FS Related News Roundup: Contacting the FS, GAO study of the Fire Service, Records and Employees

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1. Problems With Accessing Employee Contact Info Due to the Trump Admin?

This Mountain Journal piece made the claim that difficulty reaching folks at the FS is due to .. the Trump Admin.

Finding out who’s in charge of those regions has grown unreliable. Before President Donald Trump’s second administration began in January, each Forest Service Region had a public webpage listing contact information of its leadership and staffing

I’m sure there are other worthwhile discussion topics in that piece but access to info on employees is a sensitive subject that has been dealt with extensively by TSW and associates, without any previous apparent interest by other news outlets. It’s the only thing enough TSW-ers have agreed upon enough to send a joint letter to the Forest Service. And here was the response, as of November right after the election, but before Inauguration.

The Forest Service understands the importance of ensuring public communication with Agency employees, especially those tasked with public engagement. We maintain many different avenues for public engagement. The public can find local points of contact at fs.usda.gov by searching by unit, specific topic, or function. Staff in local offices can provide contact information as well. The Agency also uses several local and national social media accounts to engage with the public on various topics. These serve as key access points for information.

Back to the Mountain Journal piece..

Now many websites have a notice that they are under redesign. And the staff listings are either eliminated or disconnected from main pages.

The Region 1 page is simply blank. Region 2 still has a complete page with forester and deputy foresters listed, starting with Troy Heithecker in the forester post. However, that’s an unsupported page; its redesigned website as of April doesn’t have a leadership tab. Region 4 notes that Ben Newburn is the acting regional forester for the Intermountain Region.

Region 3’s leadership page comes back “access denied.” So does Region 8’s page. Regions 9 and 10 are blank, like Region 1.

We have been complaining about the lack of info since last summer.  Note this TSW post comparing access to BLM State leadership vs. a contact form for the FS. A

And here’s a TSW post including  Andy Stahl’s letter as well as the last Admin’s response. Andy responded by saying (see comments on that post).

We don’t know why the Forest Service has chosen to cut itself off from the public. I do know that it was the agency’s own choice; not one imposed by USDA. For example, your sister agency, NRCS, has publicly available employee directories, and contact information for its key staff, including chief, readily available on its website.

We look forward to working with the new administration to restore public trust in the Forest Service.

I have to acknowledge that the effort to do the web migration has been a serious problem for FS communications people who have had to redo links, after being told they wouldn’t have to. It’s a problem for the rest of us who use FS sites and don’t like the current layout for NFS. I am going to say upfront that I don’t know that the new Admin is responsible for web migrations- based on the new standard forest format, I’d guess they had a hand in it. It was/is still a cluster, but agencies are perfectly capable of various kinds of clusters on their own.

I just went to the Shasta T. and clicked on their SOPA.. went to click on a project, and the link doesn’t seem to work.

Description: The Northwest Forest Plan Amendment provides an updated management framework that incorporates best available scientific information, considers public input, recommendations from the Federal Advisory Committee, tribes, and government partners.
Web Link: http://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=64745

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get any of those links to work.

In May, I noticed this and received this back from the webmasters (who always answer, so shout-out to them)

Good morning, we’re in the middle of a web migration so are having some hiccups. The SOPA docs have moved to forest pages.

 2. Approps GAO Study and Timeline for Analyzing Fire Service.  We can look at this through two perspectives, the political and the policy.  What did the House Approps say specifically?

“To ensure these goals are met and that funding is utilized most effectively, prior to the transfer of any resources or authorities, the Committee directs the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study regarding the proposed creation of a consolidated Fire Service within DOI that assesses the impacts on reaching proposed timber targets, continued cohesion between wildland fire management and the hazardous fuels reduction program, continued use of the available red card-certified workforce, and how this new consolidated Service differs from the role the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) already plays to coordinate fire response. Additionally, the study should evaluate the extent to which states, localities, and Tribes were consulted regarding plans for the creation of this new Fire Service and consider what impact this transfer may have on these critical stakeholders.
Not later than 180 days following the enactment of this Act, the Committee directs GAO to report its findings to the Committee, including detailed recommendations for improving performance and addressing any identified deficiencies with the proposal. The Committee further directs DOI and the Forest Service to provide a comprehensive response to GAO’s findings and consider these findings when evaluating future actions and resources related to wildland fire management.
The Committee emphasizes that continued support for this initiative is contingent upon demonstrable progress toward meeting these performance benchmarks, with clear, measurable outcomes.”

First, let’s look at politically.. House Approps seem to be saying “we are not convinced.” They’re asking for a report 180 days after the bill is passed… and we don’t know when that will be.  They hope to pass a funding bill before October.. suppose it passes in mid-September, and that language is used as is, 180 days is mid-March, then DOI and the FS would have to respond.. with no apparent time limit.  If the agencies really want to pursue the idea, it seems like it would make sense for the agencies themselves to work on addressing those concerns, including clarifying what the goals are, how hazardous fuel reduction programs fit including NEPA and timber sale contracts (about that latter of which the House appears to be concerned), and involving stakeholders once they have a clear proposal.  The agencies, could do much of this before the bill is finalized.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  Policy wise, I think the agencies could probably do a better job than GAO, since they have more people who know more about wildfire and about the stakeholders. To those who say they are too busy with wildfires, I’d say that much of it could be done by folks not directly involved and then information added when wildfire folks become more available.  Maybe they have started doing this already?

3.  What Was the Admin Supposed to Do?   Maybe someone has an answer to this.. we know that the FS overhired on soft money (BIL, IRA) and was in the hole.  The first solution was to get rid of temps for 2025.  It was considered very bad to get rid of the new, sometimes still probationary, people, involuntarily (“the future”). It turns out it was also bad to encourage more experienced folks to leave via VERAs and other mechanisms (voluntary)( for experienced employees).  But these seem to be the only mechanisms available to reduce numbers, at least in a timely way.  I think that this would be an interesting topic for someone to explore.  What I heard was that the prior Admin encouraged the overhiring; or that “not enough people retired according to the model”; or that basically the FS had a hiring “on” switch and couldn’t turn it off.  The latter two are of concern, as there’s no reason to think “hiring back to fill the holes” won’t run into the same overshoots.   I think there are people out there who know what the story is and I hope someday they tell us.

4. Records of Previous Reorganizations and Where Are Agency Records in General?  A retiree happened to come up with more records on Transformation. He asked the FS if they wanted them. He felt it was not legitimate to post draft documents to the public (I have been doing it, and hadn’t considered this before).

The FOIA folks wrote back to him and said:

If the records were not copies of the finalized documents, they should have been destroyed in 2017, at the end of the 10yr retention period. If the records do document the final decisions of the reorganization, they are permanent and should have been retained until 2017, then retired to NARA in 2017.  In any case, the Forest Service is compliant in not having these records anymore and they cannot be provided.

I’ve been trying to contact the historian and understand that that position is vacant.  When asking, I get no answer back. Hopefully, when the position gets filled, that person will write a piece describing how all this is supposed to work.   Right now, I don’t think we know if there was a “final document.”  It’s true that no one probably cares about most 10 year old documents, but the FS reorganization efforts are so intermittent.. and I do remember many excellent people doing excellent work, all of whom are no doubt retired.

