What if the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan was law, rather than mere policy?

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An article that looks at the need to thin forests — not just for increased water flows, but forest health, fire risk reduction, etc.”

“It’s one of the lower-cost options (to increase California’s water supply) … and it also would reduce the probability of big destructive fires,” said Roger Bales, a UC Merced engineering professor who specializes in mountain hydrology. “There could be measurable and significant gains” – a hypothesized 9 percent increase in snowmelt runoff – if the forests are properly thinned.

Modesto Bee article: “Overgrown Sierra forests gulping water that could flow to Valley.”

This can’t be done without removing biomass — in other words, reducing the leaf-area index. If the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan were enacted as federal law, this might happen. Otherwise, it’ll never happen on a large scale, as appeals and litigation will continue to restrict forest management in the Sierras.

Denver Post Article on Prescribed Burning and Air Quality

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pike

One of the great things about this business is that the issues pretty much stay the same over time. This is an interesting report and even-handed. That’s a lotta piles. Conceivably if we’d used the piles for energy (or anything else), we would have fewer particulates in the air. Good for health, good for the environment?

The above photo is from a discussion we had on the blog in 2011 here, where we talked about different states and their approaches. Anyway, note that, at least in Colorado, the issue has not been partisanized. All kinds of environmental, health, and social trade-offs form a complex landscape. Maybe because we also have natural gas, we are more used to dealing with trade-offs. Or maybe because of our new marijuana laws, we are too mellow to generate unnecessary partisan vitriol ;).

GOLDEN — Trying to prevent catastrophic wildfires, federal crews torched more than 40,000 piles of dead wood this past year in snow-laden Colorado forests.

And state health authorities may allow more controlled burns over broad areas. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has agreed to expand an experiment that relaxes smoke permitting so that burn crews can operate more freely.

While controlled fires that mimic natural cycles can protect communities and revive dying forests, they also produce smoke at potentially unhealthy levels, state air quality officials warned in a meeting last week.
Drip torch operator Chris Spivey of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does prescribed burning at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge on
Drip torch operator Chris Spivey of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does prescribed burning at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

But forest managers are compelled to act because the 18,544 acres treated with controlled fire in 2013 still does not come close to the 1 million acres that the U.S. Forest Service recommends. For years, Forest Service experts have argued that state limits on open burning are shortsighted, shielding people who chose to live in woods from occasional smoke at the expense of long-term safety and ecological health.

Health officials said lawyers are reviewing how far the state can go in allowing more burns. On one hand, Colorado is obligated to clean its air to meet the national health standards. On the other, massive wildfires threaten watersheds and the people living near forests.

As firefighting agencies predicted a mild early wildfire season in the Rocky Mountain region, the top federal air quality overseer encouraged Colorado’s emerging approach.
The Fire Line

The Fire Line
Watch The Fire Line: Waldo Canyon, Black Forest and how wildfires are changing in Colorado and the American West

“You’re trying to do burns in smaller chunks, under favorable conditions, so that you avoid larger burns under unfavorable conditions,” said smoke management specialist Mike Broughton of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who monitors emissions from fires nationwide.

More of the controlled burns will boost both ecosystems and safety, Broughton said. “It makes it easier to keep a wildfire from becoming a massive wildfire.”

Recent CDPHE air tests found that even controlled burns on less than 50 acres produce particulate air pollution near homes at levels exceeding health standards. Average particulate levels reached 257 micrograms per cubic meter during recent burns, seven times higher than the 35-microgram federal standard.

“They are certainly troubling numbers. … We still have a responsibility to protect public health,” CDPHE smoke program leader Pat McLaughlin said.

However, the huge uncontrolled wildfires that increasingly plague Colorado also produce heavy smoke. The 215-square-mile Hayman fire led to 2002’s worst air quality in Denver even though it was burning 100 miles away. Smoke from the 2012 High Park and Waldo Canyon fires put particulates at 67 micrograms in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs — nearly as bad as Beijing.

Widespread burningThis winter, significant snow enabled widespread burning of timber slash piles. On the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forest west of Boulder and Fort Collins, burn crews torched more than 22,000 piles in January and February, adding to a statewide 2013 total topping 40,000, officials said.

Rocky Mountain National Park crews, burning 6,500 piles since 2012, are on pace to eliminate a backlog, said Mike Lewelling, the park’s fire management officer.

But he and other forest managers say that, beyond pile burning and mechanical thinning, they’d like to be able to conduct more controlled burns over wide areas.

