Myth-busting scientist pushes greens past reliance on ‘horror stories’, from Greenwire

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At home in differential equations and fieldwork, Kareiva illustrates his more theoretical side during a talk on the population dynamics of turtles at Santa Clara. Photo courtesy of Lauridsen/TNC.

This was circulating around at work today…
From E&E News here..
This is enough to give you a flavor.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Peter Kareiva had come to answer for his truths.

Settling at the head of a long table ringed by young researchers new to the policy world, Kareiva, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental organization, cracked open a beer. After a long day mentoring at the group’s headquarters, an eight-story box nestled in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, he was ready for some sparring.

The scientists had read Kareiva’s recent essay, which takes environmentalists to task. The data couldn’t bear out their piety, he wrote. Nature is often resilient, not fragile. There is no wilderness unspoiled by man. Thoreau was a townie. Conservation, by many measures, is failing. If it is to survive, it has to change.

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Inducted last year into the National Academy of Sciences, Kareiva continues to teach part-time at Santa Clara University. Photo by Dave Lauridsen. Courtesy of the Nature Conservancy (TNC).

Many around the table were unconvinced. Some were disturbed.

How could this be coming from the Nature Conservancy?

“We love the horror story,” Kareiva said. He was dressed in New Balance running shoes, a purple sweater and rumpled tan trousers. “We just love it. The environmental movement has loved it. That, I think, is … [a] strategy failure. And it’s actually not supported by science.”

This is not some vague hypothesis, he added to murmurs. He’s seen it in the data.

“The message [has been that] humans degrade and destroy and really crucify the natural environment, and woe is me,” he said. “The reality is humans degrade and destroy and crucify the natural environment — and 80 percent of the time it recovers pretty well, and 20 percent of the time it doesn’t.”

One of the visitors, Lisa Hayward, an ecologist working on invasive-species policy at the U.S. Geological Survey, spoke up. How can that be so? “I feel that does not represent the consensus of the ecological community,” she said.

“I’m certain that it doesn’t represent the consensus of the ecological community,” Kareiva shot back, with a smile and flash in his eyes. A circle of nervous laughter swayed around the room. “I’m absolutely certain of that! Wait two years.”

Kareiva has never feared following the data, or dragging others with him. Already a respected ecologist, for the past decade he has shoved the Nature Conservancy toward a new environmentalism. The old ways aren’t working. Inch by inch, for better or worse, conservation must, he says, enter the Anthropocene Epoch — the Age of Man.

For most of the conservancy’s history, the old way meant one thing: buying and protecting land from human development, through any means necessary. “Saving the Last Great Places on Earth,” the old Nature Conservancy motto went. And it worked. Backed by wealthy donors and corporate deals, the conservancy has long been one of the largest landowners in the United States. Worldwide, it has protected more than 119 million acres.

But not all of its trends point up.

The average age of a conservancy member is 65. The average age of a new member is 62. Each year, those numbers creep upward. Only 5 percent of the group’s 1 million members are younger than 40. Among the “conservation minded” — basically, Americans who have tried recycling — only 8 percent recognize the group. Inspiration doesn’t cut it anymore. Love of nature is receding. The ’60s aren’t coming back.

It’s a problem confronting all large conservation groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Quietly, these massive funds — nicknamed the BINGOs, for “big nongovernmental organizations” — have utterly revamped their missions, trumpeting conservation for the good it does people, rather than the other way around. “Biodiversity” is out; “clean air” is in.

“In fact, if anything, this is becoming the new orthodoxy,” said Steve McCormick, the Nature Conservancy’s former president. “It’s widespread. Conservation International changed its mission, and it’s one that Peter Kareiva could have crafted.”

For these groups, it’s a matter of survival. But for ecologists like Kareiva, it’s science.

The conservation ethic that has driven these groups — the protection of pristine wild lands and charismatic species into perpetuity — has unraveled at both ends. American Indians dramatically altered the environment for thousands of years, paleontologists have found; even before then, climate shifts followed the planet’s wobbles. And in the future, no land will be spared man’s touch, thanks to human-induced global warming.

The desire to return to a steady-state baseline, before European settlement or human influence, will never work, these scientists say. Many species won’t be saved; some that are saved will not thrive, lingering in a managed existence like the California condor. There is no return to Eden. Population will rise. Triage is coming.

