Wilderness & the Politics of Compromise

Storm in Owyhee Wilderness
Storm in Owyhee Wilderness, Photo by Nie

The former Solicitor of the Interior, John Leshy, says there exists in wilderness politics a tension between idealism and pragmatism. This tension is evident in the 1964 Wilderness Act and subsequent wilderness laws, for each is generally the product of some negotiation and compromise.   Though too simplistic, this split is helpful to understanding the past, present, and possible future of wilderness politics. 

At one end of the continuum are idealists who rightfully worry that too many deals are being made in order to secure wilderness areas that are too compromised and too small, among other deficiencies.  Their concerns are heightened when economic development, in whatever guise, is being traded for wilderness designation.  At the other end are pragmatists who rightfully point out that wilderness has always been about compromise and that concessions have to be made in order to move the agenda forward.  It is a debate that has been going on for some time.  Instead of Yankees v. Red Sox, think of George Nickas of Wilderness Watch versus Doug Scott of Campaign for America’s Wilderness (no pay-per-view for the latter). 

Compromise has always been part and parcel of wilderness politics.  This most often entailed the size of an area, the drawing of lines on maps, the releasing of lands to multiple use management, the use of alternative protected land designations, and fights over non-conforming uses and special provisions related to such things as grazing, access, and water management. 

Important to point out is the significance of precedent in these historic debates.  Special provisions are often replicated in wilderness laws.  Once used, provisions related to such matters as water rights and buffer areas are regularly stamped onto future wilderness bills as a matter of course. 

This history helps explain why some groups are so concerned about incorporating more explicit economic development provisions into wilderness legislation.  These concerns were sharpened with passage of Nevada wilderness bills beginning in 2002 that controversially included various federal land sales and other economic development goodies in exchange for wilderness. 

And these concerns continue to manifest in recent debates.  Take, for example, the proposed Boulder-White Clouds wilderness bill—the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act.  This bill includes wilderness designation, land conveyances to Idaho counties and a city, and Congressional appropriations designed to assist adjacent counties.  (And at this point, all of these sweeteners have yet to win over key political representatives in Idaho or the county government-focused Tea Party in the state).

To no surprise, wilderness legislation is a product of its time and political context.  So many of the wilderness battles of the past pitted traditional gladiators against one another; wilderness advocates versus the timber or mining industries for example.  That was a relatively simple dichotomy. 

Also relatively simple was the fact that many wilderness battles of the past were about protecting rocks and ice—alpine and subalpine environments having relatively less economic value and pre-existing uses than lower-elevation lands.  Many current wilderness proposals, however, now aim to protect lower elevation landscapes—and thus landscapes with more historic uses and entrenched interests.  I suspect that the issue of political compromise and wilderness will become only more pronounced in the future because of the character of the lands being debated.  (The recent designation of the Owyhee Canyonlands comes to mind for example).  

So What’s Changed?  What is newsworthy, perhaps, is to consider how the contemporary political context is changing the wilderness debate…again.  Let me offer a few examples:

First, consider the widespread interest in forest restoration.  At a general level, the forest restoration agenda has the potential of rearranging traditional political alliances.  Restoration has certainly shaped a large part of Senator Tester’s controversial wilderness bill (see related posts on our blog).  Its proponents are seeking a balance between roadless area protection, various forest restoration goals, and a steadier and more predictable flow of timber.  Restoration is changing the terms of the debate in other places as well, with various “place-based” groups drawing new lines on maps, including areas to be prioritized for wilderness, restoration, and more active forest management. 

Or take motorized recreation.  This constituency is important for obvious reasons, and related concessions are made in several wilderness bills.  But motorized recreation has changed the wilderness debate in other ways as well.  There seem to be differences of opinion as to how great of threat motorized recreation is to future wilderness designation.  Some people believe that there is an urgency to designating lands as wilderness because of the growing threat of motorized recreation.  Some fear that motorized interests will increasingly use roadless areas and other protected lands and in doing so will establish historic use and diminish the characteristics that make these lands suitable for wilderness designation.  This perspective believes that we don’t have the time or luxury of waiting for the perfect large-scale unblemished wilderness law.   Those stars are unlikely to align, they say, so we must get on with more politically feasible protection strategies.   

