Schultz Testifies Before House Ag Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture: E&E News Story

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Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz prepares to testify before a House Agriculture subcommittee Wednesday. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sadly we will be losing our current source of access to E&E News, and my favorite reporter, Marc Heller. Hopefully someone else can help out.  I’ve tried the “social justice” argument for Politico Pro, but no dice.  They even raised prices so FSEEE couldn’t afford it, and many thanks to them for their help in the past.

Personally there’s too much grandstanding at Congressional hearings for me (though written testimony can be interesting), but Marc has a story on it with helpful info.

Employees will learn more about their futures with the agency soon. In a memo to all Forest Service employees Wednesday, Schultz said lateral reassignments and management-directed reassignments for senior non-unionized employees at the GS-14 and GS-15 pay grades will begin this week. That’s in addition to procedures announced in June for other employees.

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Congress hasn’t specifically authorized the reorganization. Democrats pressed Schultz on that point, citing provisions in appropriations law that prohibit such moves without the approval of the Appropriations committees.
Schultz echoed the official position of the Agriculture Department — which oversees the forest agency — that the administration doesn’t need congressional permission and need only inform the committees. But moving wildfire management to Interior does require lawmakers’ approval, officials have said, and Congress has yet to give it.

Schultz told POLITICO’s E&E News he expects to contract out a congressionally mandated feasibility study on the proposal to relocate wildfire management in the
coming weeks.

I would almost bet that many key FS folks don’t want the move (likely the Undersec does), and while last I heard the turnaround for the study was very tight, I’m thinking Congress will have other things on its mind by the fall.

He pushed back against an assertion by Agriculture Committee ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) that last week’s closure of the 1.1-million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in her home state was tied to staffing shortages and to wildfires burning in the region.
“Does the fact that Minnesota lost over 100 Forest Service staff since the start of this administration have anything to do with the wilderness area’s closure?” Craig said, adding that a similar closure in 2021 came as dry conditions and high fire risk were stretching firefighters and other employees.
“No, it does not,” Schultz said. “That’s strange,” Craig said, noting the history. “As far as I can tell the difference is that the Forest Service has lost 6,000 staff since 2024, including more than 100 employees in Minnesota.”

There is quite a bit of that going around, talking about “losing 6000” without mentioning the recent “gaining 6000”. If I were on Craig’s staff, I’d have the opposite prepared as well,  “you didn’t shut the Wilderness down when you should have because you lost all the people who make good judgments.”

While Schultz acknowledged that reshuffling offices and closing some research facilities is disruptive to affected communities — he likened it to military base realignments and closures — the chief said the moves will save the government money in the long run.
Shrinking the Forest Service’s footprint in its Sidney R. Yates headquarters building in Washington alone could save $60 million over a decade, Schultz said. The agency will occupy just one floor in the building after the Forest Service headquarters moves to Salt Lake City, he said.
Reorganizing the Forest Service also isn’t a new idea, Schultz told the panel, citing internal discussions in 2007. “Many of the things we’re looking at are not new.”

Thanks to Marc, we also hear from the other side:

As Schultz weathered the criticism, his agency continues to confront a worsening wildfire season. Fires have burned nearly 3.9 million acres this year through Wednesday, or nearly a million more than a year ago, according to the National Interagency Fire Service.
Two Forest Service firefighters died in fire operations in Colorado in June, along with one from the Interior Department’s Wildland Fire Service.
Schultz said the Forest Service hired 11,800 seasonal firefighters for this year — 500 more than its initial goal — and has around 28,000 total employees available for fire-related duty when “red-carded” staff qualified for such work are included.

The NIFC recently increased the national wildfire preparedness level to its highest category on a scale of five. Schultz said the Forest Service is operating on a “full
suppression” strategy for all fires. While Democrats zeroed in on the reorganization’s potential disruptions, Republicans on the panel applauded Schultz for meeting firefighter hiring goals, refocusing the Forest Service and working to boost timber sales and “That’s all great news for this country,” said Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.), whose district includes the Allegheny National Forest.
Schultz said the agency is well on its way to its annual timber harvest goal of 3.2 billion board feet, which would exceed last year’s and make progress toward President Donald Trump’s directive to boost the nation’s production.
“Much like agriculture, forestry depends on having reliable domestic markets,” said Rep. Jim Baird (R-Ind.).
But national forests provide less than 6 percent of the country’s saw log production, Schultz said, meaning the great majority of lumber comes from privately owned land. Forest Service efforts like wood innovation grants, begun during the Obama administration, help foster expansion in private industry, he said, adding that this year the Forest Service has made as much as $100 million in related grants.

“The issue is not unique to any one part of the country,” said Schultz, who came to the Forest Service last year from the Idaho Forest Group, a timber company.
“When I talk about the biggest threat to forests and the profession of forestry, it’s lack of markets,” Schultz said. “If landowners don’t have markets for their products, they will convert their lands to some other use.”

 

Northwest Forest Plan Revisions: Protecting Old-Growth in the 21st Century: Guest Post by John Cissel

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The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, 1994) employed concepts from conservation biology in an attempt to protect old-growth habitat and associated species, including aquatic organisms, while providing a sustained level of timber harvest. Protection was to be achieved by severely limiting timber harvest, the major contemporary source of old forest loss, primarily through an extensive network of Late-Successional and Riparian Reserves. A sustained level of timber harvest was planned in the residual Matrix lands, though planned harvest levels never materialized.

Old Douglas-fir (Santiam Wagon Road)

The NWFP successfully protected old-growth forests from logging, perhaps too successfully for those counting on the promised levels of timber harvest. But old forests continue to decline in large portions of the planning area because the plan failed to address the primary disturbance process resulting in loss of old forests in the 21st century: wildfire. Though conditions vary greatly across the region of the NWFP, widespread loss of old forest due to a renewed era of wildfire is significant and undeniable in the Oregon Cascades, the focal subregion of Johnson referenced in a recent TSW post and of particular interest to me. Neither the NWFP nor any of the proposed revisions plan for or respond to wildfire in meaningful ways, particularly for seasonally moist, westside forests.

How do I know wildfires are having significant effects on old forests in the Oregon Cascades? By going out and looking, and by documenting with text, maps and photos. As a spare-time project, I authored a series of old-growth hiking guides from 1991-2003 (out-of-print) showing the location and type of old growth along hiking trails in the Oregon and Washington Cascades. And now, 30 years later (2022-2026), I’ve gone back and revisited over 100 of these hikes in the Oregon Cascades (book in review.)

Many agents of change have been at work over the past 30 years, including those furthering development of complex old-forest habitat, but wildfire has overwhelmingly been the primary phenomenon driving loss of old forests. To put this into context, of the 120 old-growth hikes in the Oregon Cascades I documented 30 years ago, most of the old growth has since severely burned on 31 (26%) of those hikes, and an additional 16 (13%) hikes experienced a significant loss of old growth due to wildfire. Though widely distributed across forest and habitat types, these hikes are not a representative sample of the region. Nevertheless, 39% of the hikes have had significant loss of old growth along trails due to wildfire, over 30 years, most occurring over the last 20 years. A key point to understand is that these losses are occurring in seasonally moist forests on the westside.

Essentially all large fires contain a mix of fire severities, and fire effects in today’s old forests are quite varied. Large areas often burn at high severity though, and even in areas burned at lower severity the post-fire forest will take many decades to fully recover the lush and complex understory communities typical of these forests. Even with surface fires, significant mortality often arises from root and root collar damage due to uncharacteristically high fuel loads and warming summers. Recent fire history and anthropological studies point to an approximate 200-year period of fire exclusion and suppression in these forests.

Duff mound consumption (Lookout Creek)
Moderate-severity fire (Chuckle Springs)
High-severity fire (Multnomah Creek)

Fire is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part of these ecosystems, but old forests have been greatly diminished and fragmented from 50 years of dispersed clearcutting and recent wildfires on national forests. And on nonfederal lands old forests have been essentially eliminated. The result is greatly reduced habitat and vital ecosystem services, e.g., carbon sequestration. There simply isn’t much old forest left to carry the load while burned forests recover.

