Hurray Firefighter Pay is Permanent.. Finally and No Government Shutdown!

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This is great news for wildland firefighters and their families, for people who support wildland firefighters, and for people who are tired of waging this campaign.

I tried to find a story with the details. Here’s an  NBC news story

Federal wildland firefighters secured a permanent pay raise Friday after years of waiting for Congress to answer their plea.

Included in the spending bill approved by Congress is a new pay scale and incident-response premium pay, which would apply to employees assigned to active fires.

The bill next goes to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

The new pay scale means firefighters will keep their temporary pay raises of either $20,000 annually or 50% of their base salary, enacted in 2021 under the Biden administration.

Firefighters will not be eligible for premium pay for fires contained within 36 hours. The pay will be calculated at 450% of their hourly base rate for each day a firefighter is on an active fire and will be limited to a total of $9,000 in any calendar year.

This marks the first time federal firefighters will get paid for the hours they rest and sleep while away from home, which is standard practice in most municipal and state departments.

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The pay bump comes as federal firefighters recover from cuts to their ranks after the Agriculture Department, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, reinstated more than 5,000 probationary employees who had been fired in February. At least 2,000 of them had primary or secondary firefighting duties, according to the NFFE.

This was surprising to me.  I had heard the 70% figure for probationary employees with secondary firefighting duties, as primary firefighters were exempt, for those previously let go and now reinstated. But 2000 out of 5000 is 40%.  Have NFFE’s estimates changed? Did NBC quote them incorrectly? Why is it so difficult to get consistent numbers about employees?

 

Getting rid of square feet

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It’s not just employees, it’s buildings that remaining employees work at.  I happened across a listing of dodgy, sorry DOGE, lease cancellations and I pulled out the ones that mention Forest Service or BLM.  It would be interesting to hear how these got picked and whether/how this will affect the agencies.

“A GSA planning document dated March 10 lists the dates when many of the cancellations are expected to go into effect. That does not mean all the locations will close by those dates, but agencies would have to either negotiate new leases or move elsewhere if they remain open. Agencies are still figuring out what to do.”

No big deal?  Is there more to “move elsewhere” than meets the eye?

  • Ackerman, Miss. (4,809 square feet)
  • Albuquerque, N.M. (22,216 square feet)
  • Phoenix, Ariz. (32,162 square feet)
  • Anchorage, Alaska (27,770 square feet)
  • Fort Collins, Colo. (43,599 square feet)
  • Montgomery, Ala. (15,792 square feet)
  • Mount Shasta, Calif. (536 square feet)
  • Pomeroy, Wash. (10,516 square feet)
  • Silver City, N.M. (29,554 square feet)
  • Bureau of Land Management, Baker City, Ore. (7,030 square feet)

But it also looks like this isn’t a complete list, or its being added to – here’s another:  https://patch.com/california/sananselmofairfax/blm-field-office-marin-napa-sonoma-more-counties-close

  • Bureau of Land Management Field Office, Ukiah, Calif.

Or are “offices to be closed” a completely different list?

If There Were No Regional Offices, Would We Have to Invent Them?

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It really makes you feel old when people you knew as young sprouts are retiring. Happy Retirement, Jennifer, if you are reading this!

Marc Heller of E&E News had a story today about people retiring and changing positions.

The most recent to announce their departures are Leanne Marten in the Northern Region, which covers parts of five states from Idaho to the Dakotas, and Jennifer Eberlien in the Pacific Southwest Region, covering California.

The retirements come as other reshufflings shake up the Forest Service in the new administration. Deputy Chief Chris French has been named acting associate chief — the agency’s second-in-charge — and Keith Lannom has left after serving as a deputy regional forester and associate acting chief for the national forest system, among other titles, according to a Forest Service employee familiar with staff moves.

I’ve heard of associate chiefs and acting associate chiefs, but never “associate acting chief for NFS.”  Maybe someone can explain whether this is a new position, and what the role is, for us retirees and others.

But what’s really interesting about the story are the different views of folks about Regional Office reduction. Many of us have been there and done that, at least talked about it, on previous iterations. As I recall, the proposals always foundered on the shoals of local politicians wanting to keep the positions. But today, since Portland, the Bay Area, and Denver all have serious housing crises, maybe they would be happy to see fewer commuters on the roads?

At the Forest Service, that could involve paring back the Washington headquarters as well as staff at the nine regional offices, according to proposals circulating among agency employees and described to E&E News. Such a realignment would put more management decisions for national forests at the local level, an approach in line with the administration’s overall approach. Whether the administration and the new Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, decide maintaining the regional forest setup fits the policy remains to be seen.
Regional foresters already serve that purpose in many ways, said Char Miller, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who’s studied Forest Service history. Without regional foresters, the power at the Forest Service would probably shift in the opposite direction the administration endorses — and toward Washington — Miller said. “Getting rid of the regional foresters would be a major example of that,” Miller said. Consolidating regions isn’t unprecedented, as Region 7 in the East was wrapped into two other regions in 1965. But that’s the most recent example.
In 2007, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the Forest Service to estimate the cost of running regional offices. The agency at that time put the cost at $224 million a year, according to a paper by Andy Kerr, an environmental consultant in Oregon who runs the Larch Co. Kerr called for regional offices to be eliminated, which he said would put more control in still-more-local hands.

