Lynx and coyote tracks, Superior National Forest, Minnesota, photo by Larry Weber
An assessment is the gathering and integrating of information relevant to the planning area from many sources and the analysis of that information to identify a need to change a plan or to inform how a new plan should be proposed. – section 219.5(a)(1) of the proposed Forest Service planning rule
It is a synthesis of information in support of land management planning to determine whether a change to the plan is needed. Assessments are not decisionmaking documents but provide current information on select issue. – section 219.19 of the proposed Forest Service planning rule
This is the first of a series of posts about possible approaches to preparing an assessment for a National Forest/Grassland Plan revision under the proposed Forest Service planning rule. (It is based on some informal conversations that Peter Williams and I have had with folks inside and outside the Forest Service, but nothing here reflects official Forest Service policy or the deliberations of the team working on the planning rule.)
The proposed rule expects a process that integrates both science and collaboration: “the objective of this part is to guide the collaborative and science-based development, amendment, and revision of land management plans.” (219.1(c)). Under the rule, an assessment must be collaborative and science-based, just as the overall plan revision process, because it brings together many sources of information, including social, economic, and ecological, whether qualitative or quantitative. Moreover, the subsequent process must rely on information from an assessment if the process is to be collaborative and science-based.
Although one immediate purpose of an assessment is to identify whether a need for change exists, the second, equally important purpose of an assessment is to inform design of the subsequent forest planning process that will propose specific changes to the plan if a determination is made that a need for change does exist.
Under this definition, an assessment is both a product and a process.
The product is a report similar to an “Analysis of the Management Situation” or other scoping documents under the 1982 planning rule. It documents “existing and potential future conditions and stressors” that subsequently will be the foundation for the revision’s Environmental Impact Statement. It describes the Forest in the context of the broader ecosystem, and what’s going on in the States and counties within and surrounding the Forest.
The process involves convening multiple parties at multiple scales to determine if the current Forest Plan is working by answering a set of assessment questions derived from the rule.
This rather long list of questions has the potential to be quite lengthy, so they need to first be screened to determine if they are relevant to the particular forest. Screening questions would include:
Assessment Goal
Coarse Screening Question
Need for change in plan components or monitoring program
Is the information needed to inform and develop plan components (i.e., Is this a Forest Plan issue, not a program planning issue or a project issue)? 219.6(b)(1)
Is the resource present? 219.7(b)(2)(ii)
Is the resource important? 219.7(b)(2)(ii)
Is addressing the resource within the authority of the Forest Service? 219.8, 219.9, 219.10, 219.11
Is addressing the resource within the capability of the plan area? 219.8, 219.9, 219.10, 219.11
Is addressing the resource within the fiscal capability of the unit? 219.10
Is there an emerging public issue that needs be addressed? 219.6
Design of process for revising a plan or monitoring program
Is the information needed to understand the discrete roles, jurisdictions, responsibilities, and skills of interested and affected parties? 219.4(a)
Is the information needed to understand the expectations regarding the accessibility of the process, opportunities, and information? 219.4(a)
Is the information needed to determine the scope, methods, forum, and timing of public participation opportunities? 219.4(a)(1)
Is the information needed to develop required plan components (219.6(b)(1)), including information needed to inform design of the public notification and participation process? 219.7(c)(1)
In answering the questions, technical information is essential, but an assessment under the rule should not merely be a technical process – it is fundamentally participatory, drawing on information and knowledge from multiple sources and multiple participants. During an assessment, the most accurate, reliable, and relevant scientific information is synthesized from governmental and non-governmental sources. But the process is also about clarifying values, because an important step is to identify why a particular National Forest/Grassland is important to the participants. One reason for clarifying values is that the knowledge being sought includes how a new plan should be proposed. That is a process-oriented goal. To meet such a goal in a way that is appropriate for the local situation, the assessment must seek to understand procedural preferences—values—of stakeholders, including but not limited to those of Forest Service personnel. The second specific assessment purpose is worth highlighting again: the goal of an assessment under the proposed planning rule is to gather and integrate information that informs design of a participatory and collaborative process should one be needed to change the plan.
Part 2 will describe how an assessment might be conducted.
Aircraft spreads retardant on Indian Gulch fire in Jefferson County. Joe Amon, The Denver Post
A while back, I had asked Andy Stahl for a description of the desired condition he hoped to achieve by the fire retardant litigation. I am still curious and I got more information from this news story from the Helena Independent Record. Now I don’t know much about the details of this controversy, but this story was very helpful at understanding the different points of view. Any feedback from blog readers on the accuracy? Kudos to Eve Byron, the writer!
The only question I have on the information in the story that does not match my personal experience is with regards to the Indian Gulch Fire (the one I refer to as “in back of my house”). That fire was not on Forest Service land and it wasn’t an FS managed fire, so I was thinking that at least the State of Colorado must use fire retardant. An internet search yielded this link to California which apparently also uses retardant. Perhaps someone in the fire biz could give a more complete view of which states do and don’t use it.
The U.S. Forest Service is proposing a few changes, but wants to continue using retardant to slow the spread of wildfires, according to a draft environmental impact statement released for public comment Friday.
