Together We Can Reduce Pest Invasions: Guest Post from Faith Campbell

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faith Faith Campbell has given her time and effort (prodigiously, is the word that comes to my mind) for many years to protecting our forests from introduced pests and diseases, most recently for The Nature Conservancy. As she is retiring, I asked her for a retrospective on her work, and she generously provided one below. Faith- thanks for all you’ve done, and all you continue to do for our forests!

When I was a child, the streets of Washington, D.C. were still shaded by towering elms with sinuous, interlocking branches. When as a 20-something I hiked in Shenandoah National Park, dark hemlock groves were favorite spots. I have many photographs of limber pines silhouetted against Hallet’s Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. I love Hawai`i’s `ohi`a trees growing out of cracks in the lava.

I know I am not alone in mourning the loss – past, current, threatened – of these and other trees. To me, these losses are severely damaging to the environment and represent an ethical failure: we are wantonly squandering species and species assemblages that have evolved over 10,000 or more years.

Many people have devoted their careers to tackling the threats posed by non-native arthropods and pathogens. I have spent 20 years trying to help them get the resources they need – both funding and political support. The longer I have been engaged, the more clearly I see that those of us who want to defend America’s trees from non-native pests need to change the political dynamic. We need to persuade the “political class” of three facts: that the threat to our trees is real, that protecting trees matters, and that solutions are possible.
In short, we can choose different actions and policies to minimize the risk that new damaging pests will invade and spread.

Many people are hurt by the death of trees caused by pests:
• homeowners who must pay to cut down beloved trees, and whose homes are diminished aesthetically and often financially when the tree is gone
• tax-payers in towns which must spend millions to cut down and replace city trees
• people whose livelihoods and cultures are tied to specific types of trees, for example, maple syrup producers, Native American basketweavers or acorn collectors, owners of walnut groves who planned on proceeds from selling the timber to finance retirement or grandchildren’s college educations
• people who enjoy hiking, camping, hunting, or other forms of recreation in the woods,

On a larger scale, about 60 million Americans depend on streams flowing from National Forests for their drinking water. Many cities are planting trees to save energy, trap pollutants, and slow climate change.

The question is, how do we engage the people who care about these issues in ways that will help to change the perception of invasive species, especially forest pests, among the political class? Can we channel their anger, frustration, even despair, into political clout to pressure the Congress and Administrative agencies to adopt more effective regulations and fund programs adequately?

I think one key player that we must somehow engage more effectively is the media. Can we persuade the regional and national media to cover the “why & how” of pest invasions, and what can be done to prevent new invasions? At present they tend to describe only the devastating impacts – which leaves people feeling helpless.

I hope to devote the next several years to trying to change this political dynamic. I welcome your thoughts, opinions, and – most of all – help!

Faith Campbell

Australia’s First CLT Public Building

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Lend Lease Development

Thanks to Forest Business Network for this one..

Australia’s first public building made from cross-laminated timber (CLT) has opened its doors. The Library at the Dock in Melbourne was built in partnership between the City of Melbourne, Places Victoria and Lend Lease. The major structural components of the three-storey library are made from more than 500m³ of CLT, produced at Stora Enso’s Ybbs and Bad St Leonhard units in Austria.

One of the main advantages of building with wood is the construction time: the building structure was completed in two-and-a-half months.

“The Australian construction industry is well used to working with wood, and CLT has recently been gaining a lot of attention from construction companies due to its many advantages. The Library at the Dock is an excellent example of how wood, and especially CLT, can deliver added value as a construction material,” said Matti Mikkola, vice-president, Building Solutions, Stora Enso Building and Living.

The Library at the Dock stands on a wharf originally designed in 1879. CLT’s light weight meant only a limited number of additional pilings and repairs of the old timber posts were required.

In addition to CLT’s speed and weight advantages, it also has strong environmental credentials.

“CLT offers a sustainable alternative to conventional materials, given its potential to be carbon negative,” said Andrew Nieland, head of timber solutions for Lend Lease. “CLT is a lightweight, strong, solid wood and, given its prefabricated nature, drives efficiency improvements onsite.”

