Crews work on planting ponderosa pine seedlings Thursday in the burned area of Colorado's Pike National Forest as part of the Hayman reforestation project. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)
Here’s an article from the Denver Post, Replanting forests in Colorado wildfire areas has benefit for water supply from April 13.
It’s interesting to compare these perspectives on tree planting. I wonder if tree planting post fire has “critics” in Colorado, or the reporter didn’t interview them..???
“There is a direct connection between healthy forests and sustainable supplies for clean water,” Denver Water spokeswoman Stacy Chesney said. “Planting trees will help re-establish the ponderosa pine forests that would otherwise take more than a hundred years to grow naturally.”
“Nature runs the game”
Sediment eroding into streams and the river after rainstorms “increases our cost of treating water” and has forced operational suspensions, Aurora Water spokesman Greg Baker said. “We want to get ahead of this.”
Forest experts say it’s too early to assess the extent to which tree-planting may spur regeneration of forests. Current targets call for replanting across 1,085 Hayman fire acres this year, with the goal of eventually replanting one-third of the burned acres, and also starting on the Buffalo Creek fire area.
Residents who still live in the former forests along the upper South Platte applauded the tree-planting but say federal foresters should have begun this work with greater intensity and focus 10 years ago in the immediate aftermath of the fire.
Drought this spring has helped, because rainstorms trigger erosion, Westcreek resident Steve Schnoes said, out with his wife, Tanya, cutting back trees near their home as a precaution in case of a new fire.
“Nature runs the game here,” but planting is a necessary response, Schnoes said. “We’re going to look like the moon if we don’t.”
Planting forests, USFS, via flickrOver at KCET‘s “The Back Forty”, Char Miller challenges some too-common thinking in forestry. In Will Trees Save Us from Climate Change? A Doubtful Tale, Miller challenges foresters to move beyond thinking that re-greening the planet via planting trees will save us. Further, Miller suggests that there are lessons unlearned in attempts to plant trees to reforest landscapes. Here’s a shortened version of Miller’s thesis:
…That [trees] can sequester carbon has been much touted in policymaking circles as one tool to help shrink our carbon footprint; and thus trees seem critical to the larger effort to reduce global warming.
Yet it does not necessarily follow … that we must reforest the planet as rapidly as possible….
Sure: if we had a more complete picture of the variations of potential temperature change across ecosystems and typographies; if we could pinpoint when and where alterations in precipitation will occur; and were we able to calibrate the shifting influence that heat, light, and wet will have on differing soil types, then we might have a clue about what tree species to plant in which biota and at what times.
But we don’t. So to plant trees in hopes that they will survive — and thus increase the odds of us doing so — seems, at best, random.
Take a local analogy. In the scorched aftermath of the Station Fire the U. S. Forest Service feared that the erosive force of coming rainy seasons would strip the burned-over district of its soil. It thus launched an aggressive restoration project. Beginning in April 2011, contract labor planted one million seedlings of an expected three million over five years. The goal was to re-green approximately 11,000 acres of the 160,000 that burned at a white heat during August and September 2009. The Angeles National Forest, or at least a portion of it, would be reborn.
It has not happened. Only about 25 percent of the seedlings dug into charred slopes, cindered meadows, and blackened canyon floors have survived, a mortality rate that has stunned agency foresters. “When we planted seedlings, conditions were ideal in terms of soil composition and temperature, rainfall and weather trends,” one of them told the LA Times. “Then the ground dried out and there just wasn’t enough moisture after we planted.”
The Forest Service has gone back to the drawing board, shrinking the number of acres to be planted and, where possible, switching to tree species that are indigenous to the San Gabriel Mountains.
Critics are unappeased. One of them [mused], “The reality we live in is a Mediterranean climate, and there is just not enough water to create what they have in mind. I do not believe they will succeed because this is Southern California, not rain-drenched Oregon.”
This climatic reality is part of the reason why there has been a very long history of flawed regeneration projects on county and federal lands in the San Gabriels….
The Forest Service has never quite learned L.A. County’s hard-won lesson. Despite what federal foresters long have understood about the low fertility of local soils, mercurial weather patterns, and steep canyon walls, they have repeatedly endeavored to re-engineer the San Gabriels’ ground cover. …
Why this institutional memory has not surfaced to check the Forest Service’s current aspirations to reforest portions of the Angeles is an open question.