Glen Stein, who put together the 370-page draft EIS, said they’re already working with individual forests where retardant is used to map areas where threatened or endangered plants, fish and animals are present and they will try to avoid those areas.
They’re also proposing to limit the use of retardant in waterways unless it’s needed for the protection of human life; previously, it also could be applied when the potential damage to natural resources outweighed the possible loss of aquatic life and when alternative fire line construction tactics aren’t available. Already, the Forest Service tries to avoid using retardant within 300 feet of waterways.
The Forest Service also said it would start to annually monitor 5 percent of fires on less than 300 acres where retardant has been applied to determine whether any adverse effects occurred, and if so, what to do in the future. In addition, they’ve laid out steps to take in case of misapplications.
“We feel this does a better job of protecting sensitive resources while allowing us to meet our obligations to protect people and property, and do so safely,” Stein said on Friday, adding that their preferred alternative now is different than what they initially proposed, based on initial public comments. “Now we’re waiting to see what the public thinks.”
The draft EIS is the result of a July 2010 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy, who directed the Forest Service to follow national environmental policies and prepare an EIS to outline the impacts on plants, animals and fish after dropping the retardant. The Forest Employees for Environmental Ethics had filed a lawsuit in 2008, alleging the retardant, which includes ammonia-based fertilizer, is toxic to fish and threatens rare plants.
Molloy ruled in July 2010 that it “is probable that substantial questions are raised hereas to the environmental impact of the annual dumping of millions of gallons of chemical retardant on national forests.” Last month, he ordered the federal government to pay $95,000 to FEEE for court costs and attorney’s fees.
In a press release, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell defended the use of the retardant, and noted that from 2000 through 2010 it was applied only on about 8 percent of wildfires on National Forest lands. In addition, during the past decade, on lands managed by the Forest Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, and the states, only one of every 5,000 retardant drops has impacted waterways.
“The use of fire retardant, in concert with firefighters on the ground, allows the Forest Service to safely protect landscapes, resources and, most importantly, people’s lives,” Tidwell said. “Research and experience demonstrate that aerially applied fire retardant, used in an appropriate manner, reduces wildfire intensity and the rate of spread, which increases the effectiveness of our fire suppression efforts on the ground.”
But Andy Stahl, FEEE executive director, argues that the Forest Service’s research in laboratories can’t be applied to real wildfire conditions, where heavy winds often created by the fire can make it rapidly spread. After a quick read of the draft EIS, Stahl said what was important to him was what the document didn’t include.
“The Forest Service makes no effort to show that fire retardant use changes the outcome of wildfires in terms of houses destroyed, lives threatened or acres burned,” Stahl said. “Tables in the draft EIS show scores of national forests use no retardant — never did — and they don’t show any different outcomes. They don’t suffer from lack of that.”
He added that while acknowledging the environmental harm, the document also doesn’t calculate any significant benefits.
“I think they’re going to be compelled to do somewhat better than this,” Stahl said. “If they’re proposing to build a dam or highway, or log a forest, there are some environmental downsides but also some kind of economic pluses. What the Forest Service has not done is told us what the pluses are when using the retardant.”
He added that state firefighting agencies, like those in Florida and Texas, don’t use retardant on wildfires and there’s no significant difference. In the West, though, he said it’s often used on fires on federal lands.
“In Florida and Texas, where forest fires are ubiquitous, retardant isn’t used because the federal government isn’t paying for it because they don’t have federal national forests,” Stahl said. “This is a federal boondoggle. State firefighting agencies without the federal treasury behind them never found retardant to be cost effective, and that the benefits outweigh the costs.”
Stein said they plan to continue to use retardant on wildfires this summer, and Tidwell will decide what course to follow after the final EIS is completed. The EIS must be completed by 2011, under Molloy’s ruling.
“We don’t know what will happen next year,” Stein said. “It depends on how this is received by the court.”
The release of the draft environmental impact statement begins a 45-day public comment period, and it can be found in this story online at helenair.com.
For those of you who haven’t found this site: here’s the page:
Tongass
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Ask the Forest Service to protect our national forests
Consisting of more than 193 million acres, our national forests are the crown jewel of America’s natural heritage. They provide critical wildlife habitat for endangered and threatened species, as well as clean drinking water and recreational opportunities for millions of Americans. The U.S. Forest Service is now drafting new rules for their management. Please urge Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to give our national forests the strongest possible protection.
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Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture
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Adopt strong rules for our national forests
I am writing to ask that you adopt strong, conservation-oriented and science-based rules for our national forests. I appreciate your commitment to preserving and restoring this key piece of America’s natural heritage, and applaud the spirit in which the proposed management rules have been drafted.
The final rules must deliver and improve upon the intent of the draft version. A core function of these rules must be to produce good outcomes for national forests and to help ensure that local managers don’t make the kinds of mistakes that have degraded too much of our public forest estate already. That will require much stronger guidance in several key areas.
First and foremost, it is critical that these rules fully protect the species that depend on national forests for their survival. The final rules must ensure that management choices don’t contribute to wildlife and other species disappearing from parts of their ranges. Local extirpations of plants and animals strip national forests of some of their most cherished elements and weaken ecosystems, increasing vulnerability to climate change and putting added pressure on surrounding lands.