Since 2010, CDPHE has cut the number of smoke permits issued for nonpile controlled burns to 72, down from 140. The Colorado State Forest Service hasn’t done any controlled burns due to liability concerns after one in 2012 escaped boundaries and became the Lower North Fork fire, which killed three people.

A CDPHE experiment in greater flexibility began in November when air-quality officials issued customized smoke permits to federal foresters near Winter Park.

This allowed burning of 6,600 piles of dead wood over eight nonconsecutive days, including 1,800 on a single day, state air division spokesman Chris Dann said.

Local forest managers had the responsibility of conducting burns under wind, moisture and temperatures that minimized smoke.

Standard state permits limit open burning to 250 piles a day.

Custom permits now will be offered at other locations, state officials said. Forest managers must agree to install air-monitoring devices to measure smoke, positioned in places state air experts approve.

Forest Service Sulphur District Ranger Craig Magwire, who oversaw efforts to burn when wind was right to disperse smoke, said he got support from community leaders.

“If you’re burning more piles, you’re putting more particulate matter into the air. But people got the concept of what we are trying to do,” Magwire said. “They realize there will be short-term air impacts. But, in general, they understand the greater good.”

For Sale: Cheap! Oregon State Forest Land — Get It Now!

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Now you, too, can own your own personal piece of Oregon State School Fund Forestland — but hurry! Only five days remain for you to buy one of these fine forested tracts in claimed prime marbled murrelet nesting country. Also — you might even be able to kill an elk on your own property, or have someone else pay you for trying to kill one themselves. On your property!

This is being posted at the request of John Thomas, Jr., a regular contributor to this blog. The deadline of the sale is March 28 and the details (including a fine collection of aerial photos and maps of the properties) can be found here: http://www.rmnw-auctions.com/auction-catalogs/1401-auction-catalog/

I will leave it up to John to explain why this is such an important topic, and what the marbled murrelet has to do with current timberland prices on these lands. Also, his predictions as to what will happen to the trees after these sales.

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Minority Report: “EPA’s Playbook,” “Fraud,” and “Secret Science”

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About a month ago I had a discussion with Dr. Bob Ferris on this blog, initially concerning the general quality of “government science.” Dr. Ferris is a “real scientist” who is “serious” and currently works for Cascadia Wildlands, an environmental activist group based in Eugene, Oregon. He has a number of publications to his credit and was instrumental in the efforts to reintroduce gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1996, through his position as a biologist with Defenders of Wildlife. Here is a current sample of his work: http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_25387360/wheres-science-fish-and-wildlife-service-must-rewrite

When Dr. Ferris brought up the topic of “best available science,” I responded by providing a link to an Evergreen Magazine interview with Dr. Alan Moghissi, a published and widely recognized expert on the topic. For some reason Dr. Ferris was able to use this link as an opportunity to veer oddly and sharply off-topic and to begin leveling ad hominem attacks on ESIPRI’s website; one of ESIPRI’s founders (and occasional contributor to this blog), Norman MacLeod; Evergreen Magazine; Jim Petersen (Dr. Moghissi’s interviewer and publisher of Evergreen); Dr. Moghissi’s “right wing credentials”; Dave Skinner, a regular contributor to this blog; and the Boards of both ESIPRI and Evergreen Foundation: https://forestpolicypub.com/2014/02/17/of-wolves-and-wilderness/comment-page-1/#comment-38197

The link that seemed to cause Dr. Ferris so much vexation and total disregard for the topic at hand (“best available science”) was to a recent issue of Evergreen Magazine with a picture of Dr. Moghissi on the front cover, the Capitol Building in the background, and featuring the headline: “Fresh Air! Alan Moghissi: Rocking Capitol Hill and the EPA!”: http://www.esipri.org/Library/Evergreen_2012.pdf

Earlier today Karla Davenport, producer of Salem, Oregon’s iSpy Radio show, sent me a copy of this amazing report, EPA’s Playbook Unveiled: A Story of Fraud, Deceit, and Secret Science: http://www.esipri.org/Library/Bolar-Steel_20140319.pdf

This may be the first time I have ever referred to a government report as “amazing” without meaning to be disrespectful. If this is only 50% accurate, it should be made required reading by our public land legislators and their staffs immediately. In my opinion. The report was just released on Wednesday, so has only been available for 72 hours. I have reproduced its Executive Summary here for discussion purposes. I’m curious as to how it is going to be received.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The greatness of our unique nation hinges on the fundamental purpose of the government to serve at the will of the people and to carry out public policy that is in the public interest. When it comes to the executive branch, the Courts have extended deference to agency policy decisions under the theory that our agencies are composed of neutral, non-biased, highly specialized public servants with particular knowledge about policy matters. This report will reveal that within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some officials making critically important policy decisions were not remotely qualified, anything but neutral, and in at least one case — EPA decision making was delegated to a now convicted felon and con artist, John Beale.

