Oregon’s longest-serving senator, Mark Hatfield, died yesterday at 89. As a youngster, I remember my mother campaigning for Hatfield in his first election to the U.S. Senate (1967), notwithstanding her life-time Democratic Party affiliation. As Oregon’s governor, Hatfield had opposed the Vietnam War, and that was enough to earn my mom’s support. Later, as an adult, I got my own chance to see him at work.
The first time was during the Mapleton litigation, circa 1982. My employer, the National Wildlife Federation, sought to reform logging practices in the steep and erosion-prone Oregon Coast Range. For a generation, the Forest Service had paid little heed to its own scientists who warned that clearcut logging and roadbuilding would accelerate mass wasting and landslides. When environmental disclosure documents fabricated erosion calculations, we sued and won a court injunction stopping timber sales on the Mapleton Ranger District. Throughout the lawsuit and its aftermath, I made it a point to stay in constant contact with Senator Hatfield natural resources staff. Sure enough, the Senator used his Appropriations Committee chairmanship to attach a rider that allowed buy-back timber sales (sales returned to the government due to purchaser speculative bidding) to go forward, notwithstanding the court’s order. It was a measured legislative response (we had not sought to stop these sales in the first instance) to the beginnings of an inexorable reformation in Coast Range logging practices.
A couple years later, Hatfield presided over a fractured Oregon delegation as it passed the 1984 Oregon Wilderness Bill. His office vetted every roadless area included in the bill, which, among other things, gave Siuslaw coastal rainforests their first (and, so far, only) wilderness protection.
Although Hatfield did not have any great interest in forest or environmental policy — his scope was much broader — his last act as a legislator was the protection of Opal Creek’s ancient forests.
In today’s era when many elected officials seem less leaders than supplicants, Hatfield stood tall as a true Oregon statesman.
From: Center for Biological Diversity
Published August 2, 2011 03:41 AM
23 Oahu Species Proposed for Endangered Species Act Protection
HONOLULU— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to protect 23 species on the Hawaiian island of Oahu as endangered under the Endangered Species Act on Monday. The proposal also includes protection of 43,491 acres of critical habitat essential for the conservation of the species, which include 20 plants (including some with fewer than 50 left in the wild) and three damselflies — the crimson Hawaiian damselfly, blackline Hawaiian damselfly and oceanic Hawaiian damselfly.
“These unique Hawaiian species are a national treasure, and we’re thrilled they’ll be getting the Endangered Species Act protection they need to survive,” said Tierra Curry, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
In early July, the Center reached a legal settlement with the Service to expedite protection for 757 imperiled species, including 19 of the 23 proposed on Oahu.
The Center petitioned in 2004 to protect 19 of the species proposed Monday. The 19 species — 16 plants and the three damselflies — have been waiting on the federal “candidate” list for protection for years. Candidates are species known to qualify for Endangered Species Act protection that are placed on a waiting list instead of receiving that protection.
In addition to the 19 candidates, Monday’s proposal includes four plants identified as the “rarest of the rare” by the Plant Extinction Prevention Program. Each of the four plant species has fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild and is in need of immediate conservation.
The plant species occur in a variety of habitats and are threatened by habitat loss and foraging and trampling by invasive goats, pigs and rodents. They are also threatened by invasive insects that outcompete native pollinators.
The damselflies are threatened by agricultural and urban development, stream alteration and predation by nonnative insects. The damselflies hatch and develop in streams, small cascades of waterfalls and wet, mossy areas. They then undergo metamorphosis and become shiny-winged adults that move into the forest.
Monday’s proposed critical habitat designation for the 23 species also includes a revision of critical habitat that has already been designated for 99 endangered Oahu plant species. In 2003, more than 55,000 acres of habitat was designated to protect the 99 plant species. The proposal includes only 43,491 acres of habitat for the 99 already-listed plants and the 23 new proposed species.
“We are concerned that this proposal appears to be reducing habitat that has already been designated to protect Oahu’s species, so we’ll work to make sure these rare plants and animals get the full habitat protection they need to survive,” said Curry.
This week, in a 3-0 opinion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Forest Service’s use of a deer habitat suitability model was “arbitrary and capricious” because key numbers in the model were altered without any rational explanation. The case is a testament to the persistence of Greenpeace’s Larry Edwards, a Sitka resident, the advocacy skills of co-plaintiff Cascadia Wildlands Project (one of my favorite grassroots outfits for its combination of smarts and passion) and their legal counsel’s (Chris Winter of Crag Law Center) talents.
It is the back story that it is especially poignant to me.
