Idaho Roadless Upheld by Appeals Court, Plus An Idea For CREATE

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one.. Here’s the link.

First congratulations to all those folks who worked on the Idaho Rule throughout the state, the Forest Service folks, and OGC and DOJ for all their assistance. I met some of the folks who worked on the Rule at various RACNAC meetings and other roadless geekfests and they were extremely dedicated to an excellent public process, persevering and knowledgeable. And thanks to the RACNAC members as well. And for that matter, Mark Rey, who thought up the “State plus national advisory committee” model.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to uphold Idaho’s national forest roadless rule.

The panel, which included Idaho Senior Appeals Judge Stephen Trott, denied the appeal by the Wilderness Society, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other environmental groups of the decision in 2011 of U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill upholding the rule.

“After scouring both the administrative and district court records in this case, we conclude that the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendants was warranted,” the panel said in its decision. “The inclusive, thorough, and transparent process resulting in the challenged rule conformed to the demands of the law and is free of legal error.”

The rule, negotiated by Jim Risch when he was governor, set up a unique system to protect nearly 9 million acres of roadless land in Idaho. The Idaho Conservation League and Trout Unlimited filed briefs in support of the Idaho rule, splitting with their environmental partners.

The rule is separate from the 2001 roadless rule that has been upheld by two appeals courts and the
Supreme Court by its decision not to hear the case.

Note from Sharon: After I read the stories of the Idahoans traveling to the appeals court (in this previous blog discussion), I was thinking that this might be a good project for accountability in litigation and direct action by other concerned individuals, as per some of the ideas in CREATE (previous post here).

This formed a mental image that might be worthy of a photo..

The federal courtroom in Portland was packed. A dozen people made the trip from Idaho to sit in silent support of the state’s roadless rule, including former Idaho governor Jim Risch and the chair of the Kootenai tribe.

Attorney Julie Weis represents the tribe. She says the rule is a good compromise, hashed out between environmental groups and mining interests. And it hasn’t led to more roads in Idaho’s national forests.

Given that some organizations made the decision to invest in a court appeal, I thought perhaps if I lived in Idaho and was involved with the rule development, I would try this. I would get a group together to email or write a letter to each member of the Board of Directors, include the above photo, and tell them that I was willing to meet with them anytime anyplace to talk to them about why they were choosing to appeal this decision. What did they think about the Idaho Rule, and why did they think it was worth the investment to appeal? Then folks who had worked on it and knew about it (and the 2001, and the differences) could engage them in a meaningful discussion.

If they did not answer the emails or letters to talk, then that would be another story. From my board memberships, I take the role of the board in providing direction very seriously. It seems to me that communicating directly (people who know about the project or rule) with board members (people who are deciding whether to invest in litigation) would be a useful and educational exercise. We often talk about accountability of federal agencies (not that they are paragons ;)), but shouldn’t we all be accountable to the people affected (that is, all taxpayers, in this case, as well as Idahoans) for our actions?

This direct action is probably not OK for federal employees to do, but I would think that concerned citizens (involved in collaborative groups?) certainly could do so. The results of these discussions could be reported back through this blog or in the press.

Now there is one easy fix that will help this process. The board members, as part of their fiduciary oversight, know how much their appeal cost their organization, but do not know how much it cost the taxpayer. That is why IMHO it is important for the FS, OGC, and DOJ to accurately track costs of litigation. How can anyone decide whether and how much to spend when they have no idea of the costs?

NCFP 2012 in review

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In the interests of transparency, below is the annual report provided by WordPress…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Any thoughts on where we should go in 2013?

If you don’t feel comfortable posting, please send to me at [email protected].

Thanks to all for 2012, especially
Bob Zybach
David Beebe
JZ
Derek
Tree
and Larry

Sarewitz’s New Year’s Resolution for Scientists

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obama science

I always appreciate Dan Sarewitz’s take on the social workings of the science biz. When I returned from my Solstice Break, I found this interesting piece on Roger Pielke, Jrs’ blog. Thanks to Roger for posting this and the image above.

