Take care with fires and fireworks and see you Tuesday!
Sharon
Spotted Owl Recovery Plan- Oregonian Article
Spotted owl recovery plan recommends preserving old forests and doing away with new invaders
Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian Here’s the link.
Again, it’s not really clear to me why “Controlled removal of barred owls to determine if spotted owls reclaim territory would be a worthwhile experiment, he (I think Forsman?) but isn’t financially or logistically sustainable.” killing creatures to find out whether a policy works- a policy you could never implement anyway, is the right thing to do. Note whatever kind of question this is, it is not a “science” question.
One of the commentors to the Oregonian piece wrote that there is a difference between “not doing something” (e.g., cutting trees), doing something (growing more habitat), and doing something that involves direct killing of other species. I am more focused on killing to do something that can’t work to save the species, but there is an ethical issue even if killing one species of owl would be effective in saving another species.
A long-anticipated recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, due by Friday, recommends preserving the best of its favored old-forest habitat across federal, state and private property lines and killing barred owls that compete with it for territory.
Those actions can steer spotted owls back from the brink of extinction, the plan says, but it could take 30 years and cost $147 million.
Whether conserving habitat and reducing competitors will save the spotted owl, however, is an unanswerable question.
“We do our best and hope for the best,” says Eric Forsman, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist considered among the nation’s leading experts on spotted owls. “There’s a lot we don’t have control over.”
The owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, touching off the Northwest “timber wars” and clamping down on federal forest harvests. The first recovery plan surfaced in 1992, but disappeared in a flurry of lawsuits and policy rhetoric that has marked the issue ever since.
The new plan is a revision of a 2008 document so marred by political interference that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which wrote it, agreed it was scientifically indefensible and asked a federal judge to send it back.
The revised version has been stalled since 2010 by threats of lawsuits. It applies across the spotted owl’s range in Oregon, Washington and Northern California; fish and wildlife’s Portland office coordinated the work. The plan does not regulate logging or habitat practices, but agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management must consult the plan as they manage forests.
Initial reaction to the plan is mixed.
Forsman and fellow owl scientist Bob Anthony, a retired fish and wildlife professor at Oregon State University, say success is uncertain because of the barred owl, which migrated from the east and was first documented in the Northwest in the 1970s. It’s larger, more aggressive, favors the same habitat and is a less picky eater than the spotted owl.
“Given that the barred owl is part of the equation,” Forsman said, “it’s no longer clear that protecting habitat is going to do the job.”
Controlled removal of barred owls to determine if spotted owls reclaim territory would be a worthwhile experiment, he said, but isn’t financially or logistically sustainable.
“The best we can do is manage a considerable amount of habitat for spotted owls and let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “It’s way too early to give up at this point and say there’s nothing we can do for spotted owls.”
Anthony said competition between owls makes it crucial to conserve as much suitable habitat as possible. “The key issue is how much habitat can be preserved, and what will be socially and politically acceptable to the residents of the Pacific Northwest,” he said.
Others believe the recovery plan is a good step.
“A really excellent effort to incorporate the best science available,” said Paula Swedeen, director of ecosystem service programs for the Pacific Forest Trust, which works with forest owners on a variety of sustainability projects. “This plan says there is high-quality habitat everywhere that needs to be preserved to give the owl the best chance possible.”
Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, welcomed the plan’s increased emphasis on owl protection on private and state forests, which he said have become a “black hole” for the owl.
“Because of heavy cutting, it was putting more protection onus on federal land,” he said. “They (non-federal lands) need to do their part,” he said.
But he said a better solution is taking old forests “off the chopping block” completely He said the timber industry in Washington and Northern California have “moved on” from dependence on old-growth logs harvested on federal land, but Oregon lags behind.
“Why pick at this scab of logging the old forest?” he asked. Thinning older forests would provide logs needed by mills, he said.
