House Natural Resources Committee Report Finds White House Office of Management and Budget Ordered Sequester of Secure Rural School Funds over USDA Opposition

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Ron Roizen did a splendiferous job in covering the same thing I tried to earlier today.. so I copied in its entirety.

Editor’s Note: Report from this morning’s Sierra Sun Times (Mariposa, California).

Committee Chair, Doc Hastings
Committee Chair, Doc Hastings

USDA then chose to broadly apply sequester to impact all SRS states

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 14, 2014 – The House Natural Resources Committee released an interim Majority staff report today detailing information uncovered during the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Obama Administration’s decision to retroactively apply 2013 sequestration cuts to 2012 Secure Rural School (SRS) funds that had already been distributed. The report, entitled “A Less Secure Future for Rural Schools: An Investigation into the Obama Administration’s Questionable Application of the Sequester to the Secure Rural Schools Program,” highlights the Committee’s investigation and preliminary findings based on internal emails and documents that were subpoenaed by the Committee in September 2013.

The oversight investigation to date has found that attorneys in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of General Counsel had determined in February that the 2013 sequestration would not apply to 2012 SRS funds already distributed. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) overruled that interpretation, leaving USDA and the Forest Service scrambling in March 2013 to figure out how to make up the shortfall and to justify the decision to apply the sequester to money already paid to states. Both USDA and OMB continue to withhold an unknown number of subpoenaed documents.

The report concludes:

“There are a number of important questions that remain unanswered about the authority for the sequester decisions affecting the SRS program, whether the Obama Administration will continue to pressure states to return FY 2012 money that was paid to them in FY 2013 and later covered by the sequester, and how sequestration will affect the SRS program in future years.

Given the change in USDA’s legal analysis, pressure by the White House, and the desire for consistency at all costs, it is clear that Congress, states, and rural communities were right to question whether these decisions were correct and made for any reason other than to make sequestration as visible and painful as possible in rural communities across the country.”

“It’s taken many months and the issuance of subpoenas to extract some truth and transparency from the Obama Administration about its decision to demand states and rural communities return funds for schools and local law enforcement. Retroactively applying the 2013 sequester to 2012 SRS funds was done at the direction of the White House OMB and then USDA chose to apply the pain to all SRS states. We can’t forget that the impact of these actions falls on schoolchildren, teachers, police officers and small communities that the federal government has already failed by not keeping its promise of responsible timber harvests. It’s important that the questions surrounding this matter are fully answered,” said Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04).

Video of the Full Committee hearing.

Click here for the full report.

Click here for emails and documents obtained by the Natural Resources Committee.

For additional background on the Committee’s investigation, visit

http://naturalresources.house.gov/oversight/srscuts

Semper Fi!

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warishell

Foresters used to lead the Forest Service’s war against wildfire. No longer. Believing it to be losing the battle, the Forest Service has turned to the real military to lead its troops into combat. Fire and Aviation Deputy Director Bob Baird has a military record that would engender pride in any veteran: Branch Head, Center For Irregular Warfare at United States Marine Corps, Deputy, 1st Marine Division G-3 Operations at US Marine Corps, Chief of Plans, I Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF). A graduate of the Marine Corps University and Navy War College, Baird may know little nothing about fire ecology, but I’ll bet he knows how to take the fight to the enemy.

Aviation Management Assistant Director Art Hinaman is an Army War College graduate with a Masters in Strategic Studies and 28 years as an Army aviator, including Air Cavalry, Attack Helicopter, Assault Helicopter, and Air Ambulance service.

Aviation Strategic Planner Ezequiel Parrilla has an impressive resume as a B1 and B-52 pilot including service in Iraq and security assistance to the Colombian Ministry of Defense, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines (those skills could come in useful in northern California!).

These men are a part of a military hiring binge the Forest Service initiated a couple of years ago to surge its war against wildfire.

How’s that working?

Emails show confusion over timber payments, sequestration

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Thanks to the Bend Bulletin for writing, and Terry Seyden for forwarding this article. It sounds very confusing..
For folks who haven’t worked in DC, it is a window on “how agencies really work with OMB”.. in this case fits and starts. And “how agencies coordinate” .. as in BLM and the FS doing things differently. Not to rehash old topics, but it seems to me that muddling the same kinds of programs through two agencies wastes time and taxpayer bucks. I’m sure there were many hours spent in meetings about this for each agency.

