“Green” Xmas Trees?

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Giant Sequoia Plantation

Giant Sequoia Plantation

The pro-tree-farm argument goes like this: When you plant a tree, it goes from seedling to full-grown plant by rapidly extracting carbon from the atmosphere, including carbon that humans have emitted by burning fossil fuels and raising cattle. (When a climatologist looks at a tree, he sees a leafy pillar of solidified greenhouse gases.) Once the tree reaches maturity, though, it slows its consumption of carbon. By way of comparison, think of the appetites of a growing teenager and a senior citizen. When you’re done growing, you stop consuming as many calories. The best move, according to some tree-farm advocates, is to replace the mature tree with a new sapling and start the growth process over again.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-10/national/35745276_1_carbon-dioxide-tree-farms-christmas-tree

I tend to think that farm-grown trees have less impacts on the forests. The best trees are always selected to be cut, reducing the quality of the gene pool. Also, having so many people driving on muddy roads tends to cause drainage problems. People will always find ways to allow, or disallow things happening on public lands. One commenter summed it all up as a non-issue, climate-wise.

Question for Readers: Special Forest Products, Forest Plans and Litigation

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Penny Frazier, a wild crops farm-producer, asks these questions of blog readers:

1) Of the forest plans you know, do they have sections about special forest products?

2) Have forest plans every been challenged on the basis that they are not managing for multiple use? (By not allowing certain uses)

3) Has there ever been litigation about permits or activities around special forest products?

O Tannenbaum! Christmas Trees and Climate Change

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Xmastreecutting

Thanks to Char Miller for this piece on Christmas trees (and history). As usual, worth reading in its entirety. Just a tiny excerpt below, link here.

We’ll also better understand the larger implications of our consumption in this troubling era of climate change. Lowenstein argues, for example, that because real Christmas trees are rooted in the soil they are able to sequester carbon. Even when harvested, and only 10% of them are cut a year, this essential air-cleaning process of absorption is maintained. Moreover, growers immediately replant, often at a ratio of two or three for ever one tree cut down, allowing this industry, with more than 400 million trees in the ground, to operate on a sustainable, Earth-affirming basis.

Of course, people could go cut their trees on the national forests. Except for the Angeles, which I can understand. I wonder how many NF’s don’t allow Christmas tree cutting?

And in case this isn’t enough on the topic of Christmas trees for you.. here is another story..
“Real Christmas trees more sustainable than fakes, forestry professor says”. Thanks to Craig Rawlings of Forest Business Network for this link.

Climate Change Already Playing Out in West: New Report

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bar beetle view

Terry Seyden also sent this link, to an article about a new report on climate change.

Here’s a link to what I think is the report (note to media folks, if you write an article about a report, it would be helpful if you would provide a link).

Here is a quote from the news article.

The study points to strides and real progress on the ground that demonstrates that government can be responsive and smart in the threat of climate change, and the public-private partnerships out there to curtail its range of potential consequences.

An example is a tree-thinning program instituted in Arizona, which experienced its largest wildfire on record in 2011. Still, the fire did not burn ridges where the thinning had happened. Such strategy invoked in advance of catastrophic wildfires can help reduce other threats, such as flash flooding that can imperil drinking water supplies, the report notes.
“The nexus of climate and forest fires is a flashpoint for several other degraded ecosystems such as water supply and water quality,” the report said.

Here’s a quote on what the report itself says about fires (in Box 4.2).

Box 4.2. Climate Impacting Fire Risk, Water Supply, Recreation,
and Flood Risk in Western U.S. Forests

Authors: Evan Girvetz, Dave Goodrich, Darius Semmens, Carolyn Enquist
The 2009 National Climate Change Assessment (CCSP, 2009) documented the broad-scale forest dieback as a threshold response to climate change in the Southwestern United States (Fagre and others, 2009) and noted this can be a precursor to high severity wildfires. Since that assessment, in the summer of 2011 the largest recorded wildfires in Arizona (Wallow – greater than 538,000 acres with 15,400 acres in New Mexico; greater than$100 million in suppression costs) and New Mexico (Las Conchas – ~156,600 acres) occurred. Both fires had significant impacts on a range of ecosystem processes, individual species, and a number of ecosystem services provided by these systems.

