Collaborative Projects: Advancing Analysis Paralysis?

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kumbaya

A reader who works for the Forest Service sent the below in:

Excerpt from AFRC newsletter. Highlighted is what we are finding….takes longer and is more painful. We find that we have to make LOTS more words and speak and field trips, etc., that never change the outcome on the ground…

Each panel member was given five minutes to present a prepared statement, followed by questions from Kilmer. While many of the panel members expressed positive views of the collaborative process, AFRC expressed caution. Most of the positive views focused on the agreements coming from within the collaborative but not on the actual successful outputs of volume or jobs. AFRC presented the view that collaboratives are a tool to accomplishing the needed management of the federal forests but we see three primary key points for improvement in the process. These points are:

 Establishment of specific goals/outcomes using concrete metrics of success, such as number of local jobs created, revenue to local government, and raw materials which fit the needs of local infrastructure. Metrics of success are essential to ensuring there is a focus on economic and social realities, rather than merely emotional satisfying outcomes. All too often the lowest common denominator effect results in projects that are too light touch, uneconomical, and don’t meet the needs of the forest or community.

 Collaborative projects should be given some form of insulation from appeals and litigation by obstructionist individuals and groups who choose not to participate in the collaborative process, but can block a project all too easily through litigation.

 Collaborative projects should result in lower Forest Service unit costs. Unfortunately, collaboration has largely failed to reduce planning and analysis costs (in fact, the costs have typically been higher). Since approximately 70% of project costs go to environmental review and planning, the Forest Service and Congress must focus on modernizing environmental review and planning requirements so we can actually begin restoring balanced management to these forests. Unless Congress or collaboratives address this issue, Forest Service timber harvests will always be limited by the appropriations the agency receives. In these fiscal times it is highly unlikely the agency will receive additional appropriations to dump into an inefficient system.

I think collaboration is good, but how could it be made more effective? What do you think? Has the Forest Service expected too much from collaborative projects, or been intentionally naive about the behavior of frequent litigants?

2013 Fire Season in New Mexico Below Normal: Nearly 60% of forest land within fire boundaries remained unburned or burned at low severity

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The following press release is from WildEarth Guardians. If you click on this link, you can see a few charts and a map. If anyone has questions about the information contained within this press release from WildEarth Guardians, please contact WildEarth Guardians directly. Thank you. – mk

2013 Fire Season in New Mexico Below Normal:
Nearly 60% of forest land within fire boundaries remained unburned or burned at low severity
Contact: Bryan Bird (505) 699-4719

Santa Fe – New Mexico experienced several expensive fires early this summer, the largest was the Silver Fire covering nearly 217 square miles in the Black Range. Fire costs in the U.S. have topped $1 billion so far this year; less than last year’s $1.9 billion, but the fire season is not over. The Thompson Ridge fire alone cost $16,326,136 before it was declared contained. Rising plumes of smoke could be seen on the horizon of Santa Fe and Albuquerque and breathless reporters gave statistics of ever increasing acreages of devastated forestland.

But, the numbers tell a different story. The four major fires in New Mexico this summer covered a total of 184,024 acres or nearly 288 square miles, but just 16% of that area burned at high severity. In all 213,289 acres have burned to date in New Mexico. While there is still a chance for late season fires, the total burned area for 2013 is significantly less than the 372,497 acres burned in 2012.

“Once the smoke cleared, the environmental benefits of the 2013 fire season were obvious,” Said Bryan Bird, Wild Places Director for WildEarth Guardians. “Though flooding is always a risk, these fires do more to clear fuels and reduce fire hazard than we could do with mechanical treatments and a large chunk of the federal budget.”

Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams take action immediately after fires to analyze the area within the burn perimeter and take action to minimize immediate damage from flooding, which can have severe consequences downstream. The BAER teams measure fire severity to analyze the loss of organic matter from the forest. In areas of low fire severity ground litter is charred or consumed, but tree canopies remain mostly unburned and the top layer of soil organic matter remains unharmed. Areas of moderate severity have a higher percentage of both crown and soil organic matter consumed. Areas of high severity have lost all or most of tree canopy organic matter and soil organic matter is wholly consumed.

