Thanks to Bob Zybach for finding this from the Bloomberg BNA Daily Environment Report.
The linked article is reproduced with permission from Daily Environment Report, 203 DEN B-1 (Oct. 22, 2012). Copyright 2012 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033)
The Chief also spoke of some of these efforts at the Chief’s Breakfast at the SAF Convention.
Currently, prices for lumber are down, a consequence of depressed housing markets. Weak markets complicate efforts to plan cost-effective timber sales.
Tidwell said the lumber market problems and the shortage of profitable markets for woody debris have led the Forest Service into increased joint efforts with the forest products industry to develop biomass energy markets and cellulose product markets.
Those efforts are needed to help logging companies and sawmills survive, because they can take care of
much of the work within the concept of forest restoration, he said. ‘‘It’s just essential that we continue to have the people who can go out and do the work in the woods,’’ Tidwell said.
It’s interesting that Tidwell is quoted about people working in the woods, just as that has become a topic of interest on our blog. Maybe some funding for studies will follow?
Another note: at the SAF Convention, I heard much about “restoration”, which I think is not a particularly clear concept (other than for specific purposes, such as longleaf restoration). I have made peace with hearing this by just substituting “improving resilience” in my mind whenever I hear it.It worked for me.. although the unnecessary term “resiliency” also kept cropping up.
It may not seem as compelling to budgeteers (in Congress and at OMB), but it is clearer in the context of climate change..even to budgeteers it can’t make much sense to 1) claim that climate change is unprecedented and 2) ask for much in the way of bucks to make things on the land the same as they used to be.
Ah.. perhaps the solution to the mystery, as so often, has something to do with politics.. Here’s a link to the story, and below are excerpts.
SG Interests owns drilling leases in the Thompson Divide, a roadless area near Carbondale. It got the leases during the George W. Bush administration, when the national roadless rule was in a state of confusion over conflicting court rulings and Bush’s repeal of former President Bill Clinton’s roadless rule.
Bush didn’t exactly “repeal” it.. it was enjoined and the Dept. decided to try a different approach. If they had just rescinded it and re-ruled, that would be true..
The new Colorado Roadless Rule adds protections for the Thompson Divide, but it does not completely put the area off-limits to drilling.
Actually it does, for new leases, and leaves the legal status of the others as to be determined by courts.
Conservationists and ranchers are pressing Tipton to introduce a bill to protect the area from future drilling. So far, he has not committed to backing a bill. Instead, he has said he wants to find a compromise solution.
Pace has said he wants to buy back leases from SG and other gas companies so that drilling will not occur in the Thompson Divide.
I don’t think anyone is stopping anyone from buying back the leases.. the price of gas is very low now.. so go for it! Not so sure about using scarce tax dollars, though.. if that’s what he means. I’m not sure that this is the time for greater public expenditures, when we can’t afford the basic recreation program, as discussed elsewhere.
10th Circuit Court of Appeals.. to what extent should agencies “roll the dice” in advance of court decisions?
Here’s another story about “gap leases.” These are leases issued at various times when the 2001 Rule was not the “law of the land”.
Below is a brief summary from this Forest Service document.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule (RACR) prohibits, with some exceptions, road construction and timber harvesting across 58.5 million acres of the National Forest System. The rule was published in the Federal Register on January 12, 2001 (66 FR 3244).* Ten lawsuits were filed challenging the rule. In May 2001, a preliminary injunction barring implementation of the rule was issued by a federal district court in Idaho. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, and the RACR became effective in April 2003. In June 2003, the State of Alaska settled its claims regarding the RACR and after further rulemaking the Tongass National Forest was exempted from the RACR (68 FR 75136). Two cases in North Dakota that involved the RACR were eventually settled in March 2007 and three others were dismissed.
However, in July 2003, a federal district court in Wyoming upheld the State of Wyoming’s challenge to the RACR holding that promulgation of the RACR was procedurally flawed under NEPA and substantively illegal under the Wilderness Act. The court set aside the rule and permanently enjoined the rule. The decision was appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the court declared the case moot and vacated the Wyoming order after the 2005 State Petitions Rule was promulgated.
Gap leases occur in other states, but attention has been focused on Colorado, seemingly earlier as a negotiating point with groups who wanted the leases withdrawn as part of the Colorado Roadless Rule. There was even an earlier effort with the FS and the State to buy out these leases.
According to some legal sources on the government side, there were various stages during the periods when the 2001 Rule was enjoined, with various letters and interim directives, and each lease might have different facts associated with it. The easiest way to find out their legal status would be to take them all to court as individual leases.
There must be some reason folks aren’t doing that.
A key dispute within the dispute over proposed oil and gas development in the Thompson Divide area involves dozens of leases issued in national forest roadless areas there in 2003.