John Beale is the character from the bizarre tale of the fake CIA agent who used his perch at the EPA to bilk the American taxpayer out of more than a million dollars. Even Jon Stewart, host of the popular Daily Show, featured Beale’s bizarre tale as “Charlatan’s Web” on his program in December 2013. Before his best friend Robert Brenner hired him to work at EPA, Beale had no legislative or environmental policy experience and wandered between jobs at a small-town law firm, a political campaign, and an apple farm. Yet at the time he was recruited to EPA, Brenner arranged to place him in the highest pay scale for general service employees, a post that typically is earned by those with significant experience.

What most Americans do not know is that Beale and Brenner were not obscure no-name bureaucrats housed in the bowels of the Agency. Through his position as head of the Office of Policy, Analysis, and Review, Brenner built a “fiefdom” that allowed him to insert himself into a number of important policy issues and to influence the direction of the Agency. Beale was one of Brenner’s acolytes — who owed his career and hefty salary to his best friend.

During the Clinton Administration, Beale and Brenner were very powerful members of EPA’s senior leadership team within the Office of Air and Radiation, the office responsible for issuing the most expensive and onerous federal regulations. Beale himself was the lead EPA official for one of the most controversial and far reaching regulations ever issued by the Agency, the 1997 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for Ozone and Particulate Matter (PM). These standards marked a turning point for EPA air regulations and set the stage for the exponential growth of the Agency’s power over the American economy. Delegating the NAAQS to Beale was the result of Brenner’s facilitating the confidence of EPA elites, making Beale the gatekeeper for critical information throughout the process.

Beale accomplished this coup based on his charisma and steadfast application of the belief that the ends justify the means. Concerned about this connection, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) staff have learned that the same mind that concocted a myriad of ways to abuse the trust of his EPA supervisors while committing fraud is the same mind that abused the deference afforded to public servants when he led EPA’s effort on the 1997 NAAQS. Brenner was known to have an objective on NAAQS, and would have done whatever was necessary to accomplish his desired outcome. Together, Brenner and Beale implemented a plan, which this report refers to as “EPA’s Playbook.”

The Playbook includes several tools first employed in the 1997 process, including sue-and-settle arrangements with a friendly outside group, manipulation of science, incomplete cost-benefit analysis reviews, heavy-handed management of interagency review processes, and capitalizing on information asymmetry,
reinforced by resistance to transparency. Ultimately, the guiding principal behind the Playbook is the Machiavellian principal that the ends will justify the means. In the case of the 1997 NAAQS, the Playbook started with a sue-and-settle agreement with the American Lung Association, which established a compressed timeline to draft and issue PM standards. This timeline was further compressed when EPA made the unprecedented decision to simultaneously issue new standards for both PM and Ozone. Issuing these standards in tandem and under the pressure of the sue-and-settle deadline, Beale had the mechanism he needed to ignore opposition to the standards — EPA simply did not have the time to consider dissenting opinions.

The techniques of the Playbook were on full display in the “Beale Memo,” a confidential document that was leaked to Congress during the controversy, which revealed how he pressured the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to back off its criticism of the NAAQS and forced them to alter their response to Congress in 1997. EPA also brushed aside objections raised by Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Energy, the White House Council of Economic Advisors, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Academy of Sciences, and EPA’s own scientific advisers — the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee.

These circumstances were compounded by EPA’s “policy call” to regulate PM2.5 for the first time in 1997. PM2.5 are ubiquitous tiny particles, the reduction of which EPA used to support both the PM and Ozone NAAQS. In doing so, the Playbook also addressed Beale’s approach to EPA’s economic analysis: overstate the benefits and underrepresent the costs of federal regulations. This technique has been applied over the years and burdens the American people today, as up to 80% of the benefits associated with all federal regulations are attributed to supposed PM2.5 reductions.

EPA has also manipulated the use of PM2.5 through the NAAQS process as the proffered health effects attributable to PM2.5 have never been independently verified. In the 1997 PM NAAQS, EPA justified the critical standards on only two data sets, the Harvard “Six Cities” and American Cancer Society (ACS II) studies. At the time, the underlying data for the studies were over a decade old and were vulnerable to even the most basic scrutiny. Yet the use of such weak studies reveals another lesson from EPA’s Playbook: shield the underlying data from scrutiny.

