Wisconsin Researchers Test Affordable Wooden Shelters

by
FPL Debris launcher
FPL Debris launcher

The weather these last couple of days has made me tornado-sensitive, and I ran across this story from the Insurance Journal (through a link from Forest Business Network). Here’s the link and below are some excerpts. Note Robert Bonnie’s statement at the end.

Bob Falk is frugal and a realist.

The research engineer at Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis. could have used expensive lumber, pricey nails and high-grade plywood in his tests to create an almost impenetrable tornado shelter made of wood. But that would have missed the point.

That’s why Falk and his team of engineers have been using an air cannon to fire, at 100 mph, 12-foot long, 15-pound southern pine 2-by-4s into specially designed walls made of some of the cheapest wood available.

The cannon mimics the forces of an F5 tornado with 250-mph winds. The lumber used to make the walls of the shelter is of such low quality, Falk had to specially order it because he couldn’t find it at area lumber yards or hardware stores.

“This is quite a resilient design,” Falk said after a test shot. “All we’re trying to do is absorb the energy.”

stormThe goal is to create an economical wood-based shelter that can be easily constructed in a basement or garage by anyone halfway skilled with a hammer and saw. The process for making a tornado safe room could be similar to that of building a storage shed that comes in a kit.

“You buy the lumber, you take it home, you put it together,” Falk told the Wisconsin State Journal. “And that’s an important aspect. Most safe rooms you can only put into new (homes).”

And the cost can be prohibitive for many. A basic safe room can easily cost between $6,000 and $15,000. Some are designed to be installed under the concrete slab of a garage while others are buried in a backyard. Exterior safe rooms, whether above or below ground, also pose a threat because users must go outside to access the shelter, Falk said.

The Forest Products Laboratory design costs between $3,000 and $4,000, can be bolted to the concrete floor of a basement or garage and consists of interlocking layers of low-grade board covered on the interior and exterior with plywood. The shelter has a steel door, which contributes about $1,500 to the cost, but Falk is working on plans for a wood door to further reduce the cost.

“The (low price) is another incentive for people to put one in their home,” Falk said. “It’s about the cost of a hot tub.”

Spring and summer in the Midwest and the South means tornado season. Last year, more than 30 people were killed in Oklahoma from a series of tornadoes. This year, 35 people have died, primarily in the South, from 74 confirmed tornadoes, including 15 in Arkansas.

Wisconsin is yet to experience a tornado this year, but in 2013 there were 16 documented tornadoes, resulting in no deaths and two injuries, according to the National Weather Service. The 30-year normal for the state is 23 tornadoes a year. Since 1844, the weather service reports that 511 people have been killed in Wisconsin tornadoes.

The state’s worst was in 1899 when 117 people died and 125 were injured in St. Croix County. But more people remember the F5 tornado that killed 9 people, injured 200 and caused $40 million in damage to the Iowa County village of Barneveld on June 8, 1984. The Stoughton tornado, in 2005, killed one person, sent three to the hospital and caused more than $45 million in damage to the city and surrounding towns.

Almost 15 months after the devastating storm, the town of Dunn in 2009 opened a $650,000 shelter with poured concrete tilt-up walls in the Bayview Heights neighborhood, home to 227 mobile homes. The above-ground shelter can hold 500 people and is also used as an emergency warming and cooling shelter and during severe thunderstorm warnings with high wind.

During the 2005 tornado, some residents drove into the storm in an attempt to reach the Stoughton Fire Department for shelter while others took refuge in nearby culverts.

“It’s taken 227 homes that were missing that one basic, very necessary safety feature and made them more safe,” said Cathy Hasslinger, the town’s clerk and treasurer. “The rural location there really made a shelter important.”

Falk’s design and research, which includes filming the tests with a high-speed camera, could have a similar impact. Demand is overwhelming the capacity of storm shelter builders in Oklahoma, The Associated Press reported. An affordable do-it-yourself model can only be a positive, said Robert Bonnie, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment.

Bonnie was in Madison recently to tour the laboratory and watch Falk fire his cannon. Bonnie grew up on a farm outside of Louisville, Kentucky, and remembers cowering in the basement during one particularly bad storm in 1973 when he was 6 years old.

“For a long time I was actually pretty nervous about storms because of that,” Bonnie said. “This (FPL research) is critically important, not only for the direct use of providing safe shelters for people in tornadoes, but also, we need a vibrant wood products industry.”

