Judge dismisses timber industry lawsuit, maintains Tongass Forest Protection

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If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years you’ve likely noticed a significant amount of hand-wringing from some folks anytime conservation groups look to hold the U.S Forest Service accountable through the federal court system.  However, what I find somewhat interesting is that when the timber industry and their allies file a lawsuit against the Forest Service the type of hand-wringing we usually see directed at conservation groups is mysteriously non-existent.

Readers may recall that last week we highlighted a Courthouse News Service article, in which an editor claimed that a lawsuit against the Forest Service’s new National Forest Management Act planning rules by an assortment of timber industry, off-road/ATV and grazing interests was the “the most obnoxious lawsuit I saw this week.”

Well, it turns out that the Courthouse News Service had another article last week which frequent commenter and reader David Beebe was kind enough to pass along.  Highlights from the article are below, or you can read the entire article here.

A federal judge dismissed claims filed by the Alaskan timber and building industries that a 2008 forest plan reducing the amount of commercial forestland in the Tongass National Forest violated federal law.

The Alaska Forest Association and the Southern Southeast Alaska Building Industries Association sued U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack and the U.S. Forest Service in 2008 over the Forest Service’s plan to reduce the amount of land available for commercial foresting from 2.4 million acres to 670,000.  The revised plan also adopted an adaptive strategy for managing lands for timber sale that the industries said reduced the acreage capable of supporting financially feasible timber sales to approximately 103,000 acres.

But because of a previous challenge to the plan filed by the Southeast Conference and several other Alaskan cities and municipal organizations that failed in federal court, U.S. District Judge John Bates dismissed this challenge under the legal doctrine of Res judicata, which prohibits re-filing legal claims that could have been litigated in prior actions.

The Alaska Forest Association, as it turns out, is a part of the Southeast Conference, and supported its similar litigation against the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service over the plan.
   The Forest Association, or AFA, unsuccessfully argued that because the Southeast Conference wasn’t aware it was representing the AFA, the doctrine does not apply.

“Plaintiffs’ argument is dubious on these facts,” stated Judge Bates. “AFA submitted an affidavit supporting Southeast Conference’s standing argument … which should have alerted the Southeast Conference plaintiffs that they were representing AFA.”

Debt standoff makes Forest Service fight all fires

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Rocker Barker with the Idaho Statesman has the full story here…excerpts below:

The FLAME Act of 2009 was supposed to ensure the Forest Service had enough money to fight fires without having to cut into programs to provide recreation, protect habitat and improve forest health.  But after Congress raided the fund established by the law during the 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling, and after further cuts this year, the fund is empty. That has the agency preparing to make cuts elsewhere as the fire season is hitting its peak in Idaho and just beginning in California.

The agency that manages 193 million acres nationwide and 20 million acres in Idaho foresaw the shortfall coming in May. It quietly ordered managers to fight every fire as soon as it starts, which it says goes against its own science and goals. It also required regional foresters to approve “any suppression strategy that includes restoration objectives,” wrote James Hubbard, Forest Service deputy chief for state and private forestry, in a May 25 memo. “I acknowledge this is not a desirable approach in the long run,” Hubbard wrote.

Today, just one fire nationwide, a blaze in the Teton Wilderness near Yellowstone, has received that approval. The Interior Department, which did not issue a similar directive, is letting one fire burn for restoration purposes in Yellowstone National Park.

Most scientists and fire managers agree that fire is a healthy and necessary part of the forest, and that fighting these blazes serves only to build up fuels and boost the size and frequency of fires that do turn catastrophic. Federal agencies still put out 97 percent to 99 percent of all fires that start….

The Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or FLAME Act, set up separate funds for the Forest Service where surplus firefighting funds in quieter fire years could be saved for big years like this. But Congress took $200 million from the fund in 2011 as a part of the deal to keep the government running in the debt-ceiling standoff. Congress took another $240 million in surplus funds in 2012. Before the FLAME Act, Congress passed bills to cover the extra cost of firefighting every year from 2002 to 2008. But with Congress divided and the pressure to reduce government spending growing, the chances for a supplemental spending bill this year are uncertain….

Gifford Pinchot T-Shirts from Center of the American West

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Between vacation and retreat, I had a moment to share this with you. I am a fan of the Center of the American West and they are offering these Pinchot t-shirts from a highly appropriate person at a highly appropriate time of the 4 year cycle. IMHO.

Here’s the link.
All I can say is “Amen, Giff, wherever you are!”

Also a note from them:

Call 303.735.1399 to order yours today!

Proceeds from the sale of these shirts go toward supplementing the activities of the Center of the American West. All sales are final. Please note: these sizes tend to be smaller than standard – you may need to order a size larger than usual.