More to the point, the agency’s century-long inability to rearrange the San Gabriels’ biota to its liking is a powerful rejoinder to those who so confidently believe that planting trees, indiscriminately and in large number, will help resolve some of the challenges that a climate-changed world is bringing. [most hyperlinks omitted here]
Endnote: The evidence Miller cites is not the only evidence that the Forest Service “never quite learned [its] hard-won lesson.” The Forest Service’s Wyoming Study in the early 1970s came to similar conclusions. In the early 1970s, following a bark-beetle infestation and big clearcuts in lodgepole pine in Wyoming, the Forest Service began a massive re-planting effort. The logging went well. The planting did not. And the very large clearcuts raised controversy, in part fueled by the failed planting effort. The saplings died for the most part, scorched by the sun in the barren clearcuts. Many were planted again, and they too died, as documented in “Forest Management in Wyoming, 1971” (cited here). The Wyoming Study, led in part to the Church clearcutting guidelines that made their way into the National Forest Management Act of 1976. You’d have thought that the Forest Service would have been very wary of future adventures in re-planting. But no.
Now, in Southern California the Forest Service has, once again, wandered into a planting effort that has failed for pretty much the same reasons. Only this time they had a ‘partner’ – the National Forest Foundation — and outside money from “carbon offsets” government subsidies.
Hanging out in the Goose timber sale on the Willamette National Forest, Oregon. Photo by forester Roy Keene.
Update: According to Cascadia Forest Defenders: “On Sunday April 22, in celebration of ‘Earth Defense Day’ and in solidarity with Occupy the Trees, Cascadia Forest Defenders installed a tree sit in the Goose Project timber sale known as ‘Golden.'”
—————
The Goose timber sale on the Willamette National Forest has been discussed on this blog before. This week, the Goose got some more press as forester Roy Keene wrote an opinion piece in the Eugene Weekly.
The Goose Timber Sale near McKenzie Bridge is a large Forest Service logging operation posed as a beneficial project for the forest and the people. But local people aren’t buying the sales pitch. They say this giant timber sale will, in truth, be as bad for the forest as it will for them….The reality disconnect of this 38-million-board-foot timber grab reducing wildfire bothers many forest-savvy locals as much as the coming war zone. McKenzie Bridge residents don’t look forward to day-long droning of chainsaws, the roar of jet helicopters, loaded trucks rumbling by in swirling dust or the increase in wildfire danger from summer logging operations….
Instead of logging large trees from distant upland slopes, remove small trees and excess vegetation around residences and thin forest understories along roads. Contract smaller, less-mechanized, but equally effective fuel reduction projects locally. Quit subsidizing distant mega-mills with huge helicopter and skyline logging operations at a loss to the public. Instead, redirect these subsidies toward activities like putting steel roofing on vulnerable community buildings and creating ponds for wildlife that would serve simultaneously as water points for future fire fighting.
The Goose Timber Sale does one thing really well. It highlights the inherent dishonesty, inequity and wastefulness of the archaic federal timber sale program. As one citizen said, “It looks as if you’re going to turn me into a 67-year-old tree sitter with this Goose Project. Bad news for us all!”
Just down the valley a piece, the Salem Weekly also took a look at the Goose timber sale with this article:
Conflict is building between the U.S. Forest Service and residents of a small community along the McKenzie River over a logging plan. Jerry Gilmour, a part-time resident of the McKenzie Bridge community, located in the Willamette National Forest, was astonished to learn in early February that 2134 acres there were about to be commercially logged and 588 acres “non-commercially thinned” by the Forest Service (USFS). Research into the matter left Gilmour angrier as he learned how the Goose Project, as the USFS calls it, came about….
According to critics, the main problems are as follows:
1 – The only warning for the large project was a small legal notice among many others in a Eugene newspaper –more than 50 miles from McKenzie Bridge – in 2010.
2 – The 45-day public comment period passed in 2010.
3 – The USFS chose to log mature forests in riparian reserves where logging is prohibited, and also to log mature trees which provide habitat for the spotted owl, a threatened species.