Criticism and/or Mutual Learning Conversation? What’s Your Culture?

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As you all know, I am interested in not only “when people you don’t think of as agreeing, do agree.”  Like maybe ENGO’s and AFRC on public comment for the new NEPA regs.  What’s equally interesting is when groups who usually agree, disagree on specific topics and are open about it.  This has been happening in a very interesting way with energy on federal lands.. and recent Administration actions have brought this into focus. So we will wade into that, as well as some other topics.

But first, I wanted to talk a little about different cultural expectations around questions and disagreements, or perhaps, what we might call the culture of critique.  For example, I am the creature of what we might call  a certain time period of  graduate study in forest science. It’s perhaps hard to imagine today, but within my discipline, it was  a cultural norm to question each other. That was a way of improving everyone’s work. If you didn’t participate or you had only pious drivel to say (e.g. “I think Dave’s work is very important”), it was thought to show that you didn’t care about the science, or you weren’t paying attention- pretty much a sign of disrespect to you colleagues.  We didn’t say mean stuff like “I think Dave is a jerkhead if he doesn’t use location as a covariate”.  In fact, emotions of all kinds didn’t have much of a home, as I recall, in the lab.  Well, OK I think we all felt sorry for Jim H. when all his seedlings died and he had to start over. In fact, maybe criticism isn’t the right word.. perhaps “engaging in collaborative sense-making” or “team inquiry” or “a mutual learning conversation” is a better description. For the rest of the post, I’ll call it MLC.

I was confronted with a very different graduate school culture when I went back to school in theology about ten years ago.  We were in an online Masters Degree Proposal class and one of my classmates had a proposal with the topic “why the animal rights movement has been unsuccessful at dismantling broader systems of oppression.” (I’m not making this up; people really talk like this). After years of organizational experience in the Forest Service, you’ll be glad to know I responded with.. “maybe that wasn’t their goal, which would explain why they didn’t attain it.” Our teacher let me know that that wasn’t the kind of mutual learning that was approved of in their culture.  Only supportive comments need apply. Which meant I received no helpful feedback on my proposal.

So what is FS culture on MLC?   Through my FS career, my efforts to make helpful suggestions and poke holes into various arguments were mostly appreciated, as far as I could tell.  I think it depends to a large extent on the leader of the team or unit to set the tone.   On the other hand, a certain Regional Forester used to call a bunch of us in and go into a bit of a speech.  I was always helpful, thinking that the taxpayers weren’t paying me good money to be quiet, and also thinking when he gave the same speech externally, it would be better (if he listened to me).  Later, I did wonder about whether this had been a good idea.  As he used to tell me (fairly frequently), I’m not particularly good at reading between the lines.

Anyway, my point here is that I do engage in MLC and will continue to do so.  And you can depend on me to engage in MLCs with people with all kinds of different views, including my own group (if such a thing exists).  I don’t do it to disrespect the people I’m engaging with; to reiterate, in my culture, engaging is precisely a form of respect.  I respect people on all sides as human beings (and in my metaphysics, sparks of the Divine), not that I agree with anyone all the time.

Folks who are interested in the topic of  of depolarization might be interested in the writings of Zach Elwood.  From a Medium story of his:

Benefits of criticizing “our side”

So what are the benefits of pushing back against the more unreasonable and extreme voices in one’s own group? Here are the benefits I see:

  • We push our own group to become more rational, and more reasonable, and more persuasive and attractive to a wider range of people.
  • Because the other side’s anger and fear is based on their perception of the more extreme and unreasonable people on our side, in making our group more reasonable and more persuasive, we also reduce the fear and anger of people on the other side, which in turn reduces the fear and anger of people on our side.
  • We act as a model for people on the other side, to show how it can be done. We encourage others on the other side to do the same thing we are doing, to show how one doesn’t have to fit the stereotype of one’s group (in an episode of my podcast, polarization researcher Jaime Settle mentioned demonstrating our own complexity as a key strategy for reducing polarization)

And a point I think is very important here: we can really only affect our own side. We can righteously judge and castigate the other side all we want (and we do) and clearly those things don’t have an impact. (In fact, I think many people would agree that a lot of the most angry and righteous moral judgments about political stances seems to only add to the judged group’s grievances, and thus our polarization.)

In order to feel morally judged, and to feel bad about doing or believing something, we must respect the people doing the judging, and that is just not the case in a very polarized environment. And this is another reason I’d say there is hidden value in criticizing people on our own side: because there’s no other place your criticism will do any good.

I think that this last point is rather important.  Was it pushback from folks like Martin Nie who were really worried about federal land sales that led to the Lee proposals being pushed back, or was it more due to R folks in the House, including his fellow Montanan Ryan Zinke?   That seems to me a good reason to have all sorts involved in discussions is because each group has credibility with different powerful individuals.

Introduction to FS Research Organization, Management and Budget: Guest Post by Alex Friend

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The recent USDA reorganization write-up wasn’t clear (IMHO) as to whether they were proposing to combine administration of Research Stations (that would be similar to the 2007 NC/NE Stations combining into the Northern Research Station) or get rid of that layer or ??.  Perhaps many TSW readers have never looked behind the scenes to see how the scientists and technicians they meet are supported and how their organization and budgets work.

I asked Alex Friend to give us a description of what goes on at Stations (the locations on the map shown as stars, or Research Station Headquarters on the map).  Alex came to the FS in 2002 from Mississippi State University, and has been a research scientist, a project leader,  the R&D budget coordinator for R&D in the WO, the Station Director at PSW, and the Deputy Chief for R&D. He has sat in pretty much all the chairs there are to occupy, so we couldn’t have a better guide to help us understand how R&D works. So a big thank you to him for sharing his knowledge with us!

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A research station functions much the same as a regional headquarters or the leadership team of any organization. The station director (SD) is an SES position that reports to the chief. The station director’s office is generally comprised of one of more assistant station directors, and directors that oversee station-wide operations such as communications, engineering, and budget. Although human resources management and grants  & agreements have been centralized, there is usually a director with expertise in these areas who liaises with centralized services in Albuquerque and assists station personnel in these activities. As with any organization, the health and vibrancy of the station director’s office depends on the executive assistant and any administrative assistants who manage calendars, meetings, and incoming information from the field and the public.

The station director’s office is connected to field operations through leaders that oversee either programs and the scientists within (i.e., program managers) or locations and the scientists within (i.e., project leaders). Program managers generally represent a particular discipline area across multiple locations (e.g. Fire). Project leaders are generally responsible for a group of scientists at a specific location. These field leaders report to an assistant station director and are part of the station leadership team (SLT). SLTs may have 10-18 members including SD, ADs, directors, and program managers/project leaders. The SLT is the primary venue for developing policy and management decisions, and ideally there will be a close association between SLT meetings and regional leadership team (RLT) meetings.

The population of a research station varies widely from about 100 employees to as high as 400 employees, depending on how you count part-time and temporary individuals. A
typical chain of command would be from a scientist to their program manager to an assistant station director to the station director. Research support staff are often supervised by scientists but may be supervised by the program manager or project leader.