Second, the rules must include numeric standards to protect streams, wetlands, and other water bodies. Please make sure that the rules specify a minimum buffer zone around all national forest waters of at least 100 feet, where all management has to promote aquatic health.
Third, consistent with President Obama’s commitment to scientific integrity across the federal government, the Forest Service needs to be guided by the best available science. I’m concerned that as drafted, the rules only direct the agency to “take account” of the science. The final rules need to require that it rely on the best available science, not just consider and then ignore it.
And finally, I am quite concerned that the public have a fully meaningful opportunity to raise concerns about management decisions with top officials in the agency. Under the rules that now apply, citizens have 90 days to appeal local planning decisions to supervisors. It’s crucial that we have at least that much time for decisions that have been years in the works, fill multiple volumes, and rely on thousands of documents.
Thank you very much for considering my concerns. I share your interest in the welfare of these wonderful forestlands and in passing them on, unimpaired, to future generations. I look forward to management rules that will ensure that outcome.
I’m particularly interested in the “science” paragraph:
Third, consistent with President Obama’s commitment to scientific integrity across the federal government, the Forest Service needs to be guided by the best available science. I’m concerned that as drafted, the rules only direct the agency to “take account” of the science. The final rules need to require that it rely on the best available science, not just consider and then ignore it.
According to my count, that’s Science/Scientists as drivers of land management:
NY Times 1
Wilderness Society 1
Graduate student in ecology 1
NRDC 1
I found the comments to be very interesting as well
Noted, but not resident of US, so could not sign.
If something isn’t done to save what we have it would be a travesty!
“They took all the trees and put’em in a tree museum, and charged a dollar and a half just to see ’em” Joni Mitchell 1970
Forty one years ago they were singing songs about the environment, why has it taken so long? Why did it get to be a worse problem??
What do you think? How should the FS consider comments from people who click buttons based on info they read online?
Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian philosophy and management methods dominated US Forest Service thought, policy, and action throughout the 20th century. A quick read of Harold Steen’s The US Forest Service: A History, David Clary’s Timber and the Forest Service, and Paul Hirt’s A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since World War Two is testament enough of Pinchot’s domination. Add in the Forest Service sponsored movie The Greatest Good for icing on the cake.
But the next century belongs to Leopold at least in the eyes of film producer Steve Dunsky, who produced The Greatest Good. Dunsky’s new film, The Green Fire is about Leopold and his influence. Leopold’s revolutionary ideas emerged with the publication of A Sand County Almanac (1966), but the transition to mainstream thinking would not happen in the 20th Century. Dunsky says the 21st Century belongs to Leopold:
I think that was what was so exciting about doing this film is we didn’t just want to do a film about Aldo Leopold’s life, we wanted to talk about why he’s important today and the reason that this is in a way a sequel to The Greatest Good is that we see Leopold as being kind of the guiding vision of the Forest Service in the 21st Century. Gifford Pinchot and his colleagues in the early part of the 20th Century had a different idea about conservation: that nature was there to be used by people and it is. But Leopold’s vision is much more about people being part of a natural community, and that shift has been occurring in the Forest Service over the last twenty years. And I think that now is the time that we are really seeing the manifestation of that in the agency’s policy and our actions and so the timing is really perfect for Green Fire to be coming out.
Moving Beyond Agrarian Forestry
Like Dunsky, I believe the time is at hand for a change in philosophy from Pinchot to Leopold, or from “Group A” to “Group B” as Leopold described it:
[O]ne group (A) regards the land as soil, and its function as commodity-production; another group (B) regards the land as a biota, and its function as something broader. How much broader is admittedly in a state of doubt and confusion.
In my own field, forestry, group A is quite content to grow trees like cabbages, with cellulose as the basic forest commodity. It feels no inhibition against violence; its ideology is agronomic. Group B, on the other hand, sees forestry as fundamentally different from agronomy because it employs natural species, and manages a natural environment rather than creating an artificial one. Group B prefers natural reproduction on principle. It worries on biotic as well as economic grounds about the loss of species like chestnut, and the threatened loss of the white pines. It worries about whole series of secondary forest functions: wildlife, recreation, watersheds, wilderness areas. To my mind, Group B feels the stirrings of an ecological conscience.
Leopold’s Philosophy in Brief
Leopold began his Forest Service career in 1909. He was promoted rapidly and was proud to part of the “outfit.” He was true-blue green Forest Service. Leopold became a forest supervisor of New Mexico’s Carson National Forest at age 24. But his enduring philosophy developed later. [We wouldn’t expect many 24-year-olds to have much of the world figured out]. As he grew older and wiser, Leopold developed the philosophy that would guide him, along with many in the wildlands preservation movement, the environmental ethics movement, and more. Here is an essence: “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
With age and wisdom, Leopold began to be more contemplative about his own and others attempts to “manage the land,” to “manage wildlife”, and so on. That led him to his commitment to help humanity discover a rightful place as “plain members” of a broader ecological community: “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals; or collectively: the land. … In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.”
First, Leopold’s Land Ethic helped create the field now known as “environmental ethics” or, more generally, environmental philosophy. … [Leopold] makes human considerations regarding the land and land use central to environmental decision-making and practice, but does not go as far as to make the land itself deserving of human moral consideration.