The Las Conchas fire in northern New Mexico burned over 63 residences, 1100 archeological sites, more than sixty percent of Bandelier National Monument (BNM), and over 80 percent of the forested lands of the Santa Clara Native American Pueblo (16,600 acres), and was severe enough to cause forest stand replacement scale damage over broad areas. Following the fire, heavy rain storms led to major flooding and erosion throughout the fire area. Scientific modeling found that this type of storm (25-year event) would lead to river runoff approximately 2.5 times greater and sediment yield three times greater due to this fire in the main canyon of Bandelier National Monument (Semmens and others, 2008; Table 4.1).
Climate change a likely contributing factor: There is good evidence for warmer temperatures, reduced snowpack, and earlier onset of springtime leading to already observed increased wildfires in the western U.S (Westerling, 2006). The National Research Council (2011) projected 2 to 6 times increase in areas in the West burned by wildfires given a 1°C increase. Recent research employing paleodata and an ensemble of climate models projects that the frequency of droughts, which cause broad-scale forest die-back may occur approximately 50 times per century by 2100, far beyond the range of variability of the driest centuries in the past millennium (Williams and others, 2012).

Other Stressors Exacerbating Fire: Forest management practices and invasive insect pests contributed to catastrophic wildfire occurring in these systems. Even-aged second growth forests much denser than natural occur in the West, remove more water out of the soil and increase the likelihood of catastrophic crown fires. In addition, naturally occurring bark beetles breed more frequently and successfully under conditions that are projected to become more frequent with climate change (Jonsson and others, 2009; Schoennagel and others, 2011). Outbreaks of bark beetles and associated tree mortality have increased in severity in recent years, suggesting a possible connection between large fires and the changing fuel conditions caused by beetle outbreaks. In turn, the dead trees left behind by bark beetles can make crown fires more likely (Hoffman and others, 2010; Schoennagel and others, 2011).

Impacts to species and biodiversity: The catastrophic crown fire conditions during the Las Conchas fire undoubtedly had a devastating impact on above-ground wildlife (McCarthy, 2012). Relatively few animals living above ground likely survived. In addition, the mid-elevation areas of all the major canyon systems of Bandelier National Monument experienced extensive to near complete mortality of all tree and shrub cover while leaving dead trees standing. Mexican Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis lucida) nesting and roosting habitat has been altered, potentially affecting its suitability for this species (Jenness and others, 2004). The Jamez salamander is an endangered species whose population was put in further danger due to this fire (McCarthy, 2012).

Impacts to recreation: Post-fire localized thunderstorms on a single day resulted in at least ten debris flows originating from the north slopes of a single canyon in Bandelier National Monument. Popular recreation areas in the Monument were evacuated for four weeks and flash floods damaged the newly-renovated multi-million dollar National Park Service visitor center. In addition, other recreation areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of Land Management closed down recreation areas due to the fire, and associated flooding and erosion.
Impacts to Urban water supply: The increased sediment and ash eroded by the floods in the wake of the fire were transported to downstream streams and rivers, including the Rio Grande, a major source of drinking water for New Mexico and 50 percent of the drinking water supply for Albuquerque. The sediment and ash led to Albuquerque’s water agency to turn off all water supplies from the Rio Grande for a week, and reducing water withdrawals in the subsequent months due to increased cost of treatment (Albuquerque Journal, September 2, 2011 http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/09/02/news/2-agencies-curtail-rio-grande-draws.html)

An adaptation effort is needed: Safeguarding against fire related impacts and adaptation to change will require innovative solutions, large-scale action and engagement among a variety of different stakeholders. The Southwest Climate Change Initiative (SWCCI), led by The Nature Conservancy, is an example of this type of adaptation planning effort. SWCCI is a public-private partnership developed in 2009 with the University of Arizona Climate Assessment for the Southwest, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Western Water Assessment along with government agency partners with the goal of providing information and tools to build resilience in ecosystems and communities of the southwestern U.S. The SWCCI is currently leading efforts across the Southwest, including adjacent to the Las Conchas fire area, to identify and implement adaptation solutions that help prevent these types of catastrophic events. Some of the solutions being considered include forest restoration activities such as non-commercial mechanical thinning of small-diameter trees, controlled burns to reintroduce the low-severity ground fires that historically maintained forest health, and comprehensive ecological monitoring to determine effects of these treatments on forest and stream habitats, plants, animals, habitats and soils.

Also I agreed with this..

