Colorado Forest Products (TM) PSAs

by

cfp_logo_lg

Found these PSAs for Colorado Forest Products (TM) in my email this afternoon.

The Colorado State Forest Service is very excited to announce that next week our first series of public service announcements (PSAs) featuring our Colorado Forest Products™ program will begin airing on the networks of 9News (KUSA, KTVD).

The creative process involved with the production of these appealing and informative 15 to 30 second PSAs has been both challenging and rewarding for the Colorado State Forest Service’s Wood Utilization and Marketing team. Please, take the time to view our 3 PSAs here:

Interesting that Andy had just posted below about “worthless” trees in 4FRI.. wonder what makes 4FRI’s “worthless” when some of the same kinds and sizes of trees are worth something in Colorado?

Here’s more stuff from the CSU website here:

Colorado’s Source of Wood Products

Colorado uses tremendous amounts of wood products, but it depends on imports from other states and countries to meet its needs. Key states exporting wood products to Colorado include Oregon, Idaho, Washington, California, Montana, Arkansas, Minnesota and Washington. Canada and Mexico also export large quantities of wood products into Colorado as well.

Purchasing Local Wood Products

There are existing businesses in the state of Colorado that produce and supply locally derived wood products. Purchasing products that were grown, harvested and manufactured in the state:

Decreases Fossil Fuel Consumption and Emissions

In many cases, wood products are being transported great distances to Colorado. This increases the amount fossil fuel used and burned to transport materials.

Retains Consumer Dollars in Colorado Economy

Purchasing local products, keeps consumer dollars in Colorado’s economy and does not flow to other states. It also keeps local people employed whether they are working directly for the company or supply materials to the company or goes to the local grocery store it stays within the community.

Increases Ability and Opportunity to Improve Colorado’s Forest Health Conditions

Supporting local products produced with Colorado wood can help reduce forest management and restoration treatment costs because the wood coming out of the forest has value. When products are generated as a result of these treatments, they generate revenue and create an opportunity to improve Colorado’s forest health.

4FRI Science Fiction

by

Hindenberg

 

The latest news out of Arizona’s 4FRI project, which seeks to thin several hundred thousand acres of worthless trees on four national forests, has left rational observers scratching their heads. First, the Forest Service has transferred the contract from one fly-by-night company with no track record or discernible assets to another fly-by-night company with no track record or discernible assets. Even better, the new company has ties to a high-level government sultan in Oman, one of the world’s most corrupt countries.

The new company, Good Earth Power Global (hey, what’s not to like with a name like that?), says it will build a biomass facility that “will use clean, green technology in a three-stage process to produce 99.99 percent pure hydrogen.”

Wow! Cool! Oh, but wait, turns out “there are no processes commercially available for centralized hydrogen production from biomass.”

So what’s really going on here? At the heart of every inconceivable, fiscally wasteful boondoggle lies a government agency willing to spend bundles of tax dollars. 4FRI’s new contractor is counting on the Forest Service and/or electricity utilities to spend lavishly to subsidize its operation.

The only gas this latest fantasy will produce is hot air.

White House threatens veto on Hastings/Daines mandated logging bill

by
Outside of Montana the entire forest/wilderness protection community has rallied together to oppose a mandated logging bill for America’s national forests sponsored by Rep Doc Hastings (R-WA), Rep Steve Daines (R-MT) and 21 other GOP House members.

The so-called “Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act” (H.R. 1526), which reads more like a timber industry/Sage Brush Rebellion wish list than anything else, is scheduled to be voted on by the US House sometime this week. (See Andy Stahl’s previous post for some vote-count predictions, as well as more information).

Of course, here in Montana it’s crystal clear that the Rep Daines/Hastings mandated logging bill is taken directly out of Senator Tester’s own mandated logging playbook.

Yesterday, the White House released a Statement of Administration Policy, which strongly opposed the bill and promised a veto:

“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1526, which includes numerous harmful provisions that impair Federal management of federally-owned lands and undermine many important existing public land and environmental laws, rules, and processes. The bill would significantly harm sound long-term management of these Federal lands for continued productivity and economic benefit as well as for the long-term health of the wildlife and ecological values sustained by these holdings. H.R. 1526, which includes unreasonable restrictions on certain Federal agency actions, would negatively impact the effective U.S. stewardship of Federal lands and natural resources, undertaken on behalf of all Americans. The bill also would create conflicts with existing statutory requirements that could generate substantial and complex litigation.” (See below for entire Statement)

I should mention that the White House’s Statement of Administration Policy on the “Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act” (H.R. 1526) has also been making the rounds via email among the Forest Service’s top communication’s strategists.

