Washington’s forests will lose stored carbon as area burned by wildfire increases

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this is a Forest Service photo, credit Tom Iraci.

Here’s the link and below is an excerpt:

A new study conducted by the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station and the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington has found that, by 2040, parts of Washington State could lose as much as a third of their carbon stores, as an increasing area of the state’s forests is projected to be burned by wildfire. The study—published in the July 2012 issue of the journal Ecological Applications—is the first to use statistical models and publicly available Forest Inventory and Analysis data to estimate the effects of a warming climate on carbon storage and fluxes on Washington’s forests. “When considering the use of forests to store carbon, it will be critical to consider the increasing risk of wildfire,” said Crystal Raymond, a research biologist based at the station’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory and lead author of the study. “Especially in the West, where climate-induced changes in fire are expected to be a key agent of change.” Trees remove and sequester carbon from the atmosphere, in the form of carbon dioxide, acting as important stores, or “sinks,” of carbon that help to offset its accumulation in the atmosphere. When trees and other woody material in the forest are burned by fire, they release carbon back to the atmosphere, mostly as carbon dioxide, where it may once again act as a greenhouse gas that promotes warming. This land-atmosphere exchange of carbon is increasingly of interest to land managers seeking ways to actively manage forests to store carbon and help mitigate greenhouse gases. To explore what effect climate-driven changes in wildfire might have on the ability of Washington’s forests to act as carbon sinks, Raymond and station research ecologist Don McKenzie used a novel approach. They combined published forest-inventory data, fire-history data, and statistical models of area burned to estimate historical and future carbon carrying capacity of three regions in Washington—the Western Cascades, the Eastern Cascades, and the Okanogan Highlands—based on potential forest productivity and projections of 21st century area burned. Ads by Google EHR Software Demo – Watch the EHR Demo Online Now Meaningful Use with Ease of Use! – AdvancedMD.com/Elec-Health-Record “Forests on both the eastern and western slopes of the Cascade Range will lose carbon stored in live biomass because area burned across the state is expected to increase,” Raymond said. “Even small increases in area burned can have large consequences for carbon stored in living and dead biomass.” The researchers looked at live biomass, which includes living trees and vegetation, as well as nonliving biomass in the form of coarse woody debris, which includes dead standing trees and downed logs. Both contribute to the carbon cycle, but in different ways—living biomass removes carbon from the atmosphere as vegetation grows, and coarse woody debris releases carbon over time as the material decomposes. Raymond and McKenzie projected forests of the Western Cascades to be most sensitive to climate-driven increases in fire, losing anywhere from 24 to 37 percent of their live biomass and from 15 to 25 percent of their coarse woody debris biomass by 2040. These forests store significant carbon and typically burn with high severity, killing many trees and consuming coarse woody debris. On the other side of the mountains, the researchers also projected a decrease in live biomass by 2040—of anywhere between 17 and 26 percent in the Eastern Cascades and in the Okanogan Highlands—but no change in coarse woody debris biomass, or possibly even an increase, because coarse woody debris biomass increases as trees are killed by fire and subsequent low-severity fires burn only a small portion of it. “Changes in fire regimes in a warming climate can limit our potential to use forests in the Pacific Northwest to store additional carbon and to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide,” Raymond said. Understanding the possible effects of more area burned by fire can help managers decide whether forests need to be actively managed for their fire potential to minimize carbon loss. More information: To read more about the study, visit www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-1851.1

from the summary…

Carbon sequestration in PNW forests will be highly sensitive to increases in fire, suggesting a cautious approach to managing these forests for C sequestration to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-1851.1
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-washington-forests-carbon-area-wildfire.html#jCp

Oregon Field Guide: Biscuit Fire 10 Years Later

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The most recent episode of Oregon Field Guide, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, takes a look at southwestern Oregon’s Biscuit Fire 10 years after the 2002 wildfire.  You can watch the ten minute program here and then offer your thoughts in the comments section.

Bernard Bormann, with the Pacific Northwest Research station, had been studying the forests’ of the Siskiyou mountains for years. When the 500,000 acre Biscuit fire burned through his research plots, he first thought all was lost. But in the 10 years since the fire, he’s been able to compare life before and after fire to reveal an amazing amount of new information about how life returns to the forest after fire.

Dousing the Claims: Extinguishing Republican Myths about Wildfire

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Democrats on the House Resources Committee released a new report on Tuesday.  Phil Taylor, a reporter with E&E, has a story out about the report and subsequent hearing.  Unfortunately, E&E doesn’t have a free link to the entire story, so some snips from the story are below.

