Interior Agencies and Harassment- From High Country News

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A very special thank you to the High Country News for generating, and allowing us to post, the images above. This is of interest because, while some of the recent attention to sexual harassment has been focused on the Forest Service, there are agencies with similar missions in Interior, so we can ask “are they about the same, better or worse?”. And since these agencies (at least BLM) trade employees with the FS frequently, and the fact that Fire is an interagency effort, does it make sense for all federal land management agencies to approach this together?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the Forest Service figures to compare, but hopefully someone can provide them.

HCN has had an interesting set of pieces on the problems in BIA. Apparently the Director Bryan Rice has resigned, and, while not mentioned in this piece, my sources tell me that he was formerly Director of Forest Management at the Forest Service in the Washington Office. This supports my argument that it makes sense to address the problem across the FS and Interior agencies.

Here’s a link to HCN’s ongoing coverage of harassment in federal agencies.

Greenwire: “Feds plan major logging boost in W.Va.”

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Lest we forget that not all National Forests are in the western US….

The Forest Service will more than double the timber cut on the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia in the next two years, reflecting the agency’s push to pull more wood from forests it considers underused.

“The Monongahela is really stepping up,” interim Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week.

At 919,000 acres, the Monongahela — sometimes referred to as “the Mon” — is twice as big as the Allegheny National Forest in neighboring Pennsylvania yet produces a small fraction of the timber.

In fiscal 2017, the Forest Service reported that $958,000 worth of timber was cut on the Monongahela, compared with $5.8 million worth on the Allegheny.

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SW Oregon Douglas Fire Study

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New study from Oregon State. From the press release:

Researchers in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University used satellite imagery and local data to analyze the factors driving differences of severity in the fire, which burned about 50,000 acres north of Grants Pass. Located in the Klamath Mountains ecoregion, the area is dominated by Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and white fir and is a mix of private and federal ownership and state-owned O&C (Oregon & California Railroad) lands.
While daily weather was the most significant driver of fire severity, the researchers found that other factors such as ownership, forest age and topography were also critical. Intensively managed private forestlands tended to burn with greater severity than older state and federal forests. The findings are important because they point to the need for collaboration among landowners, both public and private, to reduce the wildfire risk across the region. 
Some caveats: This was one fire in a unique region. The fires started in older federal forests and wind drove them across property lines.
And as the authors note, “There is strong scientific agreement that fire suppression has increased the probability of high severity fire in many fire-prone landscapes (Miller et al. 2009, Calkin et al. 2015, Reilly et al. 2017), and thinning as well as the reintroduction of fire as an ecosystem process are critical to reducing fire severity and promoting ecosystem resilience and adaptive capacity (Agee and Skinner 2005, Raymond and Peterson 2005, Earles et al. 2014, Krofcheck et al. 2017).”

 

Rio Grande Water Fund- Landscape Scale Success Story

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As part of thinking about the EADM effort, here’s another (the Rio Grande Water Fund) in the series of landscape-scale success stories. We’ve discussed it before, but now we have this excellent powerpoint from Laura McCarthy of the Nature Conservancy, presented at our 40th class reunion at Yale last fall. She received the Distinguished Alumna award from the school for this and her other work.

Some notable elements of the powerpoint are some photos of the damage caused by fires in terms of flooding and sedimentation.

And the amazing array of partners:

Based on the successes of the Flagstaff project, the Denver Water projects, we might see a pattern in which large scale projects over multiple jurisdictions are easier when 1) there has been a fire with negative effects in someone’s backyard or watershed, 2) leadership from NGOs come forward to do something, and 3) water providers or communities or other NGOs put $ on the table. Placing a bet on fires not happening (the argument that only x % is going to burn, so why spend $ to establish and maintain vegetation) may not be as appealing when the impacts hit you and your neighbors, directly, and within your own experience.

So here’s one hypothesis for why these areas perhaps have greater success in landscape scale efforts, and not, say, California. Because timber was never a big industry in the SW, perhaps the organized opposition to cutting trees (for commercial reasons) has not had an opportunity to develop. So perhaps people, and groups don’t have those issues to work through, at least not to the same degree- you could call this infrastructure established during the Timber Wars. Certainly folks like the Center for Biological Diversity and Wild Earth Guardians are headquartered in the SW, but apparently choose not to go after these projects (or they do, and that aspect has not been highlighted in the write-ups I’ve seen).

Another idea would be that this is tied to water and where water is at a premium people are going to be more careful. Our Regional Forester in 2, at the time, Rick Cables was thinking maybe California should donate to Colorado fuel treatment projects because they use Colorado River water. I don’t think that that worked out..

