How Many Snags Do Birds Need??

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With our discussions about burned forests and blackbacked woodpeckers, here are some views of the Power Fire, on the Eldorado National Forest. Initially, the wildfire seemed to be of mixed severity but, as the summer wore on, more and more insect mortality caused previously green trees to turn brown. After Chad Hanson took his appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, this project was halted with about 75% of the dead trees cut. The court decided that not enough analysis was done regarding the blackbacked woodpecker, despite only 55% of the burned area in the project.

In this picture, seven years after it burned, most of those foreground snags were in a helicopter unit, with a fairly large stream buffer at the bottom. At least 5 times we marked additional mortality in that unit. Also important is the fact that we were cutting trees which still had green needles, using the new fire mortality guidelines of the time. As you can see, the density of snags should be quite sufficient in supporting multiple woodpecker families.

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This patch of snags was clumped, below a main road and above a major streamcourse.

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Another view of abundant snags within a cutting unit, and a protected streamcourse.

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You can see that both large and small snags were left for wildlife. After 6 years, surely some snags have already fallen, as expected. Not every acre can, or should, have birds on every acre. Since this is predominantly a P. pine stand, the combination of high-intensity fire and subsequent bark beetles caused catastrophic losses of owl and goshawk habitat, including nest trees. You can also see that reforestation is, and will continue to be problematic, with all that deerbrush coming back so thick.

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National Forest Foundation webinar on IRR: Tuesday April 16, 2013

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NFF logo(mastr) RGB-smMarek Smith posted this as a comment, but I thought it might be overlooked .. here goes:

Upcoming National Forest Foundation webinar on IRR, for those interested.

U.S. Forest Service Integrated Resource Restoration: Regional Updates
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 | 2:00-4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

We invite you to join us for an “Integrated Resource Restoration Update.” In this session, Forest Service leadership and staff from the pilot regions will share information about:
• The Integrated Resource Restoration (IRR) pilot program in Forest Service Regions 1, 3, and 4
• Fiscal year 2012 pilot program implementation –achievement of restoration goals, administrative efficiency, and program integration
• How community interests and partners can engage in the IRR process
• Next steps for IRR implementation
Click below to RSVP for the upcoming peer learning session on Integrated Resource Restoration!

http://www.nff.wildapricot.org/Default.aspx?pageId=471105&eventId=616595&EventViewMode=EventDetails

Sustainable Forest Certification Wars..

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fscvssfu

Check out this piece in Forbes about the Certification Wars in Canada . I think it’s worth reading just to remember that there are other forest environmental issues besides public lands in the U.S.

For those of you who don’t follow this debate, remember that we couldn’t certify our local dead lodgepole to either standard because it doesn’t come from managed forests. Hence the EPA got credit fro greenness for importing bamboo from China for its building in central Denver, while dead lodgepole from around the corner was not “less green” but appeared to be “less green” due to the structure of the certification industry.

Even the Forest Service has touted its LEED buildings. I don’t know about you, but I feel that the FS has some very, very smart engineers and we should be paying all the bucks we have for this to get information from them about the best investments to make to make buildings greener and save the taxpayer bucks at the same time. This would be rather than pay some firm to certify that we are using less energy. Especially when they wouldn’t count the FSs’ own wood as sustainable.. So off that soapbox..

Between SFI and FSC..

Are there significant differences between the competing schemes? Independent observers see a convergence of standards as pressure for transparency on both groups has grown. Canada’s EcoLogo and TerraChoice, part of Underwriters Laboratories Global Network, each rate SFI and FSC identically. A United Nations joint commission recently concluded: “Over the years, many of the issues that previously divided the systems have become much less distinct. The largest certification systems now generally have the same structural programmatic requirements.”

University-based researchers who have scrutinized the two labeling programs have found few meaningful differences. For example North Carolina State professor Frederick Cubbage, North Carolina State University Forest Manager Joseph Cox and a team of researchers concluded that while SFI and FSC “have a slightly different focus, both prompt substantial, important changes in forest management to improve environmental, economic, and social outcomes.”

The convergence in standards has not stalled the politicization of the labeling competition. The two systems are currently going head to head in the US. The FSC has been entrenched because of the support from the US Green Building Council. USGBC adopted FSC standards in the mid-1990s, when it was the only game in town, for its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. It’s remained loyal because of fierce lobbying by green activists. Hundreds of cities and agencies in the US now mandate LEED standards, which means that FSC receives preferential treatment in building projects across the country.

