Toddi Steelman on Science and Politics

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At a recent TED lecture at North Carolina State University, Professor Toddi Steeman talked about three science myths: “Science Determines Policy,” “Science is Objective,” and “More Science Leads to Consensus.” Steelman titled the talk, “My Jihad Against Scientific Fundamentalism.” Beginning about 7:50 into the presentation Steelman talks about so-called “Climategate,” as one of two case studies where misplaced emphasis on science frustrates policy development and problem solving. Here is a “snip,” [hastily transcribed from audio, beginning at 12:57]:

More, better, new science cannot provide objective answers to value-based questions. Science is actually pretty good at helping us understand problems, but is really not so good at helping us understand solutions to those problems. … Politics is the realm where we shape and share our collective values as a society. And politics requires different forms of knowledge, including local knowledge and public preferences. …

Knowledge like “public preferences” and “local knowledge” are often dismissed outright when we talk about environmental issues because they are seen as flawed in some fundamental way. They are seen as biased or not objective or not neutral. In that type of framing science is actually seen to be a more perfect form of knowledge … seen as … less biased or more objective or more neutral. … And under that type of framing [science] is a preferred or privileged form of knowledge in environmental decision-making. … The question is, Should it be that way?

Under that type of framing politics is really vilified. It is seen as a dirty, spin-filled, nasty practice full of compromise and collaboration in the absolute worst sense of those words. And because it is portrayed that way or framed that way it is easy to dismiss these other forms of knowledge….We are sort of left with having science to fill this gap. … But the question is, Should it be that way? …

Science can’t tell us what to do as individuals or as a collective society in the face of a changing climate. We have to make those hard decisions and engage in that debate collectively. And yet we continuously look to science to provide those answers for us. So the question again is, Why? Why do we do that? …

We continue to place these expectations on science—that science really cannot meet. And in doing so we really do an enormous disservice to science. …What we really need to do is to elevate the political dialogue in our society and to take the expectations on science down a little bit. …

We could continue to perpetuate the [three science myths above]. … And in doing so we do an enormous disservice to science … Or, the alternative vision is to acknowledge what those myths are and to embrace politics and the really constructive role it can potentially play for us. And in doing so what we could do is accept what science can do and what its strengths are, as well as what local knowledge can do for us, as well as what public preferences can do for us. And in leveraging all three of those knowledge types perhaps get better purchase on some of these contested claims in the environmental arena. Because the challenges we face in our environmental arena are so wide and so challenging we need all the help that we possibly can get.

Announcing Two New NCFP Roadless Features

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Conveniently for the NCFP reader, we have our own resident roadless geek (me!). A new act in Roadless Rule Theater opened last week with the beginning of a comment period on the proposed 2011 Colorado Roadless Rule. In my view, the first step of reaching mutual understanding is to jointly examine underlying facts. In this spirit, I will introduce two new features:

1) Roadless Fact Check- where I will examine claims made by various individuals and press stories.

2) A q&a opportunity called “Ask a Roadless Geek” where I will do my best to answer your questions. Send them to [email protected]. If you don’t feel comfortable using your name, you can use any pseudonym you’d like, e.g. “Perplexed by Obscure Policy” or “Somnolescent Due to Apparently Endless Wrangling”.

These two efforts are supplanting the previous “Roadless Media Watch” that showed up on the right hand column.

Stay tuned for the first edition of Roadless Fact Check…

Biomass Carbon Accounting and Other Reports of Interest from the University of Idaho Policy Analysis Group

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A link to this report showed up in my inbox a while back.

#31. Accounting for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Wood Bioenergy. Jay O’Laughlin (September 2010).

The utilization of woody biomass to produce energy is accompanied by concerns about sustainable forest management and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from burning biomass. The conversion, or potential conversion, of land from native forest to biofuel crops has led to reconsideration of emissions accounting practices. This report critiques and responds to the Biomass Sustainability and Carbon Policy Study commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources and conducted by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. This report is designed to respond to a call for information by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as it reconsiders how GHG emissions from biomass combustion should be treated under its regulatory
responsibilities. Full report in PDF format.

Some previous posts on this blog on the Manomet study and about biomass are here and here.

But the University of Idaho Policy Analysis Group has developed a variety of interesting papers on other topics.
Check out their other studies here and here.