One of the things I’ve noticed in the past is that our community (the forestry and natural resources community) may not be linked into the a community that studies the scientific process and how scientific information is used in policy-making (hence the discussion in the planning rule about “consistent with”), and that since there is such a community, their findings should be “taken into account” ;).

Here’s a link directly to Sarewitz’s article.

Here is an excerpt:

As scientists seek to provide policy-relevant knowledge on complex, interdisciplinary problems ranging from fisheries depletion and carbon emissions to obesity and natural hazards, the boundary between the natural and the social sciences has blurred more than many scientists want to acknowledge. With Republicans generally sceptical of government’s ability and authority to direct social and economic change, the enthusiasm with which leading scientists align themselves with the Democratic party can only reinforce conservative suspicions that for contentious issues such as climate change, natural-resource management and policies around reproduction, all science is social science.

The US scientific community must decide if it wants to be a Democratic interest group or if it wants to reassert its value as an independent national asset. If scientists want to claim that their recommendations are independent of their political beliefs, they ought to be able to show that those recommendations have the support of scientists with conflicting beliefs. Expert panels advising the government on politically divisive issues could strengthen their authority by demonstrating political diversity. The National Academies, as well as many government agencies, already try to balance representation from the academic, non-governmental and private sectors on many science advisory panels; it would be only a small step to be equally explicit about ideological or political diversity. Such information could be given voluntarily.

To connect scientific advice to bipartisanship would benefit political debate. Volatile issues, such as the regulation of environmental and public-health risks, often lead to accusations of ‘junk science’ from opposing sides. Politicians would find it more difficult to attack science endorsed by avowedly bipartisan groups of scientists, and more difficult to justify their policy preferences by scientific claims that were contradicted by bipartisan panels.

While I strongly agree that partisanizing is bad for the science biz, and actually, for life in general, I see things a bit differently than Dan. Since scientists, for the most part, determine what is funded and how the questions are framed, putting scientists (if they exist) from different parties on a committee that addresses “the science” brings all those biases into the advisory committee. I would prefer the more open 8 step process I proposed in this earlier blog post.

When Dan says that to Republicans “all science is social science” it seems to imply (I don’t think he meant to do so) that social science is somehow “less than” the other sciences. Rather, I think what Republicans might think is that the scientists who conducted the research did not share their framing of the issue or were not unbiased. One thing I like about social scientists is that mostly they are more honest about the social construction of problems and solutions. I have actually found them, in general, to do less “sleight of science” than the biological or physical folks.

Roger’s post is also worth a read as he explores some additional topics. including:

The issues, however, have not disappeared. A few weeks ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists observed in the case of genetically modified salmon:

Despite what the President might have said about scientific integrity, we’ve seen White House interference on what should be science regulatory decisions.

A list of troubling issues under the Obama Administration where science and politics meet is, well, almost Bush-like, and includes issues related to drilling safety, the muzzling of scientists at USDA and at HHS, clothing political decisions in dodgy scientific claims on the morning after pill and Yucca Mountain, the withholding of scientific information for fear of political fallout … and the list goes on

To me those aren’t “science” decisions.. simply not. They are political decisions that balance different values. “Scientific” information is only one kind to be considered. Partisanizing this by environmental groups seems to have led to a great deal of commotion and angst (and poor public servants required to write “scientific integrity” guidelines), followed by the inevitable disappointment when it turns out.. they are not “science” issues.

What do you think?

California’s Dense Forests Present New Opportunities

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P9195237-web

Forestry operations and bioenergy have been part of the economic and social fabric in Northern California for decades. A five-year study produced in 2009 by the USDA Forest Service modeled forest management under different scenarios across 2.7 million acres encompassing the Feather River watershed. The model’s time horizon spanned four decades, examining wildfire behavior, forest thinning operations and a range of environmental and economic impacts. It concluded that in virtually every aspect analyzed, managing forest resources and utilizing biomass for energy production provides significant advantages over the status quo.

