables

Policy research is more useful and relevant when it focuses on real-world variables. It is very easy for us researchers to study proxies for real-world variables or dimensionless indices in search of statistical or scientific significance. However, translating the practical meaning of those variables back to the real-world may not be particularly straightforward or even possible. .

Consider how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confused itself over a study of measurements of hurricanes, mistakenly converting trends in measurements of hurricanes to making claims about trends in hurricanes (which I documented here and here). The urge to use proxies for the thing-we-really-want-to-say-something-about often arises because the real-world variable does not give the results we want or expect. If you want to study hurricanes, study hurricanes. If hurricanes don’t give the results you want, that says something important — say it and don’t go looking for work-arounds.

Eastern National Parks: Forest Regeneration Failing in 69%

by

Gettysburg battlefield; now under attack by emerald ash borer (from Faith Campbell’s blog post)We don’t often talk about the Eastern forests, but Faith Campbell has an interesting post about regen in eastern National Parks.  Faith examines and puts in context a paper by Kathryn Miller and colleagues.

Kathryn Miller and colleagues (full citation at end of blog) have published a study that examined the status and trends of forest regeneration in 39 National parks from Virginia to Maine. Four-fifths of the forest plots in the study are classified as mature or late successional – so at first glance the forests look healthy. However, the researchers made an alarming finding: in 27 of 39 parks, forest regeneration is failing – either imminently or probably. Acadia National Park is an exception; it is the only park in the study experiencing healthy regeneration. They warn that without intense, sustained – and expensive! – intervention, these forests are likely to be converted to other types of ecosystems. [I  blogged recently about findings regarding regeneration in eastern forests: here  and  here  and here and here.

The forests’ understories have too few seedlings and – especially – saplings to maintain themselves. Worse, in many cases the seedlings and saplings are not the same species as the mature trees that form the canopy. The saplings are shorter species that never reach the canopy. That is, species like pawpaw (Asimina triloba), American holly (Ilex opaca), American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana), and eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) are regenerating, rather than the oaks (Quercus spp.), hickories (Carya spp.), maples (Acer spp.), and pines (Pinus spp.) that constitute the canopies of mature forests in these parks.

It sounds like species that do well growing in understories are doing well, and species that need light and bare mineral soil to become established are not doing so well.    In many places in New England, stands regenerated post-agricultural clearing.  If you want certain species, it seems like you may have to manage to get them back.  But this paper seems to imply the interesting idea that “what used to be there” is what should go back… even though “what used to be there” might just be an artifact of the stand history.. and influenced by non-Indigenous  as well as Indigenous residents of these landscapes.

Miller and colleagues call these “regeneration mismatches.” In about half of the parks, these native canopy tree species make up less than half of current saplings and seedlings. This situation suggests the forests’ species composition will shift substantially, thereby undermining resilience in the face of other challenges, such as invasive plants and pests and climate change.

I think the idea that any shifts will ipso facto undermine resilience is questionable.  A few concepts to consider: invasive species have been a separate problem from climate change (that is, climate change in the current anthropogenic global warming sense).  One can imagine that invasive species could do better (or worse) as the climate changes (whether due to human or other factors).  We can also imagine that invasive species could make ecosystems more or less resilient to climate change.. depending on how you define resilience (some green stuff covering the soil? specific species in specific places they used to be?).

Let’s think about a western situation, say, there’s a great deal more true fir than ponderosa pine regen without intervention.  If a forest went to true fir,  would it be by definition less resilient to invasive plants, pests and climate change?  Now with true fir, we have a good history of their tendencies to succumb to native diseases and insects, and we think conditions will get drier due to climate change, and they won’t like that. In fact, there wouldn’t be so many of them around except for fire suppression and in some places the removal of overstory pine.

Of course, in the East, deer and invasive plants are also a problem.

Many of the parks experiencing the most severe impacts of chronic deer browse also have the highest invasions by non-native plants. A natural process of regeneration occurs when the death or collapse of mature trees create gaps in the forest canopy. Where deer and invasive shrubs overlap, this process is often hijacked. Instead of nearby native tree species accelerating their growth toward the canopy, thickets of invasive shrubs crowd the space.

For this reason, Miller and colleagues recommend that park management prioritize treating invasive plants in canopy gaps of disturbed stands to avoid forest loss. They recommend deliberate creation of canopy gaps to promote resilience only for parks, or stands within parks, that have low deer and invasive plant abundance or the capacity to intensively manage invasive plants in gaps.