Wildfire poses many challenges that often defy control, but a NWFP for the 21st century must directly address and integrate wildland fire in all its dimensions. It is hard to imagine a successful conservation plan that doesn’t address the primary disturbance process causing loss of old forests. And wildfire will almost certainly remain the primary source of old-forest loss throughout the Oregon Cascades in the coming decades. Ideally, the full suite of fire prevention, mitigation, fuels treatment, wildfire response and recovery priorities and strategies will be integrated with protection and conservation of old forests.

What would that look like? I have notions, but a key point is that fire operations and management staff must be enlisted to help craft solutions. They are the ones with the practical experience and on-the-ground knowledge, and they are the ones who have a strong vested interest in getting this right. Resource specialists and ecologists working with fire personnel can best articulate how protection and conservation of old forests can be integrated throughout wildland fire operations.

Protection of old forests in the 21st century likely means a different conservation strategy than one based on Late Successional Reserves (LSRs.) LSRs were sized and located based on habitat needs of the northern spotted owl, a species that is functionally extirpated throughout most of the Oregon Cascades. Fire protection and management needs were not integrated into LSR siting, and significant portions of several Oregon Cascade LSRs have already severely burned. Proposed NWFP revisions appropriately include measures to protect all mature and old forests from logging wherever they are found, obviating the primary purpose of LSRs.

Potential fire refugia may provide a sounder basis for protection and conservation of old forests. Refugia, places that stand a higher probability of avoiding or surviving fire, might be locations that have a biophysical basis for protection, such as cirque basins or adjoining wetlands. Operational reasons may also define high-priority refugia, such as places where existing roads or other features delineate a defendable space. Potential fire refugia could usefully inform all aspects of fire prevention, fuels planning, and wildfire response and recovery.

My goal with this post has been to identify a clear need to update the NWFP to account for the actually occurring primary source of old-forest loss in the Oregon Cascades: wildfire. There are many issues important to the conservation of old forests beyond the scope of this post, e.g., post-fire reforestation and salvage, treatment of young stands, the importance of mature forests, and the risks from continued atmospheric warming other than fire. But wildfire can no longer be treated as an inconvenient, exogenous variable to grand plans and theories of conservation. Continued loss of old forest at the current rate will doom these forests well before the end of the century.

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John Cissel is retired from a 35-year professional career, including roles as:

1) Director, Joint Fire Science Program (2007-2016),  2) Research Coordinator, Oregon BLM (2003-2006), 3) HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Research Liaison, US Forest Service and Oregon State University (1990-2002),  4) Planning Analyst and Team Leader, US Forest Service (1981-1989.)

 He has also authored a series of old-growth hiking guides in the 1990s, culminating in the book “Old-Growth Forest Hikes: Washington and Oregon Cascades” published in 2003. A new book “Field Guide to Old-Growth Forests in the Oregon Cascades” is currently in review (PNWOldGrowthHikesPNW.org.)

 

Pick a Lane, Please: Suppression Strategies, Particulates, Carbon, Climate Change and Capacity

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This is a post in which I advocate for metrics to help improve wildfire management practices, and for forest plans to make certain wildfire management-related decisions.  Since I am usually skeptical of both metrics (too easily gamed, many discussions with my former boss Fred Norbuey) and forest planning (many discussions with all of you all), this is highly unusual, and possibly worthy of note.

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When I worked on Colorado Roadless, our team would often say “they need to pick a lane” because external folks would sometimes hold ideas that seemed to not be consistent to us.  Let’s just say that we as staff were not encouraged to ask clarifying questions when this happened- while we might think we were clarifying it could have been seen as challenging to People More Important Than Us

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So in this case, let’s put some pieces together.

  1. Climate change “causes” wildfire and things are going to get worse until the world gives up fossil fuels.

If we agree with this, then nothing in the way of wildfire is “natural” anymore, so we should use whatever capacity (human and technology) to reduce impacts. Pluse perhaps we need to give up the argument of “historical range of variation” and “wildfire deficit” and simply deal with what presents itself in the most practical way possible.  It  is more likely that decarbonization will be a relatively slow process, so adaptation will be key.

2.  A. It’s going to be a really bad year for wildfire in many parts of the west.

B.  Reorganization has affected wildfire capacity. Some in the media have elided the Interior Combo and the FS Reorg to some extent, and personally I think the jury is outon the Combo, still , certainly experienced folks have reiired, but let’s take it  as a hypothetical for now.

what doesn’t add up is C:

Since conditions are bad, and organizational issues beset the federal wildfire force, it’s also a serious problem if they don’t use monitoring, point protection and contain and confine, which all depend for success on ongoing use of more people and other resources thereby making them not available for the next problematic wildfire, which is sure to occure, because it’s a dry year.

So the Trump Admin can be dinged for not having enough well-trained people and, at the same time, for not using strategies that require a greater number of  well-trained people to carry off safely, plus conceivably extra resources on standby in case something goes awry.  This sounds like “management by wishful thinking”, not particularly safe, and not part of the wildland firefighting culture.   It seems to me that folks need to pick a lane. If conditions are bad, and people are few, this is not the year for operations that require more people to conduct and have a potential to escape.

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If we look at FY 2025, despite similar policies, MF still happened (or at least was reported) by the FS.  Of course the FY starts in October and the inauguration wasn’t til January, but it does make me wonder how this all fits together (policies vs. metrics).

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There’s also an obvious tension about how “we need” more fire on the landscape.  Again, this is not an argument that holds much weight in my county.  Again, it seems to be a federal lands issue.

Given that “we” need it, the argument for MF is that prescribed fire and MT won’t do it.  Which is OK, except we see hundreds of thousands of acres with Unwanted Wildfire, which should also be considered in the question of whether there is “enough” or not.

But that brings up a more complicated question.  If the goal is fuel reduction, then shouldn’t UWW  acres be counted when they reduce fuels? Wouldn’t we want to decide what it is that “we” want and measure the effects (good or bad) regardless of  whether the wildfire was prescribed, MF or UWF?  Conceivably that would help improve PF, MF, and UWW practices toward more of the good and less of the bad. We’ve seen PF that burned up all the trees (not the prescription), we’ve seen UWF that reduced fuel without killing all the trees.

Which brings up the question of “how do we know we don’t have enough if we don’t know how much we have (nor how much we want)?” since we all know (with climate change) that the past is information not a target.

Which leads me to the rare place where I agree that forest plans could be useful.  That is the place to look at specific landscapes, habitats, watersheds and decide what is wanted, and how to achieve it, with public involvement.  Many places have collaboration among government agencies and other groups and are figuring this out together, but it doesn’t seem yet to have a place in FS planning (PODs, evacuation routes, and so on).

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Then there are questions of air pollution from MF, PF and UWWF . If we were going for fewer particulates, what’s the best strategy? Plus there are especially bad pollutants from structures, so we would want to avoid wildfire running through communities, right?  And what about carbon?  Wildfires put large amounts into the atmosphere.  Probably the best way to deal with these would be PF and MT, including using the biomass instead of burning it in the woods  (also good for smoke, and safer).  Monitoring, point protection, and confine and contain don’t seem like they are very good for carbon or particulates.

Another pick a lane, more carbon and particulates versus PF and MT with some biomass use? It’s true that many are against using biomass for various ideological and practical reasons, but shouldn’t we at least attempt to get on the same page?

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And of course, to the people who say “suppression doesn’t work”- if it doesn’t work,, what difference does it make what strategy is selected?

AP Story: Deaths Tied to 10 AM Policy Tied to Full Suppression Policy Tied to Private Aviation Profits

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Apologies for how long this is.. but what was so obvious to me as I read this AP story while breathing Aspen Acres fire smoke.. is that part of the reason for disagreeing and partisanship is that we get “arguments that sound vaguely plausible from carefully chosen sources” over “trying to understand why people think what they think, and how we think differently.” Ironically, while I was trying to find this story, I had a banner across the screen asking me for support for AP calling it “news without an agenda.”