“Conservation is at a crossroads,” said John Wiens, who served with Kareiva as a lead scientist at the conservancy for several years before joining the nonprofit PRBO Conservation Science. “That’s where we are. And we’re likely to be there for some time.”

Kareiva was not the first to see the crossroads. But unlike those of many writers and scientists, his message has come from the inside. And there is every reason to suspect the movement will push back, said Stewart Brand, the environmentalist best known as the editor of Whole Earth Catalog.

“To be the first going somewhat public with this kind of critique from [inside] an organization framework, it’s not only pioneering and important, but brave,” Brand said. “He’s a guy who’s risking his job.”

Here are the last paragraphs:

Ecosystem services are no panacea, though, said Wiens, the former conservancy scientist. It’s a recipe that can easily miss the nonmonetary values of the environment. And it won’t necessarily help managers make the hard choices on what species to save. How will this triage be decided? There are no tools, no paradigm, that can do that yet.

“We don’t have, right now, the framework to think through those cost-benefit calculations,” Wiens said. “And I think that’s partly because people have been avoiding this notion of triage.”

For now, at conservation and ecology conferences, many young scientists speak exactly like Kareiva, said Marvier, his former postdoc. These are the future conservation managers and agency leaders. A generational dynamic is being played out. Kareiva’s team seems to be winning. Team Biodiversity may soon leave the court.

Back at the conservancy’s headquarters, meeting with the young scientists, Kareiva had finished his beer, an India pale ale from Heavy Seas-branded Loose Cannon. It was a good talk. There would be many more like it. Move conservation into working landscapes like farms, he had said. Value nature’s services. Let go of the ideal. And bring in a base beyond affluent, educated whites. Let Thoreau go.

“Broaden the constituency to those loggers,” he said.

The whole article is interesting and you can sign up for a free trial of Greenwire here.
Here is a link to Kareiva’s paper. I think we may have posted it here before, but not sure.

Green Mountain Lookout Revisited, But Not For Long

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Last July, we blogged about a lawsuit filed against the Forest Service challenging its reconstruction of the Green Mountain lookout within Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness.

A week ago, federal district judge John Coughenour ordered the Forest Service to remove the lookout. It wasn’t a particularly close call either: “The Forest Service erred egregiously by not conducting the required necessity analysis before embarking on such an aggressive course of action,” the judge wrote regarding the Forest Service’s decision “to fully disassemble the lookout, transport the pieces off-site by helicopter, construct a new foundation on site, fly new and restored lookout pieces back in to the site, and reassemble the lookout.”

The judge was unpersuaded that the National Historic Preservation Act was relevant, even though the lookout is on the national registry. He concluded the NHPA imposes procedural, not substantive, duties on the Forest Service and, thus, could not trump the Wilderness Act’s substantive preservation mandate.

However, he did find that “historical use” is a valid management goal under the Wilderness Act. Continuing the line of reasoning first adopted in FSEEE’s High Sierra Hikers case, he faulted the Forest Service for failing to assess whether maintaining the lookout in the wilderness and using helicopters to do so, were necessary to realize the lookout’s historical virtues. For example, he pointed to other historic lookouts that had been preserved by removing them from the wilderness and rebuilding them at ranger stations as visitor interpretative facilities.

Blight of the White-Tailed Deer

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Some have asked for more Eastern stories on this blog.. here’s the link.

Forest Buffet: Blight of the White-Tailed Deer
Monday, April 2, 2012 at 9:24AM
ecoRI News

By MEREDITH HAAS/ecoRI News contributor

White-tailed deer are prevalent in Rhode Island.NORTH KINGSTOWN — East Coast forests are literally being eaten away, according to Thomas Rawinski of the USDA Forest Service. “I’m convinced that deer are the single greatest threat to eastern forests,” he said during his March 29 presentation at a Rhode Island History Survey conference entitled “Trends in Human-Wildlife Interaction” that was held at the Quonset ‘O’ Club.

Deer impair a forest’s ability to regenerate by attacking native species and consuming everything in sight, he said, noting that we’re seeing major shifts ecologically as deer have overwhelmed and drastically changed the landscape and culturally by how society views nature and its role within it.

“Rhode Island forests were much different 25 years ago,” Rawinski said. “I love deer, but I hate what people have allowed them to do to Rhode Island forests.”