*****************

The authors also recommend actions to open the canopy or subcanopy to facilitate growth of saplings belonging to desired species. They caution that deer predation must be controlled. Furthermore, either invasive plant cover must be low, or management must ensure that that the park has sufficient resources to sustain an invasive plant control program – especially if invasive plants are combined with abundant deer.

Parks experiencing compositional mismatches and that are dominated by oak–hickory forest types might also benefit from prescribed burning. Again, deer browse pressure must be minimized. In addition, regeneration of oaks and hickories must already be present.

It seems like they are saying “if you want early successional species, you need openings (plus protection from deer)”- seems like “leaving mature and old growth alone” as a strategy may have unintended (albeit predicted, based on forest ecological knowledge from the 1970’s) negative consequences.

Building Trust or Not: Colorado’s Christmas Wolf Kerfuffle

by
Photo from Lakota Wolf Preserve

Happy New Year everyone!

I’ve been thinking about trust, mostly with regard to the use of prescribed fire and managed fire WFU or Fire With Benefits (FWB).  Over the holidays, ten wolves were released in Colorado.

FWIW, I think they could have handled it better, trust-wise, and maybe some lessons could be learned from their efforts.  First, let’s take a look at Cat Urbiquit’s reporting.  The “invited guests” part, and the timing with the “Wolf Update” .. I don’t think the FS on its worst days would have done either.  Transparency, accountability and meaningful involvement yield trust. Parties to which the affected communities are not invited.. held while they are invited elsewhere. It’s a bit creepy, really, to me.

Step 2: Private Party

Colorado Public Radio reported that the first of the wolf releases was kept secret from all but about 45 invited guests including Governor Polis, his husband, and top wolf advocates from around Colorado, as well as a few representatives of the media.

According to the Colorado news pool report of the event, “The crowd watched in awed silence, then some hugged each other and low murmurs started up. … When it all ended, viewers let out their breaths and small applause broke out.”

The release location had been kept secret, the pool report noted, because state wildlife officials “may reuse the release site and is concerned about protestors or the public attempting to stop or watch future releases.” Within a few hours, the location was posted on a hand-written sign outside a post office not far from the release site.

Meanwhile, two counties away in Craig, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials were making presentations to ranchers at a previously scheduled “Wolf Update for Livestock Producers” meeting hosted by Colorado State University Extension. Steamboat Radio reported, “Halfway through the meeting, CPW Area Manager Kris Middledorf told the ranchers that five wolves had just been released a few hours earlier, onto public land in Grand County.” When 9News contacted local elected officials (mayor, county commissioners and legislator) and learned none had been told about the release beforehand.

Urbigkit is fairly supportive of CPW’s approach as in this op-ed piece.

The state wildlife agency was between a rock and a hard place in moving this program forward by the imposed deadline and hurried to make the best of a less-than-desirable situation. The agency had to make choices between hard postures on opposing sides, eventually selecting moderate options. Nothing would make everyone happy.

Colorado was banking on other states to cooperate with its plans, only to learn that most weren’t going to cooperate. Oregon agreed to provide wolves to Colorado, but when it came to sourcing the wolves, all but one came from packs that were involved in livestock depredations (something  that was obviously problematic).

Unfortunately, Colorado wasn’t up front with that information, so when it became public the rosy optics of the wolf release were tainted.

Instead of being forthright with the reasons why those wolves were selected (that the voters had imposed a strict deadline and no wolves were available that weren’t from packs that hadn’t already been involved in livestock depredations) and outlining how it weighed the ramifications, the administration was silent.

When the information became public and caused the predictable controversy, a resident of the governor’s mansion attempted to discredit the reporter who had revealed the details and told the public that “everything you need to know” about the wolf release was in the government press release.

Nothing sets off alarm bells like someone in power (or in this case, power-adjacent) telling the public that all they need to know comes from a government press release.

Which makes me wonder if Colorado has the only elected official’s spouse that goes after specific journalists on Facebook? I have no idea how common that is. Cat noting that CPW was between a rock and a hard place and had to make a series of perhaps suboptimal decisions makes me think that perhaps wildlife management by initiative is not the best idea.