Second, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink our notion of what it means to say something deserves our human moral consideration (is “morally considerable”). … Western philosophical tradition restricts moral considerability to (some) humans on the grounds that only humans are capable of reason and rationality, use language, are rights-holders, duty-bearers, interest carriers or are endowed with a soul. By making the land itself morally considerable, Leopold challenges traditional Western conceptions of moral considerability …. [F]or Leopold, “the land” was included in the realm of things deserving moral consideration.
Third, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink what it is to be human. … Western philosophical tradition is that humans are different from and superior to nonhuman animals and “nature” … Leopold’s land ethic challenges and repudiates this division.
Fourth, in place of the favored Western view of humans as unlike other animals and nature, Leopold posits the notion of human beings as [plain] members of both human and ecological communities. This notion of humans as embedded in social and ecological communities forever challenges the time-honored distinction between humans and “the rest of nature.” No longer is it “obvious” that there is an essential difference between superior humans and inferior nonhuman animals and nature….
Fifth, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink what counts as a morally relevant value in ethics, ethical decision-making, environmental policy and philosophy. No one before Leopold had ever defended the view that ecosystem integrity, diversity and beauty were morally relevant—perhaps deciding—values in human interactions with other humans, nonhuman animals or the natural environment. In doing so Leopold went far beyond traditional theories of ethics, ethical selves and ethical values: He made the “integrity, diversity, and beauty” of ecological communities, along with the requisite nutrient flows and energy cycles that are necessary for “land health” (or, the ability of the land to self renew), as themselves morally relevant values—ones which sometimes could and should trump traditional values of human self-interest, individual rights, human freedoms (or liberties) and economic efficiency. …
Sixth, Leopold’s land ethic challenges humans to rethink the role of emotion, care, love and empathy not only in ethics, ethical decision-making, and ethical policy, but also in what it means for humans to owe things to each other and the land. For Leopold, the development of an “ecological conscience”—necessary to the adoption of the land ethic—requires the development of emotional, experiential (e.g., hands-on) ecological literacy. Rational intelligence that is not exercised in concert with affectional or emotional intelligence is simply inadequate in ethics, environmental ethics and environmental decision-making.
Seventh, Leopold’s Land Ethics has yet to be understood and appreciated. It challenges us to understand the relationships between ecological diversity and cultural diversity in the creation, maintenance and perpetuation of human and land health. Leopold explicitly links cultural diversity with biodiversity when he writes, “Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse, and the resulting artifacts are very diverse. These differences in the end-product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the world’s cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.” … Leopold laments the “exhaustion of wilderness” and “world-wide hybridization of cultures” as the destruction of both ecological and cultural diversity. For Leopold, the “wild roots” of cultures and the importance of our ecological heritage are part of our humanness and our human cultural heritage that should be recognized and preserved. …
Eighth, Leopold’s land ethic makes forest and wilderness preservation necessary for any adequate ethic, environmental ethic or environmental policy. …
Ninth, Leopold’s land ethic is that he saw the valuable roles to be played by both the ecological scientist and the ordinary individual in the preservation of [wildness]. …
Tenth, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink the relationships among ecology, ethics and economics. Leopold rejected the conception and practice of both traditional laissez-faire economics and ethics because neither made ecological awareness and sensitivity to ecological contexts central to their enterprises. He writes: “That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it.” …
[footnote and hyperlink references omitted . See here]
One Final Leopoldian Notion
I’ll finish with one of my favorite Leopold quotes: “Obligations have no meaning without reference to conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of social conscience from people to land.”
Here’s an opinion piece in the Everett Herald Net.
Now I will be the first to confess that I don’t know what side if any is “right” in this debate. However, there are a couple of themes that are found more widely in various discussions around the West.
First,
Defending against petty lawsuits will likely divert most of the Forest Service’s dwindling wilderness budget from the mountains to the courtroom.
and second,
We encourage Wilderness Watch to drop the lawsuit. We also encourage people to make your voices heard. Congressional representatives need to hear from the public why this lookout needs specific legislative protection from humorless people who would tear it down.
The themes that I hear are:
(1)Why this battle?: Local person to group- “Out of all the environmental issues in the world, especially given that you are not from our area, it’s not clear why you would pick this particular battle. What’s this really about? Can we talk? ”
(2) Why this tactic (litigation)?
a) If you choose litigation as a tactic, others can choose to try to get legislation (a la wolf, see Baucus quotes here). I would think that this is a necessary constitutional co-evolutionary trend, but how optimal for everyone concerned?
(b) Forest Service budgets are not going up- is its possible that other uses of FS funds (like wilderness rangers) may lead to more environmental protection than copying documents or other litigation activities? What are the environmental “opportunity costs” of choosing litigation as a tactic?
Below is the opinion piece in full.
Lookout belongs right where it is
By Leah Tyson
In response to a pending lawsuit by Wilderness Watch to force the U.S. Forest Service to take down the Green Mountain fire lookout, the Darrington Historical Society would like to explain why the lookout does, in truth, belong there.
