Forest Service plans for continued use of fire retardant

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Greenwire has this article today (paywall, I think) and the topic may eventually be covered elsewhere. FWIW, I suggest that retardant may reduce the effects of wildfire in aquatic species. Andy will probably counter that retardant is not effective, but I’ve seen it work very well to slow fires and give firefighters a safer place to build lines.

Forest Service plans for continued use of fire retardant

The Forest Service says it could seek broad permission from EPA to use aerial retardant that can endanger aquatic wildlife.
Excerpt:

In a reply to a lawsuit filed by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, the Forest Service stood by its previously stated position that the agency doesn’t violate the Clean Water Act by applying fire retardant without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit from EPA, although the spray can be lethal to aquatic wildlife if it gets into streams and rivers.
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As an alternative, however, the Forest Service has told FSEEE it plans to seek a “general permit” from EPA, which would allow for the continued application of retardant in multiple settings without the more extensive reviews the organization argues are needed.

General permits can be based on certain categories of activities across wide geographic areas and don’t require the project-by-project reviews involved in individual permits under the NPDES system, according to EPA.

Andy Stahl, FSEEE’s executive director, said the Forest Service’s plan is questionable based on the risks of retardant entering waterways.

“We don’t think the Clean Water Act countenances that level of pollution,” Stahl said. It’s possible, he said, that the court will put the proceedings on hold while the Forest Service seeks a general permit, in which case FSEEE may ask for a halt to retardant applications that could get into waterways.

In its filing, the Forest Service acknowledged that aerial retardant can kill wildlife if it get into streams and rivers, and that the agency used more of it in 2020 and 2021 because of more wildfires in those years.

Debate Over Forest Resilience Project Near Santa Fe: Why?

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 I’m curious as to why specifically this appears to be an issue in this area of NM and not so much elsewhere.  We’ve discussed this project a bit before, but I think the dueling op-eds are a good place to start. Note: I’m trying to piece this together and some of those involved are readers of TSW, so I’m hoping that you all will correct me if I got something wrong. A special shout-out to the Santa Fe New Mexican for allowing us to see them all without a subscription (I did register).

Perhaps it started with a public listening session about local forest management issues sponsored by Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen, Wildearth Guardians and the Forest Advocate.  Sarah Hyden of WEG wrote an op-ed on Nov. 19th “Groups stand up to speak for forest.”

As far as I can tell from the op-ed, DellaSala described:

Collateral damages that have been caused in the Santa Fe National Forest by past thinning and too-frequent prescribed burning treatments, and the potential damage the proposed project may cause. He made a series of recommendations to improve the effects of the project on our forest and suggested the Forest Service should seriously consider the public health impacts of prescribed burn smoke.

I thought this was pretty interesting since concerns about PB smoke would be much broader than just New Mexico.  And I think they do “seriously consider” it.  But what exactly does that mean?

WildEarth Guardians’ Adam Rissien gave a short presentation focused on the lack of specificity and detail of the project proposal, and the need for a range of alternatives to be considered that truly restore forest processes. He recommended creating wetter and cooler areas, restoring compacted and dried-out soils, and reducing unneeded forest roads. I spoke for The Forest Advocate about the need to consider the potential for escaped prescribed burns, and that parameters for prescribed burns specific to the Santa Fe Mountains landscape should be considered within the project analysis.

Mr. Rissien is from Missoula apparently. I’d be interested in his recommendations if anyone has them available.

Which led to an op-ed in the Santa Fe New Mexican by Craig Allen, Matthew Hurteau and Tom Swetnam, all forest scientists who work in the SW. Their Dec. 3 op-ed was called Southwestern Forests Need Active Management.

A couple of things are interesting about that to me..  first, why pick DellaSala to talk about Northern New Mexico? Possibly because he’s a scientist.  And not to wax epistemological here, but what scientific research is “truer”, that done by people working in a specific geographic area, or scientists from elsewhere? And what specifically would be DellaSala’s claim to know more about Northern New Mexico?