And a note from Char Miller.

Who is Gifford Pinchot?

Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), who speaks so movingly of the high calling of citizenship, knew partisan politics inside out.

His family’s financial success came coupled with distinguished political activism at the local, state, and national levels – and he embraced his progenitors’ intense engagement with the body politic.

As founding chief of the U. S. Forest Service (est. 1905), he wheedled Congress into expanding the agency’s budgets and its authority to protect, regulate, and steward the national forests and grasslands. After President Taft fired him in 1910 – for insubordination! – Pinchot became a driving force behind Theodore Roosevelt’s insurgent Bull Moose 1912 presidential campaign, writing some of the candidate’s most blistering speeches. His zealousness later haunted his electoral ambitions: to win two terms as Pennsylvania’s governor proved a Herculean task, given that state’s take-no-prisoners political environment.

Being tough went with the territory, he assured his nephew Harcourt Johnstone in 1927, then standing for Parliament in his native England. Losing did too: “I’ve been licked so many times in so many ways that I’ve sort of become immune to it.”

Yet for all Pinchot’s love of the political rough-and-tumble, he repeatedly argued that democracy functions best when the citizenry and their representatives pursue the collective good; when they negotiated their differences, not exaggerated them.

This was especially critical for public servants: “Learn tact simply by being absolutely honest and sincere,” he told Forest Service employees, “and by learning to recognize the point of view of the other man and meet him with arguments he will understand.” After all, “a public official is there to serve the public and not run them.” In no other way could the Forest Service achieve the mission Pinchot had set for the land-management organization: “the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.”

This maxim became the mantra for Pinchot’s gubernatorial campaigns in the mid-1920s and early 1930s. Because conservative Republicans despised his progressivism and Democrats controlled the state’s large bloc of urban voters, Pinchot had to fashion an odd (yet winning) coalition. Feminists, minorities, miners and mill workers, the dispossessed and impoverished, prohibitionists and small farmers turned out in force for this well-heeled man of the people.

Once in office, his supporters cheered as he tapped the first woman and African American to serve in the state’s cabinet; intervened on behalf of striking workers; and secured passage of an impressive array of social-service initiatives and environmental protections. Still, this legislation only became law because Pinchot dealt faithfully with his opponents (and they with him). His was a conscientious pragmatism.

He believed deeply, too, in a binding, reciprocal relationship between the governed and their government. At the 1889 constitutional-centennial celebrations in his hometown of Milford, Pennsylvania, 24-year-old Gifford Pinchot assured his fellow citizens that while “we have a share in the commonwealth, … the commonwealth has a share in us.” As such, it has first claim “to our service, our thought, and action,” a credo that citizen Pinchot lived to the fullest.

Char Miller
W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College in Claremont, CA, and author of Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism.

MT: Trapping in Lynx Country Jeopardizes Recovery Efforts, Violates ESA

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The topic of lynx and forest management has been covered recently at this blog.  Yesterday, a new twist emerged as the lynx news coming out of Montana was related to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks recently announced wolf-trapping season, which will run from December 15 to February 28 across much of the state – including on millions of acres of national forest lands.

Four Conservation groups – WildEarth Guardians, The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, and Native Ecosystems Council – have filed a notice of intent to sue Montana FWP, allegding that their new wolf-trapping regulations violate the Endangered Species Act, as related to the recovering of Canada lynx.  Below is the press release and you can read their notice of intent to sue here.

Helena, MT – Four conservation organizations today served a notice of intent to sue upon the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission for permitting trapping that kills and injures Canada lynx, a species protected as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The state permits trapping and snaring in lynx habitat, but the Act prohibits harm to protected species. At least nine Montana lynx have been captured in traps in Montana since the species was listed in March 2000, and four are known to have died from trapping.

“Montana has failed to safeguard lynx from the cruel vicissitudes of traps and snares,” stated Wendy Keefover, Carnivore Protection Program Director for WildEarth Guardians, “and that has resulted in the death and impairment of several animals, which impedes lynx recovery.”

Canada lynx captured in body-gripping traps endure physiological and psychological trauma, dehydration, and exposure as well as injuries to bone and tissue that reduces their fitness and chances for persistence. Trapping is also a likely source of indirect mortality to lynx kits since adults harmed or killed by traps and snares cannot adequately feed and nurture their young.

“Crippled or dead lynx can’t take care of their young,” said Mike Garrity, Executive Director of The Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “If we want to get lynx off the Endangered Species list, we need species’ resuscitation, not more mortalities and mutilations.”

Montana allows regulated trapping of a number of species throughout the year. The conservation groups allege that trapping and snaring in occupied lynx habitat is illegal because Montana has not exercised “due care” to prevent harm to lynx as required by the Endangered Species Act.

