Mr. Lauridsen may be the only internationally recognized composer who worked on a hotshot crew and as a fire lookout for the Forest Service.
A native of the Pacific Northwest, Lauridsen worked as a Forest Service firefighter and lookout (on an isolated tower near Mt. St. Helens) before traveling south to study composition at the University of Southern California with Ingolf Dahl, Halsey Stevens, Robert Linn, and Harold Owen [4] He began teaching at USC in 1967 and has been on their faculty ever since. (Wikipedia here)
I believe I read somewhere that his father was also a Forest Service employee.
Referring to Lauridsen’s sacred music, the musicologist and conductor Nick Strimple said he was “the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic, (whose) probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered ..
It was in the process of making the documentary, which premiered in 2012, that Stillwater discovered the roots of Lauridsen’s inspiration: solitude, being in nature, silence. “It is out of that deep, peaceful beauty of nature where he lives part of his life, that this gorgeous music is heard inside of his being and then comes out,” the filmmaker said.
“I believe that anyone who has some relationship to nature, and the beauty of nature, the silence of nature — who has some relationship to music more in the classical style — will discover a new musical friend, companion and treasure in meeting Lauridsen’s music. It’s a wonderful discovery to make for somebody who doesn’t know anything about him.”
Here is a video of Lauridsen talking about his hotshot and fire lookout experience.
Sometimes I think I can hear the Pacific Northwest, wet dripping from Douglas fir, gray skies, in his music.. my favorites are available on Youtube:
This is just a reminder that some of our forests are healthy, and need no management. This view from the Pass Creek area of the Salmon-Challis National Forest shows an idyllic scene that might be similar to the land of 400 years ago. This land is full of the kinds of wildlife people want to see returned to our National Forests. While I was there on assignment, I met a guy who wandered this rugged terrain, recording wildlife sightings. This thin and wiry guy was amazing in how he could gain and lose thousands feet of elevation, day after day.
Thanks to the Pinchot Institute for sending this…Char is going to feature it in his column this week and that will be reposted here when available.
Earlier this month Tom Tidwell delivered the 2013 Pinchot Distinguished Lecture in Washington, DC. His speech was titled, “Sustaining Forests in the Time of Climate Change,” and was followed by an extended Q&A moderated by Char Miller and Al Sample. Some video highlights, including the Chief calling for reauthorization of stewardship contracting and speaking on the importance of urban forests, green infrastructure, and international programs are available on our website: http://www.pinchot.org/events/432.
The Pinchot Institute also forwarded this transcript of the talk.
Thanks again to the Pinchot Institute and Happy 50th Birthday!
I just watched the first clip, and I think it sets a foundation for the management of the future. So that’s why I think it’s important to discuss.
I agree that the past is not the future and that should change the way we think about everything. That’s what our Wise Forest Supervisor The Professor said that we should have a campfire, sit around, and discuss what it really means to all that we know if we can’t go by what we learned in the past; not the practitioners and not the scientists.
The Chief says we need to “restore” function and processes. But we wouldn’t need to restore them if they were fine now. But if they’re not resilient now, then we are assuming that they were appropriately resilient in the past. But then this climate change is “unprecedented” so it is just a random coincidence that they were resilient before? My point is that I think the word “restore” in unnecessarily confusing.
Why can’t we say:
We don’t know what’s going to happen
We will never have the bucks to manage everything
We will need to pick and choose which processes and functions and species are most important to us
We will have to weigh that against the costs and the likelihood of success of interventions
The most important thing is to protect the basics.. air, water, and soil and we may have to deal with vegetation and wildlife and fish that are not our preferred species.
But it is our task, as Forest Service employees to be absolutely clear and transparent to the public about what we plan to do, or not do, and what we believe the impacts will be to them and to the environment.
It’s not “restoration” at all, except that we are going to try to bring the good things from the past into the future. It’s joining together to figure out what’s important to us, as the climate changes, and see if we can work together to keep those things.
