Coal Mine Methane: Is the Better the Enemy of the Good ? Voltaire by Way of Allen Best

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A methane drainage well, or MDW, as they are known for short
What does this question have to do with the Forest Service, you might ask? Well, under Forest Service managed land lies some underground coal mines in Colorado, Utah and out East. Some of these coal seams require the methane to be removed to protect workers. Currently, it is vented into the atmosphere- a potent greenhouse gas. The problem the agencies have is that greenhouse gases are not regulated at this point in time. One idea was a surgical piece of federal legislation that would require capture for underground coal mines on federal land. Environmental groups have been convincing agencies to analyze capture of the methane in their NEPA documents. So we have longer NEPA documents but still no actual improvement in the environment. Here is apparently a potential solution- if it would work, good news for GHG reduction. So far there don’t seem to be a lot of competitive policy options on the table, unless I am missing something.

P.S. You gotta love someone quoting Voltaire in an article about Colorado coal mines!

The merits of methane harvesting
A proposal before the Senate seems like a no-brainer, but environmental groups are inexplicably against it.
Posted: 03/18/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

By Allen Best

Allen Best, a journalist in Colorado for 35 years, publishes an e-zine called Mountain Town News (The Denver Post | handout)

The French philosopher Voltaire in the 1700s warned against letting the better, or perfect, be the enemy of the good. That advice would seem to apply to an attempt by environmental groups in Colorado to block a market mechanism that could yield immediate reductions in emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas.

The proposal going before the Colorado Senate this week is whether to expand the state’s renewable portfolio standard to include electricity generated by burning methane emissions being vented from coal mines, both active and abandoned. The current legislation already allows electricity produced by burning methane emitted by landfills.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Agency says the heat-trapping properties of methane are 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, the more common greenhouse gas. That means generating just minor amounts of electricity from coal-mine emissions could substantially reduce Colorado’s emissions of greenhouse gases.

Energy analyst Randy Udall, who has been working the numbers of coal-mine methane for a decade, calculates just 5 megawatts of electricity generated from coal-mine methane emissions, at a capital cost of $10 million, would offset more carbon than all the solar so far installed in Colorado as of 2010, which has cost roughly $700 million. Total methane harvesting from coal mines near Paonia could produce 20 megawatts, using fairly simple technology, say advocates, and, with more challenge, up to 50 megawatts.

That’s an important point to digest. In terms of reducing the risk to our climate during the next century, just a few megawatts planned at the West Elk Mine could have as much impact as all the solar panels erected on rooftops at DIA and everywhere else in Colorado so far. As Udall puts it, renewable energy is the means, not the end unto itself. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This bill’s politics has the bewildering aspects of a Mobius strip. Introduced by one of the most conservative members of the legislature, Rep. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, House Bill 1160 passed the House by a 34-29 vote. Only Rep. Wes McKinley, the self-described cowboy from southeast Colorado (that’s what it says on the legislature’s website), bucked fellow Democrats to join Republicans, who were unanimous in support.

Now, in the Senate, it is sponsored by Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, whose base includes some of the most diligent global warming warriors in the state.

Udall has to be considered one of those warriors, and it’s a further irony that he is aligned in this case with Bill Koch, owner of the nearby Elk Creek Mine and a member of the family that has been stirring the undertow of opposition to climate-change action. However, there’s no evidence that Koch has been involved in this case. <note Allen Best corrected this story to clarify that Koch is the owner of Elk Creek Mine and not the West Elk Mine>.

Are you confused? You’re not alone. Del Worley, general manager of the Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy, an electrical cooperative that provides electricity to the Aspen and Vail areas, says he’s baffled. “The politics are mind-boggling to me,” he says. “If you’re truly trying to stop global warming, this is one of the best bills out there. It’s not a giant resource, but why waste it? It should be a no-brainer.”

Regardless of whether HB 1160 passes, Worley’s co-op has agreed to buy 3 megawatts of electricity produced by burning coal-mine methane near Paonia. Like other co-ops in Colorado, Holy Cross is required to provide 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Holy Cross exceeded that mark last year. Now, directors have adopted an internal goal of 20 percent by 2015. Although terms have not been disclosed, they are apparently willing to pay a higher price to achieve that, both with a biomass plant proposed at Gypsum and with purchase of the methane-produced electricity.

Driving this bill is Tom Vessels, a Denver-based entrepreneur who now heads North Fork Energy. He was stirred to innovate by what he saw in Germany, where coal-mine emissions are harnessed to produce electricity. The same is true in Australia and China. But in the United States, almost nothing has happened, he says.

This is despite a 2004 EPA report that found active mines contributed 10 percent and abandoned mines 5 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. (This is from emissions of methane, not from burning coal).