Environmental groups over the past three years have appealed less than 5 percent of projects on federal lands designed to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire, and, of those, less than one out of five involved endangered species issues, according to a new report from Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee….

“Environmental laws, land management agencies, litigation, endangered species and even immigrants share the Republican blame for this year’s devastating wildfires,” Markey said. “These accusations are just a smokescreen.”

Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management data obtained by committee Democrats seemed to back up his claim.

Out of 8,000 fuel reduction projects in federal forests over the last three, less than 1 percent of all of the work was affected by appeals, according to the Democrats’ report. Endangered Species Act challenges affected less than 0.05 percent of all hazardous fuels work on roughly 10 million acres of land, the report found.

“This report shows that political fact-checkers should create a new category called ‘pants on wildfire’ for the ill-informed Republican myths on forest fire prevention,” Markey said. “When climate change is baking the country in drought and actually increasing the risks of catastrophic wildfires, these half-baked ideas from Republicans do a disservice to the people who have suffered from wildfires.”….

Democrats said the findings are consistent with a Government Accountability Office report in 2010 that found less than 20 percent of the 1,191 fuel reduction projects on about 9 million acres from 2006 to 2008 were appealed. About 2 percent of all fuel reduction projects were litigated and those involved about 124,000 acres, the report says.

 

Climate, Man-Created Landscapes Feed Wildfires

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The following guest post is from Bryan Bird, Wild Places Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. He writes from Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Bird received his Masters in conservation biology from New Mexico State University in 1995 and holds an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990. He has undertaken conservation research, planning, and protection projects in Central America, Mexico, and the Southwestern United States. Since first working for the Guardians in 1996, Bryan has focused on restoration of national forestlands and their critical ecological processes, as well as monitoring, reviewing, and challenging destructive Forest Service logging proposals and land management plans.  – mk
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An incendiary situation is rising in the West’s wildlands – but it’s not just wildfire. It’s the explosion in the number of homes and structures in highly flammable landscapes and climate change-driven conditions that are leading to a public policy crisis.

We need to revisit our commitment to military-scale fire-fighting at massive taxpayer expense as well as federal, state and local policies that promote development into the West’s “fireplains.” As we recover from the largest single wildfire recorded in New Mexico history as well as the most destructive to homes and communities, we must consider effective and economical solutions.

Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Mont.-based think tank, points out the tremendous development potential in the West for the remaining 86 percent of forested private land adjacent to public land – known as wildland urban interface, or the red zone.

It calculated the astronomical costs of battling these fires. If homes were built in just half of the red zone, annual firefighting costs could range from $2.3 billion to $4.3 billion per year.

Here in New Mexico, Bernalillo, Lincoln and Otero counties have the largest portions of their red zone already developed. Sadly, these are foreseeable and expensive disasters.

A paradigm shift in how people live in fire-prone landscapes is upon us, similar to floodplain regulation in the 1970s. Insurers are taking notice, and so should county policymakers examine their building codes.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated last week at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, “Though the number of fires across the country is actually less than last year, and the acreage burned is less than last year, the number of structures and infrastructure burned is significantly higher, and that’s in part because of where the fires have been, and the growth of the wildland-urban interface.”

The latest science suggests weather and climatic conditions, rather than fuels, drive the large fires we are now witnessing. But despite all the rhetoric about “historic” fire seasons, the total acreage burned over the last decade, 7 million acres on average, is quite low by historic standards. Over 140 million acres burned annually in the U.S. in pre-industrial times. As recently as the 1930s Dust Bowl years, the number was close to 40 million acres. The past 50-70 years may actually be an abnormality in terms of acreage burned as well as fire severity.

Any single year’s fire activity, according to recent science, is related more closely to high temperatures than to previous fire suppression efforts, age of trees, or other factors. Higher spring temperatures, especially, lead to more fires. Scientists have found that the period from 1987-2004, compared to the 16 years prior to that, averaged a longer fire season, by two and a half months, four times as many fires, a fivefold increase in the time needed to put out a wildfire, and 6.7 times as much area being burned.

We simply cannot fireproof forests, but we can fireproof homes and structures. Thinning and logging far into the backcountry forests may or may not have any effect on saving communities in the red zone. But with changing climate and recurring droughts of biblical proportion, it’s a safe bet that expensive thinning and logging will not make a difference under such extreme conditions. In fact, it could make the fire hazard even worse.