To date, there has been not one word from Senator Tester  (D-MT) or Senator Baucus (D-MT) about the Rep Daines/Hastings mandated logging bill. Perhaps that’s because Sen Tester and Sen Baucus are the only Democratic senators in America supporting their own national forest mandated logging bill, the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.”

To date, none of the Tester mandated logging bill collaborators at the Montana Wilderness Association, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Montana Wildlife Federation, National Wildlife Federation or Montana Trout Unlimited have uttered one peep of resistance, protest or concern about the Rep Daines/Rep Hastings mandated logging bill, which the White House says would “undermine many important existing public land and environmental laws, rules, and processes.”

Instead these collaborators continue to court Rep Daines with expensive advertising and letters to the editor pressuring Daines to support Tester’s version of a mandated National Forest logging bill.

Yep, things are that whacky here in Montana.

———————

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503

September 18, 2013

STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY
H.R. 1526 – Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act
(Rep. Hastings, R-WA, and 22 cosponsors)

While supportive of working with States and communities to restore National Forests and rangeland, the Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1526, which includes numerous harmful provisions that impair Federal management of federally-owned lands and undermine many important existing public land and environmental laws, rules, and processes. The bill would significantly harm sound long-term management of these Federal lands for continued productivity and economic benefit as well as for the long-term health of the wildlife and ecological values sustained by these holdings. H.R. 1526, which includes unreasonable restrictions on certain Federal agency actions, would negatively impact the effective U.S. stewardship of Federal lands and natural resources, undertaken on behalf of all Americans. The bill also would create conflicts with existing statutory requirements that could generate substantial and complex litigation. A number of the Administration’s concerns with H.R. 1526 are outlined below.

Title I would negatively impact forest resources and the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) current statutory obligations to manage forest lands by requiring USDA to sell no less than 50 percent of the sustained yield from the bill’s newly created Forest Reserve Revenue Areas (FRRA). The Administration does not support specifying timber harvest levels in statute, which does not take into account public input, environmental analyses, multiple use management or ecosystem changes. The bill would create a fiduciary responsibility to beneficiary counties to manage FRRAs to satisfy the annual volume requirement, which may create significant financial liability for the United States. It would also impede National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance for projects within FRRA, which undermines the reasoned consideration of the environmental effects of Federal agency actions. The bill also would establish significant barriers to the courts by imposing a requirement that plaintiffs post a bond for the Federal government’s costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees.

Title II would give States the ability to determine management on Federal lands, including prioritized management treatments for hazardous fuel reductions and forest health projects without consultation with Federal land agencies, public involvement, or consideration of sound science and management options. The title would also accelerate commercial grazing and timber harvests without appropriate environmental review and public involvement, and would impede compliance with NEPA and Endangered Species Act (ESA) requirements. The Administration supports early public participation in Federal land management. The bill would mandate processes that shortchange collaboration and would lead to more conflict and delay. Further, this title’s mandated use of limited budgetary resources would likely reduce funding for other critical projects.

Title III would transfer from Federal agencies to a State-appointed Trust, the rights and responsibilities to manage most lands covered by the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act (O&C) lands, and attempts to create exemptions from NEPA, ESA and other land management statutes. This would undermine appropriate management and stewardship of these lands, which belong to all Americans, would compromises habitat for threatened and endangered species, and would create legal uncertainty over management of these lands as well as increase litigation risk. Further, Title III also contains seriously objectionable limitations on the President’s existing authority under the Antiquities Act to designate new National Monuments in this region.

Title IV would remove authority from the Secretary of Agriculture for management of National Forest lands designated as Community Forest Demonstration Areas, while requiring the Secretary to be responsible for a number of management actions including fire presuppression, suppression, and rehabilitation. This title’s proposed management strategies would create a patchwork of management schemes and difficulties for the agency to meet other statutory and regulatory requirements. Federal environmental laws should apply on Federal lands; however, Title IV creates exceptions to, and potentially exemptions from the normal application of these laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and the ESA.

If H.R. 1526 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.