This has created some unintended consequences. Because FSC label accounts for just one quarter of North American’s certified forests, three quarters of the wood from the continent’s certified forests are not eligible for LEED sourcing credits. As a result, LEED creates incentives for green building projects to import wood from overseas, resulting in the browning of the supply chain from excess carbon emissions generated by shipping costs. Nonetheless, activist greenies have dug in their heels, determined to do everything in their power to delegitimize competing systems.

The USGBC has never explained why only FSC forests can receive LEED credits. Michael Goergen, Jr., CEO of the Society of American Foresters, has criticized the USGBC for not including other standards, stating, “FSC or better is neither logical nor scientific, especially when it continues to reinforce misconceptions about third-party forest certification and responsible forest practices.”

Some believe LEED FSC-only framework has led to a loss of jobs. Union leader Bill Street of the International Association of Machinists stated that the “ideological driven ‘exclusivity’ of FSC means that systems such as LEED contribute to rural poverty and unemployment while simultaneously adding economic pressure to convert forest land to non-forest land uses.”

Growing concern about the rigidity of the LEED program has led to the emergence of a competing green building initiative in the US. Green Globes, run by the Green Building Initiative, recognizes the SFI and is now in the running along with FSC to be the preferred federal certification program. The Defense Department, one of the earliest LEED adopters and a huge source of new construction, is currently not allowed to spend public funds to achieve LEED’s “gold” or “platinum” certification because of questions about whether the added costs are justified by the benefits.

What’s odd about this is that it is linked to biotechnology in forests.. but the problem with biotechnology in forests in North America is not a lack of acceptance. It is, and always has been, a lack of penciling out.

Now.. to relate to our usual business.. remember that these groups:
Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth and World Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace, ForestEthics and the Dogwood Alliance seem to believe that if you follow FSC guidelines you are being sustainable. That is, removing forest products and actually using them can be done in a sustainable way.

Forestry bills: ‘Trojan horses’

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From Environment & Energy News today in below. The letter mentioned is here:

Enviro Groups Letter on Forestry Bills

 

Enviro groups call GOP forestry bills ‘Trojan horses’

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, April 11, 2013

A handful of Republican bills aiming to reduce the threat of wildfire and provide new revenues to rural counties would thwart collaborative efforts to manage the nation’s forests and could harm wildlife habitats, said a coalition of 27 environmental groups.

The groups yesterday sent a letter to leaders on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation calling the bills “Trojan horses” that would mandate unsustainable levels of logging.

“We should be looking forward, seeking collaborative solutions with broad bipartisan support, not reverting back to decades-old ideas that are destined to fail,” said the coalition, which included the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the Geos Institute and Defenders of Wildlife, among many others.

The panel this morning is meeting to discuss a handful or forestry bills, including a pair of legislative proposals seeking to wean counties off Secure Rural Schools payments by increasing timber harvests on federal forests.

The schools program for the past decade has provided billions of dollars to compensate counties whose economies suffered from the decline in federal timber sales. Now that the program has expired, lawmakers are considering ways to extend it or revive logging levels on public lands.

A draft bill by Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to be considered today would require the Forest Service to designate areas where it would harvest at least half of the timber that is grown each year, a proposal that would presumably significantly increase logging on public lands.

“We strongly oppose legislative proposals that mandate intensive logging or place our public forest lands in a ‘trust,’ so that federal agencies or an appointed board are required to generate mandated revenues for local counties through intensive commodity extraction and other industrialized development that are likely unsustainable and damaging over the long run,” the groups said.

Hastings’ bill, which would seek to replace Secure Rural Schools through the establishment of “Forest Reserve Revenue Areas,” would permit logging, including clear-cutting, by relaxing laws including the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act, said Anne Merwin, director of wilderness policy at the Wilderness Society.

“Even though the new Hastings bill might technically keep NEPA and ESA ‘intact,’ it creates such huge loopholes and such biased requirements that in practice they would almost never meaningfully apply,” she said.

The coalition said it would support the continued use of resource advisory committees under Secure Rural Schools and the Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program, which brings diverse stakeholders to the table.

Hastings has said his bill is necessary to loosen the federal restrictions that have led to significant reduction in timber harvests on federal lands, leading counties to rely on ever-diminishing revenues from Secure Rural Schools. The Forest Service from 2011 to 2014 plans to increase annual harvests by 25 percent, to 3 billion board feet, but that is still far less than the 12.7 billion board feet it harvested in the mid-1980s.

“The federal government’s inability to uphold this promise and tie our forest lands up in bureaucratic red tape has left counties without sufficient funds to pay for teachers, police officers and emergency services; devastated local economies and cost thousands of jobs throughout rural America; and left our forests susceptible to deadly wildfires,” Hastings said in a statement last week. “This draft proposal would simply cut through red tape to allow responsible timber production to occur in those areas and make the federal government uphold its commitment to rural schools and counties.”

