NFS Litigation Weekly April 6, 2018

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Litigation Weekly April 6

(New case.)  Plaintiffs challenged the Dinkey timber sale on the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest because of erosion and water quality risks.  (E.D. Tenn.)  (This case was also discussed here.)

The court invalidated the regulation issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service governing management of the reintroduced  Mexican wolf because it did not sufficiently further the conservation of the species, and the court required a new determination of whether the population was “nonessential” under ESA.  The Mexican wolf is found primarily on national forest lands in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, where there are persistent conflicts with livestock grazing.  (D. Ariz.)

 

Blogger’s bonus – new case

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies “says the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are ignoring their own science by not including roads behind earthen berms in total road mileage counts” in grizzly bear habitat on the Kootenai National Forest.  (It’s not clear what decision is being challenged.)

“The Insatiable Appetite for People to Come Here”: Interview with Scott Fitzwilliams, White River NF Supervisor

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Glenwood Springs, CO – May 13, 2016: Hanging Lake, as breathtaking a spot as you can find in Colorado’s high country, has been at risk from the crush of visitors who stomp up the trail and walk around — and sometimes in — the lake and its feeder waterfall. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

The Denver Post printed an interview with Scott Fitzwilliams, the White River NF Supervisor last week. Has your local paper done a similar interview with a Forest Supervisor? If so, please link in the comments below. It might give us a different perspective on regional variation in “what’s happening on/challenging” the National Forests.

Here’s a link to the whole story. Needless to say, there’s a lot of ski resort stuff in the interview.

DP: There’s legislation in Congress that would enable the Forest Service to retain a portion of revenue-based fees collected from ski areas on public land. That could be huge for the White River. Fee retention is not a new idea. The 2004 Federal Lands Enhancement Act enabled forests like the White River to retain some recreation fees. How has that worked out for you guys?

S.F.: It’s made all the difference. In this forest we are able to retain about $1.3 million in fees from outfitter guides, Maroon Bells, Vail Pass, campgrounds that are nonconcessioned. Since we have been able to do that with a clear and concise and rather firm direction from Congress that those fees go toward supporting the program that generated the fees, we have been able to invest in things like trails, trailheads and maintenance of that, for example, our outfitters and guides use. Frankly that has been lifesaver for us. If you were to model this fee retention proposal similarly, we have a proven track record that we make good use of fees.

DP: Crowds in the White River forest have led to some innovative management strategies with plans for permitting at hotspots such as Vail Pass, Hanging Lake, Maroon Bells and Conundrum Hot Springs. What are some of the challenges in deploying those kinds of management plans?

S.F.: Resort-based recreation is major part of our niche, but really what shapes this forest is the interstate. It really does. We look to a future where that’s not going to stop no matter how they get here, whether it is light rail or extra lanes. What we are talking about it how we create a scenario where we can get people on the forest, enjoy the forest and maybe in more developed pods or in shorter-duration experiences they can get right off the Interstate 70 corridor. It’s a tough time to do it, but where we have to be in the future is really looking at this I-70 corridor, where we have maybe webs going off into the Roaring Fork Valley and places like that. The insatiable appetite for people to come here is not going to change.

It’s this combination of managing and providing the experience because that’s what we do and it’s super important and if we want support for our public lands. Putting up a sign that reads “Sorry. The park is closed,” or overly restricting people is not the way to get support for conservation of public lands or a sustainable environmental ethic. These types of decisions and planning processes I think we will see more of in the future. I’m not sure where the next one is. Some of the more popular fourteeners around the state are being talked about. Again it’s not us outright trying to limit access. It’s more about managing people space and time. These are hard processes. To do it right it takes time.

Coastal pine marten trending toward extinction on national forests

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The coastal marten is at a high risk for extinction in Oregon and northern California in the next 30 years due to threats from human activities, according to a new study.

“The study, published today in the online journal PeerJ, will be available to federal and state wildlife agencies for their consideration to determine whether distinct geographic population segments of the coastal marten warrant state or federal listing as threatened or endangered, said Katie Moriarty, a certified wildlife biologist and lead co-author on the study.

Their population assessment revealed that the central Oregon population of coastal martens is likely fewer than 87 adults divided into two subpopulations separated by the Umpqua River. Using a population viability analysis, they concluded that the extinction risk for a subpopulation of 30 martens ranged from 32 percent to 99 percent.

In the short term, limiting human-caused deaths of the coastal martens would have the greatest impact on the animal’s survival, said Moriarty, who has studied the animals for several years. In the long term, the species requires more habitat, which perhaps could be accomplished by making the adjacent federal land in Siuslaw National Forest suitable for martens.”