Contrary to an opinion expressed in these pages several weeks ago by George Nickas, the executive director of the Montana-based Wilderness Watch, the fire lookout on Green Mountain is not a “new” lookout. It is not a “replica.”
It not only looks like the old lookout — it is the old lookout. We know this because the Darrington Historical Society, and many other local volunteers, participated in the restoration project, which started in the 1990s.
The lookout was carefully restored with at least 70 percent of its original materials from 1950 (when the 1933 lookout was fixed because of snow damage), and the project was originally completed onsite. The only substantially new aspect to the lookout is the foundation and catwalk, which were redesigned to meet modern safety codes. This is a standard legal requirement in historical restorations.
Unfortunately, the new foundation design failed, and engineers determined that the lookout might not survive the heavy snows of the coming winter. Faced with a difficult decision, Forest Service officials decided to save it by removing the lookout with a helicopter. With a better design for the foundation, the old lookout was hauled back up and secured to the peak.
Despite the overblown rhetoric of critics, this was not an “egregious” act. The Forest Service was caught between the dictates of the Wilderness Act on one side and, simultaneously, the National Historic Preservation Act, which required the agency to do its best to preserve the lookout because it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
The Wilderness Act is not as cut and dried as Wilderness Watch would have folks believe. It includes some administrative discretion for managing agencies. While Wilderness Watch certainly has the right to file suit, we question their judgment. The lawsuit is entirely out of proportion to the infraction of procedure they allege and to the aesthetic value that is supposedly harmed. Defending against petty lawsuits will likely divert most of the Forest Service’s dwindling wilderness budget from the mountains to the courtroom.
Very few fire lookouts remain. The Glacier Peak Wilderness is an area almost the size of Rhode Island. The 14-by-14-foot cabin on top of Green Mountain is dwarfed by the landscape, a blip on the radar, really. Staffing lookouts with volunteers has, in fact, helped preserve some fragile alpine areas.
If this lawsuit succeeds, it could create an interpretation of the rules so narrow as to force the loss of a few remaining historic lookouts across the Northwest. It could also be interpreted to prevent the repair of washed-out trails and bridges. This may seem extreme, but it is the stated intent on the Wilderness Watch website.
It is not necessarily the stated intent of the Wilderness Act, which recognizes that preserving the wilderness character of a place can include “recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation and historical use.”
The aesthetic Puritanism expressed by people who would tear down the Green Mountain lookout leads to spiritual satisfaction for a few at the exclusion of the many. We should acknowledge the reality of U.S. Navy jets running almost daily, low-altitude training sorties over the Glacier Peak Wilderness. In contrast, obsessing over tiny aesthetic complaints makes no sense.
We are not arguing for a return to the past, when fire lookouts dotted the backcountry and roads cut deep into the headwaters. We are simply calling for the maintenance of a historical icon that still has some life and lessons to pass on. For many of us, the rarity of such structures enhances appreciation of the enduring nature of wilderness.
We encourage Wilderness Watch to drop the lawsuit. We also encourage people to make your voices heard. Defending against petty lawsuits will likely divert most of the Forest Service’s dwindling wilderness budget from the mountains to the courtroom.
Defending against petty lawsuits will likely divert most of the Forest Service’s dwindling wilderness budget from the mountains to the courtroom.
FORESTS: Rural lawmakers fear planning rule will crimp timber harvests, spur lawsuits (05/05/2011)
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
The Forest Service’s proposed planning rule could open the door to special-interest lawsuits and does little to ensure timber harvests will increase across the nation’s millions of acres of national forests, House lawmakers from rural districts warned today.
Both Republicans and Democrats said they are concerned the agency’s planning rule — a sweeping proposal announced in February to manage more than 198 million acres of national forests and grasslands contains problematic requirements to maintain viable wildlife populations and is too vague about the role of timber production (E&ENews PM, Feb. 2).
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), chairman of the Agriculture Committee’s Conservation, Energy and Forestry subpanel, said the Forest Service runs the risk of “mission creep” by implementing requirements in the new rule to catalog invertebrate species and incorporating climate change language that is likely to invite legal challenges.
Oregon Democrat Kurt Schrader added that the agency appears to be morphing into a hybrid of the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, thrusting species viability above the needs of rural economies that depend on multiple-use of forests.
“The original mission of the Forest Service has been lost,” he said at a hearing on the rule. “The law requires species diversity, not viability.”
The lawmakers’ comments underscore the tricky balancing act the Forest Service faces in crafting a rule that will satisfy the numerous groups that use the forests, including timber companies, miners, hikers, ranchers, water users and wildlife.
The agency’s draft proposal — which promises to speed planning efforts, incorporate best available science, engage the public and ensure forests’ resilience to climate change, pests and other threats — has also come under attack from some environmental groups that argue the rule fails to set specific guidelines for ensuring species viability and gives too much discretion to local forest managers to decide which resources are preserved (Greenwire, Feb. 11).
Harris Sherman, the Forest Service’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, said today the proposal was developed from the “bottom up” based on roughly 40 public meetings and 26,000 comments. It is supported by top scientists within the agency and is expected to last several decades.
“What we’re attempting to do here is establish a new rule that is effective,” he told the House panel. It is modern, it is efficient, and it will serve the public well.”