I also wonder whether simply treating those directly negatively affected respectfully.. giving the ranchers a heads-up; perhaps involving both sets of ranchers (Oregon and Colorado) in picking the wolves; issuing a press release simply stating they had done the best they could…

So what is it?  Either CPW, the DNR, the Govs Office or some combo doesn’t care about the communities impacted by their policies? They care but don’t have good trust-building/communication skills?  Individuals do have those skills but are overruled by others higher in the food chain?  Perhaps the State should do a lessons learned, like the FS did with prescribed fire; at least that would send the message that they care about building trust with these citizens of Colorado.

****************************

More details for those interested in depredation, packs and lethal removal in Oregon and Colorado are below.

Meanwhile apparently CPW is refusing to remove non-reintroduced wolves that have been killing cattle, dogs and sheep. Apparently there are only two left of these left, so CPW told rancher Gittleson

“After consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has made the  determination not to lethally remove these two wolves at this time. The division considered the entire history of depredation events in your area, including the most recent history of depredation events in November and December of 2023. Our assessment considered the change in pack dynamics that took place over the preceding year when most of the pack left the area and did not return. With only two of the original wolves remaining, the number and frequency of events has dropped in 2023. “

So CPW seems to be saying, “you need to take more losses because folks in Wyoming have been shooting them.” It seems like it would be in everyone’s interest to not let folks kill wolves that don’t attack livestock (parts of Wyoming) and let folks kill the ones attacking livestock.

In that vein, I thought that this was interesting from CPW.

CPW defended their selection of source wolves from Oregon, saying in a statement there were two depredation events by members of the Five Points Pack in July 2023. The state of Oregon has a Wolf Management Plan that details how to respond to livestock depredation and per the plan, ODFW provided the producer with a lethal removal permit after they requested it. The producer’s agent lethally removed four wolves from the pack in early August. The pack has not depredated since. This change in pack behavior and the lack of current depredations met CPW criteria for accepting the animals.

According to a statement, CPW teams in Oregon passed on several larger and easier-to-access packs because they had recent depredation or had a chronic or ongoing depredation history.

But not all these wolves were from the Five Points..

According to Oregon wolf depredation records, Five Points Pack wolves injured one calf and killed another in separate depredations in July of 2023; killed a cow on Dec. 5, 2022; and injured a 900-pound yearling heifer on July 17, 2022. The Noregaard Pack was involved in the confirmed killing of a calf and one possible kill in June, the Desolation Pack was involved in the confirmed kill of a steer in September and an attack on two calves in May; and two wolves came from the Wenaha Pack that had confirmed kills in September and October. One wolf released into Colorado was not associated with a pack.

So Oregonians get lethal removal permits and it sounds like Coloradans don’t.  That’s not a trust-building thing either.

According to Cat’s article:

CPW’s Technical Working Group (TWG) on the reintroduction program wrote this into its final recommendations to the agency: “No wolf should be translocated that has a known history of chronic depredation, and sourcing from geographic areas with chronic depredation events should not occur.”

The TWG wrote: “There is nuance in determining depredation habits, with consideration of trends in the behavior of an individual and a pack. If a wolf is depredating livestock, the pack it belongs to is likely to depredate as well; additionally, if a pack is depredating, it is difficult to exclude one individual as non-depredating. A known wolf or pack of wolves that have been identified as chronic depredators by the source location should not be used for translocation to Colorado.” (Citations omitted)

As all of us former bureaucrats know, “should” leaves the agency flexibility.  But once the CPW knew it had to go that way,  better communications it seems to me (contacting key folks in the ranching community) even with bad news, would lead to more trust than not telling and ranting at the journalist who investigates.

 

Western Cascades landscapes in Oregon historically burned more often than previously thought

by

An Oregon State Univ. press release….

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Forests on the west slope of Oregon’s Cascade Range experienced fire much more often between 1500 and 1895 than had been previously thought, according to new research by scientists at Oregon State University.

The findings provide important insight, the authors say, into how landscapes might adapt to climate change and future fire regimes.

James Johnston of the OSU College of Forestry led the study, which was published in Ecosphere.

“Wildland fire is a fundamental forest ecosystem process,” he said. “With temperatures rising and more and more area burning, we need to know as much as we can about the long-term variability in fire.”

Johnson and collaborators at Oregon State, the University of Oregon and the U.S. Forest Service gathered tree ring data at 16 sites in the southern part of the Willamette National Forest, in the general vicinity of Oakridge.

Trees form scars after cambial cells are killed by wildfire heat, he said. These scars are partially or completely covered by new tissue as a tree grows, and tree rings tell the story of when the fire exposure occurred.

