We’ve obviously had a number of in-depth discussions and debates about the Lolo National Forests’s Colt Summit timber sale in the Seeley-Swan Valley of western Montana. However, something just arrived in my in-box this morning, which I thought would be good to highlight here for further discussion.
It’s a 2009 letter from John R. Squires , Research Wildlife Biologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula in response to specific questions from a rural landscape scientist with Missoula County’s Rural Initiatives program. The subject of the letter is lynx, and specifically lynx in the Seeley Lake area of western Montana. As frequent readers of this blog will recall, Missoula County joined with The Wilderness Society, Pyramid Mountain Lumber, National Wildlife Federal, Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Wood Products Association, Montana Logging Association and others to file an amici brief in full and unequivocal support of the Forest Service’s Colt Summit timber sale.
However, despite the enthusiastic support of these collaborators, a federal district court judge issued the following ruling:
Summary judgment is granted in favor of the plaintiffs on their claim that the defendants violated NEPA by failing to adequately analyze the Colt Summit Project’s cumulative effects on lynx….
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this matter is REMANDED to the Forest Service so that it may prepare a supplemental environmental assessment consistent with this order and the law.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the defendants are enjoined from implementing the Colt Summit Project while the proceedings required on remand are pending.
Squires 2009 letter provides some more information regarding lynx in general, but also specifically about lynx in the Seeley Lake area and how these lynx – and their habitat – are impacted by forest management practices such as logging and “thinning.” Of particular interest is that Squires states that “The Seeley Lake area represents some of the most important lynx habitat in Montana.” And also, “[L]ynx are very sensitive to forest management, especially forest thinning. Thinning reduces habitat quality for lynx with effects lasting up to several decades.”
Finally, there’s this tidbit of information from Squires, “[T]here is likely a threshold of thinning below which lynx will not be able to persist. The extent of forest thinning and forest fragmentation around Seeley in the last 5 years is of concern for lynx in western Montana. Preliminary analysis of population viability suggest that lynx in the Seeley area may be declining, so concerns for maintaining available habitat does have a scientific basis.”
Below are some excerpts from Squires letter (please note that the added emphasis is mine):
We have studied lynx in western Montana for a decade and my answers are based on our understanding gained during this research. I will focus my comments on our scientific understanding realizing that results from this research may have policy implications. You asked the following questions:
1) What information can you provide about the importance of the Seeley Lake area to lynx, especially in regards to the Northern Rockies?
Since the federal listing of Canada lynx in 2000, it has become clear that Canada lynx have a very limited distribution in the contiguous United States. Other than Montana, native populations are only found in Washington, Maine, and small populations in Minnesota and Wyoming that may consist of only a few individuals. Lynx in western Montana represents possibly the most viable native population in the contiguous United States and it is a primary focus of conservation planning for the species….The Seeley Lake area represents some of the most important lynx habitat in Montana. The areas surrounding Seeley Lake are not only central to the conservation and management of Canada lynx in western Montana, but also to the management of the species in the contiguous United States.
Lynx avoid low elevation, dry forest types and the open high elevation tundra habitats. Lynx are restricted to high elevation, spruce-fir forests, like those found around Seeley Lake. We compared habitat characteristics found in 59 lynx home ranges to 500 random areas of similar size. We found that lynx preferentially select home ranges with low topographic roughness; they generally avoid the very steep topographies like the central portions of Glacier National Park and parts of the Bob Marshall Complex. Instead, lynx preferentially select spruce-fir forests found in more rolling topographies, like those found in Seeley Lake and in the Purcell Mountains north of Libby, MT. These boreal landscapes are rare in western Montana and they are the landscapes most impacted by forest management. The spruce-fir forests that surround Seeley Lake are readily used by lynx (Figure 1). The future management of these forests will be important to the species’ recovery.
Figure 1. GPS locations of Canada lynx using lands surrounding Seeley Lake, Montana.