The Library at the Dock achieved a 6 Star Green Star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia.

Melbourne is already home to the world’s tallest CLT residential building. The 10-storey Forté Tower, also in the Docklands area, opened last year.

So does anyone out there know why Austria had to provide the CLT? There are no producers anywhere in Australia? Why is that- patents? Investment requirements?

Fire Borrowing Impacts Colorado- from Bob Berwyn

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To paraphrase an old song "the funding my friend is blowing in the wind..."
To paraphrase an old song “the funding my friend is blowing in the wind…”

Thanks to Bob Berwyn for this one..

Below are some excerpts:

FRISCO — U.S. Forest Service officials said they’ve had to defer reviews of ski area projects, delay trail improvements and forest restoration work because of the high cost of fighting wildfires. This year, the agency projects a $470 million gap that ripples through the entire Forest Service budget.

More than a dozen important projects in Colorado were on the hit list, according to a new report released this week by the Department of Agriculture. Some of the projects were canceled altogether because their funding has been diverted to fighting wildfires.

In Colorado, the following projects have been affected:

*Recreation Special Use permits for outfitter guides were deferred and ski area applications for four season use improvements were deferred.
*Emergency repairs on the Pike-San Isabel National Forests and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands were reduced to only critical repairs.
*A project to replace boundary signs that were destroyed in the High Park fire was canceled.
*Over 25,000 acres of ecosystem assessments, part of forest-wide inventories, were not accomplished.
*The Aquatic Nuisance Program (invasive species) with the State of Colorado was not funded.
*The Beaver Brookland acquisition project on the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest wasn’t funded.
*A $72,000 project to clear downfall and conduct related trail maintenance in areas affected by the bark beetle was deferred.
*Facilities improvement projects at the Lottis Creek Kiosks and the Crested Butte Forest Service housing were not completed.
*Abandoned mine mitigation work on the Akron Mine and Mill Site in Gunnison National Forest was deferred.
*Over $400,000 in watershed projects was deferred.
*Over $300,000 in wildlife management projects were delayed, deferred, or canceled.

Governor Talks Pot, Planes

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A version of this article showed up in my “paper” Denver Post this morning. It’s an article on the Western Govs meeting. It might be interesting to compare with other western states’ press.

Here’s the quote about planes:

President Barack Obama on Monday spoke with the governors via telephone to discuss new funding strategies to fight wildfires — a persistent problem that is expected to worsen in Colorado in the decades to come, officials say. Colorado this year set aside about $20 million to contract for an aerial fleet to fight wildfires.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, joked that the other governors on the panel will now want to borrow Colorado’s aircraft and that the state “will be generous” with helping out.

Bullock, a Democrat, said Montana each year sets aside money to fight wildfires, which he said “are almost always certain.” Sandoval, a Republican, noted that about 80 percent of Nevada is federal land.

“Because of that, there has to be proportional contribution from the federal government,” said Sandoval. “We can’t afford to buy planes to put out fires on federal land.”

It seems that the western govs think that planes (and therefore retardant) can be helpful at firefighting. Not just the Forest Service (this relates to previous discussions here and elsewhere).

Somewhat Related Note: if you read this article, you will note that Governor Hickenlooper mentions the Maureen Dowd op-ed on her eating of marijuana edibles. I think it’s interesting that the views of one op-ed writer for the Times becomes fodder for the Governor of a state to discuss. And if you’re curious, here’s a rejoinder by Vincent Carroll on some background to her piece (yes, we have an online section of the Post called “The Cannabist.”).

Person writes misleading op-ed. Governor ends up dealing with it. Would that have happened if the op-ed had been, say, in the Idaho Statesman? What kind of power does this kind of national media have, and are they using it wisely? How many people will read her op-ed, compared to those who read both hers and Carroll’s piece?

