Community Sourced, Shared and Supported
Escape from the controversies, if even for a few minutes, to stare, and maybe be transported to this location. Fall was a welcome pleasure there.
From the Sumter National Forest, in the South Carolina “Piedmont”, in full resolution. Click on the picture and enjoy
The following opinion editorial is written by Mike Garrity, Alliance for Wild Rockies. It appeared in today’s Great Falls Tribune:
The Tribune’s article on Nov. 18 about the Lewis and Clark National Forest left out some important details and readers deserve to know why the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council went to court to protect the Little Belt Mountains from the proposed “Hazardous Trees Reduction Project.”
First, it is important to bring some perspective to the scope of the project. Logging will take place on a whopping 575 miles of roads. If you were to jump on I-15 and head south, you’d have to go all the way to Salt Lake City to cover that many miles. But remember, all those miles of road to be logged are not spread out through three states from Great Falls to Salt Lake — they’re located in just one Montana mountain range.
The project would change those small roads and two-tracks to look like landing strips since all the roadside trees would be cut down for hundreds of feet. As a result, any elk that cross roads won’t be quickly sneaking across two-tracks, they’ll be fully exposed in an open area as long as a football field. That the project includes this kind of logging in wilderness study areas, research natural areas, inventoried roadless areas, and old growth also deserves explanation by the Forest Service, not obfuscation.
Widespread herbicide spraying is also proposed in several watersheds and streams that are already rated impaired due to sedimentation. More logging will dump even more sediment into these degraded streams, which is antithetical to state efforts to preserve Westslope cutthroat trout and keep Montana’s state fish off the Endangered Species list. The bottom line, however, is that the Forest Service is required by law to produce an environmental analysis for public review and comment.
While Forest Supervisor Bill Avey claims the agency wants more early public involvement, his attempt to use a categorical exclusion does just the opposite – it excludes the public and is the primary reason for taking the agency to court. The Forest Service has prepared an environmental analysis for all similar projects in Montana. Had this proposal been allowed to go forward, it would have set a terrible precedent not just for Montana, but nationwide.
Categorical exclusions were intended for purposes such as mowing lawns at ranger stations or painting outhouses, not logging over 17,000 acres along 575 miles of roads. Had Avey followed the law, the public would certainly have raised questions about the proposal. For instance, environmental analysis would reveal that massive infestations of noxious weeds such as thistle, knapweed, and hounds tongue already exist along these roads. The Forest Service admits it can’t control them now, but didn’t want to admit that logging will only make the situation worse.
Or how about the fact that Canada lynx, wolverine, black-backed woodpecker, Northern goshawk, Western toad, and Northern three-toed woodpecker are all known to occur in the Little Belts and that their numbers will be further reduced by these massive clear cuts? Or maybe Avey didn’t want the public to know that the Forest Service’s own studies show that logging wild lands has little effect on wildfires and that they even might make fires burn hotter because logged forests are hotter, windier, and drier than unlogged forests. Or perhaps Avey didn’t want to explain why the Forest Service wants to log these so-called hazardous trees at a cost of over $2 million to taxpayers when there isn’t a hazard.
Firewood cutters have already done a good job removing beetle-killed trees next to the roads — and they did it without a subsidy from taxpayers. And finally, the public might want to ask why Avey waited until he was sued in federal court to agree to follow the law and write an environmental analysis on this timber sale.
We explained to Avey at an appeal resolution meeting that the Forest Service was illegally excluding the public from having input on this proposal, but unfortunately, he ignored us until we sued, and then he pulled the project. We firmly believe that in America the public should have a say in the management of our public lands. It is unfortunate that we had to go to court to get it.
Thanks to Terry Seyden for this one on one of our favorite topics. Nice example of the FS telling its side of the story. It is well worth reading in its entirety because it touches pretty directly on much of the discussion we have on this blog. I’ll just focus my excerpts on the two groups of interest and lawsuit counts.