While he is also tapping methane from an inactive mine in Pennsylvania, Vessels argues that Colorado can demonstrate how to tap the existing resource — and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To make the numbers work, however, Vessels needs more customers than Holy Cross who are willing to pay a premium for electricity. He approached more than a dozen utilities. All rejected him — because they couldn’t count it toward their renewable portfolio standard mandate.

His other income stream would be carbon offsets, mostly generated by the California market.

Vessels charges that the existing renewable portfolio standard has now become the “business as usual” model. It’s thwarting innovation and stifling opportunity.

“It has been said that (renewable portfolio standards) were originally passed with the goal of supporting the new energy technologies of the legislature,” Vessels said. “The legislature a few years ago decided that solar and wind were the technologies of the future. But the Germans kept their eye on the ball and said, ‘If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we do it by building up wind and solar — and these other things.’ I think here in Colorado we missed the ‘and other things.’ ”

Among the powerful environmental groups opposing HB 1160 has been Western Resource Advocates. John Nielsen, the group’s energy program director, argues that the existing legislation is not well thought out. While the goal of reducing methane emissions is a worthy one, he says, it’s not clear the bill will actually achieve it — and might hinder better efforts in the future. “Are there better tools out there to get this done?” he asks.

But there’s another possibility that seems to bother Western Resource Advocates and other groups. If coal-mine emissions can be considered as renewable, he says, then does that mean that fugitive emissions of methane from natural gas drilling and pipeline transport can similarly be tapped someday to produce electricity under renewable portfolio standards?

Nielsen agrees that this tempest in Colorado can be considered a forerunner of a broader national debate about the clean-energy standard proposed by President Barack Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address. That debate will be about whether technology should be agnostic in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At its heart, the debate is whether we can realistically hope to completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels anytime soon. Most sober assessments have concluded that it will be impossible. That point is even more emphatic if the Chinese, Indians and Indonesians are brought into the conversation, as they absolutely must be.

Can we someday wean ourselves entirely off fossil fuels? Perhaps, but we’re going to have to live with coal for a few more decades, possibly longer. The current pushback by environmental groups and their Democratic allies smells of a litmus test of ideological purity. It confuses battles with the war.

If the war is against dangerous accumulations of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, this is a bill that should land on the desk of Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Allen Best, a journalist in Colorado for 35 years, publishes an e-zine called Mountain Town News.

Read more: The merits of methane harvesting – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_20183852/merits-methane-harvesting#comments#ixzz1pVs0TxbS

More Studies on Bark Beetles and Fire: Does It Matter, and If So, Why?

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Fire Science - The devastation of our forest lands by the pine-bark beetle has subjected vast regions to increased risk of castastrophic wild fire, especially west of the Continental Divide. Geoloigic maps are used to assess soil characteristics that might affect post-fire debris flows and intense erosion. This photo shows the northern Williams Range Mountains where beetles have killed more than 80 percent of mature lodgepole pine over many square kilometers.

Note: you may agree or disagree with the caption to this photo; I just copied it from a USGS science site (Central Mineral and Environmental Resources Science Center) here.

My fire colleagues alerted me that posting of the our previous post here, with simply the introductory paragraph, could have led to the wrong impression of the current scientific thinking.

I think fire managers would like to know better how bark beetle killed or otherwise dead and dry
trees affect fire behavior. But I don;t think that historic vegetation ecology is going to tell folks that. It seems as if some people think that “science” can prove that fires are no different with dead trees, then we wouldn’t have to do fuel treatments. But that doesn’t make sense, since we still do fuel treatments with live trees. Is it about investing more in live tree fuels treatments?

Here is how I frame the question:

Should we, in the interior west, manage tree vegetation outside the WUI (assuming we have agreement in the WUI, some days I am not so sure) to provide possible fire lines, help in some way with suppression of large fires, or to protect other resources?

Framed that way, many more disciplines that fire behavior modeling or historic vegetation ecology might have something to say. Plus of course “should” is a normative (value), and not a science (empirical) question.

And let’s involve a couple of other disciplines right now: hydrologists and fish people don’t seem to be as sanguine about the effects of fire as some vegetation ecologists are; for example, this quote in the JFSP article (pg. 13).

Schnackenberg would like to see much more
operational burning on the Medicine Bow-Routt. “My
opinion as a hydrologist is, I would rather see all that
dead stuff burn right now. It’s standing, and if we wait
for it to fall there may be places where it will burn a
little hot, and you’ll get hydrophobic soils and erosion.
And if you have heavy fuel loads on the ground in 15
years and a fire comes, what happens to the hydrology
then?”

