Largest “Dealbreaker” Ever?!?

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This may shock some readers but, I am actually against HR 3188. I don’t support any logging in Yosemite National Park, or in the Emigrant Wilderness, other than hazard tree projects. What is also pretty amazing is that others in the House have signed on to this bill. It seems like political “suicide” to go on record, being in favor of this bill. However, I am in favor of exempting regular Forest Service lands, within the Rim Fire, from legal actions, as long as they display “due diligence” in addressing endangered species, and other environmental issues. Did McClintock not think that expedited Yosemite National Park logging would be, maybe, the largest “dealbreaker” in history?

Here is McClintock’s presentation:

 HR 3188 – Timber Fire Salvage

October 3, 2013
Mr. Chairman:
I want to thank you for holding this hearing today and for the speedy consideration of HR 3188.
It is estimated that up to one billion board feet of fire-killed timber can still be salvaged out of the forests devastated by the Yosemite Rim fire, but it requires immediate action.  As time passes, the value of this dead timber declines until after a year or so it becomes unsalvageable.
The Reading Fire in Lassen occurred more than one year ago.  The Forest Service has just gotten around to selling salvage rights last month.  In the year the Forest Service has taken to plow through endless environmental reviews, all of the trees under 18” in diameter – which is most of them – have become worthless.
After a year’s delay for bureaucratic paperwork, extreme environmental groups will often file suits to run out the clock, and the 9th Circuit Court of appeals has become infamous for blocking salvage operations.
We have no time to waste in the aftermath of the Yosemite Rim Fire, which destroyed more than 400 square miles of forest in the Stanislaus National Forest and the Yosemite National Park — the largest fire ever recorded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The situation is particularly urgent because of the early infestation of bark beetles which have already been observed attacking the dead trees.  As they do so, the commercial value of those trees drops by half.
Four hundred miles of roads are now in jeopardy.  If nearby trees are not removed before winter, we can expect dead trees to begin toppling, risking lives and closing access.  Although the Forest Service has expedited a salvage sale on road and utility rights of way as part of the immediate emergency measures, current law otherwise only allows a categorical exemption for just 250 acres – enough to protect just 10 miles of road.
By the time the normal environmental review of salvage operations has been completed in a year, what was once forest land will have already begun converting to brush land, and by the following year reforestation will become infinitely more difficult and expensive – especially if access has been lost due to impassibility of roads.  By that time, only trees over 30 inches in diameter will be salvageable.
Within two years, five to eight feet of brush will have built up and the big trees will begin toppling on this tinder.  You could not possibly build a more perfect fire than that.
If we want to stop the conversion of this forestland to brush land, the dead timber has to come out.  If we take it out now, we can actually sell salvage rights, providing revenue to the treasury that could then be used for reforestation.  If we go through the normal environmental reviews and litigation, the timber will be worthless, and instead of someone paying US to remove the timber, WE will have to pay someone else to do so.  The price tag for that will be breathtaking.   We will then have to remove the accumulated brush to give seedlings a chance to survive – another very expensive proposition.
This legislation simply waives the environmental review process for salvage operations on land where the environment has already been incinerated, and allows the government to be paid for the removal of already dead timber, rather than having the government pay someone else.
There is a radical body of opinion that says, just leave it alone and the forest will grow back.
Indeed, it will, but not in our lifetimes.  Nature gives brush first claim to the land – and it will be decades before the forest is able to fight its way back to reclaim that land.
This measure has bi-partisan precedent.  It is the same approach as offered by Democratic Senator Tom Daschle a few years ago to allow salvage of beetle-killed timber in the Black Hills National Forest.
Finally, salvaging this timber would also throw an economic lifeline to communities already devastated by this fire as local mills can be brought to full employment for the first time in many years.
Time is not our friend.  We can act now and restore the forest, or we can dawdle until restoration will become cost prohibitive.

SAF Convention- Sharon’s Blog Break

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13-Website-Banner1I will be off the blog until October 30th for the SAF Convention and schoolwork. Bob Zybach has generously volunteered to keep things going, in terms of posts you might want to send for publishing as well as mediating any disputes. His email is zybachb_at_nwmapsco.com. It seems like people may be crankier lately (photoperiod?) and it’s a good time to remember that points can be made “in a caring way.”