Note: in Sharon’s opinion, if folks are going to choose litigation as a way of making policy, then all the information should be just as transparent and readily available as for an agency rulemaking or EIS.
So in the People’s Database: for each Region, a table of current lawsuits, including the plaintiffs, the current status, the project, claims and links to all court documents (at no cost). E.g., the 18 filed in FY 12, in R-1 according to this article.
Here is the link, and below are some excerpts.
The two groups in particular are challenging the forest plans in court or in administrative appeals where they often cite violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and National Forest Management Act.
The inability of the two sides to see eye-to-eye often leads to delays in the work getting implemented, sometimes for years. One project in the Lewis and Clark forest that’s still on the books first was proposed in 1999.
Avey said the delays in the implementation of the vegetation treatments, while part of the process, carry costs — opportunity costs in that it requires forest specialists to respond to lawsuits rather than working on future projects; economic costs to communities that would benefit from timber sales; and public safety costs.
“If there’s an area of interface or community at risk and it’s hung up in court, part of the cost is they’re at elevated risk,” he said.
Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said he doesn’t challenge any project unless he thinks environmental laws are not being followed.
“We’re trying to save habitat for native species,” he said.
Phil Sammon, a Forest Service spokesman for the agency’s Missoula-based Region 1, says the region sees a lot of lawsuits, maybe the most in the nation.
There are 30 active lawsuits in the region — 18 filed in fiscal year 2012 — involving agency decisions, including two cases in the Great Falls-based Lewis and Clark National Forest that don’t include appeals occurring at the administrative level. A third lawsuit in the local forest is being considered.
In September, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Lewis and Clark forest a victory, upholding a previous ruling by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy that a fuels-reduction project south of Stanford called Ettien Ridge would have no significant impact on wildlife.
The decision cleared the way for the Forest Service to implement the project — after six years, Avey said.
The Ettien Ridge project involves setting prescribed fires and using logging to thin stands on 1,600 acres to reduce the speed and intensity of a wildfire that could move through Sapphire Village, Avey said. The agency can’t stop fire, he said, but it can take steps to “take some of the punch out of that fire when it walks through there.”
Native Ecosystems Council brought the Ettien Ridge lawsuit.
Johnson, the group’s director, called the 9th circuit’s ruling on the Ettien Ridge project “a heart breaker.”
“These are beautiful old-growth trees,” she said.
Johnson says she’s on a “crusade” to keep goshawk from being listed as a threatened or endangered species. Currently, the state lists it as a species of concern. Removing old-growth trees, she says, reduces the number of red squirrels, a key food for the raptor.
In the Ettien Ridge decision, a three-judge panel in Seattle ruled the Forest Service completed the required “hard look” at the environmental impact of the burning and logging on elk hiding cover and goshawk populations as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
and
The mission of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies is to save habitat for native species in the Northern Rockies.
Currently it’s involved with 10 lawsuits in Montana, Utah, eastern Washington and Montana, said Garrity, the executive director.
Garrity says lawsuits are filed when the Forest Service is not fulfilling its obligation to ensure viable populations of native species. Those species include lynx, wolves, wolverine, goshawk and elk.
“We’re not suing on everything,” Garrity said. “If we think they’re following the law, we don’t contest the timber sale.”
His main concern with the projects is the logging, not the prescribed fire. Garrity says studies have shown that logging can increase fire danger and he calls it corporate welfare because he says receipts from timber sales don’t cover the government’s costs in preparing them.
It’s interesting that Johnson says that she is on a crusade for goshawks, while Garrity says the FS is not “fulfilling its obligation” or “following the law.” But these folks are investing beaucoup of their own and taxpayers bucks to send a 1600 acre project (I found 641 acres of mechanical treatment in the decision notice here) to appeals court. I am pretty much with Derek on the idea that policy wonks such as ourselves and taxpayers should be able to find out how much this costs the US government.