That story begins six years ago, when Tongass wildlife biologist Glen Ith emailed me aerial photographs taken by an Alaska Department of Fish and Game employee. The photos showed on-going logging road construction to access the Overlook project area. Overlook was an old-growth forest timber sale that is prime winter range habitat for Sitka black tail deer. What caught Glen’s eye was that the Forest Service had not yet completed the Overlook NEPA analysis, but had already started building the roads. Turns out that there were several million dollars that Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) had earmarked for Tongass road work; money that if not spent by fiscal year’s end would be lost to the Forest Service, and incur Stevens’ displeasure. Overlook’s NEPA documents were behind schedule, but that didn’t stop the road engineers from moving forward. [NB: The conspiracy to spend the money was broader than the engineers alone, including district and forest-level planning staff, line officers, and contracting officials.]
Glen and FSEEE filed suit, challenging the Overlook and Traitors Cove (another site of illegal “advance” work) road building. It was the first-ever environmental lawsuit by a Forest Service employee. We won. The Forest Service retaliated, suspended Glen from work, and eliminated his job. Several days thereafter, Glen passed away from sudden heart failure.
Early on in our roads litigation, Glen told me that the Tongass was using irrational numbers in its deer habitat capability model. He wanted to cure the errors. We agreed the on-going roads case wasn’t the place to do so, primarily because the issue was not ripe as the timber sale environmental reviews were not complete. Glen said he would try to work internally to fix the modeling problem, but he wasn’t confident he would be successful. He believed the errors were intentionally designed to allow the Forest Service to defend logging high-value old-growth forest habitat.
Glen assiduously documented the problems with the deer habitat model; documents that Greenpeace’s Larry Edwards later found in the administrative records. Glen also administratively appealed the Scott Peak sale on these grounds.
I’ll be taking a break from posting until September 12. Other contributors are welcome to post at any time. For the curious- yes, Camp Teresita Pines was the summer camp of my youth.
WatershedTour AngoraFire 2008
9th Circuit clears USFS logging at Lake Tahoe (here)
By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press
A federal appeals court cleared the way Monday for the Forest Service to begin logging near Lake Tahoe, where a wildfire burned more than 250 homes four years ago.
In making its ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected claims that the project violates environmental laws and will jeopardize the survival of a rare woodpecker.
The panel issued a two-page ruling denying an emergency injunction sought by two environmental groups.
The panel, including Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, gave no reason for its decision.
They said they will give the Earth Island Institute and Center for Biological Diversity until Oct. 3 to submit formal briefs so the case can be considered on a normal schedule in November.
Chad Hanson, executive director of the institute’s Sierra-based John Muir Project, said the group would continue to challenge the logging even if it is completed by November because an important precedent is at stake.
He said the argument by the Forest Service that it has no legal requirement to maintain a viable population of the black-backed woodpecker in the national forest at Lake Tahoe contradicts every previous administration’s interpretation of the National Forest Management Act dating to 1982.
“”The black-backed woodpecker is one of the rarest bird species in the entire Sierra Nevada and the Forest Service is pushing it toward extinction with its post-fire logging program,” Hanson told The Associated Press.
The Forest Service says the logging of about half of the 3,000 acres that burned in June 2007 is part of an overall restoration project that will help speed regrowth of burned stands and reduce the threat of future catastrophic fires.
The $3 million project is not intended to produce any merchantable timber, only chips and scrap wood for biomass.
The opponents counter that they have no problem with cutting trees with a diameter of less than 10 inches, but the agency’s plan to log some trees nearly 2-feet thick and to remove dead standing trees that the woodpeckers thrive on will do nothing to reduce fire threats. They say the forest should be left to regenerate on its own.
“Their own fire analysis specifically concludes that this project will actually increase the fire hazard slightly relative to doing nothing,” Hanson said. “It will not protect the community, and they did not contest that in their reply briefs because they cannot.”
He said the project amounts to a $3 million subsidy for the biomass industry.
Forest Service officials did not immediately return telephone calls or emails seeking comment on Monday.
Lawyers for the agency said in legal briefs filed last week they don’t believe the woodpecker will be harmed by the logging.
They said U.S. District Court Judge Garland Burrell Jr. made it clear that he agreed with their interpretation in his July 13 ruling in Sacramento denying a similar injunction.
Here’s the CBD press release. It includes a critique of the use of woody biomass.
Although I am not an expert, this appears to be the rationale for doing it the way the FS chose (from the EA here).