I’d like to meet any readers who are at Convention so please introduce yourselves! Also if you belong to SAF and haven’t voted, don’t forget to vote, preferably for me.

Rim Fire Billion Board Feet Salvage Bill

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This is also from the current American Forest Resource Council newsletter and brings into play Larry’s earlier objections to the “billion board feet” statement (which most people can’t visualize anyway):
Yosemite Rim Fire Salvage Bill
On October 3, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation held a hearing on H.R. 3188, the “Yosemite Rim Fire Emergency Salvage Act” which was introduced on September 28 by Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA).
The bill states that the Forest Service, BLM and the National Park Service shall promptly plan and implement salvage sales of dead, damaged, or downed timber resulting from the Yosemite Rim wildfire. Additionally, the bill would require expedited implementation of projects by requiring that salvage sales conducted under this Act proceed immediately and to completion notwithstanding any other provision of law including NEPA, NFMA, FLMPA, the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Act Planning Act, and other laws related to the management of timber within Yosemite National Park. Further, salvage sales conducted under this Act would not be subject to Administrative or Judicial Review in any court of the United States.
Tom Partin, AFRC President, testified on the need for expedited salvage authorities, noting that, “Extreme Events call for Extreme Actions. The fire which destroyed over 250,000 acres of forestland and burned over a billion board feet of timber needs to be quickly salvaged to capture the value of the timber and allow reforestation activities to take place. The revenue could be used to replant young trees and rehabilitate and restore thousands of denuded acres including key watersheds that provide drinking water to many California communities and cities including San Francisco.”
AFRC wants to thank Representative McClintock for bringing this bill forward in an effort to quickly salvage dead timber; restore forests that were destroyed as the result of this catastrophic wildfire; and establish new forests and healthy watersheds from the revenues that will be generated from the salvage.
/Tom Partin

AFRC Explains Position as Government Slimdown Ends For A While

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American Forest Resource Council just released this in their current email. It follows up on Andy Stahl’s post on the 15th, Guy Knudsen’s post on the 16th, and Steve Wilent’s post yesterday, and reveals the intent of industry in filing this action (not sure why the Edit function won’t allow me to put spaces between the paragraphs):
October 18, 2013
Contract Suspensions Overturned
On October 17, Oregon Federal District Court Judge Panner issued an Order which immediately lifted suspensions of federal timber contacts nationwide.
The Order came out of a lawsuit by AFRC, Murphy Company, High Cascade and South Bay Timber filed on October 14 challenging the government’s right to suspend contracts during the government shutdown which began October 1. The Order allowed purchasers and operators to return to work immediately without waiting for government authorization.
Also on October 17, letters were issued by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management directing contracting officers to immediately begin notifying contractors that suspension orders were being lifted because the government shutdown has ended. The letters authorize issuing verbal notice with written follow-up. The government moved to dismiss AFRC’s case, saying the letters resolved the issue of shutdowns, but AFRC’s attorneys held out for a ruling that would allow an immediate return to work.
Judge Panner’s Order is a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), common in the very early stages of litigation before there has been an opportunity for the Court to be fully briefed on the merits of the case. One of the criteria is that the plaintiffs must be likely to win the case in the end. The TRO ends October 28. Based on the letters to the field, the suspensions should be lifted long before the temporary order expires.
After, only about twenty minutes of argument, [sic] AFRC’s request for relief was granted in the form of a nationwide Order immediately lifting suspensions of all federal timber contacts. The Judge agreed with AFRC’s skepticism that the government could act quickly enough to satisfy contractors’ immediate needs to resume work. In deciding to issue a TRO so that work could resume on all contracts immediately, he noted the importance of taking advantage of fall weather when the woods are accessible to build a log deck before the winter snows and rains. Additionally, the Judge appeared to sympathize with AFRC’s argument that contractors should not have to wait on the federal bureaucracy to officially lift the suspensions, when contractors were ready and willing to resume work.
While Judge Panner’s ruling did not address the ultimate merits of AFRC’s case, it provides much needed relief to contractors and communities that depend on the national forests and BLM for timber harvest. AFRC must now decide how best to use this ruling and the pending case to prevent future contract suspensions in the event of another government shutdown.