The crux of the problem, he said, is that deer increase the economic and esthetic benefits, but also cause more harm because there are so adaptable and such a prolific prey species. “They’re adaptable and can live amongst us,” Rawinski said. “They’ve beguiled us with beauty and grace.”

White-tailed deer are selective eaters when there is an abundance of food, but as their population increases their diet shifts to low-preference species and increases impact on plants such as viburnum, pink lady slippers, wild sarsaparilla and American beech. As a result of their voracious appetite, diversity in plant species is lost and impairs a forest from regenerating.

It’s a human-caused problem that revolves around the predator control issue, Rawinski said. “We tried to gentrify nature and exclude unsavory characters,” he said, noting that hunters and other predators are seen as unsavory characters. “Nature has its own rules and deer come back with a vengeance when land is used for passive recreation.”

Rawinski’s goal is to get people concerned before there is a problem. “It’s a ticking time bomb,” he said. “People become concerned once the population as already exploded.”

The white-tailed deer population (pdf) becomes a problem when the environment is changed in a way that interferes with how it should function, causing an increase in disease and an increased risk to public health. In 2004, there were an estimated 15,800 white-tailed deer in Rhode Island, and their population is still rising, according to the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM).

The Forestry Source on “Sagebrush Rebellion Renewed”

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The April issue of The Forestry Source, leads off with “The Sagebrush Rebellion Renewed: Bills Aim to Create Trusts to Manage Federal Timber,” by Steve Wilent, Forestry Source editor. The article begins with what I perceive to be a very narrow view of the origins of the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion, blaming it all on “environmentalists”. The article ends with what I perceive to be cheerleading for “forest trusts” as a solution to current problems including the impending drying up of “Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act” funding. It is an opinion-editorial, so Wilent is entitled to his perspective. But I thought I’d share it with you, since my own framing of this matter is much different. I see the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion being just one of many from a West that was always angry over public lands. In my frame, fully funding Payments in Lieu of Taxes is a better solution to the rural schools problem. And I find the “forests trusts” idea a non-starter in dealing with America’s national forests.

Wilent’s article begins:

In his 1993 book, Federal Land, Western Anger R. McGregor Cawley describes the Sagebrush Rebellion as “a protest originating from three interrelated perceptions: first, that environmentalists had succeeded in gaining a dominant position in federal land policy discussions; second that the environmental community’s influence had created an underlying bias in favor of preservation over development in federal land management decisions throughout the 1970s; and third, that the only way to counteract the increasingly restrictive character of federal land management decisions was to precipitate an open confrontation.”

The first shot in that confrontation was fired in 1979, when the Nevada state legislature passed a bill that sought to transfer control of 40 million acres managed by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – about 79% of Nevada – to the state. …

In February, Utah fired a new salvo when its house of representative passed the Transfer of Public Lands Act&#8230.

My own framing, built in part off the Public Land Law Review Commission’s “History of Public Land Law Development”, here, tracks the Sagebrush Rebellions (several of them, with continued skirmishes in between) back to the fights for statehood in the USA. In my state of Utah the fight was nasty and long-standing. Some Utahan’s were mad back then and continue to be mad today, with their anger welling-up periodically. Ron Arnold may have captured the spirit of that 1980s “Rebellion” as well as did the Society of American Foresters (SAF) article, calling it “a temper-tantrum over public lands thrown by a handful of cowboys”. That “temper-tantrum” turned into yet-another bandwagon that powerful rural Western politicians could jump onto—which they ultimately parlayed into substantial gains. Here is what Frank J. Popper had to say about these “gains” in “A Timely End of the Sagebrush Rebellion” (pdf), National Affairs 76, Summer 1984.

The Sagebrush Rebellion did not fail—it ended because it achieved many of its goals. The Reagan administration rapidly found clever, politically appealing ways to start to transfer some public lands without having to ask Congress for new legislation. Watt’s Interior Department undertook a “good neighbor policy” that allowed state and local governments to request the department’s “surplus” lands. The initiative was soon broadened to an Asset Management Program whereby all federal agencies could sell their excess land in the West and elsewhere; the eventual sale of 35 million acres–an area the size of Iowa–was expected. Separately, the Forest Service prepared to sell up to 17 million acres. The federal land agencies sped up the transfers to Alaska’s state government and Native Americans authorized by the 1958 Statehood Act, the 1971 Native Claims Settlement Act, and the 1980 National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The BLM experimentally revived homesteading in the Kuskokwim Mountains in central Alaska. Numerous federal-Western state land exchanges were in exploratory stages, and seemed most advanced in Utah. [p. 68]

