Forest Service EADM – Workshop Introductory Powerpoint

by

One of my favorite professors at Iliff is a historian named Eric Smith. When we approach the past, he said, “we should neither be naive nor cynical.” This is a message, in my view, that applies to many things in life. With regard to EADM, you could think (the Cynical Partisan View) that this is a plot by the evil Trump Administration and Western Congressional R’s to destroy ESA, leave the public out, and lay waste to western landscapes in the name of money-grubbing corporate elites. Or you might think, (the Cynical NEPA Person View) this is the same old stuff, it comes up every decade or so, since the FS talked about Process Predicament and nothing much changed, what’s the point? But I think that there are many good ideas out there, and that this is an opportunity for us to explore them and see if there are any that we can agree on. It’s a chance to move past being stuck in the partisan swamp, and actually getting to higher ground and a better place.

Absolutely, the FS may not use our ideas. I am not naive. But I am not sure that they won’t, either, so I am not cynical. And who knows, ideas take on their own kind of life and may be adopted by Congress or other groups. And I think us discussing them outside the partisan vitriolic context has its own value to show internet world that more meaningful and less mean-spirited dialogue can take place on these platforms.

The FS says that the next opportunity to give input will be when the Draft Rule comes out in June or thereabouts. Part of the conversation is (1) what is working? (2) what is not working? (3) why do we think so? (4) what might work better? and (5) what would have to change to make that happen?

Here is the powerpoint presentation given by Glenn Casamassa. Note that Glenn’s history involved him being himself a NEPA expert, plus he is a veteran of previous NEPA improvement efforts.

Please feel free to comment on anything in the Powerpoint. I don’t know any more than the rest of you all about the process, but if we have questions we can try to find the answers. I think the NFF was supposed to generate a report based on the workshops. It would be great if that were made available and we could post and discuss. I could FOIA it but why harass FOIA people unnecessarily? Really- public comments, including syntheses thereof, should be made public IMHO.

Will EPA Science Advisory Board Bite the Dust?

by

On Monday EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that “burning of biomass, such as trees, for energy in many cases will be considered “carbon neutral” by the agency,” as reported by the Washington Post’s Chris Mooney and Dino Grandoni.

The Post article goes on to note that

… William Schlesinger, … an EPA Science Advisory Board member, said Pruitt undercut the board — which had been “divided on this subject,” — with this decision. “There would be no point in doing it now,” he said. “We’re supposed to provide analysis of the basis of decisions. He’s already made the decision. So what’s our role?”

My question is whether the EPA’s Science Advisory Board will (or ought to) follow the National Park Service’s Advisory Board lead by resigning en masse following this and other Pruitt stunts.

NFS Litigation Weekly April 20, 2018

by

Litigation Weekly April 20

The District Court accepted the magistrate’s recommendations with minor clarifications and upheld livestock grazing activities on the Malheur National Forest.  (D. Or.)  Also reported here.

(New case.)  Three southwestern tribes filed the third lawsuit challenging the Rosemont mine on the Coronado National Forest.  (D. Ariz.)  Also reported here.  (See below also.)

(New case.)  According to the complaint, the Tonto National Forest reopened portions of an allotment that had been closed since 1979 without conducting an analysis of the effects.  (D. Ariz.)

(Notice of intent.)  Plaintiffs seek reinitiation of ESA consultation on recreational summer cabin permits in Mount Graham red squirrel habitat as a result of recent fires on the Coronado National Forest.

 

Blogger’s note on the Tohono Oodam case:  The complaint challenged the Forest Service interpretation of the 1872 Mining Act that it is required to provide unpatented lands for disposal of the mining waste.  Here is a summary of this point from the article linked above:

“The Coronado may impose reasonable conditions to protect surface resources, but cannot materially interfere with reasonably necessary activities under the General Mining Law that are otherwise lawful,” Dewberry (the forest supervisor) wrote.

The lawsuit, however, asserts that the 1872 mining law gives people a right to occupy and use public lands for unpatented mining claims — the kind Hudbay has on Rosemont’s national forest lands — only when they contain a valuable mineral deposit. There’s no evidence of any mineral deposits on the lands where waste rock and tailings will go, the suit says.

“Say you are doing business and it results in some kind of waste. You can’t just put it in a neighbor’s land. You have to accommodate it on your own property, or find a place to get rid of it, without causing an environmental threat,” attorney McIntosh said on behalf of the tribes. “You can’t put it on public lands and say the Forest Service can’t say no.”