——————-

Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate HR 1526 “Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act”

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/hr1526.pdf

 

 

White House Dislikes Hastings Bill

by

As many know, I am “politically impaired” so don’t understand why the White House would get all interested in a bill that is unlikely to pass both houses.. when there are potential and real world crises going on..

So what theater might this be about? An effort to affect Wyden’s thinking? Any politically astute people are welcome to hypothesize.

I saw this blog post from the Hill..here’s a quote.

The bill would would force plaintiffs to pay for the government’s court fees, potentially limiting access to the courts, would give states new powers for federal land management and exempt a variety of actions from federal laws.

“This would undermine appropriate management and stewardship of these lands, which belong to all Americans, would compromise habitat for threatened and endangered species, and would create legal uncertainty over management of these lands as well as increase litigation risk,” the White House said.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would cost $86 million over the next five years, but would reduce federal spending by $269 million by 2023.

So I am having trouble with how 1) potentially limiting access to the courts, 2) exempting a variety of actions from federal law.. would actually INCREASE litigation risk, according to the White House. Which I’m sure is the opposite of what is intended. Are they saying that the bill isn’t written correctly to have the desired outcome?

I also thought the CBO figures were interesting.

How Many Democrats Will Vote for Hastings Forest Bill?

by

vote tally

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) will bring his omnibus forestry bill to a vote tomorrow (9/19), if all goes well in the Rules Committee tonight which sets the terms of the debate. HR 1526’s (“Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act“) goal is simple — more logging on federal lands. The means, however, differ from past practice.

In the old days, when Congress wanted more logging it increased timber sale appropriations to the Forest Service to pay for sale preparation and administration. But that dog doesn’t hunt good in today’s budget slashing House. Instead, HR 1526 uses the Jean-Luc Picard tactic: “Make it so.” The bill imposes an enforceable logging mandate for each national forest amounting to no less than one-half of the forest’s long-run sustained yield growth.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the bill, which guesses that logging levels would double and net costs to the Treasury increase. CBO acknowledges candidly that the reality “could vary significantly from CBO’s estimate.”

That the bill will pass in the Republican-controlled House is a foregone conclusion. Its reception in the Senate, however, will depend on how many of the 200 House Democrats cast an “aye” vote.

I’ll give a “shout-out” to the reader who comes closest to the actual House Democrat vote tally. Extra credit if you predict the correct vote of Oregon’s O&C district House Democrats (DeFazio and Schrader), as their O&C bill is folded into the poison-pill Hastings package. All bets are off if Democrats let the bill pass without a recorded vote (as they did in committee).

 

Canada Takes Pepsi Challenge: Redefines Green Industry

by

While the USFS has chosen Coca-Cola to help promote its efforts to create passively managed landscapes from our nation’s forests and grasslands (see: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/09/14/marlboro-signs-5-year-agreement-with-usfs-to-improve-air-quality/), Canada’s Forest Products Industry used a Pepsi Centre Studio to announce greater forestry employment opportunities for its youth via modern communications, new technology, and new forest products. Apparently there are greater differences between Canada and the US than just spelling, secondary languages, and choices in soft drinks — we are now apparently using different definitions of the word “green.” Personally, I like the Canadian definition much better, although I do prefer our spelling conventions, Spanish over French, and Australian Fosters over either of the colas. Other thoughts?

“Forestry industry launches program for greener future”

Adam Harnum
Published on September 17, 2013

David Lindsay, the executive director of the Forest Products Association of Canada, addresses the Canadian Institue of Forestry annual conference on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 at the Pepsi Centre Studio.

CORNER BROOK — The forestry industry has experienced some rough times over the past few decades, but it is beginning to restore the previous wealth in the industry in recent years, says David Lindsay.

This, in turn, is opening doors for more youth to become employed in the forestry sector.

Lindsay, executive director of Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) said at the annual conference and general meeting of the Canadian Institute of Forestry on Monday the industry is transforming itself through investment in new technologies and new equipment, which is ultimately leading to the creation of new products.

One example he discussed was a product created through the extraction of fibre from a tree, which is then used in the process of making rayon, a replacement for cotton.

“We’re going to need more employees in this next evolution of the forest industry,” Lindsay said before his keynote address at the conference.

The biggest market for the forestry industry today seems to be aimed at a younger audience.

Lindsay says a study with the Conference Board of Canada estimates over the next seven to eight years there will be a need for about 60,000 new jobs to replace those who are retiring and for new growth and economic opportunity.