I would disagree with Forest Supervisor Avey when he says
“You read letters to the editor from time to time, and you hear from people, ‘How come it takes so long for you guys to get a project out the door?’” said Avey, the Lewis and Clark forest supervisor. “I do hope people understand the laws and the climate we’re in. It is what it is. It’s neither bad nor good.”
I think 6 years for a 640 acre thinning project is, really, clearly on the “bad” and not the “good” side. Suppose the USG tab was $400K per year for 6 years, say 2.4 million. If good goshawk habitat is $5K per acre, we could buy 480 more acres of habitat, not near a WUI. If you put that with what the plaintiffs spent, you gotta wonder if this way of doing business is really good for birds or taxpayers.
All: I have received NO responses to my visualization request here. OK, maybe that was too right-brained. How about sharing your visions for the future and submitting them to me for future posts ([email protected])?
To get you started, here’s one from Governor Kitzhaber of Oregon. Thanks to a colleague for this contribution. Oregon is an important place for many reasons, not least of which is that the current chair of the Senate subcommittee on public lands and forests. Senator Wyden has the same history as many of us, watching the the public forest debate over time from a front-row seat.
You can read the entire piece here in his testimony before the Oregon Board of Forestry in 2011.
Moving Forward
The answer to meeting these challenges is not to expect that the private industrial sector is suddenly going to shift away from a timber production framework as its primary focus. Nor is it to expect that federal land logging will return to the levels of the 1980’s and early 90’s. That is not what I’m saying. Clearly there are different histories, legal frameworks and standards applicable to private versus state forest management; and state versus federal forest management.
What I am saying, however, is that the three symptoms I just described are just that – symptoms; symptoms of a larger underlying problem: the fact that the status quo in terms of our economic, community and conservation values does not represent a sustainable or, quite frankly, a defensible balance. We are mired in ongoing conflict: timber sale by timber sale; forest by forest – rather than engaging in a more holistic strategy that can move us toward a collaborative solution that balances our environmental, economic and community values in a sustainable manner.
To achieve this vision, new and innovative approaches are needed across many areas tied to public forest management. This includes diversification of product lines and business models, including ties to community-scale biomass energy. Examples of this can be found in John Day and the partnership between Malheur Lumber and the local hospital and airport; and in the integrated wood product campuses from Wallowa County.
Innovation also includes the expansion and diversification of revenue sources for counties, for the Department, and for the health of forest lands and affected communities. We need to examine responsible ways to increase revenue options, including community forests, carbon sequestration markets, and other market-based approaches that help avoid the conversion of forest lands to non-forest uses.
This also includes expansion of state-forest ownership – and I would like to applaud the Board and the Department’s work on the Gilchrist State Forest and your help in keeping a working forest active in a place that needs working forests. I am also interested in looking at innovative new loan programs, funding partnerships, the use of bonding authorities or the expansion of voter-backed funding in support of conservation-based working landscapes and rural economic development around forest management.
Innovation also includes considering the establishment of a signature research center (like ONAMI and BEST) dedicated to innovation in the use of wood – perhaps a partnership between the Forestry Department at OSU, the School of Architecture at U of O; and the proposed Sustainability Center in Portland.
Finally, we need to support pathways that lead to consensus in management, particularly on the federal landscape. Since my last term as governor– and my work on the en libra principles — the good work of collaboration has grown significantly across many Oregon regions and communities closely linked with federal forests. In many places, projects have not been appealed or litigated for years. This is a positive trend. Gaining collaborative agreement across diverse constituents on public forest management provides stability, and in a world of increasingly limited funding, the consensus these local forest collaboratives produce represents a sound place to invest. That said, the ecological, social, and economic needs we face today demand restoration work at a larger scale. I will continue to support forest collaboratives – but will also challenge them to advance project work at a pace and scale that is meaningful for forest and community health.