Let’s start with this wildfire season, here’s what AP says about their reporting..sure it’s a marketing hype thing, but still…

Reporters Martha Bellisle and Matthew Brown combined their expertise on changes to federal land agencies since U.S President Donald Trump retook office with their deep knowledge of the west and wildfires to deliver an accountability story examining how the new Wildland Fire Agency was promoting a widely discredited policy. The pair had been reporting out the story when three wildland firefighters died last week.

Through aggressive reporting and beat expertise, they quickly pivoted the story’s focus to explain the impact of the administration’s shift to an old, discredited firefighting policy, which says all fires must be extinguished in the first 24 hours – a policy many experts believed was dangerous for firefighters, communities and public lands.

I get that this is marketing, but full suppression is not the 10 AM policy. It’s just not .. true.. does that matter? Perhaps ironically, while I was trying to find this story, I had a banner across the screen asking me for support for AP calling it “news without an agenda.”

My understanding is that the people interviewed for the story did not realize that their observations would be tied to firefighter deaths.  We actually have processes to figure out what goes wrong on wildfires- and we can wait to find out.  It’s at least mildly creepy to me that the reporters chose to make that link, but I’ll leave moral judgments on that to others. The AP story was run in the Denver Post and around the nation, so many who read this article don’t get the impacted community’s side of the story.

Martha Bellisle is actually “global investigative reporter”  and you can get an idea of her areas of expertise (she is in Washington State)  Matthew Brown (from Billings MT). He has a strong background in  environmental journalism, but now has a broader scope according to this link at AP.

The headline of the story is:

Trump administration seeks to stomp out all fires quickly, reviving policy that has been discredited

At first it sounds like the 10AM policy, but here’s what the story actually says:

And the administration’s focus on “full suppression” of new fires marks a sharp reversal from a decades-long trend toward embracing flames as a tool — to burn off old vegetation and growth that acts like fuel and lessen the risk of catastrophic blazes being stoked by a warming planet.

Let’s look at what the USWFS and the FS said in their documents. Here’s what the FS said:

The safety of firefighters and the public is always first. Every unplanned ignition on National Forest System lands is managed under a full suppression strategy, and we will use best management practices for smoke. Guided by our safety principles and our risk assessment process, we will use direct tactics when conditions allow and indirect tactics when necessary. Our tactics may change with circumstances on the ground, but the goal to protect people, communities and important resources never does.

Here’s what USWFS said:

Given the Department of the Interior’s responsibilities to safeguard communities, landscapes, habitat and critical infrastructure, we will enter this season with the presumption of a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire under DOI management.

Suppression actions must be prompt, decisive and based on values at risk—balanced with firefighter safety and a clear assessment of probability of success. Until conditions permit, all unplanned ignitions will receive a suppression response, using direct or indirect strategies as conditions dictate.

While indirect approaches may occasionally be warranted, direct suppression should remain the default. DOI firefighters are empowered to assess and mitigate risk while responding to wildfires and have the full support of Department leadership in carrying out this mission.

What is a “full suppression strategy”? Here’s what Google AI says (and I hope people will correct it if it’s wrong)

A “full suppression strategy” (or full perimeter containment) is a wildland fire management response aimed at extinguishing a fire as efficiently as possible, stopping all spread. It relies heavily on constructing direct and indirect firelines to halt the fire’s advance and cooling hot spots to protect human life, property, and resources. [1, 2, 3]
Alternative fire management strategies—collectively known as Strategies Other Than Full Suppression (OTFS)—allow fire managers to manage the fire in a way that minimizes firefighter exposure while achieving ecological benefits. These are defined by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Wildfire Coordinating Group: [1]
  • Point or Zone Protection: Protects specific assets or high-value resources (such as structures or critical infrastructure) without directly trying to stop the broader spread of the wildfire. [1, 2]
  • Confine: Restricts the wildfire to a defined area primarily by utilizing natural or pre-existing barriers (e.g., rivers, roads, and ridges), intervening only to tie these barriers together. [1, 2]
    • Monitor: Involves continual assessment of the fire’s progression, weather conditions, and fire behavior without taking direct physical suppression actions, allowing the fire to run its natural course under favorable conditions. [1]

I would argue almost everyone in this currently impacted part of Colorado is not really interested in point protection, confining or monitoring right now- June in a very dry year.  Not the many evacuated people. Not the many people at risk of losing their homes.   “Stomping out”  or even better “having previously stomped out” actually sounds terrific.

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So let’s look deeper into the arguments in the story..

The consolidation of thousands of personnel into the fire service has sown confusion among some firefighters about who their bosses are and what their responsibilities should be, according to former government officials.

I thought the ICS was fairly straightforward and time-tested.  What “former government officials” exactly? If they’re “former” they must not be afraid of blowback, so why not let us be the judge of sources?

And the administration’s focus on “full suppression” of new fires marks a sharp reversal from a decades-long trend toward embracing flames as a tool — to burn off old vegetation and growth that acts like fuel and lessen the risk of catastrophic blazes being stoked by a warming planet.

The ever-helpful Google AI pointed me to this open JFor paper..

Changes to US wildfire policy in 2009 blurred the distinction between fires managed for resource benefits and fires with primarily suppression objectives, making management strategies difficult to track. Here, qualitative text is coded from a sample of 282 Wildland Fire Decision Support System Relative Risk Assessments completed on wildfires between 2010 and 2017 to examine the prevalence of different strategies and their associations with risk. Suppression is used most, associated with high risk. Managers discuss intent to suppress even when it is untenable. Monitoring, confine, or point protection are used much less commonly and when risk is low.

It kind of sounds like the “decades-long trend” was more conceptual than in practice.

The changes benefit private fire aviation companies that are key to hitting blazes fast.

Again that sounds like it might be true, but I live in a county where aggressive initial attack is the thing (think grass and high winds) and I’m not sure I care if the helicopter is owned by the county or a contractor.  Of course, this might be a jab at Sheehy and Bridger, but I think they probably have plenty of work.  If I don’t know that this is true (about aviation), how can the reporters just make a blanket statement?

“The question is, why were they attacking that fire in the first place?” asked Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter and cofounder of the advocacy group Firefighters United For Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “What was actually at risk? If it was a bunch of shrubs on remote mountaintops, what was the real risk that justified putting those firefighters at risk?”

What Ingalsbee seems to be saying is that firefighter safety (albeit #1 in both agency’s policy) was compromised in this case, because of the full suppression strategy.  But would this have been a fire that would have lent itself to other strategies? In June, in a notoriously dry year? How does he know that?

It’s kind of second-guessing the judgement calls of the IC s to strategy and tactics around that fire, based on the change in policy.   Which are the same folks we would be trusting to pick another a non-suppression strategy instead. And firefighter safety is still the #1 policy, so..

But critics say the administration is trying to fix something that isn’t broken: The four agencies the firefighters were drawn from — the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs and National Park Service — have a record of extinguishing 98% of the fires they handle.

That’s lovely, but how many watersheds, communities, wildlife and forests are damaged in the process (and from ensuing floods and so on)? And why are we funding suppression at all then,  since winter, according to this metric would do better (at 100%) for free. It did make wonder about the FS, though.

Under Trump, federal officials have been bringing in aircraft more quickly once fires ignite, said Austin Moeller, an aerospace analyst for the investment firm Canaccord Genuity.

“Anyone that has an air tanker benefits from this more aggressive contracting activity,” Moeller said.

So we don’t want to put fires out before they become unmanageable  because… aircraft? Because a Republican Montanan got elected who had a wildfire aviation firm?

Bridger describes itself as one of the nation’s leading aerial firefighting companies. CEO Sam Davis has said the company’s fleet of Super Scooper aircraft, its surveillance aircraft and its fire observation technology make it “uniquely positioned” to respond to the renewed emphasis on attacking fires to put them out.