I do agree with the statement at the end of the JFSP piece:

That is a big “how.” And, as with most knotty
management problems, the science can guide, but it
cannot direct. Wildfires and bark beetles don’t lend
themselves to controlled studies, and the findings don’t
usually point to neat, out-of-the-box solutions.

More than that, even the most undisputed
ecological knowledge is inflected by political,
economic, and social considerations. A set of findings
like Simard’s, however accurate and useful in theory,
may or may not govern management response at the
level of stand, forest, or watershed. Any prescription
will also rely on other research and on-the-ground
experience, and any action will hinge on local
constraints and opportunities.

As JZ posted in his/her comments, I think this piece by Keeley in 2009 explains better why people seem to be partially confused just by the terminology.

In the same set of comments, Larry said:

Additionally, the fire folks don’t like to address the issues of re-burn, which often results in more actual damage than a fire burning in green lodgepole. The damages totaled up for fires burning in green trees often doesn’t include the probability of a re-burn. In dry forests, the remaining fuels from a fire just sit there, until the next inevitable fire incinerates everything in its path. Even fire-adapted species have their limits of fire survival.

I, too, have seen this; near Hells Canyon, burned area with jack-strawed dead lodgepole and lodgepole coming back through the dead trees, another burn of the jack-strawed dead, and the young lodgepole are toast, with few or no nearby seed trees.

But for those who just can’t help getting involved in the fires and bb’s debate, here is another paper that recently came out that specifically examines the areas of agreement and disagreement.

Here’s the abstract

Abstract:

Millions of trees killed by bark beetles in western North America have raised concerns about subsequent
wildfire, but studies have reported a range of conclusions, often seemingly contradictory, about effects on fuels and wildfire. In this study, we reviewed and synthesized the published literature on modifications to fuels and fire characteristics following beetle-caused tree mortality. We found 39 studies addressing this topic with a variety of methods including fuels measurements, fire behavior simulations, an experiment, and observations of fire occurrence, severity, or frequency. From these publications, we developed a conceptual framework describing expected changes of fuels and fire behavior. Some characteristics of fuels and fire are enhanced following outbreaks and others are unchanged or diminished, with time since outbreak a key factor influencing changes. We also quantified areas of higher and lower confidence in our framework based on the number of studies addressing a particular area as well as agreement among studies. The published literature agrees about responses in many conditions, including fuels measurements and changes in stands with longer times since outbreak, and so we assigned higher confidence to our conceptual framework for these conditions. Disagreement or gaps in knowledge exist in several conditions, particularly in early post outbreak phases and crown fire behavior responses, leading to low confidence in our framework in these areas and highlighting the need for future research. Our findings resolved some of the controversy about effects of bark beetles on fire through more specificity about time since outbreak and fuels or fire characteristic. Recognition of the type of study question was also important in resolving controversy: some publications assessed whether beetle-caused tree mortality caused differences relative to unattacked locations, whereas other publications assessed differences relative to other drivers of wildfire such as climate. However, some disagreement among studies remained. Given the large areas of recent bark beetle and wildfire disturbances and expected effects of climate change, land and fire managers need more confidence in key areas when making decisions about treatments to reduce future fire hazard and when fighting fires.

Here’s the paper. I do like the fact that they attempt to make sense out of the different studies and approaches, from a scientific point of view. But I am not so clear on the utility of any of it toward management or policy other than improving fire behavior models. Perhaps we could discuss this further here?

Porcupines an increasingly rare sight in California forests, scientists say

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Field personnel asked to report any sightings in 2011 saw just 14 live porcupines in an area stretching from Lake Tahoe to the southern Sierra Nevada. Eight more were reported as roadkill.

I thought the comments with alternative observations and explanations were interesting, especially about dogs finding porcupines compared to fisher stations, and different interpretations of Google earth photos. Also I used to observe them in ponderosa plantations in my youth in Oregon, and it did seem like they killed young trees, not just made them crooked; but that was 30 years ago. My question is whether this is just a California thing or have others noticed this?

Porcupines an increasingly rare sight in California forests, scientists say
[email protected]
Published Saturday, Mar. 03, 2012
Here’s the link.

The porcupine is not among the cuddly critters most forest visitors hope to stumble upon.

The large rodent seems aloof as it waddles through California woods. Long quills twitching like the headdress on a drum major, it forages leisurely for herbs, seeds and tree bark. When threatened, the prickly species mostly just turns its back and hopes you’ll get the point.

While nobody was looking, however, it seems the humble porcupine has been quietly fading away.

Biologists and other resource managers who spend their working hours in California forests say it has become increasingly rare to lay eyes on a porcupine. No one knows how many are left, because very few people ever paid attention to the porcupine except to put a bounty on it for eating trees.

A recent informal survey by the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center provided some troubling clues about the porcupine’s fate.