We have an opportunity to break the mold of conflict and polarization by how we choose to move forward on our state forests. I believe you join me in wanting Oregonians and the nation to look at Oregon as a model for public forest management. To do so, two things are required.
First, we must view our state forests not in isolation but rather in the context of the larger forest landscape of which they are a part. This means that in addition to the management policies set forth by the Board of Forestry for state lands; we must aggressively pursue the latitude to engage in environmentally sound active management to restore the health of our federal forest lands;through our Congressional delegation, through the US Forest Service via channels like our Federal Forest Advisory Committee, and through our network of community-based forest collaboratives.
It also means we must develop polices and strategies that will result in logs harvested off private lands being as valuable here in Oregon as they are in Asia. In short we need to be exporting value added products, not our natural capital and our jobs. Both of these efforts will be priorities for my administration.
Second, the management of our state forests must reflect the kind of sustainable forest policy which can help inform the management debate across Oregon’s larger forested landscape.
What do you think of Governor Kitzhaber’s vision? Can you send me your own visions? Let’s see how different they are (and can we stick to not saying negative things about people who think differently in our vision; these would be positive visions).
Continuing our thread on the role of local people in managing national forest lands, it seems timely to bring up Idaho Roadless. I could understand why people who wanted A National Rule (albeit with some flaws) would be against Idaho and Colorado before the 2001 was upheld, as that may have been seen to be a harbinger of other states potentially escaping the 2001 Roadless corral. But now. I just don’t see why it is worth it for them to spend the bucks to go to appeals court with the Idaho Rule.
I am also curious if there have been settlement talks, and if so, what the USG put on the table. I wonder if such talks are protected by attorney-client privilege, or otherwise able to be FOIAed. But all that aside, what I see is the desire to not do what the State Government and the people of Idaho came to agreement about. For reasons that seemed originally ideological, but now are not so clear. I would really like to know what the groups are thinking, which I believe to be The Wilderness Society, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and The Lands Council. The groups are represented by Earthjustice.
Earthjustice’s story is that “protections were removed.” What we were told by other conservation groups is that Idaho gained additional protections in some places and lost in others but the net result was positive. This was generally a criticism of then-current Colorado efforts. It seems like there might be a lot of donated money sitting around marked “roadless,” with nothing else to litigate?
I guess they’re just “rolling the dice” (as my colleague says) with their donated, and our taxpayer money. It would be interesting to get estimates of the total cost (forest, region, OGC, DOJ) to the taxpayer for litigation and especially when legal decisions are appealed. My hypothesis, having signed many timesheets, and been on phone calls with a plentitude of attorneys, is that EAJA is the tip of a very grand iceberg.
Anyway, what triggered my thoughts about the Idaho Rule is this report on the efforts of the Implementation Committee.
Here’s a link and below is an excerpt:
Those were among the recommendations the Idaho Roadless Commission made to U.S. Forest Service staff across Idaho last week.
The panel, made up of foresters, county officials, conservationists and industry representatives, met as a federal appeals court deliberates on its future. It is designed to give the Forest Service a first look at how Idahoans react to proposed projects.
The commission was established by the Idaho Roadless Rule, which protects nearly 9 million acres of Idaho’s 20 million acres of national forest. The rule designates 250 roadless areas and establishes five management themes that guide temporary road construction, timber cutting, mineral development and recreation.These themes, and especially the logging and other activities allowed in 5.5 million acres designated as backcountry restoration, are what prompted several environmental groups to challenge the rule in federal court. The Idaho Conservation League and Trout Unlimited supported the rule that then-Gov. Jim Risch negotiated as an alternative to the 2001 national roadless rule.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on the rule Friday in Portland. The judges will decide in two to six months whether to uphold U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s decision that the rule was legal.
The commission was well aware its own recommendations are under scrutiny from the groups that are appealing the rule. Forest Service staff made the case that the boundaries between two roadless areas in eastern Idaho probably were meant to follow the ridgeline. But a closer look shows the line would be too steep in places to build a road.
