Fuel Treatments and the Northern Spotted Owl

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This post is related to Foto’s comment below. Here is an interesting piece by Scott Learn in the Oregonian on twenty years of efforts to protect the Northern Spotted Owl.

But as you know, I find the topic of science and fuel treatments fascinating from a science policy wonk point of view.

So here’s a quote from that article:

Forsman and other scientists agree that the relatively dry forests on the east side and in southern Oregon could use measures such as thinning and clear-cut corridors to act as fire breaks. There’s much more debate when it comes to wetter westside forests.

If everywhere east of Eastern Oregon is dry or drier than Oregon, then are we really all in agreement? Why does it seem to be “scientifically” controversial in some places like Colorado and less “scientifically” controversial in other places (if we believe this story, the east side or Oregon and Washington? Is it due to different disciplines, different scientific tools to look at the problem, different framings of the problem, just random scientist to scientist variation, or due to real differences of the behavior of fuels or fires?

It might be interesting to ask firefighters and incident commanders, who may have experiences throughout the west, how they perceive the differences among these places.

Why the Forest Service Can’t Get Plans Done

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Perhaps the greatest challenge in the development of a new Forest Service planning rule is the need to reduce the length and cost of forest planning processes.  The salary costs of an interdisciplinary planning team can easily run $100,000 per month, or over $1 million per year.  Planning processes can easily run five, six, seven or more years, so total salary costs can approach $10 million. 

Except for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge plan in Montana, and the smaller National Forests in the east, no plan revisions have been completed in the last four years.  The problem occured even with new planning rules in 2005 and 2008 which were intended to simplify the planning process.  There are currently 70 forest and grassland plan revisions nationwide that are overdue.

The need for a new planning rule to reduce complexity has been discussed previously on this blog.  The Notice of Intent for a new rule last December described the problems that lengthy planning processes can create for the public:

“One challenge the Agency has faced with regard to public participation is that plans can at times take 8–10 years to revise, a timeframe that is too long to sustain a true collaborative effort and use the most up-to-date science and management thinking.”

Perhaps the root of what’s going on is the “wicked problem” posed by the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), as earlier discussed on this blog and in the excellent review by George Mason University of the process for the Sierra Nevada plan amendments.  The wicked problem is evident through the lack of consensus about multiple use management.  Shortly after NFMA was passed, commentors saw that it was an impossible task and should be repealed.  Unfortunately, NFMA isn’t going away, which led to a proposal earlier on this blog to at least limit any new regulatory requirements to the minimum required by the Act.   As early as a 1990 Critique of Forest Planning, there have been calls to simplify the planning regulations.  This was noted in the December NOI for a new rule:

“The Critique found that the 1982 planning rule process was very complex; had significant costs, was lengthy, and was cumbersome for public input. The recommendations in the Critique and the Agency’s experiences with planning led to the Agency issuing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for new regulations in 1991, and two proposed rules, in 1995 and 1999. After working with a committee of scientists, the Department issued the 2000 rule to revise the 1982 regulations. The 2000 revision of the planning rule described a new framework for NFS planning; made sustainability the foundation for NFS planning and management; required the consideration of the best available science during the planning process, and set forth requirements for implementation, monitoring, evaluation, amendment, and revision of land and resource management plans. However, a review in the spring of 2001 found that the 2000 rule was costly, complex, and procedurally burdensome. The results of the review led the Department to issue a new planning rule in 2005, and a revised version again in 2008…”

Meanwhile, planners are forging ahead.  There are 21 forest plan revisions continuing using the existing regulations. 

To understand why plans are expensive and time consuming, it is helpful to look at the process.  There are five major cost centers in a Forest Planning process:  assessments, collaboration, environmental documentation, reviews, and objection/appeals.  (Often, the actual writing of a plan is a relatively small task compared to these other five.)  Any one of these five cost centers can create delays in the timeline and additional costs. 

The unfortunate problem with delays is that it extends the window in which a planning effort may be subject to new policies, directives, requirements, or political considerations.  Thus, the process itself can spiral, and a three month delay can become a one year delay to meet a new initative.  Recent examples of delays to forest plans include emerging climate change considerations, new guidance on restoration, and changes to energy policies.