The small nonprofit group, based in Twain Harte, Tuolumne County, put the word out to field personnel with the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and California Department of Fish and Game to report any and all porcupine sightings throughout 2011. The area covered was a vast region stretching from Lake Tahoe to the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada.

The results, reported Jan. 30, were startling. Only 14 live porcupines were seen the entire year. Eight additional animals were reported as roadkill.

“It’s just become kind of apparent there aren’t a lot of porcupines around,” said Lindsey Myers, the center’s staff biologist, who acknowledges the survey is far from exhaustive. “There’s definitely a growing concern about the porcupine population, because nobody’s doing research on it right now.”

Rick Sweitzer, who may be California’s foremost porcupine expert, agrees that the porcupine seems to have become scarce.

Sweitzer, an ecologist and associate adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, did his doctoral dissertation on porcupines at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has also published a number of scientific papers on the species, and runs a research program on the Pacific fisher, one of the porcupine’s primary predators.

“The indications seem to be that porcupines, where they were once present, are not present any more,” said Sweitzer. “I think we’re just now noticing.”

Sweitzer’s experience is not circumstantial. He and a team of biologists maintain a vast network of remote camera stations in the Sierra National Forest, designed to capture images of fishers and any other animal drawn to bait at the cameras.

In five years of research and over 100,000 “camera days,” the team has never captured a photo of a porcupine, nor have any of the biologists seen one personally, either alive or dead.

Another bit of evidence: Porcupine doesn’t show up in the diet of California fishers when their scat and gut contents are analyzed. Instead, fishers seem forced to spend a lot more energy eating smaller and faster prey, like squirrels.

“I’m not aware of a similar issue with porcupine declines in other states,” Sweitzer said.

The decline is not limited to the Sierra Nevada. In the state’s rainy northwest corner, researchers and Indian tribes – which use their quills in clothing and baskets – also say porcupines have become increasingly rare.

Scott Yaeger, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, saw a porcupine in a tree from his office window in Yreka about nine months ago. But he called that unusual.

Generally speaking, he said, porcupines can be found east of Interstate 5 in the state’s northeast corner, though they are not common. West of the highway, they are a very rare sight all the way to the coast.

“You just don’t see them anymore – not like people did back in the 1970s,” Yaeger said.

In the American rodent family, porcupines are second in size only to the beaver. And like the beaver, Sweitzer said, they play an important role in shaping their environment: Porcupines feed on a huge variety of plants and help disperse those plants by passing undigested seeds in their feces.

In winter, when their other food sources are dormant or buried in snow, porcupines turn to eating the inner bark of conifer trees.

Porcupines tend not to travel far, so in winter they pick out a handful of trees in a small area to feed on. Like their cousin the beaver, they strip off the outer bark and feed on the cambium, or inner bark.

“They don’t kill a tree,” Sweitzer said, “but they can cause it to not grow straight and true like you would want for your two-by-fours.”

It may be that porcupines’ taste for trees has contributed to their demise.

One problem is that many wild forests have been clear-cut and converted to tree plantations with row upon row of Ponderosa pines, which happen to be one of the porcupine’s favorites. As a result, the logging industry for decades waged an extermination campaign against the porcupine, using hired hunters as well as rodenticides.

John Heil, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service regional headquarters in Vallejo, said the agency stopped targeting porcupines in 1977.

However, it still kills pocket gophers to prevent them from damaging tree seedlings. It does this by placing strychnine-laced bait in burrows. Heil said the Forest Service has treated 83,653 acres in this manner since 1991, or less than 1 percent of its lands in the state.

Logging operations on private land engage in similar practices, though the extent of their rodenticide use is difficult to discern from data collected by the state, said Lea Brooks, spokeswoman for the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.

A bigger contributor to the porcupine’s disappearance may be illegal marijuana plantations, an ongoing problem in remote areas across the state. These plantations typically divert streams into flexible plastic irrigation tubing, sometimes amounting to hundreds of miles of tubing per grow site.

“For whatever reason, rodents like to nibble on that stuff and they poke holes in it,” said Patrick Foy, a game warden and biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. “So these guys will put rodent bait all around the irrigation pipelines.”

Compared to most rodents, the porcupine is not a prolific breeder. Each female typically gives birth to only one offspring per year. As a result, Sweitzer said, it may be that we are only now noticing the long-term effect of historic and ongoing poisoning practices.

Sweitzer said a concerted research effort is needed to determine the population status of porcupines. Yaeger is already planning to do so in the state’s northwest corner, where he has assembled a regional “porcupine working group” to launch a formal field survey.