Fixing the Rule: An Adaptive Governance Roadmap

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If adaptive governance, i.e. adaptive management applied to public lands, might help move beyond ongoing forest wars, how might the Draft NFMA Rule (pdf) be improved toward adaptive governance? This post outlines my ideas for improving the rule. Ultimately, I’d like to see us vet this proposal when more fully developed, against the Forest Service’s Draft Planning Rule, Andy Stahl’s KISS Rule, and any other proposals that may be floating about. But before I put pen to paper, I’d like to get feedback on my ideas. Here is how I propose to “fix” the rule:

Background Notions

  • No matter what NFMA rule is put in play, it needs to be written by lawyers. Court challenges will not cease no matter what rule is in force.

  • I like the idea of adaptive governance, but also believe that adaptive management as applied to public problems is the same thing. I do not have a strong preference for which words, “adaptive governance” or “adaptive management” are used to described the process. I will use “adaptive management” here. There are many pathways that might be taken to adopt an adaptive governance approach to management. It may be that embedding adaptive governance into the NFMA rule is not the best path forward. I’m willing to listen to other possible pathways, and even alternatives to any adaptive governance pathway. But I still believe that the Draft Planning rule fails as adaptive management, and can not provide a useful path forward.

Reframing/Rewriting the NFMA Rule

  • Rewrite the “Purpose and Applicability” (219.1) (and also the “Summary” and “Overview” in the Federal Register run-up to the rule) to include reasons for a move away from narrowly framed forest planning and toward broader public engagement to address forest management’s wicked problems. Include a discussion of decision containers [See, this note] and how the public needs to help natural resource managers frame discussions/resolutions, including scope and scale. Allow wicked problem discussions/resolutions to well-up to appropriately sized containers so that people don’t have to grapple with policy at local scales, where such does not makes sense. Include “all lands” decision-making where and when appropriate, allowing for responsible officials to include but not be limited to Forest Service officials.

  • Define adaptive management, then do a near “global replace” of “planning” with “adaptive management.” A beginning point for a definition of adaptive management might be:

    [Adaptive Management]: linking a broad range of actors at multiple scales to deal with the interrelated dynamics of resources and ecosystems, management systems and social systems, as well as uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise. Adaptive governance focuses on experimentation and learning, and it brings together research on institutions and organizations for collaboration, collective action, and conflict resolution in relation to natural resource and ecosystem management. The essential role of individuals needs to be recognized in this context (e.g., leadership, trust building, vision, and meaning); their social relations (e.g., actor groups, knowledge systems, social memory) and social networks serve as the web that tie together the adaptive governance system. It has cross-level and cross-scale activities and includes governmental policies that frame creativity.

    From “Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems”, Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2005. 30:441-473 (pdf)

  • Keep “forest plan,” but define as suggested by the Clinton era Committee of Scientists: “A loose-leaf notebook that contains all of the policy directions, strategies, and implementation proposals from decisions that have been made at all levels of the planning process. It is the official repository of decisions big and small that have been made and reviewed in the strategic and landscape-level planning processes.”

  • Keep the tie to the FS Strategic Plan, but add more responsibility at the Chief’s office to make sure that adaptive management is real—a cultural change, more than just words—and something that “the Forest Service does”, not something delegated to a single staff group like “planning” or “ecosystem management.” In short, position most responsibility for RPA/NFMA to the Chief and/or Secretary of Agriculture.

  • Replace “three levels of planning” (219.2) with “multiple levels of adaptive management assessment, monitoring, and decision-making.” Make sure that “all lands” assessment, monitoring, and decision-making, done in concert with appropriate collaborators is the logical choice when such makes sense. [See, Why Three Planning Levels?]

  • Keep the idea of “standards and guidelines” (219.7) but make the development and revision of both “situational” at appropriate scope and scale. The idea is that most would be developed at levels other than a “national forest.” Still, forest supervisors would be charged to show how such standards apply to decisions they make. Similarly for assessment and monitoring information, as well as for policy decisions and legal authorities.

  • Add the idea of a “forest niche,” that would be reviewed publicly at, say, five-year intervals. [See, A Forest Service for the 21st Century Who Are We? to better understand niche idea for the Forest Service as a whole.]

  • Abandon the idea of “desired conditions,” instead allow for simple “scenario planning” that would embrace the idea of emergent unfolding future as opposed to managing toward a desired future. Note that this idea interfaces with the idea of “niches” above and does not preclude working toward betterment. It just moves the “betterment” debate into the policy arena and away form the land planning arena. [See: Whose Desire? What Future? Why?]