The need to simplify the planning process was discussed last week at a meeting of Forest Service planners in Salt Lake City.  The planners recognized that management of the five cost centers is critical.  One planner said that it takes “wisdom and courage” which is not often rewarded.  Is there a point where more collaboration will no longer be effective?  Do we have the courage to make a decision without certain information?  It requires line officer engagement, to let future Regional Office and Washington Office reviewers know what is going on before the reviews.  It may require saying “no” to 11th hour changes to the plan.  It requires a set timeline, notifying the public, and sticking to the timeline.  It requires internal and external communication across all levels of the organization, to let people know ahead of time when they will be needed.  Regional and Washington Office reviewers need to be efficient, and give Forest planners more leeway.  There needs to be transparency with the public so they can see what is going on and how and when they can have input.  The Forest Service Manual and Handbook can cause confusion, and must be streamlined.   Instead, it’s important to follow the concepts of “organizational learning” discussed earlier on this blog.

Unfortunately, most or all of these managerial solutions have been tried in the past with mixed results.  Perhaps we are expecting too much from forest planning.  For instance, effective stakeholder collaboration can take years to build.  It might be easier to work on partnerships on specific projects, and build collaborative capacity prior to beginning any forest planning process. 

Until we recognize the true limitations of planning, it cannot become what it truly needs to be.  At it’s best planning can clarify goals, set priorities, empower organizational learning, and establish relationships.  But those things can’t happen if plans never get done.

New USDA Plan Sets Forest Restoration, Climate, Water, Fire Objectives

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National Forests and “private working lands” are prominently featured in the new U.S. Department of Agriculture five-year strategic plan released last week.  The plan contains strategic objectives for National Forests to restore ecosystems and watersheds on both private and public lands.  It also contains objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase carbon sequestration, and develop climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies for National Forests. 

One of the four strategic goals for the Department of Agriculture (besides assistance to rural communities, promoting agriculture production, and nutritious food for kids) is goal #2: “Ensure our National Forests and private working lands are conserved, restored, and made more resilient to climate change, while enhancing our water resources.” 

The plan calls for a collaborative “all lands” approach to bring public and private owners together across landscapes and ecosystems.  “Private working lands” are defined to include farms, ranches, grasslands, private forest lands, and retired cropland.  The plan is intended to coordinate National Forest System programs with other USDA programs for private lands. 

Restoration of watershed and forest health is intended to be a core management objective of the National Forests and Grasslands.  Objective 2.1 is to “restore and conserve the Nation’s forests, farms, ranches and grasslands.”  The plan calls for a 13% increase in forest lands that are restored or enhanced each year.

Objective 2.2 calls for efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.  It sets an 8% increase in carbon sequestration on U.S. lands and an 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector.  All National Forests must have a climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy.

Objective 2.3 calls for protection and enhancement of water resources.  It calls for an increase in National Forest System (NFS) watersheds at or near natural conditions from 58 million acres (30 percent of NFS lands) to 62 million acres (32 percent of NFS lands).   Acres of restored wetlands would increase from 2.1 million acres per year to 2.3 million acres per year.  There would be an $0.5 billion increase in flood prevention and water supply projects.  Nine million acres of high impact targeted practices would be implemented to accelerate the protection of clean, abundant water resources.

Objective 2.4 calls for a reduction of the risk of catastropic wildfire and restoring fire to its appropriate place on the landscape.  It sets a desired condition within the natural (historical) range of variability of vegetation characteristics, increasing the cumulative number of acres from 58.5 million to 61.5 million acres.  It calls for an increase from 10,000 to 18,000 communities with reduced risk from catastropic wildfire, and an increase from 41 percent to 55 percent of acres in Wildland-Urban Interface that have been treated.

The Woody Biomass for Energy Debate- Manomet Study

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As I watch the climate debate, I’ve noticed that biomass has a bad rep in some climate circles. Sometimes it is as simple as biomass is ethanol ethanol is bad therefore biomass is bad. Sometimes it is more nuanced. Seldom is it discussed in a way that reflects differences among places and the variety of possible technologies and material to be used.