Since the 1997 standards were issued, EPA has steadfastly refused to facilitate independent analysis of the studies upon which the benefits claimed were based. While this is alarming in and of itself, this report also reveals that the EPA has continued to rely upon the secret science within the same two studies to justify the vast majority of all Clean Air Act regulations issued to this day. In manipulating the scientific process, Beale effectively closed the door to open scientific enquiry, a practice the Agency has followed ever since. Even after the passage in 1999 of the Shelby Amendment, a legislative response to EPA’s secret science that requires access to federal scientific data, and President Obama’s Executive Orders on Transparency and Data Access, the EPA continues to withhold the underlying data that originally supported Beale’s efforts.
After President Clinton endorsed the 1997 NAAQS and the Agency celebrated their finalization, Beale became immune to scrutiny or the obligation to be productive for the remainder of his time at the Agency. Similarly, the product of his labors have remained intact and have been shielded from any meaningful scrutiny, much the same way Beale was protected by an inner circle of career staff who unwittingly aided in his fraud. Accordingly, it appears that the Agency is content to let the American people pay the price for Beale and EPA’s scientific insularity, a price EPA is still trying to hide almost twenty years later.

After reaching the pinnacle of his career at the Agency in 1997, and facing no accountability thereafter, Beale put matters on cruise control and enjoyed the lavish lifestyle that the highest paid EPA employee could afford, producing virtually no substantive work product thereafter. For Beale’s successes in the 1997 NAAQS process, Beale was idolized as a hero at the Agency. According to current EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, “John Beale walked on water at EPA.”

This unusual culture of idolatry has led EPA officials to blind themselves to Beale’s wrongdoing and caused them to neglect their duty to act as public servants. As such, to this day EPA continues to protect Beale’s work product and the secret science behind the Agency’s NAAQS and PM claims.

Newton’s Paradox Redux: Whitsett Calls for Scientific Accountability

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 State Senator Doug Whitsett, who represents Oregon’s District 28 — the State’s largest when measured in square-miles — posted the following editorial in his most recent newsletter. Whitsett is based in Klamath Falls, but within two days his thoughts have been featured on several blogs and widely distributed as links and/or attachments via email. For those familiar with talk radio personalities, Lars Larson talked about Whitsett’s newsletter on his show Friday, and is planning to interview Dr. Newton himself sometime next week.
Senator Whitsett’s editorial was based on an earlier post and discussion on this blog, which mostly focused on the scientific aspects of what Newton is saying: http://forestpolicypub.com/2013/10/06/newtons-paradox-why-fish-prefer-clearcuts-over-regulated-buffers/
Following the blog discussion, a version for a more general readership was then written for Oregon Fish & Wildlife Journal, which has a rural-focused distribution of about 10,000: http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Articles/Fish_vs_Loggers_2014/Zybach_20140100.pdf
Senator Doug Whitsett
R- Klamath Falls, District 28

Phone: 503-986-1728    900 Court St. NE, S-303, Salem, Oregon 97301 
Email: sen.dougwhitsett@state.or.us 
Website: http://www.leg.state.or.us/whitsett