In a hearing Tuesday, the committee heard testimony and presented a report showing the confusion faced by federal agencies surrounding mandatory spending cuts called sequestration that went into effect on March 1, 2013.

On Jan. 15, 2013, the Forest Service dispersed $323 million in 2012 payments under the Secure Rural Schools program, including $63 million for Oregon. Since the money represented funds committed before sequestration went into effect on March 1, the Office of Management and Budget at first believed the cuts did not apply, although a lack of clarity seems to have surrounded the issue.

“The main question now is: Are these payments from 2012 (budget authority)? I think they are but can you please confirm that. If it is 2012 (budget authority), then the money is not sequesterable but the 2013 (budget authority) is sequesterable in these accounts,” wrote an OMB official in an internal email on Jan. 18, three days after the funds had been released.

The internal debate between OMB officials continued, according to documents, made even more confusing by the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to withhold 10 percent from its own timber payments due to sequestration. In emails in February, a different OMB official wrote that the Forest Service “took our guidance to act as normal and ran with it.”

“The Forest Service did not make an error. That is not the appropriate word,” a later OMB email states. “They opted to pay in full, knowing sequestration could happen. That is not an error.”

Subsequently, the Forest Service asked states to return $17.9 million in timber payments.

Charter Forests Revisited

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Two letters from the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Straka has a good point about state trust lands.

The Forest, the Trees, Conflicting Goals and Poor Policy
Traditional forestry would produce healthy, wildfire-resistant, sustainable forests, and a profit if that was in the objectives.

Jan. 13, 2014 3:42 p.m. ET

Robert H. Nelson did a great job of highlighting U.S. Forest Service management problems (“Taking an Ax to Traditional Forest Management,” op-ed Jan. 2). However, forest management on national forests is anything but traditional. Traditional forestry would produce healthy, wildfire-resistant, sustainable forests, and a profit if that was in the objectives. The Forest Service used to produce a profit and even turned 25% of it over to local counties to cover expenses of rural roads and schools. Since 2000, under the Secure Rural Schools Act, Congress has directly made these payments. Last year that was nearly $330 million. What was once a use-based, profitable forest is now a “welfare case.”

The idea of charter forests is excellent. A better idea might be to turn the forests over to state management using Mr. Nelson’s idea of retained federal ownership and oversight. Many Western states already manage state forests and easily generate funds for schools and other activities, while still actively managing for social and environmental goals. From the very beginning of the forest reserves, Western concern has been these huge assets wouldn’t be developed to their potential. What is needed now is traditional forest management, and the states are best positioned to provide that.

Prof. Thomas J. Straka
Clemson University
Clemson, S.C.

Wild lands (sometimes called forest land) are complex ecosystems with many objectives. The owners (the public) are convinced that their “objective” is the only one that is right, whether it be hikers, hunters or bird watchers. Professional managers with extensive natural-resource training are not allowed to make decisions that conflict with a special-interest group’s objectives or opinions. I have negotiated at the local level and reached agreement with various environmental groups on issues only to have the agreed decision overturned by their regional or national organization because it wouldn’t fit with their regional or national objectives. In addition, often a user’s complaint to a politician results in interference in making a sound decision which is best for all the competing resources. That is one of the main reasons for the low morale in the Forest Service.

The only solution is to have special-interest groups make their concerns and objectives known to the professional resource managers, step back, and let them do their jobs just as the professional teachers are allowed to do in charter schools. That is what they are being paid to do.

David Dahl
Tucson, Ariz.

Lackey’s Salmon Policy Paper II: A Science Excerpt

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CHIN_FallLC

Considering that blog readers might not want to read all of Lackey’s paper, that I posted in the previous post here, I am posting another couple of excerpts.

The billions spent on salmon recovery might be considered “guilt money” — modern-day indulgences — a tax society and individuals willingly bear to alleviate their collective and individual remorse. It is money spent on activities not likely to achieve recovery of wild salmon, but it helps people feel better as they continue the behaviors and choices that preclude the recovery of wild salmon.

and

Salmon Policy Lesson 2 — Fisheries scientists, managers, and analysts are systemically encouraged to avoid explicitly conveying unpleasant facts or trade-offs to the public, senior bureaucrats, or elected officials.