  • For specific requirements of NFMA law, craft wording to require the WO (and it’s bevy of legal counselors) to find means to comply with said requirements as expeditiously as possible at scale and scope as close to “national” as possible. For example, the requirement for an Allowable Sale Quantity might be set nationally at zero, with provision that all timber volume flowing from the national forests be determined via adaptive management and in the context of, say “ecosystem stewardship contracting,” or equivalent internal process.

Followup

I still intend to work up a complete rewrite of what I’ll call a “Draft NFMA Rule” soon. But I would like your feedback on these ideas now.

I have been chatting with a friend about the “Pre-Decisional Administrative Review Process” (219.50-59). We believe that if collaboration were much improved and allowed for multi-scale adaptive governance, the whole idea of “pre-decisional review” makes no sense, and perchance neither does any “appeal process.”

Finally, I may probably won’t include language relative to the “species diversity” provisions from NFMA. That will no doubt be the most fought-over part of the rule. Still, I maintain that the adaptive management fight is equally important. In my framing, species diversity is one of the items that the WO and its bevy of legal counselors ought to deal with. In all such “dealing” I believe that such policy review/policy revision ought to begin early, even perchance predating the adoption of a NFMA rule. Why the Forest Service runs so much of its policy development through “NFMA forest planning” remains a mystery to me.

NY Times on Gas vs. Coal

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Kevin Maloney for the NYT

Just when we were discussing the same topic…

here’s a link to a NY Times story

But the cleanliness of natural gas is largely based on its lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned. It emits roughly half the amount of carbon dioxide as coal and about 30 percent that of oil.

Less clear, largely because no one has bothered to look, are the emissions over its entire production life cycle — that is, from the moment a well is plumbed to the point at which the gas is used.

Methane leaks have long been a concern because while methane dissipates in the atmosphere more quickly than carbon dioxide, it is far more efficient at trapping heat. Recent evidence has suggested that the amount of leakage has been underestimated. A report in January by the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, for example, noted that the Environmental Protection Agency had recently doubled its estimates for the amount of methane that is vented or lost from natural gas distribution lines.

Note that the SAF scientist letter mentioned in this post did mention methane associated with natural gas and coal.

Forest Biomass Carbon- Letter vs. Letter

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David Beebe said, in a comment here on this previous post:

“Perhaps vested interests aren’t the best sole source for getting to the heart of the science on this matter without at least including contrasting conclusions coming from perhaps more objective sources?

For instance, http://216.250.243.12/90scientistsletter.pdf”

Now I know some but not many of these “vested interests”. In fact, Jim Burchfield has posted on this blog. As far as I know, all scientists have vested interests in getting research funds. And if you know a lot about something, (say a bird species), you tend to think they are pretty important; hence you are never very objective. Maybe we ought to give up the mythology of the objective scientist and just slog through the claims and counterclaims using logic and practitioner knowledge and see how far we get.

So let’s examine the knowledge claims in this letter.

1. Replacement of fossil fuels with bioenergy does not directly stop carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes or smokestacks. Although fossil fuel emissions are reduced or eliminated, the combustion of biomass replaces fossil emissions with its own emissions (which may even be higher per unit of energy because of the lower energy to carbon ratio of biomass). Agreed.

2. Bioenergy can reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide if land and plants are managed to take up additional carbon dioxide beyond what they would absorb without bioenergy
This isn’t the clearest statement. Plants will grow and absorb carbon. If the previous plants are removed and used for bioenergy, new plants will grow and absorb carbon equivalent to that released when the previous plants are burned. Are we saying the same thing here? Not sure.

3. Alternatively, bioenergy can use some vegetative residues that would otherwise decompose and release carbon to the atmosphere rapidly. I would add possibly “even more rapidly through fires.”
4. Whether land and plants sequester additional carbon to offset emissions from burning the biomass depends on changes both in the rates of plant growth and in the carbon storage in plants and soils. OK.

6. For example, planting fast-growing energy crops on otherwise unproductive land leads to additional carbon absorption by plants that offsets emissions from their use for energy without displacing carbon storage in plants and soils. Agreed but not many acres around that are unproductive but would also grow energy crops.

7. On the other hand, clearing or cutting forests for energy, either to burn trees directly in power plants or to replace forests with bioenergy crops, has the net effect of releasing otherwise sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, just like the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

The other letter did not talk about replacing forests with bioenergy crops, or clearing forests. If it is thinning, that carbon would be released anyway when the suppressed trees ultimately die. I am not following this logic for thinnings, or for dead trees. If we take dead trees, they are replacing fossil fuels and the place they vacated will be sequestering carbon. By getting the dead guys out, they are also opening places for new plants to re-sequester faster.