State Seal
E-Newsletter
Oregon was the first state to adopt a Forest Practices Act. The widely supported 1971 Act was intended to protect forest streams against potential negative timber harvest impacts. It required the maintenance of sufficient undisturbed forest buffers alongside streams to reduce water pollution and soil erosion.
Over the ensuing twenty years, both the purpose and the implementation of the Act changed dramatically. Forest buffer zones were widened by rule in 1987 and then extended by the 1992 Northwest Forest Plan to require the maintenance of 150 foot wide buffers of undisturbed forest vegetation. Those required forest buffers have been enforced for more than two decades.
The purpose of the forest buffers now is allegedly to be to protect cold water fish habitat. Government paid biologists have theorized that maintaining the buffer zones would reduce stream temperatures and result in better fish production in the protected streams. Studies by the Department of Environmental Quality (Department) measured stream temperature and forest buffer widths, but did not evaluate other factors including the fish. The Department established their “Protection of Cold Water Standard” criterion based on those assumptions and studies.
It appears that those “Department scientists” based their assumptions, and the future of both the forest products industry and our salmonid fisheries, on modeled studies that often contradicted empirical research. The government paid biologists never bothered to actually measure the fish production in those protected streams. Worse, they ignored several studies that reported a general increase in fish productivity where clear cuts extended to the edge of the water.
Oregon State University forestry professor emeritus Mike Newton has been researching the actual benefits of streamside forest buffers for more than 20 years. Dr. Newton has measured and evaluated data collected on streams that have no forest buffer zones, streams that have various widths of forest buffers, and streams that have never been logged. He has accumulated years of empirical data on stream temperatures and fish food production. He has counted the actual number and size of fish and calculated fish production volumes in the stream segments.
Dr. Newton’s data emphatically contradicts the conventional wisdom that shaded streams are necessary or even beneficial for salmonid fish production.
His long-term empirical data proves that fish actually grow more numerous, and grow larger, in areas with little or no streamside vegetation, compared to streams with carefully maintained forest buffers that shade the stream surface. His measured data shows that fish reproduce and grow better in sunlit streams because the sunlight creates conditions that grow more food for the fish. One of those beneficial effects is increased water temperature! Any warming of the water that occurs in those sunlit areas is rapidly dissipated, as the water flows downstream.
Clear-cuts extending to the water’s edge, with no streamside forest buffer, produced the highest and largest fish counts in Dr. Newton’ study area. Moreover, streams affected by all different kinds of logging activities consistently produced more fish compared to stream segments passing through unlogged forests.
Dr. Newton’s twenty years of carefully collected on-site data simply destroys the veracity of the Department’s modelled “Protection of Cold Water Standard”. In fact, his data proves that the entire effort to protect the cold water standard may be misguided and actually counterproductive to optimal fish production.
Once again, the adoption of a false assumption by government paid biologists has wrought serious harm on both the timber industry and our fisheries.
Most government paid scientists appear to shun spending time in the field to actually observe, measure and collect real data. They seem to be wed to the practice of supporting their assumptions with modeled data. Too often the information used to calibrate their models is also based on assumed data points.
One could assume that these biologists are either uninformed regarding appropriate scientific methods, too lazy to gather and evaluate empirical data, or that they have an agenda other than the protection of fish. In my opinion, the latter is too often true. The execution of the Forest Practices Act is a clarion example. It has devolved into a pretense of science that targets the future existence of the forest products industry.
The myth that mercurial additives to vaccines causes autism was the most damaging medical hoax of the century. The British scientist that initiated and perpetuated that hoax was found guilty of three dozen charges by the General Medical Council, including dishonesty, irresponsibility and abuse of developmentally challenged children. He was stripped of his science credentials, struck from the Medical Registry and barred from medical practice.
Those scientists that misrepresent and adulterate forest science for political gain deserve no less.

Please remember, if we do not stand up for rural Oregon no one will.

Best Regards,
Doug

Balancing People’s Needs and the Environment: Ski Areas

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Well, we’ve been talking about fuels reduction and travel management, here’s an op-ed by Bob Berwyn on the Eldora Ski Expansion. It just gives you a flavor of some of the other uses of the forest..as usual, I don’t agree with everything Bob says, but he always raises interesting points that are based on observing real things happening on the ground. And I certainly agree that appeals and litigation are not the best way to work things out.

Note: I worked in appeals and litigation on some ski area projects, in fact, I first “met” Harris Sherman when he was working as an attorney with the ski industry and he called about an appeal. I was around when our OGC folks developed guidelines to separate the proponent from the contractors working on the NEPA for projects. This was actually a result, not of a ski area expansion, but of a project I called “Reasonable Access for Unreasonable People.”

For those who might believe that the FS simply rubberstamps the ski industry’s proposals, I can only say “a series of signals are sent back and forth all the time between the FS and the ski area” and “Crested Butte.”

Eldora’s proposal, a relatively small project in a discrete geographic area, could become the model for a collaborative approach that focuses attention on the resources, and not the process.

There is precedent. In Breckenridge, town, county and ski industry officials hammered out a formal Memorandum of Understanding to address some of the concerns associated with the Peak 6 expansion. Similarly, the Forest Service participated in a rigorously facilitated negotiation over a proposed motorized recreation trail, eventually finding some common ground with nearby neighborhoods and towns that had bitterly opposed the plan early on.

Another example is a recently finalized deal between Denver Water and Trout Unlimited. Instead of lunging forward into an all-but-certain legal battle, the water bosses and fish lovers agreed to work together to closely monitor and mitigate the effects of new diversions from the Fraser River. If the plan works, conditions in the depleted stream will actually improve over the next few decades.

This is the key lesson for the sides lining up to do battle over the Eldora expansion plan: The Forest Service should invite environmental advocates, concerned neighbors, state and local officials and even federal environmental experts from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop an adaptive, restoration-based alternative that enables Eldora to meet growing demand, while at the same time resulting in long-term environmental improvements within the expansion area and on surrounding public and private lands.