A spokesman for the Oregon Forest Industries Council said key pieces of the plan are incomplete. “We don’t know what’s in it, it’s very vague,” said Ray Wilkeson. “It’s like an empty shell.”
He said it’s unclear how federal officials will use computer modeling to determine the owl’s habitat requirements. A modeling tool developed for the recovery plan combines information from 4,000 spotted owl sites and 20 years of demographic data to depict where owls nest and roost now and where they are likely to do so in the future. The model allows researchers to plug in variables such as the presence of barred owls and the impact of climate change.
Guest Post from Foto
Thanks to Foto for this post and these photos.
Two years after the Park Service burned up 16,000 acres (trying to burn only 95 acres during near-record heat) of Yosemite National Park and spending $17,000,000, this is what has grown back. What used to be majestic old growth pines that has survived countless pre-historic fires, is now lupines and deerbrush, with no conifers and few oaks. These pictures shows that deerbrush will dominate the next several decades, if not an entire century. There simply is no seed source for pines to get re-established. The Park Service fire folks still arrogantly cling to the idea that prescribed fires during the heat of the summer is the way to go.
The Forest Service fire folks seem to also think they can “re-introduce” fire into fuels-choked forests without pre-treating fuels with thinning and selective logging. The Yosemite picture shows the future of our ponderosa pine forests, if we exclude commercial fuels projects. How long can we continue to embrace whatever grows back from catastrophic wildfires?
Note from Sharon- I think most people agree that trees sequester more carbon that shrubs.. therefore conceivably the sooner you start ’em growing again, the better for the environment. Just another example of how climate change forces us to question that concept “”natural” is best.”
Where Have All the Seedlings Gone? Gone to Crown Fires, Every One
Check this out from the Summit County Citizens Voice here..
Perhaps we’re back to tree planting, just about 30 years after the last surge (the circle of life). We could start those nurseries running, get the tree-coolers back online.. and go for it…
I was looking for good tree quotes for a retirement party and found this today..
Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
Aldo Leopold. But I digress…
SUMMIT COUNTY — Wildfires that have burned across almost 750,000 acres in Arizona are doing more than turning forests into charred stumps.
Researchers with Northern Arizona University say the fires, burning in unnaturally dense stands of ponderosa pine, are turning the forests from carbon sinks into net carbon producers — and, the fires have burned so hot that they aren’t finding many signs of regeneration.
Mike Stoddard, a forest ecologist with NAU’s Ecological Restoration Institute, has been looking for a sign, any sign, of ponderosa pine seedlings 15 years after the 1996 Hochderffer Fire, a crown fire that burned hot through 16,000 acres west of the San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff.
“These large fires are devastating our forests,” Stoddard said. “We’re concerned that ponderosa pine is not regenerating after these wildfire events.”
Crown fires burn into the canopies and treetops or crowns of the trees — massive, intense crown fires, such as the Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona, are not natural in the ponderosa pine forest. Naturally occurring ponderosa pine fires burn along the ground, or base, of the trees.
Scientists also are concerned about the invisible impacts of crown fires. The fires are contributing to global warming by upsetting the carbon balance while they are burning, and for years afterward, according to the NAU researchers.
In a study conducted from 2001 to 2007, forest ecologist Matthew Hurteau with NAU’s School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability found that the nation’s wildfire emissions were the equivalent of 4 percent to 6 percent of all emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas. The percentage of lingering emissions is even greater.
“We’re looking to forests to take in carbon, thereby lowering the greenhouse gases. But at a site like the Hochderffer Fire, the grassy vegetation that’s growing in is not making up for the amount of carbon that’s being released from the dead trees,” he said.
Across Arizona Highway 180, the story is much the same. NAU forestry professor Tom Kolb is calculating the amount of carbon dioxide moving between the land and the air at the site of the Horseshoe Fire. This 8,000-acre crown fire also burned in 1996.
“The fire has had a long-term legacy effect on the capacity of this site to take in and store carbon dioxide,” Kolb said. “This site has gone from being a carbon sink, where carbon was being stored, to a carbon source, where carbon is being released.”
