River-restoration guru to target creek in Colorado’s Hayman wildfire area

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From the Denver Post here.

DECKERS — The U.S. Forest Service has deployed a river-restoration guru in a $4.5 million gambit to accelerate recovery on a first segment of the South Platte tributaries ruined a decade ago by a massive human-caused wildfire.

The project launched this week by foresters and private-sector partners will try to rework the altered flow of Trail Creek to make it more natural.
For Fort Collins-based hydrologist Dave Rosgen, this also is a chance to demonstrate techniques increasingly in demand worldwide.
The problem is that the aftermath of the Hayman fire unleashed torrents of sediment — sand and decomposed Pikes Peak​ granite — that slumps from barren mountainsides into an estimated 157 miles of streams.

Before the 2002 fire, for example, Trail Creek carried 1,200 tons of sediment a year. Now foresters say 20,000 tons a year course through the creek, which flows into West Creek, Horse Creek and then the South Platte River​, which is the major source of water for people in the Denver metropolis.
Denver Water managers’ struggle to manage the sediment in both Cheesman and Strontia Springs reservoirs is driving up monthly water bills. At Strontia Springs, the utility is involved in a $29 million project to dredge out 675,000 tons of sediment.
Enter Rosgen.
“This is how Mother Nature does it,” he said Friday, describing his plan to stabilize what has become a sluice for corrosive sediment.
The steep banks will first be reshaped, and fallen tree trunks will be used to reinforce the new channel. Then, the stream bed will be raised by about 7 feet so water carrying sediment disperses into a willow studded plane instead of racing down stream.
“We’re going to basically go back in here and re-establish a braided, meandering channel,” Rosgen, 69, told a gathering of county and federal employees.
Amid budget-cutting, federal environmental stewards have turned to private-sector partners for help containing the damage. The National Forest Foundation and the Coalition for the Upper South Platte coordinated funding, with contributions of $750,000 from ski goliath Vail Associates, $500,000 from Aurora Water and $200,000 from the Gates Family Foundation.

Rosgen has developed formulas for calculating rates of erosion, enabling detailed analysis of mountain slopes, fire impact and hydrology. His team at Wildland Hydrology Inc. has restored dozens of damaged streams in Argentina, Costa Rica, Tanzania and around the western United States.

Ever since the Hayman fire, heavy rains have led to increasingly severe flooding across the scorched burn area. Foresters and volunteers have tried to address this, planting 3.5 million tree seedlings.
“But it seems that 137,000 acres doesn’t heal as quickly as we’d like it to,” said Pikes Peak District Ranger Brent Botts.
Eroding mountainsides and clogged streams eventually would stabilize on their own, Rosgen said, but not until the whole area burned by the fire is reforested — a process expected to take 80 years. Meanwhile, the growing Front Range​ population demands water and healthy mountain fisheries for wildlife and recreation.

That forces a decision of whether to intervene by re-engineering key tributaries, Rosgen said. “We’ll work with the river, not against it” with a goal of “getting back to a natural rate of erosion that is acceptable,” he said.
Over the next year, his crews with heavy machinery “will come as close as we can to duplicating the stable natural form of the rivers and their processes,” Rosgen said. “We will become a copycat of nature.”

Wolves on the Move- Western Oregon

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I ran across this and just thought it was interesting..from the Ashland Daily Tidings.

First wolf since 1946 enters southwest Oregon
2-year-old male is in Umpqua River drainage; transmitter locating collar shows his progress

By Mark Freeman
for the Tidings
Posted: 2:00 AM November 02, 2011

A young wolf migrating out of a northeast Oregon pack this fall has reached northeastern Douglas County, becoming the first confirmed wolf in Western Oregon in 65 years.

The 2-year-old male, labeled OR-7, has a transmitter collar on it that showed it crossed Highway 97 and moved across the Cascade crest and into the Umpqua River drainage, where he was last located late Thursday, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The animal set out from his original Imnaha Pack of Wallowa County on Sept. 10, wandering southwest as far as Lake County last week before turning due west and crossing the Cascades, said Russ Morgan, the ODFW’s wolf program coordinator.

“It’s the first one in modern times to go in that direction, and he’s really traveling,” Morgan said. “He could turn around and go back. He could go to California or Idaho. There’s no way to predict it.”