Of course, Bridger’s marketing uses that term, similarly to how the AP marketing says “deep knowledge of the west and wildfires.”

The aircraft will help the administration’s new full suppression policy, which harkens back to a 1935 policy known as the 10 a.m. rule because it required agencies to put out new fires by 10 a.m. the following day.

Using a full suppression strategy is not the 10AM rule.. that should be obvious to everyone.  “Harkens back to ” is carrying a lot of weight. All it is is NOT point protection, confine or monitor.

Scientists who study wildfires say trying to stop all fires is unrealistic since some of the most destructive blazes in recent years have evaded efforts to put them out. Some fires simply grow too fast, are too remote, or result from multiple ignitions that makes them impossible to stop.

If we switch this to the definition of full suppression, we’d get “scientists argue that monitoring, confining and point protection are better strategies.”  But that’s not what many scientists are saying- I wonder what scientists the reporters spoke with who said this, that they are “impossible to stop”. Sure, that happens sometimes for days or weeks.   And yet, there are thousands of folks in North America today  doing exactly that, and we can see their activities and the results on Inciweb and Watch Duty.

“The narrative that if we just try harder, we’re gonna make these fires go away isn’t true,” said former Forest Service wildfire researcher David Calkin. “The fire paradox is not beatable: The more you make fire go away, the more fuel accumulates. The more fuel accumulates, the harder it is to make fires go away.”

On the Aspen Acres fire, we currently have 100,000 acres burned with a full suppression strategy.  So there’s that. Then there’s prescribed fire, and mechanical fuel treatment that also reduce fuels.  It seems like the way this is said implies that wildfire is the only way to reduce fuels.  Then why do the States and Feds spend so many bucks on PF and MT if only wildfires “work”? To be fair, though, this could be a misquote or an out-of-context quote.

If all this wasn’t depressing enough, the comments suggest that (some) people believe the story and agree firefighting doesn’t work, and it’s only done for private profit. It all reminds me of  Miles’s Law- “where you stand depends on where you sit” or the evacuees sit in your house or the smoke you’re inhaling..

The next post will address some questions that arose in my mind from observations and reading some of these articles.

 

The Public Processes That Lead to Proclamations

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The above map is of the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, which, like almost all others, doesn’t have the back and forth across Admins of Bears Ears and GSE.

New folks may have never seen this TSW piece from 2020, where I suggested a unification approach to Bears Ears.

Mark Squillace, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, tells the story of when he accompanied Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit to affected communities to discuss Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The way his story goes, talking person to person with Babbit may have actually changed minds, or at least reduced the atmosphere of antipathy. (Of course, that’s Mark’s side of the story, but we don’t have another one, so I’ll go with it.)

Here’s my unifying approach based on that:
1. Send the Secretary out there (presence is a great symbol) as part of a public comment period
2. Determine to listen respectfully to the other sides, including elected officials from the other party (!). As the President-elect said, they are not your enemy.
3. Do a deal with the goal of stability.. “can everyone live with this?”

Actually, it sounds a lot like plain old collaboration. It’s also what states have to do regularly, which is why I like former western governors and DNR directors for Interior Secretaries.
It’s interesting to think about why it is that when the stakes are higher than at the State level, it seems like collaboration takes a back seat and “winner takes all” takes over. But internationally, we’d reject that approach in supporting peace processes. Perhaps national politics are some kind of anomaly. Not in a good way.

There was this quote from Babbitt about another Monument, Canyon of the Ancients, which I thought was interesting but sadly the link to the Durango Herald is now broken.

The pushback from the energy production industry is a major obstacle, but Babbitt said he has long held the belief that the two, preservation and industry, can co-exist.

“How many of you know, that there is gas production at the Canyon of the Ancients?” Babbitt asked the crowd of about 30 members and non-members. “The opponent says you’re taking things off the slate of use and production, that the land is just being set aside for weak environmentalists. But (oil and gas) can be managed with minimal impact. It is possible to make them work together.

The comments on the TSW piece are also interesting, not much has changed.  One link in the post was to this story in the Deseret News with details about the campaign and funding, as well as tribes for and against.

But Clarke said most of the tribal leaders who visited Bears Ears for the Jewell meeting had probably never been there before and likely will not be back again.

“The more distant you are as a Navajo and tribal member the more likely you are to support the monument because you view it as an abstraction or concept or theory of tribal sovereignty,” he said. “The closer you get to the monument, the more likely you are to view it as land that can and should be used properly.”

The Conservation Lands Foundation boasts on its website that the marathon listening meeting in Bluff attended by more than 1,500 people for Jewell was an “incredible success,” with huge showings from their Friends Grassroots Network that includes multiple Colorado-based organizations.

Supporters of monument designations sported blue T-shirts to draw attention to themselves at the event designed for Jewell to hear the issues surrounding the monument debate.

“Secretary Jewell, you came to Utah seeking local input. Unfortunately, what you saw and what you heard was theater staged by radical environmentalist outsiders intent on smothering local voices. This wasn’t local grass roots. This was Astroturf,” blogged Matthew Anderson, the Sutherland Institute’s policy analyst for the Coalition for Self Government in the West.

Chaffetz said he has no doubt tribal leaders are being influenced by environmental groups seeking monument designation.

“I sat with the president of the Navajo Nation last August and he had no idea what Bears Ears was or where it was,” he said.

Clarke wonders at what he says is a contradiction inherent in the monument designation.

“Everybody who came out here says it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful and pristine and we want to keep it that way. I say ‘thank you,’ because we have been taking care of it the last 100 years,” he said.

Patrick brought up the differences between Monumentization and Wilderness, (and forest plans and RMP’s and Roadless)  in his comment on the previous post:

The 2000 management plan for Grand Staircase Escalante closed thousands of miles of primitive dirt roads, most claimed as RS-2477 roads by the state of Utah. Massive sections of the monument are completely inaccessible by vehicle, not because there are no roads but because the public isn’t allowed to use them. Most of these roads were boundary roads for Wilderness Study Areas that predated the WSA and are technically outside of them, but were closed when the BLM decided to manage most of Grand Staircase as de facto wilderness.

And this is the real problem that keep triggering backlash – the fact that certain groups have been attempting to use national monuments as backdoor de facto wilderness designations. Real wilderness designations are settled by Congress and involve political compromises that usually cherry stem roads to preserve existing access. Monument proclamations bypass the political process and allow wilderness groups to force their will on the public, with massive wilderness-like areas shutting down all access to entire regions of the state. Grand Staircase is the prime example of this because it closed so much. The current travel management plan left maybe 5% of existing roads open. That monument set the precedent that monument designations remove public access to public lands. Before that, new National Monuments and National Parks often increased public access, involving building new roads and infrastructure to allow the public to more easily visit spectacular places. If you contrast somewhere like Zion or Colorado National Monument, which both have some impressively engineered roads built to allow public access to very forbidding terrain, with Grand Staircase which only closed existing roads, the difference is striking.

It seems like there are public processes of some kind (meetings) but not necessarily what we have come to expect in terms of formal comment periods.  Still, some, even large Monuments, receive little pushback.

My current thinking is that folks like Hewlitt (who apparently funded TWS and others involved in the campaign, according to the reporting) want land “conserved” From their current strategy document.

To date, we are approximately 65% of the way toward the foundation’s long-term goal of protecting half of the North American West. In the past five years, our grantees achieved new protections on approximately 10 million acres, which was our goal.

It seems perhaps if we put that together with Babbitt’s observation on Canyon of the Ancients. from their 2024 Manager’s Report:

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM) is a multiple use national monument. Over 81% of the monument is leased for oil and gas development to a dozen different operators and corporations. One of the largest CO2 fields in the world is found under the McElmo Dome within the boundaries of the monument. Almost 500 billion cubic feet of CO2 is extracted from within the monument and sent via high-pressure pipeline to the Permian Basin in west Texas where it is used to enhance petroleum production. This CO2 production business is the largest source of tax revenue for both Montezuma and Dolores Counties.

