I ran across this interesting project from Facebook, where researchers have released many fishers of both sexes. Definitely worth checking out!
Letter to Sec Vilsack Questions Nez Perce-Clearwater Planning Process
The following letter was sent to Secretary Vilsack on February 28, 2013 by Friends of the Clearwater and eleven other conservation groups. To view a pdf copy of this letter, and to see the names of all the conservation groups that signed onto it, click here.
Dear Secretary Vilsack:
The undersigned represent non-profit conservation organizations that have been heavily involved in national forest issues, including forest planning. We are writing to express serious concerns with the way the revision of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests Plan(s) is taking place. As an early adopter of the new National Forest Management Act (NFMA) regulations, these two merging national forests will be a model for how Forest Plans are revised in the future.
Introduction
We request that you halt the current planning process, because it is being inappropriately fast-tracked; gives disproportionate voice to local special interests; does not properly incorporate public involvement; undercuts NEPA; and appears to purposely circumvent the just released and still draft directives for the new Planning Rule.
By way of background, these two national forests comprise about 4 million acres of some of the most remote and spectacular country in the lower 48 states. These forests are home to wolves, salmon, fisher, bull trout, wolverines and grizzlies (one was illegally shot in 2007 in the North Fork Clearwater Basin). All or portions of the Gospel Hump, Selway-Bitterroot, Hells Canyon (managed by the Wallowa-Whitman) and Frank Church-River of No Return Wildernesses are found in these national forests, as are the Lochsa and Selway Wild and Scenic Rivers.
There are several problems that we see with the Forest Plan revision as it is proceeding to date. They encompass agency capacity, public involvement, and compliance with our nation’s environmental laws. An additional concern that overlays the entire process is the apparent devolution of public land management and decision-making to local and/or private special interests. All citizens have equal footing to participate in the revisions of these Forest Plans, and the public involvement process must not be “frontloaded” to render NEPA a pro-forma exercise
Administrative Issues
The Forest Service lacks the capacity to produce high quality plans through this fast-track process. The agency is clearly over-extended, in part because of the combination of the two forests into the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests, which is being done mainly for funding reasons. This is effectively doubling the workload for agency staff, and revising these Forest Plans now will only exacerbate the problem. In addition, this process attempts to merge two existing, quite different, forest plans into one–a daunting task under the best of circumstances that will not be improved with a fast-track approach.
The concept behind Forest Plan revision is just that–a revision of an existing Plan. Yet the current process seems instead to be erasing all previous information and lessons learned to create an entirely new Plan. While the required Forest Plan monitoring on both of these national forests has not been up to par, it does provide information valuable to the Forest Plan revision effort. The Forest Service appears to believe otherwise, and failed to link years of prior monitoring and the need for Forest Plan revision in the initial round of meetings.
It is also unclear as to how the Forest Service intends to use the Analysis of the Management Situation (AMS) prepared for the earlier revision process. The public was told at the initial round of meetings the AMS was being revised in an ongoing effort. To proceed with public involvement and plan preparation when the revised “assessment” (the new term for AMS) has not been completed is to put the cart before the horse.
Funding Issues
In a meeting last year–attended some of us, which included both regional and national ecosystem planning staff–the Forest Supervisor stated there is adequate funding to revise these two Forest Plans on the fast track. This money is apparently being spent on a consultant revising the two Plans and University of Idaho facilitators. While we are not questioning the qualifications of these consultants–we are concerned about three issues.
First, the outsourcing of agency functions devolves national forest management and decision-making. Second, we seriously question whether this Forest Plan revision can be done cheaply and efficiently by outsourcing. Third, we question the agency’s funding priorities when it comes to fast-tracking the revision of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests Plans as these two national forests have serious funding problems for campgrounds and other important programs. Blaming congressional allocation for this apparent funding imbalance seems disingenuous given the agency’s remarkable flexibility in redistributing funds, due in large part to the Forest Service’s ever-changing and inscrutable accounting process.
Public Involvement
The public involvement process under the new NFMA regulations is very confusing. The Forest Service has sent mixed signals about the collaborative process, which has been portrayed by the agency as a pre-NEPA public involvement process.
Communication surrounding the planning process showed an inappropriate level of involvement by local special interests. Five initial public meetings were held on the revision of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest Plans: Four in Idaho and one in Montana. Aside from the serious omissions of the major populations centers of Missoula, Montana and Spokane, Washington–two areas where citizens recreate on the Clearwater National Forests in particular–the meetings that were held generated considerable concern among the public.