Instead of settling for the least harmful alternative, the ski area, the Forest Service and local residents should aim high, striving for a plan with a long-term vision to actually improve the environment. If it sounds like a tall order, it is. You can see why some people prefer the lazy way, just letting the kabuki play out. But the end result of a front-loaded process would be infinitely preferable to years of legal squabbling that leave everyone frustrated.

Here’s what it would take: All parties would have to commit resources long-term to monitoring conditions on the ground, assessing impacts and developing new management actions to meet emerging issues. Boulder County already has considerable resources invested in protecting environmental assets, so it’s not hard to imagine the government partnering with the ski area to expand those efforts.

The ski area needs to — and probably does — consider the environmental sensibilities of its primary customer base and agree to a phased expansion approach. Making improvements in steps gives the monitoring program a chance to keep up and assess whether mitigation efforts are working. Approvals for subsequent expansion phases would be linked with meeting specific restoration goals.

The whole agreement needs to be wrapped up in a formal agreement like an Memorandum of Understanding and adopted as an enforceable provision in the Forest Service permit for the expansion. That makes everyone accountable and gives everyone a longterm stake in the outcome.

For its part, the Forest Service should also take seriously the Obama administration’s guidance on climate by developing a carbon-neutral version of the Eldora expansion plan that doesn’t result in any new greenhouse gas emissions. It may not be possible to immediately achieve a zero-emissions goal, but including a carbon-neutral version as a baseline would give the agency a chance to measure progress toward that goal.

Is there any way the ski area can harness some of those howling Eldora winds to generate electricity? Could Eldora help fund a long-term regional forest health program that would provide fuel for a biomass energy plant at the ski area?

Reasonable people working in a collaborative spirit with the goal of furthering the common good have achieved far more, so seeking a progressive solution to the vexing dilemma of ski area growth seems like a realistic path.

I’ve got to add that if more folks went to Eldora, from Denver, they would use less gas than going over 70 to the other resorts, plus fewer people on 70 mean everyone there uses less gas when it becomes a giant parking lot. Don’t know how this would or should enter the climate change considerations…

The Future of Forests and Forest Management: Change, Uncertainty, and Adaptation

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If anyone’s interested and in the area, I’ll spam this meeting that’s taking place next week in Missoula, at the Annual Meeting of the Northwest Scientific Association. It starts Wednesday and there are topics besides those shown below, but these seem most relevant to folks here (whereas my presentations on fungi and nematodes may be less enticing).  For me the biggest problem, as always, is that talks I most want to see are often running concurrently. If anyone plans to be there, maybe look me up and I’ll buy you a beer or something.

Friday, 28 March 2014  Technical Session: Fire Ecology I 

1:30 – 1:50 HISTORICAL FIRE HETEROGENEITY IN A SIERRA NEVADA MIXED-CONIFER FOREST  Molly A.F. Barth, Andrew J. Larson, University of Montana, Missoula, MT; James A. Lutz, Utah State University, Logan, UT

1:50 – 2:10 CHARACTERIZING FOREST STRUCTURE OF THE SIERRA NEVADA: AN EXAMINATION OF FIRE, CLIMATIC WATER BALANCE, AND LARGE-DIAMETER TREES  Kendall M.L. Becker, James A. Lutz, Utah State University, Logan, UT

2:10 – 2:30 HISTORICAL FIRE REGIME AND FOREST COMPOSITION IN THE SOUTHERN BLUE MOUNTAINS OF OREGON  Sean M. A. Jeronimo, Derek J. Churchill, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; Gunnar C. Carnwath, U.S. Forest Service, Baker City, OR; Andrew J. Larson, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

2:30 – 2:50 EVIDENCE OF HIGH-SEVERITY FIRE IN A 1915-1925 INVENTORY OF APPROXIMATELY 200,000 FORESTED HECTARES IN EASTERN OREGON   Keala Hagmann, Jerry F. Franklin, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Friday, 28 March 2014  Technical Session: Natural Resource Management

1:30 – 1:50 A FORTY YEAR ODYSSEY WITH WOLVES IN MONTANA Robert Ream, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

1:50 – 2:10 EMERGING RESEARCH IN NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT THROUGH A CONSORTIUM OF REGIONAL UNIVERSITIES AND FEDERAL AGENCIES Pei-Lin Yu, Lisa Gerloff, Kathy Tonnessen, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

2:10 – 2:30 TRADITIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN METHODS FOR HARVESTING BARK DOES NOT CHANGE SECONDARY GROWTH RATES IN WESTERN RED-CEDAR  David A. Hooper, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