Research publications and science applications are the mainstay of research station work. Both activities are strongly supported by the station’s communication staff. Each publication must be internally reviewed before it can be submitted to a journal for publication. Internal review considers standards of scholarship and policy. Regarding policy, station publications are ideally sources of objective and unbiased information for the management community to use in decision making. Stations also publish basic science that may not have a direct application to management but advances knowledge in a way that ultimately benefits forest management.

Budget and personnel management at a research station is complex in that forestry research takes time and so commitment of funds to projects requires scrutiny by station leaders, scientists, and stakeholders. Hiring a research scientist might involve discussions with SLT, RLT, and the Washington office to ensure that the discipline area is line with local and national priorities. After hiring, research scientists often seek outside funding to support the work they were hired to complete. Rarely do sufficient internal funds exist to fully realize the needed work. They may also cooperate with universities to bring in specialized expertise that enhances the research project.

The annual FY station budget is set in Washington in a similar manner to the regions. The station executive team (station director and assistant station directors) generally sets the budget for each program and the headquarters; however, the recent past has seen little in discretionary funds beyond fixed expenses (salaries, utilities, fleet, etc). Program managers/project leaders do manage a budget, and scientists with external funding have access to those funds for research needs associated with funded projects.

Research scientists are promoted in grade through the Research Grade Evaluation (RGE) process. Review of scientists generally takes place at least every 5 years and scientists may increase or decrease in grade according to performance standards. Scientific accomplishments, based on publications and the application of publications to solve problems, is the centerpiece of this evaluation. Scientist grades generally span GS-11 through GS15 and beyond to ST (Science Technical or “super scientists”).

The central focus of the research station is science delivery, which is conducting research, publishing it, and making it accessible to end users who benefit from it.  Science delivery is a goal of every scientist and is incentivized by the RGE process; however, stations often invest in science delivery beyond a single scientist’s work to ensure that the work is in a usable form. Science delivery is often a role of communications specialists. The interplay between regional directors and station leadership is often key to ensuring that needs of the local region are met. Research station leaders also work through state forestry organizations, conservation groups, industry, and landowner associations to foster dialogue that fine tunes research
planning and the way science delivery presents information.

 

FS Can’t Meet Congressionally Mandated Timber Targets: Good News, Bad News, or Meh?

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Forest Experts Warn Spending Bill Sets Up US Forest Service to Fail

The recently passed spending bill sets logging targets that federal officials don’t have the capacity to meet

A couple of people have sent me a link to this article from Sierra magazine (the magazine of the Sierra Club).  I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but there is a strain of reporting where things are almost always bad, especially in environmental journalism.  It’s also kind of funny that one of the main sources quoted in this story was from a state (Vermont) that isn’t exactly up there in terms of timber sales on National Forests.

As we’ve discussed before,  the Congress is asking for something the FS probably can’t do with the logging targets for reasons we’ve outlined before.  Now, since the Sierra Club has a policy (since the 80’s) that they don’t want commercial timber harvesting on NF land, you’d think that the FS not being able to do it would be a … good thing?

But one of the most devastating impacts of the law will likely be on America’s forests. The new law sets aggressive timber harvesting goals and slashes spending for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Environmental advocates and industry insiders say those goals are contradictory and unworkable.

As everyone knows, I am budget-impaired but the OB3A was not an appropriations bill.  Congress indeed cut back some spending in the IRA, but probably not for timber harvesting.  So if they are “contrary and unworkable,” they won’t happen.. and isn’t that a good thing?

Further in the story, it says about the OB3A:

It expands coal and oil leases in multiple states, cuts support for renewable energy projects, and rescinds hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for numerous programs aimed at ecosystem protection, wildfire risk reduction, and climate change resilience.

Maybe timber sales are mechanisms to promote wildfire risk reduction and climate change resilience?  Seems to me  folks need to pick a lane- either timber sales are helpful and cuts to IRA increases are bad, or timber sales are bad and were not included in the IRA.

Bosworth was one of six former chiefs who recently authored a statement decrying the staff cuts and the Trump administration’s push to sell off public lands.

“Are these drastic actions the first steps toward crippling the agencies so they cannot carry out their congressionally mandated mission? If so, they portend a cynical effort to divest and transfer federal public lands to the states and private interests,” the former chiefs wrote.

Hmm. I went to the link and couldn’t find a date, so I couldn’t tell how recent it was.  Also we have covered that the “Trump Admin’s push to sell off public lands” was really mostly Senator Mike Lee who isn’t actually a member of the Admin.  I know I’ve heard this “divest and transfer” but when Congress doesn’t support it..it’s hard for me to get too worried.

“The bill certainly layers onto these executive orders to increase timber production and to gut NEPA regulations,” said Christophe Courchesne, director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School who directs a legal clinic that has challenged harvests on national forests. “I think there’s a real policy reversal from the approaches of prior administrations, and a real doubling down on this timber sale approach to public land management.”

This made me curious about what I had missed in OB3A about NEPA. Here’s what one law firm thinks.. it has

Section 60026 of the OBBBA amends NEPA to provide that a project sponsor may, after submitting a description of the project to the CEQ, pay 125% of the anticipated preparation costs of the EA or EIS in return for a review of the EA or EIS under an accelerated timeline. The review for EAs for which the fee is paid must be completed within 180 days from the date the fee was paid, and the review for EISs must be completed within one year from the date of publication of the notice of intent to prepare the EIS. CEQ must provide the fee amount within 15 days after the date on which it receives the description of the project. This opt-in fast track is aimed at streamlining NEPA reviews …

That doesn’t seem like “gutting” to me, but I may have missed something and hope our law friends here will help out.

It also eems to me that Prof Courchesne could look at this more positively, after Marin Audubon Society vs. FAA (not OB3A), agencies are getting a get a chance to update NEPA regs, considering all the lessons learned from the past.   The Prof and his colleagues will get a chance, while challenging new logging projects, to develop an entirely new set of NEPA case law, building job opportunities for hundreds or thousands of law school graduates and getting a chance to improve their chances of having their views prevail in court.  If we don’t yet know what the future case law will look like, how do we know if it will be better or worse?

Ellis and I disagree about this:

Ellis said Forest Service chief Tom Schultz spoke at the recent Forest Congress about a new era of “cooperative federalism.” Under this concept, the Forest Service would authorize states to handle timber sales on federal land through decades-long deals. Schultz, who worked as a timber industry lobbyist for the last seven years, recently unveiled a plan for Montana to manage 200,000 acres of federal lands. At the recent Forest Congress in Washington, Schultz spoke about replicating the Montana model in 40 states.

Ellis is skeptical. “Are they literally turning the keys over to Montana to do its national forests for 20 years?”

As I have written before, it seems to me more like contracting (doing work on projects that fit existing forest plans and are reviewed and approved by feds).  Montana “managing” federal land sounds like deciding and reviewing.. would we say that the FS “turned over management” to TNC or NFF when they do projects and work on partnerships? I think we need to be super-clear about what we think is important to hang on to, and be consistent across entities who do the work.  And yes, it does make sense for the FS to work with States and Tribes, “all lands all hands” and all that.  Plus states have their own wildlife, forest and fire folks, and wouldn’t it make sense for PODs or evacuation routes to be planned across ownerships?

