Residents protested a project designed to reduce fire threats, and then a fire hits the area, reports the Montana Standard. The “project that’s been in the works for nearly five years has gone up in smoke as a result of the Roaring Lion Fire.”
Forest Service violated Wilderness Act, NFMA & NEPA in approving Wilderness mine in Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness
Here’s a bit of good news for those who value Wilderness in general, and specifically the Frank-Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho, the largest contiguous Wilderness area in the lower 48 states.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Idaho issued an order declaring that the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of the Golden Hand Mine – an extensive drilling, bulldozing and road construction project within the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness – violated the Wilderness Act, the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Below is a press release from the coalition of groups that filed the lawsuit. – mk
Boise, ID – The U.S. District Court ruled in favor of conservationists, finding that a Forest Service decision approving a mining company’s plan to deploy bulldozers, dump trucks and drilling rigs miles inside the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness violates the Wilderness Act, the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The court decision invalidates the company’s mining plan and requires the Forest Service to conduct further analysis of the proposed mining exploration and evaluate less invasive alternatives for activities in the Wilderness.
The lawsuit was filed by the Idaho Conservation League, Earthworks, The Wilderness Society, Friends of the Clearwater, and Wilderness Watch.
The lawsuit challenged the final decision by the Payette National Forest, issued on June 22, 2015, to approve American Independence Mines and Mineral’s (AIMMCO) proposal to conduct additional mineral sampling to determine if two mining claims within the Frank Church Wilderness are valid mining claims. Validating these claims is a necessary step for the mining company to proceed with any mineral development or production plans.
The mining claims are located three miles inside the Frank Church Wilderness in the headwaters of Big Creek, a tributary to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. The Forest Service decision, which the court invalidated, would have allowed AIMMCO to make 571 truck trips into and back out of the Wilderness each summer during the three-year project. AIMMCO would have also used dump trucks, bulldozers and drilling rigs to open roads, clear drill pads and excavate trenches within the wilderness.
“Wilderness areas are afforded the highest level of protection of any federal public land in our nation,” said Bryan Hurlbutt, attorney with Advocates for the West. “Even when a mining company has some rights within wilderness, its workers can walk through the wilderness like the rest of us, and any mining activities must be limited to the absolute minimum.”
“The law requires special protections from mining operations in congressionally-designated Wilderness, and the court correctly ruled that the Forest Service failed to meet these high standards,” noted Roger Flynn, attorney with the Western Mining Action Project which represented the groups along with Advocates for the West.
“Thousands of people who hike, hunt, fish and float in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness spoke out against this project,” said John Robison of the Idaho Conservation League. “The Court ruled that the Forest Service has to find a better balance and work harder to protect the public’s rights and Wilderness values.”
“The Frank Church Wilderness is a national treasure that deserves the utmost protection against needlessly destructive mining activities,” said Bonnie Gestring of Earthworks. “We’re pleased the court is requiring a more thorough analysis of less harmful measures.”
“The court has granted a necessary reprieve to the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness”, stated George Nickas, executive director of Wilderness Watch. “Now it’s up to the Forest Service to show a far greater concern for the Wilderness if or when it completes the court-ordered reanalysis of this terribly destructive mining plan.”
Gary Macfarlane of Friends of the Clearwater said, “This is good news for the wild heart of Idaho. The Forest Service must do a better job in protecting the remarkable character of the this large and amazing Wilderness.”
The federal 1872 Mining Law holds precedence over public land, even though it has not been significantly revised in nearly 150 years. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, and others have introduced H.R. 963, the Hardrock Mineral Reform and Reclamation Act of 2015. The act would empower state, local and tribal governments to petition federal authorities to withdraw lands from mining to protect drinking water, wildlife habitat, cultural and historic resources, or other important values.
The coalition of conservation groups is represented by attorneys Bryan Hurlbutt of Advocates for the West and Roger Flynn of the Western Mining Action Project.
A copy of the court decision is available here.
Big Fires, Bad for Spotted Owls
News of a study in a press release today from the U. of Wisconsin-Madison:
Giant forest fires exterminate spotted owls, long-term study finds
“We had this long-term demographic study, we knew all the owls in the 137 square mile study area,” says Peery. “The fire burned almost half the study area. On one side was the treatment, a large, high severity fire, and on the other side was the control, with little or no fire. Almost all the owl territories within the megafire went from occupied to unoccupied. We can now say that megafires have a significant impact on the spotted owl, and so we think that forest restoration through fuel reduction benefits both the forest ecosystem and the spotted owl.”