This should be the link to some videos of the technology in Dropbox (if you like splinters, you’ll love this video) If you try it and it doesn’t work, let me know!

Also here’s some more information.

SUPPOSITION OR SCIENCE – GLOBAL WARMING

by

A Linked-in contact posted this VERY INTERESTING testimony of John R. Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville to the Subcommittee on Environment Committee on Science, Space and Technology on 11December 2013 titled “A Factual Look at the Relationship Between Climate and Weather”

Please note: The author does not claim to prove or disprove global warming. He is merely pointing out the Faux Science behind many of the claims and demands for immediate action. Excellent data graphs are included to illustrate the points. Many of these points have been made elsewhere on this blog based on other references. This author is well credentialed and is not just some outlier. Some quotes include:

Page 1:

– “As the global temperature failed to warm over the past 15 years, it became popular to draw attention to the occurrence of extreme weather events as worrisome consequences of postulated climate change due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

– DROUGHT – “… we know our nation experienced droughts in the 12th century, the so-called mega-droughts, which were much worse than any we’ve seen in the past century. Thus, droughts of the past 50 years are not unusual and obviously not “unprecedented” as shown …”

Page 2:

– “A 500-year history of moisture in the upper Colorado River basin (below) indicates the past century was quite moist while major multi-decadal droughts occurred in all four prior centuries … These and other evidences point to the real probability that water supply in the West will see declines simply as a matter of the natural variability of climate.”

– “In the Great Plains, the period from 3000 to 1500 years ago saw a drier and warmer climate during which a significant parabolic sand dune ecosystem developed, especially in western Nebraska and NE Colorado”

Page 3:

– AVG. DAILY TEMPS – “It is true that the number of records in 2012 was quite high, thanks to a very warm March and a hot Mid-Western summer. However in comparison to the heat waves of the 1930s, the summer was not the “worst” for heat. 2012 finished in 8th place on the list, …” going back to 1895

– TORNADOS – “NOAA indicates we are in a very low tornado period in our country – in fact the current year (right, black line) is the lowest year-to-date (Nov.) value in the 60 year history. … It is simply a recognition that the number of tornadoes can vary significantly from year to year and there is no long term trend”

– WILDFIRES & SNOWFALL – 2013, “The current year has included the huge Rim Fire in the central Sierra Nevada of California, but, on the whole, the year is well below average as shown … A related metric is total snowfall in the Sierra of California which has also shown no trend since the Southern Pacific Railroad Company began measuring snowfall in 1878”

Page 4:

– ANTARCTIC – this warming trend is not unique. More dramatic isotopic warming (and cooling) trends occurred in the mid-nineteenth and eighteenth centuries suggesting that at present, the effect of anthropogenic climate drivers at this location has not exceeded the natural range of climate variability in the context of the past ~300 years

Page 7:

– MODELS – “the IPCC relies on climate models to distinguish “natural” from “human” caused climate change because instruments can’t. However, as demonstrated, these same models on average fail by a significant amount to reproduce the climate of the past 35 years”

Page 8:

– “Now, it is true that in the models, most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to greenhouse gases, but since the model-based warming did not occur in reality (by a significant amount), how can one claim that reality was driven by greenhouse gas warming?”

Page 9:

– HISTORY OF GLOBAL WARMING FORECASTING – “The current record is now twice as long as was available when I testified in 1996 and the models are more complicated, expensive and numerous, representing an industry unto itself. The comparison shows that the very latest climate models’ tropical response to CO2, on average, is still 2 to 5 times greater than reality, just as it was in 1996”

– “Unfortunately, as demonstrated here and discussed in the literature, climate models have not demonstrated acceptable skill in terms of depicting even very fundamental, large-scale climate variations, and thus are unable to identify natural versus human-influenced events on regional scales.”

 

So where do I (Gil) stand – This paper has only enforced what I already believed – We just don’t know what we are talking about as of yet. GLOBAL CHANGE IN UNDENIABLE but predicting where it is headed other than up and down and about the same over undetermined time periods is pure speculation until we gather the facts, quit playing Chicken Little, and approach this based on the scientific method as opposed to the same kind of elite group think that has resulted in a net negative by messing up our national forest ecosystems without accomplishing the objective of saving the NSO. The difference between this and the NSO fiasco is that the consequences are much greater.