With carbon making up about half the dry weight of a tree, researchers say overstocked ponderosa pine thickets can store a lot of carbon, at least for a while.
“Storing carbon in lots of little trees in a dense forest is like investing your retirement funds in junk bonds. It’s risky,” Hurteau said. “Our research has shown that if we reduce the amount of trees per acre and return ground fire to the system to manage those surface fuels, the carbon left in the live trees is much more stable because it’s less vulnerable to crown fire.”
Carbon flux research south of Flagstaff where excess small diameter ponderosas have been removed shows the remaining trees have become more vigorous.
“They photosynthesize at a much greater rate than the trees in the un-thinned situation,” Kolb said. “The thinned forest has an equal to or slighter greater rate of carbon sequestration than an un-thinned forest.”
Wild Earth Guardians on Zone of Agreement
Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this op-ed from the ABQ Journal.
Lack of Logging Isn’t To Blame in Massive Forest Fires
By Bryan Bird / Wild Places Program Director, WildEarth Guardians on Fri, Jun 24, 2011
As the country floods and burns, climate change is upon us. Smoke from the Wallow Fire in Arizona still lingers, and the predictable but misplaced finger-pointing has begun.
As the grandstanding goes on, however, innovative, collaborative efforts are quietly reshaping the federal forest policies that got us here in the first place and charting a sustainable future for the National Forest System.
Contrary to public perception, there have been few lawsuits challenging sensible fuel reduction on the national forests in the last decade. The GAO concluded in 2010 that about 2 percent of all hazardous fuel reduction decisions by the Forest Service nationwide were litigated. The handful challenged were because of unwarranted impacts to water, wildlife and other valuable resources the national forests generate for Americans.
Ignored in the national discourse: the U.S. Forest Service, loggers, the wood utilization industry and conservationists have been spending valuable time and resources in the woods finding a zone of agreement.
We need to go back more than a couple of decades to understand how the current wildfire situation arose.
During the last hundred years or so the lower elevation, dry pine forests of the west were severely logged over, leaving a nearly uniform mass of small trees. Domestic livestock grazing, which suppresses the grasses that normally carry low intensity fire fostered the proliferation of pine seedlings and aggravated conditions. On top of it all, humans became extremely effective at suppressing most wildfires, leaving the overgrowth unchecked.
Cutting itself out of business, the lumber industry is mostly gone and the market for lumber is at record low. Supposing we threw aside all environmental concerns and opened our public forestlands to logging on a historic scale, as some have suggested, there would be no use for the logs. In a free market system there has to be demand or no amount of deregulation is going to make a difference.
Throw in climate change and drought and you have all the ingredients for the Wallow Fire and others burning in the Southwest. The science is clear; big fire years track drought cycles, and climate change is exacerbating those conditions.
The fires are predictable, but can we do anything to mitigate their effect? Yes, we can.
Starting in 2001 with Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s Collaborative Forest Restoration Program in New Mexico, now expanded nationally, former adversaries began developing forest restoration projects that are environmentally sound and effective. In New Mexico alone, more than 30,000 acres have been treated and about 600 jobs created through the program.
More important, perhaps, are the program’s less quantifiable results, as an atmosphere of litigation and acrimony surrounding resources has given way to a spirit of cooperation.
Logging in the historic sense will leave the forests more vulnerable, not less. On federal, public forests, cost-effective fuel reduction is accomplished with other tools including: wildland fire use, prescribed fire, thinning and removal of livestock grazing pressure.
The Forest Service treated hazardous fuels on one and a half million acres with thinning or burning in 2010; many of these acres are strategically located around communities and proved critical in defending Arizona towns in the latest blaze.
Senators John Kyle of Arizona and Ron Wyden of Oregon told a senate committee recently that the Forest Service needs to pick up the pace of hazardous fuel treatments on the national forests. While that is true and the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program requires full funding, we live in time of shrinking budgets and the acute effects of climate change. Strategic use of resources will be critical.