2:30 – 2:50 INTEGRATION OF SHEEP AND CROP PRODUCTION: EFFECTS ON COVER CROP TERMINATION, WHEAT EMERGENCE, AND SHEEP LIVE WEIGHT GAINS  Jasmine Westbrook, Craig Carr, Patrick Hatfield, Molly Butler, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT; Perry

Friday, 28 March 2014  Technical Session: Forest Ecology II

3:20 – 3:40 MAPPING A HISTORIC BITTERROOT VALLEY, MONTANA LANDSCAPE USING GENERAL LAND OFFICE SURVEYORS’ FIELD

NOTES   Karen Shelly, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

3:40 – 4:00 INFLUENCE OF TREE AGREGATION ON MORTALITY IN PRE-FIRE SUPPRESSION FORESTS IN THE SOTHERN BLUE MOUNTAINS OF OREGON   Miles LeFevre, Derek J. Churchill, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; Gunnar C. Carnwath, U.S. Forest Service, Baker City, OR; Andrew J. Larson, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

4:00 – 4:20 WESTERN WHITE PINE SEEDLINGS COMPENSATE FOR AN AMMONIUM DEFICIENCY WITH INCREASED AMINO ACID UPTAKE    Beau Larkin, MPG Operations, Missoula, MT

4:20 – 4:40 RATES AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF TREE MORTALITY DIFFER STRONGLY BETWEEN YOUNG AND OLD-GROWTH FORESTS    Andrew J. Larson, University of Montana, Missoula, MT

West Bend Vegetation Project: Successful Collaboration

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west bend

Here’s a map:
west bend 2

Based on this story in the Oregonian, this effort seems to be a success, with no litigation. I wonder what lessons could be learned from this? What went right?

In 2009, Congress authorized the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Fund, providing $40 million annually through 2019 to restore national forests.

Forest Service officials on the Deschutes National Forest at first identified 150,000 acres in need of restoration and secured $1 million a year for the next 10 years for the work.

Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project Diverse forest interests come together with the help of the US Forest Service to make the Deschutes National Forest more resistant to fire, insects and disease.
Last summer, the restoration area expanded to about 257,000 acres.

The Forest Service is focusing on eight zones within the project. This month, they moved forward on the West Bend Vegetation project — 26,000 acres where mowing, thinning and prescribed burning are expected to open up the forest.

“A whole lot of people here have a whole lot of interest in that landscape,” said Kevin Larkin, the Bend/Fort Rock district ranger for the Deschutes National Forest. “It’s used all year round by a large group of recreationalists.”

“There is a high level of agreement and shared vision on Ponderosa forests,” said Phil Chang, staff coordinator for the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council.

The council includes elected officials from three counties — Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson — and eight central Oregon cities.

The 10-year project also seeks to restore watersheds within the forest to improve fish habitat, including the re-introduction of steelhead salmon into the Deschutes basin. Roads will be decommissioned, soils improved, trails rebuilt and the planting of native plants.

Because the long-term work will have such a direct effect on users of the forest, the overall project has taken input from environmental groups, the timber community, recreationalists and business interests.

“We’ve brought them all together and they’ve come to an agreement for the most part on all aspects of the project,’’ Larkin said. “What should have been a very contentious project is going forward without litigation and broad-scale support from all these disparate groups.”

Here’s a site with the documentation. The objections can be found here . (Note to folks developing project websites.. please link directly to objections rather than have people need to go search through various years to find them.)

Clearly not everyone agreed, but no one litigated. Anyone know more about this story?

Rim Fire trees sailing to China, domestic mills “pretty much at capacity”

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From Reed Fujii, staff writer with the The Record, Stockton, California:

If there’s a silver lining to last year’s Rim Fire, California’s third-largest recorded wildfire, scorching more than 257,000 acres around and in Yosemite National Park, it may be in the piles of logs now being stacked up at the Port of Stockton.

MDI Forest Products, an Oakland-based timber and lumber export company, is staging the logs at the port for shipment to Far East lumber mills.

The logs will be stripped of bark, then loaded into shipping containers and moved via the port’s Marine Highway barges to Oakland and from there on to China, primarily, and perhaps Japan and Korea, said Gary Liu, MDI chief executive and managing partner.

Fire-damaged or weakened trees need to be salvaged quickly, before insects or diseases further reduce their value.

“The Rim fire is bringing a lot of private timber onto the market,” Liu said.

And there is demand for logs from Asian lumber mills.

“There just hasn’t been an alternative,” he said Monday. “The domestic mills are pretty much at capacity.”