Trout Unlimited’s Scott Stouder told the panel how the lawyers for Earthjustice, the group that argued the case, would see it.
“They would say this is just moving the boundary to build the road,” Stouder said.
I guess that this is an illustration of how the litigation shadow can fall across people’s thinking, and not just those within the agency.
Also, I have to point out as the resident roadless geek, that:
In one area, where a mining company plans to open a pit to mine phosphate outside a roadless area, the panel supported a map correction of a slurry pipeline through the roadless area. The pipeline special area could be used as a road under the rule, but that would be decided later.
“I think it’s more of a mapping issue than anything else,” said Alan Prouty, J.R. Simplot’s vice president for environmental and regulatory affairs and a commission member.
Everyone agreed, thumbs-up.
Pipelines and the zones used to construct them are OK under the 2001 Rule according to the Bull Mountain pipeline case.
The restoration projects were proposed on the Boise National Forest in high elevation areas. In an area near Big Creek Summit, conifers competing with whitebark pine trees will be “felled, lopped and retained on the site.” The other is a reforestation project.
No roads need to be built for either one. For Caswell the projects are a reminder that the rule is not just about locking up the roadless areas.“The rule has permissions along with prohibitions,” he said.
It sounds like both these projects would have been allowed under this exception from the 2001 Rule.
294.13 b 1 ii To maintain or restore the characteristics of ecosystem composition and structure, such as to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire effects, within the range of variability that would be expected to occur under natural disturbance regimes of the current climatic period;
I wish those groups could tell those of us who understand the roadless issues, why they want to spend our money on this fight. Is it about what’s allowed in one or more of the themes? IF so, it seems better for governance to have an open discussion about it.
I also ran across this article on the Idaho folks going to the hearing:
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.
“In the four years since the rule was actually issued, not a single road has been built,” she told the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. “The sky is not following on Idaho inventoried roadless areas.”
We’ve often discussed how people not from the area should have equal voice.. apparently equal is not enough to some.
Since Ken Burns’ film on the Dust Bowl is starting tonight, see website here.
Two Forest Service linkages to shelterbelts are noted in this note from Darrel Kenops, of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees
The U.S. Forest Service from the start and up to today worked in concert with many including the USDA Soil Conservation Service. State Foresters as well as NRCS thru the years which had its start in the “New Deal” “Prairie States Forestry Project”. From Harold (Pete) K. Steen’s book “The U.S. Forest Service: A History” 1976, University of Washington Press, pages 218-221 describe briefly the context of the coming together of sheltebelts, hurricane’s, disaster programs and needed employment, jobs programs indicated by CCC’s and WPA Administration work in the forestry, natural resources sector.
Over last few years, as I represented NAFSR at the Westsern Forestry Leadership Coalition meetings, the 21st Century discussions of shelterbelts and Great Plains forestry have very interesting in how they have evolved, and confronted many of today’s challenges.
And we need to thank the many USFS State and Private as well as USDA/USFS Research and Development colleagues who continue to work with State Foresters and sister agencies to not forget, neglect the importance of shelterbelt forestry in America!
Also, of course, the initiation of the National Grasslands.
Here’s a general history in the National Grasslands Management Primer:
A total of 2.6 million acres of land were acquired between 1938 and 1946 when purchases under Title III ceased for all practical purposes. With the lands that had previously been acquired, the Government held 11.3 million acres in the LUP. The total cost for the land acquired for the LUP under the BJFTA and the preceding authorities was $47,500,000.11
Almost immediately, intensive improvement and development activities began on the LUP lands. New roads, buildings, transportation facilities, and fences were built, flood and erosion control strategies were adopted, grass and trees were planted, water storage facilities were constructed, and stream channels were widened and cleaned. The land improvements cost $102,500,000.12 Not only did the improvement activities help to restore these badly damaged lands, but they also created more than 50,000 jobs at a time when the Nation was pulling itself out of the Depression.