…Such a message to “lighten up” is also reflected in the comments of some colleagues in reviewing salmon recovery manuscripts. For example, a common sentiment is captured by one reviewer’s comment on a manuscript: “You have to give those of us trying to restore wild salmon some hope of success.”
In contrast, some colleagues, especially veterans of the unending political conflict over salmon policy, confessed their regret over the “optimistic” approach that they had taken during their careers in fisheries, and they now endorse the “tell it like it is” tactic. They felt that they had given false hope about the effectiveness of fishways, hatcheries, and the ability of their agencies to manage mixed stock fishing. Many professional fisheries scientists have been pressured by employers, funding organizations, and colleagues to “spin” fisheries science and policy realism to accentuate optimism. Sometimes the pressure on scientists to cheerlead is blunt; other times it is subtle. For example, consider the coercion of scientists by other scientists (often through nongovernmental professional societies) to avoid highlighting the importance of U.S. population policy on sustaining natural resources (Hurlbert 2013). The existence of such institutional and organizational pressure is rarely discussed except among trusted colleagues; nevertheless it is real.

Other colleagues took professional refuge in the reality that senior managers or policy bureaucrats select and define the policy or science question to be addressed, thus constraining research. Consequently, the resulting scientific information and assessments are often scientifically rigorous, but so narrowly focused that the information is only marginally relevant to decision makers. Rarely are fisheries scientists encouraged to provide “big picture” assessments of the future of salmon. Whether inadvertent or not, such constrained
information often misleads the public into endorsing false expectations of the likelihood of the recovery of wild salmon (Lackey 2001a, Hurlbert 2011).

If there are 50 things you could do, and not-logging is one of them (like not-farming, not-developing, not-fishing, not-damming, etc.), wouldn’t we want to know 1) how effective each intervention would be and 2) and who specifically would win and lose under each scenario, so that appropriate policy remedies for their pain might be considered? (Of course, scientists wouldn’t agree…) Otherwise we might target the most politically easy (say logging on public lands…), cause difficulties to communities that we don’t openly examine,
and never really fix the problem.

Employee Directory Still Unavailable

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employeesearch

Quick recap. Sometime over the winter holidays of 2013, the Forest Service took down its handy/dandy employee search directory, making it available only to Forest Service employees, not the general public. Its removal went unexplained and unacknowledged until this blog pointed out its absence.

Ten days later, the “old” directory has not been restored, nor has it been replaced. So my New Year’s resolution is to memorialize the directory’s absence on a weekly basis with as much sarcasm and cynicism as I can muster each Monday morning.

Is this childish of me? Indeed, yes. Is it constructive? Not likely. Will it cause the Forest Service bureaucracy to sit up, take notice and better serve the public? I doubt it. So why bother? Because I’ve run out of any good ideas for making the Forest Service anything but the worst place to work in government.

Saving Wild Salmon: A 165 Year Policy Conundrum: Bob Lackey

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Massive Adams River Sockeye Salmon Migration

Here’s a paper that in which Bob Lackey talks about salmon policy 165 Year Salmon Policy Conundrum – R T Lackey, which Bob asked me to review before it was published (full disclosure).

Scientists tend to depict the policy debate as a scientific or ecological challenge and the “solutions” they offer are usually focused on aspects of salmon ecology (Naiman et al 2012). There is an extensive scientific literature about salmon (Quinn 2005, Lackey et al 2006a), but the reality is that the future of wild salmon largely will be determined by factors outside the scope of science (Montgomery 2003, Lackey et al 2006b). More specifically, to effect a long-term reversal of the downward trajectory of wild salmon, a broad suite of related public policy issues must be considered:

 Hydroelectric energy — how costly and reliable does society want energy to be given that wild salmon ultimately will be affected by providing the relatively cheap, carbon-free, and reliable energy produced by hydropower?

 Land use — where will people be able to live, how much living space will they be permitted, what activities will they be able to do on their own land, and what personal choices will they have in deciding how land is used?

 Property rights — will the acceptable use of private land be altered and who or what institutions will decide what constitutes acceptable use?

 Food cost and choice — will food continue to be subsidized by taxpayers (e.g., publicly funded irrigation, crop subsidies) or will the price of food be solely determined by a free market?

 Economic opportunities — how will high-paying jobs be created and sustained for this and subsequent generations?

