Federal Judge Puts Final Nail in Coffin of Bush-Era Logging Plan

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From EcoWatch:

On March 20, a federal court in Oregon formally struck down a Bush-era plan that abandoned scientific protections for federal public lands in western Oregon and would have opened up those lands to outdated boom-and-bust logging. The plan, called the Western Oregon Plan Revision (known as WOPR and pronounced “whopper”) would have dramatically increased logging on about 2.6 million acres of federal public forests in Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice and Western Environmental Law Center on behalf of nine conservation and commercial fishing organizations.

“This ruling is the final nail in WOPR’s coffin,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice. “These public forests protect our climate, provide us with clean water, and sustain world class salmon runs and recreational opportunities that contribute to Oregon’s diverse economy. Now they will no longer be haunted by an outdated, unbalanced plan,” she said.

Defining the “Virgin” Forest

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A vestal virgin, detail of an engraving by Sir Frederic Leighton, created Lord Leighton, the first British artist to be given a title. (around 1880) The artist died in 1896.

Long before this blog, I became irritated by an email at work and wrote the following response about “virgin” forests. I attempted to get it published as an op-ed by Journal of Forestry, but they (wisely) demurred, both because it could have been written better, and it’s a bit out of the box, and perhaps, offensive.

I’m not going to pick on our invited poster, Mark, who first brought it up, but I have difficulty believing that the Park Service actually has an index of “virgin” attributes. Here is Fenwood’s related comment.

DEFINING THE VIRGIN FOREST

I would like to point out that the term “virgin” forests may not be the best term to use for a variety of reasons. At least not from my perspective, that of an evolutionary biologist who happens to be a human female. The use of the term in the human context seems to presume that the virgin forest state is somehow preferable to other states. While virginity is a trait that might be desirable for males to look for in females in terms of evolution (ensuring paternity), it is quite the opposite for females (no fun, no children). One could argue that it is a vestige of a patriarchal society that focuses on the desirability of virginity (usually only for females). If virginity were such a great deal for both genders, Homo sapiens would have died out a long time ago.

When the two genders come together it is the fountain of much of the physical and spiritual creativity of our species, and leads to the miracle of new persons. It is a sacred act. To call a forest with minimum human intervention “virgin” seems to assume that equally creative and sacred acts are not likely to come from humans relating to the forest, and that there are not mutually positive things that could come from such a relationship. I don’t agree with that underlying assumption and with the fact that it is disguised and not open to question simply by the use of the term and analogy to“virgin.”

I think the words that we use can circumscribe the possibilities we see, and are important to dialogue and mutual understanding, which is why I have taken the time to point this out. I also have a hard time with the term “rape” (to describe) human intervention in forests, as the key difference between the sacred act mentioned above and “rape” is mutual concurrence. At this point in human and forest development, I am not sure we can listen to the forests and hear them say, “No.” Using that term for forests that can’t say no seems to me that it demeans the term itself, which should remain powerful and specific to the deep violation (a desecration of the above sacred act) that it was originally intended to convey. Since castration is generally thought to be a bad thing regardless of whether it is voluntary or not, I suggest that each person who feels the urge to use sexual analogies for destructive acts by humans on the land substitute the term “castration” for “rape” at least half the time. As in “this timber sale will ultimately continue the Forest Service’s castrate and run policies.”

Because many of the founders and leaders of our professions and sciences were men, and lived in a patriarchal society, I believe we have a responsibility to question the words they used and the worldview that those words convey.

Finally there is the question of how much human intervention would cause a forest to be “deflowered.” Just air pollution? People picking mushrooms? A campground? People having camped there once twenty years ago? Thinning stands of trees? The occurrence of chestnut blight? This is another place where the analogy would break down. In virginity, from the standpoint of biology, it either is or it isn’t (this is a family blog so if we discuss this aspect further perhaps we should use code words), and the middle ground, if any is the land of lawyers, not biologists. In people’s relations with forests, the middle ground is basically all we have to talk about since humans have affected climate, pollution, species introductions, and essentially no forest on the planet exists today without any of these influences.

If you or your agency feel an overwhelming urge to use sexual analogies in dealing with natural resource issues, my advice is- first, push yourself away from the keyboard and then, take a cold shower.