Projecting climate change impacts on biodiversity involves many uncertainties (Pereira and others, 2010; Bellard and others, 2012) stemming from variability in climate projections (particularly precipitation patterns), uncertainties in future emissions, and assumptions and uncertainties in the models used to project species responses and extinctions (He and Hubbell, 2011). Some of these uncertainties are inevitable given that we are trying to predict the future; nonetheless, techniques and modeling approaches are becoming more sophisticated and able to evaluate myriad influences such as biotic interactions and dispersal abilities that were previously deficient. Projections are also complicated by uncertainty about where and how human responses to climate change are likely to impact biodiversity. Sustainable energy development and infrastructure, changes in agricultural practices, human migrations, and changes in water extraction and storage practices in response to climate change are all very likely to have impacts on biodiversity. Predicting where these mitigation and adaptation responses will occur, and how they will impact biodiversity will be a critical step in developing credible future climate change impact scenarios. Although many tools for forecasting climate change impacts on ecosystem services exist (Kareiva and others, 2011), fewer methods for anticipating how people will respond to those impacts have been developed or incorporated into projected impacts on biodiversity.

Except that I think “predicting what people will do” is a less valuable use of resources that “figuring out what is the best thing to do.” Which was actually very difficult to get funding for, comparatively. Just sayin’

RPA Assessment Released

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2010-assessment

Terry Seyden forwarded this link to an article in the Lake County (Calif) news regarding the publication of the RPA Assessment. Here is one in the Santa Barbara Independent.

The article said it was released Tuesday, I couldn’t find anything under USDA press releases, nor Forest Service, but I finally located it on the FS homepage here.

Here is a link to the report. Here is the link to RPA stuff in general.

A comprehensive U.S. Forest Service report released Tuesday examines the ways expanding populations, increased urbanization, and changing land-use patterns could profoundly impact natural resources, including water supplies, nationwide during the next 50 years.

Significantly, the study shows the potential for significant loss of privately-owned forests to development and fragmentation, which could substantially reduce benefits from forests that the public now enjoys including clean water, wildlife habitat, forest products and others.

“We should all be concerned by the projected decline in our nation’s forests and the corresponding loss of the many critical services they provide such as clean drinking water, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, wood products and outdoor recreation,” said Agriculture Under Secretary Harris Sherman.

Sherman said the report offers “a sobering perspective on what is at stake and the need to maintain our commitment to conserve these critical assets.”

U.S Forest Service scientists and partners at universities, non-profits and other agencies found urban and developed land areas in the U.S. will increase 41 percent by 2060.

Forested areas will be most impacted by this growth, with losses ranging from 16 to 34 million acres in the lower 48 states. The study also examines the effect of climate change on forests and the services forests provide.

Most importantly, over the long-term, climate change could have significant effects on water availability, making the US potentially more vulnerable to water shortages, especially in the Southwest and Great Plains.

Population growth in more arid regions will require more drinking water. Recent trends in agricultural irrigation and landscaping techniques also will boost water demands.

“Our nation’s forests and grasslands are facing significant challenges. This assessment strengthens our commitment to accelerate restoration efforts that will improve forest resiliency and conservation of vitally important natural resources,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.

The assessment’s projections are influenced by a set of scenarios with varying assumptions about U.S. population and economic growth, global population and economic growth, global wood energy consumption and U.S. land use change from 2010 to 2060. Using those scenarios, the report forecasts the following key trends:

Forest areas will decline as a result of development, particularly in the South, where population is projected to grow the most;
Timber prices are expected to remain relatively flat;
Rangeland area is expected to continue its slow decline but rangeland productivity is stable with forage sufficient to meet expected livestock grazing demands;
Biodiversity may continue to erode because projected loss of forestland will impact the variety of forest species;
Recreation use is expected to trend upward.

Additionally, the report stresses the need to develop forest and rangeland policies which are flexible enough to be effective under a wide range of future socioeconomic and ecological conditions such as climate change.

UPDATE
Thanks to an alert reader we now have links to 2010 RPA Assessment Frequently Asked Questions 17 Dec 2012

2010 RPA Assessment Talking Points 17 Dec 2012

2010_RPA_Key_Findings_Dec2012

Take a look and see what you think! Predicting the future is hard work..
My one thought is that the USG would save oodles of money by forcing the agencies (at least USGS, Bureau of Reclamation, and now FS) to do one coordinated effort on future water supply and demand. In fact, I think we could save mega-oodles by forcing coordination among agencies on every research topic. One way is just to assign a science agency a topic, and require that all funding for that work go through one agency (and people cooperating with them). There would be a panel which included practitioners reviewing proposals for utility, duplication and overlap. After all, how many different down-scaled climate model projections does one area need?