Read the entire story here.

Here’s some more posts about the Rim Fire from the NCFP blog archives.

NOTE: Since Gil DeHuff has previously questioned my attempts to research, obtain and use links to provide NCFP readers with additional context and information about frequent topics on this blog, I’d like to point out that the links to more posts about the Rim Fire were obtained by simply typing in the words “Rim Fire” to the search box on the homepage of this blog. Therefore, any credit or conspiracy or fault as to what’s included – or not included – in the archives should be directed towards the creator of WordPress’ search engine program. Thank you.

 

Arbitration in Barasso’s Bill: What Do You Think?

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It seems like this is one of the few new ideas to surface on this recently. On this blog, I have previously suggested publicly documented mediation be used, but I am not as familiar with arbitration. I’d like to hear what others think who have experience with those processes.

Also, does anyone know about the USDA “pilot program”
to use arbitration and the results of that pilot?

Here’s an explanation in English:

Sec. 5 – Administrative Review, Arbitration.

Uses the objection process established in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act as the administrative review mechanism. This allows consolidation of objections, allows discussions with the objectors, and provides more rapid resolution.

Arbitration: This section establishes a pilot arbitration program to resolve disputes over projects carried out on Forest Management Emphasis Areas. Arbitration would be available to
anyone who filed an objection and was still not satisfied with the covered project. Demands for arbitration must be filed within 30 days and must include specific modifications sought for the covered project. An arbitrator named by the court must select either the project proposed or the project as modified by the party that filed the demand for arbitration, or an intervener. The decision of the arbitrator must be made within 90 days of the demand for arbitration, is final, and is not subject to further analysis or judicial review.

Below is the section:

SEC. 5. ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW; ARBITRATION.

(a) ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW.—Administrative review of a covered project shall occur only in accordance with the special administrative review process established by section 105 of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (16 U.S.C. 6515).

(b) ARBITRATION.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—There is established in the Department of Agriculture a pilot program that—

(A) authorizes the use of arbitration instead of judicial review of a decision made following the special administrative review process for a covered project described in subsection (a); and

(B) shall be the sole means to challenge a covered project in a Forest Management Emphasis Area during the 15-year period beginning on the date that is 60 days after the date on which the Secretary assigns the acreage treatment requirements under section 4(a)(4)(B).

(2) ARBITRATION PROCESS PROCEDURES.—

(A) IN GENERAL.—Any person who sought administrative review for a covered project in accordance with subsection (a) and who is not satisfied with the decision made under the administrative review process may file a demand for arbitration in accordance with—(i) chapter 1 of title 9, United States Code; and (ii) this paragraph.

(B) REQUIREMENTS FOR DEMAND.—A demand for arbitration under subparagraph (A) shall—

(i) be filed not more than 30 days after the date on which the special administrative review decision is issued under subsection (a); and (ii) include a proposal containing the modifications sought to the covered project.

(C) INTERVENING PARTIES.—

(i) DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION; REQUIREMENTS.—Any person that submitted a public comment on the covered project subject to the demand for arbitration may intervene in the arbitration under this subsection by submitting a proposal endorsing or modifying the covered project by the date that is 30 days after the date on which the demand for arbitration is filed under subparagraph (A).

(ii) MULTIPLE PARTIES.—Multiple objectors or intervening parties that meet the requirements of clause (i) may submit a joint proposal under that clause.

(D) APPOINTMENT OF ARBITRATOR.—The United States District Court in the district in which a covered project subject to a demand for arbitration filed under subparagraph (A) is located shall appoint an arbitrator to conduct the arbitration proceedings in accordance with this subsection.

(E) SELECTION OF PROPOSALS.—

(i) IN GENERAL.—An arbitrator appointed under subparagraph (D)— (I) may not modify any of the proposals submitted under this paragraph; and (II) shall select to be conducted—

(aa) a proposal submitted by an objector under subparagraph (B)(ii) or an intervening party under subparagraph (C); or (bb) the covered project, as approved by the Secretary.

(ii) SELECTION CRITERIA.—An arbitrator shall select the proposal that best meets the purpose and needs described in the environmental assessment conducted under section 4(b)(1) for the covered project.

(iii) EFFECT.—The decision of an arbitrator with respect to a selection under clause (i)(II)— (I) shall not be considered a major Federal action; (II) shall be binding; and (III) shall not be subject to judicial review.

(F) DEADLINE FOR COMPLETION.—Not later 90 days after the date on which a demand for arbitration is filed under subparagraph (A), the arbitration process shall be completed.