Using chain saws, the scientists collected samples from 311 dead trees – logs, short snags and stumps. Seventy-three percent of the samples were coastal Douglas-fir, and 13% were ponderosa pine. The remainder were sugar pine, noble fir, red fir, incense cedar, western red cedar, mountain hemlock and western hemlock.

“We cross-dated a total of 147,588 tree rings and identified 672 cambial injuries, 479 of which were fire scars,” Johnston said. “The scars allowed us to reconstruct 130 different fire years that occurred at one or more of the 16 sites before a federal policy of fire suppression went into effect early in the 20th century.”

The main takeaways:

  • Fire was historically far more frequent in western Oregon Cascades landscapes than previously believed.
  • Indigenous peoples likely used fire to manage large areas for resources and probably altered landscapes and fire regimes in significant ways.
  • There are important present-day restoration opportunities for fire-adapted systems in western Oregon.

“Also, our study produced little evidence of the kind of large, wind-driven fires that in 2020 burned 50,000 to 75,000 hectares in the watersheds immediately to the north and south of our study area,” Johnston said. “Only 39% of fire years were recorded at more than one site, only 11% were recorded at more than two sites, and only 3% at more than three sites – in a study area of 37,000 acres, that strongly suggests that most historical fires were relatively small.”

Across all 16 sites, the average fire return interval – the length of time between fires – was as short as six years and as long as 165. In general the differences in those averages were strongly associated with vapor pressure deficit or VPD, basically the drying power of the atmosphere. The higher the VPD, the shorter the time between fires.

However, historical fire in stands seral to Douglas-fir – stands that, if left alone, would end up with Douglas-fir as the dominant tree species – was much less strongly linked with dry air.

“We interpret the extraordinary tempo of fire in those stands, and the climate pattern associated with fire there, to indicate Indigenous fire stewardship,” Johnston said. “We saw some of the most frequent fire return intervals ever documented in the Pacific Northwest, but the enormous volume of biomass that these moist forests accumulate over time is often partly attributed to long intervals between wildfire.”

The authors note that humans have occupied the southern part of what is now the Willamette National Forest for at least 10,000 years. A variety of Indigenous cultures, including the Molalla, Kalapuya, Tenino, Wasco, Klamath, Northern Paiute and Cayuse, probably used the area for trading, hunting and the collection of plants.

“Removals happened very quickly, with most Native people taken to the Grand Ronde, Warm Springs and Klamath reservations,” said co-author David Lewis, a member of the Grand Ronde Tribe and an assistant professor of anthropology and Indigenous studies in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts. “Removal of the tribes took their cultural stewardship practices, their use of annual cultural fires, from the land, radically altering how the forests were managed.”

By 1856, most remaining members of Willamette Valley and western Oregon Cascades tribes had been forcibly removed to reservations. Extensive clearcut logging on the Willamette National Forest started in the late 1940s and continued for four decades.

“Now, Forest Service managers want fine-grained information about forest vegetation and historical disturbance dynamics to manage lands in ways that promote resilience to climate change,” Johnston said.

He added that the Forest Service is working closely with the Southern Willamette Forest Collaborative, a group based in Oakridge, to plan a variety of restoration treatments.

Joining Johnston and Lewis on the paper were the College of Forestry’s Micah Schmidt, now working with the Umatilla Tribe in northeastern Oregon, and Andrew Merschel. Co-authors also included William Downing of the U.S. Forest Service and the University of Oregon’s Michael Coughlan.

The Oregon Department of Forestry funded the study

The Endangered Species Act turns 50

by

You can read any number of articles right now about this that say ESA was adopted by a nearly unanimous Congress and signed by President Nixon on December 28, 1973.  Its supporters find success in its protection of 99% of the species listed from extinction, while critics complain that only 3% have been recovered.  To me, that’s apples vs oranges, because it is much easier for a law to stop bad things from happening than to make good things happen.  I’d love to see those who complain about ESA out there arguing for more money to implement recovery plans.  (And I fail to see the logic of opposing additional listings because recovery is unlikely, when recovery without listing is even less likely.)

But I was curious about what the Forest Service might have to say about this momentous anniversary, and this posting showed up on their website.  It’s written about California, but must represent the agency’s perspective.  The current priority is evident in the second paragraph:

Large, extremely hot fires have ripped through many of these lands, charring if not destroying habitat crucial to species survival. To help reduce the risk of large, devastating fires, the Forest Service is working to remove vegetation that could feed a fire and is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to simultaneously support the conservation of listed species.