When people build and live in the “fireplain,” it’s not the federal government’s responsibility to look after them.

In addition, we cannot ask taxpayers to foot the bill for costly thinning of public forests far from home in an uncertain attempt to change fire behavior. Homeowners must be required to treat their own landscapes and build with fire-resistant materials: a proven practice known as Firewise.

Western forests have burned since time immemorial, and this natural process is both intimidating and worsening with climate change. But we do not have a wildfire problem as much as a people in flammable landscapes problem.

Bioenergy Markets, Fuel Treatments and EESI

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A reader sent in this link to an EESI report.Here’s a link, and below is an excerpt.

In a similar story in its June 27 edition, the Los Angeles Times reported on an interview with forestry expert Peter Fule of Northern Arizona University. “Firefighting technology has meant fewer fires. Fuel to feed massive blazes has built up. And, Fulé said, climate change has brought warming conditions over the last couple of decades — meaning longer fire seasons, starting early in the spring and extending late into the fall. Even if rain and snow mounts
remain the same, he said, warmer temperatures mean more evaporation, drying out the landscape. Individual drought years increase the risk of huge fires.”

Better forest management could help prevent and reduce such conflagrations in the future and make forests healthier and more resilient in the face of a changing climate. But federal and state forest management budgets are already stretched too thin. Steven Running says: “The single biggest factor is keeping forests thinned out, and dead trees removed. I really wish we had a forest bio-energy industry to use all this forest biomass and pay for the work by buying the material.”

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Four Forests Restoration Initiative in central Arizona may provide a model for intergovernmental and public/private partnerships to help restore forest health and reduce the risk of intensely destructive wildfires. This multi-year project is one of ten demonstration projects in the federal Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. According to the USFS web site, “The overall goal of the four-forest effort is to create landscape-scale restoration approaches that will provide for fuels reduction, forest health, and wildlife and plant diversity. A key objective is doing this while creating sustainable ecosystems in the long term. Appropriately-scaled businesses will likely play a key role in the effort by harvesting, processing, and selling wood products. This will reduce treatment costs and provide restoration-based work opportunities that will create good jobs.”

Another example of collaborative ecosystem management is occurring in the Flathead National Forest in Montana. This project is also supported through the federal Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. See this recent news story from the Missoulian on how diverse stakeholders came together to develop and implement this landscape management plan.

Forest fuel reduction activities have already generated positive results in terms of reducing the intensity of wildfires and protecting property. See this recent report from USFS, How Fuel Treatments Saved Homes from the 2011 Wallow Fire in Arizona. Will forest thinning and fuel reduction increase greenhouse gas emissions? Research has
shown that forest fuel reduction efforts can result in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and provide other environmental benefits compared to business as usual (namely unmanaged, over-stocked forests with intense wildfires) when the woody materials that are removed are used for building materials, other wood products, and bioenergy. See for
example the October/November 2011 special edition of the Journal of Forestry, entitled “Managing Forests Because Carbon Matters: Integrating Energy, Products, and Land Management Policy”. Section 2 on “Forest Carbon Stocks and Flows” surveys the recent literature on carbon accounting for various forest management approaches.

More, intense, highly destructive forest fires need not be the future of the American west. The federal government has a critical role to play both in managing its forests better and in building successful collaborations among diverse stakeholders on the ground to help restore resilient and healthy ecosystems across public and private lands. Allowing and encouraging the development of local biomass energy markets can be an important part of this. By creating economic value for fuel reduction and restoration activities, more forest acreage can be treated and scarce public dollars can be conserved for other purposes. This could be a win-win for public safety, public lands, climate change mitigation and adaptation, ecosystem health, local economies, and local and regional energy security.
Congress could help. In addition to sustaining investments in public and private forest health initiatives, reauthorizing and funding the Forest Biomass for Energy Program (which would provide competitive grants for research and development on the use of low-value forest biomass for energy, among other priorities) and the Community Wood Energy
Program (which would provide grants to state and local governments to develop community wood energy plans and systems) would be a step in the right direction. The House version of the Farm Bill (see Title IX in this summary), which is scheduled to be marked up by the Committee on Agriculture July 11, would repeal the Forest Biomass for Energy Program and reduce funding for the Community Wood Energy Program from $5 million per year to $2 million per year.