“We need foresters and people who understand the science of the industry to ensure that it is managed in a sustainable way so that involves a lot of technical knowledge and a lot of scientific knowledge,” he said.

Lindsay said Newfoundland and Labrador is well-situated with a good infrastructure and a healthy, vibrant forest, which places the province in a position for growth, as trees are abundant throughout.

The biggest difference between oil and minerals in contrast to forest products is the resources used to create forest products are renewable — essentially meaning that trees can be grown and harvested repeatedly.

As a renewable resource, Lindsay said the intent is to promote more involvement in the industry throughout the country, and said a second project of the Green Dream internship being launched at the conference is targeted at recruiting more young people.

In the first edition of the Green Dream internship, it was limited to seven positions but the newest version opens the door to eight more internship opportunities.

The website created for the program will serve as a portal for youth to access application forms and learn about the 15 different jobs available, then a contest will be executed and later an announcement of the winners will be made.

According to Lindsay, the individuals who are selected will be invited to post blogs about their working experience while on the job and then be made available to the public through the website — a format which he claimed to be a successful tactic from the previous program.

The forestry industry is taking much the same approach as most modern industries, as it is striving to make use of social media platforms to reach out and communicate with the rest of the world.

“What we are trying to do is say, ‘Look, there are products, there are other opportunities; the forest industry is changing,’” Lindsay said.

Lindsay used the analogy often portrayed of forestry industry as being lumberjacks dressed in plaid jackets, when realistically, the industry has changed and there are more people involved behind the scenes wearing white lab coats than plaid jackets.

“We want to rebrand the industry — not the old forest industry of the last century — but it is a new biotechnology, biosciences of the 21st century,” he said.

Plantation Thinning Success on the Rim Fire

by

Derek tipped me off about the new BAER fire severity maps, yesterday, and I was happy to see that the efforts to thin plantations has resulted in lower fire intensities. Here is the link to both high and low resolution maps. It is not surprising that fire intensities outside of this thinning project I worked on were much higher, and I doubt that there was much survival in the unthinned plantations. Those plantations were the within the 1971 Granite Fire, and is yet another example of forest re-burn. This part of the fire has terrain that is relatively gentle, compared to the rest of the burned areas. To me, it is pretty clear that fuels modifications reduced fire intensities.

This photo below shows a boundary between burn intensities. The area east of road 2N89 was thinned and burned much cooler than the untreated areas to the west. The areas in between the plantations had moderate to high burn intensities, due to the thick manzanita and whitethorn. Those areas were left to “recover on their own”. The SPI lands did not fare as well, as they didn’t thin their plantations.

Rim-Fire-plantations

The highest burn intensities occurred in the old growth, near the Clavey River. Activists have long-cherished the areas around this river, and I am assuming that these were protected as spotted owl/goshawk PACs. As you can see, this area has very thick old growth, and it shows on the map as high intensity. This same scenario is one that Wildlife Biologists have been worrying about for many years, now. These wildlife areas have huge fuel-loading issues and choked understories. Prescribed fires cannot be safely accomplished in such areas, without some sort of fuels modifications. Last year, I worked in one unit (within an owl PAC) on the Eldorado where we were cutting trees between 10″ and 15″ dbh, so that it could be safely burned, within prescription.

Clavey-old-growth

Nearly all of the Groveland Ranger District’s old growth is now gone, due to wildfires in the last 50 years. What could we have done differently, in the last 20 years?

Fred Norbury and Law Professors on Planning and the 2005 Rule (video)

by

One of the reasons we started this blog was to increase the net discussions between law school folks and practitioners of planning and NEPA. This is a video recorded in October 2007. The main voices are Fred Norbury, Professors Fred Cheever of the University of Denver Law School and Mark Squillace of University of Colorado Boulder Natural Resources Law Program. Rick Cables, the Regional Forester at the time, weighs in with his experiences and I pop in from time to time (sounding much less articulate than the rest of them).

Cheever starts asking questions first, and then Squillace. You can see Fred Norbury on the video and the only other FS players chiming in were Rick and me (who do not sound alike).

Here’s a link to the video.
Fred starts in with his talk at about 3:40; at about 21:00 are some of the ideas about collaboration. An interesting discussion about how 82 plans had requirements.. some of which were fulfilled and important (standards); others not fulfilled (outputs)around 51:00. it’s fascinating to me as to how it’s important for some things to be “binding” and others not so much; which is still echoed today in the O&C debate.