Sequoia Forestkeeper II, of Probably Many Posts

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From Bob Berwyn here:

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — A federal judge in California this week ruled that the U.S. Forest Service can’t simply drop a post-decision appeals process for logging, forest health and other projects approved under a categorical exclusions, which is a streamlined approval process for smaller projects. In those decisions, the appeals process is replaced with a pre-decisional objection period, which enables people to raise concerns before the final decision is made. Read the decision here (PDF on Scribd.com) or at the end of the post.

That means citizens or stakeholder groups across the country once again have the right to challenge certain Forest Service projects after the final decision has been made by a district- or forest-level official.
The agency has often used the categorical exclusion process in recent years to gain speedy approval for projects relating to the pine beetle epidemic. While many of the projects aren’t controversial, some have been.
Absent a formal administrative appeals process — which involves review by forest officials higher up the chain of command — citizens and environmental groups must go directly to court to challenge a project.
In some regions, the agency has done a good job of involving stakeholders in the process early to help shape decisions that have community support. But that’s not the case all over the country, and having the opportunity to appeal enables people to challenge bad decisions without the expense of going to court.
On the other hand, environmental groups have sometimes abused the appeals process to obstruct and delay projects. Those tactics led frustrated Forest Service officials to look for shortcuts. But fundamentally, appeals have always helped ensure that citizens have some recourse to challenge the agency when it comes to what are often irrevocable commitments of public resources.
In his decision, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence O’Neill also ruled that the agency must give adequate notice for its decisions on categorical exclusion projects, as well as provide the public with an opportunity to comment.
The ruling, issued by a U.S. District Court in California, is a skirmish in the long-running regulatory and legal battle over the Forest Service’s desire to cut red tape, sometimes at the expense of public involvement and adequate environmental review.
The Forest Service fired the first salvo when it tried to eliminate administrative appeals altogether in an attempt to speed up approvals for projects. In response, Congress in 1992 passed the Forest Service Decision-making and Appeals Reform Act.
“Congress said, we want to ensure that you’ve heard all the voices … and that you use the appeal process to repair your mistakes,” said Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics director Andy Stahl, explaining that he lobbied for the appeals reform act.
That law states very clearly that the Forest Service must include an appeals process for any decision or project that implements a forest plan.
Stahl said appeals help make the Forest Service decision-making process accessible to the general public, giving citizens a chance to influence decisions without having to hire a lawyer if they think a project has some fundamental flaws. And based on the agency’s track record of losing appeals and court cases, that happens as often as not.
In the bigger picture, Congress just recently passed a law that eliminates appeals for all decisions approved under Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements, instead replacing those appeals with pre-decisional objection periods.

Here’s the link to the decision (thanks, Bob!)

Sharon’s note : I’m not sure what Andy means by “losing appeals and court cases” and “that happens often as not.” How does that fit in with the concept of “appeals are just a higher level review and often just restamp the decision”? (Not that Andy said the latter, but I think someone has on this blog.) I don’t think that quantitatively appeals are 50/50 affirm/ remand nor are court cases 50/50 (although I don’t have the numbers at my fingertips). Andy- did I miss something or was I excessively quantitative in interpreting “as often as not” as 50/50?

For our mutual education and information on this subject, I propose we each pick a district and look at which actual CE’s are in progress to get a picture of how many of them actually deal with timber harvest compared to other kinds of actions, which are “implementing the forest plan”; so I picked Trabuco Ranger District (the name just came to me) and here’s a link to the current SOPA (schedule of proposed actions).

I found a decision expected in April (maybe not anymore?) :
“The Descanso Ranger District proposes to authorize reissuance of a special use permit for maintaining a club for use by the San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club, located in the Laguna Mountain Recreation Area. ”

Or this one right below it, fortunately already completed:
“Eradicate with herbicide invasive Spanish Broom along the roadway to improve visibility, clear the roadway for vehicle passage and reduce fire risk.”

Adding notice, comment and appeal to CE’s seems like a great thing for the public, but it seems to me that given the kinds of CEs that are out there, reasonable people could disagree about the value added compared to the taxpayer expense.

I invite you to “pick a district” check out the SOPA, and see what you find.