Landscape Scale Success Stories: I. Upper Monument Creek

by

As the Forest Service pursues improvements in Environmental Analysis and Decision Making through the EADM effort, it would be helpful to take a look at successful landscape scale projects and see if we can discern what they have in common. Certainly there is also shared learning on this topic going on within the agency, but this is an opportunity for those of us looking in from outside to see what makes for success, and perhaps give that as feedback to the process somewhere along the line.

Please submit posts on different successful (defined by you) projects to my email on the widget to the right. FS employees are encouraged to do so as well and I do not have to share the name of the contributor.

Here is my first candidate: the Upper Monument Creek on the PSICC National Forest in Colorado.

Here’s a description from the ROD of the project.

The intent of the proposed action is to restore more resilient ecological conditions across the entire landscape and particularly Front Range forests; reduce the impacts of severe wildfires on property, infrastructure, and natural resources; and contribute towards the long-term sustainability of a full range of forest values including creating effective wildlife habitat and protecting aquatic resources. The proposed action entails the treatment of up to 31,700 acres within the 70,600-acre UMC project area (Figure 4). A combination of mechanical thinning with product removal, service work, manual thinning, pile burning, post treatment broadcast burning, and first entry prescribed fire would be utilized to achieve the desired ecological conditions. Implementation of these management actions is expected to begin in 2017, and extend over a period of 10 years or more.

Acres treated: 31,700/70,600
NEPA tool: EIS
Collaboration: CFLRP
Time to prepare: 2012-2017
Time to conduct treatments: 10 or more years
Objections: 1
Litigation:0

I asked the District Ranger, Oscar Martinez, why he thought this approach was successful. Here’s his answer:

Given the nature of the objection, I still saw this as a victory for the IDT because we certainly had a large following of partners that were tracking the decision. To be honest, the process still took some time, but as the saying goes,… it is often necessary to go slow to go fast at the end. For us this translated into spending the time upfront in building a strong coalition with a wide range of partners that were fully vested in the process and the final objectives for the project. Consequently, the majority of the team’s time was spent in building the understanding and trust needed to support a decision that took full advantage of scale, complexity, and adaptive management principles to achieve those objectives. As we proceed with implementation, we expect that many of these partners will remained supportive and interested as we test our restoration assumptions.

The nature of the one objection is that it is pretty generic and from a person who objects or appeals a wide variety of things across the country. In my experience, this same person is not so much into the specifics of the project and makes a variety of what I would call “unsubstantiated knowledge claims.”

But you can check the objection out for yourself 20170618_UMC_obj_artley.
Note: I have seen some objections posted publicly and others not, depending on the project. If FS people can chime in whether the national database is gone, or what exactly is going on, that would be helpful. They are part of the puzzle.

Happy Earth Day! Yablonski on Conservation Optimism

by

Paradise Valley, Montana. Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of the Interior.
Here is a link to an Earth Day post by Brian Yablonski of PERC in Montana.

I too an an optimist.. How well we are doing depends on the “we” (our neighborhood, county, state, nation, world), the topic, and the timeframe, you choose to examine. Some things are getting worse. Some are getting better. Some goods and bads are intrinsically linked.. e.g. more people outdoors mean more environmental impacts from recreation. Everything people do has some kind of impact, but generally we (the US and many others) are more conscious and more careful than when Earth Day began.

EMIGRANT, Mont.—It is Earth Day, and as I write this, I am facing out across the vast Yellowstone River Valley at mountains so brilliantly beautiful, you’d swear God deserves a raise. At night, it can be hard to decipher the major constellations through the veil of a billion other stars. Life here is indelibly entwined with the environment—abundant wildlife, fresh snow-fed waters, and clean, cool mountain air.

Earth Day is often a time for Malthusian, apocalyptic speeches on the dire state of the planet and imminent exhaustion of our natural resources due to rapid growth and human overpopulation. But for me, as a conservation optimist, Earth Day is a moment to celebrate the gains of conservation and the natural world.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the population of America has swelled by 120 million people. Gross domestic product has increased from just under $2 trillion to nearly $20 trillion. The traditional Earth Day view is to see growth and conservation in conflict: As our country grows, the state of the environment declines. And yet, counter to what might intuitively seem true, we are finding ways to conserve and score significant improvements to our environment.

You don’t have to agree with the timeframe nor topics Yablonski picked, but I think one thing he said is worth repeating:

And finally, while federal conservation measures often attract the headlines, we can’t overlook the work of the unsung state and local conservation managers, hunters and anglers, and private working landowners—farmers, ranchers, foresters—who manage most of the habitat in this nation.

Those folks seldom get a shout-out, and this seems like a good time to do so.