“Lynx are particularly vulnerable to traps,” said Arlene Montgomery, Program Director of Friends of the Wild Swan, “and Federal law requires Montana to contribute to lynx survival and recovery, but continued trapping does the exact opposite.”

Note: This is the 1,000th post on A New Century of Forest Planning. Thank you to those who contribute, comment and read!

NPR: Wood Energy Not ‘Green’ Enough, Says Massachusetts

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You can listen to the National Public Radio segment from All Things Considered here.  The opening snip is below:

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:  When it comes to renewable energy, wind and solar get a lot of attention. But wood actually creates more power in the U.S., and Massachusetts state officials are scaling back their efforts to encourage wood power. It may be a renewable resource, they say, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for the environment. NPR’s Elizabeth Shogren has that story.

ELIZABETH SHOGREN, BYLINE: Power plants that turn wood into electricity aren’t anything new. They’re called biomass plants. They’ve become more popular as states have tried to reduce the use of fossil fuels. The idea is wood is a renewable resource. You can always grow more, but the state of Massachusetts decided it wasn’t enough to be renewable. It wants climate-friendly fuel, so it kicked most power plants that burned wood out of a program that helps renewable electricity plants earn more revenue.  Mark Sylvia is commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.

MARK SYLVIA: I think what it says is that Massachusetts is very curious about focusing on our climate goals.

SHOGREN: Massachusetts wants to cut its greenhouse gases 25 percent by 2020 and power plants are a huge source of greenhouse gases, so the state asked some scientists to take a hard look at the greenhouse gas footprint of power plants that burn wood.  John Gunn of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences was one of the researchers who did the study. He says the results challenged conventional wisdom.

JOHN GUNN: Basically, we found that if you’re going to switch from using fossil fuels for energy to using more wood for energy that, for a period of time, the atmosphere would see an increase in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Courthouse News Service on Timber Industry’s “obnoxious” NFMA lawsuit

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Last week we highlighted the fact that an assortment of timber industry, off-road/ATV and grazing interests had filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service’s new National Forest Management Act planning rules.  Well, on Friday, Robert Kahn, editor of the Courthouse News Service, wrote a very interest column taking the timber and cattle industries, as well as politicians, to task for what he characterized as “the most obnoxious lawsuit I saw this week.”  You can read the entire column here, or check out the excerpts below.

Scientists are better than politicians because scientists want to know if they’re wrong.   Politicians – and their friends in the timber and cattle industries – don’t give a damn. So long as the money rolls in: to them.

I see 5,000 lawsuits a week editing the Courthouse News page – stories of rape, murder, drugs, perversion, official corruption – revolting stuff.  But the most obnoxious lawsuit I saw this week was from the timber and cattle industries, which claimed that scientists exert “improper influence” on the U.S. Forest Service, by seeking ecological sustainability above industry profits in National Forests.

Really. I’m not kidding.

Citing an 1897 law, a bunch of blood-sucking lobbyists with noble-sounding names such as the American Forest Resource Council, the Public Lands Council, [Montana Wood Products Association, BlueRibbon Coalition] and the California Forestry Association claimed that National Forests should be “‘controlled and administered’ for only two purposes – to conserve water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the American people – and not for aesthetic, environmental, recreational, or wildlife-preservation purposes.”

These public-land-dependent vampires claimed that this pathetically limp, spineless administration “is causing current and threatened injury” to industry by demanding ecological sustainability in forest management.

Isn’t that great?

Can you imagine anything more stupid, petty and grasping for the timber industry than suing the Forest Service for trying to preserve National Forests?

Their insane federal lawsuit claims – I’m not kidding – that the Forest Service “effectively trivializes public participation by forbidding decisions based on non-scientific information, which is what the great majority of public comments will contain. … The rule gives ‘scientists’ improper influence on natural resource management decisions, and skews multiple-use management by improperly elevating scientific information as the centerpiece of forest management.”

Notice how they put “scientists” in sneer quotes?

These industries have powerful friends in Congress, willing to howl this nonsense into our ears for as long as it takes until we stop paying attention, and they can grease it through.

Republicans in Congress live today, in great part, by attacking science: Darwin, genetics, climate change, medical research, even basic arithmetic are all nefarious plots against God and America.

But let’s remind you, and Congress too, if it can read: Science works because it’s based on facts. Scientists publish their research in journals because they want to see if someone can prove them wrong.

U.S. politicians today, more than at any time in our history except perhaps before the Civil War, not only do not care if they are wrong, they want to punch you in the mouth if you suggest it, and are willing to wreak untold damage upon anyone at all in the name of their myths.