Bigger spotted owl habitat proposed

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Bigger spotted owl habitat proposed
Federal plan calls for nearly doubling forest acreage

By Damon Arthur
Posted March 19, 2012 at 11:16 p.m.
From the Redding Record-Searchlight
http://www.redding.com/news/2012/mar/19/bigger-owl-habitat-proposed/

Timber industry officials and environmentalists are criticizing a proposal that would nearly double the acreage designated as critical habitat for the northern spotted owl.
After the initial attempt in 2008 to set new habitat boundaries failed to pass legal and scientific review, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are trying again.
The current proposal includes nearly 10 million acres in California, Washington and Oregon as critical habitat for the spotted owl. That includes some acreage in Shasta, Tehama, Trinity and Siskiyou counties.
Most of that area is on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land and includes a small proportion of private land, said Paul Henson, the fish and wildlife service’s Oregon state supervisor.
Ann Forest Burns, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, said the latest proposal ignores what is really threatening the spotted owl — wildfires and competition from the barred owl.
Restrictions designed to protect the spotted owl continue to hurt the timber industry, she said. The resource council is made up of lumber mills and forest landowners.
“It is a very big deal. It continues to be a very big deal,” Burns said. “We can’t manage our forests as long as this (spotted owl issue) is there.”
U.S. Department of the Interior officials said they plan to continue to protect old-growth forests for the benefit of spotted owls. But they also will be working with U.S. Forest Service officials to increase the amount of lumber sold from the forests nationwide from 2.4 billion board feet to 3 billion board feet by 2014. The spotted owl has created controversy since it was listed as a threatened species in 1990. The wildlife service declared in 1992 that 6.7 million acres in California, Washington and Oregon were needed as critical habitat and special management of that area would be needed to conserve the area for the owl.
In 2008 the Fish and Wildlife Service attempted to revise the area needed as critical habitat for the owl. Henson said scientists, as well as environmentalists and timber industry officials criticized the plan.
After lawsuits were filed challenging the revised critical habitat, a federal judge ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to rewrite it.
Henson said the newest plan will stand up to the challenge. The Fish and Wildlife Service is using a better method to determine what areas are home to spotted owls, and his agency has sent the critical habitat plan to scientists for peer review.
Using a rough estimate, officials believe there are 3,000 to 5,000 spotted owls, and their numbers are declining by about 3 percent a year, Henson said.
The 2008 critical habitat proposal contained 5.3 million acres in three states, while the most recent proposal, which was released March 8, covers 9.7 million acres. Only 14 percent of the critical habitat includes private land, Henson said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service would rather have private landowners voluntarily set aside property for conserving the spotted owl, the habitat plan says. Forcing private property owners to put their land in critical habitat could be a “disincentive to the formation of future partnerships” with the federal government, the proposed plan says.
Andrew Orahaske, conservation director for the Environmental Protection Information Center, said more private land needs to be included as critical habitat.
“We’re not going to protect the spotted owl unless we protect the spotted owl on private land as well,” Orahaske said.
He said Sierra Pacific Industries, of Anderson, has been destroying spotted owl habitat through its logging on private land.
Orahaske said his organization sent SPI a letter informing the company that it plans to sue the company if it does not stop destroying owl habitat.
Mark Pawlicki, director of government affairs for SPI, said his company follows federal and state laws to protect the owl.
Two years before harvesting timber, workers check to see if the endangered owls live in the areas where they plan to cut trees.
If there are spotted owls in the area, forestry workers must leave a buffer zone between the owls and the logged area, Pawlicki said.
Henson agreed that the barred owl, which is larger and more aggressive than the spotted owl, is a threat to the smaller bird. The Fish and Wildlife Service has proposal to trap and remove barred owls from areas where spotted owls live.
But changes to the spotted owl’s habitat continue to threaten it, Henson said.
Logging that took larger and older trees originally was blamed for the spotted owl’s demise, but Henson said less timber is being harvested than in 1990.
In 1990 $213.5 million of lumber from national forests in California was sold, according to the U.S. Forest Service. In 2011, only $19 million of lumber from California’s national forest was sold.

Forest Service appeal regs exempting CE’s dinged again by federal courts

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A federal court ruling yesterday one again enjoined the Forest Service regulations that exempted Categorical Exclusion (CE) decisions from notice, comment and appeal.  According to one of the attorney’s who worked the case,  “This certainly means any new CE’d decisions must be subject to notice, comment and appeal – beyond that, and how this will affect (or be affected by) any new regulations regarding the HFRA-like rider, is TBD.”