Because these folks have a policy agenda, of course. Which is OK, as my friend “Eeyore of the Forest Service” says with a sigh..”it’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is.” But it seems to be a very different approach than if you rounded up a group of professors at CSU or OSU or NAU..but if you disagree, please comment.

There is a discussion about the divisiveness of traditional alternatives (related to today’s discussion of collaboration) around 56.

An issue to Professor Squillace was the EIS on the rule (yes, a judge required the FS to write an EIS on implementing different planning processes- as if they would result in different outcomes in a way that could be “meaningfully evaluated” (that’s NEPA, not me). But Fred Norbury says that logically, one could find that planning itself had no impacts on the environment because most of what was planned never happened (that’s right at the end of the video). There is a fundamental difference it seems to me between the language of Ohio Forestry and doing an EIS on a planning regulation.. if plans do not have effects then planning to plan probably doesn’t have an effect. But that’s just me.
So given that so many years have passed; Fred Rick and I are all retired; the 2005 Rule has gone to planning rule heaven; and I am looking at this in a more reflective way.

Here are my thoughts and I welcome discussion.

1) FS workers have traditionally come from natural resource and other schools, hence there is a natural conversation that happens and it seems like that leads to a feeling that “our graduates are generally attempting to do something right and know more than we do about actually doing it.” They tend to have mid-career training where “world as practiced” meets “academic world.” which if structured right, leads to fertile discussions.

2. I have noticed that many fewer FS employees come from law schools. So the trust/competence level must not be there. I don’t think someone from CSU would assume that folks in the FS hadn’t been working with community planners; or that they could think up better ideas about how to plan than people who work with planning every day. It’s almost like “we know more than you do about what you do because of our perspective.” But they are very nice people.. so I think it might be a legal culture thing.

3. These professors and students seem to feel like it’s their job to protect forests from abuse; not to illuminate what the trade-offs are, as say scientists are supposed to (at least when I was trained). My observation is that they tend to see things more politically (good guys vs. bad guys) than I remember in natural resource schools.

One more story.. we were having another discussion with Squillace and students and one of the students said that he thought each plan should start from scratch, and then only add uses as they made their case. I pointed out that that might not be satisfactory to people and their lawyers at say, Vail and Aspen. He said something like “but I go skiing!”. I think it is a good idea for discussions to happen across the academic/practitioner divide. Because the divide can be wide.

Let me know if you have problems.. this is the first one I’ve ever uploaded.

Blog Design – Help with CSS?

by

Some of us would like replies to comments to be indented, as on the old blog. We can do that with Jetpack (which we have now).But there are two choices, according to Support:

1) add their comment form to our CSS for the blog
or
2) find a theme (the way the blog looks) that is compatible with the Jetpack approach.

Unfortunately, I am already beyond my capabilities in CSS trying to change colors. So if we have a volunteer to do #1 please speak up!

Otherwise, we shall have to change the way the blog looks to some extent by choosing another theme. There may be other benefits to doing that (because our theme is old and not supported) but right now it is more work.

Moon and the Nautilus Shell VBC II. The Ecosystem Idea and O’Neill’s Critique

by

oneill

As I read it, the key question in Botkin’s book is found on page xii on my Kindle..

“Whatever the scientist’s knowledge of the dynamic, changing properties of nature, the formal representations of these remove such considerations in most cases…whether or not environmental scientists know about geological time and evolutionary biology, their policies ignore them. It is strange, ironic and contradictory.”

My feeling is that the locus of these contradictions may lie in the competitive forces among scientific disciplines and ideas, competing for power and funding. When I was a graduate student at Yale, I shared an office with the Hubbard Brookians..they had a way of looking at the world measuring N P and K and applying systems thinking. But there were others around who simply observed or did experiments in manipulating organisms. At the time, these were all equally legitimate approaches to studying Nature- in our minds, if not those of the Big Funding Agencies, such as NSF. Since I had taken History of Science, I understood their (the BFA’s) peculiar attraction to the Mathematical and Abstract; and understood that the rest of us were little more than flower collectors in the hierarchy of Science. And that was OK with us, because our science was more of an interplay or conversation with Nature.. in population genetics we looked for mathematical equilibria but never found them. Ideas, measure, more ideas, more measurement, that was our conversation with Nature. We used math to explore ideas, but we did not have external ideas that we tested Nature against.