So Char Miller and Andy Kerr see it differently. If we go to Andy K’s paper.

Budget reductions have forced the Forest Service to share rangers and other staff between ranger districts and merge national forests for administrative purposes. Yet, no Forest Service regional office has been eliminated or merged since 1965. Forest Service regional offices should not be merged or preserved, but eliminated entirely. Little conservation good is generated out of regional offices. The private sector has essentially eliminated middle management. Necessary functions now performed by the regional offices could be transferred to the national forest level, Washington Office level or the Albuquerque Service Center.
Unnecessary functions currently assigned to the regional offices could be eliminated with cost savings used for other purposes—preferably on-the-ground management at the national forest and ranger district level.

 

I’ll just say that many employees’ experiences with various administrative centralization efforts at Albuquerque and elsewhere at the time did not make us want to say”more service centers, please!”

Here’s Kerr’s last paragraph:

Does getting rid of Forest Service regional offices also mean the elimination of regional foresters? It might or might not. A case can be made to retain regional foresters to coordinate national forests facing similar “regional” issues. However, existing regional boundaries have little to do with geography, ecology or politics. For example, the Northwest Forest Plan (covering an area that is approximately the range of the northern spotted owl) spans parts of two Forest Service regions. In this case, there is a benefit to regional coordination between national forests. These new regional coordinating relationships should be flexible and based on current and emerging ecological and political needs, rather than based on a tradition or arbitrary administrative boundaries.

I didn’t see a date on Kerr’s paper; I suppose it could have been written any time in the last 30 years or so.

What seems to be missing from th e E&E  story are the views of anyone who has ever worked in an RO, or been a Regional Forester.

I’ve been involved in many kerfuffles between Forests and DC as a Regional Planning Director. I’ll just take one example, during the Obama Admin. The Bighorn had a shovel-ready project for ARRA funding to move some campsites in a campground, which got funded (hurray!). But it turned out later that other political entities at the FS were concerned about the fact that part of the rerouting (to protect the watershed) was in a roadless area (not so fast, Forest!). So it had to be reviewed. Of course the RO backed the Forest, and we wrote briefing papers that laid out the issue. Could the Bighorn have done the briefings themselves? Yes, of course. Conceivably the centralized Planning Experts Service Center could have helped them and reviewed it. Not every Forest could afford their own Roadless Geek.  Did our Regional Forester (Rick Cables’) personal relationships with higher-ups make them listen to him more (or less? who knows?). Clearly, the Chief and Associates and Deputies can’t have the same kinds of relationships with 154 Forest Supervisors as they do with 9 RFs. It seems like perhaps having 154 Supes would make the recommendation of the relevant WO Director mean more to the Deputy Chief, but then many issues cross WO Directorships.  Maybe there are other models out there somewhere?

Or a goal could be to harmonize with BLM and have State Directors, perhaps non SES, which could foster better “all lands” kinds of efforts and coordinate better with states. For example, Wyoming currently has to deal with two Regions of the Forest Service. Maybe BLM has some insights into the importance of that middle layer and how it works for them, of course, given that their organization is different and has a political director.

If the intention were to support local decisions (which our RO was in the habit of doing), can we think of a workaround with no RFs and functional service centers for the expertise? Ground folks have been concerned about the new budget system leading to decisions being made in the RO; with no ROs would the budget system have to be reinvented?

Please add your thoughts and experiences below. Finally, we are still interested in seeing and discussing those proposals currently circulating,

Has There Been a 30% Decline in FS Employment in the Last 30 Years?

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We have covered many things over the past 15 years of The Smokey Wire.  We’ve had number questions about timber, and folks like Mac  and Gil and Andy could always make sense of them.  Never before have I run into so much difficulty as with Forest Service employment figures.

Most recently, I ran across this letter sent on Feb. 14 by various members of the Colorado delegation to the US Congress, Bennet, Hickenlooper, Neguse, Pettersen, and Crow.

Our offices have heard for years about chronic understaffing at the USFS. Today, the agency’s workforce is nearly 30% less than it was three decades ago.  This significant reduction in staff has occurred even as the country’s population grew by over 100 million people, visitation to national forests exploded, and wildfire risk increased drastically. Agency employees have entered public service despite low pay, the frequently seasonal nature of the job, and limited housing in the remote areas they serve. With the rising cost of living across the state, Colorado communities are already challenged with limited USFS staff to confront land management challenges. Combined with the existing hiring freeze, yesterday’s staff reductions will stretch the agency to its breaking point and place an enormous burden on Colorado communities.

If I count back from 2025 for 30 years, I get 1995. If I go to this handy  John Kusano powerpoint about workforce trends from 1992 to 2001. It looks here remarkably consistent in terms of permanents .. a little over 30K in 1995 and 35,560 in 2024.  If I eyeball the Kusano powerpoint graph at 31K, then there’s actually a 15% increase in permanents over the last 30 years.

Since these numbers are so different, I have a phone call in to Bennet’s office to find out where those numbers came from.

 


People were working on diversity way back then (2001)

 

I thought that this slide was particularly interesting..given the recent problems (24 years since this ppt was presented)  with over-hiring.

Looking for historic trends, I found this story in the Mesabi Tribune from August 23, 2002:

Fewer are being asked to do more. And the trend applies nationally.