These initial meetings were hosted by the local county commissioners, sending the signal that the counties, which represent less than 1/10th of one percent of the American public, are running the show. The card sent out about the meetings came from the Forest Service, and yet the press releases came from the counties, creating the impression that local government entities are in charge of the forest plan revision. This is completely unacceptable–the federal agency in charge cannot simply step back and endow local special interests with the power to shape public policy with regard to federal lands.
The pre-NEPA planning process undercuts the critical role of NEPA. The PowerPoint presentation given at the meetings stated that the so-called collaborative process would, “Try to resolve issues before formal plan and NEPA.” Apparently, this is what is meant by the “pre-NEPA” work. The purpose of scoping under NEPA, however, is to identify issues. How can NEPA be anything more than a pro-forma exercise under this scenario where the “collaborative group” resolves issues before they are identified in scoping?
It is unreasonable to place Forest management and the time commitment it demands in the hands of self-selected volunteer citizen-advocates. The Forest Service apparently sees two unequal classes of citizens:(1) “stakeholders” who have had time to participate in the three-day summit and then subsequent working groups, whom the Forest Service refers to as “involved;” (2) those who participate fully in the only legitimate and legally required public involvement process via NEPA, are not considered involved, but merely “informed.”
Citizens engaged in the NEPA process have the right to expect that decisions will be made after an objective analysis of alternatives. Participation in a pre-NEPA collaborative could lead to insider decision-making or the implication that these participants’ ideas will get priority over input from the NEPA process itself
As reported in the press, the Forest Supervisor told the public that this revision effort would “get out ahead of” Washington DC, since the directives for implementing the new NFMA regulations have yet to be completed in final form. Frankly, it seems to us patently inappropriate for a Forest Supervisor to inveigh against the federal government, even mildly, in order to appeal to anti-government sentiment. This only underscores our concern that this process is driven by local, special interests.
Forest Plan Substance
In addition to the process for this Forest Plan revision, we would also like to address the substance of the Clearwater and Nez Perce National Forest Plans. Currently, these plans provide some accountability–with measurable, enforceable standards and required monitoring tied to on-the-ground projects. We are concerned that the new NFMA regulations, and the approach being taken here, will lessen accountability in terms enforceable standards and required monitoring.
Summary
In summary, the revision for the Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest Plans is taking the wrong track. With private and university consultants handling the process, and with counties taking the lead at the initial meetings, it appears national forest management is being devolved to private and special interests at the local scale. National forests were established precisely because there is an overriding national interest that is a counterweight to local, special interests.
We also would like a clear explanation of what the Forest Service believes is the difference between the normal NEPA public involvement process and the pre-NEPA collaborative process in the new rule.
Given the challenges facing the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests, we believe it is in the public interest to delay the revision until the directives have been issued in final form and it is clear the current planning rule will remain in effect. The Supervisor’s intention to “get out ahead” of the directives is improper. Alternatively, revising the two plans under the 1982 regulations could alleviate some of these concerns.
We look forward to your response.
Fanning the Smouldering Pile of Controversy… Last Year’s Fire Letter
From a story in E&E news titled:
Firefighters group optimistic U.S. will let more forests burn
An Oregon-based group that supports using fire to reduce fuel loads in national forests said today it hopes the Forest Service has abandoned a 2012 policy that made it difficult to use wildfires to improve forest health.
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said a letter last month from Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell indicates the agency has ditched an aggressive suppression strategy laid out last May by James Hubbard, the agency’s deputy chief of state and private forestry.
“Hubbard’s decree set Forest Service fire policy back 40 years to the days when all wildfires were attacked no matter what the risk to firefighters, the cost to taxpayers or the long-term damage to ecosystems from fighting those fires,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of FUSEE. “Tidwell should be commended for getting the agency back on track with science-based and economically rational fire management policy that is both safer and smarter for firefighters and the public they serve.”
While Tidwell last year told reporters that the Hubbard memo was not a change in policy, it sparked debate among environmental groups and forestry experts who warned it would stifle some beneficial fires that thin overstocked Western forests and allow certain tree species to regenerate.
Decades of wildfire suppression are widely blamed for the dense, fire-prone forests across the West today.