Michael Snyder is a former commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation who served under Democratic and Republican governors. He said Schultz’s plans don’t make much sense, especially since the agency’s proposed budget would cut funds for states to manage federal land. “States don’t have the capacity,” Snyder said. “We don’t have enough [federal funding] now to do what we’re supposed to be doing.”

Here again (of course the Agency’s budget proposal has already been pooh-poohed by Congress), if you think it’s a bad idea and it won’t happen, shouldn’t you be happy?

Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, a forest protection group based in Vermont. For example, a mandate for the government to sign 20-year timber sale contracts will essentially turn over vast swaths of public lands to private corporations, he said.

Wow! If you use the same logic, any timber sale contract “turns over swaths of public land to private corporations”- just for a shorter period of time.  It seems to me that they are dissing the work of all the sale administrators, silviculturists, fuels folks, wildlife biologists, botanists, archaeologists and so on that develop the prescriptions and administer the sales.  Not to speak of the heavy lifting of the forest plans.

Also, it seems to me that whether anyone even wants that length contract remains to be seen. Do we know how previous efforts have worked out? 4FRI comes to mind.. others?

“We mostly have ponderosa pine, and our mills have limited capacity,” said Rader. “We operate in the global market in response to demand, and those mills can only haul timber from a certain radius before it becomes uneconomical.”

Rader said his organization participates in stakeholder collaboratives with government and industry that have improved harvests on public land. “It actually gives us the opportunity to address issues before the objection period, before litigation.”

He said the collaborations have resulted in harvesting plans that cull trees from fire-prone areas. “We need to be able to manage the forest intentionally, and the timber industry is part of that,” he said. “But if we ramp up domestic production on the national forest, especially if we start cutting mature and older trees, that’s going to increase our wildfire risk. Those trees are rare, and they’re important for carbon sequestration, for watersheds; they help wildlife habitat and provide other ecosystem services.”

I’m going to post about the settlement (to litigation, actually) that Rader links to in another post. So technically it wasn’t the collaboration but the settlement to litigation that “improved harvests” as lined. I’d also argue that mature trees aren’t rare; also if mills only have so much capacity, who would will buy the sales?  No tree will be cut regardless of NEPA docs or timber sale advertisements, if there is no purchaser.

Mandating more harvests won’t work if there’s no one to cut the trees and nowhere to mill the lumber, said Snyder, the former Vermont forestry commissioner. In addition, national forests are never going to compete with private operations, which essentially grow crops.

“The amount of timber available is not the barrier to domestic wood production,” he said. “It’s workforce; it’s closure of mills.… These [timber targets] are not the buttons and knobs to push to reignite American forestry.”

With all due respect,  if companies couldn’t sell their wood products,  they would probably not bid on federal contracts. Ergo, they must be competitive in some sense.

So the point is that we all agree.. it’s not going to work.  Most people involved know this.  So shouldn’t everyone be happy (except the poor FS, who has to make the effort with fewer people)?

As we’ve talked about here, perhaps the areas with mill capacity will face increased pressure from the Admin to put out more sales.  Will they have different prescriptions with bigger trees (as Rader implies)? Or will there just be more acres (likely to be thinning)? Will there even be more if there’s no employees to put them up? And what about the bucks still stashed with NGOs for timber sales, do those areas match where capacity is?

There are many interesting questions that could be looked at, and I hope someone will. And I think we need more forest economists, who are the real experts on many of the topics touched upon here.

Previous Consolidation History- ASC, Biz Ops and HR: Teri Cleland

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Teri Cleland sent this in as a comment, and she was closer to centralization of business services and how it all happened, plus some additional info on ASC HR starting up that I hadn’t heard before. Thanks Teri!

I appreciate Rains’s review of that consolidation, which I don’t even recall happening although I was in the WO at the time. Sounds like a success in that regard! In 2006 the Bush administration was forcing us through competitive sourcing exercises. Those were terrible times! We had to determine what was “inherently governmental work” and what could be outsourced to the private sector. I sat in on a study done for Communications and it was rough, very emotional, and fortunately never happened. I believe that some of our internal consolidations were an effort to get ahead of having it done to us by the Department.

I was there when we consolidated Business Operations to Albuquerque. It was largely successful after a bumpy time. Working in legislative affairs, I remember telling congressional staffers looking into payment problems that hurricane Katrina staff evacuations left the NFC in New Orleans abandoned with reams of unpaid bills sitting in cubicles. It always worked, but that was shading it a bit. It took awhile to get up and running in the new consolidated center, but by all accounts I heard it worked well and was more efficient, especially fire payments. It was also much smaller than HR.

As I remember it, the business ops consolidation went so well that the agency looked at HR next. What could go wrong? I had worked on forests that had great personnel officers and those with terrible ones. I figured that the best would move to the new consolidated center and provide their excellent service to more forests from there. And the bad ones–bye bye. Duh.

I sat in on a very lively national leadership team meeting where Dale Bosworth asked Regional Foresters their opinion on HR consolidation. There were passionate arguments made on both sides of the issue, but Dale did decide to move forward with it. I think he really wanted to save funds to focus on field work, and also move the agency forward as systems made it easier to work remotely.

They worked hard on developing the consolidation plan. There were many reasons that it failed. Some had to do with those great experts not wanting to move to Albuquerque so we got hires, many from the military, who didn’t know the FS culture. It also revealed that there had been inconsistent interpretations of the rules across the agency that resulted in wrongful promotions, hiring, etc. And the opposite was also true, new interpretations of things that were always done a certain way. Most can come up with their own opinions on why it failed. A big one is that in both consolidations, wonderful administrative folks at the forest and district level lost their jobs. It was heartbreaking. Change is hard! And once initiated, there’s no going back.

But at least there was a rationale and a process for it. I’m not sure what the question is here or if I’ve shed any helpful light on things, but the only thing that never changes is that change happens.

I’m going to look at the USDA proposal seriously and provide some comments that I hope will be helpful for the process. Any of us who have had to respond to public comments of any kind in planning should know how to at least make this Administration work a little harder to ignore us.

Let’s Discuss: Chiefs’ Letter on Proposed Wildfire Agency

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Here’s the text of the former Forest Service Chief’s Letter. I have a great deal of respect for all the Forest Service Chiefs, and I don’t always agree with them.   I am not a fan of the One Fire Service idea, but I also think it’s important to understand different perspectives and question claims, if only to make the case for not doing it stronger. And I have heard concerns that I think could be addressed without the combo, so I think it would be best to address those directly, rather than combo and hope for the best.  Still, that’s not where the combo convo seems to be going.

The Honorable Brooke Rollins
Secretary United States Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave. SW
Washington, DC 20250

Subject: Strengthening Wildland Fire Management
Dear Madam Secretary:
As former firefighters, U.S. Forest Service Chiefs, we represent over 250 years of collective experience dealing with fire on America’s public lands.
We write to offer our strong support for improving wildland fire management—but to express clear opposition to creating a new federal fire agency.
Wildland fire response is just one part of an integrated wildland fire management system that includes:

  •  Suppressing wildfires,
  •  Creating fire-adapted communities, and
  •  Building resilient landscapes through fuels management and prescribed fire.