Another look at the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion, from “A Brief History of the Anti-conservation Movement” frames the issues as conservatives v. liberals:

At its most basic level the Sagebrush Rebellion was a conservative backlash against the growth of federal power represented by, among other things, such landmark environmental legislation of the late 1960s and ’70s as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. These legislative programs created new roles and concerns for managers of federal land — protection of endangered species, water quality, air quality, etc. This required closer scrutiny of activities on federal lands, including the activities of miners, loggers and ranchers who operated there. Significantly, these businesses usually enjoyed substantial operating subsidies by virtue of longstanding below-market rates for grazing, mineral and timber rights on federal land. This closer scrutiny inevitably led to federally imposed restrictions when mining, grazing and foresting practices damaged the water and air and threatened endangered species. Recognizing that a return to the good old days of less regulation would be good for business, the movement took support and comfort from the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, one of whose campaign planks was reduction of the size and power of government. Certain Reagan cabinet appointees, most notably James Watt as Secretary of the Interior and Anne Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, were selected in part for their willingness to further the de-regulatory agenda of Reagan and the right wing of the Republican Party. …

The Anti-Conservation Movement further benefitted from the attention it received from industries with something to gain. In particular, big agriculture (the American Farm Bureau Federation, The Cattlemen’s Association), the extractive industries (mining, including coal, oil and gas) and timber producers (who thrive on easy access to federal forest lands) saw a reduction of federal regulatory power working to their advantage. This message of the economic benefit of deregulation appealed as well to small businesses. After all, if workplace safety regulations could be reduced or eliminated, the money saved could be plowed back into the business.

During this period anti-regulatory forces sought to define and project an agenda that would be publicly acceptable. Throughout the 1980s the anti-regulatory/anti-environmental sentiment was expressed largely as support for the Reagan Revolution and its promise to deliver the country from the clutches of over-zealous, regulation-happy bureaucrats.

In studying the various Sagebrush Rebellions we would all probably benefit from a good class on the history of the American West. Here is one (pdf, syllabus) from Professor Chris Lewis, from the University of Colorado. Lewis places Cawley’s book in a class lecture on “‘The Lords of Yesterday’ and the Sagebrush Rebellion”. The book is well-placed there, since it is evidently written from the perspective of ‘the rebels’, according to a Great Plains Research book review (pdf). There is nothing wrong with that. One of my favorite books is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is unabashedly written from the perspective of those who lost (and/or who were horrible abused) in the struggles to form the United States. Zinn acknowledges his bias, but is quick to note that no “history” is written without bias. But what is wrong with Wilent’s piece, in my opinion, is to use the book to suggest that one particular perspective is the only perspective that counts. Still, opinion/editorial pieces often do that. So, I’ll just leave it at, “I beg to differ”.

Wilent’s article goes on to highlight various ongoing problems including the impending falldown in Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act funding—problems which are clearly still with us. These problems don’t necessarily cry out for the solutions that are being proffered in the various bills currently working their way through Congress. But you wouldn’t arrive at that particular conclusion from Wilent’s article, which concludes by essentially cheerleading attempts to put federal land management into “land trusts.” “Cheerleading” is how I see it. What Wilent actually said was this: “Management by a trust dedicated to maintaining revenues to schools and other beneficiaries may offer a solution. …”

Wilent didn’t bother to daylight any other “solutions.” So cheerleading is where I’ll leave it. When dealing with ‘trusts’ my question is, as has been for a long time, “Land trusts provide a solution to what?” Yes land trusts are a good way to generate revenue if that is all you are interested in. But I thought that the ‘public trust doctrine’, under which the national forests were carved out and managed, is much broader than ‘revenue generation’. And we are not living in 1900, when income taxes and other revenue generation means now available to the federal government were not established.

In the middle of Wilent’s article, John Freemuth is quoted on both the complexity of federal lands management and his desire to reconvene a Public Lands Law Review Commission. I support Freemuth’s desire. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that just about no one who is ranting and raving in this (or the last) Sagebrush Rebellion has ever read the last Public Lands Law Review Commission Report. Why should we expect a new one to add value to this debacle? Still, I would like to see a new one, if only to force the Administration and the Congress to delve deeper into the issues (and the history) surrounding our “Angry West”. But I’m not sure that a re-reading of the original Public Lands Law Review Commission Report wouldn’t suffice to dispel myths surrounding each seemingly-novel episode when the American West, particularly the “rural West” explodes anew in yet-another “temper-tantrum.” I guess we all get to pick our frames, and our scapegoats.

