Wildlife crossings, such as this one under U.S. Route 285 near Buena Vista, Colorado, provide safe passage for migrating elk and other animals. Matt Staver/Getty Images
The Bureau of Land Management Colorado State Office is considering an amendment to oil and gas program decisions in existing BLM Colorado resource management plans to promote the conservation of big game corridors and other important big game habitats on BLM-administered land and minerals in Colorado. The scoping period ended September 2. This press release includes a link to the official website. Here is the project description:
Description: The BLM will propose and analyze, with the best available scientific methods and information, a statewide amendment to existing BLM Colorado land use plans to evaluate alternatives for planning-scale oil and gas management prescriptions for the conservation of important big game habitat. The BLM will consider whether to incorporate new or changed oil and gas management decisions in existing land use plans, such as limits on high-density development, including facility and route density limitations, and other lease stipulations that would incorporate conservation measures for important big game habitat areas in Colorado.
This is in response to the 2018 USDI Secretarial Order No. 3362, “Improving Habitat Quality in Western Big-Game Winter Range and Migration Corridors,” and the release of the state of Colorado’s Big Game Policy Report, which recommended the bureau actually undertake this amendment to strengthen oil and gas lease stipulations consistent with new wildlife rules.
This sounds like good planning, which should be expanded to include:
The Forest Service. Especially if you are talking about connectivity, it does little good if it runs into a “wall” created by management of other ownerships. How is the Forest Service going to be involved in this? (Especially where BLM administers leases on national forests.)
Other energy. We have talked about the need to do this kind of thing for renewable energy proposals, and why shouldn’t that be integrated with this kind of planning effort for oil and gas?
Other species. Just because big game species have more lobbying power doesn’t mean such efforts should ignore the same kinds of connectivity issues for other species like sage-grouse and large carnivores. Including areas used by many species should be a goal.
Other states. The Order calls for collaboration with states, and it looks like Colorado has taken the initiative here, but that doesn’t mean the BLM couldn’t be promoting this elsewhere, or that it is precluded from initiating an effort that would include state participation.
The above slides are from Deborah Sivas’ presentation to PCAST at their March 24, 2022 Meeting.
At one time I was the science lead for an interagency task force on the regulation of genetically engineered organisms in the environment. It was quite a mouthful then, and remains so today. I worked at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (and my co-lead from the legal side worked at CEQ the Council on Environmental Quality). These groups are considered part of the White House and working there, even on a detail, has many desirable perks. My office, in the Old Executive Office Building, was shared with other “agency reps” as we were known. Well, the Los Alamos fires happened. Shortly thereafter, folks showed up from Los Alamos to visit the DOE agency rep at the next desk.
Sidenote: my understanding is that because DOE gives money to the national labs which are run via a contractor, who conveniently is not a government agency, so can lobby freely for funding. It was a brilliant stroke.
They said something like “wildfires are important, we need more money to do research”. Since I was at the next desk, I innocently inquired (after all I worked in Forest Service R&D at the time with cubicle neighbors Dave Cleaves and Sue Conard, who ran the fire science program) “doesn’t the Forest Service already do research on wildfires?” They sort of snickered, since everyone knows that the FS was thought to be sort of “bush league” science, compared to physicists, and went on talking and apparently making sure funding was going to Los Alamos for this.
Later I was having lunch with one of the OSTP folks higher on the food chain- a physicist from Stanford- and he said something like “the problem with USDA research is that they have an indirect cost cap.” Of course, indirect costs at Stanford were being used for yachts and antiques for the President so .. This person told me “if USDA wants to get good science, say from MIT, they need to raise their indirect cost rate.” I said “I don’t think researchers at MIT are really interested in say, wheat breeding research for Kansas farmers.” Well, this was 20 years ago now so perhaps it’s not such a thing. Or is it?
Now there are people who believe that OSTP and PCAST (the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) fill a valuable role in giving science advice to the Admin. However, as a person who worked there, I have to question the need for “science laundering.” There are scientists in agencies who know stuff. Sometimes (often) these scientists disagree with each other and with other agencies. If OSTP ran some kind of process to develop “the USG story on the science at this point in time” that would be useful. However, that’s not exactly what they do. And there have been improvements with PCAST, it used to be all math and information technology, now it has one agricultural scientist on it (yay!) and a few medical science types.
Epistemically, though, there’s a problem. If we give scientists authority because they know a lot about a specific topic, but we have a group of scientists who don’t know about a topic, why are they more legitimate information sources than say, a group of journalists who could also find out from the real experts. Does getting a Ph.D. in some field of science (say atmospheric physics) help you understand medical biotechnology better than .. whom exactly? That’s why I call it “science-laundering” – you have, say fire scientists talk about fire, but you launder their science through a panel of other scientists who don’t know about it.