2) How have lynx persisted in Seeley Lake despite extensive timber harvesting and recreation?
Based on 10 years of research in western Montana, we recognize that lynx occupy a very narrow habitat niche due to their highly-specialized, morphological adaptations for hunting snowshoe hares in deep-snow. During winter, lynx hunt preferentially in mature, multi-layer, spruce-fir forests. In summer, lynx remain in their same home ranges, but they broaden their niche to also include young regenerating forests that contain dense horizontal cover. Lynx are almost completely dependent on snowshoe hares (96% winter food biomass) for food, and the abundance of hares is directly rated to the amount of horizontal cover provided by forests vegetation. Therefore, lynx are very sensitive to forest management, especially forest thinning. Thinning reduces habitat quality for lynx with effects lasting up to several decades.
Although lynx are sensitive to forest management, they do persist in the Seeley Lake area and other managed landscapes, provided that a mosaic of suitable habitat is available, including a high abundance of un-thinning forests. Landscapes that offer a mosaic of forest age and structure classes provide habitat for denning and foraging. Although substantial forest thinning has occurred in the Seeley Lake area, lynx have been able to use un-thinned habitats. However, there is likely a threshold of thinning below which lynx will not be able to persist. The extent of forest thinning and forest fragmentation around Seeley in the last 5 years is of concern for lynx in western Montana. Preliminary analysis of population viability suggest that lynx in the Seeley area may be declining, so concerns for maintaining available habitat does have a scientific basis.
Thanks to Matthew for finding this one… thought it worthy of its own post. Here’s the link:
Here is an excerpt:
It’s hard to tell how big a deal this requirement for higher-level approval really is.
In an interview with the Helena Independent Record, a Washington Forest Service spokesman, Joe Walsh, said the memo “isn’t a change in policy.” Small fires may still be allowed to burn, but a regional supervisor must make that decision, not a lower-level supervisor like an incident commander or local land manager. A regional forester, he said, “just has a better idea of what’s going on strategically and what (firefighting) resources are available.” (Interestingly, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management have not adopted the Forest Service’s directive).
But Jennifer Jones, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, said it was unlikely many fires would be allowed to burn “given current fiscal constraints.” And Brenda Halter, the Superior National Forest supervisor in Minnesota, told the Duluth News Tribune the change was “a national directive that means we’re going to be much more aggressively suppressing wildfires in wilderness.”
That appears to be happening in the northern Rockies. In an article for OnEarth, Richard Manning found that of the 28 naturally-caused wildfires burning in wilderness areas in Region One this year, all were being suppressed.
Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, says bumping the decision to a regional forester just decreases the chance a fire will be allowed to burn.
“This takes what was an operational-level decision and makes it into a political-level decision,” he said.
Although the Forest Service said the directive is temporary and will likely be suspended come winter, Manning’s article makes it seem like the decision is a complete reversal of the 1995 federal fire policy that made restoration of wildland fire a national priority. He argues that the conditions that led to the temporary change—hot, dry weather and budget shortfalls—aren’t likely to go away anytime soon, suggesting the fire suppression policy might stick around, too.
Stahl thinks so, too.
“Things like this have a tendency to become indelible,” he said. In order to reverse the policy next season, he thinks the Forest Service will have to make the case that budget and weather conditions are significantly different than this year—something he worries might not happen.
I totally agree with Emily in that it’s hard to tell how big a deal this really is. I don’t think we can actually tell until next year. I disagree with Andy that taking it to the RF makes it more “political”. That is, if Andy means it in the sense of “cognizant of the opinions of those at higher levels of the Executive Branch.” In general I have found that political folks of every stripe are pretty good at making sure that line officers understand their preferences, including forest supervisors.
Using an analogy, in the Colorado Roadless Rule there are a number of places where the Regional Forester has to make a determinations about projects. The idea is that it makes people be more careful and think things through if they know someone else, like their boss and hers/his staff, will be looking at it. If that’s true for a pipeline crossing a roadless are, it seems like a small step to think it’s more true for something that could cost the taypayer, the homeowner, and business in communities millions, and risk human life (with either decision).