It is the first wolf known to be in Western Oregon since 1946, when a wolf killed in Douglas County was the last Oregon wolf turned in under a bounty program.

Morgan said this wolf — a male born in Oregon in 2009 and collared last February — has traveled more than 250 miles so far on its dispersal journey, and there was no way to guess when or where this wolf version of fleeing the nest will end.

“It’ll be interesting to see where he’s going,” Morgan said. “The best approach is you’ll have to wait and see.”

Most dispersing wolves travel alone, and there was no indication one way or another that OR-7 was joined by any other animals, but Morgan said there was a “high likelihood” other noncollared wolves have reached the Cascades.

Oregon has a minimum population of 23 confirmed wolves since the first wandered in from Idaho in 1999.

There was no state population estimate for the wolves, which are protected by state and federal laws here.

What reception this wolf gets in southwestern Oregon “depends on who you ask,” said Duane Dungannon, spokesman for the Medford-based Oregon Hunters Association.

The OHA has opposed allowing wolves to establish themselves naturally in Oregon, maintaining that their potential impacts on big-game herds and the ranching industry outweigh any benefits.

“Our deer and elk populations suffer enough from cougar predation,” Dungannon said. “It won’t do local game herds any good to deal with wolves.”

Spencer Lennard, project director of Big Wildlife, said the region should embrace this apex predator and let packs develop on public lands here.

Studies in some places show that wolves help keep animals such as deer and elk from grazing freely along creekside riparian areas and damaging fish habitat, Lennard said.

“I think they need to be supported,” Lennard said. “They are critical ecological components to this land.”

The collar on this particular wolf was designed to send a location message to a satellite every six hours, but the animal must be in an area with clear reception for that to occur, Morgan said. It is not uncommon to see days lapse between satellite connection with them, Morgan said.

Wolves have been documented to travel more than 1,000 miles during their dispersal, which is a natural event common to most wildlife, Morgan said.

The Umpqua Basin abuts the northeastern portions of the Rogue River Basin.

Logjam Project Decision

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Here’s a link to the decision. I excerpted the parts that referred to the claims made about the NEPA analysis. Here’s a news story.

2. TCS’s first challenge on appeal to the approval of the Logjam Project is that the Forest Service violated NEPA’s requirement that it take a “hard look” at the cumulative impacts of the project by failing to disclose the cumulative environmental impacts from six logging projects currently planned by the Forest Service, as well as from past logging and road building on non-federal lands.
We do not find TCS’s arguments persuasive. The future logging projects identified by TCS involve less than 300 acres, but past harvests in the Tongass National Forest involve over 10,000 acres, and the Logjam Project itself will involve 3,422 acres. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (“DEIS”) listed the six future logging projects as well as the planned harvests on lands owned by Alaska. It devoted eleven pages to the impact on the aquatic environment, discussed the cumulative impact for each of the alternatives under consideration, and is supported by an appendix that lists projects “in the Logjam Timber Sale Cumulative Effects Area.” Although TCS alludes to other future projects, they appear to be too indefinite to allow a study of their cumulative impact on the Logjam Project. In sum, TCS has not shown that the Forest Service did not take a “hard look” at the cumulative impacts of future projects together with the Logjam Project.
Furthermore, it does not appear that TCS raised concerns about the cumulative impacts from these future projects before the Forest Service. Neither TCS’s administrative appeal of the Logjam Project nor any of the appellants’ objections to the DEIS mentioned the six timber sales on federal land or the two sales on state land. This failure to focus the Forest Service’s attention on the treatment of the cumulative impact of future projects may well bar TCS from raising the matter before this court. See Buckingham v. Sec’y of U.S. Dep’t of Agr., 603 F.3d 1073, 1080 (9th Cir. 2010) (plaintiff barred from raising argument in judicial proceeding because it failed to raise it with the Forest Service “with sufficient clarity to allow the [agency] to understand and rule on the issue”).
TCS also argues that the Forest Service failed to take a “hard look” at the cumulative impacts of future timber sales by “tiering” to a non-NEPA document and by aggregating cumulative impacts. It is true that we have prohibited an environmental impact statement from “tiering” to a non-NEPA document, see Muckleshoot Indian Tribe v. U.S. Forest Serv., 177 F.3d 800, 801-11 (9th Cir. 1999), and League of Wilderness Defenders v. U.S. Forest Serv., 549 F.3d 1211, 1219 (9th Cir. 2008). However, it is not clear whether the FEIS’s citations to certain supporting documents constitute “tiering” in the sense of deferring to the supporting documents to address the impacts of the project, or constitute references to specialist reports prepared specifically for an environmental impact statement as permitted by 40 C.F.R. § 1502.21. Similarly, TCS has not shown that the aggregation of cumulative impacts, which the Ninth Circuit allows for past timber harvests, see Ecology Ctr. v. Castaneda, 574 F.3d 652, 667 (9th Cir. 2009), may not be applied to harvests that have already been approved under a separate environmental impact statement. In any event, there is no suggestion that the Forest Service hid, or failed to consider, any relevant information regarding cumulative impacts.