At present, Federal wildland fire personnel integrate all three of these functions into one job designed to save lives and livelihoods of the American public.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not sure that federal wildfire folks “create fire-adapted communities.” What it doesn’t mention is how integrated the FS is with local and state fire efforts.  And certainly FS folks work with nearby communities, so a geographic qualifier might have been helpful.

Separating fire response from land management agencies creates three major problems.  It: 1) dramatically escalates the cost of fixing the problems forest face,

This is a claim. We can accept it as is, or wonder why that would be the case.   Suppose they are the same people, located on the same units, doing the same kinds of work, but reporting differently, as in the interview with the Angeles Fire Chief and having different color trucks and uniforms.  It seems to me that the costs would depend greatly on details that haven’t been worked out, at least not publicly.

2) leaves firefighters without access to critical local knowledge needed for rapid fire decision-making under increasingly extreme fire conditions,

I think we all agree that local knowledge is key. However, we already have teams that may not be local based on the ICS.  It’s possible, again, that the work would be done locally by the same people, with a different reporting structure.

and 3) redirects already strained capacity of our wildland fire workforce away from effective response and towards rebuilding systems that already exist.

Again, it seems to me that the new organization would have to use the same (dedicated) workforce.  Perhaps removing hiring from ASC would have benefits? Point being, we don’t really know what they have in mind.  I understand that the Chiefs probably feel that they can’t wait, and I think that’s true.  At the same time there is a fuzziness that is real about how it would actually work.

Creating a new federal fire agency would be inefficient and costly. The current system allows federal land management agencies to shift staff between fire response and land stewardship as needed. During severe fire seasons, non-fire personnel who are trained and certified (“red-carded”) support suppression efforts. In low fire-risk periods, fire personnel contribute to land management projects. This integrated workforce model is both cost-effective and responsive.

I don’t see why red-carded people couldn’t still be called up by a new organization, the same way that National Guard employees are called out for training or other work.  Of all these, I think the idea that fire folks work on other projects (beyond what might become “fire projects) and their level of integration probably differs depending on various factors.  I think this one is the best argument so far.

Attempting to fully staff two separate federal agencies—one for fire, one for land—would eliminate this operational flexibility and increase costs without improving outcomes. In fact, detaching fire from land management would likely increase catastrophic fires and firefighter risk by undermining local planning, fuels management, and the essential connection between suppression and prevention.

Again, I’m not sure that’s what they are talking about.  We have a workforce, and  it seems to me that the question is “to whom would they report?”.   Also it seems to me that these individuals  might not want to do NEPA for fuel treatment (MT or PF) and where MT is involved, there might be timber sale contracts.  Who would want to learn about how to do them  if they didn’t have to? Further, lots of MT and PF work is done by stewardship contracting, grants with NGOs, and Good Neighbor agreements, in some places, whereas in others perhaps federal wildfire folks do the work.

The Forest Service currently suppresses 98% of all fires during initial attack. The remaining 2% that escape are largely driven by extreme weather events—conditions under which no agency, new or existing, could guarantee better results.

I really don’t like using percentages, like “only x of prescribed fires escape” or “only y of managed fires escape.” It seems to me that that discounts the views of impacted people (and acreages), and doesn’t mean to, but kind of implies that everything is really fine as is- so leave us alone.  I think it might be more honest to say ” this work is extremely difficult and the wildfire community has a culture of being a learning organization.  We worry that that culture might be disrupted in any new organization.”

We would encourage you to have Forest Service work with the Interior Agencies to expand on the following parts of the Executive Order:

  •  Strengthening federal, state, Tribal, and local fire cooperation;
  • Streamlining fire contracting and standardize intelligence systems;

I wonder why hiring is not included.  Seems important. But maybe everything is fine.

  • Accelerating fuels reduction, forest thinning, and prescribed fire;
  •  Implementing proven risk management strategies through application of science and technology to best implement safe, effective suppression actions;

I would think they are already being implemented.

  •  Investing in fire-adapted communities and the “Firewise” program to reduce hazardous fuels and thin forests in the wildland-urban interface;
  • Expanding public education and prevention efforts like the Smokey Bear campaign, especially to reduce human-caused ignitions (now 85% of all wildfires);
  • Reducing risk of wildfire ignition from power systems by requiring/incentivizing maintenance, clearing and expansion of right- of-ways.  There is a need to adjust right-of-ways to reflect today’s wildfire risk;
  • Continuing to advance interagency fire science, training, and technologies to assist firefighters on how and when to engage suppression actions.
  •  Performance metrics for wildfire response should be driven by taking only safe and effective actions and assigning aviation assets when safe and effective operations can be performed.  Weather, terrain and other factors influence go/no go decisions, and it is essential that decisions are communicated to the public.

Maybe there is a need to communicate better to the public? It’s hard to tell with the passive voice.

  • Increasing investment in wildfire mitigation through sale of excess aircraft and increased appropriations.

All of those bullets are good things.

The science is clear. The solutions are known. What’s needed is the political will and support to scale what works.

I’m always skeptical when someone tells me “the science is clear.”  What I’m not hearing are ideas for things working better within the current system, other than increasing funding.

We urge you to invest in our current interagency fire management system rather than create a costly and redundant new agency. Let’s work together to reduce hazardous fuels, protect communities, support our wildland firefighters, and ensure our nation is prepared to face a future of more intense fire seasons.  If there is any way we can help, please call us.

For me, it all started with the One Fire Agency folks not being clear on what problem they wanted to address.  If they had said that clearly (or maybe it is but I haven’t seen it) then the Chiefs (and the rest of us) could have proposed different, less disruptive, ways of going about making those improvements. To have a reasoned discussion, we would need to know details.. of what the Fire Service is designed to improve, and the details of how it would work.  We might have had some kind of open discussion with the proponents of the idea.

What concerns me is that we might throw the baby out with the bathwater, in the sense that we will never get to discussing what things could be improved because it will get lost in the larger issue of Fire Service.

The Path to Successful Reorganization: Michael Rains Reflects on the NC/NE Consolidation

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Michael Rains at ribbon-cutting ceremony for the University of Maine Cellulose Nanofiber Pilot Plant.

With the current USDA reorganization plan, I asked Michael Rains to describe the process used in the 2000s for merging two research stations.  As he says in the post, he thinks the current distribution is optimal. I agree with him on that.  The point here is to examine a “good” process and hopefully give the Admin some ideas if they want to reorganize.  Now that they have backtracked to taking public comment, perhaps a new process will incorporate some of Michael’s proven approaches.

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In 2006, the USDA Forest Service formally merged two research stations into one called the Northern Research Station. The merger strengthened the ability to do leading-edge science, promoting the long-term health and productivity of natural resources in a twenty-state region that extends from Maine to Minnesota and from Missouri to Maryland. With the various reorganization ideas floating around the United States Department of Agriculture and its agencies, perhaps it is a good idea to review organizational adjustments for mission attainment in ways that have been described by a wide range of individuals and organizations as extremely effective. At that time, the USDA leadership, for example, described the combination of these two research stations as one of the strongest processes they have seen.