4 – Despite the fact that the project is located within a major watershed, involves critical habitat and the destruction of old growth trees, the USFS did not prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, but only an abbreviated document called an Environmental Assessment (EA).
5 – In a 2011 notice informing residents of a boundary line survey last year, the USFS did not mention a word about the logging project.
…Gilmour says he quickly learned the project was “massive,” including road-building and spraying of herbicides. It means the cutting of enough timber to fill 9,000 logging trucks in an area rich with elk deer, grey fox, black bear, bobcats and cougars.
Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild also objects to calling the project primarily fire protection. Heiken told Salem Weekly, “900 acres of the sale have nothing to do with fire risk reduction because they are older forests that have most of their fuel suspended high above the ground.” Heiken says logging will actually increase hazard on these 900 acres of mature forest….
Gilmour remains undaunted. “We are hoping that the USFS will do the right thing… put the brakes on and redesign this project with the good of the community, the wildlife and the forest in mind rather than the timber company’s bottom line.” He is “absolutely” in favor of the possible lawsuit against the USFS. “Litigation may be the only real way to bring this madness to a screeching halt.”
Americans continue to struggle with the idea of a public good, a “res publica,” in their national forests. We struggle in terms of both purpose of the national forests and how to best manage them. Herein we will contrast two different views of ‘national forests: for whom and for what.’ The first view comes from Dave Skinner, in a recent op-ed titled Impossible Dreams at the Flathead Beacon. The second view is mine, as aired here at the New Century of Forest Planning.
As I read through Dave Skinner’s “Impossible Dreams,” I reminded myself of just how diverse our worldviews are. Skinner views the world in a crass form of utilitarianism where forests are to be used for products and human pleasures: logs to flow freely to mills to make things, but also to generate monies to be returned to the treasury. Other ‘multiple use’ products flow freely too: oil and gas, minerals, red meat, and more. Roads are for human travel and to ‘manage’ the forests, recreation is for fun and, incidentally to be free, in part subsidized by timber and other products from the forests. [Note: The “to be free” tidbit is not in Skinner’s article, but is clearly what Skinner preaches elsewhere. Note further that I too share the idea of recreation for free outside certain improved sites. I also support commodity and service production from the national forests, but in a frame much more constrained than does Skinner.] Skinner makes no mention of environmental services, no mention of wildlife sanctuaries, no mention of sanctuaries for the human spirit. This is Skinner’s near-possible dream: that people might warm up to the idea that national forests ought to be managed for the version of multiple use embodied in the Multiple Use — Sustained Yield Act of 1960 (MUSY). MUSY predated the spate of environmental laws the were ushered in a mere decade later, following an upwelling of outrage at the wanton disregard for ‘caring for the earth’ that led to the passage of many US environmental laws and led to the celebration of Earth Day as a reminder of what damage we have done to our home—and as a reminder that we must now do better. These “US environmental laws” laws include the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and more. Skinner’s “impossible dream” is that the national forests would be better managed in the tradition of state trust lands, echoing Robert Nelson’s similar push to Free America from Her Public Lands.
I too have an impossible dream. A dream that the Forest Service will finally take Aldo Leopold seriously, and move management toward the ideal that people become part of the “land community,” not overlords of the wild, neither zoo-keepers of the wildlife and garden-tenders of the forest. My dream is also that the Forest Service work up this dream hand in hand with the American people, through the Art and Promise of Adaptive Governance, helping lead America toward sustainability and ecological resilience/restoration. I suspect the Forest Service harbors a similar dream, although I don’t believe that they share my path toward that dream.
Here is a condensed version of Skinner’s Impossible Dreams, Flathead Beacon, 4/11/2012:
Golly gee, yet another U.S. Forest Service project has been blocked in court, [by environmental extremists]. …
Yet again, I found myself “thanking” Congress for writing laws enabling a handful of misanthropic kooks to utterly waste the labors of hundreds of professional, professionally paid public employees. ..
Um, what’s it called when you do the same things over and over and expect different results? Crazy!