Sherman emphasized that the draft rule — which is open to public comment until May 16 — is designed to restore the health and resilience of national forests suffering from decades of mismanagement that has led to increased diseases and invasive species, more frequent and intense wildfires, and degrading water quality.
Trimming the planning process from eight years to between one and three years, he said, should help catch more threats, including pests such as the mountain pine beetle, which has ravaged 40 million acres across the West. Concerns about litigation
But lawmakers pressed Sherman to explain why the rule does not explicitly promote an increase in timber production at a time when rural economies are reeling from unemployment and lagging tax revenues.
“Why in the world should Wisconsin be importing timber from Canada rather than harvesting timber that is rotting in our national forests?” said Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.).
Sherman said timber, as a multiple use, is expressly recognized in the draft plan, and added that the Obama administration predicted a slight increase in timber production in its new budget. “We will continue to see an upward effort to produce timber on our national forests,” he said.
Other lawmakers questioned whether the inclusion of climate change language and new requirements for agency managers to catalog invertebrates such as insects will overburden an already cash-strapped agency and offer new opportunities for special-interest lawsuits.
“Some have embraced the ideology that preventing human access to these lands is the best way to keep these forests healthy,” said Thompson, whose district includes the Allegheny National Forest. “With that in mind, I am concerned that this proposed planning rule is complex and will face the same sort of litigation that has hamstrung previous attempts to formulate a rule.”
Thompson added that timber harvests provide hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic productivity, in addition to thinning overgrown forests and allowing optimal absorption of greenhouse gases.
“Indeed, the rule makes reference to climate change,” he said. “If this is an important issue, I can think of nothing more effective than taking care of our forests and harvesting a sustainable amount of trees.”
Sherman acknowledged that litigation has hampered past management efforts, but said the agency extensively studied past litigation and judicial decisions and believes the new rule will keep the agency out of the courts.
He was also pressed to explain how forest managers would implement the science-based guidelines prescribed in the draft rule considering the budget limitations facing the agency.
“This is not a call for original research or Ph.D. theses on various issues at all. It is a call to go to reliable, available information,” he said. “There may well be competing science on a given issue, and it is up to our local responsible [forest manager] to review this issue and explain how they handle these materials.”
But John Shannon, vice president of the National Association of State Foresters, said that while it is laudable that the agency is giving deference to local forest employees who know the lands best, the proposal’s best available science standard could introduce legal challenges and increase the workload for responsible officials.
“We need to give some deference to the professional opinions of those local forest employees,” he said. But “disputes over competing science have significant potential to further delay the planning process.”
This was summarized in this blog post “Forest Service plan draws fire from rural members of Congress from both parties” here on the Rural Blog.
Last fall news broke that the University of Montana was planning to construct a $16 million wood-burning biomass plant on campus next to the Aber Hall dormitory. UM officials claimed the biomass plant would save UM $1 million annually and protect Missoula’s air quality by reducing emissions over the existing natural gas heating system.
As interested citizens, we attended the university’s biomass “poster presentation” last December, which, unfortunately, raised more serious questions than it answered. So we continued to ask questions and research the proposal. In March, we even conducted an “open records” search of UM’s biomass project file, pouring over hundreds of documents and emails between UM officials and representatives of Nexterra, a Canadian biomass boiler manufacturer, and McKinstry, a Seattle energy services company. Suffice to say, our records search turned up even more troubling questions, especially related to costs, maintenance and emissions.
As the Missoulian reported last month (April 20), information in UM’s air quality permit application to the Missoula City-County Health Department showed that “Contrary to previous claims by UM administrators, the university’s proposed biomass boiler will not reduce emissions to levels below that of natural gas. In fact, UM’s proposed state-of-the-art biomass gasification plant will produce nearly twice as much nitrogen dioxide as its existing natural gas boilers – and in some cases, will release three times as much particulate matter.” The emissions are higher than what McKinstry’s feasibility study predicted.
Our records search also turned up a document showing that the biomass plant would also increase emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds by 40 percent or more over the existing natural gas system.
Obviously, Missoula is prone to severe inversions and air stagnation, especially during winter, when the greatest load would be on the biomass system. We found a UM biomass grant application that stated, “The Missoula Valley’s constrained topography presents ideal research conditions for long term analysis of environmental impacts of efficient woody biomass boiler combustion.” Do we really want to risk Missoula’s air quality for the sake of research?
It’s also been difficult to get an accurate assessment from UM of the biomass plant’s up-front and long-term costs, something all Montana taxpayers deserve. For starters, we noticed in the project file that in April 2010 the cost of the biomass plant was $10 million. By July, the cost went to $14 million. Now it sits at $16 million. UM’s financial pro forma also shows that during the first 20 years the biomass plant would need nearly $10 million for additional operation and maintenance expenses over the existing natural gas system.
The pro forma is also troubling in other aspects. It over-estimates the cost of natural gas, while under-estimating the cost of biomass fuel trucked to campus, especially given rising diesel costs. The pro forma also completely zeros out all natural gas expenses and maintenance costs, even though UM now admits that a natural gas boiler would be used during cold winter days to augment the biomass system, and also used from May to September, when the biomass system is too powerful to use.