Flexible NEPA in the Black Hills

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Hand of Bobzien

Here’s a story from the Rapid City Journal on attempts (with CEQ) to design NEPA documents and decisions in a more flexible way.

Here’s an AP story as well, not so clear about the NEPA, more about the funding.

Black Hills National Forest officials will rely on streamlined regulations and extensive commercial tree thinning in a new attack plan against the mountain pine beetle aimed at protecting vulnerable areas before the bugs hit.

Forest Supervisor Craig Bobzien said Monday in releasing details of the Mountain Pine Beetle Response Project, which was developed over more than a year and included public comments and environmental review, that it would target 248,000 acres of highly vulnerable woodlands within the 1.2-million-acre forest for treatment in advance of beetle.

Commercial thinning would be used on almost half of those acres — 122,000 — over five to seven years to make them more resistant to the destructive bugs and less likely to erupt in wild fires, he said.

“It’s hard work and in many cases it’s expensive work,” Bobzien said. “But it’s worth the effort.”

Bobzien said the response project includes a variety of treatment options and costs about $70 million over the five to seven years. On an annual basis, that is slightly more than current forest management costs weighted heavily toward pine-beetle control work and fuels reduction to reduce the chances of wild fires.

Bobzien said the forest could put additional money to good use through the response project. But its effectiveness is about more than just money, he said.

“We’ll be able to respond much faster and adapt to what’s going on out there in nature. We’ll be able to move at a much-faster pace,” Bobzien said. “This allows us to be out in front of the beetle, which is where we’re most effective.”

The project was authorized by the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, aimed at a better response to the buildup of hazardous fuels in thick forests and including work against insects and disease. Additional pressure in recent years for streamlined regulations came from private citizens, state and local officials, and the timber industry, as well members of the state’s congressional delegation.

With support from the delegation, the Forest Service worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to find acceptable ways to streamline regulations, Bobzien said.

Rep. Kristi Noem and Sen. John Thune, both Republicans, celebrated Bobzien’s announcement Monday.

This is one of the current efforts at helping the Forest Service use NEPA in ways that facilitate dealing with 21st Century problems. 4FRI is another example, and there are others. Observers will note that the impetus to do this is still there, even though it’s not an R administration.

Sharon’s Post-Election Visualization

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secs office 2

Remember, a while back on Election Day, I asked in this post for visualizations of this conversation. We were to imagine ourselves invited to the Cage and being asked to sit by the Secretary.

“Sharon, I’ve heard from my staff that you have passion, knowledge about and great personal experience with our National Forests. I’ve brought you in for this discussion because I, too, care, about them deeply, and I’m interested in your perspective. I’m looking for advice. I understand that the Forest Service is only one piece of what the USDA does, but it’s a very important piece. I believe that our public lands, in one way or another, touch the soul of each American. If you were sitting in my chair, what would you do differently?”

When I thought about it, I had a broad range of imaginative policy ideas. But when I visualized it, something else entirely came up. The right brain and the heart have their own voice.

“Mr. Secretary, I think the most important thing you can do in the President’s second term is.. I hate to sounds like Moses (just call me Moishe Friedman).. but let my people (Forest Service employees, or former people) go! I mean, in my opinion, you need to let up on the reins in a couple of areas, or otherwise, just arrange to move the Forest Service to Interior.

A long time ago, in a Region far, far away, I worked at a Forest Service nursery where there were Wage Grade and GS folks working. They were always comparing notes about the pros and cons about being one or the other. This is basic human nature. If you diverge too much in treating Forest Service employees from the way that BLM or FWS or Park Service folks are treated, people are going to compare notes. And when things have a tendency to be worse for the Forest Service, the result is not going to be good for morale.