In addition to forest fuel treatments, it is time to start taking personal responsibility, demanding appropriate county zoning and placing the enormous costs of fire fighting on the parties that encourage development in fire-prone forests.
That is the real work of preparing for wildfire in a climate-changed world.
Ed Quillen on Maximum Trashing Utilization: Colorado Voices I
For those of you who don’t read the Denver Post or High Country News, you might not be familiar with the unique voice of Ed Quillen. I don’t always agree with the guy, but I find this curmudgeonly Salida resident to be a true Interior West voice and always worth a read. Here he is on a new concept for land use (this is related to the F.S. because of the coal mine, which is currently in (guess what?) litigation). In our next post we will hear another Colorado voice on coal mining in the same area. I think it’s interesting to contrast the perspectives.
Below is most of the op-ed; the rest can be found here.
The West could become a greener place with the help of a policy I call Maximum Trashing Utilization, or MTU. Its fundamental concept is simple: Get the maximum benefit from every disturbance of the environment. If that requires changes in regulations, or perhaps some economic adjustments, let’s just do it. The more benefit we get from “trashing,” the less trashing we’ll need to do.
Consider the vast networks of diversions, reservoirs, canals and ditches we have built to irrigate crops here in the Great American Desert. By and large, the water moves by gravity. And as everyone who has ever seen a water wheel knows, water in motion can be a source of useful energy, for anything from a gristmill to electrical generation.
With those irrigation works, we’ve already damaged the environment by removing water from its natural course. So why not get the maximum benefit by generating electricity at every irrigation reservoir and ditch drop?
There are some roadblocks, though. A state-granted right to divert water doesn’t necessarily include the legal right to run it through a turbine in the process. Hydro projects, no matter how small, must be licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and that can be a long and expensive process, not worth the trouble for the small low-head generating units that would work with irrigation systems.
Furthermore, the power generally needs to go somewhere beyond the irrigation system, which may require building new power lines — and those are often sources of contention and yet more reviews and hearings.
The upshot of all this is “regulatory uncertainty,” which leads to a reluctance to invest even as new technologies are developed for low-head (less than 16 feet of fall) hydro and in-stream generation that hardly affect stream flow.
Now, I realize that we need some regulation; environmental protection is important. But our regulatory system also ought to encourage getting the maximum possible benefit — i.e., relatively clean energy — from the damage that’s already being done. And if making it economically feasible requires subsidies in some instances, well, why not? It’s not as though other energy sources, from crude oil to solar, don’t get subsidies.
Another way to achieve Maximum Trashing Utilization is known as cogeneration. Basically, it means generating electricity with a thermal plant, and putting the waste heat to use.
One of my brothers designs and installs cogeneration units for commercial laundries. A stationary automotive engine is modified to run on natural gas instead of gasoline. It turns a generator to help power the laundry’s machinery. The hot exhaust from the engine replaces the burner on a conventional large water heater, whose intake water has been preheated in the process of cooling the engine.
The result is a lower overall energy bill for the laundry, and more use of the energy from the natural gas.
What’s not to like about it? Well, when my brother added onto his house and wanted to heat it with a small cogeneration unit, he hit all sorts of regulatory barriers, from the city building code and various zoning laws to the municipal utility company’s strenuous efforts not to buy any surplus power he generated. After two years of fighting, he gave up.
There has been some progress on the regulatory front. Back in 2008, High Country News carried a story about methane escaping from Western coal mines. Methane is a flammable gas (it and its close chemical relative ethane are the major components of natural gas) that is given off by coal as it decomposes underground.
Since methane is flammable and sometimes explosive, mine safety requires venting it away from the working area.
Logically, this methane should be burned in a productive way. Unburned methane is more than 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as the carbon dioxide produced by combustion. Plus, there’s the energy from burning it, which could be used to heat homes or generate electricity.