Much of DellaSala’s narrative was shockingly ignorant of local forest conditions, histories and trends. From a scientific perspective, much of DellaSala’s presentation was inaccurate, unbalanced, incomplete or inconsistent, exhibiting classic examples of wildfire misinformation (e.g., described here: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/fee.2553).

So the NM scientists did their own webinar.

We also know that restoring the right kinds of fire and forest densities, based on a scientific understanding of the local ecology, can help our forests adaptively persist in the face of ongoing climate change. If interested in continuing the conversation, we will participate in an interactive public webinar at 6 p.m. Dec. 15 to share and discuss the best available forest and fire science for our Santa Fe mountains landscape, livestreamed through the Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition Facebook page.

Then another op-ed by Dominick Dellasala “Forest Service must hear concerns” on December 11.

To represent legitimate public concerns is not misinformation; it’s truth telling, however inconvenient for some. Respectful communications are essential in avoiding my-way-or-the-highway attitudes — and for listening to an otherwise disenfranchised community that is anything but powerless.

So Dellasala has switched a bit to “representing legitimate public concerns” and people who don’t want thinning projects are “disenfranchised.” I thought that this was a little funny,,

The larger issue at stake is whether the U.S. Forest Service can listen to requests for a full environmental analysis of the impactful Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project and whether independent scientists without a stake in government funding are on equal footing. Strong-arming scientists and concerned citizens who speak truth to power never works.

He makes the common claim that people who disagree with him depend on government funding (same as the Sierra scientists).. I don’t know if that is respectful of them.  I don’t see the NM scientists “strong-arming” nor the Santa Fe NF.  And ah… speaking “truth to power”.. I would have to say that in terms of influencing forest policy DellaSala and WEG have much more power than the folks on the Santa Fe and their local collaborative groups.

But here’s my favorite statement from the op-ed:

Scientists often disagree over how we view the natural world. I see forests as a kind of super-organism, an interconnected marriage of form, function and process uniquely adapted to fit the environment and sometimes in need of legitimate restorative actions.

That’s actually a philosophical stance.  Which is fine (I don’t happen to agree, but we all get to have our own philosophical/spiritual beliefs).  But I think that having different philosophies about the natural world is different than claiming the authority of science for specific  philosophical views. And maybe that should be the centerpoint of the discussion.

The latest op-ed as of today is by Robert Kirmse.  It’s called “Forests in Danger; time to act is now.”

Moreover, DellaSala goes on to parrot more of the organizers’ twisted logic: that 98 percent of those who spoke at that one-sided event favored conducting an environment impact statement. Well, of course, they were; the meeting was organized and mainly attended by and promoted by well-meaning, but misguided, collaborators of those local nongovernmental organizations.

I don’t know about New Mexico, but the feeling I get is that these people want specific changes, but ask for more analysis, alternatives, etc.  I don’t actually believe, as in the Montana lodge expansion case, that more analysis will solve the problem of people disagreeing.  Certainly it will delay and provide more legal hooks for litigation, but the end result could be the same.  Especially if you really believe that the NM scientists and the local Forest Service people are “strong-arming concerned citizens” and are ignoring “the truth”.. there would just be more citations of papers some people disagree with and more pages for the real public not to read. I hear much frustration among everyone here, but shouldn’t the conversation be specifically about what changes some would like to see?  What are they afraid of the FS doing “wrong”? Maybe that’s there somewhere outside of the op-eds.

Also, in the areas I’ve worked there are local folks and groups with a variety of concerns about projects.  Perhaps we can ask them what their views are on all this; and specifically what changes they would like to make to the project.

The rise and fall of peer review

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Interesting blog post, “The rise and fall of peer review.” Excerpt:

Here’s a simple question: does peer review actually do the thing it’s supposed to do? Does it catch bad research and prevent it from being published?