The Northern Research Station had its roots in two research stations: the Northeast Research Station, which included 13 states and was headquartered in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania; and the North Central Research Station, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota. The old North Central Station conducted science in 7 states. The new Northern Research Station (NRS), which continues to conduct science in the combined 20-state region of the Northeast and Midwest, is now headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, alongside the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL). About ten years ago, I was assigned the lead for both the NRS and FPL (not a merger) until I retired from federal government service in 2017. I am now a Middle School teacher in math, science, and history for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The year was 2005. The Forest Service Chief, the great Dale N. Bosworth, called me. At that time, I was the Director of the Northeast Research Station. The Director of the North Central Research Station was retiring, and the Chief wanted to discuss the opportunity of combining the two stations, North Central and Northeast. We set up a meeting for me to go to Washington, DC. The objective was two-fold: to fully understand the combination process ahead and to discuss initial ideas with the USDA leadership. Full transparency would be a core value.

I spent some time crafting what I thought would be some important questions. For example:

  • What is the primary objective of the combination?
  • Should we do this combination? Critics? Can we do the combination with minimal
    disruption?
  • Who should lead the process? Who should follow?
  • What are the primary hurdles?
  • If we step forward, what are the most important “first three steps”?
  • How long will the process take?
  • Who should lead the new station?

The meetings with the Chief and USDA leadership went well. I was given the go-ahead to proceed. Before departing, I was asked, “What’s your next step?” I said, “Meet with Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Representative David Obey (Wisconsin, D-7).” Both were key
Congressional leaders (chairs of appropriations subcommittees for the Forest Service)  and essential to moving forward, or not, with the combination. Those were solid conversations, and both thought the idea of combining the two stations made sense. I knew their approval was fundamental to moving ahead.

The next step was to develop a basic strategy and discuss this strategy with key stakeholders (i.e., employees, State Foresters, Universities, etc.). I made a list of 75 key individuals that I thought we must speak with. That was another critical step. My two fundamental notions when
speaking with these folks were: no surprises allowed, and securing their ideas; both good, and please be aware. The single biggest resentment I have with the current USDA Reorganization Plan is the lack of reaching out to stakeholders. I will say this: for the combination of the two
stations, asking opinions from a wide range of people who eventually could and would “decide” constructively, made all the difference for a seamless transition.

A  small deployment team of station employees was convened; we were on our way. The following is what we wanted to achieve, and eventually did:

  • Integrate existing and future science, focusing on Landscape Science – science, discovery, and applications that address ecosystem to landscape-level questions.
  • Deliver to the constituents of the Northeast and Midwest a broader suite of science.
  • Enhance capabilities that allow for national-level concerns in science to be better addressed, including destructive invasive species, bioenergy, social science, and urban forestry.
  • Improve the agency structure in the region and overall operating efficiencies.

Before completing all the steps, I met with Chief Bosworth one last time to secure his final approval. The entire process, from initial idea to approval by the USDA Secretary, took less than one year. A record that still stands for this type of organizational adjustment. The process went smoothly. We did not close anything or move anyone; there was no immediate need. We wanted time to be our ally. The key ingredient to a successful merger was full transparency, and let progress dictate the pace. Nothing special, just tried to follow proven tactics and be clinical with the process.

As time passed, our connections within the science community grew stronger following the merger, creating new partnerships and linkages that expanded the scope of our research, allowing our scientists to play a part in the research being conducted beyond the twenty-state area. For example, Northern Research Station scientists contributed to a study by the University of California / Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis that estimated the economic impact of non-native forest insects and showed that, by and large, homeowners are footing that bill. We also saved some money. Combining the two stations reduced some overhead
and eliminated duplicative services, reducing our costs by approximately $1 million a year.

Change is seldom painless, and combining the Northeastern and the North Central Stations demanded hard work, patience, and goodwill from employees, retirees, partners, and neighbors. Even in retirement, I remain tremendously proud of Northern Research Station staff for their professionalism in making the merger smooth and contributing to the Station being a world-class research organization then and now. Over the years, the work by the Northern Research Station and R&D, overall, as a Mission Area, has demonstrated that the Forest Service remains a vital voice in scientific research. The merger that created the Northern Research Station also demonstrated that the agency had/has the foresight, ability, and willingness to change its organization when it sees a better way to serve people and the land. Simply put, the task-relevant maturity of the USDA Forest Service is extremely high. As Dr. Paul Hersey once said of the Forest Service (2004), “They respond well to relational behavior, with the most effective leadership style being delegating and participating. They do not require a ‘telling’ leadership style.”

Some critics suggest that combining research stations may “damage external relationships because station program leaders faced demands to meet with a larger portfolio of partners and constituents, and constrained travel budgets limited trips to more distant parts of the new
station’s larger territory.” That is a fair point, and I am sure, at least initially, that may have been an issue with the new station. However, I did not believe then or now that it was a major hurdle for the Northern Research Station. Frequent reviews seemed to confirm this. But it is a concern that we always need to be aware of. At this point, I think the current sizes and geographical distribution of the research stations in the Forest Service are pretty optimal. Further combinations are not at all necessary.

Michael Rains is currently Middle School teacher in math, science, and history for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Before his current teaching assignment, he worked for the USDA Forest Service for 50 years, starting as a wildland firefighter in California and rising to Deputy Chief of the agency. He was a Senior Executive for the agency for over 30 years. During that time, he worked for five administrations and nine Forest Service Chiefs. He had assignments in all Mission Areas of the Forest Service (i.e., National Forest System; Research and Development; Business Operations; and State, Private and Tribal Forestry [Deputy Chief].

onX and TRCP Release Map of BLM Acres Available for Potential Sale as Identified in RMPs

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Forgot to add this one.

First-of-its-kind tool identifies six million acres the Bureau of Land Management could advance for sale

onX and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today launched an interactive map that identifies lands deemed eligible for potential sale by the Bureau of Land Management. This map is the first publicly available, easy-to-use tool to inform both the public and policymakers about the locations of public land parcels that the federal government could advance for sale.

“Public lands, like those managed by the BLM, support 178.5 million outdoor recreation participants who rely on these landscapes to hunt, hike, fish, off-road, ski, climb, and bike,” said onX CEO Laura Orvidas. “The outdoor community cherishes these places, and has recently fought fiercely to keep them public. Yet the land disposal process has historically been opaque–often buried in hundreds of pages of government documents. We created this map with TRCP to bring transparency to the land disposal process, to inform outdoor enthusiasts of nearby parcels, and to encourage lawmakers to uphold existing policies that safeguard the public interest when considering any land sales.”

This map was developed using publicly available GIS data derived from 160 individual BLM Resource Management Plans in 17 western states. It reveals 6,086,900 acres of public land marked for potential sale.

“For the first time, the public and policymakers can engage with one map that spans most BLM planning areas, and see public land parcels eligible for sale in the context of other landmarks, like towns, roads, and adjoining public lands,” said Joel Pedersen, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “TRCP is proud to partner with onX to share this valuable tool that shows specific locations of land that could be considered for sale like never before.”

The six million acres depicted in the map are not guaranteed to be sold, rather, they have been identified in BLM land use plans as eligible for potential disposal or sale. Identification of lands as eligible for disposal does not trigger immediate action, it means those parcels may be considered for sale if and when a proposal is advanced. Importantly, any future sale must go through a multi-step process that includes additional opportunities for public review and comment. By showing these parcels on a map, the public can more readily participate in any future public process.

Explore the map HERE.