So this isn’t just new information for use in the ESA listing process, but it also raises new questions about whether existing forest plans would provide conditions needed for viable populations.  I look forward to seeing how the Forest Service answers this question.  (And yes, the Forest Service does have the authority to limit trapping.)

Local Newspaper Appreciation Day

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I’ve mentioned before how important I think the Denver Post is in covering federal lands issues (and other Interior West issues), being perhaps the largest newspaper in the Interior West/Rocky Mountain area. In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a sample of some of the pieces I’ve seen there. Here is a link to the cutback story.

NEWS OF IMPENDING CUTS at The Denver Post came first from Twitter. “In a staff meeting, the @DenverPost editor just told us that we are cutting 30 positions in the newsroom,” wrote City Hall reporter Jon Murray. “There are some sobs in the room.” The paper soon confirmed that its newsroom of around 100 would be reduced by almost a third, slashing its capacity to cover one of the nation’s booming cities. (Its newsroom had already been cut by two thirds, from 300 at its peak.)

From Vince Bzdek at the Colorado Springs Gazette here:

Last week, his hedge fund ordered 30 more jobs cut from The Denver Post newsroom, for a total of 75 jobs in the last three years. That’s more journalists cut than the Gazette has total in its newsroom.

Though he manages $2 billion in assets, Smith has no experience running a newspaper, or any real interest in what a newspaper does for a community.

Smith is what is known as a “vulture capitalist” and his apparent plan is to suck all the value out of the Post while he can, and then when it is a shriveled carcass and can no longer make enough profit to satisfy his bloodlust, sell it or close it.

And when that happens, one of the most dynamic cities in the country will be without its conscience, its tentpole, its beating heart.

Vultures like Smith have bought and “harvested” an estimated 679 hometown newspapers that were once serving 12.8 million readers.

Fortunately, Colorado Springs has a newspaper owned by someone with a stake in the future of the state and the city, someone who lives in Colorado and is wholly vested in its economic and civic vitality.

Most of the newspapers that are surviving and thriving now adhere to a similar model: they are locally owned by someone who thinks newspapers have a higher mission that must be preserved.

These owners believe that a city is only as good as its newspaper, and that covering local news, city council meetings, school board meetings, election campaigns, military-appreciation lunches, all those staples of civic life, are worth the investment because it is an investment in the civic fabric of the city. If a city is going to be truly good, someone has to shine a light on the bad guys, calling out corruption and incompetence. A healthy, prosperous newspaper is the watchdog, cheerleader and hearth of a healthy, prosperous city.

Things look different depending on where you are. Salt Lake City is not New York City. We don’t know the filters that the mainstream coastal media apply to what they choose to cover and how they cover it, but we can interact directly with out local news folks and they with us. Many of the best “tells both sides of the story” stories posted here have come from local press. Here’s to our local newsfolks!

NFS Litigation Weekly March 30, 2018

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Litigation Weekly March 30

Plaintiff alleges violations of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act for failure to prepare river management plans for eight river segments on the Los Padres, Inyo and San Bernardino national forests, as well as BLM lands.  (C.D. Cal.)  (Discussed earlier here.)

The court reversed decisions on BLM resource management plans by two adjacent field offices for failure to consider alternatives with fewer areas open to oil, gas and coal leasing, failure to consider the impacts of the foreseeable combustion of resources that would be sold, and failure to respond to concerns about using outdated science for methane pollution (while dismissing other NEPA challenges).  (D. Mont.)

Firefighters It’s Time We Lead the Way on Ending Harassment

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Whitewater-Baldy Complex, Gila National Forest, New Mexico, May, 2012

While searching for a photo for this post, I found Kari Greer’s fire photo website here. This site is worth checking out, as there are many amazing and wonderful fire photos.

I’ve been behind on my blog duties, partially due to discovering that backups of my computer stuff did not automatically include bookmarks from Chrome. Lesson learned. Anyway, here goes…
This is a piece from High Country News by Lorena Williams a writer and firefighter out of Durango, Colorado.

“It is such a hostile environment,” said journalist Judy Woodruff, discussing the PBS investigation. “Why do these women go into the Forest Service in the first place?”

I am one of these women, and here is my answer: The culture of firefighting is not an inherently “hostile environment.” For every coworker that has excluded me from the “boys’ club,” 10 others have made me feel welcome and safe in a professional work environment. I have faith in these good people to change a culture that has historically enabled sexual assault and retaliation. If we do not act as harbingers of change, we are by default complicit in the problem.