Approximately 160,000 of the monument’s 177,000 acres are also available for livestock grazing, including 23 grazing allotments allowing for 6,400 animal use months of grazing use. Additionally, the monument is open to small and big game hunting following Colorado state hunting and fishing laws. The monument also contains 190 miles of motorized vehicle routes open for public use including off-highway vehicles.

The proclamation designating the area states that the monument has the densest concentration of cultural sites found in our country with an estimated 30,000 sites. Twenty-six modern day tribal nations are affiliated with the cultural sites and landscape of Canyons of the Ancients.

We might have a win-win, Hewlitt gets to claim more acres as “protected” (they’re Monuments) and leave the details to those closer to the ground.

Apparently, it’s not in the Monumentizing per se, but what’s in the proclamation exactly, and the question is “what kind of collaborative or public engagement processes led to those?” Because as Patrick points out, and Don experienced, most Monuments don’t switch back and forth over time, so there is something distinctive about Bears Ears (and GSE).  What is it?

Here are more  photos from the CofA  Manager’s Report. Canyon of the Ancients is one of my faves.

Beyond the Headlines: Building the Future of Bears Ears, Guest Post by Don Amador

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Don Amador sent in this post on the recent Bears Ears changes.. for me it raises an interesting question.  What leads to Monument agreement and what to backlash and reversal? Design factors (were there groups working toward consensus, or was it imposed from above? By state (Biden established some in Arizona without apparent interest in reversal?).  What about disagreements (say Dolores Canyon)- how are they handled? Does it depend on which uses are at the table (e.g. mining, oil and gas, timber) to be potentially excluded? Because most tend to reduce OHVs and grazing, but not exclude. Is the fear of becoming an industrial tourism destination a new thing or has it always been there? What entities took leadership for establishing collaboration? Feds, states, locals, NGOs?

It seems like a good graduate student project- helping to make a roadmap for folks who want to design a Monument that is stable politically. Maybe all the rest have been stable, and if so, what are the unique characteristics of Bears Ears? But back to Don’s post, which focuses on the need for collaboration for stable decisions.

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President Trump’s recent Executive Order modifying the boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument has reignited a familiar debate across the West. Depending on which headlines or social media posts you read, the action is either being celebrated as a major victory for public access or condemned as an unprecedented attack on conservation and Tribal interests. As is often the case with public land issues, the reality is considerably more complex.

After reviewing the Executive Order, the recently approved Bears Ears Resource Management Plan, and the initial reactions from recreation, conservation, and Tribal organizations, I believe there is value in stepping back from the political rhetoric to look at what the Order actually does—and just as importantly—what it does not do.

For the off-highway vehicle community, the Executive Order does not immediately reopen trails or create new riding opportunities. It reduces the monument boundaries and restores those lands to traditional Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service multiple-use management. Existing travel management decisions, designated route systems, and resource management plans generally remain in place until they are modified through future planning processes. In other words, this is not an “opening” of public lands. It is the beginning of another planning process.

That distinction is important. Future decisions regarding motorized recreation will still require compliance with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other applicable federal laws. Public involvement, environmental analysis, and collaboration among stakeholders will remain essential components of any future travel management decisions.

For those of us who have spent decades working on travel management plans throughout the West, this is familiar territory. Executive Orders can establish policy direction, but they do not replace the detailed work of inventorying routes, evaluating resource conditions, balancing competing uses, and engaging the public in developing sustainable travel management plans.

Ironically, one fact that received relatively little attention during the previous Bears Ears planning effort was that the Bureau of Land Management estimated that approximately 98 percent of previously designated motorized routes would remain available for public use, even under the recently approved monument management plan.  While many in the OHV community understandably focused on the proposed closures, the broader story was that the vast majority of designated routes remained open. That illustrates how public perception and the actual details of land management decisions are not always the same.

From my perspective, however, the most significant issue is not the number of miles that may eventually open or close. It is the continuing instability in public land management.

Bears Ears has now experienced multiple major policy reversals under successive presidential administrations. Each change has required agencies to begin new planning efforts, redirect limited staff resources, revisit previous decisions, and prepare for the inevitable legal challenges. Local communities, Tribes, counties, recreation groups, conservation organizations, and agency personnel are once again left wondering what the next administration may decide.

Throughout my career, I have learned that durable public land management is rarely achieved through political victories alone. It is built through collaboration.

One of the reasons I publicly supported the expansion of California’s Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument was because the process brought together Tribes, conservation organizations, local governments, and the OHV community in meaningful discussions about the future of those public lands. Designated motorized recreation remained part of the conversation, not because everyone agreed on every issue, but because participants were willing to work toward practical solutions that balanced conservation with public access.

My impression has been that the Bears Ears process never achieved that same level of trust among all interested stakeholders. Whether that perception is entirely accurate is almost beside the point; rebuilding trust should now become a priority regardless of one’s position on the Executive Order.

The motorized recreation community also has an opportunity to demonstrate leadership. Rather than viewing this Executive Order solely as a political victory, we should continue advocating for what has consistently produced successful outcomes across the West: sustainable recreation on designated routes, protection of archaeological and cultural resources, respect for Tribal history and traditions, science-based travel management, and meaningful collaboration with other public land interests.

Likewise, the conservation community has an opportunity to recognize that many responsible OHV organizations have spent decades promoting route designation, resource protection, volunteer stewardship, restoration projects, wildfire recovery, and partnerships with public land managers. Managed motorized recreation and conservation are not mutually exclusive. In many places across the West, they have become complementary objectives supported by strong local partnerships.

The greatest challenge facing public lands today is not simply deciding where people can ride, hike, hunt, mountain bike, or camp. It is developing management strategies that can endure beyond the next election cycle. Constant policy reversals consume agency resources, discourage stakeholder investment, and make it increasingly difficult to build the trust necessary for successful long-term stewardship.

Whether one supports or opposes President Trump’s Executive Order, we should all recognize that the future of Bears Ears—and countless other public lands—will ultimately be determined not by headlines or executive actions alone, but by the quality of the planning and collaboration that follows.

For those of us who care deeply about America’s public lands, that should remain the common ground.

 

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Don Amador is a longtime public lands advocate with over 34 years of experience in recreation policy, trail stewardship, and collaborative land management and former Chair of the CA State Parks OHMVR Commission

Federal Lands Litigation – update through July 8, 2026

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FOREST SERVICE

Appeal dismissed in Western Watersheds Project v. United States Forest Service (10th Cir.)

On June 26, the circuit court determined that the district court’s order remanding the plan amendment to the Forest Service to correct NEPA deficiencies—while leaving the amendment in place (no vacatur)—was an administrative remand and thus not a “final decision” appealable by plaintiffs to the circuit court.  We discussed the merits of the case here (which was prior to the no vacatur decision).  (There is more than you want to know about vacatur here.)

Amended complaint in American Federation of Federal Employees v. Trump (N.D. California)

On July 1, plaintiffs in this lawsuit filed last year added claims related to actions taken since the lawsuit was filed.  Specifically, “pursuant to the directives of President Trump, OMB, and OPM, USDA created and received approval for RIF and Reorganization Plan that would impose substantial restructuring and workforce reduction across the Department.”  The claims generally assert that, in response to a presidential executive order (No. 14210, along with OMB and OPM implementation orders) the federal agencies have exceeded their authority, and such restructuring must be enacted by Congress.  We have discussed this previously here.  The article includes links to the complaint, the memorandum in support, and the Supreme Court’s stay of an injunction of the executive order itself (a different claim than those addressed here related to reorganization plans).

  • Wild horses

New lawsuit:  Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Trube of the Benton Paiute Reservation v. U. S. Department of the Interior (E.D. California)

On June 29, the Tribe, its chairman and its cultural monitor and historic preservation officer asked for a temporary restraining order to halt a wild horse roundup on lands abutting the Montgomery Pass Wild Horse Territory, a 208,000-acre swath jointly managed by the Forest Service (Inyo National Forest) and the BLM, straddling the California and Nevada border.  The Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute’s reservation sits within the roundup area’s boundaries and borders the horse territory.  The complaint is here.