Related NCFP Posts:
Free America From Her Public Lands?
Utah’s Sagebrush Rebellion Awakens
The Frame Game
The Blame Game

Who Has Authority in Political Debates involving Science? From Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog

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Check out Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog post here.

Roger links to Jan Paul van Soest’s blog here.

The body of knowledge in Earth System Sciences in the broadest sense, is impressive. Yet, most scientists at Planet under Pressure feel their knowledge is hardly translated into actions. Below the surface, frustrations can easily be sensed. Frustration may provoke scientists to even stronger formulate their messages, and choose words that fit better in the realm of societal and political discussions than in the scientific domain: ‘We must’, ‘we should’, ‘an imperative to act’, ‘we can no longer afford waiting’ and comparable phrases are frequently used to mask frustrations.

However understandable, these expressions are unlikely to be effective. The audience may think that the scientist using these terms have a political agenda. This perception undermines the scientific credibility, whether the scientist in question has a political agenda indeed or not. My take is: they don’t; most scientist don’t even really understand the nature of politics and policy-making processes. And to the extend they do, they are doing a lousy job in terms of lobbying and influencing the public and policy debate. Otherwise, more scientists would realise that overstating is not really effective in getting the message across.


Trust
The risk of being perceived as someone pursuing a political agenda is one pitfall, a second one is reinforcing communication efforts without changing the nature of the communication. “We should communicate more/better”, is quite often heard. Underlying assumption is that giving more and better information will lead to better listening and different choices. However, if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got. People just don’t change their convictions and belief systems, let alone their decisions and actions, on the basis of more information. Interesting enough, some psychologists and sociologists gave exactly that message at the Planet under Pressure conference, in a couple of parallel sessions, such as the one chaired by prof. Heinz Gutscher. Co-operation and collective action builds on trust, said Gutscher, and if that is lacking, giving ever more information has zero or even counterproductive effects.

Imperatives or options

The third pitfall may even be more problematic: communicating science in terms of imperatives actually undermines the politicians’ sense of responsibility. Although some politicians may be risk averse, the key role of politicians is to choose, not to blindly follow someone else’s view. Who would need politicians if science would automatically lead to policies? It doesn’t. Therefore, imperatives can easily be laid aside, and are likely ineffective. They disempower politicians, instead of addressing them in their key role and responsibility: choosing and negotiating options.

There were some good examples of presenting the science in a more open way, in terms of a variety of options and their consequences, and including the scientific uncertainties. A subsession on fisheries and oceanic ecosystem governance demonstrated that: a science-based mapping of goals, options, timing and uncertainties made clear what the actual choices are, and helps making progress in decision-making, even in a situation where governance is still ruled by the 1609 pamphlet Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) by the Dutch philosopher and jurist Hugo Grotius.

The best and most effective ways of communicating science therefore seem to be those that separate knowledge from decision, that provide policy-makers with options instead of imperatives, and with ‘what if’ instead of ‘will happen inevitably’.

It could be enlightening to get more information on the subsession on fisheries and how it was structured.

LEED Certification Loophole- Blue-stained not Green?

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SAF has two concerns about this version of the LEED certification scheme, put out by the US Green Building Council. One is that gives one certification system special credit (FSC), and the other is the question of 50 versus 500 miles for procurement. Here’s a letter from SAF weighing in on this.

My problem is even more fundamental. Certification systems are for managed forests and the point of certification is to ensure that those forests are managed sustainably. However, in our case (say, Colorado bark beetle- killed trees), those forests have not actually been managed at all, in the sense of fertilization, planting and thinning or the other practices that certification systems usually concern themselves with. A simple person would think it would be highly “green” to use our bounty of dead trees locally, or in Denver (500 from bug-killed would get us Denver), rather than, say, FSC certified products from anywhere far away. In my opinion, these incentives seem perverse, to say the least.

USGBC is a 501c3 not-for-profit, so there is no requirement for them to be responsive to the public’s concerns, but they are pretty much the gold (or platinum;?) standard for green building. Even the US Government touts using this scheme for buildings, despite the fact that our national forest system lumber would not be rated as “green.” Strange but true.

