The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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The management of water resources in National Forests and Grasslands continues to be an important topic in the development of the new planning rule, and was discussed at last week’s National Roundtable. While the meeting presentations were intended to focus on the more general topics of forest restoration and resilience, some participants at the meeting … Read more
The much maligned, much despised, and much misunderstood Clearcut is being seen in a new light these days. The driving force behind the new image is wildfire and the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) epidemic that has killed off millions of acres of lodgepole pine primarily in Montana and Colorado. The public never understood the ecology … Read more
The first “substantive principle” in last year’s Federal Register notice for a new Forest Service planning rule is restoration. How did we get here? Should we get out? Before we adopt the restoration idea as a central theme of the rule, we need to be aware of the pitfalls. The idea of restoration started with site-based … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
Your responses to the post below on the San Gabriel and charging for some Fourteeners were intriguing, and the topic of how to fund recreation on the national forests seems worthy of more exploration. It seems to me that water and recreation could be argued to be the two most important services that national forests … Read more
“Better to be safe than sorry.” “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” “First do no harm.” “Fences are made for those who cannot fly.” “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Caution or boldness? What happens if doing nothing is worse? This is one of the debates emerging from the Forest Service planning rule … Read more
The last panel at the Science Forum talked about the latest thinking in how to do planning, bringing together the information from the first four panels. Clare Ryan from the University of Washington spoke about policy design and implementation, especially best science. (slides pdf) When thinking about policy, we think about policy goals contained in the policy … Read more
This afternoon, the second panel at the science forum addressed the technical questions of landscape scale modeling and monitoring, and the related question of adaptive management. Eric Gustafson of the Forest Service Northern Research Station started the panel by describing the merits of landscape models, which he called the “computational formalism of state-of-the-art knowledge.” (slides pdf) … Read more
The first panel of today’s science forum emphasized landscape scale planning across multiple ownerships. Tom Sisk from Northern Arizona University began with the word: “practical”. (slides pdf) The next 20 years of the science about landscape scale management will focus on transparency, inclusion, and public deliberation. We are learning to “scale up” our management because of our … Read more