UPDATE: Just to be clear, here is the Summary Judgment Decision on Merits of Plaintiffs’ Claim.  Also, the same Court issued this Summary Judgment Decision on Jurisdictional Issues.

Winter Turns to Spring

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I went out into the deep new snow yesterday and shot quite a few frames. I love how my wide angle captured this scene. Since the temperatures were in the high 20’s, the snow hadn’t started falling off the trees yet. This piece of land appears to be Forest Service but, the local water entity seems to be using it on a special use permit. This is clearly within the WUI but, very little has been done in the last 11 years I have lived here. About 6 years ago, they brought a convict crew in to do some hand piling. The land still remains highly flammable, with ample, oily bear clover (aka mountain misery) ready to burn. They just don’t do broadcast burning around here, despite how easy it is to burn off the bear clover.

People get so surprised when we have snow during spring. The biggest storm period I have ever seen was in the first week of April, 1982. The snow was so deep, it was ABOVE the chairlift cables at Squaw Valley’s Headwall lift. They had to cut a notch in the snow, so the chairlift could run. I’ve seen fresh snow during every month of the year. Back in July 1987, a 10,000 acre wildfire I was on was put out by 4 inches of new snow. We had the biggest snowball fight I’ve ever seen, in fire camp, while everyone was waiting to be “de-mob-ed”.

Pandora’s Box: “The Southeast Alaska Land Entitlement Finalization and Jobs Protection Act”

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The following article is from the website of the Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community (GSACC), a regional organization based in Sitka, Alaska.  The Board of Directors of the organization includes an impressive and diverse group of longtime Southeast Alaska residents, including: commercial fishermen, a PhD biologist, former Forest Service foresters, hydrologist and a regional economist, a city councilor for the City of Kupreanof, the former Deputy Director of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s Habitat Division, and even a former mechanical engineer for Alaska Pulp Corporation.  You can read about GSACC’s Founding Principles here.  – mk
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Since 2007, Alaska’s congressional delegation has been pushing legislation for a special land deal for one Alaska Native corporation, Sealaska.  The 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)  authorized the corporation to select acreage for timber development from the Tongass National Forest.  Congress and Sealaska resolved the selection areas during the 1970s.  But now, Sealaska and Alaska’s delegation want to rescind this agreement by allowing the corporation to select areas for timber development outside of the original “boxes” designated in the prior settlement.  The proposed deal, S.730, has met resistance from affected communities who have worked with regional outfitters and guides and commercial fishermen to prevent passage of the current version of the bill.

A critical problem is that Sealaska and ANCSA village corporations have already logged the high quality forest within the prior land selection “boxes” under Alaska’s state forest regulations.  Those regulations are notoriously lax for private landowners and present unacceptable risks to critical wildlife and fish habitats.  Legislation to allow Sealaska to make its remaining land selections outside the box will simply spread destructive logging practices to other high value forest habitats.  A further problem is that behind closed doors several environmental organizations – apparently at the behest of the foundations that fund them – have been trying to cut a deal with Sealaska and the Alaska delegation to “improve” the bill.  These negotiations rely on the faulty premise that Sealaska can offset significant environmental impacts in one area by  including some small Wilderness (or similar) land designations in areas that for the most part are not at risk from further development because of existing laws and regulations or economic limitations.

GSACC rejects that approach as tainted by the failed process for land management changes that have significant consequences for the region and therefore cannot accept the premise of the bill.

Background
ANCSA allowed Sealaska to select several hundred thousand acres of land from the Tongass National Forest. During the 1970s, Sealaska made its selections for most of that entitlement and the federal government subsequently conveyed title to that land, which has now mostly been logged.  According to the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Sealaska has the right to select between  68,000 and 79,000 acres.  In 1976, Sealaska President John Borbridge filed specific land selections for this remaining acreage with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Congress honored the request by approving the selections. Sealaska filed for these selections in June of 2008 but at the same time, asked BLM to suspend conveyance of the lands while it pursued legislation that would give it more valuable timberland “outside the box.”