Thinning in the Sierra Nevada

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I tried my hand at some “digital thinning”, with a picture of the Stanislaus National Forest, above the Mokelumne River. I couldn’t really remove as many of the bigger trees as I should, without sacrificing photorealism. I did “enhance” some of the oaks, which is a keystone of the new paradigm of ecosystem wildlife values. I am sure there are some home habitats of ESA birds, here. There would also be some pockets of undisturbed forest, and maybe some bigger openings around the oaks.

Below is the original picture

I think we can all say that there is, indeed, some excess trees to thin out, in this stand.

www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

Fire expert blasts Lassen officials for letting blaze grow

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Contributed post from Bob Zybach:

Here is an article that appeared in yesterday’s Redding Record Searchlight and that has already drawn 70 comments on their website:

Excerpted from: http://www.redding.com/news/2012/aug/16/fire-expert-blasts-lassen-officials-letting-blaze/

Excerpts:

A former Shasta-Trinity National Forest supervisor and fire expert blasted the National Park Service on Thursday for allowing the Reading Fire to smolder for more than a week, feeding on overgrowth, before it exploded into an inferno that so far has decimated 42.5 square miles.

He said it could take a century to repair the damage the fire has wrought.

“I can’t believe they went ahead with letting a fire burn for the ecosystem’s benefit in a season that, for the entire nation, is record dry,” said Steve Fitch, a retired Shasta-Trinity National Forest supervisor, fire behavior expert and national firefighting teacher. “That fire is creating its own weather. It’s extreme temperatures there. … They probably nuked 10 percent or 15 percent (of the land).”

Fitch retired from the Forest Service in 1995 to work as an adviser on natural resources to the state Assembly until 2003.

His comments came as the blaze raged across 27,163 acres and grew another 4 acres overnight. The fire remains only 28 percent contained and 1,068 firefighters in the park braced for a weekend that could bring strong winds and thunderstorms. . .

. . . However, a host of other issues made the bad decision even worse, he said. The Forest Service’s aerial tanker fleet was at one-quarter strength this year.

“Everybody in fire management knew that,” he said. “That country up there, there’s no way to get into it. You’re relying on aerial firefighting resources.”

Then, there’s the Chips Fire, which has scorched almost 43,000 acres last Thursday and has run up $17.5 million in suppression costs.

“The killer for me: the Chips Fire took off on (July) 20. That should have shut this prescribed natural fire down immediately … it went to several thousand acres in the first 24 hours,” Fitch said. “That was just south of them. That’s going to draw on them. If anything went wrong, they knew they were going to have very limited resources to do anything with it.”

The Reading Fire didn’t take off until August — and it could get worse, owing to the weather. . .

. . . Even beyond containment, Fitch said the fire will blacken the park and forest’s legacy for decades.

The soil will be caked and unable to absorb moisture, leading to soil erosion, and the high temperatures also sterilized the dirt, meaning seeds won’t germinate in the charred land for many years, Fitchsaid.

Mostly brush will replace the vast towering pines that blanketed the park, he added.

The fire has sparked harsh criticism of the National Park Service policy that allows for control burns even in hot, dry weather.

Old Station residents, business owners and north state politicians all have weighed in over the controversial law, with some crying for reform to avoid a similar incident.

The park’s superintendent, Darlene Koontz, was out of the office all day in the field, her secretary said, and couldn’t be reached for comment.


Commentary: Here is a good example of what we have been discussing in this blog — situations where wildfires are allowed to burn in Wilderness areas (and often doing significant damage to wildlife and wildlife habitat in the process) until they escape and cause major damage to adjacent lands and communities, too.

Fitch’s references to “prescribed natural fire” and letting a fire burn for “ecosystem benefits” are a little chilling, though. Apparently Darlene Koontz made a “local decision” to let a wildfire burn within her jurisdiction and is now unavailable for comment. Wow. If history is any indicator, she will keep her job, no questions asked, and perhaps even be due for a promotion or a paid leave of absence due to stress in the coming weeks and months.

These types of decisions are clearly not based on science or common sense, yet there seems to be few consequences, if any, for the people who make them. Isn’t it time that resource managers and policy makers were made responsible for their actions? Especially when human lives and billions of dollars are involved?

To Burn or Not to Burn

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Two articles in today’s press invite further discussion of this burning topic.

Bob Zybach pointed out the first, which quotes retired forest managers taking the government to task for letting a Lassen-area fire burn. [I got an email inquiry today from a Lassen area lady asking “who is paying for the fire suppression currently UNDERWAY.”]

The second is an AP story making the opposite point, taking the government to task for putting out too many remote fires.

Pile on, folks!