I hesitate to think that the researchers were surprised that the owls had left the burned area….
The study, “Megafires: an emerging threat to old-forest species,” is (behind a pay wall).
Exterminated? Well, maybe, but all they know is that the burned area is unoccupied — the owls likely flew off. Some chicks may have been killed — but I speculate.
Some folks will point out that the fire area studied, the King Fire in Calif., burned in 2014, so it’s too soon to say that those owls won’t come back at some point. They will come back, eventually. But that doesn’t mean that “mega fires” are desirable. The researchers got one thing right: “…forest restoration through fuel reduction benefits both the forest ecosystem and the spotted owl.” We have plenty of snag forest habitat.
An ecosystem services approach to managing public lands
More grist for trhwe discussion mill: A new Science Findings report from the PNW Research Station, “What people value: an ecosystem services approach to managing public lands.”
Description: Since 1960, the Forest Service has been guided by the multiple-use concept, which recognizes five major uses for public lands—timber, water, range, recreation, and fish and wildlife habitat—and mandates that all five should be equally considered in management plans. In recent decades, however, it has become evident that people also value many other benefits offered by the natural world, such as support for indigenous cultures and sustainable communities, protection for endangered species, and carbon sequestration. The “ecosystem services” concept has emerged as a way to describe a much broader suite of goods and services, including those that are more difficult to quantify than the traditionally recognized major uses.
The 2012 Forest Service planning rule requires that ecosystem services be addressed in assessment and planning. Researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Station are working nationally and with individual forests to apply ecosystem services approaches to operations and management decisions. They are working to characterize commonly overlooked values, provide incentives for sustainable practices, and encourage inclusive, collaborative policymaking methods to ensure that input from stakeholder groups and individuals is considered prior to implementing management actions. In a recent general technical report produced by station scientists, the Deschutes National Forest is used as a case study to explore the application of the ecosystem services concept as described here.
I think this video speaks for itself.
I worked out of Hamilton for many weeks, not that many years ago. People SHOULD be horrified that this was the first 4 hours of the Roaring Lion fire.
Timber numbers in revised forest plans
If there is one thing the Forest Service should have learned from the last round of forest planning, it is that they should put realistic projections of timber volume in their forest plans. These numbers are going to create expectations for the timber industry and Congress that will translate into pressure to produce that amount. It’s when they try to plan timber programs and sales that are more intensive than are appropriate for other resources (i.e. wildlife) that they often end up in litigation.
Unfortunately, what I’ve seen in the few revised plans that have gotten this far looks like a continuing tendency to declare as many acres as possible to be suitable for timber management (defined as growing a regulated crop of trees), and to be evasive about how much future volumes would be reduced because of the presence of at-risk wildlife species (and the standards and guidelines required to provide their habitat).
In addition, there is a greater emphasis on the role of agency in budgets in determining the amount of timber that will be produced, to the point that forest plan alternatives may differ as much in their assumed budgets as they do in actual management direction. This is despite the fact that forest plans do not make budget decisions.
I get the feeling that there is a lack of transparency developing about the real tradeoffs involved in national forest management so that the Forest Service can once again promise everything for everyone, and then give itself the most flexibility to find timber sales on the largest possible suitable land base.
Federal Judge orders Forest Service to stop logging secret clearcut on Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest
The following is a press release from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council. Back in March 2016 we had this blog post about the secret clearcut on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in Montana. You can view photos of the logging project here. – mk
On July 28, 2006 the Federal District Court in Missoula granted the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council’s request for a preliminary injunction in their lawsuit filed a lawsuit against Leann Marten, the Regional Forester of the Forest Service in Federal District Court in Missoula, after discovering a secret logging project, named Moosehorn Ditch Timber Sale, that logged an unknown number of acres of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest near Wisdom, MT, without any public involvement or legally-required environmental analysis. A copy of the order is here.
“When I happened upon this, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Dr. Sara Jane Johnson, Director of Native Ecosystems Council explained. “I was visiting the area to monitor some aspen livestock fencing projects when I came across the massive clearcut. The area looked like it had been hit by a nuclear bomb.”
Dr. Johnson has a Ph.D. in wildlife biology from Montana State University and was a wildlife biologist for the Forest Service for 14 years. “Lynx are listed as ‘protected’ under the Endangered Species Act and the Forest Service has documented at least seven lynx sightings within 15 miles of this clearcut. Even the agency’s own studies show that logging destroys habitat for lynx,” Johnson continued. “Yet, despite clear legal requirements to consider the effects of logging projects on National Forest lands, the Forest Service arbitrarily decided to ignore the requirements of our nation’s environmental laws. The only thing they did was give this secret clearcut a name, Moosehorn Ditch Timber Sale.”