Utah’s government is trying something different. On March 23, Utah passed House Bill 148 into law, demanding the Feds transfer title to public lands … by the end of 2014. … Arizona … passed a nearly identical bill (SB 1332) through their Senate, but it died (for now) in Arizona’s House Rules committee. The bill sponsor … told the Arizona Republic he spearheaded the legislation because “in the last 30 years, the radical environmental policies of these federal agencies have ground [resource] industries to a halt ….”
Now, it’s constitutionally impossible to force such a transfer. But — what if a bunch of states followed Utah’s lead, and Congress went along?
In attacking [the] bill, Arizona Sierra Clubber Sandy Bahr rhetorically asked, “How in the world do they [states] think they could manage these federal public lands?”
Turns out the states (and tribes) already do a better job: Oregon State University forest engineering professor John Sessions has studied the comparative costs of forest management under various ownerships (federal, tribal, state, and private). Dr. Sessions found that, in post-spotted-owl Washington and Oregon, annual management budgets across ownerships were roughly comparable.
But when based on timber sold (which pays for management, imagine that), Indian forests harvested a thousand board feet for every $92 of budget. Private and state operators were in the $102-$107 range, with the Forest Service at a ridiculous $1,296. At the time (2001), wood stumpage in the region ran $150-$300 a thousand, putting USFS costs at four to eight times revenues — a loss carried by taxpayers. Other forests supported themselves.
Sessions’ pattern seems to hold for Montana, too. Both state and tribal forest management programs in Montana, operated under state or tribal laws and regulations, are fiscally self-supporting. More important, they are good, even excellent, forestry. …
If [the Flathead National Forest] could sell its plan maximum (50 million feet), meeting FNF expenses with revenues is an impossible dream — a dream doomed to remain impossible as long as these lands are “managed” by federal employees under federal law applied in federal courts.
So, while Greens like Ms. Bahr are doing everything possible to portray legislation such as Utah’s as impossible, even crazy – the current federal land management regime is no less crazy.
Congress should seriously consider allowing states (and tribes) so inclined to have a go at managing these lands — if they succeed, they keep the land. ….
For those not familiar with Skinner’s narrow, antiquated views and exhortations on this and other multiple use matters, neither with the legacy of plunder associated with both the Forest Service’s multiple use timber management of the 1960s and 1970s, I simply ask you to ponder a few good books, including Paul Hirt’s A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests since World War Two and Richard W. Behan’s Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands. David Clary’s Timber and the Forest Service is also useful to get a flavor of the religious zeal that drove Forest Service timber management back in the go-go years.
As to what Skinner calls “excellent forestry” on the state trust lands, all I can say is that ‘trusts’ are a good way to raise money from land. As to biodiversity conservation, ecosystems services for clean air and water, aesthetic considerations, wilderness, and other uses and values not amenable to commodification, I believe other avenues for forest management offer much better solutions to the res publica idea of national forests, parks, and monuments.
The jury is out as to what we want for our national forests in this emerging century. Somehow I don’t believe that “we,” the American people, really want to take the ‘forest land trust’ path, back toward those ‘thrilling days of yesteryear’. As for me, I’ll continue to support the Forest Service’s move toward Leopold’s philosophy/practice. And I’ll continue to champion public engagement in the process when done legally, and with and eye toward fairness.
Many of you have seen ponderosa pine but, its higher-and-drier cousin, the Jeffrey Pine, is pretty easily identified. There are some areas where the two species compete with each other but, their “preferred habitats” are different. While ponderosas have a more yellow-green needle color, the Jeffrey is more grey-green. What I like best about the Jeffreys are their oversized limbs. They put a lot more effort into growing these very stout, large diameter limbs. Since Jeffrey “habitat” is more open, with more groundwater, maybe those big limbs are just a way of the tree using up energy not needed for growing so tall and dominant. Of course, the easiest way to tell the two species apart is the old saying; “Gentle Jeffrey, Prickly Ponderosa”, when handling their cones.
Way back in 1987, I was working on the Hat Creek RD off the Lassen NF, and we had a bunch of lightning fires. Three crews from the east came in on buses and as soon as they stepped off the bus, they saw these ancient Jeffrey pines. They stared at them for a while until the mushroom cloud from the big fire we had caught their attention. We had 43 fires burning during those three days of lightning.