Finally, even if we were to find some merit to some aspect of TCS’s arguments concerning the cumulative impact of future projects, we would still deny TCS relief on the ground that the error was harmless. In Shinseki v. Sanders, 129 S.Ct. 1696, 1705-06 (2009), the Supreme Court clarified that to set aside an agency decision as being based upon an error, the plaintiff must show that the error was not harmless. We recently reiterated that “the failure to provide notice and comment is harmless only where the agency’s mistake clearly had no bearing on the procedure used or the substance of decision reached.” Cal. Wilderness Coalition v. U.S. Dept. of Energy, 631 F.3d 1072, 1090 (9th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Under NEPA, we will not grant relief for a violation of procedure if “the decision-maker was otherwise fully informed as to the environmental consequences and NEPA’s goals were met.” Laguna Greenbelt, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 42 F.3d 517, 527 (9th Cir. 1994). Here, in light of the minimum acreage involved, the Forest Service’s consideration of the impacts, and the parties’ focus on other issues, any error in the presentation of the cumulative impact of future projects would not warrant relief.

3. TCS’s second argument on appeal concerning the Forest Service’s approval of the Logjam Project is that the Forest Service violated NEPA by failing to disclose the concerns of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (“ADF&G”) about wolf mortality. Specifically, TCS asserts that the DEIS failed to state that ADF&G had concerns about wolf mortality, that this resulted in challenges to the DEIS being focused on wolf mortality concerns rather than discussing alternatives, and that the FEIS, while acknowledging ADF&G’s concerns, did not do so adequately.

We do not find TCS’s arguments convincing. The DEIS disclosed that (a) wolf hunting and trapping occurs in the area, (b) roads provide access for hunters and trappers, and (c) the road densities for the area exceeded the recommended density level. Furthermore, it appears that appellants were aware of ADF&G’s concerns and addressed them in their comments on the DEIS. Thus, the DEIS, despite its misstatement of ADF&G’s position, contained enough information to elicit extensive detailed public comments on the wolf mortality issue, and thus served “the NEPA goals of public participation and informed decision making.” Westlands Water Dist. v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, 376 F.3d 853, 874 (9th Cir. 2004).
Moreover, a review of the FEIS reveals that the Forest Service gave wolf mortality the requisite “hard look.” The FEIS (a) recognizes the concerns of the ADF&G biologists, (b) notes that the Forest Service and ADF&G are working on wolf mortality concerns on a broader basis than the project, (c) explains why the harvest data and wolf management reports do not support a wolf mortality concern in the Logjam area, (d) discusses a number of options that ADF&G has for regulating the hunting of wolves, and (e) explains why much of the wolf hunting in the Logjam Project is not explained by the density of roads. The district court properly found that TCS had not shown that the Forest Service failed to take a “hard look” at wolf mortality.

4. TCS’s third issue on appeal also concerns wolf mortality and alleges that the Forest Service violated the National Forest Management Act (“NFMA”) by arbitrarily concluding that wolf mortality was not a concern, failing to consider the unlawful hunting of wolves, failing to consider that closing the project area to hunting will not reduce wolf mortality, and failing to prepare a wolf habitat management program prior to approving the Logjam Project.

TCS’s arguments are not persuasive. The record reveals that the Forest Service does not deny that wolf mortality is a concern. Rather, the record shows that the Forest Service is working with ADF&G to address the concern on a broader level than this particular logging project. An appendix to the FEIS details why approval of the Logjam Project will not compromise the wolf population. Also, the regional supervisor for ADF&G confirms that the ADF&G and the Forest Service are working together to develop a wolf management plan and that the Logjam Project “does not trigger an immediate conservation concern.” Accordingly, our independent review of the record leads us to conclude that the Forest Service reasonably determined that it did not have to prepare a wolf habitat management program in advance of implementing the project. TCS has not shown that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily or in violation of the NFMA in approving the Logjam Project.