“We are down nationally about 10,000 employees overall from where we were eight to 10 years ago,” Sanders said.

This statement doesn’t exactly match the powerpoint, but we don’t have 1991 in the powerpoint.

In fact, between 1991 and 1998, the total Forest Service workforce fell by about 21 percent or from 50,238 to 39,782, according to a January Forest Service report.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that people apparently use different sets of numbers, but it does make life difficult. I suspect that the  “total workforce” from Sanders  might include temporaries.

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I’d like us to all use one set of numbers.  Temps and perms should be separated, and maybe a “total hours worked” if we could go back in time and do that.  I hope that somewhere out there such numbers exist?

And I agree that “the FS has been historically understaffed ” and I’d add “underfunded” and that’s a great discussion to have.

But let’s agree on the same set of numbers first.  I’m sure there is an official  set of numbers out there somewhere.

NY Times: How Trump Cuts Could Change Your Summer Hiking Trip

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“The Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service and the Fish & Wildlife Service manage more public lands than the Parks Service. And their staffs have also been cut.” (Typo: It’s Park Service)

As a subscriber, I can pass this link to the full text….

Questions linger over what this year’s layoffs and ranger protests at the National Park Service will mean for travelers, who made a record 331 million visits to park properties last year. Adding to the confusion is the federal court ruling on Thursday that the firings were done unlawfully and agencies must rehire their cut workers.

The National Park Service’s parks, sites and monuments, however, are not the only public lands affected by the seesawing reports of staffing levels and budget cutbacks brought on by the Trump administration’s goal to trim government spending.

The Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the three largest managers of public land in the United States, also keep public lands accessible. The B.L.M. alone covers 235 million acres, or nearly one-tenth of the country. If these agencies lose many of their workers, who will be around to handle the influx of visitors as summer travel season gears up?

Federal Lands Litigation – update through March 12, 2025

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And here’s the rest of the stories …

FOREST SERVICE

New lawsuit:  Save the South Fork Salmon v. U. S. Forest Service (D. Idaho)

On February 18, six environmental organizations sued the Forest Service, the two ESA consultation agencies and three federal departments regarding their review and approval the Stibnite Gold Project, an open-pit gold mine.  Much of it would occupy land on the Payette and Boise National Forests near the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness Area in the South Fork Salmon River watershed.  They allege violations of NEPA, the ESA regarding listed Chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout, and the Forest Service Organic Act and its 36 C.F.R. §228 regulations by failing to protect water quality and fisheries.  Also, a violation of NFMA for being inconsistent with a forest plan standard that prohibits road construction in riparian areas where there are other alternatives.  Among a total of nine claims.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

Court decision Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Forest Service (9th Cir.)

On February 24, the circuit court affirmed the district court on two of its holdings against the Kootenai National Forest’s Black Ram Project and reversed the district court on four others.  The court agreed that the Forest Service violated NFMA by failing to demonstrate that the project complied with a forest plan standard governing road use in grizzly bear habitat.  It found that unauthorized road use must be included in road density calculations, and, “the record belies the federal defendants’ blanket assertion that unauthorized road use is sporadic and temporary.”  It held, “Given the uncertainty as to the extent of ineffective closures and chronic unauthorized road use, it is impossible to discern actual, baseline motorized access conditions.” This failure to properly explain the baseline assumptions also led to a violation of NEPA’s requirement for a “hard look” at the effects of unauthorized road use.  The court upheld the Fish and Wildlife Service’s determination of the grizzly bear population, and the Forest Service’s reliance on that, and the determination that the project would not jeopardize grizzly bears.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

New lawsuit:   Alaska Forest Association v. Rollins (D. Alaska)

On March 6, the Alaska Forest Association and two of its members filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service, seeking to force the agency to sell timber as allegedly required by the Tongass Timber Reform Act.  The other two claims are that, “The Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy—altering the substantive requirements of the 2016 Management Plan—is functionally a rule that required notice and comment rulemaking,” and that it is arbitrary under the APA to “illegally deviat(e) from the 2016 Management Plan without considering Plaintiffs’ reliance interests” in timber production.  The 2016 plan referred to was an amendment to the forest plan that adopted a strategy for transitioning to a “young growth” timber program.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

On March 7, the Bitterroot National Forest responded to a notice of intent to sue by the Center for Biological Diversity over its Eastside Forest and Habitat Improvement Project and its effects on species listed under the Endangered Species Act.  The project covers most of the east side of the Forest.  The letter stated that the Forest had reinitiated ESA consultation on the effects of the Project on grizzly bears, wolverines and bull trout, so that claims of an ESA violation are now moot.

BLM

Court decision in American Wild Horse Campaign v. Burgum (D. Colorado)

On March 3, the district court overturned the BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) for wild horses, which pays individuals $1,000 to adopt wild, unhandled wild horses and burros.  The court held that the 2022 Instruction Memorandum establishing the AIP violated both the APA and NEPA, writing that: “an agency cannot avoid its notice and comment obligations by simply clothing instruction memoranda in permissive language, only to then treat them in practice as mandatory.”  The article includes a link to the opinion.

