Wyden slams agency for ‘staggering’ reduction in timber program

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That’s the title of an Environment & Energy Daily article from today. Here’s a PDF:

Wyden slams agency for ‘staggering’ reduction in timber program

“The budget’s timber harvest goal is 2.38 billion board feet in 2014, down from a goal of 2.8 billion board feet in fiscal 2013 and down also from the 2.64 billion board feet that was actually harvested in 2012. The agency had previously set a goal of harvesting 3 billion board feet by 2014.”

The article notes that the agency’s budget request for fiscal 2014 is $4.9 billion, a figure I think is little changed from the past few years, but is less is real terms, as it does not keep up with inflation.

A companion article stated that Wyden “is concerned about proposals to place federal lands into private management.”

http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/wyden-splits-with-ore-delegation-over-putting-federal-lands-in-private-hands.pdf

“What is most likely to produce an increase in the harvests in a sustained way?” Wdyen asked. “Is it the collaborative approach, the way they’re doing in John Day [Ore.] … or is it more likely that the harvest will get up in a sustained way by in effect taking federal lands and putting them in private ownership? You know, there’s talk of a reserve or something of that nature. Which of those two approaches, in your view, is most likely to get the harvest up in a sustained way?”

John Day, where the last remaining mill is hanging by a thread.

Not private ownership, but federal lands managed by a trust via a board of directors. The O&C Trust, Conservation, and Jobs Act (discussion draft, Oct. 2012) states that:

 (2) actions on the O&C Trust lands shall be deemed to involve no Federal agency action or Federal discretionary involvement or control and the laws of the State shall apply to the surface estate of the O&C Trust lands in the manner applicable to privately owned timberlands in the State;

Thus, the Oregon Forest Practices Act would be in force. And:

“(b) TRUST PURPOSE.—The purpose of the O&C Trust is to produce annual maximum sustained revenues in perpetuity for O&C Trust counties by managing the timber resources on O&C Trust lands on a sustained-yield basis…”

More Tempests in err… Teapots

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This post is about this story in the Washington Times

I think this is worth talking about because there are risks to FS people saying things..even on their own “first-amendment protected” time. Still, I think it would be better for the public if more FS employees said more; both being unleashed by the Dept., and also using their own time. Yes, people will say embarrassing things but the ratio of embarrassing things to helpful perspectives is generally pretty low. And if there were a person who (at work) screwed up regularly, there are ways of dealing with that that we learned in management school. And if someone who is (on their own time) screwed up regularly, people might stop reading.

One thing is for sure, trying to control information in this day and age, is putting the genie back in the bottle.

You know, there is an old expression, to paraphrase “There but for the grace of Gaia go I”. We have all said things we regret. We all try to be more careful in public speaking and writing and on the internet because it can go anywhere and appears to live forever. It just heightens the importance of being “impeccable with your word.” But the very immediacy of the internet enables poor self-editing. Anyway, there is also an expression in my spiritual tradition about casting stones, and I am not without sin in this area, so I’m not going there.

Note: I think that the three questions in the column to the right on this blog are very helpful in self-editing.is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

Murkowski vs. Tidwell: Has the USFS lost it’s purpose?

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Now I know why Murkowski is representing Alaska. I only wish she were representing Oregon, too. Or the USFS, better.

These are the questions she addresses in 4 minutes and 20 seconds:

Has the Forest Service outlived its original purpose of Multiple Use?

Does it now belong with the Department of Interior?

Should half of the FS budget be for putting out fires?

Why are there so many employees but very little cutting of timber?

(Thanks to Ted Stubblefield for this analysis)

Forest Budgets, Recreation and the Need for a Recreation-Oriented Service First

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Not surprisingly, FS budgets are down, and there are impacts, including to recreation.

Here’s one from the White River. On a scale of 1 to 10, this is probably an 8 in terms of information..
This is from the Aspen Times here. I think it would be interesting to have this much information on each forest.