That would be listed species that depend on “vegetation that could feed a fire,” which would be removed.  We’ve seen that with spotted owls, the Fish and Wildlife says this should mean focusing fuel reduction projects on areas that are less important to the species.  It would be interesting to hear about how this approach is being implemented through agency policy, forest plans, and/or implementation strategies.  This explanation by the Forest Service falls a little short of a “strategy” for accomplishing this.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the species program, often partners with the Forest Service on steps to protect species listed under the act. Collaborative efforts carry intertwined goals forward. Wildlife specialists and biologists from each agency review project plans, survey forests for species populations, collect data, and analyze the best available science. The Forest Service often includes wildlife conservation measures in as part of land management planning, which means on-the-ground activities needed to increase forest resilience align with the needs of wildlife.

For example, specific types, sizes and heights of trees are left in areas of a forest known to be actively used as nesting or denning sites by threatened or endangered species. The Forest Service plans work to occur during times of the year that will not disrupt key life stages, such as mating season or when adults are caring for young. The Fish and Wildlife Service reviews these plans before work is started to ensure that species needs are being met.

I like that they recognize the importance of forest plan standards as a key tool for protecting species, but I’d like to know more about “Collaborative efforts carry intertwined goals forward.”

 

Happy Holidays! And a Holiday Gift for TSW Readers

by

We usually have posts about trees on Christmas, but today I thought I’d post the above from the Utah DWR via the Cowboy State Daily. New Zealanders.. who knew?

Some gifts below.. links to stories about what we do here.

People often ask me why I spend my time on The Smokey Wire. Pretty much I can’t describe it in words. But I can detect it when other peoples’ writing gets at it. And what they talk about is the importance of having a place where people can hear diverse points of view. And the internet can bring light or darkness (Happy Solstice!), and we are, have been, and will be,  working on bringing the light.

We are and have been in the middle of a news/media transition. In fact, as the Bennett story below illustrates, some have chose to go off the divisive deep end in the quest for more clicks and/or the tribal delights of self-righteous witch-hunting.  But sometimes things have to die before something new and wonderful is reborn.  I think I heard that on a Rob Bell podcast, something like “the system falls apart because the new thing is better, beyond, superior and more compelling.”  And as Eliot said in (Merry Christmas!) The Journey of the Magi:

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

**********************
TSW was before its time.. or after?

Our friends at the Atlantic published a piece about how Substack is full of Nazis, or to be fairer, that Substack should do more moderation. For those of you who don’t know about Substack, it’s kind of like a place that would host The Smokey Wire, except that it makes it easy for writers to monetize their writing. TSW readers benefit from my subscriptions to the likes of Roger Pielke, Jr., Doomberg, and others on Substack. And there are many others I would like to subscribe to as well in the general news category.

Sidenote: Atlantic is also one of those who writes that Musk has “swung Twitter to the right”. Which is kind of funny to me, as in my corner of Twit-X all I can see is that I get more likes from bots known as “Hot Girls”. This is one of the piece of “you should believe what we say over your own experiences” which is a losing argument whether it’s about Twit-X or theology.

Anyway, Substack is not backing down on the moderation question. But I thought this article was interesting.

And Substack—everyone’s favorite platform for pretending like it’s 2005 and we’re all bloggers again—has already come under fire multiple times for its moderation policies (or lack thereof).

Substack differs from blogging systems of yore in some key ways: It’s set up primarily for emailed content (largely newsletters but also podcasts and videos), it has paid some writers directly at times, and it provides an easy way for any creator to monetize content by soliciting fees directly from their audience rather than running ads. But it’s similar to predecessors like WordPress and Blogger in some key ways, also—and more similar to such platforms than to social media sites such as Instagram or X (formerly Twitter). For instance, unlike on algorithm-driven social media platforms, Substack readers opt into receiving posts from specific creators, are guaranteed to get emailed those posts, and will not receive random content to which they didn’t subscribe.

These are all good things..and we have them on TSW through the goodwill and donations of all of you (it’s the season of Peace to People of Good Will). Perhaps we have always been onto something valuable :)… well, not valuable in the monetary sense, of course, but valuable in the sense of exchanging news and increasing our mutual understanding and joint search for facts and truths. And no one seems to care that WordPress doesn’t moderate.. so perhaps it’s not about ideas so much as people making money? Who knows.