Sumter Hardwood Forest

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I spent about six months in “the Piedmont” of South Carolina, doing stand exams. Most units were plantations, reforested from the old cotton fields. Some of the units were bottomland areas, with lots of interesting biodiversity. I discovered 41 different hardwoods species, with 20 of them being oaks. I did pretty well identifying the trees, despite having taken Dendrology 25 years beforehand. This oak was really unusual. with a branch being longer than the tree was tall. I paced the 55 foot distance of this limb that grew its way to the road opening.

Odd bedfellows try collaborating to resolve conflicts- from E&E News

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Thanks to a friend from Montana for this one from E&E News. Here’s a link to the principles agreed to by the Montana Forest Restoration Committee. This photo is from the Monitoring tab on the MFRC website.

This quote below is interesting:

“The groups said the project — the first CFLRP-funded project to come under legal fire — is in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The four challengers — the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, the Montana Ecosystem Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council — say the proposal does not consider the potential effects on lynx and other threatened and endangered species.”

IMHO, there’s a difference between “not considering” and “not coming to the same conclusions we did after consideration.” Perhaps they were misquoted. Check out this post for the details of the latest legal exchange, or check out the EA and the letters from FWS, and you be the judge of whether those were “considered”. You can also use the search box on the sidebar to the right and type in “Colt Summit” and find many posts on the subject.

In addition, for some time I’ve been puzzling over understanding the “collaboration backlash.” To me, we must go deeper than the statements about going “against the law.” I have worked with and talked to collaborative groups and they all seem very law-abiding folks, upright citizens volunteering for the good of the land and the community.

So I found this quote from Horning perhaps yielding a clue to a deeper understanding.

Frankly, I feel progressives are frightened of conflict, and therefore we’re suckers for consensus and collaboration as a process, and we’re sometimes willing to completely abandon any measurable outcomes, because it’s consensus. Sometimes you end up appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Of course, I wondered what a “progressive” is in this day and age (having read my history of the Progessive era). I looked at this website and found this quote from John Podesta:

Under a progressive vision of the common good, government must pursue policies that benefit everyone equally. It must ensure that opportunities are abundant and that even those who have been left out and left behind can get the help they need to succeed. Common good progressivism does not meant that everybody will be the same, think the same, or get the same material benefits. Rather, it simply means that people should start from a level playing field and have a reasonable chance to improve their stations in life.

Internationally, common good progressivism focuses on new and revitalized global leadership through the just use of force; multi-lateral engagement; and the creation of new institutions and networks to deal with difficult problems. As in past battles against fascism and totalitarianism, common-good progressives today seek to fight global extremism by using a comprehensive national-security strategy that employs all our strengths for strategic and moral advantage.

To pursue the common good, though, we as Americans owe something to our country in return. People must assume responsibility for their actions, treat others with respect and decency, and serve their families and communities.

Seems like progressives tend to “fight extremism” and treat others with respect and decency, create new institutions to deal with difficult problems.. they sound like…likely volunteers for collaborative groups. Maybe progessives, by definition, can’t be ideologues? What do you think?

FOREST SERVICE:
Odd bedfellows try collaborating to resolve conflicts

April Reese, E&E reporter

Amid a tangle of lawsuits over controversial logging projects 10 years ago, federal officials in western Montana tried a new approach to forest management that involved gathering input from a range of interests.

First came the Blackfoot Challenge, a group of local residents, timber interests, conservationists and others that came together to address issues in the Blackfoot National Forest. Then, buoyed by the success of that effort, the Forest Service and its collaborators expanded the initiative in 2007 to include districts in the Lolo and Helena national forests.

The resulting Montana Forest Restoration Committee brought together representatives of the forest-products industry, conservation groups, recreation interests and private property owners who were determined to blaze a trail around gridlock that had blocked efforts to thin forests, reduce wildfire risks, stanch a beetle epidemic and restore habitat.

“We were involved in a lot of lawsuits,” recalls Lolo National Forest Superintendent Debbie Austin. “So we made a concerted effort to understand where people’s concerns were, and find places where we could agree and move forward together. We had a lot of meetings with the people who were opposed to what we were doing — mostly conservation groups.”

The project signifies a recent shift within federal natural resource agencies toward collaborative decisionmaking to resolve thorny issues on public lands. The more buy-in there is from those interested in natural resource management, from environmental groups to foresters to recreationists, the easier those projects are to get done, collaboration advocates say.

“A lot of agencies are looking at collaboration, I think because there are so many of the issues out there — water, forest management, climate change, you name it — and collaboration is a good way to do decisionmaking,” said Kimberly Skyelander, associate director of the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. “It’s not so much top-down driven, but bottom-up.”