But certain regulatory policies for coal mines on federal land prevented the methane from being put to public use. Essentially, the mining companies had the right to use the coal, but not the methane. For safety reasons, they have to vent it — but they couldn’t put it to work.
That’s changed recently, at least on a case-by-case basis. The Interior Department now allows the capture and sale of methane. But is it economical to do so when the methane is diffuse and the nearest pipeline might lie miles away?
“We’ve tried to look at it every way in the world. If it were economic to do, we would already be doing it. It would add to our income.” That’s what James Cooper, president of Oxbow Mining, which operates the Elk Creek Mine in western Colorado, told a Grand Junction business journal.
Cap-and-trade legislation might change the economics by paying the coal company to capture methane. It’s unlikely to be enacted in the current political climate, but again, if some subsidies are required to get MTU, there are certainly worse ways to spend public money.
Note from Sharon: It would be simpler, and more likely to succeed, in my opinion, to write surgical legislation that would treat the methane from underground coal mines (or at least ones on federal land) as a pollutant and require capture; Mark Squillace, Director of the Natural Resources Law Program at University of Colorado attempted to do this last year. A more productive way of making useful policy than litigating on the NEPA, without running up bills for government and NGO attorneys. In my opinion.
Fire Retardant DEIS Comment Deadline
Tomorrow is the deadline for commenting on the Forest Service’s draft fire retardant EIS.
FSEEE’s comments can be read here. The associated spreadsheet collects together national forest-level data over an 11-year period on initial attack success rates, numbers of fires by size class, and retardant use. These data are the basis for FSEEE’s statistical analysis of retardant effectiveness.
Here is our take-home message:
“The fact of the matter is that each and every year the Forest Service drops millions of gallons of a toxic chemical slurry, predictably killing about a half-dozen air personnel while jeopardizing dozens of protected plant and animal species, all for a program that could best be characterized as faith-based firefighting. The Forest Service can and should do better.”
Char Miller on Forests Going to Pot
Check this essay out- here’s a quote:
The concentrated effort to stop this despoliation has led the local, state, and federal agents engaged in this oft-dangerous work to refer to themselves as the Thin Green Line. They do not see their actions simply as a piece of the controversial War on Drugs, but as a battle to protect and preserve imperiled landscapes. Yet there is not enough money or labor to do this critical rehab work. In 2010, volunteer restoration teams managed to reclaim 70 sites across the state, but more than 800 had been identified. Still, they and law enforcement do what they can.
Or, better, do what they feel they must. Lt. John Nores, Jr., of California’s Department of Fish and Game makes this case in War in the Woods: Combating the Marijuana Cartels on America’s Public Lands, a hyped-up if compelling account of the anguish he and his comrades feel at the end of each operation. Notwithstanding the book’s evocation of Vietnam–camouflaged strike forces slipping though a dense tangle wary of booby traps and stalking a well-armed enemy–it also advocates full restoration of the abused land.
Just before taking down an illegal dam that fed a major cultivation site along Bonjetti Creek in eastern face of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Nores muses:
“The creek water above the dam is clean, clear, and cold, just like a high-mountain trout stream in California’s Sierra Nevada. The surrounding ferns, grasses, and thick tree canopies above the creek are similarly pristine and beautiful….Standing here I have a hard time imagining that more than a million people are hustling around the San José area only a short distance from us, and yet these amazing natural areas are so close and provide so much to our environment and its wildlife species.”
FS Win on Grazing: Pike San Isabel
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) announced June 17 that the U.S. Forest Service, the Chaffee County Board of Commissioners, CCA, and most importantly – 13 livestock producing families – prevailed against a lawsuit filed by Western Watershed’s Project (WWP). In 2009, CCA and Chaffee County joined ranchers in protecting their right to multiple-use grazing of public lands by intervening in a lawsuit filed by the anti-livestock grazing WWP, which sought to deny renewal of grazing in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests.