As funding stands now, the White River will lose “somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million” in funding compared with last year, Fitzwilliams said. The funding for 19 national forests is decided by the Rocky Mountain Region headquarters in Lakewood.

Some decisions still are being made in the regional office that could affect the White River’s final budget for 2013, Fitzwilliams said. For example, some of the funds budgeted for the forests in the region weren’t spent in 2012, so there is a chance some of that will carry over to the 2013 budget. In addition, national forests across the country took funds out of programs to contribute to fire-fighting efforts last summer. Some of those funds also may be replaced.

The White River National Forest’s budget varies drastically from year to year. It had a $28.57 million total budget in 2010 with a huge caveat. About $10.6 million of that, 37 percent, was allocated specifically for projects to deal with bark-beetle destruction. Last year’s budget was about $22 million, Fitzwilliams said.

this is not counting sequestration, and

The major portion of the funds raised at the Maroon Bells will remain intact. The funds there are collected and spent under a program separate from the general operating budget.

“That’s fee money and that’s pretty sacred,” Fitzwilliams said.

Congress passed legislation that allows the Forest Service to charge a fee at areas that meet certain criteria. Those funds must be spent in the area where they are collected.

The Forest Service has collected between $100,000 and $200,000 each summer from visitors to the Maroon Bells Recreation Area since the fee was started in 2000. The agency charges $10 per vehicle and 50 cents on each bus ticket. Travel for personal vehicles is limited, so the buses take tens of thousands of visitors to the popular Maroon Lake. Fitzwilliams called the fee a “lifesaver” in a 2011 interview.

This story is at the other end of the budget in terms of what campgrounds are closed and the impacts to the environment (people aren’t going to stop “using the facilities” just because there are no facilities..and to other recreation-providing entities.

Here’s the link and below is an excerpt:

Pecos business operators are livid that the U.S. Forest Service has closed a campground, locked day-use toilets and taken away trash cans from popular recreation sites in the Pecos Canyon.

A Santa Fe National Forest spokesman says the problem is lack of funds to maintain the recreation sites.

The impact on the Pecos sites may be only the beginning. According to an initial fiscal year 2013 budget memo for the Santa Fe National Forest, recreational funding is trending down. The agency’s recreational budget was cut by about 8 percent — $166,000 — from the 2012 budget. “Without adequate funding to support program areas, the forest must set priorities as to which sites will open, and conversely which will remain closed,” the memo states.

Pecos residents say the agency shouldn’t make the Pecos Canyon low priority on the recreation funding list.

The Pecos Business Association and the Upper Pecos Watershed Association sent a letter Monday to New Mexico’s Congressional and state lawmakers and Gov. Susana Martinez about the closed recreation sites. The letter says their members met in mid-March with Pecos/Las Vegas District Ranger Steve Romero, who told them funds in the recreation budget were “insufficient to maintain services at existing recreation areas and that ‘potential’ closure of eight day-use areas, four campgrounds and one trailhead is planned for the new fiscal year.”

But the toilets already are locked and trash cans are gone from free day-use areas at Upper and Lower Dalton, Windy Bridge, Cowles Ponds and the Winsor trailhead, according to Huie Ley, owner of the Tererro General Store in the canyon. The Cowles and Links Tract campgrounds also are closed.

Finally, our friends in Southern California think “if there’s no budget, give it to the Park Service!” as we’ve discussed before..

Hmm.. if it works for the Angeles, why not the San Bernardino? Here..

NATIONAL FORESTS: Park Service offers a hand in the Angeles

Federal officials are proposing that the National Park Service help the U.S. Forest Service manage the very busy Angeles National Forest, which encompasses most of the San Gabriel Mountains stretching from the Cajon Pass to Los Angeles.