This PCAST meeting has some presentations about wildfire. there’s also a video, that I didn’t watch. Interesting from the epistemic point of view, the presentation with the slides above was given by a Stanford environmental litigator. So in addition to science-laundering, policy issues are seen through the lens of legal folks before they are transmitted to the PCAST scientists. You might also wonder what value this is adding, given that there is a already an interagency Wildfire Commission working right now… identifying scientific and technical needs. Oh well, it’s only time and money..
From the meeting notes:
Deborah Sivas, who is an environmental litigator and law prof at Stanford, who used to work for Earthjustice. This choice didn’t seem like “the science” to me..
Sivas offered three suggestions to PCAST: First, one size does not fit all needs. Different solutions will be needed for urban, wildland–urban interface, and back country areas. Second, as increased funding from federal- and state-level sources becomes available and decisions are made about how to allocate that funding, such as to firefighting resources and hardening homes, thought should also be given to allocating funding to protect vulnerable populations, such as children and underserved communities, from smoke inhalation. Third, regulatory reform should be reviewed to include consideration of prescribed burning and guidance on environmental review procedures.
I think it’s interesting that Sivas recommends regulatory reform.. but not for thinning. only prescribed fire. In the slides she seems to conflate thinning with commercial.. which it is not in many places. Which leaves one wondering, if a tree is cut in the woods and say burned but not sold, would that be OK for regulatory reform? This would be an interesting discussion to have, but I don’t see it as about science at all.
Gardner suggested that PCAST could help by addressing three main needs:
1) Early detection of fires: Most fires that occur in the west begin during weather conditions that are hot, dry, and windy, and most fire devastation, death, and destruction occurs in the first 12 hours of a firefight. Thus, early detection is critical. A number of parties need information early, including firefighters, police, emergency medical personnel, emergency managers, policy makers, elected officials, and the public. In Southern California, the 10 million residents with cell phones helps speed detection, but detection is more challenging in remote areas, and science and technology may have a role to play in detection in these areas.
2) Tracking resources: Despite the ability to easily order items on a cell phone and have them arrive on one’s doorstep the next day, Gardner’s fire department is using a resource ordering system that was designed in the 1940s mainly to move military equipment. It can take two days just to process the department’s order for equipment. Improved tracking of firefighters is a serious need as well. This applies to tracking one’s own team of firefighters and tracking firefighters in nearby teams. Gardner said that not knowing where one’s firefighters are while fighting a fire can be unbearable, and this kind of tracking should be possible given the ubiquity of GPS.
3) Monitoring fires: Having the ability to monitor fires, forecast their growth, and then share that information with fire ground commanders, emergency responders, emergency managers, and the public would improve awareness, decision making, and help with moving people out of harm’s way. Gardner noted the challenges of monitoring fast-moving fires, mentioning one fire that forced over 100,000 to flee as it traveled 14 miles in one night. Tracking that fire was hampered by high winds that grounded helicopters.
Sean Triplett of NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center):
Triplett closed by saying that while a mature and robust fire detection and tracking system has been developed that can gather a lot of information that is important to share with decision makers, the information-sharing process needs to be improved through the development of standard data practices, better intelligence tools, and more usable forecasting techniques. Information must be formatted in digestible pieces that can be received and used by firefighters with mobile devices in the field or by emergency managers working in operations centers.
And circling back to Rod Linn at Los Alamos:
Linn closed with a list of issues demonstrating that wildland fire modeling is a multidisciplinary exercise involving various aspects of natural science, computer science, AI, machine learning, and smoke modeling. Advanced modeling will require advanced data sets, including an understanding of the three dimensional structure of the vegetation. And finally, wildland fire science advancement must be done in cooperation with the wildland fire management community.
Excerpts from a UC Berkeley Forest Research and Outreach blog post, with info aimed at landowners. It reminds us that thinning and fuels reduction isn’t only about reducing fire intensity/severity: it’s also about forest health.
What is forest resilience? Forest resilience is a measure of adaptability. It focuses on retaining a forest’s essential structure and composition to a range of stresses or complex disturbances. In other words, a resilient forest may lose some trees to drought, fire or insect attack, but the mortality rate will not overtake the forest’s ability to continue growing trees and provide habitat. Some will die, but many will live.
Today’s [Sierra] forests have huge increases in basal area and tree density compared to the historical record. Historically, forests were generally low in density yet highly variable in their structure, with open patches and clumps of trees. Twenty-two trees per acre was not uncommon in the Sierras, but those 22 trees were huge! The older and bigger trees get, the more adaptations they have, like thicker bark, a high canopy and higher levels of resilience to disturbances. We have normalized high density, homogeneous stand structure and high competition forests that would not have occurred historically. Today’s forests are more vulnerable to fire and drought related mortality due to a legacy of timber harvesting in early 1900’s that focused on large tree removal; a century of fire suppression policy and action, and climate change effects such as less humidity recovery in the night.