“This is a huge win for our family and cattlemen in this part of the state,” stated Ken McMurry, grazing permittee. “Through the support of ChaffeeCounty, other local cattlemen’s associations and the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, we’ve come to realize how significant this ruling is statewide to all cattlemen, whether grazing on private or public lands.”
The appeal by WWP objected to the renewal of the grazing permits, which had been approved after a thorough environmental review. The Forest Service grazing decision also incorporated adaptive management principles to improve environmental conditions in the forests. The ranchers and the Forest Service worked together to develop management steps that would address resource issues and still be cost-effective. Upon reviewing the briefs and the administrative record, the court affirmed the decision of the Forest Service and allows continued livestock grazing under the adaptive management that everyone committed to do.
As CCA counsel Connie Brooks explained, “This decision is especially significant because Western Watersheds had objected to the fact that the Forest Service had worked closely with the grazing permittees to develop management plans that made sense and would achieve the Forest Service’s objectives. While federal law calls for these grazing plans to be written in coordination with ranchers, this litigation would have undone the cooperation and consultation that has characterized the grazing program on the Salida Leadville Ranger District of the Pike San Isabel National Forest.”
Tim Canterbury and his family are also thrilled with the courts decision. “We are happy to see that the court ruled this way. It shows that the courts recognize all of the hard work the permittees and agencies put into the Environmental Assessment.”
The WWP argued that the decision made by the Forest Service was inconsistent with the Forest Plan; more specifically, it violated the Forest Plan in various ways including wildlife protection, protecting soil productivity, protecting water quality, and protecting archaeological resources. The court found that the Forest Service properly addressed each of these issues. Some of the measures included in the Proposed Plan were changing the stocking rate, limiting grazing to certain seasons, rest rotation, and active herding – all of which permittees will conduct to protect the public’s natural resources. After further review, the court strongly disagreed with WWP, stating the court may not assume that the Forest Service will fail to implement these actions in their Proposed Plan.
“The good guys won!,” exclaimed Chaffee County Commissioner Frank Holman. “The Western Watersheds Project is ignorant of the positive impact ranchers have on the land, and that these same ranchers leave the forest in an improved state. This verdict by the government keeps WWP from running over the little guy. This finally proves that cattlemen do not have to put up with invasions to our Western way of life.”
It’s also interesting that this story from the local newspaper, the Pueblo Chieftain mentions that WWP is from Idaho in the headline..
Grazing can continue in forests
Federal judge ruled against Idaho environmental group.
Fires bolster political support for forest thinning- From Payson Roundup
Here’s the whole story from the Payson Roundup. Below is an excerpt.
With Arizona’s worst fire season in history still roaring, oft-delayed plans to use a resurrected timber industry to thin millions of acres of badly overgrown Arizona forests have suddenly gained broad support.
In a flurry of developments last week, the Department Agriculture announced $3.5 million in new funding for the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative, the Forest Service released ground rules for contractors and assorted politicians promised their support.
Environmentalists, scientists, loggers and forest managers have worked for years to create The 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4-FRI), which hopes to convince a revived logging industry to spend millions on new sawmills and power plants that could turn a profit on the small trees now choking millions of acres of forests.
The group that proposed the effort agreed on a plan to thin millions of acres by leaving most of the remaining big trees and focusing on the trees smaller than 16 inches in diameter, which now form tree thickets across millions of acres.
The Forest Service now supports the plan and last week put out requests for proposals for timber companies interested in bidding on 10-year contracts to thin 300,000 acres in the Kaibab, Coconino, Tonto and Apache-Sitgreaves forests.
Ultimately, the project will encompass perhaps a million acres — which is only twice as much as the Wallow Fire consumed. However, by concentrating on areas near forested communities, backers hope that the massive thinning project will provide much greater fire protection for those settlements.
The release of photos from the Wallow Fire effectively underscored the value of that strategy. Some of the photos show that thinned areas stopped the fire in many places.