 Individual freedoms — which, if any, personal rights or behavioral choices will be compromised or sacrificed if society is genuinely committed to restoring wild salmon?

 Evolving priorities — is society willing to substitute hatchery-produced salmon for wild salmon and, if so, will the ESA permit this?

 Political realities — will society support modifying the ESA such that salmon recovery expenditures can be shifted to those watersheds offering the best chance of success?

 Cultural legacies — which individuals and groups, if any, will be granted the right to fish and who or what institutions will decide?

 Indian treaties — will treaties between the United States and various tribes, negotiated over 150+ years ago, be modified to reflect today’s dramatically different biological, economic, and demographic realities?

 Population policy — what, if anything, will society do to influence or control the level of the human population in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho or indeed the U.S. as a whole?

 Ecological realties — given likely future conditions (i.e., an apparently warming climate), what wild salmon recovery goals are biologically realistic?

 Budgetary realities — will the fact that the annual cost of sustaining both hatchery and wild salmon runs in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho exceeds the overall market value of the harvest eventually mean that such a level of budgetary expenditure will become less politically viable?

These are a few of the key policy questions that are germane to the public debate over wild salmon policy. Scientific information, while at some level relevant and necessary, is clearly not at the crux of the wild salmon policy debate. Scientists can provide useful technical insight and ecological reality checks to help the public and decision makers answer these policy questions, but science

There are three interesting subtopics to me in this paper.

First, he tackles how ESA is not working for salmon in his view.. worth looking at.

Second, he describes the dynamics that keep scientists working and funded yet not producing information that leads to the desired outcome.. because..

(Third,) the desired outcome is very very hard or impossible to achieve politically when it goes toward a kind of a political “undiscussable” (I first heard this term used by folks from Dialogos, but they probably did not coin it); population growth. Now those of us old enough to be retired may remember when population stabilizing and reduction was an important part of the environmental NGO agenda. Perhaps Andy’s post about the Old Times started me thinking about this aspect of the environmental movement of the past.

I think we’ve discussed enough topics on this blog so that we can even tackle this one without name-calling.

Here’s a a quote from the Dalai Lama:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 14th leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

One of the great challenges today is the population explosion. Unless we area able to tackle this issue effectively we will be confronted with the problem of the natural resources being inadequate for all the human beings on this earth.

So now the question is…the population of the human being…So the only choice…limited number…happy life…meaningful life. Too many population…miserable life and always
bullying one another, exploiting one another…there’s no use.

Note that he talks about natural resources being inadequate.

Well, back to Bob Lackey. Actually, he hits on three pretty- much undiscussables (not that you can’t discuss them, but in many fora you will be called names if you do); problems with ESA, how science really works, and population. I think it’s worth bringing these to the attention of folks on the blog; one of the things I hope to do is share views of people who aren’t heard from through the standard media or academic channels. Possibly because their worldview does not fit their paradigms or structures.

OPB: Franklin & Johnson “Ecological Forestry” Includes Tree Sitters

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During his most recent comment, greg nagle requested a discussion on O&C Lands, and particularly the Wyden proposal and the SW Oregon tree sitters, as an apparent way of avoiding further discussion on Eugene-based eco-terrorism. Naturally, the sitters are also Eugene-based. They are protesting a BLM timber sale in accordance with the recently-released Wyden Plan,  featuring “ecological forestry” — a forest management model devised by university professors  Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson, failed parents of the earlier “New Forestry” model and 1/2 of the “Gang of Four” Spotted Owl and Clinton Plans for Northwest Forests proponents. Those plans, and their consequences, have been discussed elsewhere on this blog.

The American Forest Resource Council came out in opposition to the Wyden Plan in part because it: “mandates the use of forestry principles developed by Dr.’s Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin — The Pilot Projects where these principles have been used were limited in size; treated very few acres; focused on restoration forestry and weren’t sustainable in drier forest types. They were also litigated by environmental groups, so there’s no reason to believe this won’t continue without legal certainty.”

http://www.orww.org/Awards/2013/SAF/Wayne_Giesy/Giesy_Plan/AFRC_Newsletter_20131127.pdf

The following re-post demonstrates the accuracy of the latter concern, as described by Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) and environmentalist’s regards (according to the Comments video links) of “Norm ‘n Jerry science.” The link to the original post is here:

http://earthfix.opb.org/land/article/tree-sitters-dont-buy-logging-designed-to-mimic-na/