This move is often referred to as a “land grab” by its many critics.  It is GSACC’s view that Sealaska refrained from finalizing its 1976 land selections based on the possibility that a legislative deal such as S. 730 would enable the corporation to instead select more valuable lands outside the box so long as the bill included Wilderness designations or similar conservation area offsets.  Such an exchange was desired by a powerful but less than fully representative portion of the environmental groups that have been active on Tongass issues.

Paradoxically, Sealaska claims both that the forest within the ANCSA selection boxes is habitat that is too valuable to clearcut, and that the timber still standing in the boxes is so poor in quality that cutting it is not economically justified.  Alaska’s Citizens’ Advisory Commission of Federal Areas has studied the remaining lands in the boxes and found Sealaska did not provide adequate data to support its claims.  The Commission concluded that there is more than enough suitable timber acreage left within the ANCSA boxes for Sealaska to finalize its remaining entitlements.

It instead appears that S.730 simply seeks to take the most valuable remaining timberlands out of public hands in a remarkably one-sided exchange.  A recently published report by the Audubon Society analyzed the economic suitability of the timber remaining within the boxes and the habitat value of the “outside the box” forest lands allocated to Sealaska in the current bill. The report concluded that the bill targets a large proportion of the remaining “large tree” old-growth forest stands on the Tongass National Forest. This outcome of the bill – a practice known as “high-grading” – would be a continuation of this kind of destruction that began with the dawn of the region’s pulp mill era in the 1950s.

According to the Audubon report, if this legislation passes:

“This would constitute a substantial, permanent loss of a rare resource that is currently held in public trust and managed by the US Forest Service.  The proposed legislation clearly contravenes the earlier intent of Congress to end high-grading and afford higher protection to these rare and valuable large-tree stands on the Tongass.  If enacted, the Sealaska legislation would erode more than 30 years of effort by foresters, conservationists, biologists and other scientists to conserve these remaining rare stands, not only for their value to wildlife and human users in Alaska, but as a resource valued by citizens nationwide. “

The Sealaska legislation would also establish a precedent that could open a Pandora’s Box, setting a precedent for Native corporations across the state to also seek their own sweetheart deals from Congress, to create other exceptions to ANCSA provisions.  The current legislation also includes brand new categories of lands that ANCSA never contemplated, such as Native futures sites.  Land selections made under these new, craftily constructed legislative designations would be dispersed throughout the Tongass, often in ecologically-rich areas that are also valued for tourism, fisheries, already-established patterns of use, and in some cases potential for energy production. The concept of these “futures sites” has generated widespread resistance to the bill, with opponents from the full range of the political spectrum.  Additionally, the bill would authorize Sealaska to privatize portions of the Admiralty and Misty Fjords National Monuments that Congress set aside for the public in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).

Collaborators
One of GSACC’s primary objections to the process used to develop this bill is that closed door negotiations have occurred under the auspices of the Tongass Futures Roundtable (TFR).  The TFR began as a Forest Service project but has since devolved into a private discussion group (still including the Forest Service) that seeks to rezone the Tongass National Forest through legislation such as the current Sealaska bill.  Several TFR environmental groups have been negotiating with Sealaska – in meetings closed and unannounced to the press and the public – for concessions that would earn their support for the bill.  To the extent their sought concessions have become known, they are unsatisfactory to the affected communities and other environmental organizations.  The negotiations have so far failed to produce a result.  However, it is disappointing that self-appointed stakeholders from the TFR seem to have one public position that seems to oppose S.730 while working behind the scenes to achieve a compromise quid-pro-quo (Latin meaning this for that, commonly QPQ) Wilderness bill.

There has recently been a national trend toward QPQ Wilderness bills developed by self-appointed “stakeholders” that have financial interests in the outcome of their so-called “consensus-based” collaborations.  The above closed door negotiations, in which all participants were TFR members, is an unfortunate example of this trend.  At their core, the thrust of these exercises is to privatize public lands, undermine existing environmental laws and regulations, and devolve the public process of public lands management in exchange for often small Wilderness designations or other so-called “conservation gains.” Nationwide, many environmental organizations, including GSACC, recognize that the QPQ approach is antithetical to the watchdog role that environmental organizations must fulfill, and we strongly oppose the QPQ, collaborative mindset.

