The 4FRI Stakeholder Group is in the process of reviewing this draft decision. We have worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service in this planning effort, which began in 2012. It is the largest Environmental Impact Statement for forest restoration in the country,” stated Diane Vosick, current co-chair of the 4FRI stakeholder group and Director of Policy and Partnerships for the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, adding “while we are currently undergoing review of the decision details, we are unified in our support of restoring our northern Arizona National Forests.”
“This plan will help guarantee a supply of wood for the businesses who are investing in wood manufacturing, as well as create much-needed jobs,” said Steve Gatewood, the other co-chair of the stakeholder group and a longstanding member of the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership. “It is the first of at least two large plans that will eventually encompass 2.4 million acres of northern Arizona forests.”
The 4FRI landscape has been broken into two planning areas: this first plan encompasses much of the Coconino and South Kaibab forests (nearly one million acres), and the second plan, currently in the pre-planning stages, will incorporate 1.4 million acres of eastern Arizona pine forests on the Apache-Sitgreaves and the Tonto.
This draft decision summarizes the types of treatments that are intended to restore forests to a condition that protects communities and watersheds from unnatural catastrophic fire events; improve forest health; enhance wildlife habitat; and restore the beneficial role of managed and natural low-intensity ground fires. For more information on 4FRI, please visit www.4fri.org.
This is one of those projects (people in the Forest Service probably know of these) that goes on and on.. when I used to be involved I called it “reasonable access for unreasonable people.” My perspective, though, is that while the proponent may have gotten more reasonable, the other side does not necessarily feel the same way. But I like how honest the people who don’t want it are.. see the italicized last line of the quote. This is one of those that has been done and redone, by many people with much legal advice.
Here’s the link (I think visiting the Denver Post website crashed my browser, so apologies in advance if that happens to you. I would criticize them, but I’m just glad we still have their press presence.)
Dallas said the intent of the Forest Service when it approved the controversial 1986 land swap that gave McCombs the island of private land along the Continental Divide “was to create a village.”
When asked if the agency would approve the land swap today, Dallas said: “I don’t know how to answer that. I’ve been asked that many times. It was what it was. We can’t change that.”
The agency’s reviews of land exchanges that create islands of private land surrounded by public lands “has gotten much more … intense,” he said.
“Any sort of land exchange is generally controversial unless they are pretty small and simple ones, unless they have a really good identified reason like we have now,” Dallas said. “Land exchanges have gotten much more comprehensive; how we look at them, how we consider them. The public interest determination is looked at extremely closely.”
After the agency issued its draft environmental impact statement in 2012 supporting the land exchange, the agency harvested 893 letters commenting on the land exchange and more than 120 attended public meetings in August 2012.
“The proposal for the Village at Wolf Creek has been rife with controversy and strong feelings for a very long time and I’m certainly not so naïve that my decision will settle the controversy and strong feelings,” said Dallas, expressing confidence that his team’s process was thorough and transparent.
The Forest Service will field public comments on the decision for 45 days. If land advocacy groups file objections — which is likely — the agency can extend the comment period for another 75 days.
“We are going to hit it from every side,” Sandler said. “Really we will be looking at this with a microscope to find the inadequacies in this decision.”
Here’s some more info for those who are interested..
“The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are seeking to eliminate key protections for watersheds, streams and salmon” — says this op-ed in the Eugene Register-Guard.
“In 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan allowed federal forest management to free itself from court injunctions. The plan contains an aquatic conservation strategy, which provides protections for streams and critical support for threatened and endangered salmon. The BLM and Forest Service are revising all forest plans under the Northwest Forest Plan with a goal of increased timber harvests and lower standards for the aquatic conservation strategy.”
Here’s a cheery story for Wednesday morning..again, thanks to Forest Business Network.
“In Sweden we make small butter knives out of juniper wood, and just smelling one of these knives you get a great juniper smell. I wondered, if we make a big barrel out of this, what would we get out of it taste-wise?” Hillgren says.