The issue began on October 1, with Congress’ failure to reach an agreement to fund the federal government and allowed the first major shutdown of government services in nearly two decades. Because of this lapse in appropriations, and the Antideficiency Act, a law originally passed in 1870 which bars federal employees from spending money or creating an obligation without approval from Congress, federal workers were sent home and agencies like the Forest Service and BLM made plans to begin discontinuing the work of contractors. In the following days and weeks the two agencies began sending out suspension and stop-work orders to various contractors informing them that logging operations would have to cease.
AFRC took the position from the beginning that the Forest Service and BLM’s decisions to stop contractors from working was illegal, and would cause serious harm to mills who were in the process of building their winter decks. AFRC worked to communicate our members’ concerns throughout all levels of the agencies in an effort to keep contractors up and running to get work done before the weather changed.
On October 8, AFRC and the Federal Forest Resource Coalition (FFRC) joined in a letter to Undersecretary of Agriculture Robert Bonnie urging the Forest Service not to violate the terms of timber sale contracts and stewardship contracts by requiring purchasers and operators to suspend operations during the government shutdown. The same information was communicated to the BLM State Director Jerry Perez. Nonetheless, the agencies pushed forward with their ill-advised strategy, continuing to issue stop-work and suspension orders.
It was in response to the Forest Service’s and BLM’s refusal to recognize that there was no valid legal basis for suspending contract operations that AFRC joined the lawsuit.
Now that the federal government has re-opened and contractors are back in the woods, the dust has settled for the moment. Congress, however, has given the country few assurances this situation won’t happen again. The recently-passed budget deal merely extended temporary funding for the government until mid-January, making the possibility of another government shutdown a real possibility given today’s political climate. Regardless of what happens in Washington, AFRC’s positive legal result and the work it and its members put into achieving it should provide assurances that AFRC will be ready in the event another such shutdown occurs.
/Ann Forest Burns and Rob Molinelli AFRC
American Forest Resource Council
5100 S.W. Macadam Avenue, Suite 350
Portland, Oregon 97239
Phone: (503) 222-9505
Fax: (503) 222-3255
www.amforest.org

Something different: White-nose syndrome of bats, and national forests

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This hasn’t gotten huge attention in the West yet, but it will if and when (probably the latter) this wildlife disease arrives out here.  In the eastern U.S., this contagious fungal disease (first observed only a few years ago in New York and Vermont) has devastated several species of bats and obliterated some huge hibernating colonies, killing literally millions of bats. It has spread rapidly to westward and southward, and may be ready to make the leap to the Rockies. Federal and state wildlife folks are very worried about this disease, as they should be.

I’m not a bat expert by any means, but have been working on the epidemiology of this disease with colleagues from USFS and Idaho Fish & Game, both of whom are incredibly knowledgeable and devoted to the study and conservation of these animals.

We have a paper coming out later this month or next, on WNS epidemiology as it relates to potential spread of the pathogen in western bat populations, if anybody’s interested you can read the pre-publication which I have posted here:  http://gknudsenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/WNS.pdf  (hopefully the journal won’t mind).

I presented some of this work at the national WNS workshop in Boise last month, sponsored by FWS, ironically the same week that I was arguing a case in federal court just down the street against USFS and FWS. But as my FS colleague noted, we should never let a little lawsuit spoil a good friendship.

If anyone’s interested, here’s  some recent news regarding FWS activity on ESA listing of some WNS-threatened bats, these guys have an excellent website (I’m not affiliated): http://www.endangeredspecieslawandpolicy.com/2013/10/articles/listing-decision/with-the-conclusion-of-the-shutdown-the-us-fish-and-wildlife-service-gets-back-to-work/

And another bit of information on a CBD lawsuit to FOIA bat information from USFS in Idaho and Montana, I’m not sure the status of that and again I’m not affiliated in any way (though a little surprised, USFS usually responds pretty well to FOIA requests) http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2012/white-nose-syndrome-05-16-2012.html

Here’s a photo of a bat with typical symptoms, fungal sporulation on muzzle and wings, this one’s alive but not for long.