The Obama administration aims to direct more money at the approach. In a March 2 letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Coalition thanked the administration for proposing to fully fund the agency’s collaborative forest restoration program in its fiscal 2013 budget request at $40 million. The group called collaboration a “win-win solution that provides jobs, restores forests, protects water supplies, and engages people in management of the public lands.”

But collaborative efforts still can hit snags. Four environmental groups last fall challenged in federal court a project on the Lolo National Forest developed through a Forest Service collaborative program, claiming the proposal would log critical habitat for lynx and bull trout as well as prime grizzly habitat, violating multiple federal laws.

And some critics say collaborative efforts run the risk of undermining key environmental laws and can be a recipe for inaction.

Last month, however, a broad alliance of environmental and timber groups defended the Forest Service’s plan for the Lolo, arguing the project must stand up in court in order to prove that the collaborative management process can work (E&ENews PM, Feb. 28).
The Mont. example

After its initial success, the Montana Forest Restoration Committee came up with a set of principles that are used to determine which projects the group will support.

The committee has helped dozens of restoration projects move forward without facing administrative or legal challenges, allowing thousands of acres to be restored.

A couple of years ago, after the Forest Service announced its Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the Montana group submitted a proposal to create the Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. The Forest Service selected it as one of a handful of pilot CFLRP to receive funding in 2010. The Southwest Crown collaborative aims to restore 1.5 million acres of national forestland in the Blackfoot, Clearwater and Swan River valleys.

In 2011, contractors hired by the Forest Service restored 11,000 acres of wildlife habitat, 14 miles of streams and decommissioned 10 miles of old roads, according to agency.

“I think [the Montana Forest Restoration Committee and the Southwest Crown of the Continent CFLRP] have been very effective,” Austin said. “The reason is because we agreed up front on what we agreed with. For example, we set restoration principles we could work from, and we know each other, so we really have the social license to move forward with certain kinds of activities. As we go along, we’re building trust with each other, and that’s key.”

Gordy Sanders, resource manager for Pyramid Lumber and co-chairman of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee, struck a similar note.

“Collaborative efforts are definitely successful,” Sanders said. “For a long, long time I’ve said, ‘We can’t do this by ourselves.’ We need to establish relationships and develop long-term relationships with other folks who are interested in working together. In a collaborative approach, you can get more done. So we’re providing multiple benefits for a wide variety of interests, so all the different folks in the collaborative can see good work done on the ground.”

And while some in the industry have been slow to warm to the idea, that skepticism is waning, he added. “There’s growing support amongst the industry for this approach,” he said. “I think there’s a solid basis for collaborative efforts, and it’s building over time.”
Wider efforts

The Montana group is a prime example of a larger trend that’s been growing over the past few decades.

Collaborative groups began forming in kitchens and conference rooms in the 1990s, taking on controversial issues ranging from endangered species conservation to logging to watershed protection. The concept has gained favor over the years, drawing support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Under George W. Bush’s administration, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton made collaborative conservation a central tenet of her reign, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have been strong advocates of collaboration under the Obama administration.

The Forest Service has also partnered with other entities to achieve management goals, such as the “Forests to Faucets” collaboration between the agency and Denver Water to restore national forestland scorched by the 2002 Hayman fire. The fire stripped much of the land of vegetation and sent 1 million cubic yards of sentiment into the main reservoir that provides drinking water for the city, clogging water treatment systems and affecting water quality. Denver Water had to spend $10 million to scour the reservoir and repair infrastructure.

“We enter into different types of agreements in order to be able to prioritize projects, to ensure that the source of the water is taken care of, and make sure we’re doing what we can on the land to improve water quality and water quantity,” said Janelle Smith, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region.

Participants often find a collaborative, local approach preferable to a solution imposed from the outside.

And while the collaborative process may take longer than the usual National Environmental Policy Act review process, the benefits of having all interests on the same page and avoiding expensive and even more time-consuming lawsuits is well worth that prolonged effort, Austin said.
Lawsuit over Mont. project

But the collaborative approach has its critics — and occasionally the projects it helps shape do end up embattled, despite the concerted effort to keep such projects out of the courtroom.

Four environmental groups filed suit against the Forest Service over the 4,330-acre Colt Summit restoration project, which was designed with input from the Montana Restoration Committee and funded in part by the Southwest Crown CFLRP. It was intended to thin overly dense forest stands and decommission roads to benefit bull trout, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The groups said the project — the first CFLRP-funded project to come under legal fire — is in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The four challengers — the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, the Montana Ecosystem Defense Council and the Native Ecosystems Council — say the proposal does not consider the potential effects on lynx and other threatened and endangered species.

Austin said she could not comment on an ongoing lawsuit but added that generally speaking, collaboration is not intended to replace the legal avenues for challenging projects.