Comments on this, or any other part of the video or transcript, are appreciated. I’d like to hear from some of you seldom-heard-from folks if you feel so inclined…
Next month, a federal court judge will try to put a value on something that’s somewhat priceless: trees stolen from the Olympic National Forest.
The trees in question include old-growth fir, six feet across, that laid down roots before the Revolutionary War; they include intricately patterned maple destined to become high-end musical instruments; they include cedar for shingle or shake.
All of them, the U.S. Attorney’s Office says, were stolen by Reid Johnston, the son of a prominent family that had laid its own roots alongside those same trees on the Olympic Peninsula decades ago. Johnston was sentenced in December to one year in federal prison in one of the largest timber-theft prosecutions in Washington history, involving more than 100 trees. He faces another hearing March 7 to determine the amount of restitution he’ll pay — that is, the value of his haul.
“The fact is, you can’t replace with a dollar amount a 300-year-old Douglas fir tree,” said Matthew Diggs, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case. “It’s like taking an antiquity.”
Experts at the hearing will certainly try, offering estimates of the trees’ worth based on their economic value in the market as well as the ecological cost of their removal. Some of the trees were located in an area designated as marbled murrelet critical habitat.
Despite his guilty plea, Johnston maintains he was wrongly accused — that the trees were on his parents’ property, not in the national forest. (Official land surveys prove otherwise, prosecutors say.) But even he concedes that theft of trees is rampant in Washington, where thousands of dollars can be earned in less than an hour’s work.
“That’s never going to change,” he said. “There’s plenty of wood in the national forest and places they can steal.”
State and federal authorities agree the theft of natural resources, from leafy salal to massive timber, is a growing problem.
“Theft and damage to forest products have reached near epidemic proportions on public lands,” Diggs wrote in court documents.
U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Anne Minden, who is stationed in Washington, said it’s impossible to say for sure how much is stolen.
“It’s an incalculable value, but we do what we can do calculate it,” she said. “They’re somewhat priceless.” The Associated Press in 2003 pegged timber theft as a $1 billion-a-year problem.
From E&E News.. Here is a link and below is an excerpt.
For example, Washington state’s Department of Natural Resources over the past decade harvested an average of 566 million board feet per year on roughly 2.2 million acres of state forests, generating about $168.6 million annually, or more than $300 for every thousand board feet, according to Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council.
But on the 9.3 million acres of federal forests in Washington, 129.2 million board feet was harvested in 2010, earning $651,000, or $5 per thousand board-feet, Partin said.
The discrepancy is due in part to the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, which lengthen project reviews on federal lands and subject many of them to lawsuits, Partin said. In addition, higher slash disposal and road maintenance costs on Forest Service lands bring less money back to government, he said.
“There are opportunities to do a better job of managing our national forests,” he said.
Some have proposed increasing harvests by lifting NEPA, the 1969 law that requires full disclosure by agencies of the environmental impacts of federally authorized or funded projects.
For example, Oregon lawmakers last year proposed placing roughly 1.5 million acres of the state’s federal forests in a timber trust where NEPA would be replaced by state law. Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) last Congress proposed phasing out Secure Rural Schools by requiring the Forest Service to meet revenue targets through timber harvests that would be exempt from NEPA.
But while Bishop’s subcommittee has pledged to shine a spotlight on NEPA this Congress, environmentalists have argued the law is critical to ensuring that the public has a say in how its lands are managed (E&E Daily, Jan. 16).
Most environmental groups support thinning projects that avoid old growth, reduce the severity of wildfires and gird forests against pests. But few groups have endorsed clearcuts, which are common on state forests and help account for the greater harvest levels.
There is a hearing tomorrow at 10. Here’s the link. Can’t tell if it’s televised..
So here’s my take. When the Forest Service had the Gridlock Reduction effort, I worked in NEPA in DC. My boss, Fred Norbury, used to say “how can we say it takes too long and costs too much, when we don’t know how long it takes or how much it costs?”. The FS has been tracking how long it takes, since, I believe, but not how much it costs, neither NEPA work nor appeals. And for some reason, despite the Administration’s desire for transparency in government, we seem unable to find out how much litigation is costing. I’m just pointing out that we could have a more meaningful conversation about costs, if the Forest Service, OGC and DOJ would keep track of them and tell the citizens and their elected officials. In my opinion.