The Hubbard memo first surfaced in an Aug. 7 article in OnEarth magazine, which is published by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Ingalsbee said Tidwell’s new wildfire response protocol for 2013 directs line officers to allow some fires to burn for restorative purposes in areas where there are low threats. “Line officers desiring to use wildland fire as an essential ecological process and natural change agent must follow the seven standards for managing incident risk to the highest level of performance and accountability,” Tidwell wrote.
That’s a break from the Hubbard memo, which forced line officers to obtain approval from regional foresters before they let a fire burn for restoration, Ingalsbee said.
Ingalsbee said the Forest Service spent $1.3 billion fighting fires last year, which was $400 million more than was budgeted.
Now if the reason Hubbard issued the letter last year (which I read as “let’s be careful out there”) was because someone told him to be careful (OMB? The Dept.?) (or are we thinking he walked to work one day and said “hmm, I think we’ll require RF approval this year??”) And now we don’t have to be careful (did OMB or the Dept change its mind?) or no, they still have to be careful, but now they don’t have to ask the RF (calling the guy or gal on the phone, not particularly onerous). But perhaps being careful is not “science-based”?
Also it seems to me that if folks were more careful, then they would have spent less than they would have otherwise, which was the point, right?
This thing seems to be a tempest in a teapot (or a wildfire in a chiminea)? There must be something more that has started all the drama.. can anyone help fill in the blanks?
Tidwell Fire Season Letter the Chief’s letter.
Forest Service Wildland Fire Response Protocol the Response Protocol.
USFS budget cuts likely to affect fire, forest management- Missoulian Story
Thanks to Rob Chaney for delving into this mystery..
Here is the link and below is an excerpt.
On the forest management side, Vilsack’s letter predicted the closure of up to 670 campgrounds and other recreation sites and the “reduction” of 35 Forest Service law enforcement officers. It didn’t explain if those reductions meant people would be fired, furloughed or not hired.
Timber harvests would be cut about 15 percent in 2013, from 2.8 billion board feet to 2.379 billion. The agency also would “restore 390 fewer stream miles, 2,700 acres of lake habitat and improve 260,000 fewer acres of wildlife habitat.”
That sounds like the kind of work performed by Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Projects such as Montana’s Southwest Crown Collaborative. But Pyramid Mountain Lumber resource manager Gordy Sanders said he’d not heard of any change in the many CFLRP projects the Seeley Lake mill was involved in.
“We look forward to the Forest Service performing in developing projects, doing the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) work and doing the project just like always,” Sanders said. “We fully expect them to produce. They’re incredibly important piece of the overall supply for all these family-owned mills.”
Vilsack’s letter gave no indication of what this might do to Forest Service or other Agriculture Department workers.
By comparison, WildfireToday.com blogger Bill Gabbert posted a copy of a Feb. 22 letter from Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to Department of Interior employees stating “thousands of permanent employees will be furloughed … for periods of time up to 22 work days.”
The letter also stated “Many of our seasonal employees will be furloughed, have delayed starts, or face shortened employment periods. In some cases, we will not have the financial resources to hire seasonal employees at all.”
Salazar’s letter also warned of deep cuts to the department’s youth hiring this year. Montana Conservation Corps Director Jono McKinny said he was still waiting for details at a crucial time of the year.
“We have hired our crew leaders for the year, and we’re training them now,” McKinny said. “We will have 250 young people serving in AmeriCorps this summer, and another 240 serving in our summer youth programs. This is when we start negotiating projects, in March and April. If those projects aren’t there, we’re going to need to scale back dramatically. Those projects are two-thirds of our budget.”
Sharon’s take: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are two sets of highly paid folks (Interior and Agriculture) sitting in a cascading set of meetings, planning on dealing with sequestration on closely related work (e.g., fire crews) in potentially uncoordinated ways. One is more open, the other less so. It just doesn’t make any sense.
“Friends of Clearwater” not Friendly to Forest Service Planning Collaborative
Here’s an article I found but can’t get the rest without a subscription.. someone on our blog probably lives around there.. could you help and excerpt some of the rest of the article?
Friends of the Clearwater members continued to protest the collaborative process to develop a management plan for the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests during a Forest Service community meeting Monday, arguing it undermines the National Environmental Policy Act where public involvement should begin.
The combined forests were selected under a 2012 planning rule as one of eight early adopters in the nation, and since then a collaborative group has been formed by the Forest Service to provide recommendations for a new plan with work groups meeting monthly.
I have written to them to see if we can get their side of the story.