“Under the proposal, the region essentially would remain national forest land managed by the cash-strapped Forest Service. But it would draw upon the National Park Service for additional law enforcement, signage, trail maintenance and services such as trash pickup,” according to a story in the Los Angeles Times by Louis Sahagun.

Interestingly, Sahagun’s story said that more than 95 percent of public comments on the plan supported the idea of creating a National Recreation Area spanning the entire area, including the national forest land.

The San Bernardino National Forest suffers many of the same pressures as the Angeles, from vandalism and other crime to air pollution to illegal shooting and off-roading. Would the National Park Service be able to solve those problems? It will be interesting to watch what happens in our neighboring forest

Well potentially the FS and Park Service could work together to share resources in this tough budget climate but some think.. story here.

The only way the two federal agencies can work together in the Angeles is through an obscure program called Service First Authority. The NPS said this is one way to move some NPS park rangers into the heavily used Angeles Forest areas such as the East and West Fork of the San Gabriel River.

But Chu criticized this management proposal. “That is an unknown,” she said. “I don’t know if that has ever been used on a project of this scale. Visitors need – and deserve – additional resources in the San Gabriel Mountains and Watershed, and I intend to do my part to ensure that happens. ”

She will be hosting townhall meetings to allow the public to ask questions of the NPS, as well as roundtables with stakeholder groups, she said. No dates have been set for the additional meetings.

It doesn’t seem like an “obscure authority” to me, having seen it work with BLM extremely well in southern Colorado. I wonder if that is the journalist’s opinion, or the representative’s opinion. I don’t blame any representatives for doing their best to bring bucks to their forest, but discounting Service First out of hand does not seem fair either.

It makes sense for agencies to work together.. I am especially reminded since yesterday was tax day. If I were the new Interior Secretary, I would reinvigorate Service First in a serious way with the Forest Service, because giving pieces to the Park Service so they get more bucks depending on political clout doesn’t seem like good public administration.

Of course, if I were the Secretary I would ask them to stop doing studies and figure something out that minimized the need for political intervention and take the study money and give it to Mesa Verde for some decent fencing.

Goose Project Update- No New Roads

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Matthew raised this question in a comment here..
I brought up the question of “how can it be potential wilderness if we can see roads everywhere?”

He said “why do you need more roads there, if you already have many roads?” Which I thought was worth asking..

So I asked the District…

Here is the answer:

The miles of road are for reconstruction (possibly replacing culverts, washouts, etc) and maintenance. There was only 1 mile of proposed new road and that was dropped after the decision and those stands were made into helicopter units. So, its just work on existing roads.

I don’t know about western Oregon, but in our country using helicopters instead of temporary roads would be considered “listening to people’s concerns.”

Webinars This Week

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In addition to the one on IRR tomorrow, previously posted here.

There is also a webinar on Wednesday 11-12:30 MT with the NFF and Montana Forest Restoration Committee. Here is the link.

Please join us in this peer learning session on leveraging resources. Listen in to learn how log values can help offset the costs of treatment on restoration projects. Topics will include stream restoration, weeds, road obliteration and harvesting. The goal of this webinar is to increase the understanding of project costs and offsets to improve the odds of a successful project.

The Fire Policy in Plain English- High Country News

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Another nice job by Marshall Swearingen..of the High Country News.. again, it sounds pretty commonsensical (to me), so I continue to wonder what all the brouhaha (discussed in previous posts as a “Wildfire in a Chiminea”) about fire policy was really about? I hope if a fire is close to me, people are managing it on some practical principles and not the conceptual “buddy system”. Just sayin’..

Thanks to Marshall, for taking the time to ask someone who knows and explaining it in ways that people can understand.
Here’s the link, and below is an excerpt. Any potential clarifications by people on the blog would be appreciated.

1) Was the fire human-caused?