It doesn’t. Scientists have run studies where they deliberately add errors to papers, send them out to reviewers, and simply count how many errors the reviewers catch. Reviewers are pretty awful at this. In this study reviewers caught 30% of the major flaws, in this study they caught 25%, and in this study they caught 29%. These were critical issues, like “the paper claims to be a randomized controlled trial but it isn’t” and “when you look at the graphs, it’s pretty clear there’s no effect” and “the authors draw conclusions that are totally unsupported by the data.” Reviewers mostly didn’t notice.

 

 

 

Telling Other People/Countries What to Do in the Name of Rectitude: An Unalterable Human Trait? See Forest Intactness

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For years there has been concern in the biodiversity community about top-downishness of forest interventions and implications for local people.

Forrest Fleischmann has an interesting Twitter thread on this, worth examining for anyone interested.

Here’s a quote from a paper by Fleischmann and others that was an answer to another Nature paper (which in turn was responded to by the original authors). Ironically, I couldn’t access the others without a Nature subscription:

Moving forward, land-use priorities could be better identified if scientists and policy-makers work with organizations representing people who live on and manage lands. Top-down approaches to defining global restoration priorities create unrealistic targets and are less likely to succeed in the long-term. At the same time, they risk exacerbating injustice, food insecurity and displacement. Restoration, like any land-management intervention, must ultimately be implemented by people in their distinct social and ecological contexts. Global models that ignore these contexts tell us little about when and where ecological restoration can succeed.

I ran across a job that’s being advertised on LinkedIn for the Wildlife Conservation Society a New York not-for-profit, which seems to be related to zoos. Here’s their program overview:

Program Overview

The overarching goal of WCS’s Forest & Climate Change Program is to help realize the full potential of forests, to deliver climate change mitigation and adaptation, along with national, global and regional biodiversity conservation, through a linked set of programmatic priorities: (1) Protecting Intact forests; (2) Preventing the expansion of deforestation and forest degradation; (3) Reforesting in and around WCS priority landscapes; and (4) Building resilience to the impacts of climate change.

We work both globally and in support of WCS field programs to achieve results at scale, using a varied, adaptive set of tools for impact:

• Using science, including spatial planning and monitoring, to identify priorities for action and measure our impact from a global scale down to specific landscapes, enabling more effective, adaptive implementation;
• Supporting policy reforms to accelerate implementation of each priority at national and regional levels, including through governmental, intergovernmental, and private sector initiatives;
• Catalyzing financial investment and innovation to enable effective and durable progress on each priority, and to help key geographies connect with favorable investment opportunities;
• Fostering economic alternatives at local and national levels to support green economic development for each priority in ways that both protect forests and promote human well-being;
• Building capacity within government and local community partners to effectively lead on implementation and delivery of each priority;
• Employing savvy strategic communications to support and amplify all of the above to inform key decisionmakers and the constituencies that influence them

Ah but what are “intact” forests? Here’s a Nature article

Around a third of global forests had already been cleared by 200038, and we show that at least 59% of what remains has low or medium integrity, with > 50% falling in these two broad categories in every biogeographical realm. These levels of human modification result partly from the large areas affected by relatively diffuse anthropogenic pressures whose presence is inferred near forest edges, and by lost connectivity. We also map a surprising level of more localized, observed pressures, such as infrastructure and recent forest loss, which are seen in nearly a third of forested pixels worldwide.

Conservation strategies in these more heavily human-modified forests should focus on securing any remaining fragments of forests in good condition, proactively protecting those forests most vulnerable to further modification8 and planning where restoration efforts might be most effective39,40,41. In addition, effective management of production forests is needed to sustain yields without further worsening their ecological integrity42. More research is required on how to prioritize, manage, and restore forests with low to medium integrity41,43, and the FLII presented here might prove useful for this, for example, by helping prioritize where the best returns on investment are, in combination with other sources of data (e.g., carbon)44.