Note: you can click on the below photo to get closer to the ground.
Here is the stored webcast. I found the idea that our neighbor to the North has some interesting ideas and experiences that we could learn from was quite interesting. The discussion afterwards was also very stimulating.. and the ideas thrown around about possible application to our US federal lands.
Thanks much to the folks at Oregon State University for thinking to webcast and store the webcast for all of us out here around the country who are interested!
Here is the website of the British Columbia Community Forestry Association.
I’m hoping that viewing the video will start some discussion.
Here is what struck me.
The simplicity of thinking it’s a good thing to have local jobs. There wasn’t a thought that if trees are going to be removed from the woods, that people from other countries or areas of Canada could be imported to do the task more cheaply and that cheapness to do the action is the most important criterion. Taking each community as it exists, its own proclivities and needs, and working with that to make use of local resources for the benefit of the community who lives there. It seems so simple and fundamental. And it’s still federal land.
I was only mildly surprised when they mentioned that many more women were involved in the community forestry movement than the rest of the forestry enterprise. Thanks to the difficulty getting free scholarly papers, I was unable to do a complete read of some papers, but it appears that in the literature, women are sometimes shown to prefer a more collaborative style of problem solving. I think that there is an excellent opportunity for further study by some graduate student (s) at UBC or elsewhere.
I also thought it was interesting that District Ranger at Sweet Home, Cindy Glick, talked knowledgeably about the poverty in her community, and also seemed to look on the life of the community, and its relation with the forest, as a whole. She seemed like the kind of Ranger I would want to have around.
But that’s just my take. Please watch the video yourself and tell us what you think.
For many years, I carpooled in DC with a person who worked a lot in fire. We had more than our share of conversations about air tankers…this was about 10-20 years ago. It seems like there’s always something going on with them. A good business to get into for young people who want to follow the same issue for a long time.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting that Senator Udall was complaining about Forest Service “red tape” in this article, when the delay seems to have been caused by appeals of contracting procedures. But there is an emergency clause, that Udall seems to be thinking should be invoked. I like the idea of agencies being able to cut through “red tape” of all kinds; but perhaps different mechanisms could be invoked for different kinds of “red tape” or procedural processes..
Here is a post by Bob Berwyn and below is an excerpt:
Udall, who serves on the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is urgin private contractors to respect the U.S. Forest Service’s upcoming decision to award contracts to several U.S. companies to supply next-generation air tankers.
More information on the air tanker contract issue is online at Wildfire Today and Fire Aviation, where a recent post indicates the Forest Service expects to finalize contracts in the next couple of months.
Protests and challenges of past contract awards have already delayed the Forest Service’s acquisition of seven next-generation air tankers. Additional protests could leave Colorado and the West without adequate tanker resources for the 2013 wildfire season, Udall said.
Federal contracting rules allow private companies not awarded government contracts to protest contracting decisions without penalty. Previous protests by unsuccessful bidders have already delayed the delivery of the next-generation air tankers by at least eight months. Federal agencies, however, are allowed to override a protest in cases where there are urgent and compelling circumstances.
“Air tankers are critical firefighting resources that can save lives and prevent small blazes from becoming catastrophic wildfires,” Udall said. “When I met with Northern Colorado firefighting and emergency-management officials this week, they all agreed that we need to ensure that Colorado and the Forest Service have the resources they need to fight fires now. If contractors continue to challenge agency decisions, I will urge the Forest Service to use its emergency authorities to override the challenges and finalize the tanker contracts as soon as possible. Colorado cannot wait.”
Earlier this week I gave a 60-minute talk to a meeting of the Alsea Watershed Council, my “home group,” where I have been giving presentations every few years since they first formed in the 1980s. The audience was a little smaller than usual, but all of the old-timers were there and Elmer Ostling’s wife had baked delicious cinnamon rolls for everyone.