Note from Sharon: I published this over the weekend and then republished just now, hoping that someone might be interested. Perhaps I have found a topic too arcane for even this blog? I guess there’s no hope for another one I have in mind “Should federal agencies buy renewable energy credits?”

New Breakthrough in Tree Genetic Manipulation

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The Forest Service’s Institute of Forest Genetics, in Placerville, California, has announced an important development to provide future nest trees, for imperiled birds on the Endangered Species List. Dr. Marie Shelley says that a twelve year effort has produced sapling trees, which exhibit the branching characteristics needed by birds, for nest trees which protect their young from predators like the Great Grey Owl. After eight years of finding seed trees, and cone collecting, the Forest Service’s Placerville Nursery is now producing saplings that will grow into the limby, short trees that nesting birds prefer. The efforts have been met with opposition from anti-GMO groups, claiming that such “experiments” could lead to “Frankenstein Forests”, breeding with the native species and putting forests at unacceptable risk. Dr. Shelley says that those genetics already naturally exist, and there is simply no danger to current gene pools.

The Forest Service has provided this picture of their first “Mother Tree”, found on the Black Hills National Forest, showing the increased branch growth that foresters have always called “Wolfy Trees”. Often, in the past, these trees were cut down and left in the forests, without any commercial value. The revolution in forest science during the 90’s has led to using such trees as “Wildlife Trees”, considered a much better use of these kinds of trees. Researchers say that these “Wolfy Trees” have accelerated growth rates, if they have open sun. The Black Hills National Forest has implemented the pilot program and is now interplanting  their site-specific special trees in areas impacted by bark beetles and wildfires.

David Letterman’s Own Private Wilderness

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We’ve certainly discussed and debated the proposed Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act from Montana’s Senator Max Baucus on this site before. However, a new article in today’s Great Falls Tribune covers one aspect of this issue that we definitely haven’t discussed before.

You’ll have to read the entire article to more fully understand the issue, but the general gist is that in Teton County, Montana – which includes much of the Rocky Mountain Front landscape – old public County Road No. 380 was unilaterally declared private in 1988, which closed off public access to not only state lands, but also portions of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the Deep Creek area.  Today, old County Road No. 380 terminates near a large horse barn on land owned by Late Show host David Letterman.  As the Great Falls Tribune reports:

What makes the fight over old County Road No. 380 unique is that it accesses public land that abuts the proposed 17,000-acre “Deep Creek Addition” to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex contained in Sen. Max Baucus’ “Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act.”  If Baucus’ bill passes and becomes law, the new federally designated wilderness area would be inaccessible from the east.

Anderson pointed out that the Heritage Act’s supporters have promoted the measure with assurances that it would maintain access for hunters and recreationists. Anderson said if old County Road No. 380 isn’t reopened to the public, only one landowner will have access to that new wilderness — Late Night talk show host David Letterman — who owns the only piece of private land adjacent to wilderness proposed by the Heritage Act.

Question: FERC relicensing, scope of analysis

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From Dick Boyd:

What is the understanding of forest managers regarding relicensing of hydroelectric generators?

My observation is that the geographic area of the project does not extend far enough from the water to establish responsibility.

There is a need for fuels management, including reduction, to prevent the type fire that results in siltation of the reservoir. Most licenses seem to be predicated on tens of feet of elevation or tens of yards from the high water mark.

Seldom is the hydroplant tasked to pay for services rendered in fuels management.

This question was prompted by my observation at a public meeting that the map suggested the licensing would address the entire geographic area of the watershed. Someone else asked a question about the map. The response was that the project geographic area was limited to a small perimeter around the reservoir. Then the discusion went on about boat ramps and recreation. Neither fire fighting or fuels reduction was mentioned.

Dick, my only involvement in this topic was whether the FS should do separate NEPA on its terms and conditions, or their should be one NEPA document associated with the decision and terms and conditions.
Also in the case of non-FERC dams in Colorado, the water provider pays for part of fuels treatment to protect from sedimentation voluntarily.

Do others know more about this?

New Topics or Questions from Readers

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Pages on this blog are on tabs above on top. I’ve started a new one called “New Topics or Questions from Readers” for ideas that we can post about. A couple of these had turned up in the comments policy section, so this fits better and hopefully encourages more people to submit ideas for posts or questions.