Learn more about the BLM’s land disposal history and current process HERE.

August 7, 2025 News Roundup: Montana Dashboard, Softening Tourism and AFRC Likes Public Comment, too

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In no particular order:

1. Shout-out to the Montana Department of Natural Resources for their Forest Management Dashboard. It is in line with my long-standing call for a national People’s Database. It has pretty much everything I would want to know. For some projects the prescription is summarized, in others it says “see the EA” a link might be handy. I’m always a fan of States being the laboratories of democracy, still I think it would be handy if there were a national effort to develop something like this. Maybe there is?

2. Don’t Believe Everything You Read Department

According to this article:

The new GOP tax and spending law could increase the risk of massive wildfires by stripping critical National Forest System funding and increasing logging on National Park Service lands.

That’s according to a new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Lead author and center Climate Analyst Matt Sedlar said the new law removes $450 million needed to manage forests not owned by the federal government or states.

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Sedlar said the administration’s recent decision to cancel rules that prohibited development on roadless areas of the National Park system could also increase wildfire risks.

“By rescinding that rule, and then removing environmental reviews,” said Sedlar, “they’re opening up a lot of areas to development within the National Parks. And there’s a lot of research out there that shows that logging increases wildfire risk, mostly due to the waste that’s left over.”

So I clicked on the link and it was basically a blog post-like piece.  Which didn’t mention anything about National Parks. I’ m curious so I’ll ask Sedlar if he really said it.

2. Softening tourism market in Colorado.
This article has a number of interesting twists. As a person who has observed high overnight rates and avoid them, ‘m not surprised that front range visitors who don’t stay overnight are growing in numbers.

Hmm. I understand about Canadians, but Euros, Aussies and Kiwis not going to Colorado because of “the political climate” and “tariffs”? Which raises the question “is this just Colorado, or broader?” and “does it differ by summer vs. winter tourism?” And maybe they don’t come because it has become too crowded and expensive, or maybe their economies aren’t doing so well? So many questions.

International travelers stay, on average, for eight days when they vacation in Colorado. And they spend three to five times more per person than domestic travelers. Those international travelers can boost local economies with fewer people in town, creating a smaller impact than, say, lots of day-trippers who spend less.

“International is one of our top priorities,” Wolfe said. “We know these are high-value guests for communities.”

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Lodgekeepers are trying to offset the dip in numbers by raising room rates, which are up about 4% compared with 2024. But that can be a tricky game. Raise prices too much and communities can pretty much eliminate an entire segment of visitors.

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I don’t envy folks in those towns. If they increase taxes on short-term rentals, then they make them more expensive so that fewer people can visit (at least the less-desirables from the Front Range). At the same time, too many STRs means that workers have nowhere to live.

3. Charging Internationals More at Parks Legislation Introduced. We’ve discussed this before, it was originally an idea espoused by PERC.
I don’t really see the counterarguments as laid out here in the SLC Tribune. $25 more would deter international tourism?

The Senate Democrats who spoke to NOTUS mostly said they had not studied the specifics of the Banks bill. But, like King, they were concerned it would deter visitors from coming to the United States or its parks, worsening a decrease in international tourism due to Trump’s tariffs. (Projections in late spring anticipated a $12 billion loss in international visitor spending in the U.S. in 2025.)

As far as I can tell, tariffs are still being negotiated.. so I’m not sure I see this.

“There’s a lot of hostility toward America,” Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said. “As a small-business person, when my sales go down, when revenues go down, I don’t raise prices. I try to find ways to cut prices, make people feel that it’s still advantageous.”

Does Hick really think $25 is going to affect folks who pay for plane fares, lodging, food, car rentals and all that (e.g., baggage charges can be more than $25)? I think that there are interesting questions to be asked about the decrease in tourism, but I think we also need to ask some questions about the international tourism industry. It’s not known for paying high wages. Plane travel is bad for the climate. Does it improve the lives of locals? Are more people on trails good for the environment and wildlife? I’m not against the industry, but like other industries, there is an ebb and flow.

4. How Some Others Think About Tourism anti tourism demonstration in Europe.

The U.S. State Department is warning travelers to exercise caution when traveling to Europe amid a renewed wave of anti-tourism protests.

The U.S. Embassy in Spain issued an alert ahead of anti-tourism demonstrations, as well as “additional protests related to the conflict in the Middle East,” throughout the country on Sunday, including in popular tourist destinations such as Barcelona, San Sebastián, Valencia, and the Balearic island of Mallorca.

In Mallorca, off the coast of eastern Spain, demonstrators marched through the streets of the capital city of Palma de Mallorca and used water guns on tourists, protesting overtourism and the sharp rise of the local cost of living, an ongoing issue.

Protestors also gathered in Portugal’s capital of Lisbon and across Italian cities like Milan and Venice. Some held signs with messages such as “Lisbon against touristification” and “As you come, I have to go.”

5. Digital Tree Marking and Questions. The Forest Service produced a nice roundup on digital tree marking methods and the results of a study comparing that to traditional methods.

The answer has come in the Coconino National Forest’s Walker Hill Demonstration Project with The Nature Conservancy—using digital tree marking methods. Results proved to be five times faster and 10 times less expensive, demonstrating how to get more done at less cost and in less time with a tablet in hand instead of a paint can.

Some folks don’t like this and I ran into one on X. They would like to view the trees selected and boundaries. To me, though, it should be possible for stakeholders to visit the site and run the program themselves to see what the boundaries are and what trees would be cut. I wonder whether that is a possibility. Of course, there’s the issue of “contractor doesn’t do what’s in the prescription” but it seems to me that that is a separate issue and can occur regardless of technology. Does anyone know? And of course, this all leaves aside the legal question of who should be marking and oversight that Vladimir laid out in this comment.

6. AFRC comment letter on NEPA Interim Rules: supports public comment.

There is too much going on with NEPA at the same time for me to make sense of it. There is a link to the AFRC comment letter in their August newsletter.
I know that many folks are concerned with any reduction of public comment periods. Seems like that’s one thing everyone agrees on.

Regarding public comment, AFRC acknowledged the delays often caused by comment periods but stressed their value for project development and legal protection. Formal comment opportunities allow the forest industry to share technical and economic input with federal agencies and help limit the scope of future litigation. Eliminating these opportunities could lead to broader, more disruptive lawsuits and limit stakeholder engagement.

August 6 2025 News Round-up: Wildfire Edition

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A partnership between wildfire tech startup FireSwarm and resource manager Strategic Natural Resource Group will deploy uncrewed, heavy-lift drones to assist with wildland firefighting.

Please add your own clips of interest and your thoughts on them in the comments.

1) The Hotshot Wakeup had an interesting and I believe paywall-free podcast interview with Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Robert Garcia.
Garcia talks about “how do we want to be working in 20 years,” reflects on previous Angeles NF consolidations, and talks about the importance of culture. I know some retirees worry about the future of the FS (or whatever) but listening to him, I think “the next generation’s got it.” I also thought “we’ll do OK no matter the org structure if we focus on the work” and his perspective on “what if a Fire Service happens” was interesting.

Finally, being from LA, for him vegetation management is not about the issues that so occupied the past (timber, grazing) and in some minds and places are still important. It made me wonder how much, in the absence of timber industry, veg management is to some extent already decided by fuel strategies (think 10 year plan and so on). And to what extent those concerns match what FS folks and the public elaborately process during Plan Revisions.