That said, we recognize the need to work cooperatively with all sectors of society to arrive at outcomes that work well but protect the environment and ecosystem integrity.  However, GSACC believes the cozy relationships that are inherent to QPQ assemblages like the TFR and the negotiations over the Sealaska bill, and the foundation-influenced strategies that have driven some environmental organizations into such efforts, are counter to achieving the greatest public good.

In our judgment, the best course is for the Sealaska bill to be withdrawn by Alaska’s senators, and for the selections that Sealaska filed with BLM in 2008, for the corporation’s remaining entitlement, to be conveyed without further delay by the government or Sealaska.

Manchin pulls support for national park

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Another Eastern story from Terry Seyden here.

Almost as soon as it began, the federal government’s exploration into a possible national park and preserve for West Virginia’s Allegheny Highlands appears to be over.U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin dealt the initiative a potentially fatal blow recently when he withdrew his support of the National Park Service’s “reconnaissance survey” into West Virginia’s suitability for a park.
Manchin apparently didn’t get the right answers from Park Service superintendent Jon Jarvis. Manchin’s Feb. 2 letter asked Jarvis to address how hunting, fishing and other outdoor and resource-related activities might be affected if 750,000 acres in and around northern Monongahela National Forest were to be placed under Park Service jurisdiction.
Jarvis’ reply to Manchin was predictably vague. Here’s the juiciest part:
“You requested that the National Park Service make specific decisions about how the lands would be managed within this potential unit of the National Park System in West Virginia.
Such details are beyond the scope of a limited reconnaissance survey; however, under National Park Service management policies, the continuation of extractive activities such as timber harvesting and oil and gas development would make the establishment of a national park infeasible.”
Notice that Jarvis focused on timbering and gas drilling. Manchin’s questions had mainly dealt with hunting and fishing.

Sen. Manchin didn’t appreciate Jarvis’ seeming reluctance to address sportsmen’s concerns. In a March 9 reply to Jarvis, he pulled the plug on the project:
“It has become clear from your response to these concerns that including these lands in the National Park system is not the best way to protect these resources while also protecting important West Virginia pastimes and cultural activities. Therefore, I must respectfully request that you end this Reconnaissance Survey.”

So the Allegheny Highlands National Park and Preserve appears dead, at least for the moment.
Changes in the political landscape often bring changes in policy, though, and if Manchin should someday lose his senatorial seat, its next occupant might well decide to support a park even if the park’s effects on hunters and anglers turn out to be negative.
I don’t believe that will happen, though.
Unless and until the Park Service is prepared to allow hunters and anglers the same largely unfettered access that they currently enjoy in the northern Monongahela National Forest, the reservations sportsmen have about the park will remain legitimate.
A few things are sure, though:
Any part of the area that receives full national-park status will be off-limits to hunting. No questions, no debate. It’s been Park Service policy for a long, long time, and isn’t going to change any time soon.
The Park Service currently considers stocked brown and rainbow trout to be “introduced species” in the Appalachians, where brook trout are the only true “natives.” Park officials in Great Smoky Mountain National Park have gone as far as to eradicate wild, self-sustaining populations of browns and rainbows from some waters in an attempt to allow brook trout to flourish.
Even on preserves, which are generally open to hunting, Park Service officials tend to fiddle with regulations to attempt to encourage the harvest of certain species while discouraging the harvest of others.
These issues, among others, are what led Manchin to withdraw his support for the reconnaissance survey. For once, sportsmen were alert. They made their feelings known and Manchin listened. It’s a lesson sportsmen need to remember when future issues arise.

Nature Conservancy and Groups Collaborate for Restoration of the Cherokee National Forest

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this piece from the East here.


Nature Conservancy and Groups Collaborate for Restoration of the Cherokee National Forest

Recommendations will be presented to Forest Service staff on March 23, 2012

The North Zone of the Cherokee National Forest is in need of some help. Spanning seven counties in upper east Tennessee, the North Zone is an incredible asset to the local economies of the region—as a supply of drinking water, a tourism destination and a source of forest products.