On July 7, the district court denied the request for a temporary restraining order.  That opinion and the following two filings are linked to this article.

Injunction pending appeal denied in Tobin v. Rollins (E. D. California)

Also on July 7, the district court denied the motion in a case we discussed previously (linked above).

Preliminary injunction granted in Carter Reservoir Mustangs, Inc. v. U. S. Department of the Interior (E.D. California)

On July 8, the district court found that BLM’s 2025 Gather Plan for three herd management areas in Northern California and adjacent parts of Nevada, and its scheduled implementation this coming September, likely runs afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act as well as the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.  BLM had failed to consider the actual growth rates of the horse populations at issue.  The article has a link to the court order.

BLM

Court decision in Montana Wildlife Federation v. Burgum (D. Montana)

On June 12, the district court vacated the Bureau of Land Management’s decision regarding six lease sales in Wyoming (1.25 million acres) and Montana/Dakotas (185,000 acres) dating back to 2019 and 2020.  The sales were prepared in accordance with a Trump administration memo instructing staff to disregard resource management plan prioritization requirements for fluid mineral leasing to avoid sage-grouse habitat (2015 sage-grouse amendments).  As in prior cases involving the memo, the court found the leases violated FLPMA because they were inconsistent with the RMP.  The BLM must return the lease fees, except for nine leases that were developed during the litigation.  The article includes a link to the court’s order.

New lawsuit:  Cascadia Wildlands v. Burgum (D. Oregon)

On June 24, Cascadia Wildlands alleged that the Aloha Trout Timber Sale was illegally authorized because the BLM did not submit its 2016 Northwestern and Coastal Oregon Resource Management Plan for the area to Congress pursuant to the Congressional Review Act. The BLM therefore violated FLPMA by not authorizing this (or any other) project pursuant to a valid RMP.  We previously discussed this here.  The article has a link to the complaint.

Settlement in Alaska Industrial Development  and Export Authority v. Bureau of Land Management (D. Alaska)

On July 7, the Justice Department stipulated to a settlement of lawsuits filed by the state of Alaska and its investment bank over the 2025 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil lease sale (that received no bids).  “The Biden era Alaska oil and gas leasing program violated the law and improperly limited Alaska’s energy potential with unreasonable regulation,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. According to the Justice Department, restrictions imposed by the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration resulted in multiple violations of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by the 2024 leasing program.  (Can you say “sue and settle?”)  The article includes a link to the draft settlement agreement.

ESA

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (D. Oregon)

On June 9, the Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failure to issue a 12-month finding and final listing decision for the western ridged mussel in violation of the Endangered Species Act’s mandated deadline.  The freshwater mussels are native to rivers across Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Nevada. Western ridged mussels have declined across much of their historic range because of river damming, degraded water quality, climate-driven drought and invasive species such as zebra and quagga mussels, according to the complaint, which is linked to the news release.

Court decision in Yurok Tribe U. S. Bureau of Reclamation (9th Cir.)

On June 17, the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that the Endangered Species Act applies to the government’s operation of the Klamath Irrigation Project and that the rights of Klamath Project water users are subject to the requirements of the ESA. Water delivery contracts held by irrigators do not supersede the Bureau of Reclamation’s obligation to comply with the Endangered Species Act and consult on their discretionary actions.  The court also did not find a federal government taking of private water rights.  The project has severely affected the local Chinook and Coho salmon populations, which the Yurok tribe relies on, and requiring consultation by the Bureau of Reclamation under ESA would likely result in more water in the streams instead of being stored for irrigation.  The circuit court had earlier denied the Trump Administration’s motion to dismiss the case.  The opinion is here.

Court decision

On June 25, the Maryland district court dismissed as moot the challenge to the Biological Opinion that led to the Endangered Species Committee waiving ESA requirements for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas activities.  The ruling makes clear that a decision by the Committee supersedes all other authority under the ESA.  This ruling does not affect the multiple new cases filed against the use of the Committee (discussed here).

Court decision in San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper v. County of San Luis Obispo (C.D. California)

On July 6, on a remand from the 9th Circuit (which we discussed here), the district court denied the environmental groups’ motion to order the county owner of a dam to implement an increased water release schedule to protect threatened steelhead trout.  The court said the environmental groups did not adequately prove that the increased water flows wouldn’t harm the tidewater goby and the California red-legged frog, also federally listed species.

OTHER

Amended complaint in Friends of the Ruidosa Church v. Mullin (W. D. Texas)

On June 11, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Ruidosa Church and a Big Bend-area landowner amended their lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to challenge the waiver of dozens of laws to fast-track border barrier construction through Big Bend National Park.  The original lawsuit was filed in April, and it says the Department violated “a provision in the U.S. Constitution that requires congressional approval for actions with vast economic and political consequences,” and the amendment adds claims against waivers of laws applied to the national park, including the National Park Service Organic Act.  According to the complaint (which is linked to this news release), this is the first time a national park has been affected by waivers of environmental laws.  The waiver would also affect the Lower Canyons stretch of the Rio Grande, a designated national Wild and Scenic River.

  • History rewrite

Court decision in National Parks Conservation Association v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. Massachusetts)

On June 12, the district court granted a preliminary injunction and ordered the National Park Service to restore interpretative materials pertaining to history and climate change removed from national parks.  The court said Secretarial Order No. 3431 was arbitrary and capricious (the court’s order is linked to the article):

“Yet, the Government’s actions do exactly what they profess to counteract, dismantling objective historic truths and permanently damaging public memory.  Behind the incendiary rhetoric lies little substance, lacking even a remote amount of scientific rigor, facts, legal authority, or discernible reasoning.  Our democracy and system of governance demand more from the Executive.”

However, on July 2, the 1st Circuit granted the government’s motion to stay the district court’s order because plaintiffs had insufficiently supported its claims of “irreparable harm.”

New lawsuit:  Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. Department of the Interior (D. D.C.)

On June 17, PEER filed a lawsuit seeking release of “records showing how it is implementing an order to scrub ‘disparaging’ content about American history from national parks, monuments, and other public lands.”  They included the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Bureau of Reclamation.  PEER filed its FOIA request on September 5, 2025, seeking information regarding which properties were reviewed, what content was flagged, who made the final calls, and what was removed, altered, or “restored” as a result.  The Department has not released any records.  The complaint is linked to the press release (and is not related to the NPCA case above).

Case reinstated in Garfield County, Utah v. Trump (10th Cir.)

On June 23, the circuit court reversed a district court decision that dismissed challenges to President Biden’s October 2021 use of the Antiquities Act to restore the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. The court held that applications of the Antiquities Act to establish national monuments are reviewable in federal court, and the cases were remanded to the U.S. District Court in Utah.  The boundaries and protections remain in place.  The opinion is here.

Case dismissed

On June 26, an Idaho state district judge dismissed a case filed by the new USDA undersecretary for natural resources and environment due to inactivity in the litigation.  Michael Boren claimed that he was defamed by opponents of his requested permit to use a strip of irrigated pasture within protected land along the Salmon River to land Boren’s helicopter.  The case had been dismissed previously, where the judge wrote it “appears to be a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) brought to violate the constitutional rights,” of the defendants.

Preliminary injunction

On June 26 a Montana state district court judge granted a preliminary injunction to the conservation group American Prairie, temporarily blocking a directive from the Montana Land Board for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation not to approve new or pending requests to allow bison to graze on state land.  Earlier this year, at the request of Montana officials, the Bureau of Land Management revoked seven of American Prairie’s bison-grazing leases for its federal land, stating that the federal Taylor Grazing Act is limited to animals used for “produciton-oriented purposes” (sic).

 

Real World Impacts of De-Monumentizing…Does RMP Control Until Revised or Amended?

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The Utah Monuments football has been kicked again…I think what’s missing from some of the stories are (once again) the mechanisms of how things actually work

Our friends at Center for Western Priorities made some claims in their newsletter that made me wonder.