UPDATE from Matthew: I contacted Friends of the Clearwater and asked them for their letter to Secretary Vilsack, which JZ had requested in the comment thread to this post. The letter is available here: http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/secretary-vilsack.pdf.
FS Budget & Sequestration 101
To (sort of) understand the sequestration and its effects on the Forest Service, here’s a crash course in the Forest Service’s budget.
FS spending is divided into the following budget accounts (FY2013):
National Forest System ($1.63 billion): This money is used primarily to pay salaries & benefits for the 40,000 folks who do day-to-day national forest management.
Fire ($2.5 billion): About half is spent on having an infrastructure reading to fight fires and the other half on actually fighting the fires, with very large fires accounting for most of these costs. These proportions can vary greatly from one year to another.
Research ($0.3 billion): Studying how things tick.
Capital Improvement ($0.45 billion): Fixing built stuff.
State and Private Forestry ($0.26 billion): Cutting & burning worthless wood.
Permanent Appropriations ($0.65 billion): Payments to states (e.g., Secure Rural Schools) is the big ticket. Also where most of your recreation fee dollars are spent. A potpourri of other spending tidbits is lumped in here, too, e.g., salvage sale money laundering.
Land Acquisition ($0.08 billion): House R’s don’t want to buy any more federal land, so we don’t anymore.
Trust Funds ($0.08 billion): Green groups don’t want to cut any trees, so we don’t anymore, which has pretty much zeroed out K-V and other trust funds.
Take these numbers and subtract 5% and that gives you the FY2013 spending amount if the sequestration dollars stay sequestered to the end of the fiscal year. On a month-to-month basis, however, actual spending will reflect a 10% cut because federal agencies have been spending at the regular, un-sequestered rate since the beginning of the fiscal year (10/1/12). We’re halfway through the fiscal year, so agencies have to double their cuts to stay within the caps.
How the FS distributes the cuts WITHIN these budget accounts is anyone’s guess.
Forest Service Sequestration Update Attempt
There are a couple of E&E news stories today..this is a good time to give a shout out to our contributor that sends me stuff from E&E News.. it is a helpful and relevant news source, but many of us can’t afford our own subscriptions.
This one linked to this document. You can find the line item totals needing to be reduced.
Here’s one but it’s all about the rest of USDA, apparently because the Ag Committee asked..maybe House Natural Resources should do the same..
Several Agriculture Department officials, including Secretary Tom Vilsack, are scheduled to testify this week in front of House panels just days after across-the-board spending cuts went into place Friday.
Vilsack, who is set to appear tomorrow at a hearing of the House Agriculture Committee, likely will face questions on the so-called sequestration among a wide range of topics, from the farm bill to the drought to a recent proposal by USDA to define “rural.”
Tomorrow’s hearing will be the first formal opportunity committee members have had to question Vilsack about sequestration and how it will affect agricultural programs.
Vilsack was scheduled to testify before the Agriculture Committee at a hearing on the rural economy last week, but the hearing was postponed at the last minute when the committee’s chairman, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), got stuck in snowstorms in his home state.
Sequestration means a 10 to 12 percent cut for the rest of the year in the department’s programs, according to Vilsack, and the department plans to furlough meat and poultry inspectors and cut funding from conservation programs, among many other reductions. Agriculture Committee members have for weeks expressed concerns about the plans.
“I am concerned about your recent comments on how the sequester will impact the agricultural community,” Rep. Mike Conaway (Texas), a top Republican on the committee, wrote in a recent letter to Vilsack. “I understand that the sequester demands difficult across-the-board cuts within each program at the USDA, and I do not fault you for making tough decisions. However, our nation’s agricultural producers need you to manage these cuts in a way that protects them from as much harm as possible.”
The hearing also will likely touch on the farm bill, which House leaders failed to bring to the floor last year after the Agriculture Committee approved a version that would have cut $35 billion in direct spending. The bill was partially extended as part of the “fiscal cliff” legislation passed earlier this year, but the extension left several programs without funding, including the bill’s full suite of energy measures and key livestock disaster programs.
At recent public appearances, Vilsack has urged Congress to pass the five-year legislation. The lack of a bill, he says, is one of several risks the agricultural community is facing.
“Because we don’t have a farm bill, those livestock producers that were hurt so badly in 2012, those dairy producers, those poultry producers, were not afforded the opportunity to have the kind of disaster assistance that was in effect the year before,” Vilsack said at a recent Washington, D.C., speech to the agricultural industry, “and so they now face a financial risk that’s man-made.”