The victims interviewed for the PBS investigation are just a fraction of those who remain fearfully silent or have moved on from the agency. I have little doubt of their credibility. I have never been assaulted, fortunately, but I have experienced and also witnessed harassment and discrimination. In my view, it stems from the perspective that women are, and should remain, outsiders in the industry.

….

I was told three years ago during a friendly conversation with a male coworker that I was only hired because I was female. It wasn’t true, but it illustrated what I fear most about this transition in our field: Women are often seen as intruders, as tokens who were only hired to meet some kind of quota. We are treated as pariahs in our professional fields, regarded as little more than sexual-harassment cases waiting to happen.

This sentiment — that working with women is playing with fire — has been hinted at by many of my colleagues throughout the years. Male firefighters at all levels feel hamstrung, suddenly censored, in what is a naturally high-risk, adrenaline-filled career that at times warrants aggressive command presence. In expressing their concerns, however, some male firefighters imply that simply maintaining an appropriate workplace environment is so difficult and out of the ordinary that it cannot possibly be done. And so, they say, they fear for their jobs.

It’s true that certain aspects of this job inherently challenge political correctness. We work in the woods, sleep on the ground, relate to each other through bathroom humor, teasing and goading. Spending an entire summer, day and night, with the same people means that professionalism inevitably slips into casual camaraderie. This is how we cope, how we bond and thrive. This gray area, where our professional lives become personal, is both rewarding and dangerous — prime territory for interpersonal chaos. But firefighter culture has to try to enter the 21st century; it can no longer hide fearfully behind patriarchal tradition. Times have changed, and fire culture needs to catch up.

Federal lands, “Utah-style”

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Three Republicans running for election this year discussed weakening the Antiquities Act and Endangered Species Act, dropping the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate and rewriting federal public lands policy to require state approval of new regulations.

“It’s not that lawmakers in the East — and for me that’s everything east of Denver — it’s not that they’re evil, they’re just stupid,” he (Bishop) said, drawing chuckles from some in the audience. “When we talk about public lands to Easterners, they just don’t have the same concept. They think everything is Yellowstone.”

I would say they might think everything “should be” Yellowstone, and who’s to say they are wrong.  It’s their land too.  Maybe Bishop is the one who is stupid.

“”It’s going to take an educational effort, not just a political effort” to push back against what he called radical environmental groups, he (Romney) added, referencing decisions such as Trump’s national monuments order, which has been challenged in court by Native American groups, environmental groups and others.  “There are some in the environmental lawsuit industry that may not care very much about the underlying facts,” he (Romney) said. “They’re just going to file lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit because that’s how they get paid.”

The underlying facts are what the lawsuits are based on.  And apparently “radical” means “willing to go to court.”

Calif. Forests: “an unnatural 300 to 500 trees an acre”

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Mike Archer listed this article in today’s Wildfire News Of The Day email: “California fights wildfires aggressively—but prevention takes a back seat.”

“A 19th-century California forest would have held fewer than 50 trees an acre. Today the state’s forests have grown to an unnatural 300 to 500 trees an acre, or more. That doesn’t count the 2 million drought-stressed trees a month lost to bark beetles that have killed entire stands.” [emphasis mine]

Mentions the Little Hoover Commission report, “Fire on the Mountain: Rethinking Forest Management in the Sierra Nevada.”

FYI, to subscribe to the Wildfire News Of The Day list, contact Archer at [email protected].

USFS Planning Workshop Video

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Here’s a link to video that Nick Smith included in today’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities News Round Up email. In the video, Chris French, Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination, gives a presentation on NEPA reform at the Environmental Analysis and Decision Making Workshop in Phoenix, Arizona. French gives examples of the time and money the USFS spends on various planning documents and looks at documents for similar projects from other agencies — BLM, BIA. Nick’s link is an ~8 minute portion of the full video, nearly an hour, which is here. I haven’t had time to watch the whole thing. The 8-minute excerpt is worth a look.

Wild and scenic river plan lawsuit

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The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act requires a comprehensive river management plan for eight rivers and creeks in southern California that Congress designated under the Act in 2009.  The law requires completion of river plans within three years of designation.  The rivers flow through national forest and BLM lands.  A complaint was filed March 27.

The North Fork of the San Jacinto River, for example, runs through lands managed by the San Bernardino National Forest and provides habitat for the critically endangered mountain yellow-legged frog, as well as other animals including California spotted owls and rubber boas.

Animals that live along Palm Canyon Creek include the southwestern willow flycatcher and Peninsular bighorn sheep.  “We’re concerned that by not having a comprehensive management plan for this wild creek that the resources could degrade over time,” she said.

The complaint asks  for “a permanent injunction, to prepare a Management Plan … by a date certain.”  Seems like a good candidate for a settlement, no?