The numbers reported by the BAER teams for the 2013 fire season in New Mexico put into perspective the burn results. Of all acres within fire boundaries over 10,000 acres this summer, 59% (109,290 acres) were ranked as unburned or low severity. Another 24% (44,880 acres) was moderate severity. Finally, just 16% (29,125 acres) burned at high severity.

The Joroso Fire, located in the Pecos Wilderness, burned primarily in mature Spruce Fir stands with high levels of wind blown material. These conditions create an environment where high severity burns are much more likely than the other fires, so it is instructive to remove it from summary statistics. When removing this fire from the analysis the overall numbers demonstrate even less severe effects on the vegetation: 61% remained unburned or burned at low intensity, 25% burned at moderate severity, and only 13% burned at high severity.

Fire fighting in the United Sates has become a very costly endeavor. While most fires are extinguished quickly, it is the very small portion of wildfires that are not immediately controlled and result in significant financial burdens to states and the federal government. Already this year the Forest Service has exhausted its fire-fighting budget and has had to tap other budget line items. And yet, it is not clear that committing such resources is necessary or beneficial when human life and property are not immediately at risk.

“Fire is an essential process in western forests and we cannot eliminate it. Resources need to be reserved for protecting lives, not supporting huge operations in the backcountry.” Said Bird. “We can fire proof communities, but we cannot fire proof the forest.”

Blame For Western Wildfires… Timber Industry (??!!)

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I just read this story from AP via NPR.. interesting statement by “Federal forest ecologists.” I wish they’d said “some federal forest ecologists” or even “one or two”, whomever they interviewed.

Federal forest ecologists say that historic policies of fire suppression to protect Sierra timber interests left a century’s worth of fuel in the fire’s path.

“That’s called making the woodpile bigger,” said Hugh Safford, an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in California.

Wow! My first experience in the Sierra was at Meadow Valley Forestry Camp, prior to UC Berkeley forestry school in 1974. That was almost 40 years ago. At that time there were many people and communities, (camps, ski areas, etc.) and infrastructure of various kinds (dams, powerlines) in the Sierra. Fires were thought to be bad for people and communities and infrastructure. Smoke was bad for human health.

It seems to me that fires were also suppressed, and continue to be suppressed, in southern California, where there was no timber and no timber industry, but there was still.. people and houses and infrastructure. And Colorado, where industry is minimal…

Wonder Who is Funding Ads on Youtube About O&C Lands?

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This morning I was looking up some music on Youtube for one of my other hobbies, and got an ad about “write Senator Wyden about O&C Lands” . It said “a balanced approach is best but no clearcutting.” It kind of creeps me out that that could have been targeted at me (or they have enough money to go after random people in Colorado), but I wonder who is doing this, and how much it costs to put it on Youtube?

I’d be interested if anyone else has seen this or other ads.. then perhaps we can check the organization’s 990 and figure it out next year.

Wilderness Watch Questions Landscaping Proposal for the Pasayten Wilderness

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From Wilderness Watch:

Wilderness Watch is urging the Forest Service (FS) to abandon its proposal to plant whitebark pine in the Pasayten Wilderness in Washington. None of the reasons the FS gives in its Quartz Mountain Whitebark Pine Preliminary Environmental Assessment (EA) appear to be valid. The EA states, “There is a need to establish a whitebark pine seed source…for natural regeneration to occur.” It also notes, “…no tree seedlings were observed on the former whitebark site and it is therefore unlikely that whitebark pine will naturally regenerate in the area.” This clearly leads the public to believe there are no living whitebark pines in the area. However, the EA goes on to contradict the earlier statement by saying there are “surviving whitebark pines in the Quartz Mountain area.”

The Quartz Mountain fire that killed whitebark pines was a natural event, and it may take decades for seedlings to be reestablished (a fact recognized by the Whitebark Pine Foundation). The project would have a significant negative impact on the Pasayten Wilderness. Wilderness Watch told the Forest Service to let natural processes—fire, Clark’s nutcrackers, rains, and wind—determine the extent of whitebark pine regeneration. Wilderness is about wildness and that includes letting nature determine when and where seedlings will be re-established. Any experiment of this type should be confined to non-Wilderness lands.

Read Wilderness Watch’s comments here.