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) yesterday said he had a chance to meet with Hastings recently in Pasco, Wash., to discuss Secure Rural Schools, among other issues, but that he has yet to review Hastings’ bill.

Wyden last Congress said he opposed Hastings’ previous bill, H.R. 4019, to transition away from Secure Rural Schools, which set similar mandates for forest management.

“Chairman Hastings is to be commended for recognizing the problems faced by rural, resource-dependent communities,” said Wyden spokesman Keith Chu. “Senator Wyden enjoyed meeting with him recently and looks forward to working with him on legislation that will address these problems and can earn majority support in both houses of Congress.”

Wyden is working with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to extend Secure Rural Schools for at least one year, though the proposal will be a tough political sell to Republicans who feel the program is fiscally unsustainable and fails to provide adequate jobs in the woods.

The environmental groups today said they also oppose H.R. 818 and H.R. 1345, which seek to reduce wildfire risks by thinning overstocked forests.

The bills by Reps. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), respectively, “fly in the face of best science and evidence about effective solutions to protecting communities and forests from wildfire,” the groups wrote. “While these bills purport to protect public lands from wildfire and disease, in reality they fast-track a huge range of projects with limited-to-no public review, federal oversight, scientific support for efficacy of wildfire or disease suppression tactics, prioritization of public safety, or protections for our most sensitive places.”

News Story on Objections.. Missoulian

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Thanks to Rob Chaney for writing a story on this.. there’s been a great deal of silence out there in Medialand on this. Here’s a link..

Western Environmental Law attorney and Lewis and Clark Law School professor Susan Jane Brown has served on a federal advisory board reviewing the new Forest Service rules. She said her biggest concern about the pre-decision objections was the lack of evidence they would improve anything.

“Over the years, we’ve heard a lot about ‘analysis paralysis,’ ” Brown said. “But in the scholarly research on that issue – whether administrative appeals slow down or delay or preclude forest management – there’s no support that links administrative appeals and delays in project implementation. There are many confounding factors in play, so pointing the finger at administrative appeals is hasty.”

I don’t know about scholarly research (if a tree falls in a forest and a scientist is not there to observe it, has it really fallen?), but if there is an appeal period with no appeal, the project goes to implementation. How can someone say that appeals and their resolution does not slow things down? This is not clear. Also, I know field folks that have used HFRA objections successfully and prefer them.
It seems like evidence to me. I wonder what kind of evidence Brown is looking for? If we did interviews of people on forests and published it somewhere, would that count as “evidence”? Ah.. but there is no budget particularly to do that kind of research (the People’s Research Agenda). It seems odd that a person who (if Rob was carefully quoting) dismisses something everyone can plainly see, was selected for a FACA committee on a related subject.

Craig Rawlings of the Forest Products Network said timber mill owners he’d spoken with had a different view.

“It almost forces these litigants to participate in the process,” Rawlings said. “Right now they just wait until everything is done and then file appeals. That does drag it out longer. I think the industry is very optimistic about it.”

The appeals process has been around since 1993. The objection process debuted in 2003 as part of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and Congress applied it to all EAs and EISs through the new Forest Rule last year as an anonymous rider on an appropriations bill, according to Brown.

The objection does not apply to what the Forest Service calls categorical exclusions, which are supposed to be small projects that don’t warrant a full NEPA analysis. It also doesn’t apply to permits for grazing, special use, access and mining. Those actions still face post-decision appeals.

I’m not sure that that’s clear about CE’s I think the Administration decided to wait for the court case to work its way through (Grandaughter of Earth Island) instead of making a point of it in the regulation.

Also, I think Rob is referring to 251 appeals (for the permittees) people can have 215, now 218 objections for those projects as well (just not the permittees).

The new rule took effect March 27. However, Forest Service officers have some leeway with existing projects whether to shift them to the pre-decision process or continue with the post-decision appeal procedure. Smith advises district rangers and forest supervisors on the issue, and has been running about 50-50 on staying with the old or adopting the new rule.

Anyone who can further help clarify, please chime in.