5. TCS’s final contention on appeal is that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily in analyzing the impact of the project on deer winter habitat. Specifically, TCS asserts that in its model for determining the effect of the project on deer habitat, the Forest Service (a) first correctly excluded non-federal lands for the estimation of habitat capability, (b) recognized that non-federal land have a presumed zero habitat capability, and (c) then “reported the habitat capability it calculated for just federal lands to be representative of the whole” area, resulting in an overcalculation of capability. The Forest Service responds that the deer model is only one tool for assessing management impacts on deer, and denies that it committed any material methodological error.

We need not determine whether the Forest Service committed an actual computation error of the habitat capability of the Logjam Project area because: (1) it is not clear that TCS raised this claim before the Forest Service, see Buckingham, 603 F.3d at 1073; (2) even if the Forest Service committed a methodological error, the record shows that it nonetheless gave the impact of the Logjam Project on deer habitat the requisite “hard look;” and (3) the distortion due to the computation error, if it occurred, was harmless. The ADF&G notes that it and the Forest Service reviewed the deer model, the model tends to overestimate the impact from timber harvests, and that the deer harvest in 2008 was the highest recorded in the last decade. Furthermore, as non-federal land constitutes only two percent of the Logjam Project area, the maximum distortion due to the alleged computation error would appear to be only two percent. TCS has the burden of showing that this alleged error was not harmless. Shinseki, 129 S. Ct. at 1705-06. Here, in light of all the other considerations that went into the FEIS, any error in the computation of the deer model for the Logjam Project had no bearing on the Forest Service’s decision.

PEER Press Release on Marijuana in the Upper Midwest Forests

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Here’s the link to the memo and here to the press release on the PEER website.

MEXICAN DRUG GANGS INVADE GREAT LAKES FORESTS — Forest Service Cops in Michigan and Wisconsin Decry Agency Head-in-Sand Stance

Washington, DC — Mexican drug gangs have expanded their mega-marijuana operations into the Upper Midwest, according to an internal briefing memo released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). U.S. Forest Service law enforcement agents in Michigan and Wisconsin say their agency is “dangerously unprepared” for the explosive growth of “Drug Trafficking Organizations” in this region which had not before seen “multi-thousand plant grows” tended by armed gangs.

The undated 2010 briefing memo obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act describes a “disturbing new trend” in which Great Lakes states are on a trajectory approaching the notorious Mexican gang incursions onto California public lands. The memo warns that the number and size of cultivation operations has spiked dramatically since 2008 but that the Forest Service is outgunned, outmanned and disinclined to deal with the growing role of Mexican drug gangs:

“Drug traffickers have harmed and threatened innocent civilians and law enforcement. There have been attempts to kidnap civilians and there have been several shootings this year alone”;
“During the season when DTO [Drug Trafficking Organization] is prevalent, we have been forced to restrict our employees from working in large portions of the forest”; and
Drug gangs have set “large forest fires” and wreaked extensive resource damage in the forests.

“The leadership of the Forest Service’s law enforcement program seems far more intent on covering up problems than addressing them,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “The public has a right to know what dangers they may encounter while hiking in the woods.”

Forest Service law enforcement officials had earlier released only a highly redacted, virtually unreadable, version of the memo to PEER, claiming that it was pre-decisional and revealed sensitive law enforcement techniques. PEER later obtained the memo from another branch of the Forest Service which released it largely un-redacted as an attachment to a 2011 report on severe morale problems within the region.

The 13-page memo recounts a litany of instances in which Forest Service brass refused requests for inter-agency cooperation, training and surveillance. It paints a stark picture of an agency in denial:

“We are not prepared in terms of manpower, training resources for ourselves and local agencies, investigative and operational resources…”
Supervisors “denied, ignored or failed to support requests for additional training, funding and public education efforts” while one supervisor tried “to convince others that eradication and cultivation numbers in Wisconsin had actually decreased” (emphasis in original); and
Referring to an all inclusive gag order against law enforcement officers speaking with the media, “we are not reasonably allowed to use the media to educate the public on the dangers” they face.