***********************************
James Bennet’s Story in the Economist

This link seemed to help me avoid the paywall so perhaps it will work for you. It’s called “When the New York Times lost its way America’s media should do more to equip readers to think for themselves.” It’s by a fellow named James Bennet, who was the op-ed page editor of the New York Times. It’s quite long (and worth reading, but fairly depressing) so I’ll excerpt the parts that reflect observations similar to mine here at TSW.  Or the story might be cheerful, if you think “at least my workplace isn’t like that…talk about hostile work environment!”

As everyone knows, the internet knocked the industry off its foundations. Local newspapers were the proving ground between college campuses and national newsrooms. As they disintegrated, the national news media lost a source of seasoned reporters and many Americans lost a journalism whose truth they could verify with their own eyes. As the country became more polarised, the national media followed the money by serving partisan audiences the versions of reality they preferred. This relationship proved self-reinforcing. As Americans became freer to choose among alternative versions of reality, their polarisation intensified.

*****

It is hard to imagine a path back to saner American politics that does not traverse a common ground of shared fact. It is equally hard to imagine how America’s diversity can continue to be a source of strength, rather than become a fatal flaw, if Americans are afraid or unwilling to listen to each other. I suppose it is also pretty grandiose to think you might help fix all that. But that hope, to me, is what makes journalism worth doing.

*******

But there was a compensating moral and psychological privilege that came with aspiring to journalistic neutrality and open-mindedness, despised as they might understandably be by partisans. Unlike the duelling politicians and advocates of all kinds, unlike the corporate chieftains and their critics, unlike even the sainted non-profit workers, you did not have to pretend things were simpler than they actually were. You did not have to go along with everything that any tribe said. You did not have to pretend that the good guys, much as you might have respected them, were right about everything, or that the bad guys, much as you might have disdained them, never had a point. You did not, in other words, ever have to lie.

******

This fundamental honesty was vital for readers, because it equipped them to make better, more informed judgments about the world. Sometimes it might shock or upset them by failing to conform to their picture of reality. But it also granted them the respect of acknowledging that they were able to work things out for themselves.

******

A journalism that starts out assuming it knows the answers, it seemed to me then, and seems even more so to me now, can be far less valuable to the reader than a journalism that starts out with a humbling awareness that it knows nothing. “In truly effective thinking”, Walter Lippmann wrote 100 years ago in “Public Opinion”, “the prime necessity is to liquidate judgments, regain an innocent eye, disentangle feelings, be curious and open-hearted.” Alarmed by the shoddy journalism of his day, Lippmann was calling for journalists to struggle against their ignorance and assumptions in order to help Americans resist the increasingly sophisticated tools of propagandists.

******

On the right and left, America’s elites now talk within their tribes, and get angry or contemptuous on those occasions when they happen to overhear the other conclave. If they could be coaxed to agree what they were arguing about, and the rules by which they would argue about it, opinion journalism could serve a foundational need of the democracy by fostering diverse and inclusive debate. Who could be against that?

*******

The Opinion department is a relic of the era when the Times enforced a line between news and opinion journalism. Editors in the newsroom did not touch opinionated copy, lest they be contaminated by it, and opinion journalists and editors kept largely to their own, distant floor within the Times building. Such fastidiousness could seem excessive, but it enforced an ethos that Times reporters owed their readers an unceasing struggle against bias in the news. But by the time I returned as editorial-page editor, more opinion columnists and critics were writing for the newsroom than for Opinion. As at the cable news networks, the boundaries between commentary and news were disappearing, and readers had little reason to trust that Times journalists were resisting rather than indulging their biases.

******

That is also, by the way, an important means by which politicians, like Cotton, can learn, by speaking to audiences who are not inclined to nod along with them. That was our ambition for Times Opinion – or mine, I guess. Americans can shout about their lack of free speech all they want, but they will never be able to overcome their differences, and deal with any of their real problems, if they do not learn to listen to each other again.

***************

Is it journalism’s role to salt wounds or to salve them, to promote debates or settle them, to ask or to answer? Is its proper posture humble or righteous?

Happy Holidays, everyone!  See you after New Years!

Compassion with a Twist of Anthropocentrism: And A Dive into Carnivorism

by

 

Do their friends miss them? Do they miss their friends?