So who is EESI? Do they have an axe to grind (so to speak ;))? They don’t appear to be any of the usual suspects…here’s the Board of Directors. Here are their funders.
Here’s a link to their forest initiative.

WSJ analysis: 80% of wood-burning biomass plants generate violations

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Today’s Wall Street Journal includes this very detailed article, from Justin Scheck and IantheJeanne Dugan, about wood-burning biomass plants in the United States.
…biomass plants nationwide [have] together have received at least $700 million in federal and state green-energy subsidies since 2009, a calculation by The Wall Street Journal shows.

Yet of 107 U.S. biomass plants that the Journal could confirm were operating at the start of this year, the Journal analysis shows that 85 have been cited by state or federal regulators for violating air-pollution or water-pollution standards at some time during the past five years, including minor infractions.

Colt Summit Lynx Cumulative Effects: Let’s Hear Both Sides

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I think it would be interesting to investigate further exactly what the FS did right with the cumulative effects of other species, and apparently, according to Judge Molloy, did wrong with lynx.

It seems odd to me that the FS would do an adequate analysis for the other species, but not for lynx (look at past, present and reasonably foreseeable future actions). Below is a quote from Judge Molloy’s decision (italics in both below quotes are mine) :

Once an agency detemines the geographical scope of its cumulative-effects

analysis, it must analyze the incremental impact of the proposed project when

added to past, present, and reasonably foreseeable actions within the selected

geographical area. Ctr for Envtl. Law & Policy, 655 F.3d at 1007; 40 C.F.R. §

1508.7. The plaintiffs in this case insist the Forest Service’s cumulative effects

Cumulative effects on lynx analysis for lynx is inadequate. On this point they are correct. On remand the

Forest Service must prepare a supplemental EA that adequately addresses the

cumulative effects for lynx, and if necessary after that review, an EIS.

“Consideration of cumulative impacts requires some quantified or detailed

information that results in a useful analysis, even when the agency is preparing an

EA and not an BIS.” Id. “An EA’s analysis of cumulative impacts ‘must give a

sufficiently detailed catalogue of past, present, and future projects, and provide

adequate analysis about how these projects, and differences between the projects,

are thought to have impacted the environment.'” Te-Moak Tribe ofW. Shoshone of

Nev. v. U.S. Dept. ofInt., 608 F.3d 592, 603 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting Lands

Council v. Powell, 395 F.3d 1019, 1028 (9th Cir. 2004)). “An agency may,

however, characterize the cumulative effects ofpast actions in the aggregate

without enumerating every past project that has affected an area.” Ctr for Envtl.

Law & Policy, 655 F.3d at 1007.

When there is no BIS containing a cumulative effects analysis, “[T]he scope

of the required analysis in the EA is correspondingly increased.” Kern, 284 F.3d at

1077. “Without such information, neither the court nor the public … can be

assured that the [agency] provided the hard look that it is required to provide.” Te­

Moak Tribe ofW Shoshone ofNev. , 608 F.3d at 603 (citations and internal

Depending on what the cumulative effects analysis

shows, the Forest Service might be required to prepare an EIS for the Project. See

40 C.F.R. § 1508.27(b)(7).

Here, the Forest Service did not discuss or mention any past projects or

actions in its cumulative effects analysis for lynx. (See EA, A-I FS000066.) In the

EA, the Forest Service discusses how it recently acquired 640 acres ofland owned

by Plum Creek Timber Company. (fd.) It discusses the impact of snowmobile

activity in the area. (Id.) But there is no discussion of past projects or activities.

Even assuming there are no past projects or activities that would have a

cumulative effect when considered along with the Colt Summit Project, the Forest

Service must still “characterize the cumulative effects of past actions in the

aggregate.”

“neither the court nor the public … can be assured that the [agency] provided the

hard look that it is required to provide.” Te-Moak Tribe ofW. Shoshone ofNev. ,

608 F.3d at 603 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

etr for Envtl. Law & Policy, 655 F.3d at 1007.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the Judge’s statements to the US Attorneys’ on the point of cumulative effects on lynx, but don’t have a PACER account, nor would I know exactly what document to look for. To me, it would be illuminating to hear both sides. Can someone help locate this document, so we can hear the other side?

I could easily find the appeal response here (worth looking at to examine the kitchen-sinkery that the plaintiffs started with during the appeal).