…
Timber harvesting or commercial thinning:
Sometimes you have to commercially thin in order to restore lower density forest conditions;
You can leverage saw logs/forest products to pay for other management activities; and
It is effective in reducing tree density in the canopy and ladder fuels and reduces competition for the remaining trees.
Commercial thinning plus prescribed fire: Very effective in reducing tree density, ladder fuels and surface fuels. Combining meaningful thinning and prescribed fire can mitigate fire hazard and improved the growth and vigor of your trees to maximize resistance and resilience to wildfire and drought-related tree mortality!
Here’s a link to the announcement. Here’s the bill itself (only 21 pp).
Read a summary of the Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022 here.
Read a section-by-section of the Promoting Effective Forest Management Act of 2022 here.
My comments are in italics.
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ITITLE I–ACCOMPLISHMENTS OVER RHETORIC Section 101.Thinning Targets. Section 101directsthe Forest Service andthe Bureau of Land Management (BLM)to set annualacreage targets for mechanical thinning projects on National Forests and public lands. Under the bill, agencies are to double their acreage targets by 2025 and quadruple them by 2027.
Just exhortation and funding won’t do it. Heck the Wildfire Commission couldn’t get going in the Congressionally prescribed timeframe with only picking people and having a meeting. And there are the workforce problems we’ve discussed many times. But perhaps timelines would be useful due to the next section.
Section 102. Annual Reports. Section 102directs the Forest Service and BLM to reportcertain acreageaccomplishments,including whether the mechanical thinning targets in Section 101 have been met.If the targets are not met, the agencies must report anylimitations or challenges, including litigation orpermitting delaysthat hindered their progress.
I think this one has value by making transparent what’s really holding up projects. We’ve discussed various sources of delays here, but with those reports everyone could get a better picture or what’s going on.
Section 103. Transparency in Fire MitigationReporting. Section 103 increases transparency in fire mitigation reporting bydirecting the Forest Serviceand BLMtoexcludeacres that need to be treated more than once from output measures in certain reports and budget request documents.
This sounds like cleaning up accounting, about time.
Section 104. Regional Forest Carbon Accounting. Section 104directs the Forest Service to, using data from the forest inventory and analysisprogram, determine whether National Forest System lands are carbon sources or carbon sinks, and to publish that information online.
This sounds useful.
Section 105. Targets for Wildlife Habitat Improvement. Section 105directs the Forest Service and BLM to meetwildlife habitatimprovementgoals andtargetsrelative to existing management plans.
There must be a backstory of how the FS is not meeting targets, the hook and bullet folks are on board with this bill so they must be concerned. There must be a write-up somewhere, has anyone seen it?
TITLE II–FOREST MANAGEMENT Section 201. Land and Resource Management Plans. Section 201 directs the GovernmentAccountability Office (GAO) to report on whethershortening the length and development timelines of Forest Service land and resourcemanagement plans would help the agency address its backlog of out–of–date plans.
I think the FS should convene a Committee of Practitioners and Collaborators to review the successes and failures of the current planning process and recommend changes to NFMA. I don’t think the GAO has the folks to figure out how best to “shorten the length.”
Section 202. Management of Old Growth and Mature Forests. Section 202directs the Forest Service and BLM to adhere to the current definitions of “oldgrowth forest,” andrequiresthat any updates or revisions can only been made after arecommendation by a scientific committee, followed by a rulemaking process under theAdministrative Procedure Act. Further, this section clarifies that “mature forests” are separatefrom old–growthforests, and that mature forests are to be managed according to current law. This section also clarifies that executive branch actions shall not modify, amend, or otherwisechange the duties of the Forest Service or BLM under current law.
This takes aim at the Moggie process which is I think a time-wasting (to the rest of us) bone thrown to certain supporters of the current Admin. This bill seems like a step in the right direction, especially the part about mature forests.
2 Section 203. Assessment of Processed–based Restoration Techniques. Section 203directs the Forest Service and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) toestablish apilotprogram to conduct research on and evaluate wetland and riparian restoration techniques, includingutilizing biologically–driven restoration. Section 204. Intervenor Status. Section 204allowscounties and local governments to intervene in lawsuits intended to stopwildfire prevention projects on nearby National Forests.
Help from legal folks here.. I didn’t know they couldn’t be intervenors..
Section 205. UtilizingGrazing for Wildfire Prevention. Section 205 directs the Forest Service and BLM to develop a strategy to increase the use ofgrazing as a wildfire mitigation tool. This includes the use of targeted grazing, increasing issuances of temporary grazingpermits, and completing environmental reviews for vacantgrazing allotments that could be used for grazing when drought and fires impact occupied allotments.
TITLE III—WORKFORCE Section301.Logging workforce. Section 301directs the Forest Service to work with States to develop a universal, tiered programto train people to enter the logging workforce, and to examine ways to facilitate apprenticeship training opportunities. This section also allows existing funding to be use for low–interest loansto modernize logging machinery. Section302.Break–in–service consideration for firefighter retirements. Section 302 ensures that wildland firefighters can retain employment and retirement benefits for breaks–in–service that are 9 months or less. Section303.Firefighter rental housing. Section 303 placesa cap on rentfor wildland firefighters when theyare forced to pay for agency–provided housing.