These seem to be the main questions:

1. What biomass are you taking off the acres?
2. What would happen to the carbon if you didn’t remove some biomass?
3. What would happen to the carbon if you removed the biomass but didn’t use it for energy?
3. What is the difference if you did use it for bioenergy?

Let’s use an example.

You are doing a thinning in ponderosa pine to “restore to HRV” and/or for fuels reduction.
You can use the trees for energy to replace fossil fuels OR you can put them into wood products OR you can pile them and burn them.

If you put them into wood products, the carbon will be released more slowly than in the woods. But you would be using the gas for heavy equipment and transportation and electricity (coal?) at the mill, more transportation to the Home Depot, etc. However, at the Home Depot it would replace boards from Canada, which might presumably have the same gas to extract from the woods, maybe hydro for western mills (don’t know) and possibly more transportation.

If you put the trees into bioenergy, you would still have to haul somewhere or chip and haul. But should this be compared to, say, extracting natural gas? There seems to be plenty of hauling associated with that, including heavy equipment drilling, compressors, etc. Or our old friend coal. Say, on an open mine there are huge pieces of equipment moving overburden and coal around (see photo above) (compared to how much for a skidder per energy unit) , and it goes on a train to the power plant, if you are in Wyoming, at least.

In fact, the more you think about this (in our region, we are being litigated on both coal and natural gas impacts currently, but not bioenergy) the more it makes sense to not consider carbon any differently from any other environmental impact.

It makes sense to me to line them all up (carbon, particulates, development impacts, etc.) and then make the judgment about what is the best energy source .

A carbon-o-centric view of energy sources might be good for some things (like setting up carbon trading), but not so good for others (deciding on the least expensive, and impactful energy technology that helps put jobs in rural America, and lets us control our own energy destiny).

Twenty Years of Forest Blogging

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It was 1989 and the “timber wars” were raging. Having failed to gain voice on any important issues in the Forest Service via traditional channels, a few of us joined with Jeff Debonis to form a non-profit called the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (AFSEEE, later FSEEE). We adopted a three-part mission: to speak up as concerned citizens, to organize, and to protect whistleblowers. Not long thereafter, I began to blog as a Forest Service employee on government time. Not a blog, really, but an email list, that I later named Eco-Watch. I simply passed along forest policy-relevant materials to a rather large email list. By 1992 I began to compile a feedback list of comments and “comments on comments,” that I passed along via my mailing list. The list caused quite a stir in the Forest Service Intermountain Region leadership team, and maybe “higher up.”

Eco-Watch and I somehow managed to be a topic of conversation at many a Regional Leadership Team meeting. Interestingly, the “leadership team” was pretty much split, with a lot of the members supporting my attempt to open up communication via email. Deputy Regional Forester Bob Joslin once told me, paraphrasing: “If [the Regional Forester] mentions your stuff once more time, the next message is going to come from my inbox. … I don’t agree with all you write, but do believe that we [the Forest Service] need to discuss these things.”

I remember numerous tense meetings with my boss, the Regional Planning Director, about feathers that were being ruffled, not only by my emails, but also by my being on the board of that nonprofit organization FSEEE. It got worse once I became president of FSEEE’s board. I once told our Planning Director that if the Regional Forester had a problem with my being a part of FSEEE, I would gladly have lunch with him to discuss it—but that I did not talk about my FSEEE role at work since it was an exercise in free speech as a citizen, not as a public employee. As FSEEE board members and Forest Service employees we knew we were walking a fine line with the FSEEE stuff. Another time I was asked to talk to our Director of Information Systems about the email list. So I did, and he told me that the Forest Service email system had been set up for multi-way communications (after a proposal for top-down communications had been batted about, then batted down by either the Department of Ag or the Forest Service). He also told me he was not going to be a “DG cop” [the DG was then the Forest Service’s computing platform]. He also wanted to know more about FSEEE. He was curious about our daring venture.