Last weekend there was an article in the NY Times on a Manomet study. In this Q&A, John Hagan and Thomas Walker go into some depth describing their findings. Here are some considerations:

The framework we developed for carbon accounting could be used for an individual power facility, a state, a country, or even the European Union (which is importing wood chips from the U.S. and other countries to meet its renewable-energy goals). In order to assess the greenhouse gas implications of using wood for energy, you have to know four things:

• The life cycle of the wood (e.g., logging debris, whole trees, trees vulnerable to catastrophic events) in the absence of the biomass energy opportunity.

• The type of energy that will be generated (heat, electricity, combined heat and electricity), because different types have different efficiencies and thus different CO2 emissions profiles.

• The type of fossil fuel being displaced (coal, oil, or natural gas), because different fuels have different emissions profiles.

• The management of the forest — management can either slow or accelerate forest growth, and therefore recovery of carbon from the atmosphere.

To further complicate the story, while our life cycle analysis looked at greenhouse gas emissions from production and transport of both biomass and fossil fuels, we couldn’t evaluate every possible environmental impact of energy production, such as broken blowout preventers 5,000 feet under water or mountaintop removals to access coal. Rarely (maybe never) does society really weigh the full array of costs and benefits of our decisions. But as the world gets more complicated, and as resources get more scarce, and as the human population climbs to nine billion (and then some), we’re going to have to become more serious about analyzing these kinds of trade-offs.

And

But our study suggests that it’s important to be specific about how you define biomass. Energy generation from harvests of live whole trees from natural forests has different life cycle implications than energy generation from wood wastes that otherwise would have released their carbon to the atmosphere relatively quickly. The choice of biomass energy generation technologies also matters. Biomass fueling thermal and combined heat and power systems typically produce greenhouse gas benefits sooner than large-scale biomass electricity generation.

Finally, we’d emphasize that there are many other considerations besides greenhouse gas emissions when making energy policy — these include energy security, air quality, forest recreation values, local economics, other environmental impacts of extracting fossil fuels (and not just greenhouse gas emissions of burning fossil fuels), and quality of place, among others. Policymakers need to weigh all these factors in making energy policy.

What we’ve done is put a much sharper point on one piece of the story — greenhouse gas emissions. Until our study came out, it was widely assumed that using wood for energy was immediately carbon- neutral. How this new insight factors into the public’s view of using wood for energy remains to be seen.

As for Manomet, our role is to inform society with science, with the hope that a better informed society will make better decisions.

21 Forest Service Plans Now Being Revised

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Three more forest plan revision efforts now have funding and can be restarted, bringing the total to 21 plans being revised under the existing 1982 Forest Service land management planning rule procedures.  These efforts had previously been stopped when the 2008 planning rule was enjoined.  The announcement came at a Forest Service planners meeting last week.   The additional forest planning efforts that can now be restarted include the Shoshone Forest Plan (Wyoming, Region 2); Tonto Forest Plan (Arizona, Region 3); and Sequoia Forest Plan (California, Region 5).  The exact timing of restarting the processes will vary, since forest planning teams will need to be reassembled and the specifics of the planning processes will need to be planned.

Here is the current list of Forest Plan Revisions that may proceed under the 1982 rule.

Region 1:  Kootenai (Montana) and Idaho-Panhandle NFs (Idaho) (one revision efforts for both forests) 

 Region 2:  San Juan NF (Colorado), Shoshone NF (Wyoming)

 Region 3:  Coronado, Apache-Sitgreaves, Kaibab, Prescott, Coconino and Tonto NFs (Arizona); Cibola National Grassland (New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas)

 Region 5:  Lake Tahoe Basin Mgmt Unit (California/Nevada), Sequoia NF (California)

 Region 6:  Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman (Oregon – one revision effort for the three forests), Colville and Okanogan/Wenatchee NFs (Washington – one revision effort for the two plans)

 Region 8:  NFs in Mississippi, Uwharrie NF (North Carolina) and George Washington NFs (Virginia – 2nd round of LMP Revision)

There are 15 other forest plan revision efforts that have not been restarted, and some were shut down last year because of a lack of funding, partially due to the costs of preparing a new planning rule.  (Region 1: Lolo, Bitteroot, Flathead, Clearwater, Nez Perce; Region 2: Cimarron-Comanche, Pike-San Isabel, GMUG; Region 4: Dixie and Fishlake, Manti-La Sal, Ashley, Humboldt-Toiyabe, Bridger-Teton; Region 5: Modoc; and Region 6: Fremont-Winema.)