“It’s difficult to have absolutely everyone agree with absolutely everything,” Austin said. “The collaborative groups are trying to help people be involved and allow them to be involved. But all those options — administrative challenge and litigation — are still available to people. In general, I just would hope people do come to the table.”

The conservation groups fighting the project were invited to join the Southwest Crown of the Continent CFLRP early in the process, Austin said.

Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, one of the groups challenging the Colt Summit project, said he was asked to join the group but not until the environmental assessment for the project was already done.

And it is important to hold the federal government accountable when it violates the law, as the alliance says the Forest Service did in crafting the Colt Summit project, he said.

“Federal agencies still must comply with the law, regardless of how a management decision was made,” Garrity said.
Broader objections

With a few rare exceptions, collaboration is “a way to undermine good environmental laws, including NEPA,” Garrity said. “The goal is to try to get some resource out rather than improve the environment.”

John Horning, executive director of the Santa Fe, N.M.-based group Wild Earth Guardians, which also has seen considerable success using litigation to advance its conservation goals, is more equivocal.

“I’m of mixed minds on it,” Horning said. “Consensus and collaboration have been the term du jour for over a decade now. Frankly, I feel progressives are frightened of conflict, and therefore we’re suckers for consensus and collaboration as a process, and we’re sometimes willing to completely abandon any measurable outcomes, because it’s consensus. Sometimes you end up appealing to the lowest common denominator. It could be a hardening of the status quo, at worst.”

Wild Earth Guardians does support some of the Forest Service’s CFLRPs: “We’re comfortable with experimentation within some bounds,” he said. But it takes issue with the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, intended to unify and expand restoration efforts across a large swath of northern and eastern Arizona, because it focuses too heavily on logging, Horning added.

But he reserves his harshest criticism for the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Collaborative Program in New Mexico, designed to assuage conflicts over how to balance water supplies and habitat for the endangered silvery minnow and the Southwestern willow flycatcher.

“You have people who have widely conflicting views … it’s a recipe for getting absolutely nothing done,” Horning said.

“Unless there’s a commitment to a new vision or that the current framework is really really dysfunctional and not serving any interest, then collaboration models don’t really work,” Horning added. “If the status quo is serving some interest, they’ll participate as a means of preventing further change.”

Skyelander of Colorado State University said that generally speaking, there are two main problems that can undermine a collaborative effort: trying to impose a particular point of view on the group and turnover within the group over time.

“If they can come to the table without an agenda, of course that’s ideal,” she said. “The best collaboration is when people come with an open mind. They want their voices heard, of course, but they’re also open to hearing other people’s opinions.”

Statement of “Undisputed Facts” Disputed: Colt Summit

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The legal steps on Colt Summit are going through their process. Here is the response to the “statement of facts.”

I’d like to post assertion 1 and assertion 2, and have people make their own determinations, but I don’t think that the administrative record (that they refer to) is public information. Personally, I think it would add to transparency and openness for equivalent records on both sides of litigation to be open to the public, and for the legal documents to be freely available.

Anyway, here are a couple of examples from the document:

Plaintiff’s Statement: “17. A ‘shelterwood’ cut is similar to a clearcut
with a few more trees left in place in order to create a partial canopy
cover. The shelterwood cuts will vary in size and density. M11-
29:12346.”

Record: Shelterwood cuts are not similar to clearcuts.
“Shelterwood cuts will vary in residual size and density from 30 to
50 trees per acre and 2 to 7 acres in size. Thinning-from-below,
western larch, ponderosa pine, and Douglas-fir will be selected as
residual trees in the shelterwood areas.” M11-29:12347, A-1:14.

Plaintiffs’ Statements: “45. MDOT’s 2006 report states that lynx are
‘known to cross MT 83 around the [Summit] Divide . . . It is thought
that the reason Canada lynx may not frequently cross MT 83 elsewhere
is that most of MT 83 is at lower elevation and therefore not
surrounded by typical Canada lynx habitat. . .’ S-1:3.” “46. Recent
federal studies depict most lynx movements across Highway 83 to be
within or near the Summit Divide corridor. N1-370:27976, N1-
370:27996, N1-370:28006.”

Record: Plaintiffs refer to: N1-370:27976 (lynx points), N1-
370:27996 (dispersal paths of two lynx), and N1-370:28006
(“preliminary model” landscape scale map). The maps and
discussion in K-32:1549-1553 contain the latest comprehensive
studies of lynx in the Seeley Lake area, including location data
from all radio / GPS-collared lynx, from 2005 through 2008. The
data show very limited use of the project area by lynx, and
virtually no use in the area provisionally identified as a linkage
area in 2003. K-32:1553. They also show virtually no lynx use of
areas near or across Highway 83, where treatments are proposed.
Compare M16-39:15168 with K-32:1549 and 1552. The lynx point
map at K-32:1552 shows in site-specific detail the locations of lynx
in and near the Colt Summit project area. The 2006 MDOT
report does not include the results from these comprehensive
studies of lynx in the Seeley Lake area.

and..