That was two years after President Bill Clinton, in one of his final acts as president, declared a national forest rule to protect roadless areas from development.
Peter Hart, staff attorney with the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop conservation group, has some questions about the legality of leases issued without restrictions on surface disturbance after Clinton’s action.
“We’re in the process of sorting all that out,” he said.
Such leases in the Thompson Divide area and elsewhere have gained the nickname of “gap” leases because they were issued at a time when the legal status of the national roadless rule was in question because of prior court rulings later being upheld.
This seems odd to me (they are still “sorting it out”) as there are only so many of these… spreadsheets of them have been circulating since 2007 or so..it’s not clear that anything about the status has changed in the last five years except that the 2001 Rule came back. However, it does not seem to me that the issue is what are the rules now, but what were the rules when the lease was let (did the FS and BLM follow legal procedures correctly when leasing?).
I would argue that the legal status was not really “in question” as the 10th circuit had enjoined it being used…it seems relatively clear.
However not Hart, who said:
We think the 2001 rule has been the rule of law since 2001,” Hart said.
So how can the FS predict the ultimate outcome of court decisions, and follow the future rules rather than the current court decision at a time? It would have been illegal to not follow Brimmer’s decision. I have never really understood this line of argument.
He said a Colorado-specific roadless rule implemented this year “explicitly preserves limitations on surface use” for leases issued in roadless areas after 2001.
My understanding is that the Colorado Rule says “if it is determined that the leases’ restrictions or lack thereof were made legally, then they stand.”
Again, it seems to me like the simplest thing to do is just take the individual leases to court and get them clarified.
Another thing I don’t quite understand is:
Leased lands with no-surface occupancy rules would have to be reached by directional drilling. Hart said he’d like to see the Forest Service go further by not leasing for oil and gas at all in roadless areas, to prevent these areas from being ringed by well pads and other facilities, isolating wildlife habitat. A White River National Forest planning alternative the Forest Service agreed to also consider in response to the concerns of the Thompson Divide Coalition would allow for no new leasing in lands under the forest’s jurisdiction in that area, including in existing lease areas if those leases expire.
But if you don’t want leases inside roadless areas, because there would be wellpads going directionally from outside, you should know you could also have wellpads outside for leases on that land outside the roadless areas, so outside wellpads are not prevented. And the solution to “ringing” the area with wellpads would be looking at the impacts of each development during NEPA. It seems unlikely that wellpads would be cheek to jowl in a ring around the roadless area.
Also this is interesting..
Antero Resources has proposed drilling up to four wells on “gap” lease acreage in the northwest portion of the Thompson Divide, but under its proposal the well pad would be placed outside the roadless area. How any initial drilling on gap leases in the Thompson Divide area occurs will be important because of the precedential impact it will have on future drilling on such leases in the area, Hart said.
Antero wants to drill outside the roadless area, and that isn’t good because of …the precedent on drilling?
Gary Osier is a former Forest Service employee who served as forest minerals specialist for the White River National Forest,
For all the focus on roadless areas, Osier said Thompson Divide also has a lot of areas with roads, and “is probably one of the most multiple-use pieces of ground on the whole (White River National) Forest.”
He said he’s “walked virtually every foot” of the area, and it has high potential for natural gas and some oil development.
“What’s interesting to me is there’s only a little teeny bit of the whole (White River) forest that has high potential, and that’s the only part that we identified originally (for leasing), this whole Thompson Divide thing. I think most of the people who are screaming and hollering about it have never been there,” he said.
My instincts follow those of Gary.. it all doesn’t really add up. There must be more to this than meets the eye. For previous posts on gap leases, see this,this, and this, and my blog post here on the Range Blog of High Country News and especially the comments on that..
Sharon’s 10/29 4FRI post reports on “a $10 million bond issue to raise money to support forest-thinning projects,” primarily on national forest lands within the watershed from which Flagstaff’s municipal water is piped.
The article mentions two examples of local financing for national forest thinning, but in neither case did taxpayers approve the financing. In both (Denver and Santa Fe), water utility boards decided that ratepayers should pay for national forest work to protect watersheds. Santa Fe’s water board was sufficiently nervous about this modest ratepayer assessment that it has launched “the fee program as a public education opportunity—listing the charge on users’ water bills as a credit, with a note about the purpose of the expenditures.” In the meantime, Santa Fe is paying for the program with state dollars, borrowing against future severance taxes on private mineral and timber receipts.
On Nov. 6, we’ll know whether Flagstaff voters authorize the city to borrow money, repaid from future property taxes, to finance tree thinning and brush removal on national forests. To the best of my knowledge, this would be the first time that local taxpayers have voted directly to finance Forest Service work.
The Forest Service is watching this development with great interest as it seeks to diversify funding sources that have relied historically on federally appropriated tax dollars and timber receipts. The former is threatened by deficit concerns and the latter has all but dried up.