Diversity
Now, the Chief may have told you, but there aren’t that many diverse folks in the natural resource professions. You must know this as you picked the current Chief, Tom Tidwell, Harris Sherman, Jay Jensen, and Butch Blazer, and I’m sure you looked around. At the same time, when you run the numbers, you also need to look at women. We tend to be a smaller percentage than men of any ethnic group in natural resources, and a smaller percentage of veterans (less than what you would expect, which would be 50%). So if you and others are not careful, you could end up being diverse in many ways, but not with women,which I think is very important for a variety of reasons. If all you’ve done is increase the diversity of complexions of folks who discuss elk or turkey hunting at the morning staff meeting, have you really diversified?

When I retired, I worked for a black man, who worked for a Hispanic man, who worked for a white man (the Chief) who worked for a white man (Harris) who worked for another white man (you) who worked for a black man (the President) helped by a white man (the vice-president). All I could see is an unbroken linkage of testosterone molecules from me to President Obama. Even the President is having trouble with the Cabinet, as in this Denver Post story, so I get it. So I think you need to keep this in mind as you fill positions and look at your agencies filling positions. But enough on that.

The Forest Service is looking for the same kinds of folks that BLM and FWS are. If you want to diversify the Forest Service, it’s gotta look like at least as good a place to work, or a better place. As they say, it should be an “employer of choice.”

But some of the current efforts, to some of us, look both draconian and silly at the same time. I know your heart is in the right place, but the systems don’t exist in some cases, to get you’re the results you want, and in actuality it looks like a Dilbert cartoon out there. “Hire diverse people but you have no way of knowing if they are and you will get in trouble if you don’t.” “We have targets but we can’t tell you what they are or write down what they are because we know we’re not supposed to have them.”

Like I said, I know your heart is in the right place. So here’s what I’d do instead. I’d get a diverse panel of young leaders, tell them to work with the schools that produce people with qualifications we need, and give them 2 months to come up with a plan. I’d ask them to identify administrative barriers that need to be removed. I’d publish the plan and vet it online with comments from the rank and file. Then I’d work the plan. I might even go in with the other natural resource agencies on a plan, to maximize the taxpayer bang for the buck.

Travel

Again, the reductions in the Forest Service appear to be much more draconian than fellow natural resource agencies. What’s up with that? In any large organization, the top of the food chain doesn’t get into the weeds of how to manage subordinates’ budgets. If the USFS needed to save X millions of dollars annually, it would have made sense to identify the amount of savings and then say to the Chief, go forth and cut your spending. Instead, you specifically targeted travel after the agency had been reducing on its own for the previous three or more years, the end result is that some important work isn’t getting done because of the constraint, in some cases employee safety is being compromised, and it disproportionately punishes units that were proactive in reducing travel costs before the current quest for reductions. Somehow I don’t think Homeland Security can’t go get terrorists because of their “travel cap” (yes, I know they’re not a natural resource agency, but you get the point).

So maybe “work” needs to be defined differently and separated from meetings. One of the problems is that perhaps some people go to too many meetings, but the draconian aspect of this policy has cut into people’s ability to: develop relationships with their peers and potential partners, provide oversight for how federal funds are spent, and mentoring of younger employees by older employees, professional development, and membership in professional societies.

I brought a copy of Mike Dombeck’s 1999 letter on professional societies (attached to this post as Professional Society Letter. Take a look. All of the things in that letter are still true. It seems like the travel cap has had an impact on people’s participation in keeping up their professional credentials, both meetings and training. It’s extremely demoralizing for our employees, makes the FS an employer “to avoid” rather than “of choice” and keeps the taxpayer from having the best professional advice in an era when we write in regulation that the agency needs to look at the “best available science.”

Now I realize that you are just setting general direction, and people can and do, possibly, interpret things differently down the food chain. In my opinion, the best thing that you could possibly do 1) set up a group to examine why USDA travel policies appear to be different from other federal agencies,
And 2) ask the Chief to update Mike Dombeck’s letter. and clarify that professional development is still encouraged.

Communication

The election is over. You have a second term. So just lighten up! If people don’t get to tell their story, the public can’t make good decisions about their public lands. Sure, sometimes there will be screwups in a large organization. But there are enormously talented, hardworking, public servants out there. Just let them do their job, and if some do it wrong, hold them accountable. What you are saying implicitly, when you hold the reins as tight as they have been, is that you don’t trust them to do their job. Bad, bad, bad for morale. Bad for the public. It’s just all around bad. You might even ask previous administrations for tricks of the trade in communicating in a decentralized organization without going wildly awry. It seemed to me before I retired that it was worse than previous administrations. Part of that might be the growth of social media but it seems to me that can be an advantage if you trust your people.. more ways to get the story out.