According to Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, all of the trees in this picture that are not painted orange will be cut down as part of the Bozeman Watershed logging project. Photo by Cottonwood Environmental Law Center.
A copy of the complaint can be found here. Meanwhile, a copy of the press release from the plaintiffs is printed below and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle’s article can be found here.
Weekend Update: An attorney with the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center – who happens to live directly next to the Bozeman Watershed logging project area – provided this very enlightening comment over the weekend, which deserves to be highlighted here:
I helped write the administrative appeal for the enviro groups on the first round of this. We won on soils issues. I submitted a FOIA request for the project record on the BMW project back in 2010.
Here is language from the agency’s hydrologist that I found in an internal document:
The BMW implemented assumes that the BMW treated acres are totally within
the wildfire area so the reduced %>natural figures are probably an over estimation of potential sediment reduction since the wildfires would burn areas outside of BMW treatment boundaries and not all areas within BMW treatment areas would be subjected to wildfire.
Bottom line is that the BMW project, if fully implemented, could result in a modest reduction in sediment yields from a moderate to large size wildfire in either watershed. Since the sediment standard is 30% over natural for each drainage the resulting sediment yields would still be well over standard and pose a challenge to the Bozeman Municipal Water Treatment Plant.
Mark T. Story
Hydrologist
Gallatin National Forest
PO 130 Bozeman, Mt
59771
406-587-6735 [email protected]
This project is particularly troubling for me because it is nearly adjacent to my home, which is in Cottonwood Canyon, the drainage west of Hyalite. The agency is seeking to log in Cottowood. How is sediment going to be reduced by logging in a different drainage that is six miles away from a reservoir? I bowhunt for deer and elk in the Cottonwood side of the project area. This project will destroy my hunting grounds.
I took photos of the project area, approximately six miles away from the drainage in the Cottonwood side. The photos are on our website: http://cottonwoodlaw.org/work.html
Finally, The Wilderness Society submitted comments against this project years ago. They had a former UM soil scientist working for them that heavily criticized the project. They just aren’t talking about it now because it would be politically unpopular and they are worried about funding.
Bozeman, MT –The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in Federal District Court against two proposed logging and road-building projects. The Bozeman Municipal Watershed (BMW) timber sale is a 10-year logging project which authorizes more than 3,000 acres of logging, including 200 acres within the Gallatin Fringe Inventoried Roadless Area, 1,575 acres of prescribed burning, and 7.1 to 8.2 miles of new road construction. The East Boulder Timber sale would authorize 650 acres of logging and 2.1 miles of new road construction.
“The last thing you want to do in a healthy watershed is bulldoze in 7 miles of new logging roads,” said Michael Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “This is the fifth time the Forest Service has tried to push the Bozeman Watershed timber sale which has been successfully challenged four times since the 90s, including our successful administrative appeal last April. Simply stated, the agency’s proposal breaks a number of laws and this time around is no different.”
The groups also say the two timber sales would log lynx critical habitat, core grizzly bear habitat, and destroy habitat for other old growth dependent species. “The two timber sales do not comply with the best available scientific threshold to maintain open road densities of one mile or less per square mile of habitat in grizzly bear habitat,” Garrity said. “Moreover, the logging and road building will also dump sediment into creeks that contain native westslope cutthroat trout, Montana’s State Fish, which is already listed as a ‘Species of Special Concern’ due to habitat destruction and rapidly declining populations.”
“The Forest Service is determined to force bulldozers, logging trucks and helicopters into the Sourdough Creek, Hyalite Creek and South Cottonwood Creek drainages,” said Steve Kelly. “We are equally determined to protect the outstanding wildlife habitat, water quality and recreational opportunities these federal public lands provide to Bozeman residents and visitors who rightfully expect to encounter nature in a peaceful and quiet forest landscape.”
“Bozeman Creek and Hyalite Creek are already listed as ‘impaired,’ meaning they’re not in compliance with state water quality standards or the provisions of the federal Clean Water Act,” Kelly explained. “Yet, despite an already degraded aquatic environment, this project will increase sediment loads in the streams both during and after logging. Sediment sources from past logging projects should be cleaned up first to protect both native westslope cutthroat trout and Bozeman’s drinking water supply from harmful sediment pollution.”