Land inside the original monument boundaries could be opened to oil, gas, mining, and logging leases within 60 days.

It seems to me that the RMP based on the previous designation would still hold until amended.  If you look at the current ROD (January 2025.. hmm) on page 17

Numerous rights and privileges have been established on BLM-administered lands under law, regulation, or planning decisions. The decisions included in this ROD and Approved RMP supersede the 2020 BENM ROD/MMPs, the 2008 Monticello RMP, the 2008 Moab RMP, and the 1986 MantiLa Sal LRMP, as amended. Beyond the decisions in the Approved RMP, all BLM-administered lands remain subject to valid existing rights and to the stipulations and conditions of approval associated with the given right at the time it was granted.

Poor BLMers.. there was a whole lot of planning going on and we can only expect them to have to start again.  I wonder who is enjoying the political football, and who just wants a sustainable deal to be done. And previously we’ve discussed the mapping that suggests there is not oil and gas.

But let’s hear (part of) the White House side of the story..

Finally, a monument designation and reservation of land were unnecessary to protect many of the objects of historic and scientific interest identified by Proclamation 10285, which are already subject to enhanced protections under Federal laws enacted after the Antiquities Act that preserve archaeological, historic, cultural and paleontological resources, as well as plants and animals and their respective habitats.  These laws, including the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (16 U.S.C. 470aa–470mm), National Historic Preservation Act (54 U.S.C. 300101 et seq.), Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 668–668d), Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.), Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988 (16 U.S.C. 4301 et seq.), Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.), National Forest Management Act (16 U.S.C. 1600 et seq.),Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 U.S.C. 703–712), Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1976 (25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq.), and Paleontological Resources Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470aaa–470aaa–11), authorize the BLM or the USFS to limit and condition activities on Federal lands for the protection of certain natural or cultural resources, whether they are within or outside a national monument.

For instance, more than 500,000 acres of the Monument were already being managed to maintain, enhance, or protect their roadless character before they were designated as part of a national monument.  Specifically, the BLM manages approximately 380,759 acres of lands within the existing monument as Wilderness Study Areas, which the BLM is required by law to manage so as not to impair their suitability for future congressional designation as Wilderness.  On lands managed by the USFS, 46,348 acres are part of the congressionally designated Dark Canyon Wilderness Area, which, under the 1964 Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1131-1136), and the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984 (Public Law 98-428), the USFS must manage so as to maintain or enhance its wilderness character.  As a result, many of the objects previously designated as monuments by Proclamation 10285 are already adequately protected by Federal law and do not require a reservation of land under the Antiquities Act for protection.

So what is in this 2025 RMP?

1.2.1 Summary of Management Decisions
The Approved RMP provides a detailed account of the management directions authorized by this ROD. The Approved RMP includes the following key management decisions:
• Manage recreation based on a zoned approach on all BLM and NFS lands within BENM and designate four zones: Front Country, Passage, Outback, and Remote. Establish six Management Areas and seven Sub-Areas that underlie the recreation zones on BLM administered land.
• Recreational shooting will be prohibited in campgrounds, developed recreation sites, rock writing sites, and structural cultural sites. Additionally, recreational shooting will be prohibited in all developed recreation sites and areas under 43 CFR 8365.2-5(a) and 36 CFR 261.10(d) in all portions of the Monument.
• Allocate 162,217 acres as unavailable (BLM)/not suitable (USDA Forest Service) and restrict 10,917 acres to trailing/trailing with emergency grazing only. Apply adaptive management to John’s Canyon, North Cottonwood, and North Cottonwood Upper Pastures.
• Designate the San Juan River, Lavender Mesa, Shay Canyon, Valley of the Gods, Indian Creek, and Aquifer Protection ACECs to protect relevant and important values with special management.
• Designate 591,185 acres as closed to off-highway vehicle (OHV) use and 483,917 acres as limited to OHV use on BLM-administered lands. On NFS lands, designated wilderness will be closed to OHV use and all non-wilderness NFS lands will be limited to OHV use. Public use of BENM for landings and takeoffs of motorized aircraft will be limited to Bluff Airport and Fry Canyon Airstrip or on routes designated for such use in the travel management plan (TMP).
• Manage 205,594 acres of LWC to protect their wilderness characteristics while allowing for compatible uses. Manage 216,371 acres of LWC to minimize impacts to wilderness characteristics. Under the Approved RMP, LWC are only applicable to BLM-administered lands

It seems like it’s not about logging (most of it is not timber country) or oil and gas, or mining.  Remember this piece in 2020 about sharp-stickery?

It will be interesting to see if we agree on the SSE (sharp stick) factor. I’d give Bears Ears an 8 on a 1-10 scale.

I don’t think the “uniting” approach would be to “immediately reverse” what the Trump Administration did. That would be just another sharp stick in the eye.. haven’t we had enough of those? What about sitting down again with folks in the area and concerned groups looking at a variety of alternatives without the drama of the Nationally Significant Focus by Some Groups as a Symbol. Certainly the only choice is not “these 2016 lines with these 2016 restrictions”. As Chris Wood said about the 2001 Roadless Rule, “it wasn’t written on stone tablets.”

Despite the fears, we didn’t see any oil and gas nor additional uranium development. Maybe, as we have seen, increasing recreation in the area would be bad for the environment, or people come whether or not it’s a Monument, or people overuse trails and spread Covid to locals. Seems like the last four years have had changes that could be considered in such a discussion.

So here we are on another doom loop, requiring both BLM employees and the public to engage on yet another of these efforts.  Whose job would it be to work on a finding a durable solution? Certainly the political feds aren’t doing so well.

Oops.. last time this happened, there was much wringing of hands (almost word for word, the same as today), but not much in the way of oil and gas nor uranium actually happened.  Was that because it takes four years to get another RMP out? Or because there isn’t oil and gas to speak of, and maybe the Energy Fuels people were telling the truth. At the same time, there is a renewed focus on strategic minerals which may include uranium for national security goals.

If we go by the ROD, the issues seem to be grazing and OHVs.  But maybe more OHVs are not as scary to put in press releases, although possibly more accurate?

Finally, remember this story from 2017?

The new Bears Ears National Monument is already impacting land use in the region after a judge said an 12-year-old proposal to build an off-road trail is contrary to the presidential proclamation.

A judge with the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled this week that no work can begin on the 6.4 mile ATV loop the Bureau of Land Management approved for the Indian Creek area until an appeal brought by environmental groups is settled.

The loop, sought by San Juan County since 2005, was approved by the BLM in December, just a little under two weeks before then-President Barack Obama made the 1.35 million-acre monument designation in southeast Utah.

Or maybe you remember Zinke Proposes Co-Management With Tribes

There are probably dozens of posts about Bears Ears over time on TSW that can be found by using the search bar for Bears Ears.

The NWFP: Norm Johnson on the AFRC Podcast on Hits and Misses, And Some Process Riffing by Me

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Nick Smith had an excellent (to my mind) interview with OSU Professor Emeritus Norm Johnson, one of the folks involved in the development of the NW Forest Plan.  At first I was a bit skeptical, as I would be all for a formal review of what worked and what didn’t, perhaps led by OSU, and involving the public.  In the interview, Johnson goes over some of the things that were missed or downplayed (e.g. dry forests, Tribes) and suggests remedies. He and Debbie Johnson have written a report on it. Map is above.

But I would like to back up and ask more structural questions.

It continues to be suboptimal to me that we have parts of the FS who do a formal lessons learned for a vehicle rollover, and at the same time for a grand social, economic, and ecological experiment, we have .. not much.  Yes, researchers have studied what has happened via PNW reports like this or this (25 years) (the latter is a review of the science), or this Northwest Forest Plan- the first 10 years (1994-2003) synthesis of monitoring and research results.

Granted that I wasn’t working in the NW then, but I did hear from people working there, the problems with Adaptive Management Areas not being adaptively managed. One associate told me that there was only one academic who could tell the difference between two species that they had to survey in survey and manage.  Which leads me to two questions that might be relevant to future efforts.  I’m going to assume that there will be future efforts. I’m not criticizing what they did, I think everyone does the best that they can do at the time, but going forward, there are broader questions.