Energy law and policy provides my last example.  This sprawling field will likely touch upon all of our federal land systems, wilderness included.  Take, for example, the proposed California Desert Protection Act of 2010 (click and read only if you have nothing to do for the next two days).  This gargantuan bill, in a nutshell (it wouldn’t fit), would designate wilderness areas, national monuments, and other protected lands and thus take roughly 1 million acres of the Mohave desert off-limits to renewable energy development.  But 119 pages later, that same bill encourages solar power production on other federal lands, including those managed by the BLM, USFS, and Defense Department.  Worked into the legislation is a hodgepodge of various provisions designed to expedite renewable energy—including its permitting and transmission—in California and other Western states. 

***

To conclude, I don’t want to overstate this trend because there are lots of old-fashioned wilderness bills and recently passed wilderness laws that are straightforward and uncomplicated.  The last Omnibus Conservation Law passed in 2009 includes several examples.  So there is nothing preordained about more compromise and economic development in future wilderness designation. 

Nonetheless, issues like restoration, motorized recreation, and energy development, among others, will continue to change the way in which wilderness politics is debated in the future.  They also bring to the fore a number of important questions. 

For now, consider two.  First, is wilderness law the appropriate vehicle to address related (and not-so-related) conservation issues such as energy development and forest restoration? And second, is the split between idealists and pragmatists a healthy one, a tension to be balanced? Or are these viewpoints working at cross-purposes to the disadvantage of wilderness and conservation?

Martin Nie, University of Montana

Cumulative Effects and the Five Buttes Project

This article is provided thanks to the good folks at the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and the Forestry Source.

Here’s Five Buttes 9th Circuit Appeal – Text-1 the article.

And a quote:

Cumulative Effects
Michael Mortimer, director of the Natural Resources Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is working on a study of judicial deference to agency expertise in cases against the US Forest Service in US district and appeals courts. The Five Buttes case, he said, is a good example of how the court had “reset the bar” to the appropriate legal standard for deference to agencies. However, the court engaged in the same level of fine-grained analysis of scientific and procedural detail that the court addressed in Lands Council.

“I see both the majority and dissenting opinions getting into what I think is fairly high-resolution detail on many of the issues that the agency dealt with in the case,” he said. “This notion of judicial deference can be a little bit of a trap. In court cases like these you have competing expert opinions, facts that may be presented out of context, and inherently complex scientific issues, so even if the court gives a high level of deference to the agency, they are tempted to get into the details of what the agency did, wading through agency science and process.”

Such was the case with the agency’s analysis of the cumulative effects of the Five Buttes project.

“Cumulative effects is a difficult scientific concept, it’s a difficult administrative concept, and it’s a difficult legal standard to define. And yet, both the majority opinion and the dissent were focused on cumulative effects analysis,” Mortimer said. “Instead of simply determining whether or not the agency had examined cumulative effects, the court looked at exactly what the agency did, what actions it took, how many pages they devoted to it, and so on. It’s a little troubling to see a court trying to unpack the adequacy of this type of analysis, because that’s inherently a very difficult thing for a court to get its head around.”

The Forestry Source- This is my favorite SAF publication and often has articles of interest. You don’t have to be a member of SAF to subscribe. Anyone wishing to subscribe can go to this page: and click on Subscribe. Costs $42 for individuals, $79 for institutions. This page has info for all of SAF’s publications.

Shrinking the Carbon Footprint -Biomass Grants to U of M

Here’s an article on biomass at U of M- “University of Montana officials hope to shrink the carbon footprint of campus by nearly a quarter by building a $16 million, wood-fired, biomass boiler onto the existing heating plant.”

Julie Kies coordinates the Fuels for Schools and Beyond program with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. She said the biomass plant proposal represents proven technology, as forest-products mills have used similar technology to heat their facilities for decades. In addition, 10 Montana public schools already use similar technology, as does UM-Western in Dillon and the University of Idaho in Moscow.

“What sets the UM plan apart is its scale, though it still won’t be as large as the co-generation facilities used by mills,” Kies said. “But it would be the largest such plant used at a Montana educational facility.”

Duringer said the University of South Carolina completed a similar project with mixed results that UM has learned from. Other campuses now introducing biomass plants include the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

In addition to the University of Montana, the DNRC awarded grants to two other area projects. Mineral Community Hospital in Superior received $175,000 for its biomass energy facility that will serve the hospital, elementary school, and high school. Clark Fork Valley Hospital in Plains received $104,000 for its wood pellet-based biomass energy system.