The theme of my talk was to discuss scientific and political “transparency” in this age of Internet communications – and to use the recently completed website report, Oregon Websites and Watershed Project’s (ORWW) “Coquelle Trails,” as a model and framework for the discussion. The Coquelle Trails project covered more than 1,400,000-acres in southwest Oregon, including sizable portions of BLM and USFS lands and hundreds of thousands of acres of marbled murrelet, spotted owl, coho, California condor, wolf, and elk habitat. PowerPoint and PDF versions of the presentation have been put online here:
The discussion was arranged in four parts: 1) a proposed definition of “scientific and political transparency” — at least as it should apply to taxpayer-funded research — for the 21st century; 2) a demonstration of how inexpensive and easy it is to produce baseline data in modern digital formats, by using the Coquelle Trails’ predictive map construction and field verification methodology as an illustration; 3) a brief overview of how the Coquelle Trails’ historical datasets and current findings were formatted for Internet access by using the same standards developed by ORWW with Siletz School 2nd-Grade students 15 years ago; and 4) basic conclusions regarding current opportunities and needs to create better trust and transparency between federal land management agencies and local communities via enhanced research methods and internet communications.
After a brief introduction and background regarding the focus of my talk and the reference materials we would be using, we began with the proposed definition for “Scientific (& Political) Transparency: 2013,” which was also outlined in four parts:
1. Plain English
Acronyms + Jargon + Latin + Metrics x Statistics = Total Obfuscation
Doug Fir vs. Doug-fir vs. PsMe
TMDL vs. turbidity vs. muddy water
2. Research Methodology
A. All taxpayer-funded work is documented.
B. All documentation is made readily available via public websites.
C. Most work is subject to Independent Peer Review.
D. All peer reviews and resulting discussions are made publicly available.
3. Direct Access to all taxpayer-funded research, meetings, reports, correspondence, political decisions, etc.
4. Stable, well-designed (dependable, comprehensive & “easy to use”) Websites: ORWW Coquelle Trails as a model.
The opening discussion of Plain English was illustrated with a philosophical approach as to how Latin had been used to create distance between the Messengers of God and the illiterate masses in the Middle Ages, and how that process was still being used today – via government acronyms, professional jargon, metrics, and obscure statistics (and Latin) – to create distance between government agencies and the public; between the agencies themselves; and even between different generations of scientists within the same disciplines.
I used personal examples of the “evolution” of Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga taxifolia) to Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) to PsMe (“Piz-Me”) in the agencies and classrooms during the past 60 years – while everyone in town and at the sawmills continued to call it “Doug Fir.” The similar history of TMDL – and why that acronym is not a good fit to discuss with current grade school and high school students – was another example. Same with metrics: the USFS and BLM are US agencies. Our standard of measure, used by all taxpayers, is the English system (chains, links, feet, miles, and acres) — why then do agency personnel try and talk and write in terms of hectares and kilometers in official reports and public presentations (rhetorical question)?
The second part of the discussion involved a series of slides showing how traditional archival research methods and modern technology were used during the Coquelle Trails project to achieve desired results. This was, essentially, a summary of the methodology as described and illustrated by the online report:
Part three of the discussion used a series of slides showing how ORWW has continued to use the same methods and formats developed with Siletz 2nd-Graders in 1998 to present Coquelle Trails research datasets, findings, and conclusions to the present day:
The point was made – pointedly – that government websites to the present time continue to be far less stable, far less comprehensive, and much more difficult to navigate than methods developed by grade-schoolers during the past century – during the very infancy of the Internet. Also, that the more accessible and reliable design was developed and has been expanded and maintained by a tiny non-profit in Philomath, Oregon, entirely funded by local residents, businesses, and organizations – and no federal dollars. And that those works have been continuously available and online for more than 16 years (compare to the life of an average government link or URL).
Which brought us to the Conclusions, also listed in four parts:
Conclusions: How Transparency Saves Money& Improves Decision Making
1. The 1976 Paperwork Reduction Act and the 2010 Plain Writing Act already require the use of Plain English by federal agencies. These actssimply need to be enforced.