To make a traditional Swedish cask, Hillgren needed thick juniper staves with as few knots as possible, to prevent leaks. His distillery is located just a few miles from Sweden’s largest sawmills, but he couldn’t find juniper wood anywhere in Europe that met his specifications. So he searched Google, and found the In The Sticks sawmill in Fossil, Oregon.
Kendal Derby, a rangeland ecologist, founded the mill so that juniper cut during range restoration projects wouldn’t go to waste. Few of Oregon’s larger sawmills are willing to work with it. Hillgren began emailing Derby, and was delighted to find another small artisan business halfway across the world.
“We haven’t met each other, but we’re doing business very well. It’s all about trust. It’s a perfect cooperation,” Hillgren says.
Derby agrees. “It was fun. When we first started talking about it, I was headed out the door to go elk hunting. Jon promptly wrote back and said ‘we go elk hunting in Sweden too,’” he remembers.
Sen. Ron Wyden has succeeded in pushing his O&C lands act through committee. There are lots of points in the act to discuss, but this one is interesting. I haven’t been paying close attention to the bill since last year. This provision for Private Landowner Actions on Federal Land was included in the Dec. 2013 version of the bill, but the amended bill just approved by the committee adds one key change — see Section F below….
‘‘(B) PRIVATE LANDOWNER ACTIONS ON FEDERAL LAND.—
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL
.—Without a permit from the
Secretary, a person may enter and treat adjacent
Federal land in a Dry or Moist Forestry Emphasis
Area that is located within 100 feet of the residence
of that person if—
‘‘(A) the residence is in existence on the
date of enactment of the Oregon and California
Land Grant Act of 2014;
‘‘(B) the treatment is carried out at the
expense of the person;
‘‘(C) the person notifies the Secretary of
the intent to treat that land; and
‘‘(D) the Secretary has adequate super-
visory, monitoring, and enforcement resources
to ensure that the person carries out the treat-
ment activities in accordance with paragraph (3).
…
‘‘(A) No dead tree, nest tree, legacy tree,
or tree greater than 16 inches in diameter shall
be cut.
‘‘(B) No herbicide or insecticide applica18
tion shall be used.
‘‘(C) Vegetation shall be cut so that—
‘‘(i) less flammable species are favored
for retention; and
‘‘(ii) the adequate height and spacing
between bushes and trees are maintained.
‘‘(D) Any residual trees shall be pruned…
…
‘‘(F) Any material of commercial value
generated by the activity authorized in paragraph (1)
is the property of the United States.
The following article was written by Josh Schlossberg and appears in the current issue of the Boulder Weekly. – mk
Drive along Highway 119 south of Nederland or Highway 9 south of Frisco and you’ll see large swaths of bare soil and scattered slash — including entire hillsides — where once there was forest. These aren’t future subdivisions, but the Arapaho and White River National Forests.
The U.S. Forest Service is undertaking logging with the goal of keeping communities and the forest safe from wildfire. The project is funded by taxpayers to the tune of $1,200 per acre. But some locals, upset about the changes to the forest they know and love, are questioning if logging can really protect their homes and whether wildfire is as much of a threat to the forest as they’re being told.
Some residents of the mountain towns Nederland and Frisco are up in arms about these “fuel reduction” logging projects. Forest Service efforts often include cutting down thousands of acres of public forests that many enjoy as a quiet place to recreate, including the popular West Magnolia Mountain Bike Trail in Nederland and the section of the nationally renowned Colorado Trail outside of Frisco.
The Ophir Mountain Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project consists of 1,500 acres of clearcuts in the White River National Forest outside of Frisco, with trees chipped and trucked 70 miles to the Eagle Valley Clean Energy biomass facility in Gypsum. The Lump Gulch Fuel Treatment Project will cut 500 acres in the Arapaho National Forest outside of Nederland, with much of the material piled to burn on site, according to Marcia Gilles, public affairs specialist for the Arapaho National Forest. Both areas have recently experienced the native mountain pine beetle, an epidemic that peaked between 2007 and 2009 and has since subsided.
The Forest Service contends that logging these forests, which are in some cases miles from the nearest home, will “protect communities and restore natural processes to forest ecosystems.” Yet some Coloradans point to science demonstrating that logging is often ineffective at stopping large wildfires and can even make them spread more quickly by opening the forest to sunlight and wind.