If so, the Forest Service will work to immediately put it out. The agency doesn’t want to encourage folks to light fires willy-nilly, thinking they’re helping the forest. And there are legal liabilities associated with letting a human-caused fire burn. This includes any prescribed burns that jump their lines. Interestingly, the Park Service may allow human-ignited fires to burn because in some of the smaller park units, according to Sexton, “they feel that they have a deficit of fire on the landscape, and they want to take advantage of any start.”

2) Where is the fire?

Certain areas in forests, primarily in wilderness areas, are identified as places where natural fire can safely play a beneficial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. Fire helps check the spread of insects and disease, and some ecosystems, like ponderosa forest, are adapted to periodic low-intensity burns that clean out the understory. Each individual National Forest decides where fire could serve a restoration purpose, and those areas are identified in that forest’s management plan.

3) When is the fire?

Even if a fire is ignited by lighting in wilderness, it may be a candidate for suppression if it would burn habitat, such as a nesting area, that’s critical during a certain time of the year. Timing during the fire season also factors into other criteria, like risk: a fire started early in the fire season has a greater chance of speading and becoming a danger.

4) What do the locals think?

In 2012, the Forest Service changed its fire policies to emphasize pre-season planning with other agencies, local firefighters and landowners. The agency may have identified an area as being suitable for restoration fire, but if the owner of a private inholding is opposed, for example, that’s a significant factor in the agency’s decision.

5) What are the risks?

This includes danger to public safety and private property, plus risks to fire fighters. Challenging terrain, like steep, rocky slopes and dense forests, could make the fire difficult to manage if it grows.

6) What’s the long-term benefit?

This is basically a cumulative weighing of restoration benefits versus potential risks. If it looks like the fire could be allowed to run a natural course for the remainder of the fire season without getting out of hand, it’s a candidate for “let burn.” But if it looks like it could blow up and get expensive to fight, or move into areas that endanger safety or property, it may be put out.

7) What’s the plan?

Prior to 2009, the Forest Service would decide shortly after a fire started whether to suppress it or manage it for restoration, and the agency was expected to stick to its plan. Changes to federal fire policy in 2009 allow the agency more discretion throughout the whole process, meaning fire-line officials can change their minds as fire conditions change.

Even when the Forest Service is “letting it burn,” the term is a little misleading. “None of these fires are just ‘let burn,'” says Sexton. “Any time we make a decision to allow a wildfire help us achieve a restoration objective, that fire is carefully managed from ignition until it’s out.”

“Politicization” and the Forest Service: What Do We Mean?

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TR and GP
TR and GP

Relevant Maxims

Use the press first, last, and all the time if you want to reach the public. Get rid of the attitude of personal arrogance or pride of attainment or superior knowledge.

Don’t try any sly or foxy politics, because a forester is not a politician.

Ed raised this issue in our discussion of the Shield Snafu here, and it seems like a rich and important area. What do we mean when we say that? Traditionally, we were attached to the idea of having a career Chief.. yet if that would mean that all key decisions were kept from her/him (not saying that that is the case, I have no idea) because they are made by politicals, would that still be valuable? I don’t know.

So I thought I would expound on my opinion, and let others give their impressions. After all the Dept of the Interior has a new secretary, the USDA (will get) a new undersecretary.. perhaps one of their future staff folks will read this and consider it in deciding how to approach their work.

First, federal agencies are in the executive branch. So when one party wins, they get to have their buddies take the reins, and have primary seats on the policy advice team. They also get to reward people of varying talents, experience, and management capabilities with political jobs; often overseeing large organizations.

Let’s take a look at this article on the new Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell.

“When you think about this appointment, it’s the first time you have someone—a CEO—from our industry coming into the Department of the Interior,” Frank Hugelmeyer, OIA’s CEO, tells Quartz. “I actually find this curious, that this is a big surprise. When you look at Treasury secretaries, they’re often from the investment world. So we see this as completely appropriate and overdue.”

So if it’s OK to get CEOS (“appropriate and overdue!”) from industry for secretaries, do all industries count? Like the CEO of Monsanto for USDA Secretary? And did that work well for SEC? .. anyway, that’s a bit of an aside..