Eco-Watch
By 1992, I began to send out follow-up comments and “comments on comments” to my email lists. Eco-Watch was born. The rough and rocky road that connected me to both the Forest Service and FSEEE was paved, in part by my Listserv. And finally near the end of the FSEEE-friendly Clinton Administration, I got approval to take Eco-Watch to the next phase, making it into a Forest Service-blessed Policy Dialogues Forum, via Hypernews. With Mark Garland’s help we put all my email listings on the internet, along with emergent policy dialogue threads. The tracks of this era still reside on the Forest Service servers, here, with numerous broken hyperlinks. Sadly, all the policy dialogue threads are lost, although I did manage to salvage most of them and have them on my own Forest Policy site as Eco-Watch [retaining much of the character of the old site, but linking to “discussion threads” of the past, rather than to ongoing discussion forums]. During this same era we tried to get Mark Garland’s Forest Service in the News to be a partnership between FSEEE and the Forest Service, even a three-way partnership adding in a timber industry group. That discussion was a non-starter. Mark continues to this day with his Forest Service in the News, hosted by FSEEE.

Eco-Watch Policy Dialogues Forum ran from 1999 until its demise in the Spring of 2005—right in the middle of the Bush/Cheney Administration War Games /Homeland Security—when the chant was “If you are not with us. You are against us.”

Why did the Forest Service drop its love affair with Hypernews? I don’t know, but suspect it had to do more with Homeland Security paranoia, than with FS internal politics. But maybe it was simple paranoia over Internet viruses, etc. All I know is that one day the forums were dead, and so too with all other forums that were being hosted on Forest Service Hypernews software. My inquiries into the matter led me to an odd dead end—something like, “It was just too hard to maintain the software.” I still believe that similar software powers many internet forums today, and maybe even Wiki sites. But I let it go. After all, we were at war in the wake of the Sept. 2001 World Trade Center bombings.

Forest Policy – Forest Practice
Early in 2005 I threw together a real blog, Forest Policy–Forest Practice, subtitled ‘A communities of practice weblog.’ My goal was to emulate what others had done by then, in other fields far from natural resources—to engage practitioners in policy/practice dialogues. I reached out to a few old friends and let it fly, this time on my own dime and on servers that couldn’t be shut down by FS bureaucrats, whether by design or by neglect.

We started out OK, but never got it up to steam—just couldn’t muster the participation needed to make it a strong platform for “voice.” Maybe it was me, being my usual flaky self, not getting anything “real” going. But I think not. I think that it was just too new, and some of the “academic” friends I courted were too busy with traditional meetings, publications, trade associations, etc. to be bothered with blogs. Oddly, there are still very few, maybe only one, active discussion blogs on forest policy.

A few of us did kept the discussion alive for several years, but it just wasn’t the “in your face” immediate gratification that the email list or the Hypernews forums had been. I tried a few other things, like a blog tied to Adaptive Forest Management, a theme I continue talking about today. On another blog I chronicled the rise and fall of what I like to call “Planning cast up as Environmental Management Systems” or “EMS cast up as Planning.” Among other things I unveiled in my Forest Environmental Systems blog was a clever little powerpoint about why bureaucrats don’t want to “mess with anything”. Policy wonk Ron Brunner told me that it was the best example ever of why bureaucracies can’t change. The EMS/Planning love affair was short-lived, and the blog only ran for about a year.

A New Century of Forest Planning
Today a few of us are blogging forestry and forest policy, under the guise of “forest planning” here. It will prove interesting to see if/when the Forest Service joins other agencies that allow/encourage many blogs and wikis, by individuals or groups. But it doesn’t seem likely just now.

——————————-
I continue to cross-walk to my earlier blogs, but realize that they are pretty much just a place where I store stuff. I also continue to blog matters at the confluence of complex systems, wicked problems, politics, finance, economics, and ecology at Ecology and Economics: a cross-disciplinary conversation and Economic Dreams-Economic Nightmares. Mostly I just dabble at the edges, and continue to hope that more folks will jump in to re-frame politics, science, and public administration in the US and around the world.

Biomass and Carbon Accounting- Two Letters and a Powerpoint

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Found these on the Society of American Foresters Policy website here. First, there’s a link to a powerpoint by Al Lucier on biomass and carbon.

Then there are two letters to the House and Senate, signed by a group of scientists, including this quote:

A consortium of research institutions has, over the last decade, developed life cycle measures of all inputs and all outputs associated with the ways that we use wood: a thorough environmental footprint of not just managing the forest, but harvesting, transportation, producing products or biofuels, buildings or other products, maintenance and their ultimate disposal. 4 Results of this research are clear. When looking across the carbon life cycle, biomass burning does produce some fossil fuel emissions from harvesting, transportation, feedstock preparation and processing. These impacts, however, are substantially more than offset by eliminating the emissions from using a fossil fuel. Sustainable removals of biomass feedstocks used for energy produce a reduction in carbon emissions year after year through a reduction in fossil fuel emissions far greater than all of the emissions from feedstock collection and processing. When wood removals are used to produce both renewable materials as well as bio-energy, the carbon stored in forest products continues to grow year after year, more than off-setting any processing emissions while at the same time permanently substituting for fossil fuel intensive materials displacing their emissions.