Climate change, continuing drought, and labor and trade barriers also threaten to upend the agricultural industry, he said in the same speech.
Here’s the problem the way the Denver Post editorial board saw it..
In my opinion, to reduce Washington Monument-ing and Chicken Little-hood, we would install committees composed of 1/4 and 1/4 of each party (people experienced with the budget from relevant committees) and 1/4 current employees and 1/4 recent retirees, to work with the agency on and to review the proposed cuts and suggest other ones. To work well, this is likely to require more flexibility as to where to take the cuts.
I’d also pick about 20 of the highest dollar dis-coordinated topics (done by more than one agency in a relatively uncoordinated way) say genomics research, and require all the agencies to get together and move toward a joint formal funding and coordinating mechanism, reducing the cross agency totals by 5%.
Rocky Barker: Good reasons why federal forests don’t pay like the state’s
Here’s the link and here’s an excerpt.
In the days when the Forest Service did try to emphasize making money from logging, it lost support across the West because it was clear-cutting.
No matter how many times the timber industry tried to put a good face on that accepted forest practice, the public just didn’t like looking at clear-cuts. Much of the federal forest timber program was shut down by litigation and lack of money for roads, along with water-quality problems and endangered species issues.
Otter noted that timber harvests on federal lands in Idaho are the lowest they have been since 1952. They are actually beginning to rise, however, in part due to the collaborative efforts of timber executives, environmentalists and others to identify timber that can be sold.
Private forests and state forests are, by definition, high-value forests. If they weren’t, the owners would have disposed of or traded them in years ago.
But the Forest Service doesn’t manage forests for a profit. You don’t hear the conservation groups that are supporting new mills and increased timber harvests and jobs complaining about timber sales that lose money.
That’s because they know the restoration value for wildlife and fish habitat that comes with timber sales are a part of the cost of managing forests for multiple uses.
Private and state forests are managed for maximum timber harvest. The recreation, habitat and other values that come from those lands are secondary. That’s why you can go to some state forests in Idaho and clearly see the difference between them and the federal forests next door.
It’s the state forests that are still being clear-cut.
Sharon’s take: It’s still not clear to me (so to speak) why clearcutting still comes up as an issue when the FS hasn’t done it in a while. Anyone who can help with this, especially from Idaho, please comment.
Wilderness Fires: Who’s For What???
I find that what people think, or don’t think, goes in wilderness, and why to be fascinating. If it’s trammeled you can act to untrammel, because that would be trammeling.. Oh, well.
Here’s a link and below is an excerpt.
These prescribed fires in wilderness areas wouldn’t have this
preparation. There are no plans to thin before the fires, Larkin said.
And firefighters would be using trails and natural features, such as
rock outcroppings, as fire breaks rather than scratching in fire lines.
While the Forest Service has used prescribed fire in wilderness
elsewhere around the country, this would be the first time it would be
done in Central Oregon.
The Cascade Lakes and Scott Mountain burns are planned for fall days
when temperatures are cooler than the prime fire season of summer but
forests are still dry enough to burn hot.
Along with helicopters, the plan says firefighters on the ground may use
flame-dripping torches to start the fires. The goal is to have high
severity fires, burning through the tops of the trees and killing many
of them. Firefighters would wait to start to the fires when the weather
forecast calls for impending snow or rain.
The fires would create a patchwork of burned and unburned woods, where
lightning-sparked blazes would not grow as large as they do now, said
Geoff Babb, a fire ecologist with the Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of
Land Management in Central Oregon.
Such a patchwork would mimic the forest seen in century-old,
black-and-white photos of the forests near Bend and Sisters. For much of
the 100 years since, the Forest Service and other agencies were quick to
snuff wildfires even in the wilderness, creating an overgrown forest
prone to big fires.
“I think if many of those were allowed to burn, they would have created
those patches that we are talking about,” Babb said.
Opposition
The Forest Service plans go against the intent of the Wilderness Act of
1964, which set aside lands to be left in their natural condition, said
Karen Coulter, director of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in
Fossil.
“We are strongly opposed,” she said.
She offered threes reasons for her opposition to prescribed fire in
wilderness:
* Prescribed burning is the type of human management not intended for
wilderness.
* Protecting communities and other assets outside of wilderness is best
done by treating the forests close to them, not the backcountry.
* The fires wouldn’t burn the same as natural, lightning-started fires.