But you know, I don’t really think it’s about policy. I don’t. I don’t even care if they picked Salazar and Sherman to have an in with Colorado in the last election (pickin’ people for political purposes) as long as they’re good folks. I think it’s about how you work with the career folks and whether you treat them with respect (as fuzzy wuzzy as that is).

Like if your buddy is a neighbor to a timber sale, do you go through channels to ask questions? Do you assume your buddy is right and your employees are yo-ho’s? Do you make glaring press-covered mistakes about diversity and then flagellate others as your penance? Do you appear to spend scarce government funds on secret dumb ideas that don’t seem to have any practical role? Do you call some science folks going to a conference and tell them they can’t go because it’s a swing state during an election and could be targeted as wasteful?

I worked in DC during three administrations (close enough to observe a lot of behavior), so I have seen some things. You can read Jack Ward Thomas’s journal for some of the things he found annoying. Again, my hypothesis is that it’s not what politicals believe so much, as the actions they do to carry out their policies and how they treat career employees in general (not just their buddies). Like trusting them to do their communications job, and just jumping on specific ones when they screw up. In a large organization, people will always screw up..so keeping them from doing their job is not really a solution. At least I didn’t learn that in any management course I took.

I remember a new Undersecretary coming in once, and I attended a meeting where he was talking to alumni of our mutual school. He gave me the impression that he thought of the FS as a bunch of dinosaurs who would staunchly resist all inklings of Goodness and Light. At the time, I remember looking up a quote, something about “if you want to change people, first you have to love them” but I can’t find it now. Maybe that’s a bit strong. Or as I used to say about Ronald Reagan “if he really believes that federal employees are so useless, why does he want to be out boss?”

Anyway, what does “politicization” of the FS mean to you, good or bad? You are welcome to share your experiences.

Forest Service Gets to Keep Pine Tree Logo, But Controversy Points to Larger Problem: By Char Miller

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forest-service-usda-logosI, too, think there’s something creepy about the way this was handled (as well as other actions of the USDA vis a vis FS employees and citizens).

Here’s a link and below is an excerpt.

Yet so reluctant was USDA leadership to admit defeat at the hands of the Old Smokeys — the thousands of Forest Service retirees who wrote impassioned emails and letters to the secretary and his minions challenging the department’s action; so cornered were they by the onslaught of negative public opinion, that they would not allow Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell to make the announcement directly to his 30,000 employees and would not identify a particular person with the 13 words exempting the agency from the rebranding effort.

How apt that the department set its notice in the passive voice. By doing so it took no responsibility for its actions, an adept evasion that Czarist Russia’s faceless bureaucrats routinely practiced and which Fyodor Dostoyevsky took such dark pleasure in pillorying.
Although there is no crime in being thoughtless (or evasive), the punishment in this case was meted out by those who once had worked within the system and now fought against its mindlessness. All credit for preserving the pine-tree logo goes to the agency retirees, the large number of FSx who remain committed to resolving some of the vital challenges confronting the 193 million acres of national forests their former employer stewards.

As I wrote in my column last week, they swiftly responded to what they interpreted as an attack on the Forest Service’s legacy, and on the honorable work and years of devoted service that they had given to the agency, the Department of Agriculture, and by extension the American public.
By leaping into the fray, they turned back Secretary Vilsack’s ill-conceived and ill-considered rebranding campaign. Their quick reactions also testify to the inescapable value of an engaged citizenry to a democratic society.

Smokeys..arise! You have nothing to lose but your non-confrontational style and cultural disinclination for conflict!

Planetary Boundaries as Millenarian Prophesies and Midwest Thunderstorms

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Steve-Rayner-large-300x300

A couple of interesting items from Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog..

First he posted this guest post by Steven Rayner.