Gallatin Wins Hazard Tree Lawsuit

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big_hazard_tree_me-web

Here’s a report from the FS on the win:

District Court Upholds Millie Roadside Hazard Tree Removal Project on the Gallatin National Forest in Native Ecosystems Council v. Krueger. On June 4, 2014, the United States District Court for the District of Montana ruled in favor of the Forest Service in Plaintiffs, Native Ecosystems Council and Alliance for the Wild Rockies’, challenge to the Millie Roadside Hazard Tree Removal Project on the Gallatin National Forest. On Plaintiffs’ ESA claims related to grizzly bear, the Court found Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate (1) that the Project would result in an unauthorized take of grizzly bear in violation of ESA Section 9; (2) how the Forest Service would have reached a different decision had they utilized the most recent reports regarding secure habitat (Plaintiffs alleged that the Forest Service had failed to utilize Best Available Scientific Information); and (3) how the project will adversely affect the grizzly bear in violation of ESA Section 7. Plaintiffs also raised ESA claims related to lynx. On lynx, the Court found that its decision in Salix v. U.S. Forest Service did not require the Project to be enjoined because the determination that the Project would not adversely affect lynx or lynx critical habitat was not contingent upon the 2007 Northern Rockies Lynx Amendment. On Salix’s applicability the Court concluded, “…a project affecting lynx or lynx critical habitat may be appropriately and reasonably approved even if the agencies’ analysis mentions or relies in part on the Lynx Amendment, so long as the agencies’ analysis also contains a reasonable independent basis for its conclusions with respect to effects on lynx and lynx critical habitat.” (In Salix the Court determined that the designation of critical habitat triggers the need for reinitation of consultation and ordered the Forest Service to reinitiate consultation on the Lynx amendment.) Finally, the Court found that the Forest Service had reasonably concluded that the Project fell within the categorical exclusion for road maintenance, and had correctly concluded that the use of the categorical exclusion is appropriate because no extraordinary circumstances preclude it. (13-00167, D. Mont.)

Really… they were saying falling hazard trees would affect grizzlies and lynx? I guess it’s one thing to declaim it and and another thing to prove it in court.. but still it is hard to imagine it in Physical World. And I continue to wonder whether there might be more useful investments in promoting wildlife habitat or protecting the environment?

(Edit: Here is a picture of me, from the Eldorado NF’s Power Fire Salvage projects. The top 30 feet or more was also dead, and the picture was taken from the road. The logger ripped the butt log, in an attempt to get more scale. There were five 16’s and three 33’s to a broken top of 20″ diameter….. Larry H. )

Bill Aims at USFS Travel Mgmt. Rule

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The travel management rule had been highly polarizing on and around some National Forests, not so much on others. See the article I wrote for The Forestry Source back in June 2012. The wen site shown in the sign in the photo, www.keepourfreedom.com, is no longer operating.

 

Panel to take up bill halting Forest Service rule for off-highway vehicles

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, June 9, 2014

House lawmakers tomorrow will take up a GOP bill to overturn a major Forest Service rule that regulates off-highway vehicle use on 193 million acres of national forests.

A House Natural Resources panel will review H.R. 4272 by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), which would forbid the agency from implementing its 2005 Travel Management Rule. The rule required all national forests and grasslands to designate which trails would be available to OHVs.

Walden’s bill, which is co-sponsored by six other Republicans, would also give county commissioners the power to veto any Forest Service plans to restrict OHV access.

It will be considered along with several other public lands bills by the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation.

“This hearing is the first step in passing my common-sense bill to stop the misguided travel management rule on national forests in the West and promote local control over future proposals that could restrict forest access,” Walden said last week in a statement.

But the bill has drawn heavy criticism from environmental groups that argue the George W. Bush administration rule has been critical to ensuring the increasing use of all-terrain vehicles and motorbikes does not foul waterways and disrupt other forest users.

“It would be absolute insanity” to repeal the rule, said Bethanie Walder, public lands director at WildEarth Guardians, which was among 61 environmental groups last week to sign a letter to the panel opposing the bill. “It does more than stop the rule in its tracks. It stops the Forest Service from managing off-road vehicles.”

Walder said the majority of the agency’s 155 forests and 20 grasslands have implemented final travel management plans.