Issue 32. The appellants allege the significance of the cumulative effects of habitat
fragmentation and reduction due to logging, road building, fire suppression, and other
management activities in regards to their effects on population levels or viability was not
disclosed.
Response: The Wildlife Report (PF, Doc. A-20, Table 5, pp. 14 to 15) indicates the project may
impact some individuals of some species, but there is no indication of project effects on
population levels or species viability of any threatened, sensitive, or management indicator
species.
Fragmentation is discussed in the Wildlife Report (PF, Doc. A-20, pp. 93 to 96). It concludes
that the proposed action would have “no impact” on fragmentation, corridors, or linkages
because the vegetation would not be altered beyond patterns that occur naturally from fire and
other disturbance, and open road density would not increase.
Cumulative effects discussions are covered in the Wildlife Report’s affected environment
sections (PF, Doc. A-20). Effects for connectivity, fragmentation, and linkages are discussed
where that issue has been raised: lynx (pp. 27 to 31); grizzly bear (pp. 35 to 45), fisher (pp. 49 to
52), wolverine (pp. 53 to 54), northern bog lemming (pp. 55 to 56), Townsend’s big-eared bat
(pp. 57 to 58), black-backed woodpecker (pp. 60 to 65), flammulated owl (pp. 67 to 70), boreal
(western) toad (pp. 70 to 72), northern goshawk (pp. 76 to 81), elk (pp. 81 to 85), and pileated
woodpecker (pp. 87 to 91).
The Biological Assessment for lynx and grizzly bear (PF, Doc. A-25) and subsequent letters of
concurrence (PF, Doc. K-14) indicate the USFWS concurred with the determinations for these
species (which include analyses on linkage and corridors). The record discusses effects of
habitat fragmentation on population levels and viability and is in compliance with NEPA,
NFMA, and ESA.

Historical Vegetation Ecologists Duke it Out: Does It Matter?

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This Tuesday, June 26, 2012 photo provided by the U.S. Forest Service shows the Fontenelle Fire burning in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyo.

I saw this study a couple of days ago but didn’t have time to do it justice. However a thoughtful reader suggested it so here goes..
Here’s a link to the AP story. Below are some excerpts:

Researchers at the University of Wyoming studied historical fire patterns across millions of acres of dry Western forests. Their findings challenge the current operating protocol of the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies that today’s fires are burning hotter and more frequently than in the past.

Combing through 13,000 firsthand descriptions of forests and retracing steps covering more than 250 miles in three states, where teams of government land surveyors first set out in the mid-1800s to map the nation’s wild lands, the researchers said they found evidence forests then were much denser than previously believed.

“More highly intense fire is not occurring now than historically in dry forests,” said William Baker, who teaches fire ecology and landscape ecology in Laramie, Wyo., where he’s been doing research more than 20 years. “These forests were much more diverse and experienced a much wider mixture of fire than we thought in the past, including substantial amounts of high-severity fire.”

If he’s right, he and others say it means fuel-reduction programs aimed at removing trees and shrubs in the name of easing fire threats are creating artificial conditions that likely make dry forests less resilient.

“It means we need to rethink our management of Western dry forests,” said Baker, a member of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service working group that is developing plans to help bolster northern spotted owl populations in dry forests.

Baker’s conclusions have drawn sharp criticism from other longtime researchers who believe that decades of fire suppression have led to more densely tangled forests and more intense fires, the position advanced by the Forest Service.

“I have yet to hear any knowledgeable forest or fire ecologist or forest manager say they are convinced by the main interpretations in that (Wyoming) paper,” said Thomas Swetnam, a professor of dendrochronology and director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona. “I doubt it will gain much traction in the scientific or management communities.”

And..

Williams said the Wyoming studies have significant implications for wildlife that depends on post-fire habitat, such as the black-backed woodpecker, which has survived for millions of years by eating beetle larvae in burned trees.

Four conservation groups filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department in May seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the bird in the Sierra Nevada, Oregon’s Eastern Cascades and the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota.

The new studies provide the first “real, direct data'” showing that more forests burned historically, creating more post-fire forest habitat, said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist and director of the John Muir Project who is helping lead the listing effort and suing the Forest Service to block post-fire logging in woodpecker habitat near Lake Tahoe.

“It indicates the woodpeckers had more habitat historically than they do now,'” Hanson said.

Note from Sharon: A couple of points

1. OK, so I have worked in central Oregon, the Sierra, and Colorado and Wyoming. I don’t think I would use data from one to make judgments about the other. In fact, the Blue Mountains were very different from the east side of the Cascades. Yes they all have “ponderosa pine” but to me that says more about the wondrousness and adaptability of PPine than it says about any similarity of environment. Just look at their co-trees in the overstory and the understory.