WNS

 

 

Fire-Suppression Funding Restored

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A news brief from the National Association of State Foresters. The Continuing Resolution wasn’t “clean,” but this is a good thing.

Friday, October 18, 2013

The legislation signed into law early Thursday didn’t just end the 16-day-old partial government shutdown, it also paid back $636 million in fire transfer funds moved from other accounts to battle wildfires in the 2012-2013 season.

“Funding to restore budgets that have been drained through fire borrowing is a critical piece of this legislation,” Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson said in a statement. “It means (the government) can do the restoration work and hazardous-fuels removal needed to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires next year.”

Alan Rowsome, a budget expert at The Wilderness Society, said Congress deserves credit for recognizing that the Forest Service and the Interior Department must be repaid. “This is a good, important step,” Rowsome said in an interview. “But I think it also underscores the fact that the way we’re budgeting for fires is not adequate.”

Welcome Back, Feds!

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welcome back

It was great to hear your voices again … we missed you :)!
Had the occasion to call a Supervisor’s Office.. told the receptionist that I was glad to have them back and I appreciate their service. Please consider doing suchlike when you talk to your favorite Fed (or even a random one you happen to be talking to). Positive words are cheap, yet effective at making the world a better place, IMHO.

Judge issues order lifting federal suspension of logging sales

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Pointless at this point?

 

Judge issues order lifting federal suspension of logging sales

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, October 17, 2013

A federal judge in Oregon today issued a restraining order blocking the Obama administration from enforcing its earlier suspension of timber sales during the government shutdown.

The order by Judge Owen Panner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon came the same day the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service directed regional staff to begin allowing timber contractors to resume operations with the shutdown over.

The order follows a lawsuit filed this week by the American Forest Resource Council and three wood products manufacturing companies in the Pacific Northwest that argued the administration’s suspension of timber sales during the 16-day government shutdown was illegal (E&ENews PM, Oct. 15).

Tom Partin, president of AFRC, today said the judge did not rule on the merits of the suspensions but issued the order so individual contractors do not have to wait to receive approval to return to work.

“It will take a few days to get those out to the folks in the forest,” Partin said. “We greatly appreciate the judge’s [temporary restraining order] today.”

The industry had argued in the lawsuit that the suspensions were illegal because the supervision of logging activities is not “critical” and therefore activity should have continued in the absence of appropriations.

It remains to be seen whether any companies will file breach-of-contract claims against the government for lost production during the shutdown, which came at a critical time for loggers after the wildfire season and before the onset of November rains.

“Timber Trouble” in Wisconsin

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chequamegon-nicolet o2

Since Norman brought up Wisconsin, and I had seen this earlier, thought it would be a good time to post this.

Buried deep in Wisconsin’s northwoods is a story that warrants statewide attention.

In the coming days, the Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team will bring you “Timber Trouble.”

Our three-part series focuses on the growing mistrust between the logging industry and the national forest service.

Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team reporter Nick Penzenstadler and Post-Crescent Media photojournalist William Glasheen traveled north to do the reporting, photo and video work for the “Timber Troubles” project..

The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and Laona area, in Forest County, serve as ground zero for our report.

Penzenstadler and Glasheen investigated whether the timber harvests inside northern Wisconsin’s national forest are being mismanaged. As a result of smaller harvests, the number of logging jobs has plummeted. That in turn has triggered a huge decline in student enrollment for Laona schools because of a drop in the Forest County population as people have had to move elsewhere in search of work.

It’s an intensely emotional issue, said Penzenstadler, adding that it’s hard to overstate the frustration of people in the logging and timber industry in northern Wisconsin.

They’re exasperated, disheartened and discouraged.

Their way of life is at stake. Their local school districts, businesses and economy are on the brink of collapse — and it does not have to be this way.

Millions of board feet of wood could be taken out of the Chequamegon-Nicolet while still preserving important portions of the forest.

The author says it merits “statewide attention.” I would think that the situation in the Lake States and the west merits national attention. If someone finds a story, please post in a comment. Required: in national news media, looks at situation nationally.

UPDATE: Looks like the entire series, which includes articles and video, is now available on-line. -mk