With acres per wildfire going WAY up, thinning projects seem to be the way to go to reduce both wildfire sizes and wildfire intensities. Again, we have strict diameter limits in the Sierra Nevada, and clearcutting has been banned since 1993.

The link is here

Group Hails Forest Cooperation

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View 88

I saw a local article about our part of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.

For the first time in many years, loggers and conservation groups are working together and the results have been stunning, according to Katherine Evatt, president of the Pine Grove-based Foothill Conservancy.

The Amador Calaveras Consensus Group has been working in the Stanislaus and Eldorado national forests on projects that are part of a larger national program called Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration.

The goal is to restore forests for people, water and wildlife, and a report released in December shows some of those goals are being met.

The ACCG Cornerstone Project is one of 23 national projects that split $40 million in 2012. According to the fiscal year-end report for the project, the two forests spent more than $658,000 in CFLRA funds this year, matched by more than $433,000 of other Forest Service funds. There was more than $67,700 in ACCG in-kind partner contributions and more than $1 million in leverage funds from ACCG members. Additional funds included a $196,000 grant from the Coca-Cola Company as well as $283,000 worth of in-service work under stewardship contracts.

The article is here

Restoration by the Numbers.. What Are They?

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One more post before I leave..also if you sent me something to post and I forgot, please email [email protected] and I will get to it after my Solstice break.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

If this article is correct…

Forest Service Failing to Create Jobs, Stimulate Economy in Forest Management Practices

Crystal Feldman House Natural Resources Committee

During the height of this year’s record-breaking fire season, the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held a legislative hearing on bills to address forest health and reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fire. Following a Forest Service report on the need for restoration on 65-82 million acres of National Forest land, the Forest Service testified that it had restored 3.7 million acres in 2011. Restoration is the process of assisting recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. Following the hearing, we submitted a series of questions to get further detail on what methods the agency used to “restore” these lands.

In its response, the Forest Service explained that of those 3.7 million acres, over 1.4 million – nearly 40% of the total – were “restored” through a combination of prescribed fire (fire intentionally set and monitored by the agency) and wildland-use fire (fire allowed to burn to achieve resource objectives). Meanwhile, commercial harvest was only allowed on 195,477 acres – 5% of the total work for 2011 and only .1% of the 193 million acres managed by the Forest Service.

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The .1 % seems to answer one of Derek’s questions. in the People’s Database.but does it agree with the below? It would be nice to see a table that shows prescribed fire, fire use, non-commercial and commercial thinnings and mechanical treatments by acre (like how many acres were touched by different treatments in a given year). Of course, if it’s a service contract, wood might still go to mills, not sure how that is considered in the numbers either..

Like this:

x acres commercial harvest fuels reduction thinning followed by prescribed burning
y acres commercial harvest fuels reduction thinning alone
z acres prescribed burning only forest in WUI
a acres prescribed burning only grasslands and shrublands
b acres prescribed burning only forest outside WUI
c acres fuels reduction could have gone to mill but we don’t know for sure
etc.

Also A little birdie told me that some of the figures in the report below are not accurate.

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/forests/newsroom/us-forest-service-program-reports-welcome-christmas-news.xml

U.S. Forest Service Program Reports Welcome Christmas News

Third Year of Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program Reveals Big Benefits for People, Water, and Wildlife

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/forests/newsroom/us-forest-service-program-reports-welcome-christmas-news.xml

Arlington, Virginia | December 19, 2012

An annual report was released today on the performance of a U.S. Forest Service program, called Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR), revealing impressive returns for forests, jobs, water, and wildlife. The three-year old program invested $40 million in forest restoration at 23 forested landscapes across the country in 2012.

As identified in the report, the 23 landscapes cumulatively provided the following 2012 results:

• Created and maintained 4,574 full- and part-time jobs;
• Generated nearly $320 million in labor income;
• Reduced the risk of megafire on 612,000 acres;
• Enhanced clean water supplies by remediating 6,000 miles of eroding roads;
• Sold 95.1 million cubic feet of timber;
• Improved 537,000 acres of wildlife habitat;
• Restored nearly 400 miles of fish habitat.