So please take a look at the powerpoint and share your thoughts. Also, I’m still looking for successful landscape scale projects outside of Regions 2 and 3. I’m sure they’re there, but I can’t as easily find out about them.

Putting the Public in Public Lands .. Center for the American West Meeting.. Volunteer Wanted!

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This meeting sounds right up our alley. Unfortunately I only found out a few days ago via their email, and have a conflict. Here’s a description:

About the “Putting ‘the Public’ in Public Lands” Summit – Americans often take for granted that the term “public lands” presumes that all citizens should have claims to the benefits of lands held by governments, and an inherent right to play a role in their use and management. In reality, the mechanisms through which constituents and interest groups can feed into public lands decisions are not often well understood, are not static, and are not consistent across jurisdictions. In some ways, Colorado is at the forefront in valuing and attending to a variety public land uses: a “multiple use ethic” is a core part of the state’s identity, which land managers, citizens, and public officials strive to reflect.

The Putting ‘the Public’ in Public Lands Summit will provide an occasion to take stock of current frameworks that guide public involvement in decisions, including:

What is the current landscape of laws and regulations, and how could recent developments alter opportunities for consideration of stakeholder input in decisions?
How are various interests or values “weighted” in decisions, and is this prioritization transparent?
Where can we uncover intersecting interests and balance between public lands uses, such as grazing, timber production, mineral development, recreation, and conservation?
How can decisions incorporate tribal interests and perspectives to result in more defensible and just outcomes for places that we now call “public lands” and impacted communities?

Participants will include state, federal, and tribal land managers; state, local, and tribal officials and leaders; representatives from agriculture, mining, energy, ranching and forestry industries; outdoor recreation business and user groups; hunters and anglers; economic development organizations; and conservation groups, in addition to experts in related fields drawn from CU and other institutions. Space will be reserved for the interested general public and students to attend.

Here’s the agenda, you’ll note many interesting and knowledgeable people. I would like to hear what they have to say. My count, sorry to say, is .21 female to male ratio of speakers. I would greatly appreciate it if someone (or more than one) would attend, and write up their observations (and try to get powerpoints, if available) for us.

The next extinction on the national forests

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Based on this year’s winter survey, the federally endangered South Selkirk mountain caribou herd may be down to three individuals – all females.  That would not be good for continued viability of the species on national forest lands.  We can try to blame Canada for what’s happened to this cross-boundary herd, but, “The mountain caribou have struggled as old growth forests have been thinned by logging and other industrial activities, George said. With thinner forests the caribou have become more susceptible to predation.”  There has been a lot of that on the Idaho Panhandle and Colville national forests over the years, though maybe not recently.  However, as recently as 2007, the Forest Service lost a lawsuit brought because of their failure to protect caribou from snowmobiles.

It would be hard to say that national forest management has had nothing to do with their current status.  Mark Hebblewhite, a Canadian wildlife biologist at the University of Montana and a science adviser to the Canadian government put it this way:

“It’s game over …  The functional loss of this herd is the legacy of decades of government mismanagement across caribou range.  It is completely unsurprising. Bad things happen to small populations.”

Meanwhile, north of the border, the boreal woodland caribou may become Canada’s spotted owl, as conflicts with logging are driving it towards extinction.   A letter from the Alberta government to Ottawa said “now is not the time to impede” an economic recovery currently underway in Alberta.  Maybe when there are three females left.

Forest Service EADM Workshop: Region 9 Summary

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I’m going to start going through the write-ups for each Regional EADM Workshop and see what we can find in terms of issues and ideas for improvement.

I started with Region 9, linked here, and noticed that our own Tony Erba was involved. Hopefully, he will weigh in with his own thoughts. For the purpose of this discussion, I have taken the summaries produced by NFF and selected some points. Others are welcome to add their own from the report, or from their own experience. After we go through all the Regions’ reports, we can talk about the FS has done to deal with these issues. I don’t have the whole picture of what the FS tried and how it worked, but we can piece it together from my own memories and those of others.

Here’s what I’d like to see from commenters: 1) questions or additional description and your own experiences of what I summarized, 2) interesting things I left out from the report (it’s a detailed report, so I confess that I probably missed many ideas), 3) suggestions for different categories.