This reminds me a bit of the “restoration” and ARRA. This article in the Denver Post saw it, at least partially, as a cautionary tale about climate change.
The Dust Bowl did not end farming, but it forced farmers to change. “It was a matter of rethinking farming,” says Nielsen. “And we need to rethink how we produce energy.” Renewable energy must be at the core, not the fringes, he says, supported when necessary by the cleanest, most efficient fossil fuel technologies.
There are differences, too. In the 1920s, few people foresaw the consequences of the massive plowing up of prairie turf. Today, the science supporting the theory of global warming is cohesive and clear about the broad outcomes unless we make changes in how we produce and consume fossil fuels. “Because we know more, we have greater responsibility,” says John Nielsen.
Human suffering during the Dust Bowl is hard to image today. Nearly 50 percent of families in Baca County were on relief. Many dryland farmers left the Great Plains. If the Nielsens survived well enough on their irrigated farm, the highway through the Arkansas Valley was filled with weary, dryland refugees. There were plenty of Joads, and they weren’t all Okies.
Federal action salved the worst of the wounds. Direct aid and then jobs were offered. More controversially, the federal government bought dryland farms to create the Comanche, Pawnee and other grasslands now managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Farmers were encouraged to plant belts of trees, to deflect the winds. Then, rainfall returned.
Which reminds me, I think I’m going to check this out of the library..
Here’s a guest post from Derek Weidensee, which started as a comment here in a previous thread, but the whole idea of what’s in the cut and sold report, and what it means, I think is worth its own post and discussion.
The Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 USFS “cut and sold” report has just came out. The nine forests in Montana have sold the least amount of timber since 2007, and 40% less than 2009. When one looks back 10 years, one can see an inverse curve between “timber sold” in Montana and “money raised” by the Alliance of Wild Rockies. In 2007, when only 109 Million board foot was sold (MMBF), the AWR raised $255,000. The Wildwest Institute raised $136,000. There was much litigation then wasn’t there. In 2009, the AWR budget dropped to $83,000 (barely enough to cover Garrity’s salary) and the WWI to $33,000. In 2010, because of a “gift” from Carole King, the AWR budget bounced up to $380,000. Now here’s some research for you. Graph this one out. How many lawsuits were filed in the last few years, or more importantly, how many MMBF is currently litigated. How much of the 40% decline in volume is attributed to litigation? Why can’t the USFS tell us that? They know, and they could, but why wait for the Missoulian to get around to asking them. You can argue that it’s all about following the law, but who could be opposed to the public’s right to know. Let’s stop the dance here, we all know the litigation is all about soaking up person hours so less timber can be cut with the available budget, and with holding timber supplies in the hope some more mills will close. A tactic that has worked quite well in the past 30 years.
Here’s a few more fun “stat’s” from the cut and sold. Out of the 122 MMBF “sold” 25% was personal use firewood. Of the “commercial” timber, only 38%(47MMBF) of the 122 was “sawtimber” and 35%(43MMBF) “non-sawtimber,” in other words, trees less than 9″ DBH(there’s your hazard road timber sales). The mills can cut down to a 7″ DBH. In 2007, 70% was “sawtimber”. That means that in 2007 75 MMBF was sawtimber while in 2012 only 47MMBF was.
–Meanwhile,the Ouachita in Arkansas sold 90MMBF of which 65MMBF was sawtimber. One forest in the east sold more sawtimber than all nine in Montana.
–The three NF’s in Michigan sold 150 MMBF. Three million acres in Michagan sold more than 20 some million in Montana. Guess there ain’t much litigation in Michigan.
—The White Mountain NF in New Hampshire, barely 100 miles from Boston, sold as much timber as the Bitteroot in Montana.