New lawsuit:  BlueRibbon Coalition v. Bureau of Land Management (D. Utah)

On March 5, the BlueRibbon Coalition, Sage Riders Motorcycle Club and a landowner challenged 665 miles of route closures established by the approval of the San Rafael Swell Travel Management Plan.  They claim that the decision violates the Dingell Act’s prohibition of “buffer zones” around wilderness areas in the vicinity of this plan, and that the decision violates the APA for several reasons, including that the “minimization criteria” used are not authorized by FLPMA (invoking a 2024 Supreme Court decision that regulations must have a clear statutory basis).  They also claim that the decision to issue an EA/FONSI instead of an EIS was based on CEQ regulations that are not valid.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

New Lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. National Marine Fisheries Service (D. Oregon)

On February 18, five conservation organizations filed a lawsuit over NMFS missing its 1-year deadline to determine if coastal spring-run Chinook salmon in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.  NMFS found that federal protections “may be warranted” for the three salmon populations in 2023 but has made no further decisions.  In their complaint, plaintiffs state that the threats to the species include “habitat degradation from logging.”  The article includes a link to the complaint.

New lawsuit:  Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. Montana)

On March 10, RMEF and the and the Property and Environment Research Center challenged the 2024 regulation (referred to as the “Blanket Rule”), under which the ESA’s prohibitions for endangered species apply automatically to newly listed threatened species.  Plaintiffs assert, the language of ESA, as well as the ESA’s structure, “authorizes the Service only to issue regulations in response to each species’ listing and tailored to each species based on science, the species’ unique conservation needs, and the incentives needed to recover that species.”

OTHER

New lawsuit:  Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York v. U. S. Department of Agriculture (S.D. New York)

On February 24, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Environmental Working Group sued the USDA, accusing the Department of deleting “climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and resources from its websites.”  Examples cited in the lawsuit include the Forest Service deleting an interactive map that allowed users to see where federal agencies have conducted climate change vulnerability assessments.  The lawsuit claimed that in deleting the materials so quickly and without notice, USDA violated the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires agencies to provide notice when terminating “significant information dissemination products,” and the Freedom of Information Act.  (If you can read the Washington Post, an article is here.)

On February 24, the trial began in a lawsuit in a North Dakota state court by Energy Transfer Partners against the environmental organization Greenpeace.  They allege that Greenpeace orchestrated protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and defamed the company, and sued them in 2017 for $300 million.  Earlier in February, Greenpeace International filed an anti-intimidation suit in a Dutch court against Energy Transfer, saying the company acted wrongfully and should pay costs and damages resulting from its “meritless” litigation.  Legal experts call the case a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), aimed at silencing critics through costly litigation rather than seeking legitimate damages, and believe it could set a precedent for how courts handle free speech protections, especially in environmental cases.

Court decision in Murray v. U.S.A. (D. South Carolina)

This case involves an accident caused by a large hole in a Forest Service designated dirt road on the Francis Marion National Forest.  On February 24, the federal district court dismissed the case because the government is immune from suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act’s discretionary function exception.  The court held that the exception to tort liability applies because the Forest Service Manual and Handbook “does not contain mandatory directives requiring FS officials to inspect, maintain, or repair FS roads or warn of potential hazards in a certain manner or under a particular schedule,” and that decisions about such things must “consider a multitude of policy considerations.”

Temporary restraining order granted in American Federation of Government Employees v. U. S. Office of Personnel Management (N.D. California)

On February 28, the district court held that, “No statute — anywhere, ever — has granted OPM the authority to direct the termination of employees in other agencies,” and also that OPM violated the APA because the notice was arbitrary and capricious, and by not providing for public notice and comment.  Western Watersheds Project was one of the plaintiffs granted standing to bring this case based on “its members’ legally protected interest in the recreational enjoyment of federal lands and the flora and fauna therein.”  The court considered harm to those interests “irreparable.”  The court ordered that,  “OPM’s January 20 memo, February 14 email, and all other efforts by OPM to direct the termination of employees at NPS, BLM, VA, DOD, SBA, and FWS are unlawful, invalid, and must be stopped and rescinded.”  The government has since agreed that the TRO should be converted to a preliminary injunction, and is attempting to avoid having the Director of OPM testify.

 

History of Recent Forest Service Employee Numbers: Recap and Context: Opportunities for Learning

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Many new people have recently signed up for TSW, and I would guess that they are interested in the FS employee questions, so I thought for new folks I would lay out the recent history, at least what I see and what I’ve heard. Others are welcome to their own observations. I’m intentionally spending more time on these topics due to the nature of this time period and folks’ concerns. So people who miss the regular programming, know that that will be back at some point.

I think it’s important to track budget as well as number of employees.  Like our Wildfire colleagues, I think there’s much good in being a learning organization/public  rather than a blaming organization/public. All the entities (Congress and Admins) had their own parts to play.

(1) As we saw in the last post on this, it appears that FS numbers were relatively consistent from 2018 to 2023. (budgets and employees were apparently at equilibrium, even if numbers were suboptimal.)

(2) Then came a giant influx of funding via BIL and IRA.  Congress thought it was a good idea to spend lotsa bucks, supposedly for climate, but everything can be related to climate.or climate equity, or climate justice.. so everything was included. Perhaps they did not consider the difficulties of agencies spending so much suddenly, and to be able to scale up with adequate oversight? And here we are.. perhaps they could have been more careful and possible achieved better outcomes ultimately with less funding.