The cited paper on production forests (42) says:

 The state of the enabling environment for SFM and progress made at the operational level demonstrates commitment to sustainable forest management by governments, industry and communities. At the same time further investment in addressing these limitations is clearly needed to promote and support SFM – particularly in low income forest countries and in large parts of the tropical climatic domain. Overall, the evidence shows a trend favourable to SFM globally that will help ensure forests remain a valued part of our common future.

It almost sounds as if from the cite “sustaining yields without reducing integrity” integrity and yields can coexist? So confusing.

Looking at the map of “Forest Landscape Integrity” it sounds a bit as if some institutional entities think they know best how to manage (or not) landscapes and those living there (human beings). It seems to me to be fairly arrogant.  Isn’t colonialism what wreaked havoc on many of those countries in the first place?   If a country has fewer intact forests or makes up its own criteria, why is it the international community’s business? In the simplest world of helping communities, the first step is to ask them what they need.  Why do these international efforts and NGO’s seem to skip this step?

In addition, count me very mistrusting of a) satellite maps and b) indices of things that aren’t measured well in the first place, and then mooshed together.  Many thanks to Forrest and his colleagues for pushing back on this nascent neocolonialism.

Public Land Litigation News through November 2022

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Some old news to start the new year.

Settlement in Cascadia Wildlands v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. Or.)

On October 3, the BLM agreed to reverse the expansion of a categorical exclusion made by the Trump Administration.  The Trump rule increased the maximum area for categorical exclusions permitting logging of “dead or dying trees” from 250 acres to 3,000 acres. The rule also doubled the maximum amount of permitted road construction from one-half to one mile of permanent road. The previous categorical exclusion rule had required those roads to be temporary. The BLM will now engage in rulemaking to remove the categorical exclusion language from its NEPA implementing procedures and revert to the old guidance. On August 3, the BLM had alread limited the CE to 250 acres again.  The settlement allowed a specific BLM project that had used the new CE to proceed. The news release includes a link to the agreement.

New lawsuit:  Dine´ Citizens Against Ruining our Environment v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. N.M.)

On October 26, plaintiffs challenged authorization and issuance of oil and gas leases on 42 parcels, covering nearly 45,000 acres of land administered by the BLM’s Rio Puerco and Farmington field offices in the Greater Chaco area, and BLM’s approval of approximately 120 Applications for Permit to Drill on 8 of these lease parcels. Plaintiffs fault the agency’s failure to adequately analyze the effects this fracking will have on the climate, public health, environmental justice, and cultural resources. There is also a claim of failure to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation of public lands under FLPMA.  It comes amid current government efforts to “honor” Chaco.  The news release includes a link to the complaint

Notice of Intent to Sue

On November 9, The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society notified the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service of an intent to sue for failure to control cows grazing in endangered species critical habitat, primarily along the Salt River and its tributaries.  The groups allege the Forest Service is violating the ESA by failing to ensure that ongoing livestock grazing is not likely to jeopardize the yellow-billed cuckoos, southwestern willow flycatchers, Chiricahua leopard frogs, northern Mexican garter snakes, narrow-headed garter snakes, spikedace, razorback suckers or Gila chub and their habitat. The notice follows the Center’s 2020 report and lawsuit and resulting 2021 legal agreement protecting the Verde River from cattle grazing, and recent findings continue to show widespread, severe cow grazing damage in riparian areas.  The news release includes a map and a link to the notice.

  • Tonto copper mine

On November 15, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that the state Department of Environmental Quality illegally issued a Clean Water Act permit for the proposed Resolution Copper Mine, which is being opposed by the San Carlos Apache Tribe.  The decision overturns a Maricopa County Superior Court ruling and orders ADEQ to restart the permit process.  The opinion in San Carlos Apache Tribe v. State of Arizona is included here.