Reduced Removal of Snags: There were concerns that the proposed action would remove
snags that are not necessary to meet the purpose and need. The following alternative was considered: leaves all snags >16 inches in diameter except where they pose an imminent health and safety hazard to forest users and works. An analysis was conducted to compare the amounts of downed fuel that would accumulate in three time frames: immediately after project implementation, 20 years after project implementation, and 50 years1 after project implementation. These values were compared with the desired conditions that are described in Chapter 1. In summary, these desired conditions are: reducing wildland fire behavior under
high fire weather conditions (hot, dry summer days), including flame lengths of less than 4 feet at the head of a fire; reducing the rate of spread at the head of the fire; reducing hazards to firefighters by removing snags from locations likely to be used for fire suppression; and doubling fire line construction rates. To meet these desired conditions for defense zones, average fuel loading should be less than 10 tons per acre of various size and decay classes of woody debris (see discussion under Section 1.3, “Overview of the Existing Condition”). The desired conditions are responsive to the need to ensure that fuel loadings do not create potential wildfire behavior conditions such that fire severity is excessive or that fire suppression
activities are ineffective or compromised in protecting communities or wildlife and watershed values.
The analysis of residual fuel loadings if dead trees >16 inches dbh were left (Project Record Document E20) revealed that fuel loadings would not meet the desired conditions over time as all of the remaining dead trees fall after project implementation (36 tons per acre, weighted) and hence would not meet the desired conditions (10‐15 tons per acre) nor would this alternative meet the purpose and need of reducing long‐term fuel loadings (see discussion under Section 1.5.1, “Fire, Fuels, Vegetation, and Forest Health”). In addition, leaving dead trees
>16 inches dbh would leave approximately 31 downed logs per acre, which would reduce
fireline construction rates. This condition also would not meet the purpose and need. A study by Brown et al. (Project Record Document E179) acknowledges that leaving high amounts of coarse woody debris leads to high or even severe resistance‐to‐control. The predicted fuel loading if all trees >16 inches dbh were left at 36 tons per acre would lead to high or even extreme resistance‐to‐control, which would mean slow work for line construction by dozers and hand crews and difficulty in holding control lines. These conditions would not meet the desired conditions for defense zones immediately adjacent to communities.
Here’s a previous post on this project from this blog.
For those of you curious about black-backed woodpeckers, here is an interesting write-up from Region 1. It seems like it thrives on post-fire trees, which it seems like there should be plenty of in the Sierra other than this 1400 acres, just based on reports of fires in the Sierra. Also notice the range of the species here in a South Dakota entry.
Based on reports of climate change effects and more frequent fires, and bug attacks, seems like their habitat should be increasing across the west. But I’m not a bird person; am I missing something?
I know it’s a press release, but I found some of the rhetoric to be rather off-putting. If the case is being made that your organization is “good,” a thought might be to try to refute others’ ideas in a respectful way. What partisans appreciate (vitriolic attacks) tends to dispel your credibility with the broader community- and can the end justify the means? I’ve italicized the most egregious examples.
Further, the piece starts out with an assertion that the bill keeps nonprofits from protecting veterans, etc. That doesn’t seem to be the case based on what Andy says here. And since Andy has not gone on record supporting psychological warfare against my kind (as has Mr. Suckling here), I am more inclined to believe him.
And if a press release starts out with an easily checked untrue assertion, how likely is it that I will take your word on things I don’t have the time to look up? Just sayin’.
Center for Biological Diversity: Our goal is to save species, not make money
by Kiéran Suckling
Industry-funded zealots are angling to prevent nonprofits from protecting veterans, children, workers and the environment. With the absurd argument that nonprofits are getting rich by making the government follow its own laws, they want to ensure that only the truly rich are able to take the government to court.
Even those who should know better are drinking the Kool-Aid, including outdoor writer Ted Williams, whose essay in the June 23 Tucson Weekly accused the Center for Biological Diversity of “shaking down taxpayers.” Cribbing from the Internet like a Fox News intern, Williams serves up industry propaganda with a side of his own trademark use of “anonymous” sources and dubious quotations.
Laws to make working conditions safe, ensure our water is clean and protect the rights of veterans and children only work when they are enforced. Often, they are not because of industry pressure. Witness the complete dominance of the U.S. Minerals Management Service by the oil industry.
American democracy guards against corruption by allowing citizens to sue the government. Now, taking on the government isn’t cheap. You have to go up against the entire Department of Justice. That’s easy for the oil industry, Walmart and developers who have money to burn. It’s not so easy for the rest of us.
To level the playing field, the federal government pays the legal fees of individuals, small businesses and nonprofit groups—if they win. If they lose, they pay their own way.
In its campaign to revoke this essential equalizer, industry has launched a public-relations war hinged on the big lie that nonprofits—especially environmental groups—are getting rich by ensuring that environmental laws are followed.