“We have learned that forest thinning is rarely effective under extreme burning conditions, and the severity of fire in adjacent forests has little to do with whether a home burns,” says Tania Schoennagel research scientist at University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and co-author of a new study titled Learning to Coexist with Wildfire.
While the wisdom of logging to prevent wildfire continues to be debated, the most effective action homeowners can take to prevent their homes from burning is to tend an area 100 feet to 200 feet surrounding the structure, called the home ignition zone, according to the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. One study showed 95 percent of homes with metal roofs and a maintained area of 30 feet to 60 feet survived fires.
Vivian Long of Nederland, president of the Magnolia Forest Group, says she doesn’t subscribe to the Forest Service “rationale of logging for fire protection to save us from the big fire.” She’s concerned that clearcutting will simply create another “spindly, lodgepole thicket” in the forest, which the agency might want to log again in the future for the same reason. Her group is in discussion with the agency in hopes of amending some of the ongoing logging in the area.
As in Nederland, locals in Frisco are concerned that logging will have a negative impact on recreational resources that are a national draw, including ski areas and the Colorado and Continental Divide trails.
Having spoken to forestry experts and studied the woods as he hikes, Howard Brown of Silverthorne says he would prefer to see the lodgepole pines around trails like the Peaks Trail left alone to eventually become spruce-fir climax forest, rather than turned into a “war zone.” He’s worried about the harm to the local resort community of Breckenridge, as the clearcuts transform from “thickets, to overgrown Christmas tree lots, to dense scrawny lodgepole monoculture.”
“When you live next to the forest, there’s a chance there’s going to be a forest fire,” says Frisco resident Don Cacace, who has opposed the Ophir Mountain project since its inception. “The last thing we want to do is cut down the forest.”
No one denies the inevitability of wildfire in Colorado. Rocky Mountain forests have evolved with fire over the millennia as a natural and essential component of western forest ecosystems. Fire kills off some trees to make room for future growth, returns vital nutrients to the soil and creates wildlife habitat.
Over the past century, attempts have been made to suppress wildfire out of concern for communities and at the behest of the timber industry. The perspective of industry, the Forest Service, and some environmental groups is that fire suppression has resulted in overgrown forests full of dangerous “fuel” — either dense stands of live trees or beetle kill — that is causing more frequent and destructive wildfires. The proposed cure for these sick forests is a logging prescription that will restore the forest and keep people safe, while gleaning some merchantable lumber or biomass energy.
Recent science has challenged these assumptions, demonstrating that wild fires, including large, catastrophic ones, were historically quite common in Colorado and that large fires are more a product of drought, high temperatures and wind than fuel levels. Studies have shown that large wildfires are often just as likely to burn through clearcuts devoid of most fuels, as they are through densely-stocked forests.
While beetle-killed trees in the Rockies have been impossible to ignore, Bill Romme, who teaches forest and fire ecology at Colorado State University, says there is “little or no such relationship between beetle-caused tree mortality and subsequent fire occurrence and severity in lodgepole pine forests,” as quoted in an article written for NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Scott Fitzwilliams, forest supervisor of the White River National Forest, acknowledges the controversy, yet explains the need for projects such as Ophir Mountain and the upcoming Keystone Vegetation Management to give firefighters a “chance to protect homes, property and power lines.” He is also concerned about what’s going to happen over the next few years when beetle-killed trees start falling, risking the safety of recreationists and creating a “tangled mess.”
As more and more people inhabit Colorado’s forests, the chance of a community experiencing wildfire increases. Federal, regional, state and local grants are available for home treatments, while Saws and Slaws is bringing community members around Nederland, Coal Creek Canyon and Sugarloaf together to make homes firewise and feast together afterward, with projects starting up again in the spring.
No matter what happens in the forest, Fitzwilliams says the Forest Service is going to feel the heat. If they cut trees in an attempt to prevent wildfire, they’ll be criticized by those who’d rather see nature take its course. If they do nothing and a wildfire ignites, they’ll be blamed for that, too. Fitzwilliams says there’s science and emotion on all sides of the issue, and adds “we’re going to have to make some choices that are sometimes hard to swallow.”
