The Board of Cranks Proposal

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Andy Stahl has pointed out some issues around FS morale here.

But “what specific actions can be done to improve it?”, is the question at hand. The following is my contribution to the discussion. Please feel free to share your ideas.

To non- FS folks- I am aware that some of the irritations of modern organizational and technological life transcend the FS and even the government, e.g. “centralized services,” “help desks”, “self-service.”

Here is the proposal.

One cause of poor morale is a seemingly endless barrage of new requirements- usually with an unrealistic timeframe. Employees can’t understand why the new requirement is needed or imposed. One example is the new requirement to get two layers of approval plus ASC to approve requests to exceed the per diem rate, where it seems like for many years the supervisor was enough approval.

To improve morale, in my view, before a new requirement (that requires more time for employees to complete) is introduced, the new requirement would have to pass before the Board of Cranks. The Cranks would be volunteers but would also have a staff of 10 up and coming professionals, energetic, creative, and technically knowledgeable. This would then cost approximately $1,000,000 a year but be inestimably valuable in terms of morale. These would be called the Crankstaff and they would be virtual positions expected last two to three years. They would be encouraged to talk to districts and forests and conduct time trials when comparisons of alternative approaches need to be tested.

The Board of Cranks would review:
1) The necessity of a new requirement.
Why is it required? By whom? What has changed for this new requirement to be necessary?
Cranks would question the necessity. If they found it was necessary, they would move on to..
2) Is there an easier way to meet the need that led to the requirement?
a. How do the top three agencies on the morale survey handle the requirement?
b. How do other USDA agencies and BLM handle the requirement?
c. Post the requirement on a Cranks.fs.fed blog and give a substantial cash award to an individual who finds a better way to do it (based on a percentage of the costs saved agency- wide from the costs of the original “new requirement” proposal – not less than $1 K.)

Cranks would select the most cost-effective solution and post all the background information they generated on a website- say, Cranks.fs.gov. No letter with new requirements would be allowed to go out without a link to the background at the Cranksite. That way when people found out about a new requirement, they would understand why it was instituted and how hard our own folks had tried to minimize the hassle. At least, we would be no worse than other feds.

Cranks would determine the lead time for new requirements. For example, for performance evaluations, Cranks might determine that four months before the evaluations are due would be a minimal time frame for changes to the process- if changes show up after that, they can wait until next year.

Even after the new requirement is in place, there would be a specific comment section on the Cranksite blog for each requirement- for people to share their frustrations and creative ideas for minimizing the impact. The Crankstaff would monitor these sites and make recommendations to the Board of Cranks for changing the system when good new ideas were proposed.

Each month, the Chief would sit down with the Deputy Chief for Operations and the CIO (where appropriate) and the elected Chair of the Board of Cranks and review new requirements and their progress. If the Board recommended a change to a new requirement, the Deputy Chief would have to defend the new requirement to the Chief.

That’s just one idea. What’s your idea for improving FS morale?

White Pass Expansion

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Did it really take 33 years? Here’s a blog piece by Ron Judd in the Seattle Times.

But because it was, technically, a sacrifice of a small piece of wilderness for ostensibly political purposes, the whole thing obviously still grates like a sharp rock in the hiking boots to at least some enviros, who see it as a black/white, corporate profit/vs. conservation matter. The Sierra Club’s Mark Lawler cited it immediately last week when I asked him how the White Pass expansion could legitimately be called a “major disaster,” as he suggested.

I get the emotions; conservation is an emotional issue to many Northwesterners, and for that we should all be grateful. I also appreciated attorney David Bahr’s important perspective — that important principles were maintained in the legal fight. Precedents from the case affected other litigation. But in this case, a bit of literal forest-for-the-trees logic should have come into play long, long ago.

It’s too late now, of course. But not for lessons learned. And one is that the environmental movement in this case would have been better served by focusing on its successes — celebrating the amazing lands preserved as wilderness for the small price of allowing a relatively green public use of a small, federal-highway-bordered parcel near an existing ski area — than by digging in for a legal battle which, over the years, increasingly smacked of crying wolf, if not vengeance.