2. Modern technology makes automated scanning of documents and GPS-referenced digital photography increasingly cheap and easy. Citizens should insist on such documentation and direct access to all taxpayer-funded research, meetings, etc., affecting local regulations.
3. High-speed Internet communications and the recent proliferation ofipads and smart phones has made universal access to technical information possible, with few limitations to time and location.
4. Increased access to better information is believed to result in improved research, discussion, and decision-making. Stable, well-designed websites make such access possible for almost all citizens, including: students, teachers, scientists, politicians and public resource managers.
So that was my presentation. I would be very interested in other thoughts on this. I think the current lack of transparency in government and in science (and maybe particularly in government-funded science) is doing a great disservice to taxpaying citizens, our voters, and our students and teachers, all of whom deserve clear and complete answers to their questions and requests.
Modern technology and Internet communications have made sharing information more possible, cheaper, and easier than at any other time in history – so why does the government (and its scientists) continue to hide behind secret meetings, foreign languages and measurements, unavailable “findings,” clunky and outdated communications, never-ending acronyms, and other forms of deliberate obfuscation? That’s a rhetorical question with lots of answers, but the bottom line is that there is really no excuse for allowing this type of behavior to continue. It’s way too expensive, totally unnecessary, probably unethical, and counterproductive to most legitimate workings of government and of science. In my opinion. I’m interested in the thoughts of others.
I left Oregon in 1988.. about 25 years ago.. and some of the concerns and the folks were the same, but it sounds like folks like Wyden who have been involved for this whole period of time, are ready for something different. And perhaps more importantly, the folks like Wyden, who want something different, are in positions to help make it happen, and can’t be dismissed in a hail of partisanising rhetoric.
“The cut level in southwestern Oregon has been, in my view, unacceptable,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told the Medford Rogue Rotary Club Friday. “You can be very sure that I will be pushing hard through hearings as chairman of this committee to turn that around.”
Wyden’s comments came after being told that Rough and Ready Lumber Co. in Cave Junction had been forced to close for a week and lay off its workers because of a lack of logs.
In an interview with the Mail Tribune following his talk, Wyden said he did not have a specific figure in mind but felt the harvest level was too low for the economy and the environment.
Much of the local federal forestland is unnaturally overstocked, creating a situation ripe for wildfire and disease, he noted.
He also expressed concern that sequestration — mandatory federal budget cuts — would result in more harvest reduction because of cuts to the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The cuts would go into effect March 1 unless Congress and the Obama administration can settle their financial differences.
“Let’s just say it (the timber harvest) is way short of what the pledged target has been,” he said. “They are a long, long way from the pledged target, and that is what we have to change.”
Wyden said finding a way to break the impasse over logging is critical to the survival of rural Oregon communities.
“There is a common thread among all these communities,” he stressed. “They want good paying jobs. They want to protect their treasure. And they want to make sure they don’t become ghost towns.”
In answer to a question from the audience, Wyden indicated he would reach out to all sides in the debate over how much federal timberland should be harvested. That includes Gov. John Kitzhaber’s forest task force, he noted.
“We all are trying to find common ground between timber folks and environmental folks — that’s really the coin of the realm,” he said.
He observed it can be done, noting he was able to create a bill for the east side of the Cascades after working with diverse factions. “Trust is the key,” he said.
and
“My top priority as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is to find that sweet spot where we can come as close to possible to having it all,” he said. “Let’s make sure we wring every bit of this American advantage out for our country.”
He also noted that Oregon is in a position to take advantage of renewable energy, including hydropower, geothermal power and biomass power.
“Overstocked stands are magnets for fire,” he said, noting material from thinned forests can produce biomass energy while reducing the threat of catastrophic fires.
“When we make our forests healthier with that kind of thinning work, we also have a healthier economy,” he said. “We have a chance then to do right by both our families and the environment.”
That should include salvaging trees killed by drought, disease or wildfire, he added later, in answer to a question from the audience.