TITLE IV—CULTURAL CHANGE IN AGENCIES Section401.Mandatory use of existing authorities. Section 401 requireseach National Forest and BLM unit to use at least one existing streamlinedauthority for environmental review on a forest management project within the next three years. Section402.Curtailing employee relocations. Section 402 directs the Forest Serviceto curtail employee relocations and to develop a programthat provides incentives for employees to grow in place. Further, this section places a cap on employee relocation expenses, and directs the Secretary tosolicit employee applications in amanner that does not limit eligibility to current Forest Service employees.
I had to read the bill to see that the relocation is about line officers. Since BLM and FS line officers are always switching back and forth, I don’t know about this one:
“Sec shall solicit applications for line officer positions in a manner that does not limit eligibility for the solicited position to only an applicant who is a current employee of the Forest Service.”
Section403.Repeal of FLAME reports. Section 403 repeals a report within the FLAME Act of 2009.
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Please add your own thoughts and any analyses you run across, and it would be great if someone would read the entire bill itself.
At the risk of starting another round of acrimonious series of rants, here’s a well-written article from Audubon’s magazine, “It’s the Moment of Truth for Saving the Northern Spotted Owl.” It features some familiar names, such as Susan Jane Brown, senior attorney and wildlands program director with the Western Environmental Law Center, and Paul Henson, who led the US F&WS recovery program for the bird until his retirement in June. But also two folks from Green Diamond Resource Company who are working to save spotted owls on “industrial” timberland — and having some success.
Henson “says the situation calls for action on multiple fronts: Preserve the best remaining habitat, control the Barred Owl, and manage forests to avoid the most serious wildfires.”
These are points we might discuss, respectfully.
On the last point, for example, I agree that we need to manage forests — whether designated NSO habitat or not — to avoid the most serious wildfires. “That does not mean aggressively logging healthy forests, Henson stresses; what’s needed is targeted thinning and prescribed burning.”
IMHO, that includes targeted thinning and prescribed burning in late-successional reserves where stocking and fuel loads are higher than can be maintained going forward. Thinning being “commercial logging.” Like it or not, “commercial logging” is an important tool for conserving not just owls, but many other species and forest types. And Rx fire is risky, of course. To do nothing assures the NSO’s continued decline.
Maybe the folks involved with the NW Forest Plan revision process will consider all this.
Many thanks to Jim Furnish for posting this piece and generating much good discussion and observations. But there are many different claims within it, and so I think each is worthy of its own post and focused discussion. I’m hoping that posting them individually will lead to a more in-depth discussion.
But I’d like to start with framing the problem. I think later we’ll be able to reflect back and see how specific observations or research may be relevant or not based on each person’s framing of the issue.
I’ve written before about some people arguing that the issue is burning houses. At the time, (10 years ago) I said
In this case, the difference in framing is as simple as it’s not about the structures- it’s about the fact that people don’t want fire running through their communities. It is about all kinds of community infrastructure, stop signs and power poles, landscaping, fences, gardens, trees and benches in parks, people and pets and livestock having safe exits from encroaching fires. It is about firefighter safety and about conditions for different suppression tactics. That’s why fire breaks of some kinds around communities (not just structures) will always be popular in the real world.
If we don’t agree on framing, then we are unlikely to agree on what science is relevant, and then the discussion devolves to “science-slinging.” But if we talk about our different framings it might help us understand each other. Each person can frame the issue their own way.. there is no right or wrong. Policy actors strive to get their framings incorporated into policy, but that is a factor of political power, not morality or “science.”
My framing would be “how best can we work together protect our communities, watersheds, wildlife and so on from negative impacts of wildfires?” What have we learned from suppression experts, fuels experts, wildfire scientists, social scientists, communities’ and practitioners’ and Indigenous experiences and knowledge that can be used to do better?
At the same time, others can have different framings and end up with similar policy options. That’s always encouraging when it happens. Here’s an example.
There’s a new group called Megafire Action with a mission to “end the megafire crisis within a decade.” That sounds very different from my framing.
Here are their
GOALS FOR 2023
Enact policy to treat millions of acres of hazardous fuels in high risk areas
Pathway to achieve 50M acres treated by 2032
Address structural barriers to progress
Fix Forest Service workforce problems
Streamline burdensome regulations
Support sustainable forest product markets
Double the federal investment in wildfire science innovation
Harness the full potential of the scientific community
I’d go along generally with those options.. but the policy devil is always in the details.
What is your framing of the “wildfire management” issue?
New case: Kentucky Heartwood v. U. S. Forest Service (E.D. Ky.)