(3) The FS (Biden Admin) decided to take a bunch of the funds (FOIAs have been unsuccessful at finding out how much exactly, but 400 mill or so?) and obligate it to NGOs (non-competitively, and not requiring a match).  This was intended at least in part to “build capacity” which required the NGOs to contract or hire to get work done. I don’t know the status of these agreement, but I do know NGOs hired people to do work formerly done by employees, and we have covered some of that previously here.

(4) The FS (Biden Admin) also hired a bunch of people via a major hiring effort.  At the time, I recall employees were telling me a) they were told to hire as many as they could, and b) some folks (even those in ROs) complained that many of those people were bulking up SOs, ROs and the WO.  Some folks also questioned new positions that did not previously exist and didn’t seem directed at the most critical needs. Of course, that’s in the eye of the beholder. From the previous post.

In 2023, 3080 were added of which 740 were fire.
in 2024, 2780 were added of which 690 were fire.
So in two years, 23 and 24, the FS added 5860 permanent positions, of which 1430 were in fire? If we take, say, 28,500 (the average of 2018-2022), that would be about a 20% increase in perms in two years?

If, as said in that post, 1400 non-fire positions were conversions from temps to PSEs; we don’t know how many fire positions were conversions, but probably not all.

So if we add 1400 non-fire conversions to all 1430 of the fire positions (acknowledging that some of them were also conversions) we get 2830. If we subtract that from 5860, we get 3,030 additional employees who are neither fire nor conversions from temps.

So the FS is still up from previous years in terms of what we might call “non-converted from temps and not fire” recent hires. Of course, this does not help any individual units, who may be down or never have been fully staffed.

Now, since the FS knew that some of this was short-term funding, they could have put a cap on the hiring (if the databases were up to it). But as anyone can imagine, it’s easier to let the dogs out than to get them back in. And in a quasi- decentralized organization,  it’s up to whomever is doing the hiring and what they think is important.

My own experience is that given a chance to hire perms, we would always do that.  Because the next time you’re in a budget discussion, you have the ultimate card to play “I have to cover salaries for perms.” Plus it’s only rational, if you see others (staffs, forests, districts) hiring for what you think are relatively less important positions, why not get in on it, and not  leave your own staff out in the cold?  For a federal agency, the budget winter is always coming, and it makes sense to bulk up.  Everyone was acting perfectly rationally.  It may be that the new budget process affects this kind of behavior, though, I don’t know.

There was also the effort to convert temps to permanent seasonals, which we’ve discussed before.  This approach makes a lot of sense, and is better for the employees, but, as a result, it costs more. One observation  in the previous comments by Anonymous was that

But generally, in my experience, programs that used to hire four 1039 seasonals were able to advertise around three PSEs.

(5) And so it went, until the Biden Admin (Sec of Ag?) decided to use the House marks (reduced compared to 2024 final) for the 2025 budget.   A budget reckoning occurred, and the FS found itself $750 million short.

(6) Realizing this, the FS (Biden Admin) said it would not hire any temporaries for 2025 to make up the budget deficit. If, in fact, most (fire and non-fire) temps had been converted to permanent seasonals, this might not have had an unduly bad impact.  But it probably varies quite a bit by unit.

(7) Trump Admin comes along and fires all probationary employees including the newly permanent seasonals, but got them back due to judge’s order, at least for now.  Original idea being to save federal bucks, perhaps intentionally, before the agency heads were confirmed and began to fight back.

(8) Trump Admin asks for Agency Reorganization Plans (ARRP), which includes employee numbers as well as other stuff (I hope someone will share, so we can discuss here):

Phase 1 (Due by March 13, 2025)

This phase focuses on initial agency cuts and reductions. These plans should identify service delivery subcomponents, statutory requirements, and potential eliminations or consolidations. They should also outline efficiency tools agencies intend to use to achieve efficiencies, including hiring freezes, attrition, and RIFs, with specific targets and timetables

(9) Now that we have a Chief and Sec of Ag in place, we will see what the FS (Trump Admin) comes up with in their ARRP.

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Now, back to Congress, which is often its own cluster regardless of Admin. Maybe in addition to the the Dogpile of Powers, we can also have a Joint Cluster among branches…

(9) Congress passes CR (or doesn’t?)

(10) Congress might increase firefighter pay (good idea, but costs more) and hopefully would include that in budget, but who knows?

(11) Congress might also start a move of firefighters into a fire agency within Interior (for very logical reasons, as there are many interagency clusters involved with wildfire, at least according to fire folks, e.g., Kelly Martin, which we can only imagine..)  with unknown impacts to remaining work for FS.

(12) This is a bit off the employee topic, but also relevant:
The general problems with managing agencies by Continuing Resolution (remember how the decision not to hire temporaries for FY25 was initiated by the Secretary telling the FS to abide by the House marks (#5)) . The general problems were described in 2018 in an article by Jeff Neal for Federal News Network.

The bottom line on this is that the federal budget process is broken. Agencies are not getting appropriations until too late in the fiscal year. They operate under continuing resolutions that limit their ability to plan and to start new work or to hire new staff. Contractors are left not knowing if work will continue or terminate, and everyone in the contracting process (government and industry) crams most of the contracting process into six months of the year or less. The impact is significant. In a 2017 letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Defense Secretary Mattis said: “Long term CRs impact the readiness of our forces and their equipment at a time when security threats are extraordinarily high. The longer the CR, there greater the consequences for our force.”