I had been subsumed in graduate study but looking through the Denver Post grouse articles I found this story from the AP..from October. It sounds like an approach that the FS would get in trouble if they tried.. does anyone have more info?
GRAND JUNCTION — A meeting next week in Fort Collins about the greater sage-grouse has drawn fire from several western representatives who want to know why public attendance is limited while regulators focus on possible land use issues.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are conducting a workshop Wednesday and Thursday to discuss scientific questions about bird populations. Interior Department officials say the panel includes government agencies, tribes, industry and local conservation organizations.
The department says people who were invited to attend were drafted with help from wildlife agencies so they could focus on scientific issues.
According to The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, critics say scientists who favor federal limits are invited, while industries and other critics are being excluded.
“It is disappointing that the Fish and Wildlife Service workshop does not also include an examination of the data relating to population trends, in addition to questions of genetics, since many have questioned the … lack of clear data that Greater Sage Grouse populations range-wide are declining,” according to a letter sent from 18 local representatives to the Department of the Interior.
The letter urges Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to cancel the workshop and gather population and other data before the Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to list the greater sage-grouse as threatened or endangered. Estimates on the number of sage grouse vary from 100,000 to 500,000, raising questions over the need for stricter limits on development.
Sage grouse are chicken-sized birds that live in sagebrush and grasslands. They are known for gathering in spring in breeding grounds called leks, where the males puff themselves out and dance for females searching for mates.
A listing would affect the way lands are managed in 11 states, including Colorado, where state and local officials say it could hamstring the energy industry, particularly in northwest Colorado.
Fish and Wildlife is expected to make a decision on the listing by September 2015.
With all the partisan mud-slinging of the past months, it’s nice to have your delegation all together.
The story is that folks in D controlled (Hickenlooper) state of Colorado have been working assiduously to avoid listing.
Here’s the Denver Post editorial:
OPINION
Gunnison sage grouse listing snubs local efforts
By The Denver Post Editorial Board
It’s unfortunate the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service felt obliged to list the Gunnison sage grouse this week as a threatened species — unfortunate because it is unnecessary and because state and local officials have worked hard to avoid the listing through aggressive measures to protect the bird.
Indeed, Fish & Wildlife acknowledges the bird’s population in the Gunnison Basin, where over 84 percent of them reside, has been relatively stable over a number of years. And agency officials praise land-use and other measures in Gunnison County — so much so that they do not foresee imposing additionial requirements there on the grouse’s behalf.
What concerns the agency are six, smaller satellite populations, several of which have declined. Since the overall number of the Gunnison sage grouse, at 4,007, is relatively small, the agency worries that it can’t afford the loss of any of the satellite populations if the bird is to survive. “Multiple stable populations across a broad geographic area provide for population redundancy and resiliency necessary for the species’ survival,” its FAQ sheet argues.
Fair enough. But state and county officials and private landowners have not exactly been sitting on their hands in those arenas, either. They’ve been working to increase formal protection against habitat disturbances there as well. And their request for a delay in the federal listing decision so they could install additional conservation measures was supported by Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, as well as Republican Rep. Scott Tipton.
Ironically, according to the state, as recently as this summer a draft document by Fish & Wildlife recommended concentrating resources on four of the six satellite populations, as opposed to all six.
Gov. John Hickenlooper called the listing a “major blow to voluntary conservation efforts” that “complicates our good faith efforts to work with local stakeholders on locally driven approaches.”
And that is the biggest reason to regret the federal listing. While it’s hard to see how it will do much to enhance actual prospects for the sage grouse, it could end up slowing progress in protecting habitat for other species.
Hmm this raises some interesting questions.. would the NY Times, W Post LA Times or so on, editorial boards even address a question like this?
When the southern Cal forests did not (dot every i and cross every t) in working with the State, they had to go back to the drawing board based on litigation. Is that a difference in the requirements of NFMA compared to ESA? Or ?. What should the role of states be in ESA on private or public lands?