According to the letter from environmentalists, the bill “also endangers protections for drinking water resources, wildlife, and other key forest resources by returning our national forests to a state of lawless motorized cross country travel and by preventing the Forest Service from timely mitigation and restoration of road impacts.”

The 2005 rule by then-Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth was crafted after OHV use had more than doubled between 1982 and 2000 and the machines had become more adept at travelling off established trails.

“Soil erosion, water quality, and wildlife habitat are affected,” the rule said. “Some national forest visitors report that their ability to enjoy quiet recreational experiences is affected by visitors using motor vehicles.”

The rule requires forests to publish maps specifying what trails are open to which vehicles and when.

Walden’s bill, which is backed by the Bend Bulletin, was crafted in response to an outcry in parts of Oregon to the Forest Service’s travel management plan for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in 2012, which would have closed 4,000 miles of roads to vehicles, leaving 3,000 of them open, according to the Oregonian.

The agency within months abruptly withdrew the plan following criticism from the Oregon delegation, local officials and OHV groups.

“My bill will bring management decisions about public lands back to rural communities and force the Forest Service to listen to Oregonians,” Walden said.

Walden spokesman Andrew Malcolm said the congressman also has heard complaints about travel management planning on the Malheur and Ochoco national forests, which suggests a blanket fix to the rule is needed.

The Wallowa-Whitman now has a new supervisor and is taking its time to understand exactly how many roads and trails the forest has and who is using them, said Jodi Kramer, a Forest Service spokeswoman.

There’s no timeline for when the forest will release a new travel plan. Most of its focus is currently on revising land-use plans for the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur forests, she said.

“People feel like we’re trying to lock up the forest,” she said. “But what we’re trying to do is provide access while maintaining the resources for future generations.”

But the 2005 rule, which implements an executive order by President Nixon, required the agency to ban off-trail or improvised travel, Kramer said.

“These plans were developed to reduce harm to public lands when vehicles created their own routes — often in sensitive or unstable areas,” said the letter from environmentalists. “Stopping implementation of these management plans means road signs will not be installed, maps showing the public where the roads and trails are located will not be printed, and roads that are eroding and causing drinking water pollution and harming fish populations will not be fixed.”

Forest supervisors say travel management plans — which often involve closing some areas to OHV recreation — are among the most difficult decisions they have to make.

Gila Wilderness Area’s 90th Birthday- by Char Miller

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Looking into the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. | Photo: Avelino Maestas/Flickr/Creative Commons License
Looking into the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. | Photo: Avelino Maestas/Flickr/Creative Commons License

I was out of town and have a bit of a backup of posts and will be be posting them this week. This from Char Miller on Wilderness:

Link here..

Excerpt below:

The two men met in Colorado in 1919, shortly after Carhart achieved what Leopold then was dreaming about. Assigned to develop a plan for the development of roads into and cabins surrounding Trappers Lake in Colorado’s White River National Forest, Carhart took one look at the unsullied high-country site and reported to his supervisor that the best and highest use of the lake and its beguiling environs was no use at all. Strikingly, his advice and plan was accepted, and Trapper’s Lake is today considered the “Cradle of Wilderness.” So when Leopold came calling, he and Carhart had a meeting of the mind.

From their conversation emerged a set of ideas that eventually became enshrined in the Wilderness Act. Carhart, for example, drafted a memorandum distilling the essence of their shared vision, a perspective driven by a sense of how imperiled these lands were and how democratic their preservation would be. “There is a limit to the number of lakes in existence; there is a limit to the mountainous areas of the world,” Carhart affirmed in 1919, and “there are portions of natural scenic beauty which are God-made.” Such divine terrain, primitive and uncluttered, “of a right should be the property of all people.”

Two years later, Leopold published what amounted to a declaration of first principles, and did so in his profession’s lead publication, the Journal of Forestry: “By ‘wilderness,’ I mean a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man.”