On November 17, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to rehear a federal case in front of a full panel of 11 judges. The 3-judge panel had previously ruled that the federal government was not in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and could give land in the Tonto National Forest to the mining company.  A link to the district court order under review in Apache Stronghold v. United States may be found here.  The earlier 9th Circuit decision was discussed and linked here.

On November 23, Standing Trees, a Montpelier-based anti-logging group, filed a lawsuit in Vermont Superior Court against logging of mature forest in Camel’s Hump State Forest.  The group has called for a moratorium on logging in state parks and forests and in the federal Green Mountain National Forest, and has protested the Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Project there (which may be the next lawsuit).  The group argues that the Forest Service logging plans violate the spirit, if not the letter, of President Joe Biden’s executive order earlier this year requiring the service to categorize and monitor old-growth trees on federal lands and to implement “climate-smart management and conservation strategies.”

Court decision in Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center v. Bureau of Land Management (9th Cir.)

On November 25, the 9th Circuit upheld the North Landscape Project against NEPA and ESA claims, as discussed here.

Injunction pending appeal in Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project v. Jeffries (9th Cir.)

On November 18, the circuit court agreed to preserve the injunction until it hears the case against logging around the recreation area on the Ochoco National Forest to manage root rot.  (The article includes a picture.)  The district court opinion was summarized here:

A Supreme Court decision has threatened the immediate future of the native timber industry in Victoria, according to logging proponents. The court ordered stricter rules for VicForests operations, after it found the government-owned agency broke the law by failing to adequately protect the yellow-bellied glider and the endangered greater glider in Victoria.  The court ordered VicForests to undertake more rigorous surveying for gliders in logging coupes, create wider protected areas where gliders were located, and maintain at least 60 per cent of basal area eucalypts in harvested areas where gilders were identified.  (This is from Australia, but does it sound familiar?)

 

There were a number of developments related to the Endangered Species Act that may affect public land management.

Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. Holland (N.D. Cal.)

On November 16, the district court granted the requests by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to send the 2019 Trump Administration changes to ESA regulations back to them for further reconsideration. The 2019 rule changed procedures for listing, interagency consultation, and incidental take.  The judge left the changes to the ESA intact, saying he couldn’t vacate them without having first ruled on the merits of the environmentalists’ claims.  There is no deadline for this reconsideration.  The article contains a link to the ruling.

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Haaland (D. D.C.)

On November 29, the Center sued the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to complete a national wolf recovery plan.  The existing plan has separate treatments for the eastern timber wolf in Minnesota, the delisted gray wolf population in the northern Rocky Mountains and the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest, and the agency has attempted to delist the species in other areas.  The lawsuit also challenges the failure to prepare a required 5-year status review.  The article includes a link to the complaint.

  • Potential ESA Listing lawsuits

The Center for Biological Diversity has also been busy prodding the Fish and Wildlife Service to make listing decisions for several species.

On November 14, they filed a Notice of Intent to Sue for deciding to not list the southern hognose snake.  The species lives in longleaf pine savanna, a forested fire-dependent ecosystem that once covered an estimated 92 million acres in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions. Because of forest clearing and fire suppression, longleaf pine forests now cover less than 3 million acres.

On November 15, they filed a Notice of Intent to Sue for improperly delaying protection of the least chub, a species found in spring habitats in Utah’s Bonneville Basin.  The main threat to the species is groundwater pumping, but much of the habitat is found on BLM lands where oil and gas development is a threat to some populations.  The fish have also been introduced at protected sites on BLM lands.  There is more information about an immediate water pipeline threat here.

On November 15, the Center also filed a Notice of Intent to Sue for improperly delaying protection of the Fish Lake Valley tui chub in Nevada.  The FWS had found substantial evidence that listing the fish may be warranted, but the agency failed to issue a decision on whether protection is warranted by the legally required deadline.  The Center alleges that the state of Nevada, which has the authority to manage groundwater, failed to correct severe overpumping as groundwater levels continue to fall across the valley.  The chub is a BLM sensitive species, and additional threats include geothermal leases on BLM lands and numerous proposed lithium mines on a nearby playa.