Question for the reader: Will local funding of national forest activities lead to more local control over national forest decisionmaking?
The late Dr. Stephen Schneider, quoted below.Here’s the link and below is an excerpt. Worth reading in its entirety for those who like to follow the climate science narrative.
What is Wrong with Embellishing Science?
embellishing present participle of em·bel·lish (Verb)
Verb: Make (something) more attractive by the addition of decorative details or features: “blue silk embellished with golden embroidery”.
Make (a statement or story) more interesting or entertaining by adding extra details, esp. ones that are not true.
……
Yesterday, before heading back to the National Hurricane Center to help deal with Sandy, Chris Landsea gave a great talk here at CU on hurricanes and climate change (we’ll have a video up soon). In Chris’ talk he explained that he has no doubts that humans affect the climate system through the emission of greenhouse gases, and this influence may affect tropical cyclones. He then proceeded to review theory and data from recent peer-reviewed publications on the magnitude of such an influence. Chris argued that any such influence is expected to be small today, almost certainly undetectable, and that this view is not particularly controversial among tropical cyclone climatologists. He concluded that hurricanes should not be the “poster” representing a human influence on climate.
After his talk someone in the audience asked him what is wrong with making a connection between hurricanes and climate change if it gives the general public reason for concern about climate change. Chris responded that asserting such a connection can be easily shown to be incorrect and thus risks some of the trust that the public has in scientists to play things straight.
And
The late Stephen Schneider gained some fame for observing that when engaging in public debates scientists face a difficult choice between between honesty and effectiveness (as quoted in TCF pp. 202-203):
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
Often overlooked is what Schneider recommended about how to handle this “double ethical bind”:
I hope that means being both [effective and honest)
Helicopter on Wallow FireHere’s an article in the Payson Roundup from Saturday. Below is an excerpt.
Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin — one of the driving forces in the 4FRI movement — was among those openly questioning whether Pioneer had the financing or expertise to undertake the massive thinning project, which depend on the contractor building bio-fuel plants and mills that could turn a profit on millions of saplings and small trees.
#Locked in a campaign for re-election now, she says her doubts about Pioneer’s financing remain — but the effort now relies on Pioneer’s success. Martin has played a leadership role in the effort to convince the U.S. Forest Service to thin fire-prone thickets on the outskirts of Rim Country communities. She has also spearheaded the effort to post water-filled bladders strategically throughout the region to enable fire trucks and firefighting helicopters to quickly fill up storage tanks to contain brush fires.
#Meanwhile, other recent developments have advanced the effort to use a revitalized timber industry to thin millions of acres in Northern Arizona where a century of grazing and fire suppression have created an overgrown, tree-choked forest.
#Tree densities across most of the ponderosa pine forests of Northern Arizona have increased from perhaps 30 per acre to closer to 800 per acre in the past century, according to researchers from Northern Arizona University. A once-open, fire-adapted forest now generates an increasing number of massive crown fires, which threaten to incinerate forested communities.
#It costs up to $1,000 per acre to thin and burn off the slash piles, which means it would cost taxpayers about $6 billion annually to thin those forests by hand. The 4FRI approach would give private contractors a guaranteed 10- or 20-year supply of mostly small-diameter trees as an inducement to invest millions in building mills and power plants that could turn a profit on the vast oversupply of small trees.
#The 4FRI approach could get a boost in November if Flagstaff voters approve a $10 million bond issue to raise money to support forest-thinning projects in the Lake Mary watershed. Backers say that a crown fire that killed all the trees and scorched the soil would result in a dramatic increase in silt building up in Lake Mary, endangering Flagstaff’s already precarious water supply.
#The Schultz Fire two years ago demonstrated the risk to the city. The fire roared through an area that had been earmarked for a 4FRI project. The monsoon rains that followed caused mudslides that inflicted millions of dollars of additional damage on homes.
However, the Forest Service adopted many of the recommendations of the Stakeholder Group, but refused to commit to the preservation of most of the larger trees. Forest Service biologists reasoned that in some areas those larger trees exist in relatively dense clusters.
#That refusal to set a clear size limit on the trees caused concern among some members of the Stakeholder Group, including Martin — who found herself in the unusual position of agreeing with the Centers for Biological Diversity, which had spent years suing to block timber projects on the grounds they continued to target the big, fire-resistant trees.
#The selection of Pioneer after almost two years of study and delay initially posed a near-mutiny among the Stakeholder Group. Pioneer actually offered to pay the Forest Service millions less for the bid than did the contractor who had spent years working with the Stakeholder Group. Moreover, Pioneer omitted any money for monitoring whether the thinning projects had the desired impact on wildlife and watersheds.
#Martin also raised concerns about whether Pioneer had enough financing — and a business plan that would yield a profit on turning small trees into energy and into furniture.