On September 7, plaintiff conservation group sued the Daniel Boone National Forest over the South Redbird Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project, allegedly the largest timber project on the Forest in nearly 20 years. Issues include the proper identification of old growth (which is allegedly being logged), the effects of landslides on aquatic species listed under ESA and loss of habitat for endangered bats. (The news release includes a link to the complaint. And a storymap!)
New case: Berlaimont Estates v. U. S. Forest Service (D. Colo.)
On September 7, the developers behind the 19-home Berlaimont Estates development within the White River National Forest sued the Forest Service for failing to make a decision to approve a road on federal land to reach their planned 680-acre mountaintop community. Plaintiffs have objected to the alternative proposed by the Forest Service, arguing the route violated their right to “adequate access” for “reasonable use” under ANILCA, and they may sue again if that becomes the final decision. We’ve talked about this a couple of times, here and here.
New case: Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Forest Service (D.C. Cir.)
On September 8, the Center for Biological Diversity, Living Rivers, Sierra Club, and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment petitioned the circuit court (having exclusive jurisdiction by statute) to review the U.S. Forest Service’s Record of Decision, issued July 14, 2022, authorizing, inter alia, the granting of a special use permit in response to a request for a right-of-way on National Forest System lands on the Ashley National Forest for the construction, operation, and maintenance of Uinta Basin Railway. Plaintiffs allege that the proposed railway will spur increased oil production in the Uinta Basin, and that the climate impacts were not considered in the EIS prepared by the Surface Transportation Board. The lawsuit also challenges the Forest Service’s failure to protect rare plants protected by the Endangered Species Act. Twelve miles of the railway would run through the Ashley National Forest on public lands protected by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. (The news release includes a link to the complaint.)
On September 9, the district court decided a case filed in 2013 in favor of a company with a 1982 oil and gas lease on a part of the Lewis and Clark National Forest that is south of Glacier National Park, and is considered sacred to Native Americans. (All other leases in the area have been voluntarily relinquished.) The lease was cancelled by the Department of the Interior in 2016 and this was upheld by the D. C. Circuit, but on remand the plaintiffs amended their complaint, and the district court agreed with them that the lease was properly issued and not subject to cancellation. The article includes a link to the opinion, and the prior circuit court decision was noted here.
New case: Western Watersheds Project v. Moore (D. Mont.)
On September 12, nine conservation organizations filed suit over the East Paradise grazing decision, which expanded livestock grazing in grizzly bear habitat on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest near Yellowstone National Park. The decision increases acreages and allows cattle to graze a month earlier than normal, allegedly increasing human-bear conflicts. The suit also names the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a defendant for using out-of-date scientific information and failing to adequately consider the impacts of the grazing decision on grizzly bears. The news release includes a link to the complaint, and this article includes maps.
New case: Center for Biological Diversity v. Moore (D. Ariz.)
On September 13, the Center for Biological Diversity, Maricopa Audubon Society and Mount Graham Coalition sued the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service for violating the Endangered Species Act when approving special use permits for an organizational camp (expired permit) and recreational cabins (2015 permit) on the Coronado National Forest in the only habitat for the endangered Mt. Graham red squirrel. In the summer of 2017, the Frye Fire killed between 61-78% of the remaining red squirrel population and decimated a significant portion of its remaining habitat. Consultation on both permits was completed in 2021. The news release has a link to the complaint.
New case: Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (N.D. Cal.)
On September 13, the Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Protection Information Center and Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for denying Endangered Species Act protections for fisher populations in southern Oregon and northern California when it listed other populations in the southern Sierra Nevada as threatened in 2020. The challenge is based on plaintiffs’ interpretation of the best available science, and largely related to threats from logging and fire. (The article has a link to the complaint.)
Recently enacted Idaho water rights forfeiture laws create a state process where ranchers can potentially gain control of federal water rights already decided by a court. Ranchers have started using that process, and the Idaho Department of Water Resources this year, at the request of ranchers, initiated multiple actions against water rights claimed by the federal government based on those water rights not being put to beneficial use.
A lawsuit filed in June against Idaho and the Idaho Department of Water Resources by the U.S. Department of Justice contends that it does put the water to a beneficial use because it issues grazing permits to ranchers who in turn graze livestock that drink the water. The federal government also argues that the state’s forfeiture procedure violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which states that federal law takes precedence over state law. The Justice Department also says the laws violate parts of the Idaho Constitution. In a case with statewide ramifications for millions of acres of land in Idaho administered by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, and their associated instream water rights, the Idaho legislature was granted intervention on September 15.
The Oregon Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from 13 counties in a long-running $1 billion lawsuit over timber revenue and what constitutes “the greatest permanent value” when it comes to state forest management. The decision leaves in place a lower court ruling saying that Oregon can manage forests for a range of values that include recreation, water quality and wildlife habitat — not just logging revenue. The Oregon Department of Justice, which represented the state government in the case called the Supreme Court’s decision a “victory for Oregon’s environment and for sound forest management in general.”