Here is another piece:

Julie Kies, DNRC Biomass Program Manager, sees the expansion of biomass utilization in Montana as a positive for both local economies and the state’s forest industry. The Montana Fuels for Schools and Beyond Program has helped to fund and implement 10 other biomass energy projects in Montana, starting with the pilot project at Darby School in 2003. We’re pleased to see woody biomass energy expanding to other facilities in the state including hospitals and university campuses, she said. Information about DNRC’s Biomass Utilization Program can be found online at http://dnrc.mt.gov/forestry/assistance/biomass

Station Fire in LA Times


Forest Service firefighters try to keep flames from jumping Angeles Crest Highway on the critical second day of the Station fire. They did not succeed, and the six-week blaze became the largest in Los Angeles County history, scorching 250 square miles and destroying more than 200 structures. (Al Seib, Los Angeles Times / August 26, 2009)

Here’s the article.
Working in fire suppression seems like a hopeless “darned if you do darned if you don’t” in an atmosphere of intense political pressure (to save money AND put out fires), knowing there’ll be a later maelstrom of finger-pointing and Monday morning quarterbacking, with some threats of personal liability thrown in for good measure. Don’t know how they put up with it, but I’m glad they do.
Thank you, firefighters!

Travel Management on the W-W


Richard Cockle/The Oregonian Randy James, operator of an Enterprise ATV and motorcycle shop, and ex-logger Larry Cribbs of La Grande repair a damaged sign that takes issue with a forthcoming travel management plan expected to prohibit motorized vehicles on much of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

This article from the Oregonian is full of interesting observations.. travel management is a big workload in the FS administrative appeals department right now and there may be more controversy as implementation of the travel management rule moves forward.  So  I added a new blog category for travel management.

Anyway, here are a couple of observations of interest.

Once in place, the plan will require forest users to consult a free map before setting off, Christensen said. Roads designated off-limits won’t be gated or marked, but straying onto a closed road could mean a $5,000 fine, she said.

“It is going to be a change in mindset for people to learn that when you are on the national forest these are the rules you’ve got to play by,” Christensen said.

The following two statements appear to be a bit in conflict

On the Wallowa-Whitman, fewer than 1 percent of visitors ride OHVs, said Randy Rasmussen of Corvallis, spokesman for the American Hiking Society. While their numbers are few, more control and management of them would help establish the Wallowa-Whitman as a preferred destination for hikers, equestrians, bird watchers and hunters — the ” so-called “quiet recreationists,” he said.

And

People widely use Wallowa-Whitman forest roads for sightseeing, cruising on ATVs, hunting deer, elk, chukar partridges and grouse, gathering winter firewood, huckleberrying and picking mushrooms.

Unless there are people, who, when taken together, compose less than 1% of total visitors, but those individuals widely use the forest roads? It seems confusing.

This one was of particular interest to me, as recently I attended a meeting with interest groups where one of the major topics was to make sure that NEPA did not form an obstacle to collaboration in landscape scale planning efforts. But we did not talk about consultation specifically at our meeting.

Early in the process, the Forest Service and public enjoyed “wide open and constant communication,” he said, but that’s changed with the entry of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Excluding the public isn’t unusual when federal agencies meet, said Judy Wing , a Forest Service spokeswoman in Baker City. “Consultation is not a public process,” she said.

That may be, but as with clearance of rules, I think agencies with opinions should document them and provide for public comment and discussion on their opinions. Speaking as a scientist, I think it would be a great opportunity for real- world science education if the dialogue among scientists and practitioners in the different agencies could be made public. I think it would be hard to achieve the kind of collaboration we all would prefer when there are periodic information blackouts.

The Community, Fuel Treatment and Industry Nexus in Colorado


Photo by Matt Stensland

I thought it was interesting that while we were discussing the 78 acres of WUI fuel treatments in roadless on the Umpqua, the Denver Post published this article this morning.

In addition, regional foresters are planning to remove dead trees from another 33,224 acres the next year, he said.

One challenge facing contractors is getting rid of the cut trees. Timber mills in Montrose and the San Luis Valley and a pellet factory in Kremmling have been hard-pressed to pay loggers enough to make that tree-removal work profitable.

Forest Service contracting officials say they pay around $1,200 per acre for selective removal of dead trees.

As firefighters on Wednesday worked to shore up lines around the wildfire west of Fraser, Town Manager Jeff Durbin said he and other local leaders are looking to meet with Forest Service officials.

Federal land managers haven’t removed enough of the beetle-kill trees that pose threats, Durbin said.

“Wildfire mitigation is really important business,” and this week’s fire heightened concerns about intense fires spreading from federal land, he said.

“You could see, from town, the flames. It was frightening.”

Interaction of Fire Exclusion and Logging- UM Paper

Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this find.

