The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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At midnight tonight, NFMA planning ceases to exist. All forest planners will be furloughed. No more collaborations, assessments, EIS writing, model-building, monitoring, or map-making. Will the sun still rise on Monday morning without NFMA planning? Will the deer still browse and the birds still sing? Will trees still grow, die, burn, and rot without planning … Read more
Adaptive Governance is art and science, blended with management and politics. It is art since political decision-making is an art. One face of adaptive governance is a dance wherein public land managers engage with particularly ecological and social scientists in learning from experience about transformations in ecosystems and institutions. The dance is broadened further, since … Read more
When we sometimes tire of our “word wars” here, we need to remember that they are just one manifestation of broader holy wars being waged in and around our public lands. Long Road to War Utilitarian ideology has been a mainstay in forest policy development since the early 1900s when Gifford Pinchot and Bernhard Fernow … Read more
In 2009, I had the opportunity to be involved in an effort known as the Quadrennial Fire Review. Here is an excerpt from the final report explaining what the effort is about. The Quadrennial Fire Review (QFR) is a strategic assessment process that is conducted every four years to evaluate current mission strategies and capabilities … Read more
An old adage says, “Form follows function.” In my experience with the federal government it often works the other way around, i.e. Function follows form. Consider “collaborative engagement.” If you survey the landscape, you’ll often find the Forest Service attempting collaboration, while at the same time so is the Bureau of Land Management, the US … Read more
One of my hopes for the new planning rule was that it would require the writing of meaningful forest plans. Here is what I wrote as part of last year’s science panel (Nie NFS planning rule science panel statement): There is little value in writing expensive, time-consuming plans if such plans make no decisions and … Read more
I went back and looked at the 2009 Notice of Intent today to refresh my memory regarding why implementing a new rule is so important to the Forest Service. From the NOI: Developing a new rule will allow the Agency to integrate forest restoration, watershed protection, climate resilience, wildlife conservation, the need to support vibrant … Read more
Here’s the link to an Arizona Daily Sun story. On paper, they are all starting on the same page. Now comes the hard part: finding the money and implementing one of the most ambitious forest restoration plans in the country. More than 20 organizations — some of them past legal adversaries — signed a memorandum … Read more
This story is from the NY Times/Greenwire. It’s well thought out and touches on some topics that other news stories did not. Here are a couple of quotes: Forest Service officials say they want the rule to provide flexibility to account for varying local conditions. What is best for a forest in Alaska, for example, … Read more
What is a forest plan? A committee of scientists once said that a forest plan is simply a loose-leaf compendium of all decisions large and small that affect the administration of a national forest. Following adaptive management principles and practices, “decisions” can and are made at multiple scales: international, national whether or not made by … Read more