Seems like Manning, and to a lesser extent. Andy, are assuming the worst, while Greg has an “it’s not great but let’s wait and see” attitude.
On July 12, lightning sparked a forest fire in western Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex — a place where wildfires are common this time of year. Usually, if they’re small and don’t threaten to get out of control, the U.S. Forest Service will let them burn. Small fires are good for the forest ecosystem, burning off dead timber and creating habitat for many woodland species; because of that, all U.S. agencies adopted a policy in 1995 to reintroduce fire on federal land.
So what happened last month was unusual: the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the 1.5 million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and an additional 35 million acres of federally designated wilderness land nationwide, ordered a full-on attack of the fire by smokejumpers, bucket-bearing helicopters, and four lumbering slurry bombers that each dumped more than 2,000 gallons of red chemical fire retardant on an ecosystem that is otherwise treated as pristine.
This has been happening all across the West this summer, as the Forest Service throws its already-thin firefighting resources at blazes that in previous years would have been allowed to spread naturally and burn out on their own. The stated reason is cost: the Forest Service is so worried that the hot, dry conditions will cause one or more of those small fires to burn out of control — consuming not just acres of forest, but also the agency’s strapped budget — that it’s willing to pour money and resources into fighting blazes that threaten little and are usually considered healthy for the forests.
Here is a link to today’s article in the Denver Post, and below is an excerpt.
The commission also may make “compensatory recommendations” after hearing from victims of the fire, who were expected to testify in Conifer on Monday night.
“Realistically, we’re talking about many months, if not over years” before victims see special compensation from the state, said commission chairwoman state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango .
Mike Babler, fire programs manager for the Colorado chapter of the Nature Conservancy , said wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense.
Babler said prescribed burns, which the state put an indefinite ban on after the Lower North Fork fire, are still important for fire management. But he listed a variety of other strategies, including defensive techniques such as cleaning up pine needles and other fuel around homes.
Another major factor has been the collapse of the timber industry, Babler said. With a depressed construction industry and foreign competition, mills have been shuttered, leaving forests thicker with fuel.
He also pointed to the growth of those living in the “urban wilderness interface,” where development creeps into forests. Two million people in Colorado now live in these areas, and studies say that could double in 20 years, he said.
In California on Monday, more than 825,000 rural residents received bills from the state of up to $150 for fire protection costs.
The controversial new fees are expected to raise $84 million to help balance the state budget.
Sharon’s questions: Does someone have a link to the California policy? Also, it’s still not clear to me why the taxpayers of Colorado (say, the person working at the 7-11) should be compensating these folks. Is it for something their insurance does not cover? Does the policy of “no prescribed burns” really make any practical sense? Is there really such a policy in the State (I haven’t been following this)? Finally, I wonder if the studies of the doubling of populations in the WUI takes into account the economy, and the distribution of wealth. If we can’t predict that, what can we predict? Sensitivity analysis might be useful.
Here’s a copy of the lawsuit filed yesterday by an assortment of timber industry, off-road/ATV and grazing interests against the new NFMA planning rules.
JZ sent this as a comment to another thread, but in the interest of using the “best available science” here is a link to a Journal of Forestry article from 2008. The full title is “External Human Factors in Incident Management Team Decisionmaking and their Effect on Large Fire Expenditures.”
It’s interesting to get a perspective from the people involved. It sounds like the next piece of research was to interview the agency administrators. Does anyone know if the authors finished this, and if so, where the paper might be found?
Some folks thought it was difficult to understand the bureacratese of this proposed reg. So I scheduled 2 hours to develop an “easy guide”. It only took an hour and a half, and now it will take you less, and you will get more out of it.