“The supreme irony of this project is that while Montana’s fish and wildlife agency is spending tons of money struggling to recover the population of this native fish and keep it from being listed as an Endangered Species, the federal government is promoting the primary cause of its decline — more logging and sedimentation in its remaining range,” concluded Kelly.
Sara Jane Johnson, PhD., is the Director of the Native Ecosystems Council and a former Gallatin National Forest wildlife biologist. Johnson contends the Forest Service is converting its emphasis for both areas to fuels management, which violates the agency’s own Forest Plan.
“The Forest Service loves fuels management because it promotes logging – and now, apparently nothing else matters,” Johnson said, noting that the federal agency is ignoring the adverse impacts the timber sales will have on water quality, fish, wildlife, and recreation. “The Bozeman watershed timber sale is scheduled to last 10 years. What that means is that the people of Bozeman are going to have to deal with logging trucks, road building and helicopters in their favorite back yard recreation area for the next decade.”
Johnson also says that the increase in road density will adversely affect grizzly bears and lynx, which violates the Endangered Species Act. “Under the Gallatin National Forest Service’s lynx conservation strategy, 55,000 acres of lynx critical habitat can be logged before they claim there is any impact to lynx, “ Johnson continued. “This is an insane, irrational extinction strategy, not a recovery strategy. The government is supposed to work to protect lynx critical habitat, not destroy it.”
“If we want to recover the grizzly bear and lynx and remove them from the Endangered Species list, they need secure habitat on public land,” Johnson explained. “Otherwise they will be forced onto private land where they often end up dead.”
“The Forest Service is also ignoring all road density standards for grizzly bears” Johnson concluded. “The last place the agency should build more roads is in critical lynx habitat and occupied grizzly bear habitat – especially when it is also Bozeman’s municipal watershed.”
The East Boulder project is being litigated for many of the same reasons, Garrity explained, “except in addition to more road building, the Forest Service also blatantly ignores its own Forest Plan requirements to preserve big game winter range standards.”
“The Project area contains important winter range for mule deer and moose,” Garrity continued. “The Forest Plan requires the Forest Service to manage big game winter range to meet the forage and cover needs of deer, elk, moose, and other big game species. Winter range provides important canopy cover that intercepts snow, blocks wind, and reduces snow crusting, making movement for big game less difficult.”
“The elimination of hundreds of acres of winter range in the project area coupled with the disturbance effects of winter logging will negatively affect the already below-average population of mule deer in violation of the Forest Plan, the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act,” Garrity concluded. “We have been involved in every step of this process, made the agency aware of our concerns and it continues to push the projects forward. So now, for the good of the fish, wildlife, big game and water quality, we’re forced to take them to court. It’s not something we prefer to do, but in the end, judicial review is part and parcel of our system of government and we are using it to challenge the government’s actions exactly as it was intended.”
The National Arboretum in Washington D.C. is one of my favorite places. Here’s the Azalea Blossom Watch 2012 site. I’ll be back next Sunday. Other contributors: feel free to post more this week.
Nothing could be more spring-like than the azaleas at the National Arboretum.
For those of you who haven’t been following this, it turns out that papers appreciate it when blogs link to their articles and quote snippets rather than the whole thing. So given that press releases don’t have those restrictions (and the USG doesn’t have press releases giving their side of the story). I will focus on snippets that show viewpoints not aligned with the plaintiffs’ point of view. Matthew posted that press release here.
Nice reporting IMHO, you can see the discussion we have on this blog take place.
Officials have said that a severe wildfire could put so much sediment and ash in the creeks that intakes for the water utility could clog, and the city could be cut off from its water.
Garrity said he believes the odds of a major fire striking those particular drainages are very low and that even then, a major fire would have to be followed by heavy rains.
If new roads are built, however, he said there’s a 100 percent chance that sediment will end up in creeks, hurting trout habitat and polluting drinking water.
Gallatin National Forest spokeswoman Marna Daley said historical fire records show that there have been a number of lightning-caused fires in those drainages. The use of the drainages, particularly Hyalite, also creates the potential for human-caused fires, she said.
Garrity said there’s “no science that proves that thinning the watershed will fireproof it.”