“This memo is a cop calling for help from a stone deaf chain-of-command,” added Ruch. “Disturbingly, the indifference and self-serving reaction from Forest Service leadership may pose a greater threat to public safety than the gangs themselves.”

Taking a Closer Look at “Corporate Interests” and the Forest Service

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Photo by Josh Birnbaum

This weekend, I ran across this op-ed piece in the Denver Post by JoAnne Ditmer. In it, she said:

That’s what critics call the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, which would erase current protections on more than 60 million acres of America’s undeveloped public lands, including 4.6 million acres in Colorado. The act would affect 55 million acres in national forests and almost 7 million acres in Bureau of Land Management properties, “releasing” them to corporate profit-making decisions.

I don’t think that that is exactly true, as there are regulations and environmental laws that intervene between “release” and “corporate decisions.” It’s not a simple and direct relationship.

And:

The vast majority are in the West and this is an alarming signal that some powerful people think the West and its spectacular landscapes no longer deserve special protections. With protection removed, these irreplaceable lands would be open to destructive “multiple use” — oil and gas development, mining, timber harvests, off-road vehicles.

“Come help yourself to our national treasures” seems to be the motto.

I don’t think that timber harvests or off-road vehicles are best described as “corporate interests,” at least not here in the Interior West. Which is, after all, where the Denver Post is located. What I would call Urban Elk Country.

I know that corporations are unpopular these days, so therefore are good for inflammatory op-eds. And the word “corporations” comes from corpus or body- so all organizations, in a way, are “corporate.”

Nevertheless, I wonder if “corporate” really is a good term to use about the timber industry in the Interior West. In the WFLC Newsletter (here), I ran across this Photography Fellowship Blog for the International Year of Forests. Take a look, many interesting photos.

So I happened to click on one labelled “Ovando Montana” by Josh Birnbaum that showed the Pyramid Mountain Lumber mill (photo above). I wondered if the conversation would change if instead of “corporate timber interests” people substituted “local businesses that provide family-supporting-wage jobs in rural areas.”

And so back to our discussion of “corporate huckster” here. How about substituting for “corporate huckster” “supporter of local businesses that provide family-supporting wage jobs in rural areas and otherwise contribute to their communities.”

I don’t think we’ll be able to work our way out of our current economic crisis (bad for people, good for GHG reduction) without acknowledging that there is value to companies that providing goods and services to people, thereby providing jobs and taxes.

To my mind, there is a big, and important, differences between the Pyramid Valley Lumbers of the world, and, say, Conoco or Enron.

More Bucks From Congress if it’s a Park; What’s Up with That?

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All US tax dollars come from the same source, the US taxpayer. In a couple of recent instances, people are sure that putting an area under the Park Service would get them more funds to do a better job of management.

Here are two examples, in Southern California here
“Diverse support shown for National Park Service proposal for San Gabriel Mountains, River” and here for the Valles Caldera.

The economic benefits of consolidated management of both the Valles Caldera National Preserve and Bandelier National Monument is one of several reasons the preserve should be taken over by the National Park Service, according to a recent study.

Caldera Action, which advocates for increased public access to the preserve, is touting an analysis from The Harbinger Consulting Group that, according to Caldera Trust Executive Director Tom Ribe, “produced more dramatic findings than we expected in terms of impact to the local economy.”

Harbinger says a Park Service takeover would net the Valles Caldera millions more in revenue.

The preserve was created by Congress in 2000 as a kind of private-public management experiment. It is now run by the Valles Caldera Trust, with a board appointed by the president and which has been charged with making the preserve a financially self-sustaining operation.

That, however, isn’t likely to happen. Other studies have shown the preserve won’t make nearly enough money to meet the federal requirement that it break even by 2015. The preserve’s annual operating budget is about $3.5 million; the trust typically raises, through grazing contracts and recreation fees, about $800,000 per year.

“Through fees and commercial resource management, the Trust has made gains in recovering some of the costs of managing the Preserve, but by all accounts, that experiment has not succeeded and is unlikely to do so,” the Harbinger report says.

U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall have been making this argument since at least last year, when they introduced legislation to fold the Valles Caldera into the National Park Service.