Like I said, I know your heart is in the right place, and I think you could do a lot for morale just by setting up groups to look at these two things (travel and diversity) compare us to other agencies, find the best ways, reduce the Dilbertiana, and let the communicators communicate (with guidelines, of course).

Thank you so much for this chance to chat. I hope you take my suggestions in the spirit in which they are offered. I believe that if you and the FS are working better together, you can get much farther down the road in the President’s direction.

I’d like to thank the two employees and one retiree who helped edit and provided feedback on this visualization. If you disagree with the points I made, or have other ideas, please comment!

And I still would like to get visualizations from others… not too late!

NEPA : What’s it to Ya?

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forest_service_decisions_law

Warning: We are exploring the hinterlands of NEPA-Nerd country here… but if people are really interested…

Bob Berwyn raised some points about NEPA in this comment, which reminded me of many discussions the FS NEPA folks have had about “when we talk about NEPA do we mean section 101 of the statute (promote harmony,etc.), do we mean a document, a process, or a framework for decision-making?

I remembered lots of conversations about that among NEPA practitioners, especially during the A-76 process. A-76, for those of you blessed to not know what it is, was the bureaucratic equivalent of “which of your children will you sacrifice to the Gods.” This God being the theological proposition that all things contracted are cheaper and more effective than all things in-house. Somehow it was decided that people involved with NEPA would be sacrificed (err.. sacrifice would be “studied” by a group of Beltway Bandits who were seen to be experts in “Competitive Sourcing.”)

I may remember some of the details incorrectly, but that’s my memory. Any other survivors of this period are invited to comment.

Another blog contributor remembered this article, which I think lays some of the ideas out (for the record, I neither agree with Dave Iverson nor Susan Y-S (who was the Director of EMC, possibly at that time). But I think it’s worth all interested parties hearing this more or less internal discussion.

Here’s the link. This links to the Forest Policy-Forest Practice site, which was in many ways the antecedent of this blog.

Forest farming key to saving wild ginseng from extinction

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USRangeNew

An Eastern forest story, here.

“I’m very concerned that we might not have ginseng in the wild in a few years,” said Jim Corbin, a plant protection specialist with the N.C. Department of Agriculture, which regulates the sale and export of ginseng.

Corbin was part of an expert panel of botanists and regulators discussing plant conservation Friday at the International American Ginseng Exposition, a conference held this weekend at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center.

Conference speakers agreed that more ginseng must be grown on private lands by forest farmers to take pressure off wild populations on federal lands, which have been hard-hit by drought, poaching and decades of intense collecting pressure.

“Getting more ginseng grown on private lands is the key to sustainability of ginseng long-term,” said Pat Ford, a botanist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

While the conference focused on numerous barriers facing ginseng cultivators, experts say high demand for wild ginseng in China and Hong Kong offers local landowners the opportunity to sustainably manage their forests while generating steady income.

Grijalva’s 2008 Report on Bush Administration Public Land “Assault”

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DOI_Seal_55x54

I think everyone should take a look at this report submitted by Congressman Grijalva. Especially those of us who were involved in different things decried therein.

Running through it briefly, I noticed this..

NPS Employee Morale Near All-Time Low
A poll of NPS employees conducted by the Campaign to Protect America’s Lands and the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees found that, of 1,361 respondents surveyed, 84% expressed a “great deal of concern” about the effect of current policies on national parks; 59% said the situation had worsened over the last few years; and 79% said morale had declined over the same period.

Perhaps there is a need for a Coalition of Concerned National Forest Service Retirees perhaps to fund more in-depth studies of FS morale issues? Or existing organizations might take on some of this work. Here’s a link to the Coalition of Park Service Retirees.

Here’s a link to some testimony..

which includes this quote:

This deficiency is pointed out in the Partnership for Public Service 2007 Rankings of “The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.” In this survey, NPS ranked 203 out of 222. Several of the other items with low rankings also may result from an inadequate employee development program.
One of the most significant deficiencies is “effective leadership” (ranked 191 of 222 in the aforementioned survey). The general belief in the NPS is that there are two parts to this perceived deficiency:
• Inadequate training and development of lower-level (first- and second-line) supervisors; and
• Ineffective and unprincipled leadership practices and decisions by high-level agency leaders, particularly political appointees.