Here are the current categories:

I. Same as Previous NEPA Improvement Efforts:

FS is risk averse and overdoes documents.
Lack of consistency among units.
Use of jargon
Turnover- no steady hand to guide process, time lags to find new people
Lack of staff
Staff not motivated
Not using contracting
Underfunded
Not good and early collaboration
FS has bad writers forest plans not decipherable
Make it easier to find projects on web

II. Potentially New:

Poor quality of, and need to share data and maps
Disconnected decisionmaking from communities
Excessive use of EAs when NRCS doesn’t need to for the same kind of work.
Partner resources underutilized
Small non-controversial projects not getting done.
Special Use (SUP) authorizations are slow
Inaccurate and inconsistent data in databases and analyses

III. Not Related to EADM but Still Concerns:
Stop closing roads and trails
Broken web links
Lack of signage at picnic tables and trailheads website difficult to navigate

IV. Improvement Suggestions:
Annual Meeting for better communication on project planning and status
Make better use of partners to do work.
Sustainable Forest Certification to reduce litigation.

It’s Called “Lying By Omission”

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Yesterday, Vicky Christiansen made her first Hill appearance as Forest Service chief, albeit with an “interim” asterisk. Her written testimony focused on fire funding and “active forest management,” aka, logging:

The funding and related work will support between 340,000 and 370,000 jobs and contribute more than $30 billion in Gross Domestic Product. Through the use of tools like the Good Neighbor Authority, with more than 127 agreements in 33 states, 20-year stewardship contracts with cancellation ceiling relief, and other internal process improvements like environmental analysis decision-making (EADM), the Forest Service will move forward to sell 3.7 billion board feet of timber while improving the resiliency and health of more than 3.4 million acres of National Forest System lands through removal of hazardous fuels and stand treatments.

The Forest Service’s FY 2018 Budget is the source for her jobs and GDP data. Here’s what the budget says:

The proposed Forest Service program of work is projected to contribute between 340,000 and 370,000 jobs in the economy and between $30 billion and $31 billion in GDP. A greater share of the economic benefit, up to 70 percent, is anticipated to be generated by resource use effects in FY 2018. While all resource uses are important to the nation, recreation and wildlife visitor use will continue to provide the single largest category of economic contribution.

Guess what she left out of her testimony? Yep, not one word about the importance of recreation and wildlife visitor use.

STS Community: Would Like to Hear What You Think About Proposed EPA Transparency Rule

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The current major media stories quote people who say something like “transparency is generally good, but not here.” We all know that EPA does health studies but we also know they do much other regulating as well. Say climate, or biomass or …. So I would like to know, given that feedback, what if the EPA just used it for the non-health studies? Is there a way to review the health studies’ calculations without going to the level of personal data? The standard newspaper stories seem to be “good people hate this proposed rule, only bad people (“climate deniers,” industry) support it.” That is really not all that helpful in terms of a news story for us folks that are trying to understand the pros and cons.
Here’s one story from the Scientific American:

Smith said.. Many in the scientific community agree that increased access to data is essential for reproducibility and objective analysis,” he said. “Open access to scientific data fosters good policymaking. The American people have a right to understand how and why regulatory decisions are made.”

In a House office building last week, Smith feted a group of researchers from the National Association of Scholars who routinely attack climate science and who say in a new report that there is a “crisis” in science because too much of it cannot be reproduced. The authors of its new report, titled “The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science,” say government agencies should establish review commissions to determine which existing regulations are based on reproducible research and to rescind those that are not, a process that could affect key provisions of the Clean Air Act, among other regulations.

For those of you who don’t follow science biz studies (the social science of observing the science biz), here’s a link to a piece by Andrea Saltelli on “Science’s credibility crisis” that gives some background of some of the issues across disciplines. This paper has many interesting links.

Ravetz emphasises the loss of this essential ethical element. In later works he notes that the new social and ethical conditions of science are reflected in a set of “emerging contradictions”. These concern the cognitive dissonance between the official image of science as enlightened, egalitarian, protective and virtuous, against the current realities of scientific dogmatism, elitism and corruption; of science serving corporate interests and practices; of science used as an ersatz religion.

Echoes of Ravetz’s analysis can be found in many recent works, such as on the commodification of science, or on the present problems with trust in expertise.

Ioannidis and co-authors are careful to stress the importance of a multidisciplinary approach, as both troubles and solutions may spill over from one discipline to the other. This would perhaps be a call to the arms for social scientists in general – and for those who study science itself – to tackle the crisis as a priority.

Here we clash with another of science’s contradictions: at this point in time, to study science as a scholar would mean to criticise its mainstream image and role. We do not see this happening any time soon. Because of the scars of “science wars” – whose spectre is periodically resuscitated – social scientists are wary of being seen as attacking science, or worse helping US President Donald Trump.

I think this would be a good time for social scientists who study science (the science and technology studies or STS community) to step up, dare to be labelled as denialist or Trump supporters and say “we resist the use of science as tool of partisan warfare”. Perhaps something along these lines “From our perspective, based on decades of study of the scientific processes and regulatory science in particular, we think regulatory science might be helped by open data in these situations.. but not these.. and would instead suggest …”.