The report backs them up, saying National Park Service management would provide “more stable long-term benefits, more reliable resource protection, and superior visitor experiences.” Key findings in the study include:

Under NPS management, the preserve would support over $1 million more in sales to local businesses and nearly 50 more local jobs than it would if managed by the Forest Service with a similar operating budget and staff.
NPS management would generate in excess of $110 million in local economic benefits over the first 15 years.
In 2016, NPS operation of the preserve would be expected to support 202 local jobs, nearly $8 million in wages and $11 million in economic activity. And between 2012 and 2016, construction projects on the preserve could support an average of 50 local jobs per year.
Consolidated NPS management of the preserve and neighboring Bandelier National Monument would attract more visitors to the preserve and improve the visitors’ experience at both sites. Consolidation would also boost efficiency and create consistent policies and programs.
The National Park Service is more likely than the U.S. Forest Service to maintain a high and consistent level of funding, staffing, visitor services and resource protection.

Part of the reason NPS stands to make more money with the preserve than the Forest Service is that the Park Service would probably invest more money in the preserve upfront. “With a small number of notable exceptions,” the study notes, “the Forest Service does not tend to put in place the same level of infrastructure and visitor services typically associated with NPS units.”

Based on plans already presented by the Valles Caldera Trust, the analysis says a likely scenario for the preserve would include the addition of a main visitors center overlooking the Valle Grande, a loop drive with interpretive signs, a full slate of interpretive and educational programming, more trails and trailhead facilities, and one or two small campgrounds on the preserve.

The Park Service is more likely to raise the funds for these projects because of its budget process, the report says. NPS requests annual appropriations by line item for each of its parks — a certain amount for a particular park’s visitors center, for example. The Forest Service, on the other hand, receives appropriations for broad functional categories like fire-fighting, and has to spread those funds out among its areas.

Plus, the Park Service is a draw in itself, much more so than the Forest Service, according to the analysis. Informal surveys of visitors to attractions managed by the National Park Service have shown that “many travelers (especially international visitors) use the NPS website to help plan their visits,” the report says. “Over time, the Preserve would become widely known as part of the NPS system, and word of mouth from other parks in the region could encourage even more visitors to Bandelier and Valles Caldera.”

The bill to put the Valles Caldera under management of NPS has gotten a hearing in Congress’ Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Bingaman chairs, but has not advanced.

In a statement, Bingaman said, “The National Park Service is best suited for the long-term management of the Valles Caldera as it has a long history of protecting unique cultural and natural resources, while also increasing tourism to our nation’s crown jewels.”

For those curious about the study and the assumptions therein, here is a link to the study.

Maybe it’s time to consider changing the budget structure of the Forest Service to be unit by unit- or somehow otherwise equilibrating the budgets among agencies for equivalent kinds of activities. Perhaps there is something about lobbying for a park or for parks; that lobbying for a “fuels treatment” line item across the country doesn’t have the same resonance.

Perhaps, if a place is special, then it belongs best at the Park Service.. otherwise if it’s forested, the Forest Service and if not, the BLM. Maybe it’s time to put all federal lands together under one budget process and approach (if not department). Otherwise, there is likely to be increasing amounts of transferring as local areas try to increase their funding- with the transfers themselves incurring additional costs.

WUI Fuel Treatment Potential Zone of Agreement 1.0

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We have been having a fascinating discussion about dead trees burning differently, but I wonder if debates about the science obfuscate an underlying reality of agreement. I am wondering, that’s all.

This morning, I am proposing that we may all agree that

Fuel treatments (completed with fuel removed) to create defensible space and change fire behavior within 1/2 mile of a community are generally OK.

I would like to throw this proposition out there and see what everyone thinks.. because if everyone agrees to this proposition (or and edited version), much of the “science” discussion is not relevant (historic patterns, etc.). We are interested in making conditions safe for firefighters by changing structure (not having jackstrawed piles of dead trees, for example) and fuel conditions around communities (we can discuss what “communities” means).

Some people think that we should just let the homes burn and not put firefighters in, thereby solving the problem (and saving much money, both for fuel treatments and for suppression) but this does not seem socially and politically realistic.

I would be interested to know what people on this blog think about the proposition. Feel free to propose edits. From this discussion, I’d like to move on to the question of fuel treatments that are not in the WUI.

Check out some of this paper and other photos from the Wallow fire and fuel treatments.