There are also 33 Forest Plan revision efforts that are overdue and have never been started.  11 of these are in California, 11 more are in the Pacific Northwest, 5 are in New Mexico, and 4 are in Montana. 

A new planning rule is anticipated in 2011, and many of these planning efforts may follow the new procedures.

Different Ways of Knowing about Fire and Fuel Treatments

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Last week, some scientists and practitioners met to discuss the utility of fuels treatments in creating defensibly space around communities. Even on a fairly simple question (what stages of dead trees have what kinds of fire behavior?) there are a variety of approaches to think about the question.

One is practitioner observation. For example, one practitioner had spoken to suppression people in BC who said that fire can move through dead trees with needles like a “tall grass fire.” Another piece of evidence (called “the science”) was based on looking at the past, that when there were many dead trees, there was not more fire. But if we believe the climate is changing, what do studies of the past really tell us in terms of relevance to the future?

I ran across this set of photos by Derek Weidensee on observed fire behavior (granted, not entirely about dead trees). His piece is worth a read- he rounds up both some research and empirical evidence. He also has some latitudes and longitudes you can plug into Google Earth and see the changes through time for yourself. Here’s a quote I found interesting:

I’ve read dozens of USFS EIS’s and EA’s, and frankly the litigation-driven reliance on published “best available science” means the public doesn’t have a clue what the EIS authors are talking about. Nothing makes the public’s eyes glaze over faster than fuel models, fire groups, fire regime condition class, canopy bulk density, etc. etc. Local experience carries a lot of weight with the local public. And pictures are worth more to the public than the thousands of words in the fires and fuels section of an EIS. It’s unfortunate local experience doesn’t seem to carry much weight with a judge.

It made me wonder to what extent local collaboratives may come to different answers than national groups, not based on “caving to pressure” but based on empirical ways of knowing.

Last week there was a piece in New West by George Wuerthner.

Here are some quotes:

the Forest Service exploits the public’s misconceptions about wildfire and forest ecology to further its logging agenda

Research by the FS own scientists suggests that thinning any greater distance than a hundred or so feet from a home provides little additional reduction in fire risk. In other words, this timber sale will do little to safeguard Elliston from wildfire—indeed; most of the town is in no jeopardy what so ever from a direct fire front

Furthermore, if the County Commissioners were truly concerned about fire hazards, they would not permit house construction in the fire plain. Zoning is the best way to protect homes and safe lives rather than expect taxpayer to fix the problem they created by allowing home construction in inappropriate sites. Building in a fire plain is just as foolish as building in a river floodplain.

It may be desirable, in the view of some, to move everyone out of treed and (chaparraled) western landscapes. However, in my view this is not practically feasible.
And once again the “timber wars filter” is part of the story..

Instead of using the Elliston Face to counter misconceptions about wildfire and who is actually responsible for protecting property, the FS exploits the fears of misinformed citizens. One can only conclude the agency is still the handmaiden to the timber industry rather than a public servant working on behalf of all citizens of the country.

and

The Elliston sale is…is yet another example of how the Forest Service exploits the public’s misconceptions about wildfire and forest ecology to further its logging agenda.

Based on looking at press stories, fuel treatments in Southern California don’t seem to be all that controversial. I wonder if that is because in the Interior West the specter of the timber industry still lives in the imagination.

Derek said in his post

In the ongoing debate, the public and policy makers need more unbiased research and a one stop database to see for themselves what fuels treatments can do.

I think we need a central place to show the results of different ways of knowing, and have an ongoing conversation about what they each tell us about the reality of fuel treatments and fires.

Advisory Committee for Forest Restoration Named

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Comments: I noticed that there were 5/15 females, which I believe to be much better than usual. Many advisory groups in natural resources seem to arrive at about 20%, to the extent that I was beginning to think it was some kind of subconscious principle. In my opinion, there are lots of good people on this panel including two former RACNAC members. Actually, I was worried on the basis of the announcement that it would be too “sciency” but the folks I know on the list are both experienced, knowledgeable and pragmatic. Congratulations to all!