In addition to these on-the-ground results, CFLR also highlighted the opportunity to leverage matching investments in forest restoration. All told, CFLR leveraged an additional $45.4 million dollars towards collaborative actions in 2012.

Beyond the beauty they offer, forests are critical to life and livelihood across the nation. Americans forests cover one-third of the United States; store and filter half the nation’s water supply; provide jobs to more than a million wood products workers; absorb nearly 20% of U.S. carbon emissions; offer 650 million acres of recreational lands that generate well over $13 billion a year in economic activity; and provide habitat for thousands of species across the country.

Observers say the program is bucking the larger downward funding trend because restoration of National Forests is the new ‘zone of agreement’ where traditional adversaries in the timber industry, conservation, and local county governments are working to advance common goals. .

The collaborative results of the report were heralded by companies, community groups, and conservation organizations around the nation.

“The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program is bringing communities from around the country together to create jobs, to restore forest and watershed health, and to reduce the costs of wildfire suppression at impressive scales,” offered Laura McCarthy of The Nature Conservancy. “The program and its many supporters are charting a successful path forward for National Forest management.”

“This is an outstanding program because it simultaneously helps forests, water, and jobs,” said Kelsey Delaney of the Society of American Foresters.

“Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration projects are cost efficient, mostly because of their long time frame and larger scale,” added Scott Brennan of The Wilderness Society. “Selected projects are assured funding as long as appropriations are available until 2019, which provided certainty for businesses their banks and other investors, time for workers to be trained and become skilled, and for product markets to be developed and expanded.”

“Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration has shown that the critical importance of healthy and thriving forests can be a unifying force,” said Rebecca Turner of American Forests. “Our organization is proud to be collaborating with such a diverse collective of partners on a program that received bipartisan support from Congress to improve the health of our forests, as well as creating needed jobs.”

Dylan Kruse of Sustainable Northwest said, “Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration is about boots on the ground, creating jobs in rural communities. Now is the time to invest in rural communities and restore the health of our National Forests. CFLR does exactly that.”

CFLR is particularly valuable now, on the heels of the nation recording its third-largest wildfire year. A century of suppressing natural wildfires has resulted in unhealthy forests choked with small trees and brush that can lead to destructive megafires. Over the last 50 years the United States has had only 6 years with more than 8 million acres burned— all have occurred in the last 8 years (including 2012).

The conditions of our forests are further enflamed by pest and diseases, as well as climate change. All told, The Nature Conservancy estimates 120 million acres of America’s forests – an area bigger than the state of California – are in immediate need of restoration due to this “perfect storm” of threats.

The 23 sites to receive investment in 2012 were:
• Ozark Highlands Ecosystem Restoration, Arkansas, $959,000
• Shortleaf-Bluestem Community Project, Arkansas and Oklahoma, $342,000
• Four Forest Restoration Initiative, Arizona, $2 million
• Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group Cornerstone Project, California, $730,000
• Burney-Hat Creek Basins Project, California, $605,000
• Dinkey Landscape Restoration Project, California, $829,900
• Front Range Landscape Restoration Initiative, Colorado, $1 million
• Uncompahgre Plateau, Colorado, $446,000
• Accelerating Longleaf Pine Restoration, Florida, $1.17 million
• Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative, Idaho, $324,000
• Selway-Middle Fork Clearwater, Idaho, $1 million
• Weiser-Little Salmon Headwaters Project, Idaho, $2.45 million
• Longleaf Pine Ecosystem Restoration and Hazardous Fuels Reduction, Mississippi, $2.71 million
• Pine-Oak Woodlands Restoration Project, Missouri, $617,000
• Southwestern Crown of the Continent, Montana, $1.03 million
• Southwest Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, $392,000
• Zuni Mountain Project, New Mexico, $400,000
• Grandfather Restoration Project, North Carolina, $605,000
• Deschutes Collaborative Forest, Oregon, $500,000
• Lakeview Stewardship Project, Oregon, $3.5 million
• Southern Blues Restoration Coalition, Oregon, $2.5 million
• Northeast Washington Forest Vision 2020, Washington, $968,000
• Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative, Washington, $1.63 million

The CFLR annual report was produced by the CFLR Coalition, which is comprised of 145 member organizations that include private businesses, communities, counties, tribes, water suppliers, associations, and non-governmental organizations.