Stanley Idaho Turns North for Ideas on Wildfire Protectionto

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The black smoke signals a particularly hot area in a prescribed burn in British Columbia’s Kootenay National Park in 2008, when trees killed by mountain pine beetles were on the ground. Idaho’s Sawtooths have similar lodgepole pine forests. PROVIDED BY PARKS CANADA — Provided by Parks Canada

The black smoke signals a particularly hot area in a prescribed burn in British Columbia’s Kootenay National Park in 2008, when trees killed by mountain pine beetles were on the ground. Idaho’s Sawtooths have similar lodgepole pine forests.
PROVIDED BY PARKS CANADA — Provided by Parks Canada

Does anyone know any philanthropists? I propose an NCFP field trip to Kootenay National Park.

Here’s a link to a story by Rocky Barker in June.

A CANADIAN MODEL

The Forest Service burns thousands of acres of ponderosa pine in prescriptive burns, but very little lodgepole. But Stanley leaders have looked to Canada for a late-winter, early-spring model for burning lodgepole, and they hope the Forest Service will consider it.

Most of Southern Idaho forests have burned over the past 25 years. With those forests cleared of built-up fuels, firefighters have made steering new fires into those previously burned tracts their main tactic.

But the heart of the Sawtooth Valley remains largely untouched over the same period.

“What remains to burn is right in front of us,” said Herbert Mumford, mayor of Stanley, which has 63 year-round residents.

There is only one power line connecting the mountain hamlet to the grid that snakes up the Salmon River from Challis. If a fire burns through the line, Salmon River Electrical Cooperative officials tell Mumford, it could take weeks to rebuild it.

No electricity would mean the sewage treatment plant would stop working, Mumford said, leaving the community helpless. That’s why he and Steve Botti, president of the City Council, are leading the effort to seek a more aggressive prescriptive-burning effort.

“Should we just sit back and buy marshmallows and weenies and wait for the fire to start?” Mumford said.

Botti, a retired National Park Service fire ecologist at Boise’s National Interagency Fire Center, was familiar with Parks Canada’s ambitious burning program in lodgepole pine forests in British Columbia and Alberta. Two of the program’s leaders came to Stanley this spring to tell of their success.

A MATTER OF TIME

In Kootenay National Park, about two hours west of Calgary, Parks Canada embarked on a landscape-level program designed to burn strategic chunks of forest under carefully managed conditions. The burning is done during spring or late fall. Loggers cut large open spaces, or “anchors,” to ensure that the fire stays within its parameters and to protect revenue-producing forests nearby.

The logging is done in winter, to reduce impact on the land and the park’s visitor season.

“It is understood as a sacrifice on national park land” to prevent future fires and improve the larger ecology, said Rick Kubian, resource conservation manager for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay parks.

The fires have been successful. They burn the identified areas in a mosaic pattern, which will slow down any future fire that tests the forest. It’s the kind of burning that Stanley leaders hope they can convince the Forest Service to try in Idaho.

Sawtooth National Ran-ger Joby Timm is pleased that Stanley has put together the fire collaborative and is encouraged by its support for increased management. He proudly points to the agency’s record of preventive “treatment” of 90 percent of the recreation area’s wildland-urban interface.

He and the Forest Service’s local fire managers support what the Canadians have done, but Timm is skeptical that large Canada-style winter burns, along with the necessary logging, could get the support needed from Idahoans who want their scenic views unchanged.

“Politically and socially,” Timm said, “I don’t know how logging a quarter-mile swath would be accepted in the Sawtooths.”

Forsgren, Mumford and Botti all say that it’s just a matter of time until the Sawtooth Valley burns. Those who want to see it left alone could see the view they love blackened and an entire summer recreation season lost.

The next step is for the collaborative group to make a formal proposal to the Forest Service.

“Fire is part of the ecosystem, but we don’t want it all to burn,” Forsgren said. “We’d like the Forest Service to do some logging and prescribed burning so when the fire comes, it drops to the ground, where they can fight it.”

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/06/02/2599958/protecting-stanley-from-wildfires.html#storylink=cpy

The Colville Experiment

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This sounds like an interesting approach. Here’s the news story.

COLVILLE, WA – Today, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) held a Summit with a panel of local business and community leaders involved in the Colville National Forest to discuss how to more effectively utilize Forest Service land to promote healthier forests, reduce the risks of forest fires, and strengthen rural economies.

Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers said, “The Colville National Forest is the economic engine for our Northeastern Washington counties and healthy forests mean healthy communities. Of the 1.1 million acre Colville National Forest, over 300,000 acres are bug infested. In addition, it has the potential to bring more jobs, recreation and increased local revenue to Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille counties.”

The federal government made a promise over a century ago to actively manage our forests and provide 25% of revenues for schools and counties impacted by National Forest land. But declining timber harvests has meant dramatically less revenue.

McMorris Rodgers is an original sponsor of H.R. 1526, Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act. It directs the Forest Service to meet specific harvest levels in certain areas, will help improve forest health and prevent catastrophic wildfires, extends supplemental Secure Rural Schools payments for one year, and would improve local forest management by allowing counties to actively manage portions of National Forest land through the creation of “Community Forest Demonstration Areas.”

The bill is expected to be on the House Floor this fall.

McMorris Rodgers has also been working for the past two years to initiate an innovative public-private partnership in the national forest.

The “A to Z” Mill Creek Pilot Project sets up a 10-year contract on 50,000 acres in the Colville National Forest. It allows a private company to use private dollars for everything after the timber sale is laid out, including the pre-sale environmental requirements and NEPA. With private funds and local management, the Colville National Forest can be managed for healthier forests and stable, sustainable revenue.

According to McMorris Rodgers, the Washington Department of Natural Resources produces seven times the timber from one-quarter of the acreage as the Forest Service in Washington state.

“The Forest Service should work with the timber industry to create jobs and revenue at a time when they are badly needed, while still protecting the environment and ensuring a sustainable harvest. This pilot project will show how it can be done, and I want Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties to be model for the rest of the country.”

The winning bid will be announced in September.

Efficacy of Whole Tree Harvest Thinning in Reducing Fire Severity

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Don’t ya love the black trunk scorching. Classic ponderosa. Color these photos black and white and you can step back in time 150 years ago. This was your pre-settlement forest. The Park retained a nice “clumpy” layout here.
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A more traditional spacing of 25 feet between trees. The 25′ spacing is the minimum to stop a crown fire. Don’t ya love that grass!

                            

The photos above were taken at Chadron State Park in the northwest corner of Nebraska. You couldn’t find a more warm/dry Ponderosa Pine habitat than this with annual precipitation of around 16 inches. As with most recreation areas in the West that sought to “preserve,” very little logging occurred in the last one hundred years (if any) and the average tree spacing was around 8-10’. I visited the park about 6 years ago right after the Park did a whole tree harvest thinning fuels treatment in anticipation of a wildfire just like the one that burned through last summer.

When looking at these photos, some would make the claim that this proves “fuels treatments don’t stop wildfires” and end their analysis there. But that ignores the fact that while 90% of the 1000 acre park burned, 80% of the forest is still green while 100% of the adjacent USFS lands is black having suffered a stand replacing crown fire. The “surface fire” in the Park was extinguished before it burned the 10% of the Park that contained 30 rental cabins, 80 camp sites, a lodge, picnic sites, and assorted infrastructure. Fuels treatments don’t stop fires, but that’s where firefighters stop them. The thinning in the park turned what would have been a stand replacing crown fire into nothing but an unscheduled prescribed fire. The thinning in the park turned what would have been a stand replacing crown fire into nothing but an unscheduled prescribed fire. But…but…but…of course, I suppose it “is” possible the Park survived because “the wind” just stopped blowing when the fire reached the section line dividing the Forest Service property from the Park.

Fuels treatments isn’t about “stopping the fire.” We’d have to pave it over to do that. Fuels treatments is about making it easier for firefighters to extinguish the fire but most importantly it’s about “what’s still green” after the fire. Because of the fuels treatments, a 70 year legacy of family reunions, weddings, and cool shady getaways on hot August weekends can now continue for generations to come. Every local, state, and federal recreation area in the West should be, and is, doing these kinds of fuels treatments. What better place to showcase the “efficacy of fuels treatment.” When the public sees these “green islands” in a sea of black untreated forests….they’re gonna wonder why the USFS didn’t do them everywhere.

 

The bottom two photos are examples of Whole Tree Harvesting. 