That’s my take of the history. What did I get wrong? What have I missed?

Hoot Owl Biology and the US Government

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Chuck Sheley just published my editorial “Hoot Owl Biology and the US Government” in the April issue of Smokejumper Magazine: http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Editorials/Smokejumper/Zybach_20250401.pdf

This editorial had been published previously in the October 30, 2024 Salem, Oregon Capital Press: http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Editorials/Salem_Capital_Press/Zybach_20241030.pdf

This current editorial is based on a series of articles, editorials, and presentations I did on the topic in 2013 titled “Spotted Owls and the Spotty Sciences that Spawned Them,” including a post to this blog on June 19 of that year, which got 33 Comments: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/06/19/spotted-owls-the-spotty-sciences-that-spawned-them-5-questions-2/

Here is the Text:

In Charles Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species, he describes “race” as members of the same species that typically develop different characteristics when separated geographically over time. Human races were the common focus and “scientific” discussions reflected the bigoted prejudices of that time.

In 1942 a German ornithologist, Ernst Mayr, defined animal species as “genetically distinct populations of individuals” capable of mating with one another and producing viable offspring.

These were the definitions my classmates and I were taught in public grade schools in the 1950s, and in public high schools and colleges in the 1960s.

When the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was adopted in 1973, 36 birds, 22 fish, 14 mammals, six reptiles, and six amphibians were initially listed: 84 animals in all, and each a distinct species. Today there are more than 1770 designated ESA species listed as threatened or endangered in the US, and more than 635 foreign species: 2,400 total!

Of these totals, only 57 species that have been considered “recovered” and 11 considered “extinct” were delisted in the past 51 years. This is a success rate of less than 3%; and an average of listing more than 47 new ESA species a year, while removing only one. The cost to taxpayers can be measured in the billions or trillions of dollars, depending on accounting method.

The barred owl is the most common brown-eyed owl in North America and has been popularly known as a “hoot owl” for many generations. Sometime by the 1950s these birds began expanding their range into the Pacific Northwest and breeding with native spotted owls, producing viable young called “sparred owls.”

The spotted owl had been listed by the ESA as endangered in 1990 and the supposed cause of its low population numbers was claimed to be logging. This determination resulted in dozens of successful “environmental” lawsuits being filed from that time to the present with the specific focus of stopping the sale and harvesting of commercial timber, and particularly on public forestlands.

In 2007 US Fish & Wildlife hunters began systematically killing barred owls and sparred owls on an “experimental” basis. The sole purpose was to control the breeding process in order to maintain genetic purity. Only these were wild owls, not domestic plants or animals, and ethical concerns were raised immediately. And then ignored.

A little over 10 years ago I wrote about this problem in a lengthy article that I also posted to a national blog of (mostly) retired US Forest Service professionals for discussion. I then presented this perspective in two lectures to graduate students, staff, and professors at the College of Forestry and then the Department of Fish & Wildlife at Oregon State University.

These efforts resulted in some meaningful discussions in the public forums, but immediate and adversarial claims of being a racist during my university lectures. Which was my whole point.

I had used polar opposites of the human species — a Pygmy and a Swede — to compare their differences in physiology, vocalizations, diet, coloration, appearance, and preferred habitat with those of spotted owls and barred owls. I was challenging current scientific theory and government policies with documentation, but my work could be safely ignored because someone called me a name.

The cost to US society for the purpose of keeping these brown-eyed cousins from having sex has simply been too great for too many years. The massive economic damage from spotted owl lawsuits — almost entirely funded by taxpayers — is generally well recognized: tens of thousands of lost jobs in the forest industry and US Forest Service; hundreds of sawmill closures; billions of dollars in lost revenues to the US Treasury, states, counties, and schools; and the resulting degradation of our rural communities, roads, parks, and services.

And, as predicted, millions of acres of so-called “spotted owl critical habitat” have gone up in flames, killing millions of wildlife and polluting the air with deadly smoke.

My thought remains that we need to stop playing God with hoot owls and let nature take its course. As Darwin pointed out, nature favors the “survival of the fittest,” and in this instance that seems to be sparred owls.

Forest Plan Litigation – early 2025 update

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FOREST PLANS

There are not a lot of lawsuits involving forest plans, but oddly there has been news about three of them (and maybe four) in the last couple of months.  I’ve separated those out for this summary, partly because I thought the first one was worth covering at length for any planning nerds left out there.

Court decision in San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council v. Dallas (D. Colorado)

(Thanks to Susan Jane Brown for filling in this gap in my newsfeed.)

On December 13, the district court upheld the Rio Grande’s revised forest plan against challenges based on its treatment of the Canada lynx and the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly (UFB).  Both species are federally listed as threatened under the ESA, but the claims were related to compliance with NFMA and NEPA.