This does sound kind of familiar to the FS, although “unprincipled” doesn’t sound like FS language.
Well, that was interesting, but a bit off track…

So I know some of the readers of this blog were involved in the 2005 Rule, so I picked this out.

On January 5, 2005, the Forest Service published the 2005 planning rule (70 CFR 1023) establishing procedures for National Forest System compliance with the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). The Bush administration set out to gut protections and promulgated final rules intended to completely overhaul the forest management planning process by abolishing mandatory protections for wildlife and habitat and eliminating public input from the planning process. The rule also would exempt the plans from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This was all part of an intensive effort by the administration to ramp up logging and mining, significantly, on public land.

OK, well maybe “abolishing protections” is viability..but public input was not “eliminated”. It was actually required.. So that is er… untrue.

There are many fun quotes in there.

NEPA Rollbacks by the Forest Service
According to the Congressional Research Service, the bulk of the efforts to amend NEPA have been directed at the six federal agencies that tend to produce the most environmental impact statements (EIS); the Forest Service, Federal Highways Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, agencies within the Department of the Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers. To date, twenty-eight administrative efforts related to NEPA ―reform have been finalized. The Forest Service has made 8 changes to NEPA procedures, the most of any federal agency researched

As you all know, I used to work in NEPA in DC and I don’t even know what this means in terms of the eight changes… it sounds bad, though 😉 . Maybe I could argue that it wasn’t true if I had the vaguest idea what they are talking about. Gee, the people/agencies who do most of the work care most about improving processes. Now why would that be?

or this one:

As of 2003, the Forest Service had only one categorical exclusion for vegetation management activities involving timber stand or wildlife habitat improvement. However, in 2003 and 2004 under the Bush Administration, the Forest Service added four new vegetation management categorical exclusions: (1) salvage of dead or dying trees up to 250 acres, (2) timber harvest of live trees up to 70 acres, (3) hazardous fuels reduction up to 5,500 acres, and (4) removal of insect or disease infested trees up to 250 acres.

A more experienced person might see a different pattern.. from the 2003 Federal Register Notice here. Note: I also worked on the Limited Timber Harvest CE so that’s why it’s easy for me to know that the categories weren’t really “new.”

On September 18, 1998, a lawsuit was filed against the Forest Service arguing that the 1992 categorical exclusions were improperly promulgated. On September 28, 1999, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois found that the categorical exclusions were properly promulgated.
However, the court found insufficient evidence in the record to support the agency’s decision to set the volume limits in Categorical Exclusion 4 at 250,000 board feet of merchantable wood products for timber harvest and 1 million board feet of merchantable wood products for salvage. Accordingly,
the court declared Categorical Exclusion 4 in section 31.2 of Chapter 30 FSH 1909.15 null and void and enjoined the agency from its further use.

It’s hard for me to believe that anyone knowledgeable could write this..

The Bush Administration claimed environmentalists used the appeals process to delay thinning projects to reduce fire risk, however a 2001 study by the Government Accountability Office found that only 1 percent of hazardous fuels reduction projects were appealed.

I think we see much evidence, even on this blog, that thinning projects have been delayed or stopped, and the Bush Administration is long gone.

Also

During the past nearly 8 years of the Bush Administration, the growing costs of wildland fire suppression have consumed major parts of the Forest Service budget, and other critical programs have been cut.

Spending related to fires continues to account for an ever-larger percentage of the Forest Service budget. In 1991, wildland fire management was 13% of the overall Forest Service budget; and today it is nearly 48%. The skyrocketing cost of fighting fires has forced drastic reductions in other Forest Service accounts, a trend continued yearly in Forest Service budget requests under the Bush Administration. Ironically, many of these budget requests have included cuts to critical fire prevention programs in the face of ever-worsening fire seasons. Even more troublesome, the Forest Service has had to ―Rob Peter to Pay Paul by borrowing funds from other critical Forest Service programs to cover the escalating costs of fire suppression.

Well, I’m glad that’s been fixed ;)!

Note: I am not saying or implying that this administration’s performance is sub-par. All I’m pointing out is that partisanizing difficult problems, that require all of us to work together to solve, does not really help and actually, in some cases, makes the environment worse while people are litigating or fighting to get elected, rather than finding a policy that works across the aisle. I know that the Congress’s work tends to be about theatrical party-bashing instead of thoughtful policy-making, but still..