Copies of the 2012 CFLRP Annual Report can be requested from Jon Schwedler of the CFLR Coalition at [email protected].

Information on CFLRP can be found at the U.S. Forest Service’s website: http://www.fs.fed.us/restoration/CFLR/

Happy Winter Solstice Blogging Break!

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Chambers_Yule_Log

Larry Harrell has generously agreed to post posts others might contribute, and to approve comments while I am gone on a Solstice break from December 22nd until January 4th or so. Contributions are encouraged. While you are contemplating your own Yule log, perhaps you could jot down some ideas for posting?

Photo by Penny Stritch
Photo by Penny Stritch

The Yule log is a large log that is burned in the hearth as part of a Yule, or Christmas, celebration or with Winter Solstice festivals. “Yule log” may also refer to log-shaped Christmas cakes.

Historically, the Yule log tradition may have included an entire tree or the largest log available to be burned in the fire hearth. Historians believe the tradition was derived from pagan worship rites, representations of health and fertility, rituals asking for blessings and protection, festivals celebrating the winter solstice, or was simply for decoration and practical use.

Some traditions included starting the Yule log fire with the remnant of the previous year’s log, to bring prosperity and protection from evil. After the celebration, pieces of the Yule log would be saved to start the fire of next winter’s solstice Yule log. In some European traditions, oak was the preferred species for the Yule log, as it represented the waxing sun, symbolized endurance, strength, protection, and good luck to people in the coming year.

From Larry Stritch’s Forest Service site on Plants of the Winter Solstice, worth taking a look at here.

Best wishes to you and yours from all of us here at NCFP!

Trusts, More Generally- A Guest Post from Steve Wilent

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Folks, Here’s an excerpt from my Editor’s Notebook column from August 2012, in which the two main types of trusts are defined, thanks to the folks at the conference mentioned: public trusts and real trusts.

Steve Wilent, Editor, The Forestry Source.
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The conference I mentioned, “Trust Management: A Viable Option for Public Forest Lands?”—sponsored by the Western Forestry and Conservation Association and the American Forest Resource Council—was held in June in Tigard, Oregon. The event featured notable speakers such as Jay O’Laughlin, director of the Policy Analysis Group at the University of Idaho’s College of Natural Resources; Ann Forest Burns, AFRC vice-president; and US Rep. Kurt Schrader, of Oregon. Elaine Spencer, an attorney with Graham & Dunn PC, a Seattle-based law firm, explained a key concept: The difference between a “public trust” and a “real trust.”

Washington’s Department of Ecology, for example, bases its management of shorelines on the public trust doctrine, a legal principle derived from English Common Law: “The essence of the doctrine is that the waters of the state are a public resource owned by and available to all citizens equally for the purposes of navigation, conducting commerce, fishing, recreation, and similar uses and that this trust is not invalidated by private ownership of the underlying land. The doctrine limits public and private use of tidelands and other shorelands to protect the public’s right to use the waters of the state.”

Protection of the trust is carried out through laws such as the state’s Shoreline Management Act.

In contrast, in a real trust, or real property trust, land or some other real asset is held in trust for specific beneficiaries. Washington has about 2.2 million acres of trust land—public land that is managed for timber, agriculture, grazing, and other uses. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (http://www.lincolninst.edu) describes it this way: “Unlike public lands, state trust lands are publicly owned lands that are held in trust by the state for specifically designated beneficiaries. As trustees, the state Legislature has a fiduciary duty to manage the lands for the benefit of the beneficiaries of the trust grant. These lands are managed for a diverse range of uses to meet that responsibility—generating revenue for the designated beneficiaries, today and for future generations.”