Plaintiffs argued that the revised plan did not comply with the requirement of the Planning Rule for the UFB that plan components “provide the ecological conditions necessary to: contribute to the recovery of federally listed threatened and endangered species …” 36 C.F.R § 219.9(b)(1).  Key ecological conditions necessary for the UFB are large patches of snow willow located above 12,000 feet, and alleged threats to the UFB are from illegal collection, recreation, livestock grazing, and climate change.  Plaintiffs sought specific protection from these threats for colony sites and potential recovery areas.  The court conducted a granular review of the relevant forest plan components (and so will I).

It focused first on species-specific plan components that had been included in the draft plan, but not in the final plan, and plaintiffs believed this weakened the protection for these species beyond what NFMA requires.  The court found that these three plan components “may have been condensed into other components” in the final plan.  The court held, “Petitioners do not explain why condensing these three components into other components or removing them for redundancy was ‘a clear error of judgment’ sufficient to overcome the presumption of validity attaching to the agency’s action.

The court characterized a second argument as, “essentially that the final plan should have been identical to the draft plan because “neither the status review or Biological Assessment contain any different information than what was before the agency when it published the [draft] EIS.”  The court could find no “record evidence suggesting the eliminated species-specific components would have provided for butterfly recovery in a way that the remaining ecological plan components would not.”

The court then found that the discussion of the effects of other plan components (not specific to these species) showed they would meet the needs of these species, focusing on four desired conditions and one guideline.  The court found that the desired condition of “[m]aintain[ing] or improv[ing] habitat conditions that contribute to either stability or recovery” met the Planning Rule requirement to be “specific.”  The court added, “It certainly seems possible to measure whether the snow willow population in that area is ‘maintaining or improving,'” and that plaintiffs, “do not, however, provide any authority indicating what level of detail is required; nor was the Court able to locate caselaw defining that requirement.”

The court also found that two desired conditions for different “species of conservation concern” need not be disregarded because they may benefit the UFB even though they are not directed at that species.  Plaintiffs argued that a desired condition for connectivity was insufficient, to which the court responded that, “Petitioners point to no authority suggesting that desired conditions must be self-executing, or that each component must simultaneously address all possible threats to a given species.

With regard to the one guideline, the court discussed the programmatic nature of forest plans, and held:

“Petitioners do not provide any authority to support their assertion that the guideline insufficiently constrains the agency’s future management actions. They seem to believe that the 2020 Plan must be an exhaustive enumeration of all requirements for future site-specific actions….  The Court is thus unpersuaded by Petitioners’ request to, in effect, superimpose the requirements for approving site-specific projects onto its review of the more general Forest Plan at issue here.”

Finally, with regard to the adequacy of the ecosystem components leading to no need for species-specific plan components, “the Court finds the USFS exercised its prerogative to determine whether fine-filter components were necessary to provide for the key ecological conditions to contribute to the recovery of the UFB.”

As for NEPA, the court found that analyzing the effects of the winter motorized recreation plan components on lynx without first updating the 2018 lynx map for changes in snow compaction levels was not arbitrary or capricious.  While the court observed that plaintiff’s argument seemed reasonable, it said they didn’t do enough to overcome the Forest Service position that there were “no significant changes in the compaction routes and noted that it was committed to ‘remapping of compaction and the overlap with associated LAUs . . . as soon as practical.’”  The court held, “it is clear from the record that the USFS considered and applied what it considered to be the best available science…” and plaintiff’s argument was “more of a methodological quibble.”  For the UFB, the court referred to its analysis for the NFMA claim as determinative of the NEPA claim and found that “the analysis of the UFB” was adequate under NEPA.

Finally, plaintiffs claimed that the Forest should have considered an alternative that included two Special Interest Areas.  The court rejected an argument by the Forest Service that they could reject such an alternative because that would keep them from providing other multiple-uses.  However, the court then decided that these alternatives were not “significantly distinguishable from alternatives already considered.”  With regard to one of the areas, the court faulted plaintiffs for not showing that an existing alternative “would result in significantly different regulatory requirements.”  For the other area, the court found that the proposed Special Interest Area would either provide protection for lynx that already existed in the no-action alternative or if not, “would not have promoted the objectives of balancing competing interests in the plan area.”  Therefore, it was properly eliminated from detailed study as an alternative.

For those looking for insights into how the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright could affect the deference that courts will give to federal land management agencies, that opinion was not briefed in this case, but the district court explained in a footnote: “But this Court has likewise found no basis to conclude it affects the analysis here, which—though it implicates the APA—does not involve any disputed statutory construction.”  However, with regard to the analysis of effects on wildlife species, “where that analysis ‘requires a high degree of technical expertise,’ the Court properly ‘defer[s] to the informed discretion of the responsible agency.’”  Overall, “a presumption of validity attaches to agency action.”

(For what it’s worth, I found a number of flaws in the court’s reasoning that I think could be worth an appeal, but I understand plaintiffs are not going to do that.)

Government drops its appeal in Swan View Coalition v. Haaland (9th Cir.)

On February 20, the circuit court dismissed this case against the Flathead National Forest after the defendants opted not to appeal a lower court’s determination that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act because it failed to adequately consider the effects on grizzly bears and bull trout of closed roads and unauthorized use of roads when it adopted its revised forest plan (discussed here).  Here is the order.