The current darling of the propaganda machine is Williams, who accuses the Center for Biological Diversity of filing petitions to protect hundreds of endangered species and then suing the government when it inevitably fails to rule on the petitions within 90 days. In Williams’ tightly scripted anti-environmental message, it’s a racket producing “a major source of revenue” for the center.
Nonsense. Between 2008 and 2011, the center received legal-fee reimbursements for an average of one case per year while challenging the government’s failure to process endangered-species protection petitions within 90 days. The average yearly total was $3,867—much less than the center spent bringing the cases. Not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.
Rush to court? Every one of these suits was filed after the government missed its 90-day protection deadline by months, and in some cases by more than a year. I would submit that spending $3,867 of the federal government’s money to save the Mexican gray wolf, walrus and right whale from extinction is a bargain and a half.
Williams dives completely into the propaganda sewer when he quotes an “anonymous” government official complaining about a center petition to protect 404 rare Southeastern plants and animals. The “anonymous” source is allegedly outraged that the center will file a slam-dunk nuisance lawsuit because the government can’t possibly study all 404 species in 90 days.
In fact, the center didn’t sue, even after the government missed its deadline by 420 days. Instead, we developed a plan with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure all these rare species get reviewed for protection in a reasonable amount of time.
Without providing any supporting data, Williams goes on to charge that the center is raking in the cash by suing “for missed deadlines when the agency can’t keep up with the broadside of Freedom of Information Act requests.”
Hmm. In the past four years, the center received legal reimbursements for exactly one Freedom of Information Act deadline suit, and the amount we received ($3,031) was far less than we spent forcing the Department of the Interior to come clean with the public over its offshore oil leasing program in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
The Center for Biological Diversity will keep expending vastly more resources ensuring the government follows its own wildlife protection laws than we’ll ever recoup. That’s fine with us, because making sure bald eagles, wolves, and even Tucson shovel-nose snakes and Arizona tree frogs have a place to live and grow is more important than money.
I had thought I had reposted this from Bob Berwyn’s blog here but couldn’t find it- the last two weeks have been a blur..
Climate-fire feedback loop likely to accelerate global warming
Wildfires can spur increased releases of nitrous oxide from the soil, adding significantly to greenhouse gas concentrations.
By Summit Voice
SUMMIT COUNTY — An accidental grassfire during a series of climate change experiments showed that increased nitrogen deposits in soils, combined with wildfires, can significantly increase the release of nitrous oxide from the soil, which in turn can accelerate global warming.
“Soils are the major source of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere,” said Jamie Brown, graduate student in biological sciences at Northern Arizona University and co-author of the study. “So increased soil emissions of nitrous oxide will accelerate global warming.”
Brown worked with colleagues from NAU, Stanford University, the University of Paris and the University of Lyon. The study used an experimental grassland at Stanford, where researchers exposed the grassland to simulated environmental changes — heat, extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more rain, more nitrogen deposition, and, when part of the experiment accidentally burned, wildfire.
The study is significant because it measured the impact of several factors simultaneously, unlike previous studies that examined the impact of one element at a time.
“Alone, the treatments had little influence on nitrous oxide emissions, but what was really surprising was the interaction with wildfire, causing a huge burst of nitrous oxide production,” said NAU professor Bruce Hungate, Brown’s thesis adviser and co-author on the study.
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, Hungate explained. In some parts of the world, like the western United States, wildfires also are becoming more frequent and more intense.
“Increasing wildfire frequency and the changing climate could cause these soil micro-organisms to release more nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming,” Brown said.
The experiment examined the complexity to simulate a realistic situation, where all factors are changing together. “The design is complex, with each treatment by itself in every possible combination with the other treatments,” Brown said.
With such a complex design, researchers can see if the effects of two or more global changes together can be predicted from their effects in isolation.
Last week I spent a day on a field trip with some conservation NGO interns. The ranger had asked them to think about a question:
On the watershed for an important Colorado water supply, prescribed burning would lead to a better situation to protect from wildfires that degrade water quality. Yet air quality requirements make it difficult to do prescribed burning. Mechanical treatments would not release particulates, but without a timber industry we can’t afford mechanical treatments. We know there is a trade-off between prescribed fire particulates and, ultimately, wildfire particulates (greater in quantity). Wildfires can have greater negative effects on both watersheds and soil and vegetation carbon, compared to prescribed burns. So how do we negotiate the apparently contradictory requirements of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act?
It was a great question, and I was very impressed with the thoughtfulness and expertise of our FS employees (as I usually am :)), as I think were the interns.
So here are my additional wonkish questions. Is that tension between air quality and prescribed burning an equal problem in all the western states? Why can southern states have so much (comparatively) prescribed burning- are the reasons environmental or social or some combination?