In Washington, the state trust land beneficiaries are schools, state universities, prisons, and other institutions.

Forest Trust Beneficiaries – Forestry Source August 2012-1 a link to Steve’s August 2012 editorial “Forest Trust Beneficiaries – Forestry Source August 2012.

Wyden to tackle forestry issues early in 113th Congress

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This is from E&E news and posted here.

Below is an excerpt:

Wyden to tackle forestry issues early in 113th Congress

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said forestry issues will be among his top priorities when he becomes chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee next Congress, including bills to accelerate restoration logging in Oregon and other parts of the West.

Wyden, who once described the Beaver State as the “Saudi Arabia of biomass,” is seen as more supportive of “place-based” forestry bills than current committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who is retiring at the end of this month after 30 years in the Senate.

Wyden said he will push hard for bills such as his S. 220, which would promote active management on 8.3 million acres of forests east of the Cascades, and that he would consider similar bills such as a proposal by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to accelerate forest restoration and designate wilderness in western Montana.

Wyden said he discussed forestry issues with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the committee’s ranking member, during a recent trip to Alaska, which, like Oregon, saw timber harvests plummet over the past decades as a result of protections for old-growth trees and the species they support.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities to find common ground on forestry,” Wyden said in a brief interview last week. “I think there is a chance to possibly build a coalition between these hard-hit rural communities that are worried about becoming ghost towns and get them off what I really call their own version of a fiscal cliff.”

As chairman, Wyden will have a full slate of forestry issues to tackle, including the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools program, which provides financial aid for timber-dependent counties, a continuing bark-beetle epidemic and increasingly severe wildfires as a result of dry, overstocked forests.

Trust-y Federal Land Management- O&C Version

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When I started reading the news stories about this, I felt like I’d come into the middle of a novel.
First, I’d like to start with some thinking by Bob Malmsheimer of SUNY ESF, who said something along the lines of “we can never have a meaningful discussion about “trust management” until we clarify exactly what we mean. The term is used in so many different ways.” I think he raises an excellent point, so here on this blog we will try to be clear about these concepts and language.

This piece will be about O&C efforts, and, as we will see “trusts” are only one of the ideas involved once we look more closely.

So with the help of Steve Wilent, I managed to find enough pieces of the O&C puzzle so that perhaps we can begin to understand what’s going on. Since it seems fairly complicated, we will probably have a number of posts. Clearly, looking through the news “clippings,” there has been a great deal going on so I’m hoping readers from Oregon will help us catch up.

The most recent piece of news was Enviro Groups Letter to Wyden Dec. 2012-2 letter of some environmental groups to Senator Wyden.

That letter referred to something called ““Principles for an O&C Solution: A Roadmap for Federal Legislation to Navigate both the House and Senate”.

So I went looking for them, and the only place I could locate them was on Andy Kerr’s website here. Obviously I can’t vouch for their accuracy, but thankfully he posted the Governor’s and the Senator’s principles in one place. Now for those of you who aren’t following this, Andy Kerr is the same person who “bolted” from the Governor’s county payments panel based on clearcutting as in this news story. There appears to be another proposal for the O&C lands from environmental groups based on this piece by Jim Petersen in Evergreen, but I couldn’t find that either. So here is what Andy Kerr posted:

The Governor’s O&C Principles and the Senator’s O&C Principles

Though the attention for the present is on Governor John Kitzhaber’s attempt to resolve the O&C lands management crisis by convening a group of stakeholders from the O&C counties, timber industry and conservation community (as many of you know, I am of the view that the Governor’s choices to represent the conservation community are not representative of the conservation community as a whole), given that controversy involves federal public forestlands, it will be the forthcoming effort led by Senator Ron Wyden that will be controlling on the issue.