Plaintiffs’ Statement: “85. Colt Summit is likely to adversely affect bull
trout critical habitat, at least in the short term. K:29:1527.”

Record: The FWS Biological Opinion concluded “[a]fter reviewing
the current status of the Clearwater River, Rainy Lake and
Clearwater River and Lakes core area of bull trout and its
relationship to the Upper Columbia River bull trout population,
the environmental baseline for the action area, the effects of the
proposed action, and cumulative effects, it is the Service’s opinion
the actions as proposed are not likely to destroy or adversely
modify the bull trout critical habitat in the Clearwater River and
Rainy Lake.” K-29:1530.

There are 29 pages of these claims and counterclaims in the document; it gives you a flavor over the kinds of discussions involving both the physical and biological realities (e.g. where are the lynx and whether they use the area), as well as what it in the record. Worth taking a look at to get a picture of the kinds of information that judges have to deal with. We’ll be following these legal documents through time on this project.

Here is the USG rejoinder to the “undisputed facts.”

Bozeman Project Appeal: Affirmed

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NICK WOLCOTT/CHRONICLE Now that an administrative appeal filed by conservation groups has been denied, the Bozeman Municipal Watershed Project, which calls for fuels reduction in the Hyalite and Bozeman Creek drainages, will move forward.

Thanks to Derek for this link.

Bozeman Municipal Watershed Project to move forward

CARLY FLANDRO, Chronicle Staff Writer | Posted: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 12:15 am

A controversial plan to thin part of the Gallatin National Forest south of Bozeman is set to move forward — for now, anyway.

The Bozeman Municipal Watershed Project calls for burning, harvesting and thinning 4,800 acres in the Hyalite and Bozeman Creek drainages. Those drainages supply more than 80 percent of the Bozeman area’s water, and thinning efforts there are intended to reduce the extent of any potential wildfires.

A severe wildfire could put so much sediment and ash in the creeks, officials have said, that intakes for the water utility could clog and the city could be cut off from its water.

“The city of Bozeman and the Gallatin National Forest remain committed to maintaining a high-quality, predictable water supply for Bozeman’s residents,” said Debbie Arkell, director of public services for the city of Bozeman.

A trio of conservation groups – Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Montana Ecosystem Defense Council and Native Ecosystems Council – had a number of concerns with the plan, including that it would harm habitat for wildlife species such as lynx and grizzly bears.

They presented their concerns via administrative appeal to Jane L. Cottrell, the region 1 deputy regional forester, who recently upheld the watershed plan.

“I find the forest supervisor has made a reasoned decision and has complied with all laws, regulations, and policy,” Cottrell wrote in a letter to Michael Garrity, executive director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Your requested relief is denied.”

It was the third time conservation groups have challenged the proposal.

Garrity said the next step “would be to file a lawsuit in federal district court.” He said his organization will consult with its attorney about whether to take that action.

Thinning activities are anticipated to begin by late fall of 2012. Some of the fuels reduction will take place along road corridors to provide safer conditions for firefighters and the public and reduce the risk of wildfire spreading between national forest lands and private lands.

“The forest is looking forward to continuing to work with the city and the Bozeman community to implement this project,” said Lisa Stoeffler, Bozeman district ranger. “We are grateful for the continued community and partner support for this important project.”

CFLR Project News- Amador/Calaveras

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Here is the blog for the local (to me) project. It is unclear how much the Pacific Rivers decision will affect it. I’m sure they will find ways to spend the money but, I doubt any logs will get sold. It is awful hard to make a log truck load out of  10 to 16 foot long small logs. The money won’t go very far if it only results in service contracts. This is their stated mission: “The Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group is a community-based organization that works to create fire-safe communities, healthy forests and watersheds, and sustainable local economies.”

http://acconsensus.wordpress.com/

Forest Service Buyouts?

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I stumbled across this website for Federal employees, and it seems like buyouts are still in flux, for now. There seems to be plenty of interest in taking the buyouts but, delays are apparently reducing the possibility of it happening this fiscal year. I’d expect a headlong rush of Region 5 timber people to want out, now, after the Pacific Rivers decision.

http://federalsoup.federaldaily.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=41295&FID=41&title=forest-service-buyouts

On a side note, it appears there is a freeze on Sale Administration jobs, right now, here in California. With current projects needing MAJOR revisions, and the timber industry not wanting tiny trees, we’ve reached a true gridlock on forest restoration.