I’ve been thinking how often in news stories, and in public life, we are told implicitly or explicitly that some people and critters are deserving of compassion and not others.  Take OHV folks who would prefer not to have roads closed.  Or the people who have jobs at a uranium mill or a biomass plant- some news stories focus on some people (those potentially harmed) and not on others (those potentially harmed by its absence).  Now I’m not saying it’s wrong to focus on certain people, but I think we should pay attention to whose stories are left out.

There are two reasons.  First, there is no limit on compassion. It’s not as if we have some for person or group  x, there will be less for person or group  y.  If you do feel that, there are traditional spiritual ways to open up to acquire more compassion energy, and that’s a very different discussion.

Second, some will imply that if you feel compassion for x people, that leads directly to a certain policy choice, which of course it doesn’t.  For example, if you feel compassion for people around some infrastructure (wind turbine, uranium mine, biomass plant), there are a wide array of regulations that might be adopted.

Now our journalism friends have been taught that they need to engage our emotions, in many cases compassion for individuals or groups, but sometimes they leave out other individuals or groups and go directly from their own chosen circle of compassion to a specific policy outcome.  And to my mind, many perspectives and policy options are not presented.

**********************

So for right now, though, we have the five Oregon wolves recently reintroduced to western Colorado (in the depths of winter).  It was a politically contentious idea, driven by urban folks druthers with consequences for rural folks, and to me the oddest thing was that the goals did not change when it turned out that wolves were already coming down from Wyoming on their own volition.  So to me, this seemed as yet another unnecessary sharp stick in the eye to rural folks. For me, disturbing Oregon wolves  (is different from allowing wolves to naturally repopulate Colorado.

Plus our friends of CBD had this to say last spring about Oregon wolves not doing so well.

PORTLAND, Ore.— Oregon’s wolf population increased by two confirmed animals in 2021 — from 173 to 175 wolves — according to a report released today by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. There were 21 reported packs in 2021, while the number of breeding pairs decreased by one for a total of 16.

This small population increase comes after a tragic year that saw eight gray wolves killed by deliberate poisoning in northeast Oregon. State officials themselves killed another eight wolves in 2021 over conflicts with livestock.

I’d like to anthropomorphize a bit. So you know,  peer-reviewed literature says its OK and does not cause “significant misconceptions”.

Now if I were a wolf, making a living in eastern Oregon, happy and accustomed to my pack dynamics, surrounded by wolves I know and like, knowing where elk and deer are likely to be.. knowing where water is, knowing what ranches and highways to avoid, would I want to be dumped off in western Colorado in the winter with other wolves unknown to me? Not.  Why are you doing this to us, I might ask?  Oh, because some people have an idea.. and they couldn’t get wolves from closer states, so … we picked you.  You see, these peoples’ ideas about “the balance of nature” “keystone species” “apex predators” (mountain lions, you aren’t doing the job..)  and the timing (no we haven’t had them around for 70 years, but we can’t wait for natural processes, because…. some humans don’t want to).   Will they bring Oregon diseases to Colorado canines? Will they be susceptible to diseases Colorado canines carry?

I’m mostly a fan of the folks at Colorado Parks and Wildlife, but driven by a ballot initiative they might not have been able to consider the latter two questions. But back to critters.  Whom we care about. But some to quote Orwell “are more equal than others.”

If we could interview coyotes and mountain lions, they might say “hey, we’re carnivores too.. sure we’re not exactly the same niche, but we think we’re doing fine right now; why do they count more than us?”

As to the elk and deer, “hey, you guys are wildlife too, but you don’t count as much because of some peoples’ ideas. It’s actually better for you as a species to have more animals hunting and killing you on the landscape.. because maybe they will kill the sick along with the unlucky.  Your well-being is sacrificed for the good of the population- and well, some people have this idea about “balance of nature” and so on, and it’s more important than your well-being.”

As for cows, sheep, livestock guardian dogs, domestic dogs and others.. sure being ripped apart or killed is not good for you, but maybe you shouldn’t be there anyway. Besides, some people have this idea that it’s better for an abstraction.. “the ecosystem”..

Then there’s a narrative where elk fear is really good because it changes their behavior and that’s good for other species.  Again, the individual sacrificed for the whole.species, ecosystem?