#Forest Service officials in the Southwestern Regional Office in New Mexico made the selection, without direct input from the Stakeholder’s Group.
#Pioneer has said it remains on track to start work in the spring. Marlin Johnson said the company will start off with already-prepared timber sales and send the wood it harvests to existing mills, while the company continues to line up financing for its own mills.
#The company plans to build a 500-acre plant near Winslow, which will convert small trees into finger-jointed materials, like furniture and other wood products. The company also plans to build a bio-diesel fuel plant, which would turn brush and scraps into diesel.
#Johnson noted that Western Energy Solutions/Concord Blue USA will build and operate the bio-diesel plant.
#However, Pioneer has yet to announce any firm commitment for financing of the thinning projects or the Winslow plant.
I’ve heard many times that groups think “you should never take big trees,” e.g. diameter limits But if big trees are in a clump, and you are trying to thin trees, then to get fewer trees in the clump you would have to take out big trees. I’d be interested to have a discussion with someone with this point of view and see what their side of the story is.. that is.. the “no big trees” point of view.
Despite the recession, a mansion in Aspen, Colo., has fetched a boom-market price. The 21,400-square-foot home sold this week for $43 million and it wasn’t even on the market. Brokers say it’s the most expensive home that has sold in the U.S. so far this year. The 10-bedroom contemporary mountain home on 4.5 acres sits at the base of Aspen’s exclusive Red Mountain.I thought this letter to the editor was interesting and posed a creative solution to some of the issues raised on this blog, particularly given our previous discussions about privatization of recreation, concessionaires, and the importance of hiring people in poor rural areas and treating members of the workforce with adequate pay and safety. I can’t figure out quite how the unemployed issue would relate to the Roaring Fork Valley, though; because there are so many well-off people there, the cost of housing is so high that everyone who is not well-off might be considered underemployed. Would that we had an economist on call for this blog!
The Aspen-Sopris Ranger District’s budget is out for next summer, and they get four summer employees for the entire district. One of those will be trail crew to clear more than 500 miles of trail. This past summer, the district had four on-trail crew members, and they still didn’t quite get all the trails cleared. Be prepared for some tough hiking next summer.
The Roaring Fork Valley makes a lot of money from national forest use. Perhaps those who make the money would be willing to help the district maintain the facilities. A trail-crew person cost the Forest Service $20,000 for the season, including all benefits. The Forest Service cannot solicit donations but can accept donations for a specific purpose.
An organization needs to step forward to act as a clearinghouse for money donated if we want our visitors to have a quality experience next summer.
Here’s the view from my hotel in Spokane.I hadn’t been to a Convention since I entered Planning World and it was amazing to see all the changes; in the people, in what they are studying and the way that everyone is looking at the world. I could post on every presentation I attended (and may, through time). I also found a variety of people interested in posting and commenting, a source of more Grassland photos, and received a lot of positive feedback about this blog (and you posters and commenters) and my presentation (which I will post as part of catching up).
Right now, though, I am heading home and have a bunch of other backed up pieces. But for now, here’s to the young people- foresters and others, and all those responsible for our mutual future. The young foresters I met this week were amazing- with incredible energy, positive spirits and competence.
What is it that they can do? Figure it out; how to provide a good environment, jobs, and responsible use of our resources to provide for the needs of society. There is a good Rosemary Radford Ruether (the ecofeminist theologian) quote that I can find when I get home). Something about harmony (shades of NEPA..) and a celebratory culture.
Donnie McClurkin was my background music for the week.. so here’s a musical affirmation for those folks called “Yes You Can”. I was listening to Donnie’s album “Again” on my IPod. So I looked for a Youtube to share, and Serendipitously the first one that came up featured a tree.
Here it is:
During my recent trip to SW Utah, I was fascinated by the old and large cottonwoods in the canyon bottoms. While they do have good fall color, I was more mesmerized by the hypnotic bark patterns.
A close-up of the bark reveals such interesting patterns to something thought to be more random in nature. This old tree had fallen from last year’s big floods, a completely normal thing for Zion Canyon. It’s truly amazing that cottonwoods can resist so many flash floods over an 80-120 year lifespan. Of course, there could be “micro-evolution” at work here, in this specialized environment of Zion Canyon.
In these narrow slot canyons, only those trees with the strongest roots can withstand the debris torrents that reshape channels and move boulders, like this one lodged under the huge, water-altered cottonwood branch. To the right of this tree is a house-sized boulder. To the left, outside of view, is another giant boulder. Up the canyon is a giant, super-narrow slot canyon, which drains a substantial watershed of solid bedrock. What an awesome experience it would be to find a safe spot to watch a flash flood here.
I am off to Spokane for the SAF Convention..so if you have been thinking about giving your point of view, or sharing something you find interesting, this would be a good time.