Daley said the purpose of the watershed plan is not to fireproof the drainages, but to reduce the intensity and severity of a wildfire.
“We’re recognizing that a fire will happen in those drainages,” Daley said. “It is inevitable that it will happen… We just want it to be more controllable and less extensive and severe.”
and
The East Boulder project would be located outside Big Timber, Daley said, and is intended to increase safety for firefighters and the public, as the drainage has only one way in and out.
She said the Forest Service feels both projects were fully analyzed and concerns were addressed.
“The Forest Service worked very hard to listen to their concerns during all the public input, not just during the appeal and litigation,” Daley said. “We’ve invested a substantial amount of time and energy to be responsive to their concerns.”
She noted that the Bozeman watershed plan was seven years in the making, and three years were spent planning the East Boulder project.
“We believe these are very important projects with great benefits to the public,” Daley said. “We’ve worked hard to address individuals’ and organizations’ complaints and concerns. It is a bit disappointing that we’re to the place where it appears the only resolution we can find with these groups is in the courtroom.”
With regard to Garrity’s 100 percent chance sediment will end up in the water, here is where I posted the section of the ROD on sedimentation.
Here are a couple of other posts related to this project.
In looking over a Record of Decision, I found some new and old stuff, regarding NEPA alternatives.
The first one is being called “The Environmentally Preferable Alternative”, which seeks to dispel the calls to remove discretion from Forest Service bigwigs.
“NEPA implementing regulations require agencies to specify “the alternative or alternatives which were considered to be environmentally preferable” [40 CFR 1502.2(b)]. Forest Service policy further defines the environmentally preferable alternative as “…an alternative that best meets the goals of Section 101 of NEPA…” (FSH 1909.15). Section 101 of NEPA describes national environmental policy, calling on Federal, state, and local governments and the public to “…create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.” Section 101 further defines this policy in six broad goals:
• Fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations
• Assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and esthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings
• Attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the environment without degradation, risk to health or safety, or other undesirable and unintended consequences
• Preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage, and maintain wherever possible, an environment which supports diversity and variety of individual choiceRecord of Decision for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest Travel Management Plan FEIS Record of Decision 13
• Achieve a balance between population and resource use which will permit high standards of living and a wide sharing of life’s amenities
• Enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the maximum attainable recycling of depletable resources
Based on the description of the alternatives considered in detail in the FEIS and this record of decision, I believe that the selected alternative best meets the goals of Section 101 of the National Environmental Policy Act and is therefore the environmentally preferable alternative for this proposed Federal action.”
This appears to be the justification for his decision that this is the best alternative for the land, overall, balancing the impacts with the benefits. I’m wondering if the Federal lawyers have had input on such statements, and if the Forest Service folks have had training in how to make their statements as legally-supportable, as possible. I know that my experience in contract documents had me choosing my wording very carefully. Overall, I welcome the transparency and the willingness of Forest Supervisors to do their jobs, (and I hope they do it well).
“The no action alternative serves as the baseline used to compare the effects of the proposed action and alternatives. No new management activities are proposed. Current biological and physical processes would be allowed to continue on their present trajectories along with associated risks and benefits. None of the management activities described in the proposed action or the other action alternatives would be implemented to accomplish project goals. Commercial thinning, fuels treatments for activity and natural fuels, and prescription burning would not be authorized. There would be no temporary road construction or treatment of fuels in riparian habitat conservation areas. Hardwood restoration and road decommissioning activities would not be authorized. There would be no amendment to the forest plan to allow specific treatments needed to increase stand health and resilience in the planning area. For the no action alternative, current management plans would continue to guide management of the project area. Other approved projects would continue in the project area. In addition, other public uses, such as recreation, hunting, and firewood gathering would continue as permitted.”
This is a VERY tiny paragraph explaining what happens if nothing is done at all. The social and economic losses need to be studied and presented, as well as a projection of the next 30 years for the probable outcomes. Judges, and the public, needs to know what ALL is at stake, including the full ecological costs of doing nothing, within the framework of today’s realities.
This photo is from the West Salem, Wisconsin, stand of chestnuts. Of all my work experiences, seeing this stand, before the blight hit it, was one of the most soul-stirring and memorable. If anyone has photos that show the stand from that time period, please let me know, they weren’t easy to find on the internet. As you can see from this photo, it’s hard to get a feeling for what the stand was like from a picture as the trees were so tall.