My own experience with safe places as a college and graduate student, and unsafe places, is that it’s a much easier life in many ways to be in a safe place.  Aside from alertness and stress, there’s decision making (should I go to the library after dark?).  There was also time spent reviewing the list of crimes and locations and trying to discern patterns and adapt to them.   My college roommate was mugged on the way to the Computer Center.. (yes there was a building that housed The Computer) and her box of cards (that is how a person programmed in those days) was dumped across the road, and she needed to redo her semester’s project.  Perhaps that’s the equivalent of the energy expended running away from an attack.  I’d say generally less crime and fewer perpetrators was actually good for my mental and physical health. So I’d be displeased if someone said “higher crime is better for you as it keeps you on your toes” or “it’s better for the human species if not you”, or “the ecosystem” or whatever.

It’s also interesting to me how climate change is used for different species.   For some species (carnivores), climate change is happening so we need more protections of current habitat and more habitat and more reintroductions.  For herbivores, climate change is happening, populations in some areas are dropping and we don’t know why… so let’s stress them more by introducing more predators!  It seems like a bias against hervivores, what we might call carnivorism or carnivolatry.

Again, I’m not against wolves.  I just think that this Colorado thing is needlessly disruptive to all kinds of creatures and people.  Many bad things happen when individuals become unimportant in pursuit of ideas (think 20th century history) and I don’t think we necessarily are having the conversations around this that we should including all points of view.

 

 

OG:- White House Announcement; More NGO Comments and Some Concern About FS Bandwidth from AFRC

by

Thanks to SJ for adding these ..  the White House Announcement is of particular interest. Here’s a copy of the letter to forests.  It reminds me a bit of the old “reviewing roadless projects in the WO” effort. As they say:

This letter only affects the process by which such activities are authorized. It does not alter or prescribe any substantive standards for the management of old growth forests

I always wondered about the legality of these kinds of   review processes, it seems they are designed to provide an outcome before there is a legal reason to do so.  Just saying it doesn’t prescribe anything different (perhaps on the advice of OGC?) has not, in the past, been accurate. Perhaps our legal TSW friends can clarify.

This workshop sounds interesting, and that it is joint by BLM and FS is good; after all, PJ is  the most abundant old-growth and traditionally disagreements have not been timber-war-ish.

Collaborative Efforts to Conserve Pinyon Juniper: Pinyon and juniper woodlands encompass tens of millions of acres of federal lands across the West, and have significant biodiversity, climate, and cultural values. Pinyon-juniper woodlands are the most abundant forest type in the federally managed inventory of mature and old-growth forests, and are the majority of mature and old-growth forests managed by the BLM. While much management focus has been rightly placed on pinyon-juniper encroachment onto sagebrush ecosystems, less attention has been paid to the importance of mature and old-growth pinyon-juniper ecosystems. The Forest Service and the BLM will co-host a public workshop focused on the conservation of these ecosystems in 2024. Through this effort, the Forest Service and the BLM will engage the public, Tribes, land managers, experts, and stakeholders in informed discussion around management issues, threats, trends, and opportunities for climate-smart management and conservation of mature and old-growth pinyon-juniper woodlands on federal lands.

Susan also linked to this group of ENGO’s quotes.

It seems like some of the quotes focused on  consistency across the country (Sam Evans) and a seat at the table for developing national policy (The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife), while EDF uses that other “f” word (flexibility) and notes the role of local folks:

The proposed forest plan amendment creates a rigorous, science-based process that will both protect old-growth forests and provide flexibility for managers, local communities, and tribal nations to recommend management actions to improve resilience to catastrophic wildfire and other climate change-induced threats.”

Meanwhile our friends at AFRC also have a press release. Perhaps oddly, so far they are the only ones who seem to be concerned about loading more paperworky processes on already-overburdened and difficult-to-hire federal employees. Excerpts:

 “The Forest Service’s data confirms logging poses a negligible threat to old growth forests, and existing federal environmental laws and forest plans provide direction on managing and protecting old growth. Yet the agency is now being directed to embark on a new, massive bureaucratic process – during a wildfire and forest health crisis – that will likely make forest management more complex, costly, and contentious.

 “Protecting old growth requires intentional, thoughtful action on the ground – not more paperwork.  It’s not clear how amending every single Forest Plan will help the Forest Service implement the Biden Administration’s own 10-year wildfire strategy that calls for a threefold increase in forest health treatments. Rather than giving our public lands managers the policy tools and support they need to sustain our forests and all the values they provide, this policy will force them to focus limited time and resources on more process and that will do nothing to address the real risks on the ground..