However, past land management practices, including those prior to the land coming under public ownership as a national forest early in the 20th century—and future threats from invasive forest pests—left large portions of the forest in need of restoration. In order for the Cherokee’s North Zone to continue to be a strong, resilient and healthy ecosystem, the forest is now in need of a sound plan for restoration. A good restoration plan should be based on science, garner public support and consider varied management approaches including active methods such as regeneration cuts, targeted thinning and prescribed fire and passive methods that would allow nature to take its own course.

Many different individuals and organizations are passionate about their concerns for the Cherokee National Forest, but in the past they have not all agreed about how this national forest should be managed. That long-term lack of cohesion, coupled with strained budgets and planning hurdles, resulted in a situation where the necessary forest restoration was a very elusive target.

Two and a half years ago, in partnership with Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy convened a diverse group of stakeholders to determine what landscape restoration for the North Zone should look like. “It was time to think outside of the box and do things differently,” says Tom Speaks, the Cherokee National Forest Supervisor. The assembled group was made up of environmentalists, sportsmen, loggers and forest managers, and they have worked for two years to develop a set of consensus-based recommendations to the Forest Service about how forest restoration should be conducted in the North Zone of the Cherokee National Forest.

The members of the group—the Cherokee National Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative Steering Committee— had much work to do in considering the available science and the diverse viewpoints on the Cherokee National Forest. To arrive at recommendations, the committee polled the public, pored over computer-simulation models, considered numerous alternatives and finally came to consensus on a slate of recommendations. “It was a challenge at times, but, we used the best available science and we worked together to achieve our goals,” says Parker Street, a local sportsman representing the Ruffed Grouse Society on the committee.

On March 23, 2012, representatives from the steering committee will come together to celebrate their work and present the Forest Service staff with their final restoration recommendations. “This is a really important step in the right direction,” says committee member Catherine Murray, representing Cherokee Forest Voices, a local conservation organization.

The Cherokee National Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative Steering Committee members are:

Geoff Call, US Fish and Wildlife Service

Dennis Daniel, National Wild Turkey Federation

John Gregory, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

Steve Henson, Southern Appalachian Multiple Use Council

Josh Kelly, At Large-Environmental Community

Dwight King, Sullivan County Commissioner/Logger

Joe McGuiness, Cherokee National Forest

Katherine Medlock, Tennessee Chapter of The Nature Conservancy

Catherine Murray, Cherokee Forest Voices

Danny Osborne, Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry

Terry Porter, Tennessee Forestry Association

Mark Shelley, Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition

Parker Street, Ruffed Grouse Society

To find out more about the initiative and to read the final recommendations, please visit www.communityplan.net/cherokee/

Missoulian on Fire, Beetles, Etc.

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this link. Note: any photos of pine beetle stands and fire would be appreciated.

Report defies conventional wisdom on pine beetles and wildfire

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/news/local/report-defies-conventional-wisdom-on-pine-beetles-and-wildfire/article_9c505c58-70b5-11e1-b9ab-0019bb2963f4.html