  • Other ESA news

On November 7,  the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has revised its proposal to designate critical habitat for the Southern Sierra Nevada distinct population segment of fisher. The critical habitat designation would include approximately 595,495 acres and span six units in California’s Tuolumne, Mariposa, Madera, Fresno, and Tulare Counties. The majority of the land comprising these units is owned and/or managed by federal, state, or tribal governments.

On November 30, the Dixie Valley toad was given permanent protection as an endangered species under ESA (replacing an emergency designation).  Its only habitat is threatened by a geothermal energy project approved by the BLM, which is currently in court (last discussed here).  The final rule is here.

And finally, an election on November 8 for the Deschutes Basin North Unit Irrigation District in Oregon was viewed as a referendum of sorts on a habitat conservation plan that allows incidental take of bull trout and Oregon spotted frogs, both listed under the Endangered Species Act.  Two candidates for board members were outspoken against the HCP, and they were both defeated by a vote of those who use the water managed by the District.

Happy Holidays!

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Christmas Tree tag from the Eldorado National Forest

 

Here, more or less on the Front Range of Colorado, it is very cold.  That’s good news, I hope, for bark beetles populations to be set back a bit.

Winter festivals of whatever ilk tend to be about light coming into or returning to the world.   It ‘s  a season of hope, in which old traditions are savored and new ones made.

 For though my faith is not yours and your faith is not mine, if we each are free to light our own flame, together we can banish some of the darkness of the world.

And

History does not give rise to hope: hope gives rise to history.

— Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Blessings to all this holiday season! I’ll return on January 2.

 

The Grizzly in the Driveway by Rob Chaney: Book Review and Discussion

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First of all, I would recommend reading this book, and possibly giving it as a gift to people with TSW-like interests.

Rob Chaney, well-known journalist and currently Managing Editor of the Missoulian, is the author.  He’s got a strong background in this and other federal lands issues, knows and interviews many of the key people, and tells great stories.  The stories alone are worth the price of admission.  Naturally, I disagree with his views on all kinds of topics, but I both learned much from, and was greatly entertained by his stories.

Apparently there are internet communities around specific bears as Chaney discusses in the chapter titled “Ursus arctos Facebookii.”  There’s also a discussion of drone-induced wildlife harassment (where do all those videos come from anyway?).  More generally, there’s much of interest in this book, and Chaney is an excellent writer.  In fact, you can see in the photo that I placed so many tabs for things I considered to be interesting.. well, there’s so many it held me up from writing this review. Where to start?

The grizzly is Nature’s performance-enhancing drug.

Yest taking that drug, while it may make you better, it will also extract a price. Because what do you do when you enter the wilderness? You meet the wild. You meet thunderstorms that rattle your teeth, rivers that rip your boots off, and , just maybe, a grizzly bear that might maul you.  You measure yourself against the Universe, see how infinitesimally tiny you are compared to the indifferent cosmos, and yet you come out somewhat enlarged.

Take the bear out of the temple, and the magic becomes indifferent.  The thunderstorms and rivers and mountain peaks don’t look you in the eye.  They don’t pass judgment on your worthiness, or edibility, or threat potential.  It’s not anthropomorphizing to say the grizzly makes a decision about any encounter between the two of you, once in which you have virtually no standing to justify or sway.  As the Glacier Park t-shirt says “Some days the bear gets you; some days it just walks away.” Get sanctified by a a grizzly bear, and you wear a pan-denominational robe of glory.

Anyone with any affinity for wilderness longs for that kind of transfiguration.  That promise that if I go in deep, I will return empowered, enlighted- or at least verified as beyond merely human.