Even in the 1920s, not many places would meet all these qualifications, but the upper watershed of the Gila River did. Its typography — mountain ranges and box canyons — had isolated it from development, leaving it in a “semi-virgin state,” Leopold confirmed in his article. Its relatively pristine character made it perfect for his purposes: The Gila was the “last typical wilderness in the southwestern mountains. Highest use demands its preservation.” With the support of Forest Service chief, William B. Greeley, and regional forester Frank Pooler, he submitted a proposal to designate the vast region a wilderness, and to that end on June 3, 1924 the Forest Service set aside 755,000 acres.

For all its virtues, one of this landed legacy’s core assumptions, the notion that wilderness is absent of and an antidote to civilization, a place devoid of human impress, must be critiqued. The conceit emerged in the late 19th-century in response to the industrial revolution and rapid urbanization, when writers such as John Muir asserted that the call of the wild, of open space, would be a tonic for those living in cramped, dense cities. This understandable aspiration only makes sense however in the context of other historic forces that had emptied these lands of the people who once lived within them. The Gila wildlands Leopold encountered were absent of people as a direct result of the Mexican-American War and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. To manifest its control over the region, the U.S. Army ultimately defeated the Apache who had made use of the Gila, relocating them to distant reservations.

Even with their forced removal, evidence remained that what would become a “wilderness” had supported complex social life dating back 11,000 years to the Paleoindian peoples who occupied the Gila highlands. And forward in time to include the Cochise and Mogollon cultures that later settled the region. When the latter disappeared sometime in the 13th-century it left behind a built environment that included cliff dwellings and pueblos, and a material culture rich in pottery. The Apaches, who arrived in the 1600s, held this ground for several centuries. To declare this land wild, then, was to erase these people and their ancient histories, an erasure the Gila designation set in motion and that has been replicated wherever wilderness has been proclaimed.

Leopold did not wrestle with this conundrum, though he recognized that wilderness was a social construct and a lived reality. He knew too that its physical presence was in decline. “Wilderness is a resource that can shrink but not grow,” he observed in Sand County Almanac. “The creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible,” and it follows that “any wilderness program is a rear-guard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum.” To hold this line required a new form of activist, “a militant minority of wilderness-minded citizens” scattered across the country and who are available “for action at a pinch.”

Energizing this avant-garde is also cause for celebration, on this or any other day.

Botkin’s Testimony on Climate Change

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Have we discussed climate change enough yet? <grin> Here’s something worth a look: Daniel Botkin’s May 29 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Technology. I agree with much of what he says. Here’s a excerpt from the 29-page transcript:

1. I want to state up front that we have been living through a warming trend driven by a
variety of influences. However, it is my view that this is not unusual, and contrary to the
characterizations by the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment, these environmental
changes are not apocalyptic nor irreversible.

2. My biggest concern is that both the reports present a number of speculative, and sometimes
incomplete, conclusions embedded in language that gives them more scientific heft than they
deserve. The reports are “scientific-sounding” rather than based on clearly settled facts or admitting
their lack. Established facts about the global environment exist less often in science than laymen
usually think.

3. HAS IT BEEN WARMING? Yes, we have been living through a warming trend, no doubt about
that. The rate of change we are experiencing is also not unprecedented, and the “mystery” of the
warming “plateau” simply indicates the inherent complexity of our global biosphere. Change is
normal, life on Earth is inherently risky; it always has been. The two reports, however, makes it
seem that environmental change is apocalyptic and irreversible. It is not.

…

9. What I sought to learn was the overall take-away that the reports leave with a
reader. I regret to say that I was left with the impression that the reports
overestimate the danger from human-induced climate change and do not
contribute to our ability to solve major environmental problems. I am afraid that
an “agenda” permeates the reports, an implication that humans and our activity
are necessarily bad and ought to be curtailed.

FS Website Gets a Makeover

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For those who care about the fate of the Forest Service’s iconic badge, here’s a little something to give you sleepless nights. The Forest Service is getting a website makeover. Its new look (still in “beta” form) conforms in appearance to all other USDA agencies, e.g., NRCS, Farm Service Agency, Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Anyone for a blog pool on what date the badge will disappear from the FS’s new website banner?

O&C Bill Progress

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Here’s an article from Environment & Energy Daily on negotiations over the O&C bill. Our fellow blogger Andy Stahl is quoted.