Talkfest about “Large Wildland Fires”

by

This conference is going on this week in Missoula.  With this many events and speakers I would like to think that someone would talk about the legal and administrative framework for making decisions about fire prevention and management on national forest lands.  That would be the National Forest Management Act and land management plans.  Specifically the law’s requirement that “resource plans” (fire plans) and projects (fuel treatments and fire suppression actions) “shall be consistent with the land management plans.”   The new planning rule also requires that development of plan components consider “wildland fire and opportunities to restore fire adapted ecosystems.”  Someone should maybe be thinking and talking about how revised forest plans should plan for fire (where we want what on a national forest).

Does anyone in the fire profession care about this?  Apparently the ‘counter-culture’ does – Professor Richard Hutto will talk about “It’s Time to Integrate the Ecological Benefits and Necessity of Severe Fire in National Fire and Forest Management Plans.”  There’s also one (1) presentation by Forest Service fire staff that sounds like it could talk about the decision-making process on national forests: “Integrating Fuel Treatments in Land Management Planning and Wildfire Incident Response.”  I hope that someone who knows something about the Forest Service planning process has been involved.

Vilsack: Forest Service needs to key on insects, adds to air fleet

by

Cochetopa area, spruce beetle infestation, August 2013. Photo courtesy of GMUG NF.
Cochetopa area, spruce beetle infestation, August 2013. Photo courtesy of GMUG NF.
Below are some excerpts from a Denver Post story here today:

(the Denver Post has good stories on our topics but the website is THE MOST ANNOYING of any in the ones we link to, IMHO). Also, I get the print edition and there was a map and a table about insects that don’t show up online(??).

National Forest overseers on Tuesday targeted 45 million acres in 35 states — 9.6 million acres in Colorado — for accelerated work dealing with insects and disease that are weakening forests and raising wildfire risks.

But the challenge is growing in Colorado as epidemic ravaging by one bug, the mountain pine beetle, leads to a rapidly expanding outbreak of another, the spruce beetle, which has infested 1.14 million acres across southwestern Colorado.

and

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday announced the designation of the national forest land for accelerated projects to combat insect infestations and disease. Forest overseers are embarking on a streamlined review process for projects aimed at controlling epidemics and restoring balance.

“More needs to be done,” Vilsack said, noting the role of forests as the source of water, as recreation havens that draw 166 million visitors and as generators of 200,000 jobs.

Accelerating the battle against insects and disease dovetails with budgeting changes — pushed by Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall — to prevent the raiding of forest health funds for wildfire suppression when fires become catastrophic.

Vilsack has requested the creation of a $954 million disaster fund for the worst 2 percent of wildfires, ensuring Forest Service funds for work to combat insect epidemics, disease and restoration of overly dense forests.

Vilsack also announced the addition of four firefighting aircraft, bringing the total to 21 large tankers and about 113 helicopters as drought across the Southwest and California leads to heavy wildfires. Firefighting aircraft, if deployed early, can be effective in snuffing potential mega-fires.

“The breathing room is only going to come when we don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul,” Vilsack said in an interview with The Denver Post. “It’s a return to days gone by when you had a budget where a substantial percentage was going to restoration efforts and a small percentage was going to fire suppression. That’s been flipped on its head now. You’ve got 40 percent of your money going toward fighting fires. And because you are robbing money from restoration, that percentage is just going to continue to increase.

“The only way you deal with it is you reduce the risk. The only way to reduce the risk is by doing a better job of restoring and making your forests more resilient. And you can’t do that unless you have the resources.”

I hope Bruce Finley, the author, put in the “restoring balance” part, although I don’t think the “balance” idea should even still be out there in the public. That goes back to Botkin’s book (see sidebar).

While I think “restoration” has some conceptual issues, I do think “making forests more resilient” is a great way of talking about it. Yay, public affairs folks!

Anyway, attached is more detailed information that USDA is sending around the effort. Andy, note that airplanes are part of the response ;).
AcresDesignatedByStateForestAndCongressionDistrict-may16

Healthy_Forest_Restoration_Act_Designations_NationalMap_May162014

Insect and Disease Communications and Rollout Package FINAL

And here’s a Rocky Barker story that shows the relationship to the Farm Bill (as does the USDA press release):

The new Farm Bill amends the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 to allow the Forest Service to more quickly plan projects for insect and disease treatments within designated areas, in an effort to increase the pace and scale of restoration across the National Forest System. Using the new tools in the Farm Bill, restoration projects in these designated areas have to be developed in collaboration with a diverse group of stakeholders and must meet environmental safeguards.