With all that perspective knocking around in my brain, I made a visit to White last week and quickly fell in love with the new ski terrain on Hogback. It’s truly beautiful. Having hiked there on occasion in the summer, I realize it was truly beautiful as wilderness, as well (aside from the nearly lethal waves of mosquitoes; but that’s another story). But physical changes to the place indeed are minimal. It seems to me to be a shining example of limited development done correctly. And that became a focus of my piece.

Ranger Sue Ranger of the Naches Ranger District is careful not to criticize opponents of the project. They’re all constituents, as well, with a claim to proper use of public land. But as someone involved in the case for much of its history, she truly believes the best public use was accomplished.

She is one of those old-fashioned people (I count myself among them) who believe that environmental protection is essential — but not to the point that it prevents citizens from using public lands in low-impact ways, thereby creating a lasting political constituency for their protection from more egregious uses.

Most conservationists agree with that. The question, in this case, is whether alpine skiing and snowboarding is a low-impact use.

You an argue it both ways. And you should. I’ll probably even ponder it all over again myself, next time I’m at White Pass, making some turns up top and feeling fortunate to partake in a clean, green use my federal government decided — finally — to allow.

Judge Upholds Idaho Roadless Rule

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Here’s the decision.

Here’s a link to an Idaho Stateman story.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, in a decision dated Jan. 29, ruled in favor of the U.S. Forest Service against the Wilderness Society and other environmental groups.

The decision upholds the Idaho roadless rule that Sen. Jim Risch negotated when he was governor. It means the Idaho roadless rule will remain in place, no matter what happens to the areas in other states.

The rule, which set up a unique system to protect nearly 9 million acres of roadless land in Idaho, had conservation groups divided. Trout Unlimited and the Idaho Conservation League are on the state’s side. The Wilderness Society, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and others are opposed.

The Obama administration, the state of Idaho, the Kootenai Tribe, counties and the Idaho Mining Association defend the decision.

More as info trickles in…

Adventures with the Biochar People

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The State of Colorado convened an interesting meeting to discuss biochar. For those of you unfamiliar with it, here’s the Wikipedia article and here is another general and historic description of its use.

The group included a variety of scientists, from the Forest Service, ARS, and CSU; and a variety of people with interests in development of biochar products and markets. There’s a natural connection in Colorado between the ever-present bug killed trees, and restoring the soils of abandoned mines. Not only that, biochar may be valuable for agricultural soils in Colorado. What was interesting to me was how much this meeting was not the usual suspects talking about our usual stuff. The connection to agriculture was strong- definitely an “all lands” approach. We had people talk about international aspects of food security, and US soil loss; we had people who were starting businesses to use different kinds of waste; we had people interested in renewable energy. The Front Range of Colorado is a hotbed of interest in renewable energy- we have DOE’s National Renewable Energy Lab, the Colorado School of Mines, the University of Colorado and Colorado State.

Someone even asked “what kind of competition is there for feedstock from dead pine trees?”. That’s how novel our issues are to these folks. The great thing about this dialogue is that the technology is at such an early stage that its development can be guided by environmental concerns. You don’t like big plants because you are afraid that the FS will be pressured to cut extra trees? Well, we can have small mobile equipment that can cluster when large amounts of dead trees are available, and then migrate somewhere else.

There appear to be extra dead trees sitting around from fuel and hazard tree treatments. No one is arguing (at least that I have heard) that they all must be burnt in place for environmental reasons. Abandoned mines and agricultural soils are previously impacted and currently managed by humans, so they are not subject to the same kinds of concerns that people might have for previously unimpacted soils of native forests.

It’s pretty obvious to Coloradans that using some of our dead lodgepole would be a good idea; renewable energy is a good idea; and sequestering carbon and helping soil is a good idea. The State level is a handy scale to organize, as there is social and political coherence- and groups of people who are used to working with each other on a variety of issues. It was invigorating to see a group of people excited about the opportunities to do good and make a living, and for us all to talk about what we can contribute to this goal.