Yablonski ends with:

No doubt, we still face significant conservation challenges, but in the century since T.R. spoke those words, we’ve written a conservation story worth telling this Earth Day. I am optimistic about our environment and the ability of humankind to invent, collaborate, and innovate our way to conservation solutions. For the doubters and worriers, there’s one more reason to stop and smile at the state of our environment: Optimists live longer. And that means more time for all of us to enjoy our natural world.

If you’re interested in a link to some of these studies (on health and optimism), here’s one from the Guardian.

Making decisions to not mine national forests

by

Here’s a role reversal for the Forest Service, who has recently been in the news more for making it easier to extract things from federal public lands.

New oil, gas and mineral exploration and development will be barred in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument under a long-awaited management plan, released Thursday, governing the largest wilderness in Los Angeles County.

Of course the forest supervisor hinted that the main reason might be “there just aren’t any significant oil, gas, mineral or timber aspects to this monument.”

The U.S. Forest Service wants to ban new mining claims on about 30,000 acres of public land in the mountains north of Yellowstone National Park for 20 years, a move they say will hamper mine development and protect the environment.

Forest officials released a draft environmental assessment of the proposed withdrawal Thursday that considered potential environmental and economic impacts from future mine development. A 20-year ban wouldn’t affect existing mining claims but would likely limit future mining development.

The Forest Service’s environmental assessment will now be reviewed by the Department of the Interior, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has the final say on whether the ban will be extended and for how long.

Zinke, who has opposed mining near the Paradise Valley, said in an emailed statement that he looks forward to “hearing from the community and seeing how we can work together to protect this area.”

Zinke has been accused of treating his native Montana different from other parts of the country.

Which comes first, the NEPA or the ESA (process)?

by

My experience was generally that the consulting agencies wanted to have the last word. That is that they didn’t want to consult on anything unless it was the final decision by the Forest Service. The expectation was that the FS would just incorporate any needed changes that resulted from the consultation process. I wondered if the public needed be involved in these changes in the decision, but I didn’t think NEPA would apply because any changes required by ESA would further mitigate adverse impacts and/or be non-discretionary.

The court’s recent opinion in Bark v. Northrop discusses this part of the NEPA process. It involves a proposal to build the Timberline Ski Area Mountain Bike Trails and Skills Park on the Mt. Hood National Forest. As approved, the project is a chairlift-assisted mountain biking development with seventeen miles of bike trails and a small skills park within an area designated for managed recreation.

It turns out that after consulting with NMFS on the project’s effects on the Lower Columbia River steelhead the Forest Service issued a New Information Report (“NIR”) and concluded that NMFS’s discussion of the Project’s effects was consistent with the effects considered and disclosed in the project EA. (This actually happened twice, and the Forest Service made the point that the second set of terms and conditions were actually more protective so that impacts had been decreased.)

The court agreed that no supplemental NEPA analysis was necessary because “the mere fact that NMFS found likely adverse effects does not trigger further NEPA analysis unless NMFS’s finding implicates impacts that could significantly affect the environment in a manner not already considered by the Forest Service.”  The effects were minor, and the difference in effects was minor.  (The court reached a similar conclusion for new information about the western bumblebee, a FS-designated sensitive species.)

The Forest Service has little guidance on how to make determinations in accordance with NEPA regarding the significance of new information, never mind how that interfaces with ESA. “NIRs” are not a “thing” recognized in the agency NEPA directives. But the FS got it right this time.

Logging planned in national park – by environmentalists

by

Really.  Redwood National Park and three state parks.  Led by Save the Redwoods League.

The new task for this century, Hodder said, is to restore landscapes that were logged but now exist in parks in a damaged, unnatural state.

That means removing old logging roads, restoring streams to bring back salmon and other fish, and doing everything to help second-and-third growth redwood trees get bigger, he said. On April 27, the league is scheduled to sign an agreement with the California state parks department and the National Park Service to allow for “restoration forestry” funded by the league as a way to undo the damage from industrial logging and recreate forests that are more natural.

All four parks involved together have about 120,000 acres of forests. Of those, about 40,000 acres is old-growth redwood, and the other 80,000 acres are in formerly logged areas that project planners hope to thin and restore in the coming decades. Most of the trees cut down will be Douglas fir, with some second-growth redwood and hardwoods like tan oak, said Paul Ringgold, a forest ecologist and chief program officer of the Save the Redwoods League. Roughly 30 to 70 percent of the trees will be taken out in the 10,000 acres treated between now and 2022, he said, and in some cases, sold to timber companies.

“These stands are a legacy of clear-cut logging,” Ringgold said. “We want to restore these areas as close as we can to the way they were pre-logging.