2) Thanks to Dave Mertz for this Zeke Lunder link. He takes a couple of roadless areas and talks about what we’ve said here before- “they’re usually roadless for a reason.” It seems to me that it can be argued either way.. “building roads in them won’t help with wildfire” the point Zeke was making and “no one wants to spend the money to build roads into them”. If I were the FS (and unlikely to be canned) I’d put out a call for forests, communities and timber industry who might want to do tree cutting or road-building in roadless areas, and yard them up and see what’s there.

I predict that any tweaks to the Roadless Rule will generate outsized political reactions while it might be much ado about very little when it comes to specific changes. At least that was my lived experience with Colorado Roadless.

Anyway, back to Zeke’s video. For those of us of a pre-GIS technology orientation, it is just very cool the way he swoops in and out and through time. And it shows how the landownership is mixed in that area.

3. New wildfire technologies (article in Civil Engineering Source)

The available selection of heavy-lift drones, until a few years ago, consisted only of electric-power drones that were subject to the endurance and payload limitations of batteries, says Deslauriers.

“Even though some of these machines might be able to lift up to 50 pounds, maybe up to 100 pounds in some cases, your endurance is in the 7- to 10-minute range,” he said. “So, from the get-go, as engineers, we knew very early that battery technology is probably 5 to maybe 10 years away from having the energy density equal to that of jet fuel.”

In 2020, Atvidaberg, Sweden-based ACC Innovation began the first test flights of what would become its Thunder Wasp GT heavy-lift quadcopter drone. Powered by a single 220-horsepower turbo-shaft engine, the Thunder Wasp can carry up to 880 pounds and cruise at up to 48 knots. Heavy-lift drones are also finding applications in areas such as wind-turbine repair, heavy construction, and emergency relief.

Deslauriers says the aircraft can operate between 60 and 90 minutes before refueling, although an aircraft’s endurance is a function of factors such as payload, altitude, and wind.

4. High Country News story tagline “Thousands of Forest Service firefighters are vacant.”
Now I’m skeptical of anything to do with numbers of employees, except for the extracts pulled by a retiree I trust. Because we have seen in the past “optimal org charts” used- which tend to be wishful thinking. Then there’s the fire folks who were conceivably (?) intentionally not let go of. And the red carded people who may have been let go or VERAd but were asked to come back (did they)? But this story is interesting because it interviewed two people, and then referred to a Propublica piece from July 22.

The story starts with a quote from “one employee”/

This year, some employees were shocked by the blunt remarks made during a meeting with forest supervisors and fire staff officers from across the Intermountain West. “We were told, ‘Help is not on the way,’” said one employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job. “I’ve never been told that before.”

ProPublica’s review of internal agency data found that more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs — over one-fourth of all the agency’s firefighting jobs — were vacant as of July 17. The Guardian also reported that vacancy rates were highest in the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain Regions, at 39% and 37% respectively.

The Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, disputes this. “ProPublica’s analysis doesn’t reflect our current fire response capacity,” spokesperson Cat McRae told High Country News in an email. “Their numbers likely come from outdated org charts and unfunded positions.” In an email, ProPublica confirmed that their data excluded unfunded positions. According to McRae, “the Forest Service is fully prepared and operational to protect individuals and communities from wildfires.”

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We know the demand for resources outpaces their availability,” Schultz wrote. He requested that all red-carded employees, including IT and human resource staff, be made available for fire assignments. “We have reached a critical point in our national response efforts, and we must make every resource available.”

Much of the Western U.S. is expected to experience above-normal wildfire activity over the next few months. Already, the Forest Service has asked at least 1,400 people with fire qualifications who had resigned to come back. After all, firefighting is a group effort.

“All those people matter,” said Dave Whittekiend, formerly the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache forest supervisor. “Once it goes beyond an initial attack, it takes all the logistics. It’s like setting up a small city.”

Whittekiend, who retired in May, had also attended this spring’s planning meeting for forest leaders in Nevada, Utah and parts of Idaho and Wyoming, where he heard the same warning about limited help. “It was creating a sense of urgency,” he said. “It was pretty direct: ‘We are seeing changes, and so be careful about how you choose your strategies and what you think you might be able to do with a fire.’”

Whittekiend pointed out that — even before all the layoffs and resignations this spring — the Forest Service sometimes struggled to get through busy fire seasons. Firefighters have been called in from Canada, Mexico and Australia when resources are stretched too thin, and sometimes National Guard or military troops are deployed.

“We’ve never had all the people that we needed in some fire years,” he said. “That’s been an ongoing trend. It probably accelerated when a whole bunch of us said, ‘All right, we’re out of here’” — including employees in overhead positions, like the people who buy food and organize shower trailers and outhouses for fire camps, as well as staffers who take weather forecasts and do safety checks on firefighting operations. More than 10,530 people are currently assigned to wildfires; as of Aug. 1, there are 35 large fires nationwide.

I wonder whether those are FS employees, USG employees, Tribal, State and County employees, prison crews, contract crews, and whatever other kind of people exist. It would have been handy to have a link. I also wonder whether seasonal overhead positions might be hired separately from current existing employees.

Apparently not having enough people has always been a problem…according to ProPublica

But the Forest Service is by far the largest employer of wildland firefighters, and it has long used gymnastic arithmetic to paint an optimistic picture of its staffing. Last summer, ProPublica reported that the Forest Service under President Joe Biden had overstated its capacity. Robert Kuhn, a former Forest Service official who between 2009 and 2011 co-authored an assessment of the agency’s personnel needs, recently said that the practice of selectively counting firefighters dates back years. “What the public needs to understand is, that is just a very small number of what is needed every summer,” he said. Riva Duncan, a retired Forest Service fire chief and the vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a labor advocacy organization, said staffing is a constant frustration for managers on the ground. “We have engines that are completely unstaffed,” said Duncan, who remains active in wildland firefighting, having worked in temporary roles this summer. “We have vacant positions in management.”

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Administration officials have maintained that employees primarily assigned to wildland fire were exempted from the resignation offers this spring. But according to another internal data set obtained by ProPublica, of the more than 4,000 Forest Service employees who accepted deferred resignations and early retirements, approximately 1,600 had red cards. (A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture wrote that the actual number was 1,400, adding that 85 of them “have decided to return for the season.”)

Of course, both things can be true, although it doesn’t sound that way; red-carded folks are not primarily assigned to wildland fire. Heck even I had a red card at one time (long, long ago).

Good on Propublica for getting internal dataset, and getting answers from USDA. USDA wants to paint a story with the numbers, and Propublica wants to paint a story with numbers and interviews. At the end of all this, I don’t know what to think- having had my own problems getting and interpreting numbers. Certainly experts of all stripes, including wildfire, have left the FS, in greater numbers than usual.

For me it always makes sense to watch out for too many long-term fires, especially MFs that need monitoring and may blow up and need resources. And I don’t think it’s bad for the Chief to ask people to go on fires; in the old days it was close to required. Plus it was a good chance to work with different people than those you saw day-today. And get out of the role you might fill in your home office and just be a member of a different team.