Further complicating the picture, UM realized during the permitted process that its existing natural gas boilers are in violation of air pollution limits. The fix will cost around $500,000. And UM’s contract with McKinstry was amended recently, meaning that UM is already contractually committed to McKinstry for $532,000 just for project development.
It is our belief that all of these significant issues need to be fully analyzed and rechecked, not just by the biomass project’s supporters, but also by the Board of Regents, independent of McKinstry and UM. Guarantees of performance by McKinstry need to be carefully scrutinized, as other colleges have paid the price for poorly written contracts or poorly vetted companies.
At the end of the day, Montana taxpayers deserve to see accurate, updated financial information from UM concerning all aspects of the biomass plant, including the initial $16 million price tag and $10 million needed for additional operation and maintenance expenses. And Missoula’s citizens have a right to expect that the University of Montana would not risk Missoula’s fragile air quality by needlessly increasing emissions over present levels.
Matthew Koehler is executive director of the WildWest Institute; Ian M. Lange is a professor emeritus, Department of Geosciences at the University of Montana; and Dr. John Snively is a retired dentist. All three live in Missoula.
Here’s an essay from High Country News called:
Privatization threatens an Arizona national forest
When I think of “privatization” I think of something a bit more far-reaching than concessionaires… but OK, it’s an attention grabbing headline. Here are my questions for discussion:
What do you think about the use of concessionaires in recreation?
If you were the Forest Supervisor what would you do?
If you were the Chief what would you do?
What do you think keeps the FS from getting enough recreation funds?
Why don’t recreation groups get together and lobby Congress for enough funds?
Hypothesis: too busy debating each other to unite?
Here’s a website I found that points out some of the benefits of concessionaires, especially in this economic environment.
Here are the presentations from the 2010 NFRA conference.
Privatization threatens an Arizona national forest
Essay – April 29, 2011 by Kitty Benzar
Once upon a time, the Western public lands — places like our national forests and parks — were supported with American tax dollars.
In return, we were welcome to use them. Undeveloped areas required no money to enter, and developed facilities were basic but affordable. Land managers were public servants whose mission was stewardship – or so it seemed.
As in a fairy tale, public lands have fallen under an evil spell. Now the most popular of them sport high-end facilities with prices set to whatever the market will bear. Now, land managers implement business plans while we, the citizen-owners, have been downgraded to mere “customers.” Nowadays, even simple access frequently requires payment of a fee.
The latest place to fall under the spell is the Payson Ranger District of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest. The district is currently soliciting bids on the for-profit management of virtually all recreation there. The successful bidder will control more than 25 facilities located on your public land and constructed using your tax dollars. And the winning bidder won’t even be required to follow the same federal laws as the national forest would have to, if it continued doing its job.
The Forest Service defends recreation fees by claiming that the agency retains the money and uses it to directly benefit the very place you paid to visit. By leasing federally owned recreation facilities to private firms, the agency makes a mockery of that argument. Fees become just another tax, and concessionaires become private tax collectors.
In a prospectus issued in early March, the Payson District began soliciting companies to privatize six family campgrounds, four group sites, a horse campground, an interpretive site, 10 picnic areas and seven trailheads. The prospectus vastly expands the number of fee sites on the district and does so without public involvement or comment. It’s a clear attempt to evade federal legal requirements and prohibitions on where fees can be charged.
What’s more, the winning bidder will not be required to honor federally issued recreation passes. The concessionaire will be allowed to issue and sell a pass of its own creation and keep all revenues. Furthermore, the concessionaire will be allowed to charge fees that the national forest is prohibited from charging, including fees just to park your car and gain access to trails and the backcountry.
A law called the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act was supposed to set strict limits on the recreation fees the Forest Service can and cannot charge. But in a feat of hocus-pocus, the agency says it can simply set these limits aside when it surrenders lands to a concessionaire’s private control.
The Enhancement Act also requires that any proposed new fee sites must undergo a robust and transparent public process, with final review by a citizen advisory committee. Apparently, that’s become too much if a hassle for the agency, because it doesn’t always get the needed public support. Land managers on the Payson have chosen to hand over previously free recreation sites to a concessionaire and declare the process exempt from the law.
The Tonto National Forest is attempting to do all this at the Payson District’s picnic areas, trailheads and a prehistoric Native American village, even though four of the picnic sites were improved in 2010 with taxpayer dollars. We own these sites, and we just paid to fix them up. Isn’t it an outrage that the Forest Service intends to allow a private company to sell us access to our own investment?
The Tonto did not invent this policy, but it is among the worst offenders. There is an America the Beautiful Pass that costs $80 and allows entry into all national parks for a year. It also covers day-use fees at virtually all Forest Service-operated recreation sites. But it won’t get you into the Tonto. For that, you need to upgrade the interagency pass and pay an additional $15. That makes the Tonto the most expensive federal recreational land in the country. And soon, even your pricey new Tonto Pass won’t allow you access to most recreational opportunities on the Payson Ranger District. As for your lifetime Senior or Disabled Pass, both of them will be nearly worthless.