“This logging is particularly egregious because of the numerous other sensitive species that have been sighted within a 15-mile radius of the timber sale,” Johnson explained. “Goshawks and a nest, wolverines, sage grouse and a lek, Northern Rockies fishers, gray wolves, black-backed woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers, northern bog lemmings, Brewer’s sparrows, and great gray owls have all been documented in the area.”
“The shocking thing is to see what the Forest Service will do if they think no one is watching,” Johnson concluded. “It was just pure luck that we found this illegal timber sale.”
Apparently the Forest Service got so tired of losing court cases on their timber sales that they now are pretending that our nation’s laws don’t apply to them,” added Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “When we asked the Forest Service for a copy of the legally-required environmental analysis for this secret timber sale and documentation of how the public was involved, the agency responded that there was neither.”
“We are please that the court ordered logging stopped on this secret timber sale. Fortunately for the American public, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act are still on the books,” Garrity continued. “We are a democracy and only Congress can change laws, not federal agencies.”
“Congress passed these laws because the Forest Service was destroying our public lands by putting clearcutting ahead of preserving habitat for biodiversity, preservation of species, hunting, fishing and the clean, vital watersheds national forests provide,” Garrity concluded. “Bureaucrats can’t just pretend laws don’t exist when they get in the way of clearcutting the National Forests that belong to all Americans. In our nation everybody has to follow the law and that certainly includes the taxpayer-funded Forest Service.”
Forest fires and houses – the Interior Secretary speaks
The question of how much responsibility should fall on the homeowner who choses to live with fire risk came up recently. Here’s Secretary Jewell’s opinion on that:
“We should be holding these people accountable, and we’re not.”
“We each have to take personal responsibility.”
Life After the Timber Bust
Here’s a July 26, 2016, AP article about an Oregon town that has survived the federal timber bust: Prineville, which is home to several Facebook and Apple server farms, as well as the venerable Les Schwab Tire distribution center. There are lots of construction jobs now, but will server farms provide a level of employment comparable to the former timber industry? I doubt it.
Former Oregon lumber town rides digital wave to a comeback
For perspective, you might read these articles about other towns where things aren’t as rosy. Sweet Home, where “The patchwork that resulted — some people with money, many people without and few ways to earn a wage — now defines much of rural Oregon.”:
Town That Thrived on Logging Is Looking for a Second Growth
And Oakridge, where “About 1,600 people — nearly half the town’s population — come to the Oakridge food bank each month to pick up free supplies.”:
Former Oregon Lumber Town Tries To Reinvent Itself
Is There a Place for Legislating Place-Based Collaborative Forestry Proposals?
Homework assignment: Read “Is There a Place for Legislating Place-Based Collaborative Forestry Proposals?: Examining the Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act Pilot Project,” Journal of Forestry, July 2016.
Focuses on the Quincy Library Group. Was anyone on this blog involved with the group? I’d like to hear your comments on the paper.
Here’s the abstract:
In 1993, a group of national forest stakeholders, the Quincy Library Group, crafted a proposal that intended to reduce wildfire risk, protect the California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis), restore watersheds, and enhance community stability by ensuring a predictable supply of timber for area sawmills and biomass for energy plants. The Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act of 1998 codified this proposal, directing the USDA Forest Service to conduct forest treatments on 40,000 – 60,000 acres per year by creating defensible fuel profile zones and logging by group- and individual tree-selection methods. The law also designated an Independent Science Panel to review monitoring studies, administrative studies, and research to assess efficacy of the implementation and achievement of goals. Although several goals were achieved, implementation fell short of treatment and volume goals, and evidence was lacking to make conclusive judgments about environmental impacts. Shortcomings were due to differing interpretations of the Act’s prescriptive intent, changes in management direction, compounding economic factors, appeals and litigation, variation in site-specific forest conditions, and variation in approaches among national forests and districts. Most notable was a lack of monitoring of the treatment effects on California spotted owl populations and other environmental concerns. These findings suggest that attempts to legislate prescriptive, collaboratively developed proposals may not account for the complex biophysical, management, social, and economic contexts within which national forest management occurs. These findings also suggest that current national forest policies and directives promoting collaboration should also be accompanied by a commitment to monitoring and adaptive management.