Battle of Op-Eds in Montana

by

A war of words between Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, and Mike Garrity is executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies….

Ochenski spouts alarmist nonsense on Farm Bill matter
by BRUCE FARLING

Right on cue, when Gov. Steve Bullock recommended using tools in the new federal Farm Bill that might result in some logging, Missoulian columnist George Ochenski and the usual tiny clique representing pretend “institutes,” “councils” and “alliances” began sanctimoniously lecturing Montanans on how awful this was. They claim a secret cabal conspired to deliberately exclude public concerns in order to produce environmental catastrophe.

Nonsense.

…

Trout Unlimited’s mission appears to favor logging
by MIKE GARRITY

Trout Unlimited’s Bruce Farling had an opinion piece in the May 7 Missoulian that promoted logging, but other than writing “Trout Unlimited,” didn’t use the words trout, fish or clean water, which are all of the things Trout Unlimited claims they work to protect.

Unfortunately, Trout Unlimited, like a lot of big environmental groups, has decided their job is now to promote more clearcutting of Montana’s pristine watersheds instead of protecting these same aquatic ecosystems for native fish.

…

 

Whitebark Lawsuit Redux: Groups Appeal

by
Whitebark pine cones are caged to protect them from Clark's nutcrackers. by USDA Forest Service
Whitebark pine cones are caged to protect them from Clark’s nutcrackers. by USDA Forest Service

Here’s a story from the Bozeman Chronicle and below is an excerpt.

In July 2011, the agency determined that whitebark pine forests have enough threats, such as climate change, to warrant listing.

However, the USFWS was not abusing its power or being arbitrary when it decided other species have a higher priority for listing, said U.S. District Judge Dana Christiansen of Missoula in his April 25 ruling.

The USFWS has identified more than 260 species that qualify for Endangered Species Act protections but are yet to be listed.

In their appeal filed Friday, the two groups asked the appeals court to declare the decision to delay listing as illegal and to order the agency to list the whitebark pine by a set date.

“The FWS has already found that whitebark pine trees are going extinct due to global warming,” said Mike Garrity, AWR executive director. “Whitebark pine seeds are an important food source for grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We are going to keep fighting to keep whitebark pines from going extinct because Yellowstone grizzly bears are so dependent on them.“

The U.S. Forest Service estimated that climate change would result in the whitebark-pine population shrinking to less than 3 percent of its current range by the end of the century.

However, the Forest Service still has proposals to clearcut whitebark pine stands, Garrity said.

When whitebark pine trees were more numerous, grizzly bears’ diets could be as much as 75 percent pine nuts, said whitebark pine expert Jesse Logan.

But since 2005, pine beetles and white blister rust, a fungus, have been decimating whitebark pine forests in the greater Yellowstone area, especially at lower elevations.

2009, 95 percent of the stands had some infestation. As a result, stands in 18 of 22 mountain ranges in the greater Yellowstone area are nearly gone.

Some scientists say that grizzly bears have historically sought out high-fat whitebark-pine nuts as an autumn food source but are now adapting to use other foods as whitebark pine trees die out.

The difference between the legal aspects of ESA, what goes on that all can see in Physical World, and what people say in news stories (perhaps simplified?) can lead to a great deal of confusion in my mind, and this is an example.

For example, 1) did FWS really say whitebark pine would go extinct due to climate change? Is that the same data that the Forest Service said it would be 3% of its natural range? If whitebark’s original range is very broad, then 3% could be many acres. When is the criterion “going extinct” versus “populations are greatly reduced”? Who decides exactly what “greatly” is for these purposes?

2) That would be a projection based on many assumptions.. probably all of which are open to different points of view. We tree people know it’s not that easy to predict how trees will respond to unknown future events.

For example, how do they know it won’t adapt through time? Many folks have predicted that many species (including WWP) would be wiped out by diseases and natural selection seems to have worked pretty well. We know that these things are impossible to predict with any accuracy, so…. we need to rely on someone’s judgment on what the risk is and what could be done that would work. But is a lawsuit the best way to arrive at that? (I had personal experience with some scientists wanting to list sugar pine. The scientists are retired, but sugar pine is still doing fine.)