2. If climate change means more and larger fires (can’t remember if the researchers who said this also said said “more intense”) what relevance does the historical data possess? Are the authors saying that we should manage to keep fires smaller than we might expect given the climate change future, or should we manage for more acres than the fire suppression past? What is the goal for the amount of post-fire habitat (same as what, 900 AD? 1560?). Or perhaps more habitat than the past for the woodpecker is OK to woodpecker watchers, but what if that’s less habitat for everything else?

3. My favorite leap in this article is :

If he’s right, he and others say it means fuel-reduction programs aimed at removing trees and shrubs in the name of easing fire threats are creating artificial conditions that likely make dry forests less resilient.

“It means we need to rethink our management of Western dry forests,” said Baker, a member of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service working group that is developing plans to help bolster northern spotted owl populations in dry forests.

Unless you assume that historical data are “what we should manage for” why would thinning make a forest “less resilient”? Is there a proposed specific mechanism for that “less resilience”? We know that trees grow more slowly and lose vigor when they are dense and droughts occur. Are they saying that if fuel treatments are deemed to be “unnatural” then we shouldn’t do them? It’s all very confusing.

Then there’s

Now, he believes thinning and post-fire salvage operations should be re-examined and emphasis placed on maintaining high-density stands in certain circumstances that would not threaten people or homes.

“We shouldn’t be managing just for low-density forests,” he said. “We should not be unhappy with — or perhaps even manage for — higher severity fires in the forests.”

Are these folks aware that most stands are (and have to be, it costs money to manage) things left alone? This goes back to Derek’s percentage of acres in treatment question.. if we are treating <5%, isn't 95% managed that way enough? Further, it is an odd world where there is plenty of bucks to go back and examine conditions two hundred years ago, but there doesn't seem to be any to answer Derek's question.

Just because high severity fires occurred in the past, doesn't seem to me that we would necessarily "manage for them" in the future, as they can have negative impacts to soils.

I guess I’m with Wally on this one..

Wallace Covington, the director of the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, takes no issue with the Wyoming duo’s data collection or statistical analysis but said some of Baker’s conclusions don’t follow from his data. Covington first testified before Congress in 2002 about the urgent need to thin forests to guard against catastrophic wildfires and insists it’s still necessary.

House Bill Standardizing Fees for Recreation Residences

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Here’s the link, below is an excerpt..

The House Natural Resources Committee last week reported the Cabin Fee Act of 2011 (H.R. 3397), which would standardize the fee structure. The committee approved the bill last November but waited till now to officially send it to the House floor for a vote.

Owners would only have to pay $100 a year “if access to a cabin is significantly impaired, either by natural causes or governmental actions, such that the cabin is rendered unsafe or unable to be occupied,” according to the committee report on the bill.

And when someone sells a cabin or transfers title, the government would collect a transfer fee.

The U.S. Forest Service has always collected fees from cabin owners but in a haphazard manner that did not accurately reflect their valuation – sometimes more than $10,000. And many owners couldn’t afford them.

The bill would set a structure of fees ranging from $500 to $4,500 per year.

The transfer fee would consist of $1,000 for all sales and transfers plus an additional five percent on prices between $250,000 and $500,000, and an additional 10 percent on sale amounts exceeding $500,000.

Companion legislation (S. 1906) is pending before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, which conducted a hearing in March. Here is a link to the bill.

Note from Sharon: I wonder about the causes of what the reporter (or the Congressfolk) terms “haphazard” .. there is a great deal of political pressure not to increase the fees by recreation residencers, but the FS is attempting to implement regulations, which are conceivably based on the intent of Congress and probably have some kind of deadline to collect the currently appropriate fees. I wonder if there is more to this story, and about the perspectives of people who contribute to this blog on recreation residences and fees?

Stewardship Contracting Authority – What Do You Think?

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One of my colleagues (not FS) asked the question “what are the pros and cons of stewardship contracting in your opinion?” My story has been it’s a good idea but you need trees to have positive economic value, so we have problems with that in large parts of the interior West.

We are interested in your stories… seems like members of our community share a variety of (thankfully, non-partisan!) perspectives and have on-the-ground experience. What’s been your experience? Are there things you would like to change about the program?

Thanks in advance for your ideas.