A lawsuit filed on September 8 in Sacramento County Superior Court on behalf of a family whose home was destroyed by the (aptly named) Mill Fire alleges that the Roseburg Forest Products mill in Weed failed to properly handle hot ash, which ignited a fire that burned 4,000 acres, killed two people and burned dozens of homes.
On September 14, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the tricolored bat as endangered, primarily due to the range-wide impacts of white-noise syndrome, caused by a deadly fungus affecting cave-dwelling bats across the continent. Other threats include disturbance to bats in their roosting, foraging, commuting and wintering habitats and mortality at wind energy facilities. With regard to forests, the proposed rule said:
“While temporary or permanent suitable forested habitat loss may occur throughout the species’ range, impacts to tricolored bat typically occur at a more local scale (i.e., individuals and potentially colonies), and summer forested habitat continues to be widely available across the species’ range. Based on this information, forested habitat loss is not a major driver of the species’ status, and suitable forest habitat is not limiting for tricolored bat now nor is it likely to be limiting in the future. Therefore, we conclude that designating the forest habitat of the tricolored bat as critical habitat is not prudent.”
However, effects on the species would need to be consulted on for projects in bat habitat. The tricolored bat is found east of the Rocky Mountains in 39 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. This article provides more background and a link to the FWS announcement.
Commentary: Counteracting Wildfire Misinformation, by Jones et al 2022: Response
I recently read and reflected on Commentary, a piece from a well-intentioned group of authors, in which they attempt to bring clarity to efforts to identify solutions and responses to the
increasing impact on wildfires on homes, communities and wild lands. They appropriately titled their contribution as commentary, as I find it long on opinion and short on facts. Any time one
sets out to discern what constitutes “misinformation” they should have facts on their side, lest they be just one more voice suggesting they alone are credible, as is the case here.
First, let me lay out incontrovertible truths and observations. Climate change is upon us and increasing wildfire activity in both human communities and large swaths of forest, particularly the American West. Rising temperatures and prolonged drought have lengthened fire seasons and, along with strong wind events, have led to many large fires that are too often becoming destructive to human communities. Costs of fire suppression have risen dramatically, with little correlation to reduced acres burned. Nor have we experienced reduced risk to communities and development near and within forests, in spite of increasing investment. Fire science has made dramatic gains in recent decades, yet forest fires present an enigma: how can we bend the curve of escalating cost and losses, for both natural resources and urbanized areas?
The authors of Jones et al suggest that part of the problem is misinformation, and ask us for their faith that they alone are the arbiters of what is true and what is working. Let me begin by citing the large Jasper Fire, in SD’s Black Hills National Forest, circa 2000. Jasper Fire burned almost 90,000 acres of intensively managed Ponderosa pine forest, about 10 percent of the entire national forest. Human caused, it was ignited on a hot, dry, windy July day – quite typical of weather in peak burning periods nowadays. Suppression efforts were immediate and used every tool in the agency’s tool box… to no avail.
Notably, the burned terrain exemplifies what we consider the best way to fire proof a forest. This mature forest of small sawtimber had been previously thinned to create an open stand
intended to limit the likelihood of a crown fire. Yet, the fire crowned anyway and raced across the land at great speed, defying control efforts. Much of the area remains barren 20 years later,
while the Forest Service slowly replants the area.
I cite this example, because it represents precisely what agencies posit as the solution to our current crisis: 1) aggressively reduce fuel loading through forest thinning on a massive scale
of tens of millions of acres (at a cost of several $billion), while trying to 2) come up with sensible answers about how to utilize woody material that has little or no economic value; and 3)
rapidly expanding the use of prescribed fire to reduce fire severity. These solutions are predicated on the highly unlikely (less than 1%) probability that fire will occur exactly where
preemptive treatments occurred before their benefits expire. These treatments are not durable over time and space, and only work if weather conditions are favorable, and fire fighters are
present to extinguish the blaze.
How does this relate to misinformation? To be blunt, the ineffectiveness of current practices has led many scientists to suggest, based on peer reviewed science and field research as
opposed to modeling, that agency “fire dogma” needs to be revisited. The call for a true paradigm shift is occurring both within and outside the agency. Several themes and truths have
emerged, for example:
1) Fires burn in ways that do not “destroy”, but rather reset and restore forests that evolved with fire in ways that enhance biodiversity.
2) Forest carbon does not “go up in smoke” – careful study shows that more than 90 percent remains in dead and live trees, as well as soil, because only the fine material burned.
3) The biggest trees in the forest are the most likely to survive fire, and thinning efforts that remove mature and older trees are counter-productive. We are seeing more cumulative fire
mortality in thinned forests, than in natural forests that burn.
4) Thinning and other vegetation removal increases carbon losses more than fire itself and, if scaled up, would release substantial amounts of carbon at a time when we must do all we
can to keep carbon in our forests.