Here’s a link to the whole story, below is just a snippet. It’s also interesting to see the chestnuts still in the understory in Connecticut and Massachusetts after all these years. If anyone has photos of those to share, that would be great. Please send to [email protected].
The New York Times
Sara Fitzsimmons, the regional science coordinator for the American Chestnut Foundation, studies a canker — a symptom of the chestnut blight that killed billions of American trees in the 20th century — on a seven-year-old American chestnut at the arboretum at Penn State.
Green: Science
Old swaths of Appalachian forest land left barren by decades of coal mining may find their past is their future, if efforts to restore the American chestnut tree in reclaimed coal fields are successful.
Over the next three years, more than 360 acres in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee will be planted with a variety of American chestnut trees bred to resist chestnut blight. The blight is a fungus that entered the United States around the year 1900 on imported Asian chestnut trees and destroyed about 4 billion native hosts by 1955.
The $1.1 million project — still largely an experiment — represents three decades of innovative breeding by the American Chestnut Foundation and its partners, which also have been planting restoration trees in national forests and on other public lands.
The trees were cultivated at the foundation’s Meadowview, Virginia research farms, as Michael Tortorello reported in his Thanksgiving-season exploration into the life, times and taste of the nut associated with winter holiday feasts and urban sidewalk vendors.
The process involves crossing an American with a Chinese chestnut tree to create half Chinese-half American progeny, then backcrossing several subsequent generations to American chestnuts to cut Chinese characteristics first by one quarter, then again by an eighth and a sixteenth.
As Dr. Frederick V. Hebard, the foundation’s chief scientist, explained. “We diluted out all the traits of the Chinese chestnut except for blight resistance, for which we selected at each backcross by inoculating the trees with the blight fungus.”
“Whenever we backcrossed to the American chestnut, the trees inherited genes for susceptibility to the blight from the American parent. They also had a chance of inheriting the blight resistant gene from the Chinese side. But when we inter-crossed them to each other, they had a chance of inheriting blight resistance from both parents and eliminating the genes for susceptibility,” he said.
Planting American chestnuts in the wild is a major milestone, but restoration work is a long-term process involving additional research and backcross breeding, said Sara Fitzsimmons, the foundation’s regional science coordinator, who works at Pennsylvania State University’s campus in State College.
“We’ve reached the point where we need to get these trees into the woods and see how they perform,” she said. “The public thinks you go through a pipeline and you have a magic tree and it’s the ‘be all’ and ‘end all’ and that’s not really true.”
“While we’re optimistic we have great lines coming out of the pipeline” from the Meadowview farms, she said, “we’re still working on a lot of things, like regional adaptability.” That “will take another 10 to 15 years to perfect,” she added.
Because the foundation is eager to gauge the trees’ disease-hardiness, scientists will probably inoculate some specimens with fungus after they are planted, while letting exposure occur naturally to others, said the foundation’s chief executive, Bryan Burhans.
And exposure is likely, given the blight’s presence in the environment, he said. “It’s ubiquitous and easily transmitted by wind” or on the feet of birds. “If there’s a wound or weak site,” he said, “it enters a tree that way.”
The disease appears as orange-yellow spots on branches, then as a canker that eventually girdles the trunk, killing everything above it, Mr. Burhans said. “The tree dies pretty quickly.”
Although the vast majority of American chestnut trees have succumbed to blight, some stands have survived, including some in Braceville, Ohio, and in the Allegheny National Forest in northwest Pennsylvania. The largest remaining stand of American chestnuts — 2,500 trees near West Salem, Wisconsin — was found to have blight about 10 years ago.
But the foundation keeps trying to breed its way to a blight-proof American chestnut tree. And it strives to make its work known to a generation that has little or no memory of the trees that once dominated the eastern landscape. The foundation’s volunteer corps began demonstration plantings in 2005 at schools, public parks, and other high-profile venues, like the National Mall in Washington D.C. and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.
Here’s a really nice story by Susan Freinkel from NRDC on restoring chestnut. It’s always interesting what people agree on.(!)
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