—Colorado sold 105 MMBF, almost as much as Montana, when it has one mill just out of bankruptcy and another opening soon, while Montana has what, 7 mills of comparable size.
—The two one million acre forests in Minnesota sold 105 MMBF.
Keep in mind, that the above forests sell very little “personal use firewood”.
The whole Northern Region sold 206 MMBF. If the Obama administration wants to sell 350 MMBF as Tidwell talked of, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
Matthew, feel free to repost your comments on this on this thread.
Here’s the link to the Cut and Sold report.
Two months ago we had a discussion about the appropriate, or inappropriate, use of a Categorical Exclusion (CE) relating to the Lewis and Clark National Forest’s “Little Belt Mountain Hazard Tree Removal Project” in central Montana. This followed other debates on this blog about the use of CE’s (here and here).
According to the Alliance for Wild Rockies, the use of a CE for this project – which they contend would result in logging over 17,000 acres of national forest lands, including logging in Inventoried Roadless Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Research Natural Areas, and old-growth forests – was inappropriate, so they sued.
On Thursday, Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor, William Avey, sent out this letter to interested parties, letting the public know he was withdrawing the CE Decision Memo and intending “to prepare an environmental assessment to provide evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an environmental impact statement or a finding of no significant impact for the Little Belt Mountains Hazard Tree Removal Project.”
The Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP) is a joint effort by the University of California, state and federal agencies, and the public formed in 2004 to assess how treatments designed by the USDA Forest Service to prevent severe wildfires affect fire risk, sensitive wildlife populations, forest health and water resources. SNAMP is in year five of an ambitious 7-year experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies to modify fire behavior across the landscape.
SNAMP has examined real-world fires and developed computer models to evaluate wildfire severity and environmental impacts in response to fuel-reduction treatments looking 30 years to the future. In its Northern Sierra project covering roughly 30,000 acres, SNAMP evaluated three different treatment scenarios. In each case, fuels were reduced across approximately one-third of the study area, and all treatments showed substantial reductions in high-intensity wildfire across the landscape, not just treated areas for 20 years after implementation.
This is from California Forests Magazine, and this issue is full of articles about severe wildfires. The whole article is here. The picture is one of mine from the Lassen National Forest’s 1987 Lost Fire.
Props to these groups for seeing a different path to meet their objectives than litigation, plus the taxpayer will be off the hook for the costs of litigation, no small thing.
Here is a link to a story in the Denver Post today. Below are a couple of excerpts.
It’s interesting how diverse groups can bond when gas development comes up:
A combination of funds from foundations and coalition board members, including Sue Anschutz-Rodgers and Avalanche Ranch owner Chuck Ogilby, easily could raise $50 million if the leases were worth that, Kessler said.
Preserving the high country “is critical for our operations,” said rancher Bill Fales, whose family has run the Cold Mountain Ranch near Carbondale since 1924. Ranchers anchoring the region’s agricultural economy rely on federal permits allowing sustainable grazing in the high-country — grazing that they say could not be done amid drilling.
“We would have nowhere to go with our cows,” said Fales, whose wife, Marj Perry, is on the coalition board.
The area also includes a key migration corridor for lynx, moose, bear, deer, elk and mountain lions — and two Colorado Parks and Wildlife game units in which 14,000 big game hunting licenses are sold each year. A Sunlight to Powderhorn snowmobile route traverses the forests. Rock climbers, cross-country skiers and fishermen flock here for recreation.
Note the reference to sustainable grazing.. vis a vis our discussion yesterday here. Also snowmobiles (italics mine).
I also noticed that the author of the article states:
The U.S. Forest Service owns the surface land — located south of the Sunlight ski area and west of McClure Pass — much of it designated “roadless” under a recently upheld national rule aimed at protecting pristine forests.
It seems odd to me that the Colorado Roadless Rule, which is currently the law of the land in Colorado, is not mentioned (I don’t know offhand if there are any boundary differences between the rules in this area.)