To clarify, I do use the term “ecosystem”; if we had talked about “prairies” in the past , the “prairie ecosystem” is handy because it denotes all the critters, plant, animal, insects, fungus, bacteria, viruses, water, soil- all of which we had studied before. We had studied them and their interactions with the environment, but at the time we might call ourselves “wildlife or fish biologists” “plant physiologists” “soil scientists” “entomologists” or “silviculturists”(applied vegetation ecologists). We even had a course at Yale called “genecology” but what else would creatures adapt to other than the environment? My point is that we were all studying things and their relation to the environment, which would make us all “ecologists,” I guess. Except that our language was not about equilibria, attractors, functions, etc. These are all abstractions that came from systems theory. It’s legitimate, I think to question how helpful these abstractions have been and continue to be.

But don’t believe me. Check out this 2001 piece.. Is It Time to Bury the Ecosystem Concept? (With full military honors, of course) by Robert V. O’Neill. The ideas he raised in 2001 are as current as the “ecosystem integrity” requirement in the 2012 Planning Rule.

The term ecosystem was coined by Tansley in 1935. But as Botkin (1990) points out, the underlying concept goes back at least to Marsh (1864). Nature was viewed as relatively constant in the face of change and repaired
itself when disrupted, returning to its previous balanced state. Clements (1905, 1916) and Elton (1930) offered plant and animal succession as basic processes that permitted relative constancy by repairing damage.
Forbes (1925) described the northern lake as a microcosm, a relatively closed, self-regulating system, an archetypic ecosystem.

Science emerged from the Second World War with a new paradigm, Systems Analysis (e.g., Bode 1945), which seemed uniquely suited for this ‘‘balance of nature’’ concept, and fit well with earlier work on the stability of interacting populations (Nicholson and Bailey 1935). Systems Analysis dealt with complex systems as interconnected components with feedback
loops (Hutchinson 1948) that stabilized the system at a relatively constant equilibrium point. Systems Analysis can be seen underlying E. P. Odum’s (1953) definition of the ecosystem as a ‘‘. . . natural unit that
includes living and nonliving parts interacting to pro duce a stable system in which the exchange of materials between the living and nonliving parts follows circular paths . . . .’’

The machine analogy, inherent in Systems Analysis, became a central paradigm for many ecologists (Odum 1971, Holling 1973, Waide and Webster 1976). The paradigm offered a practical approach to the enormous
complexity of natural systems (Teal 1962, Van Dyne 1969). The paradigm helped harness the power of the computer in ecosystem models (Olson 1963). The paradigm permitted a holistic view of system properties
such as nutrient cycling (Webster et al. 1974). The familiarity of the machine analogy facilitated the communication of ecological concepts to the public.
If the ecosystem concept has held such a central place in ecology and been so productive of new ideas, why call it into question? The simple fact is that the ecosystem is not an a posteriori, empirical observation
about nature. The ecosystem concept is a paradigm (sensu Kuhn 1962), an a priori intellectual structure, a specific way of looking at nature. The paradigm emphasizes and focuses on some properties of nature, while ignoring and de-emphasizing others. After a half century of application, the paradigm is showing some rust. Limitations in the concept are becoming more apparent and leading to a vigorous backlash toward ecosystem concepts in particular, and ecology in general.

One more story. When I was working for the FS in R&D we did a review of one of the Research Stations. One of the administrators there was a big aficionado of systems thinking. One of the scientists had done this fascinating study (to me) of how fish move around in streams and discovered something very useful that hadn’t been known before. I thought it was great work. This administrator, though, felt that “organismal biology is passe, it’s all about systems, now.” In arguing that this scientist should be better appreciated, I stated “you can’t understand systems without understanding their components” to which he replied “oh, yes you can.. it’s about flows among boxes and you don’t need to understand what’s in them.”

So you may say “this guy was off the wall, and not in the mainstream.” Well, that could be true. Still the reason I’m telling the story is that to point out that people can cross the line from systems being 1) one way of conceiving of how nature works, to 2) the best way of conceiving how nature works, to 3) how nature works. And somewhere along that line, the empiricism that “science” claims as its basis for legitimacy gets left behind.

To comment, please go to the Virtual Book Club site here.