The Comments are worth reading, too, and not just for watching the video links — particularly (to me) one that was just posted as I was writing this — and already one of my all-time favorite blog Comments:

Merryl Eng
• 24 minutes ago

I am Joshua Eng’s Mom. It does not look safe. for him to be sleeping & living in that. tree he needs to come home & get a job where he can his bills & not family who cannot afford it pay it for him

Tree Sitters Don’t Buy Logging Designed To Mimic Nature

Dec. 23, 2013 | OPB
  • Stationed on wooden platforms and rope lines 100 feet in the air, members of the group Cascadia Forest Defenders are protesting what they claim is a clear cut of native forest. The logging is part of a pilot project designed to mimic nature. credit: Amelia Templeton
  • The White Castle timber sale near Roseburg, Ore., by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has pitted environmentalists against forestry professors in a new debate over the management of Pacific Northwest forests. credit: Amelia Templeton
  • Ground camp: Josh Eng, right, prepares to climb up a fir tree with fellow protesters (from left) Brian Garcia, Shannon Wilson and Kate Armstrong. The group is protesting a plan to log at the site. credit: Amelia Templeton
  • Kate Armstrong climbing up to tree camp. She and her fellow Cascadia Forest Defender protesters are concerned about a plan to log 120-year-old forests on O&C Lands. credit: Amelia Templeton
Stationed on wooden platforms and rope lines 100 feet in the air, members of the group Cascadia Forest Defenders are protesting what they claim is a clear cut of native forest. The logging is part of a pilot project designed to mimic nature. | credit: Amelia Templeton | rollover image for more

MYRTLE CREEK, Ore. — Last year, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management sold the rights to log a small grove of Douglas firs to a private company called Roseburg Forest Products.

Roseburg bid more than $1 million for the trees, and planned to start logging this fall.

Then the tree sitters showed up.

Stationed on wooden platforms and rope lines 100 feet in the air, members of the group Cascadia Forest Defenders are protesting what they claim is a clear cut of native forest. But the scheduled logging is also part of a pilot project designed by Northwest forestry professors to mimic nature.
The professors’ plan has become politically popular and is a key component of bills proposing new management for Oregon’s O&C Lands — a checkerboard of parcels in Western Oregon named for the Oregon & California Railroad that once owned them. Those on both sides of the protest say it’s potentially the first battle in the next big debate over how to manage Northwest forests.

The site in question, known as the White Castle timber sale, lies about 19 miles east of Myrtle Creek, at the end of a narrow gravel road curving up a forested ridgeline and covered with ice, boulders and fallen trees. The forest here started growing 120 years ago after a fire burned through this area, west of Crater Lake. It’s native forest, never been cut before, but it’s not “old growth” forest.

“When I first got here, I was so excited that I spent a good week or two, just in the tree. It’s wonderful,” said Josh Eng, a 29-year-old with a pointy, black beard who has spent much of the past nine weeks living on one of the tiny platforms.

20131217treesit-18
Josh Eng. Credit: Amelia Templeton.

Eng, taking his turn stationed in the tree, answers to the nickname Turtle when fellow protesters shout up to him from the ground camp. That camp includes a tent, a kerosene lamp, and a milk crate full of science fiction novels from the Eugene Public library.

“The books are extremely important because we have minimal entertainment out here except for ourselves,” protester Brian Garcia said.

20131216treesit-8

To reach Turtle and the heart of the group’s tree camp requires buckling into a climbing harness and using sliding knots called prusiks to climb inchworm-style up 100 feet of rope.

The wooden platform at the top is just big enough to sleep on. Buckets of food and water hang from the branches nearby. It rocks gently like a boat as the top of the fir tree sways in the wind.

“Yes, always keep connected. Two points of safety,” Eng said. He remains clipped in, even while he sleeps.

Watch: Tree Sitter Josh Eng Climbs To A Platform

This high up, Eng figures he’ll be very difficult to arrest. So far, he says, nobody’s tried to remove him from the tree. Or, rather, no people have tried to remove him.

“I do have a squirrel that kind of comes around at night, and yells at me and throws things,” Eng said.