UM Study Finds Logged Forests More Prone To Severe Wildfires
Oct. 04, 2010

UM Press Release: http://news.umt.edu/2010/10/100110fire.aspx

Copy of Ecological Applications article: http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~cana4848/papers/Naficy_et_al_2010_Ecol_App.pdf

Contact:
Anna Sala, professor, UM Division of Biological Sciences, 406-243-6009, [email protected] .

MISSOULA – Historically logged forest sites are denser and potentially more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuel-reduction treatments, according to a new University of Montana study.

Anna Sala and Cameron Naficy, the lead researchers in the study, published an article on these findings in the most recent issue of the journal Ecological Applications. Sala is a professor in UM’s Division of Biological Sciences, and Naficy graduated with a master’s degree from UM in 2008.

Sala and Naficy’s study compared logged, fire-excluded sites to unlogged, fire-excluded sites in forests mainly consisting of ponderosa pines. The study covered a broad region spanning the Continental Divide of the Northern Rockies, from central Montana to central Idaho.

The findings contradict much of the conventional wisdom defining current U.S. forest policy, which assumes that increases in forest density, which in turn increase the susceptibility to severe wildfires or insect outbreaks, are primarily caused by fire suppression.

“This is an important finding because it highlights that vegetation management can result in long-lasting changes to forests that are likely to affect how large-scale disturbances, such as wildfires or insect outbreaks, play out on the landscape well into the future,” Naficy said.

“Furthermore, it shows that previously harvested and unharvested forests have very different restoration needs and fire hazard potential,” Sala said. “This recognition should go a long way in helping land managers to prioritize restoration and fuel-reduction efforts where they are most likely to be successful.”

For more information, call Sala at 406-243-6009, e-mail [email protected] or e-mail Naficy at [email protected] .

# # #

Naficy, Cameron, Anna Sala, Eric G. Keeling, Jon Graham, and Thomas H. DeLuca. 2010. Interactive effects of historical logging and fire exclusion on ponderosa pine forest structure in the northern Rockies. Ecological Applications 20:1851-1864. [doi:10.1890/09-0217.1]

Increased forest density resulting from decades of fire exclusion is often perceived as the leading cause of historically aberrant, severe, contemporary wildfires and insect outbreaks documented in some fire-prone forests of the western United States. Based on this notion, current U.S. forest policy directs managers to reduce stand density and restore historical conditions in fire-excluded forests to help minimize high-severity disturbances. Historical logging, however, has also caused widespread change in forest vegetation conditions, but its long-term effects on vegetation structure and composition have never been adequately quantified. We document that fire-excluded ponderosa pine forests of the northern Rocky Mountains logged prior to 1960 have much higher average stand density, greater homogeneity of stand structure, more standing dead trees and increased abundance of fire-intolerant trees than paired fire-excluded, unlogged counterparts. Notably, the magnitude of the interactive effect of fire exclusion and historical logging substantially exceeds the effects of fire exclusion alone. These differences suggest that historically logged sites are more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuels reduction treatments. Furthermore, we propose that ponderosa pine forests with these distinct management histories likely require distinct restoration approaches. We also highlight potential long-term risks of mechanical stand manipulation in unlogged forests and emphasize the need for a long-term view of fuels management.

The Roaded Roadless Paradox

This post is not really about the multifaceted and fascinating roadless controversies; it’s about clarity of communication in the press-where citizens should become informed on public policy issues.

Suppose you read this piece, “Forest Service cuts back logging in Oregon roadless area on fire safety project”

Here’s a quote:

The project scaled back commercial logging from 621 acres within roadless areas to 78 acres. It is all along a road on the western side of Diamond Lake that serves 102 private cabins on federal land, Dils said. Without the logging there is nowhere for firefighters to make a stand against a fire moving out of the roadless area toward the cabins, Dils said.

“When they designed this plan it really looked like they wanted to test the limits of the Obama administration on roadless,” said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild. “And from our cursory look the new plan looks like it scaled that way, way back, but it seems they still can’t resist pushing the envelope a little bit.”

People who take the English language literally might wonder how cutting trees along a road would impact “roadless” values.

I italicized the sentence about the fuelbreak for firefighters because that is a very clear statement of the objectives of fuel treatment in a WUI area, whether the trees are dead or alive.

Here’s another quote:

The two-year-old project was widely seen as a test of President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to protect the 58 million acres of backcountry that has never been commercially logged on national forests across the country.

But how can an area next to a road be considered “backcountry”? I am mystified as to why this apparent paradox does not seem to be addressed in this article.