Here’s the link.

The USDA Forest Service received 31 proposals from across the country for the committee to evaluate. Project proposals cover a myriad of ecological restoration treatments to reduce wildfire risk, enhance fish and wildlife habitats, maintain and improve water quality and use woody biomass and small-diameter trees. Many of the landscape proposals include contributions from partners and commitments from adjacent landowners to treat their lands.

The Advisory Committee is expected to make final recommendations to Secretary by August 2010.

Primary Committee Members:

Julia Altemus, Missoula, Mont.

Maia J. Enzer, Portland, Ore.

Karen Hardigg, Anchorage, Alaska

Brian Kahn, Helena, Mont.

James Kennamer, Edgefield, SC

Paige Lewis, Boulder, Colo.

Gary Nakamura, Redding, Calif.

Dr. Brent Racher, Corona, N.M.

Philip Rigdon, Silverton, Ore.

Dr. Melissa Savage, Santa Fe, N.M.

Todd Schulke, Tucson, Ariz.

Gary J. Severson, Breckenridge, Colo.

Scott Simon, Little Rock, Ark.

Ray Vaughan, Montgomery, Ala.

Frederick Weyerhaeuser, Cambridge, Mass.

Tester Adjusts Forest Bill

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From Great Falls Tribune, here.

However, Tester warned that if the final committee bill does not contain mandated logging levels aimed at sustaining the state’s dwindling wood-products industry, then it will be “dead on arrival.”

“I have said from the beginning that I will only support a bill that contains the four carefully balanced provisions that have resulted from years of folks working together, those being timber, wilderness, recreation and restoration,” Tester said. “The committee’s bill stripped out the timber and restoration certainties in my bill. All four components are critically important to this bill.”

Update on Planning Rule Blog and Other Links of Interest

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Thanks to Peter Williams for this update and roundup of interesting links:

“We are updating our electronic resources with completely new blog technology and new material on the planning rule website: http://fs.usda.gov/planningrule
The “History of Forest Planning” webpage has been updated to include the 1990 Critique of Forest Planning, Volumes 1 — 11
The new blog, when stood up, will demonstrate a variety of new features that may have value during subsequent planning efforts throughout the agency; we are coordinating closely with CIO regarding security related to those features; exact features that get stood up will depend on the outcome of that coordination.

Several other agency, Departmental, or administration initiatives are worth knowing about too:
State Assessment and Resource Strategies (Part of the State and Private Forestry Redesign effort)
LINK: http://www.fs.fed.us/spf/redesign/resourcecenter.shtml
Addressing “all lands” and a broad set of relevant issues identified by each State Forester; some States are pushing hard for these assessments to “guide” or play a significant role in Forest Plan revisions & amendments; Helps set context state-by-state

Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program/Projects
LINK: http://www.fs.fed.us/restoration/CFLR/index.shtml
Proposals just submitted by Forests and Grasslands to each relevant RO for forwarding to WO; multiparty monitoring and collaboration are highlighted

State Climate Adaptation Plans
LINK: http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_states/adaptation_map.cfm
May become part of Congressional climate change legislation; could set context for Forest Planning

Cohesive WildFire Management Strategy
LINK: Homepage — http://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/leadership/index.shtml
Strategy — http://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/leadership/strategy/index.shtml
Public meetings conclude at the end of May; a draft cohesive fire strategy is due in November and will be updated every 5 years after that.

America’s Great Outdoors Initiative
LINK: Presidential Memo http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-americas-great-outdoors
Initiative Homepage: http://www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors/
On April 16, 2010, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum establishing the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative to be led by the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ); this initiative carries forward elements of the ‘all lands’ vision of Secretary Vilsack. ”

Science vs. Advocacy in Natural Resource Management

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Photo of a scoured stream channel in a roadless area that resulted from a flash flood in a burn area in 2009 in South Fork Salmon River drainage, west central Idaho.

A guest post by Michael Dixon.

I believe the line between science and advocacy is often blurred in natural resource management. I am convinced that often the people doing the science and the advocacy do not know the difference. The public and special interest groups often cite their favorite “science” that supports their point of view, and down play the other views, or worse yet, actively discredit other points of view. To me this is advocacy and politics, using selected science to support your position. This is common and obviously your or my science is better than the opposing positions.
This has been taken a step further by advocacy groups who fund their own science, I’m starting to see more of this or maybe I’m just more aware of it.