An objections rule describes a process, so most of it is, by nature, uninteresting (e.g, what happens to the count of number of days, if 45 days falls on a Saturday?). However, if you read my handy 6 page guide here, you can figure out 1) what they want you to comment about, 2) general things of interest, and 3) some topics you might want to look at further.
I’d be interested in discussing here what you think about the proposed rule and if I’ve done this correctly.
Lots of spirituality references in this story.. is it the Sunday effect?
“Like a steeple”
“All of a sudden, all conifers in an aspen grove are bad. And if they are not in a grove, you pray to them”
and (not excerpted)
“An aspen grove is a spiritual area,” said Mary Leavell, who ranches with her husband, Tom. “The way the sunlight slants through them – you get into a good grove and get a really nice feeling.”
Here’s a link to the story from the Sacramento Bee and below is an excerpt.
Like a steeple, the Jeffrey pine towers over other conifers and quaking aspen in the Tahoe National Forest north of Truckee.
Nearly 13 feet around at its base and believed to be about 250 to 300 years old, it has weathered every threat to come its way, including wildfire, drought, storms and logging.
Now it is slated to fall to a modern force: environmental restoration.
As part of a Forest Service effort to return Sierra forests to their pre-settlement glory, this tree is one of many conifers – large and small – the agency has designated for logging to help aspen, which its research shows is in danger.
“We need to be doing everything we can to help promote and foster these aspen stands,” said Quentin Youngblood, the Sierraville district ranger for the Tahoe National Forest. “And quite frankly, there are some tough choices.”
But as trees crash to the ground this summer, anger is growing among environmentalists and area residents who say the effort is heavy-handed and environmentally risky.
“I think they are going to destroy more than they are going to restore,” said Tom Leavell, a rancher whose cattle graze on Forest Service land in the logging zone. “Nature put everything together for a reason. As soon as we go in messing with it, something else happens.”
The project is part of a wider pattern. No longer is agency logging just about timber production. Now, it’s often aimed at healing past mistakes and restoring nature’s bounty.
Playing God with nature is often fraught with risk, of course. But what also makes some scientists uneasy about the Tahoe project is that the Forest Service is logging one cherished Sierra icon to help another.
“All of a sudden, all conifers in an aspen grove are bad. And if they are not in a grove, you pray to them,” said Bill Stewart, a forestry management specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s a little bit mind-bending.”
Cutting big trees has long stirred conflict in the Sierra, where the Forest Service limits most logging to trees less than 30 inches in diameter, but has left a loophole for aspen restoration, allowing even large, old trees to fall.
“This is not scientifically defensible,” said Chad Hanson, director and staff ecologist of the John Muir Project, an environmental group. “This is really just a very creative excuse to get some very large old-growth trees to the mill.”
Youngblood said that’s not the case. “We’re not taking any of the larger trees based on economics,” he said.
Note from Sharon: when I was a young sapling in the Forest Service, in the same years, we used wildlife money to remove conifers from aspen stands (not in the Sierra) and timber money to remove aspen from conifer stands. To those who don’t see the world improving through time, at least now there are not countervailing objectives…
In an earlier post, NRDC’s Niel Lawrence is quoted saying that the Forest Service “has learned to maximize its income in the fire suppression business.”
The graph above shows the quotient of Forest Service and Interior Department fire suppression costs between 1997 and 2008. The trend line is provided by Excel. The source is “Air Attack Against Wildfires: Understanding U.S. Forest Service Requirements for Large Aircraft,” published recently by the Rand Corporation.
For the math challenged, the graph shows that the Forest Service’s fire suppression costs, relative to DOI’s for the same years, have been increasing for a decade.
I don’t fully agree with Niel because I think the Forest Service hasn’t yet learned “to maximize its income.” It is still discovering new tricks to increase milk from the fire suppression cash cow, e.g., adopting an ecologically illiterate and expensive wilderness fire suppression policy.
San Juan Mountains, Colorado