As Johnson says- what worked is that the NWFP reserved a great deal of forest, and that was good for NSO and other old growth species.

How Did They Miss This, and What Changes Should be Made This Time?

1.Tribal Involvement Then- Who is Left Out Now?

Are there other groups being left out currently? I understand that that was then and times have changed, so not criticizing the past, just saying in retrospect, the importance of their view are obvious.  Who or what groups are being left out this time?  When I worked in the FS, for example, I often found that the voices of employees who worked with say.. planning… were not necessarily at the table the same way other interests were.  Implementation is a thing.

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2. East-side and SW Oregon Forests Tend to Burn 

That “dry forests” (what we call them now)  behave differently was absolutely known at the time. I remember going on field trips in which East Side silviculturists said “if we do this, these stands will become tinderboxes and then owl habitat will burn.”  Why were their voices not heard or paid attention to?  Certainly, as we can see from the reports, there was a heavily researcher and heavily west-side based locus of researchers. Perhaps it’s the difference between “the best science” and “the best science produced by people studying west-side forests.”

Was it simply because of the old Oregon bias based on lack of universities on the East Side at the time- “if a tree burns up in the woods and no one at OSU has observed it, has it really burned?”

Was it because fuels researchers weren’t there at OSU at the time (disciplinary gap), or they weren’t asked to participate?

Was the scale planned at the time simply too big for important distinctions to be made? What about the folks and forests in SW Oregon and Northern California, which isn’t like the west side or the east side?

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3.  Results and Timing Very Bad for Some Communities

As I recall, and tried to find documentation for, there were also some researchers like Bob Lee who warned of negative impacts (leading to some kind of kerfuffle with Charlie Philpot, the then PNW Station Director.

Here we have at 10 years from Haynes et al abstract…

 The Plan anticipated greater timber harvests and more treatments to reduce fuel in fire-prone stands than have actually occurred. Monitoring showed human communities are highly variable, and it is difficult to disentangle overall growth in regional economies from the impacts of reduced timber harvests on federal land.

And from the first 25 years..

 These findings suggest that many rural communities in the NWFP area have experienced socioeconomic decline since 1994 and that changes to forest management and industry are important factors in the decline. However, the types of social and economic changes are contingent on local history and geography, and thus vary widely across the region.

The way Johnson expresses it.. the economic and social costs were too high, especially in some communities. Did we know that at the time? Or was it ultimately a political decision? Which of course is OK, because trade-offs are best handled by those accountable for handling them.

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4. Did it Resolve the Timber Wars?

I just read the current comments on FOFA by the usual suspect organizations (plus some not so usual), and my answer would be.. no. As Johnson says, many folks are just against timber harvesting or non-commercial thinning.

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5. The Quid Pro Nada Problem With Delineating Acres For This or That

This is a structural problem with any plan.. protected areas are protected from whatever, but the areas supposedly released for other uses may not ever see the “other uses” agreed to.  The same folks who did the deal for a certain number of acres tend to litigate the other uses.  This is probably the source of the problem of the “quo” level of timber harvest never happening, plus the lack of adaptive management in AMA’s. Johnson says in the podcast something like “he knows many people who feel this way.” They don’t seem to be going away, so perhaps some consideration of that fact needs to be built in.

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6. The Future is Hard to Predict So You Need to Adapt More Frequently Than Every 30 Years

They didn’t realize that barred owls would be as much of a problem.  Of course, in 30 years, there are many unpredictable things.. say wildfire technology, or climate change or whatever.  If you realize that and put it into practice, you would have a formal set of goals, and a formal set of structures for changing when things are not working. Not just monitoring them, but making changes.  Not just publishing papers, but designing and implementing and monitoring changes.  It seems like, to some extent, these plans get so complicated that inertia makes those kinds of changes and experiments impossible.

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7. Survey and Manage

This is from Johnson and Johnson in their report.

First, the purpose of Survey and Manage was to help protect species associated with old-growth forests. Under the Proposed Action in the DEIS, old-growth forests will be protected; hence, Survey and Manage, which was focused on old-growth species, is no longer indicated. The default assumption should be that these species are protected under the amended NWFP unless sufficient evidence is developed that shows they are still at risk.

Elimination of Survey and Manage was also recommended in Franklin, Johnson and Johnson letter on the NWFP amendment. My question, in keeping with the theme of this, is “did the people implementing this get a chance to give feedback? Was there a formal feedback mechanism for them? When did thought leaders like N and J figure out that it wasn’t helpful? Did they have access to a formal feedback mechanism? ” I still think that implementers (as I did for various planning rules) need to have a separate team and recommendations from the larger interest group committee-otherwise, in my experience, the implementers’ “lived experience” tends to be downplayed or ignored in developing plans and processes.

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So to me that’s the final answer.. 1) identify and listen to all the voices, 2) choose scale carefully, 3) when implementation problems arise or goals are not being met, have a process to change course.. at least every 10 years, but more frequently if possible.  An effort towards continual improvement is better than no improvement or once every thirty years in my view.  Of course, these are management ideas (meeting goals, improving, testing) and perhaps not addressing this directly is an indirect result of choosing to empower researchers preferentially.

Franklin and Johnson wrote a commentary on implementation in 2014 and this is from the abstract:

While old growth harvest has largely ceased, some key species are still in decline and forest management has been restricted more than intended. Creation of openings, even those based on disturbance processes, has been especially difficult. Some lessons from this experience include the difficulty of adaptive management, the importance of ecological foundations for management, and the need for stakeholder collaboration.

I’m sure those are all accurate observations. My question is, again,  “if these challenges were identified early (as I think they were), how did implementation change to reflect those challenges? Or did the structure permit that kind of feedback and adaptive management? Or didn’t implementers such as agency employees have the political clout to implement changes?

It would be interesting to compare the stated goals and achievements of the NSO effort (if that’s what it was, or was it mostly about “not logging” or “old growth protection”  with an NSO veneer? ), with CASPO and forest plans in California.

 

Eldorado National Forest Deck Removal Project

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From the Golden State Natural Resources newsletter. Couldn’t find a photo.

Milestone Reached: First Project Completed Under the Pilot Biomass Transport Project
GSNR is pleased to announce the successful completion of hauling operations for the Grizzly Flats Cull Deck Removal Project, marking the first project implemented under its Pilot Biomass Transport Project. The initiative is designed to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health by facilitating the transportation of previously felled biomass, roundwood, and hazardous fuels from National Forest System lands to regional businesses where these materials can be put to productive use.

To support this effort, GSNR entered into a standalone $3.34 million Stewardship Agreement with the U.S. Forest Service that is independent of GSNR’s proposed Forest Resiliency Demonstration Project. Through this agreement, GSNR is advancing healthier, more resilient forests, safer communities, and rural economic development opportunities. The Grizzly Flats Cull Deck Removal Project, located within the Eldorado National Forest, represents the first project completed under this agreement.

Since hauling operations commenced in December 2025, more than 400 truckloads (an estimated 10,325 green tons) of previously felled cull logs resulting from the Caldor Fire have been transported from the project area to three end-use facilities: Tuolumne Biomass, American Wood Fibers, and the Pacific Ultra-power Chinese Station woodyard. Through this effort, low-value forest material that would have otherwise remained on the landscape has been diverted to productive uses, including renewable energy generation and wood products manufacturing, while supporting California’s forest products industry and reducing hazardous fuel loading.

Building on the success of this first project, GSNR continues to work closely with the U.S. Forest Service to identify and prioritize additional deck removal opportunities across multiple National Forests. A formal modification to the Stewardship Agreement is anticipated later this summer, expanding the Pilot Biomass Transport Project to additional project areas and allowing GSNR to continue advancing forest resilience, wildfire risk reduction, sustainable biomass utilization, and rural economic development throughout California.