Eng’s arch nemesis in this conflict, apart from the squirrel, isn’t necessarily Roseburg Forest Products, or even the BLM. It’s a pair of forestry professors: Norm Johnson at Oregon State University and Jerry Franklin at the University of Washington. The two have a long track record in conservation.

Kate Armstrong, a 21-year-old University of Oregon student and part of the protest, said they see the pilot project as a clear cut under the guise of science.

“I think that it’s a shame that they would call themselves scientists and call themselves conservationists or environmentalists who care about the forest, but who would put their names on such a bogus project that is so obviously to me just playing into what the logging industry wants to have happen,” Armstrong said of Johnson and Franklin.

norm johnson
Norm Johnson. Credit: Amelia Templeton.

Johnson, who said he knew White Castle would be controversial the minute he set foot there, has visited the protesters and said he’s taking their comments to heart.

“I could see how disappointed they were in me,” Johnson said. “Yeah, that’s hard.”

Johnson said this timber sale isn’t your grandfather’s clear-cut. The pilot project is a demonstration of something called a “variable retention harvest.”

“The approach we’re taking is trying as best we can to emulate the development of a wild forest,” he said. “We’re not trying to replace it with a tree farm. ”

Several years ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar asked Johnson and Franklin to help the BLM develop timber harvests that would be profitable while serving an environmental purpose. The professors drew inspiration from a wealth of new research, published in the years after the Mount St. Helens eruption, on the importance of so-called early seral habitat that develops after natural disasters like eruptions, windstorms and large wildfires.

In the variable retention harvest Johnson and Franklin developed, the largest, oldest trees on a site don’t get cut down. About a third of the standing and fallen wood is left untouched, while the rest gets logged. The site is largely allowed to recover naturally, with foresters replanting a minimal amount of species like fir, cedar, and hemlock. After a few years, a meadow of grasses and bushes and berries will start to grow in place of the forest.

“There are many creatures that like to live in openings. Say mountain bluebirds, or salamanders,” Johnson said.

This moment just after the destruction of a forest, when young trees compete with bushes and grasses for sun is called an early seral ecosystem. It can last for 30 years or more, until the conifers grow tall enough to block the light. Studies show as much of 35 percent of the landscape in the western Cascades used to be early seral habitat, but that’s now fallen to as little as 2 percent.

“The diverse early seral stage is actually rarer than old growth right now,” Johnson said. “We are very short of it.”

Johnson and Franklin’s idea: mimic nature, and create a few more rural jobs in the process, has proved popular with politicians. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a bill that would use Johnson’s technique to significantly increase the amount of timber cut on public lands in Western Oregon.

“We worked with the best scientists in the Northwest to make these harvests as ecologically friendly as we possibly could,” Wyden said in a recent press conference.

20131216treesit-1
Near White Castle timber sale on O&C Lands east of Roseburg, Ore. Credit: Amelia Templeton.

Johnson calls the harvest rate set in Wyden’s bill modest, allowing logging on 2 or 3 percent of the 2.6 million acres of the BLM’s O&C lands in the first decade. He says logged areas would be given roughly 100 years to grow back into forest.

“I would be less comfortable with it if the harvest rate was much higher,” Johnson said.

But the Cascadia Forest Defenders are not alone in criticizing the idea.

“Jobs, logs and early seral forest can all be attained without wrecking more mature forests,” Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild wrote in comments submitted to the BLM. “There is 20+ years of young stand thinning to do and significant new reasons NOT to conduct (regeneration) harvest in mature forests.”

Trees older than 80 years contain clearer wood of a higher value, though, said Scott Folk, Vice President of Resources at Roseburg Forest Products, which can be used in a wider variety of higher grade products.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says moving forward with the logging pilot project is critical. And it is in the process of closing road access to the ridgeline to try to force the tree sitters to move on.

“We want to be respectful of the protesters, and respectful of their right to protest the sale,” said Steve Lydic, Field Manager with the BLM in Roseburg. “But there comes a time when the timber sale purchaser also has the right to harvest wood they have purchased.”

Back on the ridge east of Roseburg, tree sitter Josh Eng says the fact that logging here could become a blueprint for other harvests on public lands makes him all the more determined to stop it.

“This is a very beautiful place. And it would be a real heartbreaking thing to see it go the way of a variable retention harvest,” Eng said.

© 2013 OPB

Where Are They Now?