“Prescribed burning in wilderness is de facto management of wilderness
and contradicts the intention of the Wilderness Act to set aside
untrammeled wild places for spiritual solace, recreation and wildlife,”
she said.
While he considers lightning fires to be a natural part of wilderness
forests, Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director of Wilderness Watch,
said he is skeptical about the idea of prescribed fires burning in
wilderness. Proescholdt lives in Minnesota but works for the
Montana-based nonprofit focused on wilderness conservation. His
criticisms of the idea were in line with Coulter’s.
“It basically is a form of manipulation of the wilderness ecosystem by
humans that we are not supposed to do under the Wilderness Act,”
Proescholdt said.
Forest Service’s reasons
The Forest Service plans are legal, said Larkin, the Bend-Fort Rock
ranger, and he contends they are in the spirit of the Wilderness Act.
Larkin offers three reasons for doing the prescribed fires in the
wilderness:
* Returning the forest to a state where fire can plan a natural role and
lightning fires may be allowed to burn.
* Keeping wildfires that start in the wilderness in the wilderness.
* Increasing the safety for firefighters who respond to wildfires.
Babb and Larkin both emphasized that the burning would be done in a
relatively small piece of wilderness at a time, at most a couple hundred
acres, and the intention is not to burn the entire section outlined in
the plan.
“This is really the start of a process that we envision taking 20 to 30
years to finish,” Larkin said.
Also, I wonder why some people would think it is OK in some places but not in others.. or maybe it’s just a function of who is watching what forests.
Here’s an interesting paper I found on the topic on wilderness.net:
Interpreting the Wilderness Act
Varying interpretations of the specific language of the Wilderness Act contributes to the philosophical
split over manager-ignited fire. The Forest Service often equates historic conditions with naturalness.
However, Ryan wonders what point in history was natural – the point in time when white people arrived
or the point in time when the area was designated as wilderness or some other point? Whether or not
human actions are natural or can be natural is also a major question, in light of the Act’s focus on
humans as visitors. This question is further complicated by the history of Native American burning in
many places.
While restoration of naturalness or natural conditions is often the stated goal of manger-ignited fires,
the Wilderness Act also re quires that wilderness be untrammeled. According to Worf untrammeled
means that “you don’t control it, you don’t net it. You let nature’s processes go wherever you can.”
There is clear agreement that past fire suppression represents trammeling of wilderness. According to
Arno a mixed-severity fire region is “absolutely incredible for biodiversity,” and taking it away is
trammeling, “a much greater trammeling than most other things you can do in wilderness.” Morton also
agrees that suppression of fire has been a form of trammeling.Nickas and Morton agree that manager-ignited fire also constitutes a trammeling. Morton claims that
they are trammeling to restore naturalness. Eckert calls this the “double trammel” and considers it the
crux of the issue. Do we trammel wilderness again to reduce the effects of previous trammeling? For
Morton “natural and untrammeled are 180 degrees apart,” meaning that they are in conflict with one
another regarding the issue of fire.Another trammel is required, in Morton’s view, to make wilderness
natural again.
Perhaps we need to hire more Forest Service philosophers to figure this out? We could get the “best available philosophy” ;)?
Was John Karpinski a Visionary?
When I recently posted a discussion about lodgepole pine ecology in this blog, Matthew seemed far more interested in the snippet of the September 3, 1994 Therese Novak newspaper article than in anything Bob Berwyn, the foresters and forest scientists, or I might have to say about the topic. I offered to send him the complete article, due to his interest, and will try and do so here, if I can learn to use links with these posts.
The attached article was also published in the September 3, 1994 Salem, Oregon Statesman-Journal, in conjunction with Novak’s article. “John” claims that only 1% of timber sales are litigated. This article sets a different course. Most timber sales aren’t even contemplated anymore because of the successful strategy described by Karpinski, above. Sometimes we quibble about word definitions in this blog. I would describe Karpinski’s threat as “obstructionist,” and remind everyone that lawyers on both sides of the table get paid, whether loggers or sawmill workers, or firefighters, or field foresters, or tree planters are paid or not. So it would also be “self-serving,” in that regard ($$).
Now if I can make a link in this thing, I’ll get the article to Matt:
http://www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachB/Presentations/2004-2009/20060221_SAF_Siskiyou/B&B_News_19940903c.jpg
http://www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachB/Presentations/2004-2009/20060221_SAF_Siskiyou/B&B_News_19940903e.jpg
http://www.ORWW.org/B&B_Complex/index.html