It’s Baaack.. The Beetle-Fire-Science Fracas!

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Photo by Bob Berwyn.
After some internet searching, couldn’t find more than this AP story, but I’m sure we can find the journal article itself in time.

Study ties pine beetle to severe Wash. wildfires

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

YAKIMA, Wash. — A new study mapping the mountain pine beetle outbreak in north-central Washington shows that infested areas were more likely to experience larger, more destructive forest fires.

The study, which was a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Forest Service, aimed to detect bark beetle infestations and to evaluate the link between them and forest fires in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

Satellite data showed regions of the forest experiencing water and vegetation stress, and analysis tied these regions to beetle infestations. Additional review showed highly infested areas that subsequently burned had more intense forest fires than areas without infestations.

The forest has experienced severe wildfires in recent years, including the Tripod Fire, which burned on more than 273 square miles.

Now, I have argued that the whole “more/worse fires” controversy isn’t particularly relevant to real-world management decisions, as most bark beetle funding (in lodgepole country) is used on hazard trees and making defensible space around communities. But I could be looking at the world through dead lodgepole-colored glasses. However, every new journal article seems to fan the flames of controversy so here goes..

You can find more photos by Bob Berwyn (and other good information) here at the Summit County Voice.

Recreation and the Planning Rule- New West Story

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Is Recreation in the Rockies Becoming a Bigger Forest Service Priority?
Ski resorts, outfitters and others in the recreation industry want the U.S. Forest Service to think about outdoor sports enthusiasts in the same way they think about species and habitat. Will the Forest Service listen? by Steve Bunk

This story is a description of the planning rule development and the interaction with people interested in recreation.
Well worth a read. Here’s a quote.

Seven leaders of the groups met with Tidwell later that month, including Lyle Laverty, CEO of the National Association of Gateway Communities, headquartered in Denver. Laverty’s job history includes Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, director of Colorado State Parks, and associate deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

He said the letter to Tidwell and the subsequent meeting with him were sparked by a Forest Service document issued during last year’s development of the planning rule. Addressing input received by the agency concerning the new rule, the document said, “Many noted that the Forest Service does not have much ability to influence economies, and should focus instead on the land management business it knows.”

“That stimulated a lot of angst,” said Laverty. During about 38 years working for the Forest Service, he never had heard anyone in the agency question its importance in influencing economies, he said.
For years, a notion has been brewing in the agency that it should leave the planning for recreational uses of national forests up to local and regional officials, Laverty said. “My personal sense is that this didn’t just happen. It’s a trend we’ve observed, starting back in the early 1990s.”

Derrick Crandall, president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Recreation Coalition (ARC), which organized the letter to Tidwell, suggested that other aspects of Forest Service work are trendier than planning for recreation. Global planning issues, such as climate change and biodiversity, “have a lot of cachet within the beltway circle,” he said.
Recreation is a key use of national forests under various federal laws, but the agency’s written materials that outlined the core concepts of the upcoming plan did not include it, he noted. “We did find it very serious that the number one benefit of national forests—camping, hiking, fishing, skiing, and other recreational activities—wasn’t even represented.”
Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado, which is the leading trade group for ski resort owners and operators, also attended the meeting with Tidwell.

“We all know that recreation, particularly in the 11 western states … plays a huge part in economies,” he said. “The issue of the agency’s ability to manage recreation is a topic that we want to continue to ensure will be addressed.”
The lobby’s emphasis on that topic bore further fruit last November, when 41 House of Representatives members wrote to Tidwell in support of recreational opportunities in national forests, including Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz of Utah, Doug Lamborn of Colorado, Denny Rehberg of Montana, Mike Coffman of Colorado and Mike Simpson of Idaho. Simpson is chairman of the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Committee, which overseas Forest Service funding.

“We were very interested to see the dramatic interest of the congressmen in this issue, and we think that’s probably been very helpful, also,” Crandall said.