Here are the Governor’s O&C Principles:

• Stable County Funding – Recognize O&C Act’s unique community stability mandate and provide adequate and stable county revenues sufficient to meet needs for basic public services.
• Stable Timber Supply – Provide adequate and stable timber supply that will provide for employment opportunities, forest products and renewable energy.
• Protect Unique Places – Permanently protect ecologically unique places.
• Durable & Adaptive Conservation Standards – Maintain Northwest Forest Plan forest management standards – Late Successional/Old Growth Reserves & Aquatic Conservation Strategy – in an adaptive manner where and when required to comply with environmental laws.
• Conservation Opportunities – Promote conservation advances on private “checkerboard” lands through voluntary, non-regulatory incentives – financial, technical, regulatory relief, etc.
• Federal Budget Neutral – Recognize that O&C solution will need to be budget neutral or positive at the Federal level.
·• Achieve Certainty – Develop a policy framework that will provide for certainty in achieving all of these principles.

Here are the Senator’s O&C Principles:

Principles for an O&C Solution

A Roadmap for Federal Legislation to Navigate Both the House and the Senate

1. STABLE FUNDING FOR COUNTIES: Oregon rural counties must be assured a stable level of funding from the Federal government due to the large extend of public lands they contain. Those funds can come through public lands receipts of through another mechanism created by this, or other, legislation. In the current fiscal climate that funding will not be able to replace historical levels of receipts, nor will timber receipts be able to fully provide for all funding needs. Recognizing that Oregon’s rural communities are suffering with high unemployment and unique economic challenges, they also need to do their part in reducing disparities in tax rates and developing a reasonable level of revenue from local activities. However, the Federal government must do its share to compensate counties for the impact of federal lands and the policies governing those lands.

2. SUSTAINABILITY: Timber harvest must be economically and environmentally sustainable. Timber harvests must produce more commercial product from O&C lands than is currently being produced and harvest should be guided by a scientifically-based, sustainable management regime that will meet or exceed the stated goals of the relevant federal and state environmental laws. Opportunities for active and adaptive management could included a variety of examples, such as the ecological forestry principles promoted by Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin, as well as the pilot projects being currently promoted by various collaborative groups in Southern Oregon.

3. CONSERVATION: In addition to increasing timber harvesting, this legislation must result in wilderness and other permanently conserved lands proportional to the lands designated for harvest. These should include protection of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, including large blocks of Bureau of Land Management lands and old-growth forests.

4. MANAGING LANDS MORE EFFICIENTLY: The legislation should seek opportunities to consolidate O&C and non-O&C lands. This will include addressing the checkerboard pattern of the O&C ownership and exchanging lands according to their best use whenever possible. It must develop an approach to rationalize land management between the O&C lands and adjoining private and public lands, both for timber and conservation values. The legislation should consider setting in motion a process to seek greater consolidation and management efficiencies on federal lands going forward.

Any consolidation or exchange should take into account concerns of neighboring private landowners, including access, rights of way and wildfire. The discussion should also address opportunities to finally honor unrealized treaty obligations to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, understanding that some lands considered for their reservations may not be O&C lands. Both tribes have treaties pre-dating the O&C Lands Act.

5. LEGAL REQUIREMENT FOR TIMBER MANAGEMENT: Management of these lands must comply with all applicable Federal laws. Development of the plan should include open discussions on how to better implement the National Environmental Policy Act. There should be particular focus on streamlining the objection processes (for example, as included in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and Senator Wyden’s Eastside Forestry legislation), and categorical exclusions for timber projects and other defined situations.

6. CHANGING RESPONSIBILITIES FOR LAND MANAGEMENT: Due consideration should be given to proposals for non-Federal entities managing lands designated for conservation or active management as long as their is broad support for the proposal among stakeholders. Negotiations must take into account the failures of other private management efforts and the general opposition to private management of federal lands in Congress.

7. SAFEGUARDING OLD GROWTH: Oregon’s old growth must be protected. Old growth should generally be defined as 120 years of age or older, with exceptions made for significant ecological reasons.

O&C Trust Draft the draft bill that perhaps the environmental groups were responding to…

This is the beginning of the dialogue, and I am trying to catch up. Others can add links to documents and their opinions..