 

Wyden staffers huddle with DeFazio, BLM to fine-tune O&C bill

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, June 6, 2014

A proposal to more than double logging levels in western Oregon while protecting old-growth trees, wilderness and rivers is moving closer to markup, according to bill sponsor Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Wyden’s staff met yesterday in Portland with Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and representatives of the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to discuss Wyden’s S. 1784, a bill to resolve decades of conflicts on the O&C lands.

“We feel very strongly about making sure we can have this effort, this joint product, ready for markup when [Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Mary] Landrieu (D-La.) holds the next markup,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “I think it will be soon, but we will be ready.”

Wyden spokesman Keith Chu said yesterday’s meeting was “part of the learning and information-gathering process” and that it only involved congressional and agency staff.

“Senator Wyden wanted to hear from the agency officials on the ground who would be responsible for implementing the bill,” Chu said.

Brent Lawrence, a FWS spokesman in Portland, said the meeting was part of “an important ongoing dialogue on conservation and habitat management” and that Fish and Wildlife strives to educate lawmakers about the agency’s “responsibilities and limitations.”

Both Wyden and DeFazio have introduced their own proposals to increase timber harvests on the roughly 2.5 million acres of BLM-managed O&C lands, an effort aimed at providing financial security to the western Oregon counties that historically depended on logging for revenue and jobs.

Wyden’s bill calls for accelerating “ecological forestry,” which allows patches of clearcuts and is backed by key forest scientists and the Obama administration. It would also provide for streamlined National Environmental Policy Act reviews and some exceptions to wildlife surveying protocols in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, among other provisions.

DeFazio’s bill — Title III of H.R. 1526 — would allow a state-appointed board to manage about half of the O&C lands under mostly state laws. It would presumably allow much faster environmental reviews and less litigation.

Both bills contain similar provisions to designate wilderness, preserve free-flowing rivers and safeguard old-growth trees.

Neither proposal has garnered broad support from the environmental community, though counties and the logging industry have rallied around DeFazio’s proposal, which passed the House last fall. Wyden’s bill has drawn cautious praise from moderate environmental groups and timber officials and some county officials.

“Congressman DeFazio has been very constructive,” Wyden said. “The delegation is united that we have to get the harvest up in a sustainable manner. We need to protect our treasures. I think the delegation has come very close at having a product that will reflect that we’ve come together.”

DeFazio this week told E&E Daily that he was scheduled to make brief remarks at the beginning of yesterday’s meeting, but it is unclear what specifically was discussed.

“I am still working with Senator Wyden to finalize a balanced plan that can pass both the Republican-controlled House and the Democratically-controlled Senate so it can be signed into law,” DeFazio said in an email to constituents Monday. “While there has been a lot of noise surrounding this issue from both sides, this legislation is still a work in progress and I am confident that we can continue working with all stakeholders to finalize a plan that protects our conservation values and provides financial certainty for vital public services.”

Observers said they believe that Wyden and DeFazio are working to reconcile their bills.

Andy Stahl, executive director of the Eugene, Ore.-based Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, said it’s unlikely any bill to increase O&C logging will pass unless it has the support of both Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and DeFazio, who is the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. The bill must also “pass the laugh test” of both the environmental community and O&C counties, he said.

That’s no easy task in Oregon, a flashpoint in the Pacific Northwest timber wars.

But county governments have been left financially depleted following the closure of timber mills and the recent reduction in annual federal payments from the Secure Rural Schools program, which is again expired. Wyden and DeFazio are under enormous pressure to find a solution.

Getting floor time in the Senate for an Oregon-centric problem will also be a challenge, Stahl said. It’s plausible that Wyden would seek to attach O&C legislation to a must-pass bill such as an extension of SRS. Such a bill would garner support outside of Oregon and must go through the Finance Committee.

The Obama administration took no position on Wyden’s bill during a hearing in February, though it did recommend changes to bolster NEPA reviews and endangered species protections. The administration expressed major concerns over DeFazio’s bill and threatened to veto the larger, mostly GOP logging package in which it was bundled.

Reporter Nick Juliano contributed.