Forest plan contributes to recovery of the lesser long-nosed bat

by

This cave-roosting nectar-feeding bat was listed as endangered in 1988, and has just been delisted.   According to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

The primary concern regarding future viability of this subspecies continues to be roost site disturbance or loss. This is primarily an issue related to human activities and destructive actions at these roost sites.

One of the three recovery criteria is “Protect Roost and Forage Plant Habitats.”  In its final delisting rule, the FWS cites the recently revised Coronado National Forest Plan as an existing regulatory mechanism that would protect the species (one of the 5 factors to be considered in listing a species, and a key one for this species):

More than 75 percent of the range of this species in the United States is on federally managed lands and these federal agencies have guidelines and requirements in place to protect lesser long-nosed bats and their habitats, particularly roost sites… If the lesser long-nosed bat is delisted, protection of their roost sites and forage resources will continue on Federal lands because agency land-use plans and general management plans contain objectives to protect cave resources and restrict access to abandoned mines, both of which can be enforced by law enforcement officers. In addition, guidelines in these plans for grazing, recreation, off-road use, fire, etc., will continue to prevent or minimize impacts to lesser long-nosed bat forage resources. The Coronado National Forest’s 2017 Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) includes standards and guidelines to retain and enhance areas with paniculate agaves in order to benefit the lesser long-nosed bat.

Federal land management plans directly address the main threats to the species, providing assurance that improving trends in population numbers would continue, and allowing delisting to be warranted.  Recovery of listed species should be an important goal for plan components in revisions of the rest of the national forest plans.  (Even where the value of a species is not as obvious as being “vital to the tequila industry.”)

Avoiding Old Growth in Alaska- Sealaska and Forest Service

by
Image courtesy of Sealaska Corporation.

Here are two stories about Alaska, thanks to Forest Business Network.

First, this piece by Catherine Mater in the Juneau Empire, in which she talks about young growth and becoming “Siuslaw-like”.

From this piece from KTOO, Sealaska is going to sell carbon credits instead of/in addition to logs from its land in Alaska.

Alaska was invited to participate in the California cap-and-trade market in 2015 after lobbying from the Chugach Alaska Corporation. Chugach is also working on developing its own carbon offset credits. (Creative Commons photo by Xa’at)

Big greenhouse gas emitters in California are now able to buy carbon offset credits based in Alaska. The Southeast regional Native corporation Sealaska is using some of its lands for carbon sequestration. Thousands of acres of old growth trees will stay intact for over 100 years. It’s the first carbon bank in the state to be approved for the market.

Sealaska says its another way of securing a future for shareholders.

…

The corporation is expected to make money for its shareholders. But it’s already cut close to a third of its trees, and not all of the sites left are ideal for logging, like old growth stands next to salmon streams.

So, Mallott says the corporation faced a challenge. How do you protect those sensitive areas and still make money for shareholders?

“It was really the need to stretch our harvest and diminish our harvest from a higher level that put us in this framework thinking, ‘OK, what really is sustainability for Sealaska?” Mallott said.

Enter the California cap-and-trade program.

Basically, big polluters in the Golden State receive an allowance to release a planned amount of carbon each year. To account for each metric ton of carbon, companies can use that allowance or buy carbon offset credits. Those credits represent an actual, tangible thing: carbon stored in trees — in this case, trees belonging to Sealaska.

Mallott says carbon sequestration looked like the right opportunity. The money generated would help shareholders and nearly half of the trees on Sealaska land could stay in the ground.

He’s quick to point out this land isn’t locked up. The corporation can can still develop parcels for tourism or mineral exploration.

He says the project has already attracted a buyer. It’s too early to put a dollar figure on the deal. But he thinks the amount could be huge.

“Multiple millions,” Mallott said. “The financial benefit of this is very significant for Sealaska.”

In the past, conservation groups have been critical of the rate Sealaska has clear cut its forests.

Buck Lindekugel is a grass roots attorney for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, and he says that old model of logging doesn’t make sense for the region’s economy today. He welcomes the corporation’s new venture.

“We’re excited that Sealaska is seizing this opportunity to explore those options,” Lindekugel said. “We think it’s good for their shareholders, and it’s certainly good for all of us who care about the forest.”

But Mallott says Sealaska has always cared about sustainability and the bottom line.

“The carbon project. Is it a shift? It’s a recognition in the way we’ve always thought,” Mallott said.

He says the corporation isn’t going to stop logging on its remaining land. But it’s also planning to allocate more acreage to carbon sequestration in the near future.

As for what happens to the trees after the 110 years is up, Mallott says that’s up to a younger generation to decide.