Court decision in Helena Hunters and Anglers Association v. Moore (9th Circuit)

On February 25, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court decision (discussed here) to uphold the ESA consultation on the revised forest plan for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.  The circuit court addressed only the question of how the Fish and Wildlife Service must analyze the “removal” of ten standards for big game that were in the original plan and also protected grizzly bears.  It held:

“FWS was not required to spell out, separately and specifically, all changes between the 1986 Plan and the 2021 Plan and their incremental effects on grizzly bears. Instead, the text of the ESA and its implementing regulations requires a more wholistic approach that was satisfied here…  The analysis by FWS therefore captured the total net effect of implementing the entire forest plan.”

New lawsuit:  Native Ecosystems Council v. Webber (D. Montana)

On February 18, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council and Council on Fish and Wildlife sued the Forest Service over its approval of the Wood Duck Project on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.  It calls for 42 acres of clearcutting, 936 acres of additional commercial logging, and 263 acres of other logging in an area of widespread tree mortality.  Plaintiffs state that 195 acres is in old growth, and the area is important to grizzly bears and big game, and they allege violations of NEPA and NFMA.  According the plaintiffs, “The lawsuit raises challenges against the project, and also against the Forest Service’s failure to implement strong protections for public land elk habitat, grizzly bear travel corridors, and old growth forest across the Helena – Lewis and Clark National Forest.”  That sounds like they could also be initiating a lawsuit against the revised forest plan.  (I have not seen the complaint.)

 

All Probationary Employees Coming Back At Least For 45 Days; Probationary Employees’ Red Cards and the Importance of the Thing Formerly Known as Militia

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From Wildfire Today:

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2025 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released the following statement today regarding the status of probationary employees:

“On Wednesday, March 5, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) issued a 45-day stay on the termination of U.S. Department of Agriculture probationary employees. By Wednesday, March 12, the Department will place all terminated probationary employees in pay status and provide each with back pay, from the date of termination. The Department will work quickly to develop a phased plan for return-to-duty, and while those plans materialize, all probationary employees will be paid.”

USDA’s mass firing on Feb. 13 included thousands of federal land employees, around 75% of which had secondary wildland fire duties, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Vice President Riva Duncan, who obtained the numbers from the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Wildland Fire division.

“While ‘primary firefighters’ were exempt, the positions that were cut made some pretty huge contributions to operational wildland fire,” Duncan said. “For example, eastern national forests rely much more heavily on these collateral duty folks to do a lot of prescribed burning and initial attack of wildfires…There were people working the LA fires who, because it was the offseason, weren’t primary fire but were filling in on engines and crews.”

The Hotshot Wakeup looked at the specific steps (what’s next):

The big question is, what happens after the 45-day order expires? Here are the potential moves being made as this stay order is implemented.

  1. OSC Investigation:
    • During the stay period (until April 19, 2025), the OSC will gather evidence and determine if the terminations were unlawful.
    • If violations are found, OSC may seek permanent corrective action.
  2. Further MSPB Actions:
    • OSC could request an extension of the stay if the investigation is incomplete.
    • If OSC determines that the agency violated laws, it may file a formal complaint with MSPB to reverse the terminations.
  3. Legal Proceedings:
    • If MSPB finds wrongdoing, it could order reinstatements, back pay, or other remedies for affected employees.
    • The employing agency may challenge the findings, leading to potential litigation.
  4. Policy or Legislative Response:
    • If OSC confirms misuse of probationary terminations to bypass RIF regulations, broader policy reviews or Congressional oversight could follow.

If I had to guess, I think that USDA will back off and go on to VERA and RIF, which are more commonly used and easier to justify.

Importance of Collateral Duty Firefighters to Prescribed Fire and Wildfire Response and the Future National Wildfire Fighting Service

I asked around about the “75% red carded” figure and how it was obtained (from NFFE Wildfire folks, that much we know), but haven’t received an answer back.  I did ask a new retiree who was involved in preparing the testimony for NAFSR (post on that later) and he said:

Quals from their red cards – most people don’t know what a red card is so we kept it to qualifications. Trained in wild land firefighting means they had FFT1 or FFT2 quals – on the ground collateral duty wildland firefighters. We don’t use the term militia anymore since that has multiple meanings for the general public. The point being – while probationary  personnel in primary wildland firefighting position descriptions were not fired, many of those who were fired had on-the-fireline red card quals as collateral duty firefighters, which will impact the ability of the agency to respond to wildfires.

I thought that this was interesting as 1) the terminology has apparently changed from “militia” to “collateral duty firefighters” and 2) that the approach to the use and importance of “collateral duty firefighters” (CDFs) (not to be confused with the old California Department of Forestry, now known as CalFire)   may vary from Region to Region, because 3) a bill has been introduced to take fire people out of the FS.  Of course, they could still interact with CDFs still in the FS, but hopefully the process of integration would be relatively pain and bureaucracy- free.   From a Fire Aviation story in February.

Republican Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana and Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California recently introduced a Senate bill that would create the “National Wildland Fire Service.” The bill directs the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to reorganize federal wildland fire response nationwide, create a Director of the National Wildland Firefighting Service position, and develop a description for the new agency.

“The Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior (referred to in this Act as the ‘Secretaries’) shall jointly develop a plan to consolidate the authorities of the Secretaries relating to Federal wildland fire preparedness, suppression, and recovery efforts under an agency of the Department of the Interior, to be known as the ‘National Wildland Firefighting Service’,” the bill’s text reads.