Steve Gage used to worry about his firefighters getting burned. Now the Type I incident commander wonders if they’ll be clubbed to death before they ever reach a forest fire.
The threat comes from the tiny mountain pine beetle, only not in the way most people think. Beetle-killed trees have undermined decades of fire behavior research – because before they burn, dead trees may silently topple. And an unburned falling tree will kill you just as surely as a burning one.
“Now my big concern is how do we approach the thing,” Gage said. “How do we get people into a fire that’s in the middle of beetle-kill safely? Hike them in? Fly them, or put heavy equipment in front of them? And if we can’t get people in safely, how do we engage when the fire comes out?”
Gage has spent 42 years fighting fire. In the last two or three years, he’s seen things that drain away the confidence he’s placed in his tactical handbooks. The reports from 2011’s Saddle and Salt fires in the southern Bitterroot Mountains told of beetle-killed stands on flat ground burning as if they were on steep hillsides or high winds. Colorado forests have seen more than 60 trees a minute blow down in winds of less than 15 mph.
“We’re always thinking about what-if?” Gage said. “If we’ve got an 80 percent chance of success, what does 20 percent failure look like?”
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The impact of mountain pine beetles looks very different for environmentalists like Matthew Koehler of the Wild West Institute. Koehler recently circulated a February 2012 Fire Science Digest report on bark beetles, highlighting the following summary:
“Are the beetles setting the stage for larger, more severe wildfires? And are fires bringing on beetle epidemics? Contrary to popular opinion, the answer to both questions seems to be ‘no.’ ”
“We feel as if a lot of the conventional wisdom about bark beetles and wildfire is incorrect,” Koehler said. “The latest science and research coming out seems to support the notion wildfire and beetles are critically important to forest health. We would encourage forest managers and politicians to embrace these natural processes, instead of fear-based rhetoric that leads to justification for more logging or road-building or resource development.”
One of the biggest recent timber sales on the Helena National Forest involves creating a 300-foot safety zone along most secondary roads through Forest Service lands. That sale was predicated on the risk of beetle-killed trees burning or falling on the roads more than on its potential timber value.
Koehler said he understood the reasoning behind clearing trees that threaten campgrounds at Georgetown Lake. But he worried the same reasoning might be used for backcountry logging where the beetle-kill might provide improved wildlife habitat.
Whether the question is tactical – how best to deploy a Hot Shot crew on a fire front? – or managerial (how to justify a timber sale), the mountain pine beetle has chewed its way through mounds of what we used to call normal.
“When people look across a landscape like Lookout Pass and see a lot of red needles, they think they’re looking at a tinderbox,” said fire ecologist Robert Keane at the Missoula Fire Science Laboratory.
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The factors he sees defy such simple assumptions.
Current research on beetle-killed trees depends a lot on time and space. Time-wise, it appears a lodgepole pine burns easier within three years of death by pine beetles – when its needles are still green or have turned red – than a live lodgepole. But it’s very hard to tell a dead-but-green “fader” tree from a live one, until it burns.
And Keane said dead trees with needles, regardless of color, appear to burst into dangerous crown fires much easier than live stands. And while firefighters used to simply measure the moisture content of dry wood to determine how fast it could catch fire, it turns out chemical factors like sugars are even more important.
Once the needles fall, after four or five years, the crown-fire hazard falls too. Except that around eight years after death, those “gray ghosts” start toppling. That’s the new problem incident commanders like Gage worry about. And it’s not just trees falling on firefighter’s heads. It’s the difference between having one ton of dry needles per acre on the ground or 100 tons of dry firewood.
“The issue is resistance to control.” Gage said. “When you have a lot of fuel on the ground, it’s like having many logs in your fireplace instead of one. It puts out more heat on the ground. It exponentially adds to the number of people you need. It takes more water. You need more saws to clear paths. It changes where you can put your safety zones.”
Space-wise, the question is where? Keane said a lot of research in fire behavior in Yellowstone National Park doesn’t apply elsewhere, because almost no other place has Yellowstone’s combination of high altitude and volcanic soils.
And those toppling trees? Keane said in parts of British Columbia, foresters have found whole stands of beetle-kill that collapsed into pick-up sticks just three years after infestation. You can’t cut and paste a study in one part of the Rocky Mountains to another and expect identical results.
Once the needles have fallen, sunlight and rain can foster low-growing shrubs. In some places, that provides new ladder fuels which can ignite the dead trees. In others, the moist shrubs lower the chance of a fire getting going.
Fire Sciences Laboratory program manager Colin Hardy said pine beetles have upended whole shelves of assumptions his researchers have depended on for decades.
“The models everybody uses on an operational basis were developed in 1972,” Hardy said. “They were designed for firefighter safety and fire suppression of surface fires.”
Those models don’t account for crown fires, climate change, population changes, backcountry subdivisions – let alone mountain pine beetle infestations.
Current studies of beetle effects have been running for 15 years, and they may need 15 more to reveal conclusive answers. It’s like being asked how many ears of corn will come from the kernel you planted yesterday.
And that’s just the beetle questions involving lodgepole pine. Conditions are different for ponderosa pine, or for stands of spruce and Douglas fir infested with spruce budworm. Then there are the new developments in physics that may explain why fires react to different wind conditions or terrain features.
In the corner of Hardy’s conference room stands a refrigerator-sized box with a label that reads “Unisys ES-7000.” It’s a mainframe computer with a once-whopping 32 gigabytes of memory. When it was installed, it chewed through fire behavior models that used to take 38 days of computing in just 17 hours.
“Now our new Cray supercomputer is two orders of magnitude faster,” Hardy said. “It can run that model in about an hour. It’s still not enough.”