Locally where I live the Wilderness Society has their own report on how to deal with fire dependent Ponderosa Pine Ecosystems. They presented this to the FS as science a nice little booklet with glossy photos and citations. I think The Wilderness Society believed that this was state of the art science, and the FS should adopt their recommendations. I skimmed through it and got the impression that the “science” was pretty much what the FS had known for years concerning Ponderosa Pine ecosystems, with the WS’s recommendations on how to manage it was what you would expect from them with the slight admission that thinning stands by logging might be acceptable in some limited cases. I am sure there are cases where the Forest Products Commission does something similar but recommends much more logging as the proper course of management. To me this is just political advocacy with a sprinkling of selected science that the advocates tout as science.

What is more disturbing to me is when researchers and scientists do not appear to know the difference between science and advocacy. An example that I know is as follows: The local Forest Fisheries biologist hired a college professor with a doctorate in fisheries to monitor macro invertebrates in recently burned and unburned drainages to see what effects fire had. Sounds reasonable, he found that the macro invertebrates in the wilderness streams he sampled were more numerous in the burnt drainages. More sunlight and nutrients in the water in the burned drainages, makes sense. Then he sampled some steep gradient streams outside the wilderness. This was the year after the 1997 flood and many of these drainages experienced channel scouring debris torrents. He sampled two of the channel scoured drainages; one had a road in it and was salvaged logged by helicopter after the 1994 fires. The other was in a roadless area. He found only two species of macro invertebrates instead of the five or six species he had found in the other streams. His conclusion was the stream in the roadless area was an anomaly, where as the lack of species in the other stream was due to salvage logging. A better conclusion might have been channel scouring debris torrents remove macro invertebrates. This particular scientist was one of the authors of a widely circulated science paper that sharply criticized salvage logging after fires.

Fisheries biologists, as do many biologists, tend to favor natural conditions as that’s where the species evolved. Roadless and wilderness areas tend to be favored for their pristine/natural conditions. The science report for the ICBEMP (Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan?) did a study comparing fish habitat to road density, and they found a correlation between road density and fish habitat, generally the higher the road density the poorer the fish habitat. I can believe this is generally true, the higher road densities probably also correspond to higher levels of development. I believe there were a few drainage basins in the ICBEMP study area with higher road densities and good fish habitat. The fish biologist for the science report was concerned that the high road density/good fish habitat areas are threatened by the road density. A better response may have been to ask why they are different from the other areas. Is there something to be learned in areas where good fish habitat exists in areas with a high road density? I think this would be important to ask when the big emphasis is restoration.

The study has been taken forward into Forest Planning as a watershed condition indicator. This is considered by some as a direct cause and effect. I would tend to favor more stream based indicators such as; stream temperatures, pool riffle ratios, man made fish barriers, bank stability, riparian conditions and large woody debris. The Boise, Payette, and Sawtooth Forests in Idaho adopted road density as one of the watershed condition indicators, however the ESA consultation process with Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries went a step further and added the following descriptions to road densities: less than 0.7 miles per section is functioning properly, 0.7 to 1.7 miles per section as functioning at risk and anything over 1.7 miles per section as functioning at an unacceptable risk. This categorization basically calls all areas that have been developed for timber management in the past an unacceptable risk to listed fish species due to road density.

This all seems rather ironic in west central Idaho where wildfire, especially in 2007, primarily in roadless and wilderness areas have had a considerable impact, on both old forest structure and stream channel condition. Hundreds of stream channels have been scoured by flash floods and debris torrents in the burn areas, leaving raw and unstable banks. Hundreds of thousands of acres of old forest have been lost to wildfire. Is ecologic integrity assured in roadless and wilderness areas? Not from what I have seen.

About the Author
Michael Dixon has over 30 years of Forest Service employment, including over 25 years as a member of project level NEPA teams. He has worked on two Forest Plans as well as post plan project level implementation and monitoring. He has been a member on Burn Area Emergency Recovery (BAER) teams on 6 major wildfires.