3) And if it’s really climate change and not BBs or blister rust, how on earth are any physical actions taken by FWS or the FS going to help? If we look at what Garrity appears to be asking for, it is for the FS to stop clearcutting WBP.

4) But I don’t know why the FS would clearcut WBP, certainly not for timber. Does anyone have links to any FS projects where this is proposed?

5) Finally, even if you grant all the above, which I don’t, many scientists think it’s too late to turn climate change around (if that’s the ultimate fix to the situation).. so.. are we spending money on the ESA equivalent of beating dead horses? And who but FWS should decide which dead horses to pick?

Perhaps readers know the answers to these questions.

While looking for a photo, I ran across this study which said that the whitebark was experiencing mortality in 1993 (20 years ago, now) due to BR and BBs and successional replacement, and more prescribed burning was/is(?) needed. Could a listing make the FS do more prescribed burning? But that’s already part of their restoration plan..

Abstract:
Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), an important producer of food for wildlife, is decreasing in abundance in western Montana due to attacks by the white pine blister rust fungus (Cronartium ribicola), epidemics of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) and successional replacement mainly by subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). Plots established in 1971 were remeasured in 1991 and 1992 to determine the rate and causes of whitebark pine mortality. Mortality rates averaged 42% over the last 20 yr. indicating a rapid decline in whitebark pine populations of western Montana. This decline is most pronounced in northwestern Montana with the southward extension of heaviest mortality centered along the continental divide and Bitterroot Mountain range. Management treatments such as prescribed fire can serve to maintain whitebark pine in the landscape. West. J. Appl. For. 8(2):44-47.

Local Views and Local News: Fuel Treatments in Jefferson County, Colorado

by
EVERGREEN, CO - MAY 7: A worker moves recently cut trees into a pile at Birch Hill Park on May 7, 2014, in Evergreen, Colorado. A crew made up of Denver Mountain Parks employees and volunteers, with the help of Jefferson County workers, have been clearing out the dense parts of the area to improve forest health and help mitigate potential fire hazards. (Photo by Anya Semenoff/The Denver Post)
EVERGREEN, CO – MAY 7: A worker moves recently cut trees into a pile at Birch Hill Park on May 7, 2014, in Evergreen, Colorado. A crew made up of Denver Mountain Parks employees and volunteers, with the help of Jefferson County workers, have been clearing out the dense parts of the area to improve forest health and help mitigate potential fire hazards. (Photo by Anya Semenoff/The Denver Post)

I continue to be fascinated by the difference between “fuels treatments on NFS land” (controversial! scientifically questionable! excuses for rampant logging!) and “fuels treatments on anyone else’s land” (wish we could do more! protects communities!). To that end, the difference between national, regional and local coverage is interesting. Here’s about as local as you can get.. YourHub of the Denver Post in Jefferson County, CO.

Wildfire mitigation in Jefferson County foothills is a joint effort
By Josie Klemaier
YourHub Reporter

EVERGREEN —Last year, Dave Flanagan’s insurance provider threatened to drop fire insurance for his Evergreen-area property due to poor fire mitigation around his property.

“I had to point out to them I was doing everything per the standards,” he said, but he couldn’t say the same about his neighbor, one of the parks in the Denver Mountain Parks system.

Denver Mountain Parks, owned by the city of Denver, occupy 14,000 acres of land and 10,000 of those acres are forested, said Andy Perri, Denver Mountain Parks’ forestry program manager.

Denver hired Perri in 2010 to focus on fire mitigation efforts and overall forest health.

Since then, Denver Mountain Parks has received $1 million to go toward mitigation efforts on 800 acres of parkland. It expects to receive $500,000 more in 2014, according to an April 30 release.

“Denver Mountain Parks is somewhat limited as far as what we do,” Perri said, referring to the cost of going into sometimes hard-to-access forest to remove dead and downed trees, reduce fuel on the ground and thin trees. He said the cost of such efforts can cost from $500 to $2,200 an acre or more.

Perri admits the numbers seem like a drop in a bucket, but he said a lot of other factors go into the decision of where to put resources, including, but not limited to, wildland-urban interface.

“Of course I want to treat right behind everyone’s house,” he said. “But you also have to look at strategic placement of these projects.”

Perri said he takes calls from concerned residents, goes to the land that is of concern and adds it to his endless project list.