In a recently updated list of core concepts for the planning rule, recreation now holds equal place with four other concepts: people and the environment, climate change, watershed health, and resilience, the latter of which is defined as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.”
In terms of inviting public input, the process of developing the new planning rule has been impressive. More than 40 public meetings were held in 2010, and more than 26,000 written comments were received, plus many informal comments on the agency website devoted to the rule.

Even so, Laverty thinks that a deeper change might have been instigated by the recreational lobby’s involvement in developing the new planning rule. He said the traditional model of collaboration with interest groups is shaped like a wheel, with the Forest Service at the hub. That process involves one-on-one dealings between the agency and each interest group, with the Forest Service reviewing comments received.

The new model, which he and others suggested to Tidwell, is a circle with a number of nodes on it, one of which is the Forest Service. The others include representatives of county and city governments, wildlife management, ATV use, hunting, and numerous other special interest groups. Final decision-making power still resides with the Forest Service, but all the nodes interact with each other.

“It’s a table of trust,” Laverty said. “You have to take off your stripes and sleeves and leave your gun at the door when you come to the table.”

In the comments, Matthew Koehler linked to a couple of articles. I thought this one from 1997 was particularly interesting. It’s about Lyle coming to Denver to be Regional Forester for the Rocky Mountain Region.

Outdoor enthusiasts like Laverty used to be seen as friends of the environment, but conservation groups increasingly contend that the growing demand for outdoor recreation is wreaking havoc on national forests. They argue that ski-resort construction, off-road vehicles and mountain bikers not only drive reclusive animals out of their natural habitats, but also create trails that irreversibly damage soil and plants. “There’s no shortage of favor for the Forest Service from ski resorts and the like,” says Rocky Smith of the Colorado Environmental Coalition. “Sometimes it seems like the Forest Service is acting as an agent for the ski areas, especially since the Forest Service has been promoting this sort of industrial-strength recreation.”

Colorado environmentalists are already firing warning shots at Laverty, sending letters of concern and other documents to his D.C. office.

“I don’t have a problem with ski resorts or recreational trails,” says Jasper Carlton, “but we’re afraid that Laverty is going to allow all-out development and the forests won’t tolerate it.”

McClellan points to the impact caused by the 100,000 mountain bikers she estimates visited Vail last summer.

“The mountain bike is dangerous,” she says, “because of its potential to get people further into undisturbed backcountry–the last refuge for reclusive species like the lynx and wolverine. Where a hiker can maybe get ten miles into the backcountry, a biker can get forty and an off-road vehicle one hundred. When you throw in skiing, the result is a year-round gridlock of recreation, which is a greater threat to our lands than logging ever was. Twenty years from now, forests harvested for timber will have grown back, but a trail will always be there.

“If this kind of proliferation continues, which it looks like it will when Laverty gets out here, I predict that we’ll have uniform saturation [of Forest Service land] within two decades.”

It’s 14 years out.. I wonder how we are doing with the “saturation” idea?

The “Common Interest” Approach: Useful for Federal Lands Issues?

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Jim Fenwood and I ran into Keith Allred when he taught us at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. During his lectures, Allred described “the Common Interest”, an organization he founded described here. Yes, he also ran for Governor of Idaho recently. What intrigued me the most about the project was not so much the advocacy, as the process for development of useful information to help citizens decide on a policy.

Fair and Accurate Issues Briefings and Representative Positions

When we brief an issue, we aim to provide the best factual evidence and fairest representation of the competing perspectives as we reasonably can. To help ensure the fairness and accuracy of our briefs, we interview those with expertise and important perspectives on the issue. We then provide draft briefs to those we interviewed to give them an opportunity to tell us if we’ve fairly captured their perspective. We keep improving the draft until there is a broad consensus among those involved with the issue that we have fairly and accurately represented the issue.

I invite you to take a look at the Common Interest website here.

George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that for the system the Founders deeded to us to realize its full promise, we would need to recognize and resist the typical ploys of faction.

One of the expedients of Party to acquire influence…is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other [parties]. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render Alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

More by Allred on the Founding Fathers here.