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Whole tree harvesting one week after logging. Note the light on the land touch and total absence of any “slash.” The bottom photo is one “day” after logging. Absolutely no slash or surface fuels. This stand was pre-commercially thinned 30 years ago and had a tree every 8 feet.Image
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The best kept secret of forestry is the “thinning release.” Thinning greatly increases the diameter growth rate of the remaining trees. This tree put on 7″ diameter growth in the 32 years since it was thinned in 1972, and about 10 times the cross section volume growth than in the first 46 years. In 20 years, the trees in Chadron Park will be 18-20″ diameter. A nice legacy for the next generation I’d say…considering the alternative.

 

 

Schott Resigns from Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative

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A reader submitted this editorial in the Albany (Oregon) Democrat-Herald, which I think it an interesting bookend to the discussion about local wood below. So Santa Cruz-ites are finding a middle ground, where the sector has NOT been important, but where it has been important, in Southern Oregon, they cannot find common ground. Hypotheses anyone? I wish the People’s Research Fund could fund social scientists to survey folks across the west on some of their deeper values around this.

The story involved the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative, a local effort which has been working to reach a common ground on ecological issues and reforestation.

But the effort has hit a bump: The only representative of the timber industry in the group, Dave Schott, has resigned. In explaining the reasons for his resignation, Schott said that in his view, the group has been overly focused on the priorities of environmentalists and has failed to take into account the needs of the logging industry.

The director of the collaborative called Schott’s decision “short-sighted,” according to a story about the dustup in the Medford Mail-Tribune newspaper.

And that short-sighted assessment would seem justified, except for one thing:

Schott had spent eight years on the board.

Eight years.

Now, maybe the better part of a decade doesn’t amount to a lot of time in the effort to change the policies that have led to generations of gridlock over our forests.

But surely it’s not too much to hope that one would have seen some progress in those eight years toward resolving the issues that have devastated our rural communities — and threatened the health of our forests, as witnessed by this summer’s busy wildfire season.

When the group initially formed, the collaborative agreed to base its work on a three-pronged approach that included economic, environmental and social considerations, said Schott, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. But, he said, as the years went on, the economic prong of the equation kept getting short shrift.

No one thinks that logging levels ever will return to the levels of the 1950s and 1960s. And no one is advocating anything like widespread clearcuts or the elimination of old-growth stands.

But there is a place for logging as we work to reboot our rural economies, an important place. The idea that we should simply declare our public forests off-limits not only jeopardizes the health of our forests but makes it difficult to move toward any of kind of compromise.

And it also means there isn’t any way to compromise. As one player in this drama noted, “Special interest groups are hard to bring to the middle, no matter how big that middle may be.“

The result? Years go by, and little happens — except people who started a good-faith effort to locate some common ground increasingly despair of finding it.

Maybe the efforts currently running through Congress — in discussions led by members of Oregon’s delegation — finally will make some progress.

But there is a sense that time is running out.

“This is coming to a head,” Schott said of the debate. “People are realizing something has to be done. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.” (mm)

Buy Local Wood – (from Santa Cruz?)

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Thanks to Mike De LaSaux for posting this on the SAF LinkedIn site.

It is a TED talk video of a conservationist, Terry Corwin talking about using local sustainably produced wood for construction. Here are some of the snippets I copied..
“islands of privilege” “environmental haves and have-nots” “bias toward local sustainably produced wood,” and “embrace local supply of building material as much as food.”

I remember submitting an op-ed to the Denver Post with a similar message and received the reply that “this was nothing new.” My op-ed was around “why can I go to the grocery store and find a locally grown section but not Home Depot or Lowe’s?” and so on.

It would be interesting if that were thought to be the “right thing” to do in Santa Cruz but not in places where federal lands happen to be.

But I think what’s most important is who stands up and what kind of credibility they have. If conservationists would stand up with this message everywhere, some of our battles might be different; or not be battles at all.

I was curious about the local wood movement, and found this link at Dovetail Partners. Here is a link to the Colorado campaign.

I have always wondered why “timber industry” doesn’t play a larger role in this local wood effort. I can only think that the “industry” is not a monolith (as we have been discussing recently) and some parts benefit from imports. If not them, who should play this role? (personally I think that some of the Endowment should go for supporting a “Local Wood” effort, but not sure that’s appropriate given their charter).

It would be somewhat ironic if conservationists, such as Ms. Corwin, carried the water on this effort.