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burningsuv

Idly reading the local news (sic) weekly and came across a letter-to-the-editor signed by a familiar name . . . Jeffrey Luers. I don’t know Jeff, but most anyone who was in Eugene during its radical anarchist days knows of Jeff. He and a friend torched some SUVs at a local car dealership as a political statement against everything that SUVs stand for. He became a cause celebre not for the arson itself, but the excessively long 22+ year sentence he received, later reduced to 10 of which he served 9 1/2 years.

Jeff is now a landscape architecture student at Nike U. (aka the University of Oregon). He’s transitioned from tree sitting and arson to the greening of Eugene’s gravel alleys. Warning to Eugene’s SUV drivers — you might think twice about parking in the alley.

Groups Sue USFS/IDFG Over Hunter Hired to Kill Wolves in Frank Church Wilderness

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Hired Wolf Hunter
The following is a press release from the groups:A coalition of conservationists, represented by the non-profit environmental law firm Earthjustice, today asked a federal judge in Idaho to halt an unprecedented program by the U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) to exterminate two wolf packs deep within the largest forested wilderness area in the lower-48 states.In mid-December 2013, IDFG hired a hunter-trapper to pack into central Idaho’s 2.4-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness to eradicate two wolf packs, the Golden and Monumental packs, in the interest of inflating elk populations for outfitters and recreational hunters. The U.S. Forest Service, which administers the wilderness, approved the extermination program by authorizing use of a Forest Service cabin and airstrip to support wolf extermination activities.

“A wilderness is supposed to be a wild place governed by natural conditions, not an elk farm,” said Earthjustice attorney Timothy Preso. “Wolves are a key part of that wild nature and we are asking a judge to protect the wilderness by stopping the extermination of two wolf packs.”

Earthjustice is representing long-time Idaho conservationist and wilderness advocate Ralph Maughan along with three conservation groups—Defenders of Wildlife, Western Watersheds Project, and Wilderness Watch—in a lawsuit challenging the wolf extermination program. The conservationists argue that the U.S. Forest Service’s approval and facilitation of the program violated the agency’s duty to protect the wilderness character of the Frank Church Wilderness. They have requested a court injunction to prohibit further implementation of the wolf extermination program until their case can be resolved.

“Idaho’s program to eliminate two wolf packs from the Frank Church Wilderness Area for perceived benefits to elk hunting is just the most recent example of the state bending over backwards to accommodate the wishes of people who hate wolves,” said Jonathan Proctor of Defenders of Wildlife. “Wilderness areas are places for wildlife to remain as wild as is possible in today’s modern world. If Idaho’s wildlife officials won’t let wolves and elk interact naturally in the Frank Church Wilderness, then clearly they will allow it nowhere. The U.S. Forest Service must immediately prohibit the use of national forest wilderness areas for this hostile and shortsighted wolf eradication program.”

The region of the Frank Church Wilderness where IDFG’s hunter-trapper is killing wolves is a remote area around Big Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Even though this region hosts one of the lightest densities of hunters in the state, IDFG prioritized elk production over protection of the area’s wilderness character. The Forest Service failed to object to IDFG’s plans and instead actively assisted them.

“As someone who has enjoyed watching members of the Golden Pack and spent time in the area where these wolves live, I am startled that IDFG thinks it is acceptable to kill them off. If wolves can’t live inside one of America’s biggest wilderness areas without a government extermination program then where can they live?” asked Ken Cole of Western Watersheds Project. “The value of wilderness is not solely to provide outfitters elk to shoot,” Cole added.

“The 1964 Wilderness Act requires the Forest Service to protect the wilderness character of the Frank Church Wilderness,” added Gary Macfarlane of Wilderness Watch.  “By allowing Idaho to exterminate wolves in the Frank Church Wilderness and degrade that wilderness character, the Forest Service is violating the Wilderness Act.”

Read the Complaint

UPDATE: From the court filing:

Plaintiffs learned from counsel for defendant Virgil Moore that, as of January 2, 2014, IDFG’s hired hunter-trapper had killed seven wolves within the targeted wolf packs, six by trapping and one by hunting, and that more wolves may have been killed as of today. Defendant Moore’s counsel further advised that IDFG’s only means of communication with the hunter-trapper is a satellite telephone in the hunter-trapper’s possession, and that, to preserve the phone’s batteries, the hunter-trapper turns on the phone only when he places a call.