Planetary Boundaries as Millenarian Prophesies: A Guest Post by Steve Rayner

This is a guest post by Steve Rayner, Oxford University, and is distilled from a forthcoming book chapter that Steve has co-authored with Clare Heyward, also of Oxford University. The full citation is (and please see the original for the broader argument and references):

S. Rayner and C. Heyward, 2013 (in press). The Inevitability of Nature as a Rhetorical Resource, Chapter 14 in Kerstin Hastrup (editor), Anthropology and Nature (Routledge, London

You gotta think that a chapter entitled “the inevitability of nature as a rhetorical resource” will be of interest to us.

Check out the guest post here.
Below is an excerpt.

…..

The rhetoric employed in the plenary sessions was especially striking in its efforts to establish the present as a uniquely defining moment for the future of humanity requiring urgent action on a global scale which seems slow in coming. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom declared that, “We have never faced a challenge this big.” Johan Rockström drove home the point claiming that “We are the first generation to know we are truly putting the future of civilization at risk.” Apparently, those who lived through the Second World War or the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation in the 1960s were deluded in their estimation of the challenge they faced or the consequences for civilization, to say nothing of Old Testament prophets who only had the authority of God that destruction was imminent if people did not mend their wicked ways. Lest there be any doubt that behavioural change was the goal, Dutch political scientist Frank Biermann spelled out the imperative that “The Anthropocene requires new thinking” and “The Anthropocene requires new lifestyles.”
,,,,,,

At first sight, the contemporary resurgence in catastrophist thinking might be understood as a response to improvements in our understanding of critical earth systems resulting from research-led improvements in scientific understanding. However, I have not been able to identify any new empirical studies to justify the claim that, “Although Earth’s complex systems sometimes respond smoothly to changing pressures, it seems that this will prove to be the exception rather than the rule.” (Rockström et al 2009:472). Leading ecologists have long suggested that the general assertions of systems theorists that “everything is connected to everything else” and “you can’t change just one thing” are actually less robust than is often claimed. It seems that most species in many ecosystems are actually quite redundant and can be removed without any loss of overall ecosystems character or function (e.g., Lawton 1991, but for a contrasting view, see Gitay et al 1996). While it is doubtless the case that there are many non-linear relationships in natural systems, it is another matter as to whether non-linearity dominates and whether we should, as a matter of course, expect to find tipping points everywhere. Indeed, a recent review challenges Rockström et al.’s claims, arguing that out of the planetary boundaries posited, only three genuinely represent truly global biophysical thresholds, the passing of which could be expected to result in non-linear changes (Blomqvist et al, 2012).

The same report also challenges the idea that the planetary boundaries constitute “non-negotiable thresholds”. The identification of the planetary boundaries is dependent on the normative assumptions made, for example, concerning the value of biodiversity and the desirability of the Holocene. Rather than non-negotiables, humanity faces a system of trade-offs – not only economic, but moral and aesthetic as well. Deciding how to balance these trade-offs is a matter of political contestation (Blomqvist et al, 2012:37). What counts as “unacceptable environmental change” is not a matter of scientific fact, but involves judgments concerning the value of the things to be affected by the potential changes. The framing of planetary boundaries as being scientifically derived non-negotiable limits, obscures the inherent normativity of deciding how to react to environmental change. Presenting human values as facts of nature is an effective political strategy to shut down debate.

I particularly liked the last line…

then there is a detailed discussion of Munich Re’s paper on thunderstorm.. here.

My favorite line is also the last..

Misleading public claims. An over-hyped press release. A paper which neglects to include materially relevant and contradictory information central to its core argument. All in all, just a normal day in climate science!

I’ll go post something on the blog that it’s not just climate science..I suspect it’s really all sciences. Something about a culture of competition where press releases run amok. But even broader than science, as Ron C. says in comment #10

The same behavior occurs in the world of advertising, where it has been seen that:
“The Large print giveth,
The Small print taketh away.”