5) If reducing home loss is our goal, experts are telling us that the condition of vegetation more than 60 feet from the home has nothing to do with the ignitability or likelihood a home will
burn. The best most durable investments to reduce home loss are focused on hardening homes in at-risk communities using proven fire wise technology.
6) Large, wind-driven fires defy suppression efforts and many costly techniques simply waste money and do more damage. Weather changes douse big fires, people do not.
Do the authors of the Commentary believe these scientific findings are misinformation necessitating “debunking and prebunking” based on their authors “collective experience in wildfire science.” Boiled down, their commentary suggests that they know best what constitutes valid information; that they are the self-appointed gatekeepers of fire science and truth.
My charitable judgment is that their belief that thinning forests to reduce fire severity may be effective sometimes at accomplishing that goal – if weather is favorable, when we don’t
have extreme wind and drought, and we have adequate firefighters on hand. Overall, however, this strategy is not working out well for human communities – as we have been at it for over
thirty years, and we are seeing increasing loses. While careful thinning can work in favorable conditions, the authors cannot and do not claim that their recommendations for careful thinning
are always faithfully implemented by the line officers in federal agencies. They cannot and do not say that careful forest management is occurring on private industrial lands that dominate
significant swaths of at-risk forestland in the Western United States, nor do they suggest that private industrial forests incur less fire losses. In fact, studies have shown that fires are often
worse on private forests. They spend no time identifying industry misinformation, which are often grossly oversimplified and pushed out to the public through well-funded campaigns.
The authors are dismissive of anything that questions their position, and uncomfortable with answering the hard questions about the costs and challenges of scale regarding landscape
vegetation management. No credible business plan exists for scaling up what they propose based on a full accounting of costs and operational challenges, and that is free from confirmation bias .
They also fail to acknowledge the scientific findings that efforts to control vegetation and fire severity in wet, western Cascade forests, for example, are unequivocally useless over space and
time because the forests quickly grow back.
I encourage authors to welcome contrary opinion and emerging science that does not conform to their collective experience. The nasty truth is that forest fires defy simple explanations and solutions. They ought to embrace paradox, not demand fealty. They ought to ask the tough questions, not claim that there are no questions to ask.
But one thing is quite clear – what’s been done and being done hasn’t worked well, and we are not close to pulling ourselves through the knothole of now. We need new thinking and new approaches that see fire management in context with climate change, forest carbon sequestration and storage, biodiversity, clean water and good air quality. New voices are as worthy of careful consideration as those authoring the subject commentary.
References
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Jim Furnish
Deputy Chief, USDA Forest Service (Ret.)
Author: Toward A Natural Forest (Oregon St Univ Press 2015)
Gila, New Mexico
I found the above video on the Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project website while looking for a photos to illustrate the below Esquire article.. it relates to prescribed fire as practiced. And I liked the background music.
Here’s a story in Esquire by a reporter who covers many things. One thing I’ve noticed about the Coastal Gaze is that stories usually involve (at least peripherally) partisan politics and climate change. I don’t know if those bring in more clicks, or it’s just a habit. Certainly hiring lots of climate reporters, as did the WaPo, would incline people to frame stories through a climate lens.
In this article, two individuals were interviewed from Southern Cal and, perhaps not surprisingly, have a different take from what we usually hear in these discussions.
This from Stephanie Pincetl, founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA:
The area encompassing both Southern California and Baja in Mexico have what’s known as chaparral ecosystems: dry soil, hot weather, and short shrubs. But these two regions’ fire lives have played out very differently. “Right across the border, there are very similar chaparral ecosystems,” Pincetl said, but “that chaparral has not had the benefit of fire suppression, because the Mexicans simply can’t afford it. And it continues to exhibit this low intensity fire pattern, which does not kill the chaparral, but there are unsuppressed fires that occur on a relatively regular basis. And people don’t die. The houses aren’t burned. There’s not huge conflagrations. So how do we get back to that kind of chaparral, is the question.”
It seems to me that people could still die and houses still burn if they are in the way of low level fires.. at least that seems to be the case in grasslands. Does anyone know more about this?
Miller is a AAAS fellow at USC. I think this is probably the first time that private property has been discussed as an obstacle to forest management..
Here Miller pointed towards a whole bunch of modern obstacles to forest management, be it prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, or “managed wildfires” (a naturally ignited fire that burns out in an unpopulated area). One issue is the fairly basic concept of private property. It’s one thing for the government to organize prescribed burns on land it owns. But of California’s 104 million total acres, according to a study Miller co-authored, 45 million—or 43 percent—are owned by the federal government. Local governments below the state level own another 27 percent, and the remaining 30 percent belongs to the state of California and private entities. The state administers just 2.2 percent of forested land, but CAL FIRE, a state agency, provides wildfire protection to private lands as well.