I used to call the attitudes of some folks “carnivolatry.”  This isn’t, strictly speaking, accurate, as it seemed to be mostly about wolves and grizzlies (an omnivore) and not so much about mountain lions. “Transfiguration,” “sanctified” and all spiritual/religious terminology.  Personally, I like Wilderness as a place to be with (usually) fewer humans and (usually) more quiet.  Being challenged by large animals is not part of what I go there for; in fact, it’s a bit of a pain for me to follow the grizzly rules as I like to be there alone.  That’s why I prefer places without them. But I’d never read about these religious views before “temple”  “magic” and so on.

I like this quote about the Wilderness Act:  “the result is a law commanding preservation of places never well understood for relatively undefined purposes.”

And how Native Americans (who disagree among themselves, as he notes) and Tribal sovereignty might influence decision-making.

“Some people derive life-changing benefit from seeing a grizzly. What is that worth? How does a Hindu explain to a Muslim that in India a cow is sacred and must be allowed to wander in the streets unmolested, until it wanders across the border into Pakistan , where it’s a commodity to be eaten and tanned into leather? How do I tell a Hutterite Farmer on the Rocky Mountain Front that my grizzly siting is worth his family having to live behind electric fences? All those precepts get thrown in a blender when North America’s sovereign Indian Nations get involved. And they have, in a big way.”

Then there’s the spiritual rights argument..

Does an Indian making a spiritual-rights claim by protecting a grizzly bear from a hunter actually commit hunter harassment, a criminal offense in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho? Or would the protection be a treaty-backed, constitutional exercise in Freedom of Religion?

It is the position of the FWS that they cannot consider the religious implications of their delisting decision because this would conflict with the ESA,” the tribal attorneys wrote in Crow Tribe vs. Zinke. This position is in violation of RFRA  (Religious Freedoms Restoration Act) and is arbitrary and capricious.

There’s a section on women in Indigenous traditions and shamanic work, including the work of Barbara Tedlock.

There’s a whole chapter called “The Bear on the Bicycle” about biking and bear conflicts, which I’m sure is of interest to many.  And other recreationists that were not around in the past.. like endurance runners.

Such runners routinely race fifty miles across the Bob Marshall core in a dayy, on a route that professional outfitters like Smoke Elser spend a week leading dudes on horseback through the most productive grizzly habitat in the Lower 48. Few can afford the thousands of dollars such guided adventures cost. Fewer still have the stamina to “Bag the Bob” in a twenty-four-hour ultramarathon. Yet both groups claim a vested interest in teh heart of the biggest bit of landscape in the contiguous United States that grizzly bears still call home.

Who am I to tell the runners to stay home? I was out there too, packing a three-ounce titanium cooking post instead of an outfitter’s cast-iron skillet. I enjoy the assistance of modern technology in ways that don’t involve wheels.

The Endangered Species Act asks people to think about what adjustments we’re willing to make for other forms of life. National surveys show most people support such sacrifices. This breaks the debate down to two questions.  First, do we want to keep having wild grizzly bears? If no, then the Endangered Species Act “problem” goes away with them.

But if we say yes, we want grizzlies, then the debate becomes all about limits and sacrifices.  Not only loggers and miners, but bikers and hikers must leave something on the table for the bear.

It does seem a bit ironic that “loggers” who came to grizz country were bad news for coming in and cutting trees..and miners, whose behavior was fairly predictable,  but the various forms of recreation reach much further, more regularly, and for all seasons of the year.  Maybe the bear would be better off if the loggers and miners returned, and all varieties of recreationist were excluded.  Just a thought.

Anyway, there are many possible discussion topics in this book.  The comments below will remain open if you want to read the book and discuss further.  As you can tell from the tabs in the photo, I only touched upon a few of the interesting things in this post.

Happy Holidays from APHIS! Another Opportunity to Comment on the Deregulation of Genetically Engineered American Chestnut

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Happy Holidays from APHIS!

