The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
Community Sourced, Shared and Supported
The year was 1995 (or thereabouts). I attended a Forest Service sponsored meeting on Strategic Planning at Grey Towers. I carried my brand new copy of Henry Mintzberg’s Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning to the meeting, referring to Mintzberg’s death-knell for planning whenever I could. (Here is a six-page summary pdf) A few souls … Read more
The series of public meetings on the planning rulemaking process starts with a science forum next Monday and Tuesday (March 29-30) in Washington D.C. The draft agenda has five panels over the two day event. The event will be webcast. Here is information on the panels and panelists with their web links. The panels are a mix of academia and Forest … Read more
Right now we have two possibly complementary approaches being discussed on this blog; which I will call Doing Useful Things and Satisfying NFMA Requirements (Andy’s KISS approach). Adaptive Governance probably falls in the former category. I am sold on the concept of some form of adaptive governance, and so would like to explore some questions … Read more
Kudos to BLM for this excellent document .. at a glance, it is a comprehensive overview of the landscape of collaboration and conflict resolution. The photos included are excellent also. The below section talks about the competitive style of negotiation, thoughts which are similar to what I said in this morning’s post but expressed way more … Read more
Yesterday morning we visited the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to listen to the appeal of Judge Brimmer’s decision on the 2001 Rule. There were three judges presiding,Anderson, Murphy and Holmes. Since this is Women’s History Month, I have to point out that all the lead counsels, and all the judges were male. The ratio of female to … Read more
They are “remembered landscapes.” Nearly every weekend when I was growing up, my parents, my two sisters, our large family dog, and I would get in the car and head to my grandparents’ house in St. Maries, Idaho. The trip was usually pretty boring for a kid, but we always got excited when we got … Read more
Arizona Lumber and Timber Company, Coconino National Forest, 1939, photo by Walter H. Shaffer Sometimes language can get in the way. Foresters are becoming aware that their traditional language for cutting trees confuses the public, and reduced their ability to explain what they are trying to accomplish. This is especially true today when trying to … Read more
The announcement went out today for the dates of the initial series of public meetings on a new planning rule, including: A science forum in Washington D.C. on March 29-30. Three National Roundtable meetings on April 1-2, April 20-21, and May 11-12. Regional roundtable meetings in April: Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6), Portland, OR … Read more
I hope all of us will post responses to the NOI for the planning rule that we find interesting. Frankly, we all are a bit overwhelmed at this point (some people have sent me copies of theirs, plus we will all be able to access the comments when they are published on the FS website). … Read more
Army Officer at Nine Mile Camp, Mt. Baker National Forest, 1933, photo by W.L. Baker The more we look at the literature, the more evidence we find that our current NFMA management system doesn’t align with the current thinking about land use management. We gravitate toward adaptive management, but we don’t quite grasp it yet. … Read more