From this articles it looks as if the State might sue
Colorado blitzed the federal government, urging a delay of a court-ordered decision on whether to protect the imperiled Gunnison sage grouse.
Federal biologists since 2010 have said Gunnison grouse need endangered-species protection to prevent extinction.
But Colorado leaders on Monday proposed multiple new voluntary measures — such as possibly relocating a road used for oil and gas drilling — as the basis for extending a Wednesday deadline for legally binding federal protection.
Gov. John Hickenlooper said Colorado will sue if U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe moves ahead on the feds’ proposal to list grouse as endangered or threatened.
I’d be interested in whether and how this story is covered in the major coastal media outlets.
Madeline Green and Allison Erny practice “buck-sawing” with Cal Logging Sports at the Russell Research Station. Courtesy of Anya Schultz.
Our information network is full of surprises. I found this on Craig Rawlings’ Forest Business Network. Joe McBride, quoted in this article was one of my professors, lo these many years ago.
Here’s a quote:
Cal Logging Sports, a traditional sport for old-time male loggers, is just one part of UC Berkeley’s forestry and natural resources major. The program is one of only a handful in the state and the most female dominated by far.
“They have more resources and coaches and a lot more burly men,” said Gonen of other forestry programs, such as those at Humboldt State and Cal Poly. “But we have spirit, and we have a lot of fun.”
Berkeley’s forestry program has 32 majors that study the art and science of managing forested landscapes. More than two-thirds of the students are female.
“This isn’t a national trend. It’s something unique here at Berkeley,” said professor Kevin O’Hara, the advisor for the forestry club on campus. “Forestry has been a male-dominated field forever.”
Berkeley’s program, which has been around since 1914, reached an equal gender ratio in the 1980s. Only eight women had graduated from the program before 1965. It has since turned mostly female.
Despite the traditional image of a male lumberjack logging in the forest, the women of the program recognize the value of their trade. A quarter of California is forest, and there are more than 6 million acres in the Sierra Nevada alone that need restoration. After graduation, forestry students will likely work for the U.S. Forest Service or private industry, playing a vital role in managing and protecting the state’s increasingly threatened forested landscapes. Forests are the home to beloved national parks and are the heart and soul of many northern California counties whose primary industry is logging.
“If you want to build a house, you need us. If you want paper, you need us,” said Green, a forestry student. “If you want toilet paper, you need us. If you want your kids to see forests, you need us.”
photo by G. R. Graves Apparently it doesn’t take much to surprise scientists ;), according to this headline. Hopefully, organisms adapting to, and taking advantage of, their environment is not new news. In fact, I seem to remember learning about “niche” theory back in the day, which suggested new niches that became available would be filled by creatures. But maybe that idea was promulgated so long ago that it has been forgotten? Or maybe creatures that are relatively rare are thought not to have these capabilities? Or thinking everything is “stunning” makes a better headline?
Here is the article from the Smithsonian that Steve Wilent posted in the SAF Linked-In site..
Swainson’s warbler breeding pairs require large territories of between 10 to 20 acres, which the pine plantations provide. Most warbler territories observed by Graves occurred in plantations planted on sandy loam soil, with normally low water tables, he says. “These pine forests may be creating a microhabitat at ground level where the birds feed on insects in the leaf litter, maintaining humidity and allowing them to live on dryer soils then they have traditionally.” Also, Graves observed, most plantations occupied by Swainson’s warblers had a certain “weediness,” associated with them: namely broadleaf saplings, vines and shrubs growing along the edges of roads and streams crossing the forests.
Covering some 40 million acres in the U.S. today, southern pine plantations are projected to increase to 66 million acres by 2060, Graves points out in his paper. “Given the 25 to 35 year rotation cycles commonly prescribed for private and commercial plantations, and a 7 to 8 year window of habitat suitability for Swainson’s warblers in a typical stand,” roughly one quarter of these pine plantations will be suitable habitat for these birds at any given time, provided that other requirements such as deciduous weediness and soil moisture are met, Graves concludes. “If current distributional trends continue, forestry lands managed for short rotation pine plantations will soon support a majority of the global Swainson’s warbler breeding population.”
Here’re the FS documents, below is a press release from