It’s one thing for the state to enter private property to respond to a natural disaster, an intervention that enjoys broad support across the political spectrum. But once you get into preventative behavior like mechanical thinning and prescribed burns—“fuel treatments”—it becomes a different issue. “Are they trained in how to conduct a prescribed burn?” asks Miller, introducing some elements of the calculus for a private citizen. “Are they concerned about it escaping and causing a liability issue? Are they going to go bankrupt because it set their neighbor’s property on fire?” She added that “a tiny, tiny sliver, far less than 1%, of prescribed burns actually get out of control,” but the possibility is still in the equation. There’s a larger kind of eminent domain question at work around whether the government has the authority to insist that private landowners manage their forests in a certain way based on the public interest in having fewer catastrophic fires. California seems to be looking for a way around this, taking a page out of Florida’s book to change the incentive structure for private landowners—who, by the way, include big lumber companies as well as ranchers or private landowner.
Anyway, the article isn’t paywalled and is an interesting take or at least an angle. There”s also the “people shouldn’t live there” argument.
Beyond people’s opinions about these fuel treatment techniques, though, we have a more fundamental problem. Put simply, there are Americans living in places no human beings should realistically live. It’s true down on the Gulf Coast on the flood plains, it’s true in water-starved areas of the Southwest, it’s true in some basement apartments in Queens, and it’s true of fire-prone spots throughout the wider West. One basic fact of life in a climate-adjusted world is that people are going to be on the move, but it’s no easy thing to convince somebody they have to. And to make them? It’s a major political battle to institute any rules at all, a contest of competing interests that, as it always does in America, comes down to power and who has it.
I don’t really understand this.. it sounds like people move places because they like to live there. Especially with work from home. If it gets unpleasant enough, overcrowded or too expensive or whatever, they will move elsewhere. Why exactly do we need to convince people “they have to”? What’s that about?
In recent months we have seen a lot of litigation over fossil fuel production and climate change at the national level, (see comment), lease availability stage (resource management plans, see MT/WY), leasing stage (see North Dakota Resource Council) and drilling stage (see NM/WY permit case) (and then there’s the pipeline cases). This does suggest there might be some efficiency to be gained by rethinking their planning/NEPA process for oil and gas, but that may be pointless given the political polarization of this issue. Anyway, here is the latest installment.
Court decision in Citizens for Clean Energy v. USDI (D. Mont.)
On August 12, the United States District Court for the District of Montana ordered the Interior Department to pause the issuing of new coal leases pending compliance with NEPA requirements to consider climate effects. The order reinstates a 2016 freeze on new federal coal lease sales, which the Trump Administration lifted two months after taking office. The court found that a Bureau of Land Management environmental assessment of that order was insufficient. A more comprehensive environmental review of the revocation of the coal leasing moratorium must be completed before the BLM can start coal leasing again. There is a link to the opinion in the press release above, and here is a news article.
On August 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit vacated a district-court injunction decision from last year that could have forced the Biden Administration to proceed with auction of oil and gas drilling rights in federal lands and offshore. The case was remanded to the district court because the court’s order did not “state its terms specifically and describe in reasonable detail the conduct restrained or required.” (The article includes a link to the opinion.)
The appeals court gives the Biden administration a potential path to pause leasing again. However, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act mandates new oil and gas sales off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico and also tethers the construction of wind and solar facilities to ongoing oil and gas auctions.
Court decision in Western Energy Alliance v. Biden (D. Wyoming)
In another attempt to force the government to drill, on September 2, a judge in the federal district court for Wyoming held that the Department of the Interior legally delayed a federal oil and gas lease sale because, “…postponing the first quarter 2021 lease sales was done to ensure NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) compliance with several then-recent federal court opinions that negated previously authorized oil and gas lease sales.” The court also rejected challenges to the program-wide “pause” authorized by executive orders (the same issue as in the 5th Circuit appeal above).
“The court reaffirmed that BLM has broad leeway to postpone lease sales in order to make sure that it considers the environmental impacts of leasing,” said Michael Freeman, a senior attorney at Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain office. According the Western Energy Alliance, the ruling “essentially gives the government a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to the environmental analysis required for any lease sales,” adding that if Interior Department says it’s not done, “it doesn’t have to hold sales.” “If the agency never makes the decision, then we have no recourse,” said Ryan McConnaughey, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. (These quotes are from this article.)
Plaintiffs don’t interpret it that way, but it is hard to make the government do something, especially if it argues it is required by law to do other things first. (Regarding the idea of mandating leases, it’s also hard to get out of meeting NEPA requirements, even if there is a deadline.)
On September 6, the Bureau of Land Management settled a lawsuit in the Montana federal district court involving previously sold oil and gas leases in Montana and North Dakota which will require it to evaluate potential effects on climate, which is similar to recent agreements for other leases elsewhere. The agency agreed not to approve any more drilling applications on the affected lands until that new leasing decision is made. The agreements don’t include deadlines for new environmental reviews, and they don’t cancel any leases.