Spam Attack of Comments

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All- AKISMET is a utility of WordPress that protects from spam and does a great job. Today there were 50 messages tagged as spam and I did not read them all. If you have sent a comment and it doesn’t show up it may have gotten in that list. so please send again. Thanks to all commenters!

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I take a class with required homework on Tuesday night, so there may be a slowing of response around that time as I do homework and go to class.

Nibbled to Death By Neighbors: The Future of Public Lands?

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One of the issues that you usually don’t hear much about in the press are “lands” issues. Lands people, in my opinion, are among the unsung heroes of the Forest Service.

If you talk to them, you will find out some of the problems facing public lands-
neighbors attempting to cut off access to the public, through
land exchanges, trespass and subsequently being granted the land through efforts of their Congresspeople, putting gates on public roads, signing public roads as private, removing Forest Service signs, and probably other approaches I have not yet heard about.

Because of the relative tininess of each individual action, it is difficult to get a handle on the overall size of the problem. I have heard that it is difficult to get the courts involved, again, due to the individual size of each incursion and the workload of the Justice Department- although some are successfully litigated. My understanding is that there simply aren’t enough people funded to keep an eye on these kinds of things to keep up with the need.

Here’s a discussion about the roads problem- the question raised was “how can you tell if the “private” signs are accurate?”

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to tell. In Wyoming, you can check the commissioners’ records at the local courthouse to find out the surveyed route of all the county roads, and get copies of the easements (or orders) establishing the road. Even then, you can get into issues regarding whether the county road has been abandoned, and reverted to private.

The forest service roads are not so easy, because the forest service is so bad about either maintaining their roads, or keeping records regarding which ones are public and private. It is not uncommon for private inholders in the forest who block a road through their property, which was built and maintained by the public long before their property was private. The Forest Service (or the public) is left to file suit to enjoin the blockage, and they usually conclude it is not worth the money to bring suit.

I just finished working on a lawsuit where this precise issue was involved, and the forest service won the suit, but they had allowed the road to remain blocked for over a decade. If they hadn’t convinced the U.S. Attorney to bring suit to establish a trail along the old railroad bed passing through the same property, they would never have sued just to reopen the road.

There are several theories under which the forest service, the local county commission or the public can sue to enjoin a landowner from blocking a public road. (prescriptive easements, R.S. 2477, implied easement, simple lack of right) Sadly, the amount of historical research necessary to prevail in those suits means that few ever get brought, due to the cost. The private landowners know this, so they routinely just block the roads, and dare anyone to do anything about it.

The worst abuse I’ve seen in Wyoming is where a private landowner (with buddies on the county commission) will grant an easement for a county road, get the county to pay to build the road, then convince the commissioners to abandon the road later. The landowner, in the process, just got the taxpayers to build him a nice long driveway, thank you very much. I can point to a couple of these in my county.

Here’s a story in the Denver Post yesterday about a land exchange. It’s not clear to me why one individual’s desire to join pieces of property is more important than traditional rights of access for the public.

At the root of the controversy is the fact that the swap is being carried out with legislation rather than through an administrative process as most of the land swaps in the country are done.

That means there is no environmental review process before the trade takes place: There are no formal public hearings that would put a spotlight on the trade rather than making it just another item on a county commission’s agenda.

That is one reason a national watchdog group devoted to overhauling the way the government trades public land is looking askance.

The Western Lands Project in Seattle is questioning the transparency and is troubled that Koch included land in two states (Colorado and Utah) and land involving two federal management agencies. Those factors guarantee the trade must be done through legislation.

“The thing that bothers me about this bill — it appears to me this whole thing was engineered to keep it out of the normal public process. All of our questions could have been answered if this hadn’t been done legislatively,” Western Lands director Janine Blaeloch said.

Goldstein said Koch is only interested in having a much larger ranch in Gunnison County so he can hunt and ride horses and have a place to put his extensive collection of Western memorabilia. He has had enough of people trespassing from the quarter-mile-wide strip of public land that runs through the ranch. The trade would fix that.

Hmm. If there is public access, and people trespass on nearby private land, and the proposed solution is to cut off public access, then there is not much hope for much public land. Another solution would be to not buy (or sell) land that is adjacent to roads with public access.

Readers: do you have these kinds of problems in your neck of the woods?