This was the case with Birch Hill Park near North Turkey Creek in south Evergreen. A forest management plan for the area was written, which was used to get a grant for the project. Denver Mountain Parks hired the Jefferson County Sheriff’s fire mitigation program to do the work.

Though it does such work for hire, the Jeffco Sheriff’s program doesn’t have any funds set aside specifically for mitigation work — its main focus is response management, such as creating fuel breaks in the path of active fires, said Mark Gutke, director of critical incident response for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. For preventive mitigation, it helps communities find grants for wildfire protection plans.

It comes down to the property owner, Gutke said.

“The problem is the funding to attack (the acreage) and the desire from property owners, whether it’s the government or private,” he said.

Denver Mountain Parks and Jefferson County Open Space have programs to allow residents to mitigate park property bordering their private property through permit processes. However, like community wildfire protection plans, that requires an investment on the landowner’s part.

Keith Bol is a natural resource team leader for Jefferson County Open Space, which manages more than 53,000 acres of parkland. He said Jeffco Open Space’s efforts focus on healthy forest management, which often includes mitigation.

“We try to tie in our forest management activities into these fuel breaks or fire mitigation work,” he said. “We try to look at a larger area. A lot of it we try to identify by the health of the forest already. By making it healthier, we’re probably going to make it more fire-resistant.”

When it comes to projects focused on mitigation, it’s about proactive community involvement. He said work is more likely to happen where there is private property work nearby.

“We start to look at communities that are working together, willing to do something in an entire development,” Bol said. “We will work on our property if they are doing work on their property.”

Judge Christensen on Whitebark Pine

by

rmrs_gtr279 1 small

It’s interesting to me that there are species that have few members right now, and there are species that are likely to have few members in the future depending on people’s predictions/projections about what will happen in the future.

Given my experience with people’s projections about the future, I would tend to prioritize those species that are having problems now. I don’t know if that’s the way ESA works, though.

Anyway, this seems to be a discussion about funding, but it’s not clear what the funding would do other than to develop a plan. But I believe that there have been a couple of other plans or strategies developed. There is one for the Pacific Northwest (here) and one (range-wide) from the Rocky Mountain Station here. I know individuals who have spent many hours working on these efforts, so I am curious why

Christensen also agreed with FWS’ claim that developing multi-species protection plans (that might include whitebark pine with things facing similar threats or use similar areas) was a reasonable and logical effort.

What is missing from the other strategies, developed with much government time and money, that makes them insufficient?

Again, as in so many lawsuits, it’s difficult for me to figure out what is the desired endgame (in Physical World) following all the paperwork-jousting that will actually help the WB pine.

Here’s a link, and below is an excerpt from a Missoulian story. Thanks to an unnamed reader for this.

Whitebark pines grow on high-altitude mountain slopes and mature trees can produce big crops of protein-rich pine nuts. Grizzly bears and other animals count on the trees as a major food source. But decades of devastation by blister rust fungus and mountain pine beetle infestation have put it in danger of extinction. FWS research expects it to be gone from the landscape within two or three generations.

In July 2011, FWS decided whitebark pine was warranted but precluded from protection under the Endangered Species Act. That means while the agency agrees the tree is in danger, it does not have the resources to prioritize its protection over other species already listed.

The Fish and Wildlife Service ranks species’ risk numerically from 1 to 12, based on their respective threats and rarity. The environmental groups argued that whitebark pine got a rank of 2 – second-most serious – but the federal agency let species with lower ranks get protection while the tree was precluded.

Christensen ruled the ranking could assist FWS in setting its priorities, but didn’t force it to work exclusively by the strict order of worst-first standing.

“Congress could have expressly bound the service to its (listing priority number) rankings or some other proxy for degree of threat, but chose not to do so,” Christensen wrote. “The court will respect that decision.”

In September 2011, FWS settled another lawsuit over its endangered species backlog by creating a work plan to finish initial reviews of more than 600 species and settle the status of 251 “candidate” species that were already under review. But the whitebark pine status was done before that agreement was imposed, Christensen said.

Christensen also agreed with FWS’ claim that developing multi-species protection plans (that might include whitebark pine with things facing similar threats or use similar areas) was a reasonable and logical effort.

“The service provided sufficient reasoning and data upon which the finding that listing of the whitebark pine is ‘precluded by pending proposals to determine whether any species is an endangered species or a threatened species’ as required by (law),” Christensen wrote. “In the case of the whitebark pine, the service turned in its homework, which the court gives a passing grade.”