Sadly I couldn’t find an American Chestnut holiday wreath photo to illustrate this post.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is inviting public comment on two draft documents involving a petition from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY) seeking deregulation of an American chestnut variety modified for tolerance to chestnut blight. The first document is a draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) that examines the potential environmental impacts, and the second is a draft Plant Pest Risk Assessment (DPPRA) that considers potential plants pest risks.

APHIS is now seeking public comments on the DEIS and DPPRA for 45 days so the public may review our preliminary evaluation of potential impacts on the environment in consideration of the SUNY petition. You can view the Federal Register notice, DEIS, DPPRA, and supporting documents on the APHIS website. Beginning November 10, 2022, members of the public can submit comments through December 27, 2022, by going to www.regulations.gov and entering “APHIS-2020-0030” into the Search field.

History of Nursery Introductions and Plant Quarantine Laws

Faith Campbell wrote a fascinating history of the nursery trade here.

The earliest commercial horticulture in colonies that became the United States was in the mid-17th Century. It involved imports of Eurasian fruit trees to establish orchards to provide familiar foods. Ornamental horticulture became popular earlier than I expected. Prince Nurseries was established in 1732 in Flushing, NY. It was followed by additional nurseries in New York, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts.

According to this paper by Sandra Anagnostakis of the Connecticut Ag Experiment Station:

The chestnut blight fungus was accidentally introduced into the U.S. on Japanese chestnut trees imported at the end of the 1800s. It was spread all over the range of our native chestnut trees by “mail order” as people bought chestnut trees from nurseries, and was spread locally by every creature that walked over the cankers. This led to the enactment of Plant Quarantine laws in the United States.

It’s always puzzling to me that the importance of plant quarantine regulations (and packaging)  gets lost or downplayed in our discussions of threats to forests and their ability to sequester carbon.

A Range of Light National Monument?

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News article about a legislation to establish “1.4 Million Acres of Federal Land Between Yosemite and Kings Canyon [as] the Range of Light National Monument.” I’d much prefer Congress to create monuments than for any president to do so via the Antiquities Act, which, as I’ve said on Smokey Wire before, I think has been used in a way never intended by Congress when it created the act. The Sierra Club loves the idea. Nat Geo notes that “The sprawling national forest in California has thousands of mining claims, timber sales, grazing leases, and private inholdings, activities not typically found in national parks.”

Anyhow, I’d like to discuss not the politics, but the management proposed Range of Light National Monument, how management would change — taking national forest and transferring it to the National Park Service. The area is in the midst of a dire forest health crisis. Which agency is better positioned to tackle it? Not to mention all of the other uses….

Drought is causing more forest loss than wildfire or other factors in the Sierra Nevada

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Excerpt from a Greenwire article. I haven’t read the study yet….

Study shows worsening drought threats to Western forests

Researchers found that drought is causing more forest loss than wildfire or other factors in the Sierra Nevada, with implications for how those forests should be managed.

GREENWIRE | Drought — not wildfires or logging — may be the biggest long-term threat to forests in part of the West, according to researchers from the Forest Service and two universities.

A research paper suggested drought is the main contributor to ongoing losses of dense conifer forests in the southern Sierra Nevada, speeding the conversion of land to nonforest or lower density woodlands. Drought and the beetle infestations it invites were more responsible than the combined effects of wildfire or forest-thinning, researchers said.

In the area the scientists studied, they found that about 213,000 hectares — or slightly more than half of the area that transitioned to nonforest — could be blamed on drought alone. Forty-five percent could be attributed to drought and wildfire combined, and 4 percent to when drought and mechanical activities like thinning coincided.

That and other findings, the researchers said, together point to a need to manage forests through a mix of prescribed fire, thinning in some areas that have grown thick for lack of natural fire, and leaving big trees in place to protect against wildfire and maintain wildlife habitat. It also illustrates the dire future that may await forests in dry regions as the climate warms and wildfires potentially increase.