The recent comment by David Beebe on this blog here reminded me that this might be a productive approach on “our” issues to ensure that citizens get to hear quality information from both sides on complex topics. I wonder if we should start a 501c3 that uses a similar approach to Forest Service or public lands issues? This might be a helpful resource to both citizens and to journalists. What do you think?

Grazing Fees

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Here’s a New York Times story on the BLM and FS response to a 2005 petition from some environmental groups on raising grazing fees.

This is from the FS letter:

Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System, said the agency is pursuing separate rulemakings to revise its forest planning rule and respond to Colorado’s roadless proposal, each of which have drained agency resources.

Moreover, roughly 4,000 grazing allotments on Forest Service property are in need of environmental analyses that will help determine the best management of rangeland resources, Holtrop said in the FS letter . The original petition and the BLM letter can be found on links through the NY Times article.

“This major effort will require focused agency range management technical expertise and funding and is not expected to be completed for several years,” he said.

A recent order from a U.S. District Court in Montana also requires the Forest Service to prepare an environmental impact statement in order to continue applying aerial chemical fire retardants to fight wildfires, Holtrop said.

“Given these and other significant agency priorities, I am reluctant to burden the agency’s limited resources by initiating an additional major rulemaking endeavor at the present time,” he said.

Court Decision- NEPA for Ski Master Development Plan

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Pp 10-12 of this Ark Initiative vs. Forest Service decision deal with the “NEPA for master development plan” question. It also has a good discussion of a variety of NEPA issues and the detailed discussion of the FS approach and why the judge found it was OK. Sometimes on this blog we talk about “if the FS followed the law there would be no problem” but people can disagree on not so much the concept, but the details of following the law, especially NEPA.

Here’s a quote:

The Forest Service’s acceptance of the conceptual 2003 MPA does not meet these
criteria. The 2003 MPA merely discloses Aspen Skiing’s goals and objectives, AR
5748-50, the existing conditions, AR 5762-76, and Aspen Skiing’s desired future
conditions, AR 5778-96. The Forest Service expressly noted that the acceptance of the
2003 MPA “in no way guarantees that all elements represented here will be completed at
any time in the future.” AR 5751. Nor does the agency’s acceptance mean that all of the
elements described in the 2003 MPA will be approved in the future, that the Forest Service has completed its environmental review of elements described in the 2003 MPA, or that the Forest Service completely agrees with Aspen Skiing on all of the listed actions. AR 5898-99. Instead, the Forest Service accepted the 2003 MPA as a guiding document for Aspen Skiing’s future development of the Snowmass Ski Area that would help the agency understand Aspen Skiing’s vision for the ski area and evaluate future connected actions when analyzing site-specific projects. AR 5899. Accordingly, it is not a “definitive statement of [the Forest Service’s] position determining the rights and obligations” of Aspen Skiing or other parties. More decisions remain to be made, depending on what Aspen Skiing actually proposes and the further required NEPA analysis, which means that it is not the consummation of the agency’s decision-making process. Thus, the acceptance of the 2003 MPA is not a final agency action.

More on the Green Mountain Lookout

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Haven’t had time for thoughtful responses to the last two posts yet (one of my other volunteer activities is having some difficulties), but here is another story on the Lookout in Wilderness from Joel Connelly of the Seattle PI. The story is here.

Warning: the rhetoric of this article is fairly inflammatory.

As an ultimate test, the lawsuit issue was put to Rick McGuire, a friend and North Cascades Conservation Council board member with whom I have trekked deep into the 573,000-acre Glacier Peak Wilderness.

McGuire grumbles at Forest Service use of helicopters. Still, he adds, “a lot of people like that lookout. It was there even if not in its new improved form, and it seems to be there are way more dire threats out there.”

And that makes the Green Mountain lawsuit even more puzzling.

Wilderness Watch is being represented by the Eugene-based Western Environmental Law Center. The center has taken on “dire threats,” from protecting old-growth forests marked for liquidation to exposing dioxin emissions by Columbia River pulp mills.

Why hassle Green Mountain? Green interlopers from Montana and Oregon should heed locals who love our wilderness areas — and their lookouts. Litigate elsewhere.