The ESA petition process

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The ESA petition process
The ESA petition process

Lot of good discussion around the black backed woodpecker recently.  Maybe everyone else is way ahead of me, but I have to admit that I wasn’t clear on how the ESA process worked (I only deal with the actual listed species).  There’s been plenty of debate today on advocacy vs. science, appropriate science  and the motivation of “petitioners”.  Hopefully this helps shed a little light on the process and how the USFWS considers science.  Thanks to John Persell for prompting me to do some more research.  The USFWS site is clunky, but here’s an overview:  http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/listing-overview.html

 

Good fire, bad fire: the myth of the mega-blaze

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Brooks Hays, a reporter with GIMBY, recently wrote an article that should generate some interest here, especially in context of some of the comments related to recent black-backed woodpecker articles.  Below is a snip from the opening lead, which features some quotes from forest ecologist Chad Hanson.  The article also includes perspectives from Richard Hutto, forest ecologist and director of the Avian Science Center at the University of Montana, and from myself.  You can read the entire article here.

Last summer, talk of wildfires filled newspapers and dominated the headlines. Wildfires were “trending,” as they say.

Blazes were burning the western forests in record numbers, announced policy officials and reporters. Every news and science organization from USA Today to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was calling 2012’s fire season one of the worst on record.

“Records maintained by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and NASA both indicate that 2012 was an extraordinary year for wildfires in the United States,” NOAA wrote in a year-end review.

Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters blamed the growing threat of wildfire on “rising temperatures and earlier snow melt due to climate change” and added that “fire suppression policies which leave more timber to burn may also be a factor.”

In August, as fire season continued to rage in most of the West, National Public Radio ran a five-part series calling mega-fires the “new normal.” This new reality was attributed to excess forest growth — an overly abundant accumulation of combustible materials – all resulting from an overzealous Forest Service that put out too many fires. NPR dubbed it the “Smokey the Bear effect.”

But a growing body of empirical data suggests these superlatives might be more storytelling than science. “Those terms, ‘mega-fire’ and ‘catastrophic fire,’ are not scientific terms,” says forest ecologist Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project. “And such hyperbolic and extreme terms are not going to lead us to an objective view of the evidence.”

An objective view of the evidence, Hanson argues, reveals that the vast majority of wildlands and forests aren’t burning hotter and faster.  They’re actually starved for high-intensity fires — fires Hanson says are more ecologically valuable than they’re given credit for.

As Hanson argues in his most recent study, The Myth of “Catastrophic” Wildfire, high-intensity fires are the exception in the U.S. today, not the norm. And he finds no correlation between increased fire-suppression activity and high-intensity fire. Hanson says the opposite is true: the longer a forest goes without fire, the more mature it becomes, the higher its canopy grows, and the less susceptible it is to fire damage.

Click here to read the entire article.

Restive Retired Smokeys Step Up and Speak Out

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Today, having a beer…tomorrow, who knows? (Retired R6ers at Missoula Reunion 2009)

Yes, feds are generally go along to get along kinds of folks. And aging doesn’t usually make us more likely to fight. Still..check out this article. I do think the retiree group mentioned is more commonly known as NAFSR, but I could be wrong…

Here’s the link and below is an excerpt..

But that policy was kept so under wraps that not even Pacific Northwest forest supervisors were told. Some of them only heard about it in retrospect late last week — after the USDA had decided, in light of the virulent opposition from the Forest Service’s “Old Smokies” retiree group, to keep the service’s shield logo intact.
“We were all getting ready for a good fight,” said Jim Golden of Sonora, Calif., chairman of the retiree group.
“Of course the alarm went off with our group. The strength of an organization like ours is we can say things in a different way — we can say things the Forest Service (current employees) can’t because of politics.

“We went into it with the attitude that it would be no holds barred.”
The retirees, though, didn’t swing into action until barely two weeks ago because the new USDA policy — while ostensibly already in force for 31/2 months — wasn’t known to the people in the field.
Questions sent Monday morning by the Yakima Herald-Republic to the office of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack prompted a short email reply with this statement, which was “to be attributed to ‘a USDA spokesperson’ ”: “The US Forest Service shield is exempted from the One USDA branding directive.”
Also Monday morning, Forest Service headquarters around the country received the same message, with this terse directive, from Forest Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.: “Good morning, colleagues. Per USDA, we are cleared at all levels to provide only the following comment when queried about the (Forest Service) shield. If we get further guidance, we will let you know.”
While current Forest Service employees could not comment on the record, many retirees were aghast at the idea of what they saw as the USDA’s usurping the service’s shield logo.
“I just think that’s horrible,” said Doug Jenkins, who retired as a Naches Ranger District information specialist four months ago. “It doesn’t surprise me, as if they didn’t have better things to do than do away with the Forest Service shield so they can have their own little realm.”
The Forest Service’s logo has been around since the agency’s inception in 1905 under then-chief forester Gifford Pinchot. It was a former Gifford Pinchot National Forest supervisor who was instrumental in marshaling the opposition to the shield logo’s removal.
Ted Stubblefield, who retired in 1999, said he was told about the shield logo’s impending demise two weeks ago “from an insider, a person at a fairly high level,” who asked not to be identified. Stubblefield spent the next day and a half verifying it, and then began getting the word out to the “Old Smokies.”
Almost immediately, the retiree group began receiving and forwarding letters from former employees from all levels of the service.
One retired 34-year employee sent sarcastic congratulations through the USDA’s online feedback forum, calling the new standards “egotistical bureaucratic tunnel vision” and “the best example of top-down, super-centralized, micro-managed piece of bureaucratic direction that it has been my disgust to read.”
Stubblefield said he and the “Old Smokies” began hearing from retirees “that had never commented on any issue prior to this. It really got to them. It’s pretty sad for politicians to not really look at the history of something before they decide to discard it.”
Golden, chairman of the “Old Smokies,” said the decision to merge the logos into one would also cost “millions of dollars” to replace the shield “on thousands of uniforms, thousands of vehicles and office buildings, every darn campground sign. And to do this in this day and age of budget issues?”