Across the national forest system, creeping privatization has overtaken recreation like the briars that defended Sleeping Beauty’s castle. We need more defenders of free access to our public lands, and you don’t even need to kiss any frogs to speak out; just email Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell at [email protected] and tell him that federal law applies on all federal land. Otherwise, the concept of public lands is nothing but a fairy tale.
Kitty Benzar is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She runs the Western No-Fee Coalition in Durango, Colorado.
Anyone remember the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000? The Act, along with follow-up legislation was supposed to wean rural Oregon Counties from long-standing dependence on timber revenues from O&C and other Federal Lands and put them on a path to “self-determination.” Guess what? It didn’t. In fact by funding the counties at highest revenue levels ever for a period of time, the Law may have increased the dependence. Admittedly, the recent global recession played a part in the drama, but the question remains as to whether the secure rural schools law really paved a path to “self-determination.” No matter. The Lands are once-again under consideration to help the counties out of a financial bind. Isn’t it time then, once again, to bring up the notion that these lands ought not to be put into play as a single-purpose program? Isn’t it time to realize that given the broad scale of this checkerboard (here’s a map, pdf), we need better resolution of a mixed ownership problem? Watershed concerns loom large, as do species viability problems. Then there are the ever-present access and esthetic problems that surround public lands ownership. And these are no doubt just the tip of an iceberg of problems. [Note: A good short history of this saga up to 2007 is found in Forest Magazine, a longer history was published in 2010 from the Congressional Research Service (pdf)
This is a problem that cries out for “all lands management,” yet our political system doesn’t seem ready to confront multi-scale deliberative democracy (Wikipedia link). We have tried to jump start that program for many years and always come up short. Remember Kai Lee’s Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment. Lee’s masterwork went to press in 1993. Nearly 20 years later we seem to have largely forgotten that the issue is still on the table. It always will be, because as John Muir noted long ago, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” So too with the O&C lands.
When I looked at the O&C lands map yesterday I thought, Why not just trade away the checkerboard federal lands for lands nearer the larger blocks, i.e. block-up ownership? That way land management would be made easier. But easier is not always better, as the massive and extensive clearcuts of recent memory in the Northwest constantly remind us. In the old days the clearcuts tended toward checkerboard, following the ownership patterns. If we were to block up the ownership what might we get, particularly on the then predominant private lands?
I sometimes ponder Gifford Pinchot’s notion of needing to regulate all forest lands. In Pinchot’s day the rallying cry was to prevent a “timber famine.” In our day, I believe we need to regulate all lands in an attempt to stave off and/or reverse a “biodiversity famine.”
Increasingly I ask myself, What might Aldo Leopold recommend? Leopold not only was a forest supervisor, but in later years also helped found the Wilderness Society, and importantly helped to guide the foundation of both wildlife management and environmental ethics. So, What might Leopold recommend?
Note: As I was updating this post, I realized that an alternative resolution to the funding side of this problem has been on the table for a long time: provide “just compensation” to counties with a preponderance of federal lands via PILT. A careful look at the recent Congressional Research Service’s assessment of the situation (pdf), yield’s Ross Gorte’s long-standing contention that the Congress ought to find means to get overly dependent counties off the federal dole by fully funding PILT payments, and thereby rid the nation of the plague of over-cutting federal lands in the name of “revenue enhancement.” Or maybe I just read Gorte’s CRS piece too quickly, in which case I can either amend this post one more time, or maybe just “deep six” it.
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Updated (4:56 PM MDT): After Andy Stahl corrected me via email on an earlier version of this post as to what is/has been in play w/r/t Oregon Counties and Oregon School Districts:
The [1937 ] O&C Act gives the counties three times the stake in BLM logging as compared to national forests — 75% of sale receipts vs. 25%. Further, the counties don’t share any O&C revenue with schools. The schools get only a portion of national forest logging receipts. The school’s share is set by state law at 40% in Oregon with 60% going to county road funds. Schools receive zero BLM O&C monies.
So I changed my mistaken wording that tied rural schools to O&C timber receipts, and reworked other parts of this post accordingly. Lemee know if I’ve still got it wrong.
Because the Denver Post is one of the larger newspapers in Elk Country (the interior West), you see different kinds of stories here than in places where neighbors are not evacuated due to wildfires. I thought the above diagram with what to do to prepare your home and yourself deserved wider circulation that just Post readers. You can read it more clearly by looking at this link and clicking on the image to make it larger.
As Jim Fenwood has suggested perhaps the whole “living with wildfire” deal needs to be rethought. But for this fire season (I was close to being evacuated, although I live in town), we are dealing with what is, and not what might be in the future.
Finally, I was working at home one weekend while the Indian Gulch fire was in back of my house. Smoke was in the air and the whirring of helicopters coming by to get water at a pond in back of the neighbor’s house. I think sometimes some people outside of our fire-prone country think there are “good people” who live in town, and “bad people” who live in the woods and who are fragmenting the landscape. Where I live the distinctions are not so clear. Plus in my hometown (Golden) many people who live in the canyons come down to restaurants, stores, or to the library. They are all members of our community. Any policy provisions to be debated need to recognize the communities as we experience them.
Here’s a photo of the Indian Gulch fire by Jeff Warner, a local photographer. Other of his photos, including more on the fire, can be found at his blog here.