Finally, biomass power facilities generally contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gases beyond just the displacement of fossil fuels. The use of forest fuels in a modern boiler also eliminates the methane (CH4) emissions from incomplete oxidation following open burning, land filling, or decomposition which occurs in the absence of a higher and better use for this material. Methane is a 25 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. In contrast, the mining of coal and exploration for oil and gas release significant amounts of methane and other harmful pollutants into the environment. Any modeling to examine the impact of carbon-based fuel sources must account for all of these impacts.

Now, think about the scientists who signed this letter and the analytical suggestions in the Angora lawsuit for NEPA. Perhaps lawsuits, as well as scientific papers, would be best informed by a vigorous public debate over knowledge claims.

Angora Restoration- Much Ado About Relatively Little

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Watershed Tour of Angora Fire (photo by Steven McQuinn)

Today this story was in the AP “Burned forest value central to Tahoe logging fight.”

So far, I have seen it in a Bellingham Washington paper and the San Jose Mercury News. I wonder about the timing, as the lawsuit was filed in February (11th?) as per this press release.

As with all vegetation management lawsuits, I hunted around to get the acreage of the project. It was a bit hard to tell from the article since it seemed to be focused on “why fire is good” but not so much on “why whatever the project is proposing is bad.”

I found the EA and DN here, and the appeals here.
I decided to take a look at the John Muir Project appeal decision since those folks were interviewed in the AP story. Here is what that appeal decision says about the project (my apologies for the quality of Adobe to blog conversion):

Alternative 2 includes activities on approximately 1,416 acres of the approximately 2,700 acres on National Forest System lands. The modification included:

Hand thinning and piling/burning will be used instead of aerial logging approximately
447 acres where slopes are over 30%.

The prescription will change in Units 1, 3, 6, 8 and 11 to remove 16 inches and less live
trees and 20 inches and less dead standing and downed trees (See final EA Figure 2-2).
Piles would primarily include woody material 14 inches and less. The portion of tree
boles over 14 inches would be left on the ground.

Alternative 2, as modified, includes the following activities:
Fuel removal of standing dead and downed wood and thinning of live trees on
approximately 1,411 acres.
Within the 1,411 acres:
o 6 acres of conifer removal for aspen stand enhancement;
o approximately 77 acres of treatment proposed in wildlife snag zones (39 acres in
SEZ; 38 ac Subdivision);
o 13 acres of conifer removal for meadow restoration/aspen enhancement in the
Gardner Mountain meadow.

A ground-based logging system on up to 964 acres (including 13 acres of Cut-to-Length
mechanical thinning in Gardner Mountain Meadow) located in areas with slopes under
30%.
New construction of new roads (up to 7.7 miles) and landings to facilitate fuel removal.
Reconstruction or opening of existing roads, trails, and landings to facilitate fuel removal.
Decommissioning/restoring 1.9 miles of road and 16.7 miles of trail.
Existing and new landings and staging areas would be utilized to facilitate removal of
fuels for ground-based operations.
Reconstruction of 1,200 feet of Angora Creek.
Treatment of the following noxious weeds: bull thistle, field bindweed, St. John‘s wort,
tall whitetop, and oxeye daisy.

But here’s my favorite appeal point..(I couldn’t easily find the appeal itself, so I am assuming that the appeal point was accurately summarized; if anyone can point me to a copy of the appeal, I will post it here.)

Contention A: The CO2 emissions from the Angora project will have a significant impact on climate change. (Appeal #10-05-00-0102-A215, pp. 12-13)

I’m hoping that something got lost in translation between the appeal and the appeal decision.

Will Anyone Miss NFMA Planning?

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At midnight tonight, NFMA planning ceases to exist. All forest planners will be furloughed. No more collaborations, assessments, EIS writing, model-building, monitoring, or map-making. Will the sun still rise on Monday morning without NFMA planning? Will the deer still browse and the birds still sing? Will trees still grow, die, burn, and rot without planning to guide them?

Tune in next week to find out.