To the Department: being secretive about dumb ideas just makes things worse when people ultimately find out.

Federal Judge Tells USFS It Must Manage Snowmobile Travel on National Forests

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This is a guest post from regular commenter John Persell. -mk

Here’s the link to the Oregonian story: “Federal judge in Idaho agrees with skiers, says snowmobile excemption is arbitrary.”

The meat of the court’s decision is in the last several pages, but the intro provides good background on how travel management came about on public lands.

This is a very satisfying victory for many who have advocated for management of snowmobiles and motorized travel in general on national forests, and is the result of great work by Advocates for the West on behalf of the Winter Wildlands Alliance.  It is not clear yet whether the Forest Service will appeal to the 9th Circuit or comply with the 180-day timeframe ordered by the judge.

The judge’s straightforward decision highlights some truly head-scratching plain language twists the Forest Service attempted to use.  The case also raises questions as to why the current administration chooses to defend some of the previous administration’s actions (as here) but not others (the 2008 NFMA planning rule).

More Fires and Less Burned Snag Habitat: How Can Both Be True?

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Oregon_amo_2011239NASA photo

Certainly this story is about Colorado and neither Oregon nor South Dakota; still, it makes a person wonder.

Here’s the link and below is an excerpt.

If wildlife acres burned double in the next 50 years, how can birds that live in burnt trees be on a bad trajectory in terms of habitat? Could someone in the legal business explain the logic path.. facts found, conclusions drawn, how that relates to the ESA regulations to make the FWS go spend bucks (I wonder if they track how many?) to assess this situation when Interior can’t afford to plow the roads to Yellowstone Park?

The hotter, drier climate will transform Rocky Mountain forests, unleashing wider wildfires and insect attacks, federal scientists warn in a report for Congress and the White House.

The U.S. Forest Service scientists project that, by 2050, the area burned each year by increasingly severe wildfires will at least double, to around 20 million acres nationwide.

Some regions, including western Colorado, are expected to face up to a fivefold increase in acres burned if climate change continues on the current trajectory.

Floods, droughts and heat waves, driven by changing weather patterns, also are expected to spur bug infestations of the sort seen across 4 million acres of Colorado pine forests.

“We’re going to have to figure out some more effective and efficient ways for adapting rather than just pouring more and more resources and money at it,” Forest Service climate change advisor Dave Cleaves said.

“We’re going to have to have a lot more partnerships with states and communities to look at fires and forest health problems.”

The Forest Service scientists this week attended a “National Adaptation” forum in Denver, where experts explored responses to climate change. They’ve synthesized 25 years of federal climate science as part of the National Climate Assessment — now being finalized for the president and Congress — as the basis for navigating changes.

Degradation of city watersheds is anticipated along with diminished cleansing capacity of forests. Forests today absorb an estimated 13 percent of U.S. carbon pollution.

New data shows bug attacks are already broadening. In Colorado, insects target trees at higher elevations, such as white-bark pines found in wilderness areas, said David Peterson, a Forest Service research biologist who co-wrote the 265-page report.

This was also interesting..

Some Western governors took the climate change warning as confirmation of current trends and called for federal help creating new forest projects industries.

Fires and insect attacks “are only going to get even worse,” Montana Gov. Steve Bullock said Wednesday. “We need a real federal commitment to managing our forests in a way that will prepare and protect our communities, protect and enhance wildlife habitat and protect our water for drinking, irrigation and fishing.”