Apparently there is something in the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 about permitting (including NEPA) reforms for energy siting that would no doubt affect Federal lands.
Let me make it clear, I will not vote to support policies that make the United States more dependent on foreign energy and supply chains or risk moving the country closer to the unstable and vulnerable European model of energy we are witnessing today. Most importantly, I am heartened by the bipartisan recognition that for America to achieve our energy and climate goals, it is critical we reform the broken permitting process. President Biden, Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have committed to advancing a suite of commonsense permitting reforms this fall that will ensure all energy infrastructure, from transmission to pipelines and export facilities, can be efficiently and responsibly built to deliver energy safely around the country and to our allies.
It also apparently has some provisions about fossil and renewable energy on federal land, the Atlantic says “it forbids the government from selling leases to install solar or wind on federal land or seafloors when it has not also recently opened territory to oil and gas developers.”
I saw someone on Twitter say..
We need an 8 year, highly litigious process to ascertain the environment impacts of speeding up the permitting process.
Which cracked me up a bit until I remembered I had actually spent time on a NEPA process for an NFMA rule…
Here’s a link to the text if someone wants to look for provisions of interest to us and post them. It would be greatly appreciated.
If the Old Growth comment period feels like Groundhog Day, this feels like Back to the Future.
WASHINGTON, July 25, 2022 — Today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a strategy for how the Biden-Harris Administration, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will address a reforestation backlog of four million acres on national forests and plant more than one billion trees over the next decade.
With new resources made available through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, combined with support from state, local, and Tribal governments as well as other partners, the Forest Service aims to eliminate the backlog over the next 10 years and develop the infrastructure, such as nurseries, to keep up with increasing needs.
The Forest Service has invested more than $100 million in reforestation this year – more than three times the investment in previous years – thanks to the Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees (REPLANT) Act made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These historic investments will help mitigate the impacts of climate change, rebuild in the aftermath of devastating wildfires and strengthen America’s forestlands.
“Forests are a powerful tool in the fight against climate change,” said Secretary Vilsack. “Nurturing their natural regeneration and planting in areas with the most need is critical to mitigating the worst effects of climate change while also making those forests more resilient to the threats they face from catastrophic wildfire, historic drought, disease outbreaks and pest infestation.”
Before the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and REPLANT, the Forest Service was only able to address about 6% of its post-wildfire reforestation needs. The REPLANT Act directs the Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees over the next decade, removes a cap of $30 million and is now expected to provide the agency significantly more resources every year to do so.
According to Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, the reforestation strategy (PDF, 7 MB) will serve as a framework to understand reforestation needs, develop shared priorities with partners, expand reforestation and nursery capacity, and ensure the trees planted grow to support healthy, resilient forests.
“Our reforestation efforts on national forests only increase through strong partnerships with other federal agencies, tribes, state and local governments, communities and organizations,” Moore said. “We recognize that successfully increasing reforestation on national forests is dependent on these strong partnerships.”
Secretary Vilsack and Chief Moore said that the strategy announced today is an important first step in realizing the goals laid out in President Biden’s direction to scale up climate-smart reforestation and also supports the Forest Service’s 10-year strategy to cut wildfire risk, protect communities and improve forest health.
In addition to the reforestation strategy, Secretary Vilsack announced 13 new USDA agency climate adaptation plans, which outline how each USDA agency will incorporate climate change into their operations and decisions to support communities, agriculture and forests nationwide.
“Our climate adaptation plans represent a blueprint for how we account for the risks our changing climate has on those groups most vulnerable to its effects – America’s farmers, ranchers, forest landowners and rural communities,” said Secretary Vilsack.
**************
Center for Western Priorities, in reporting on this,
The Biden administration plans to replant trees on millions of acres of forest affected by wildfires and other symptoms of climate change, like insects and drought. Warming temperatures and less rain mean hotter and bigger fires are taking out trees more rapidly than in the past, leading toa backlog of 4 million acres of forest in need of replanting. This comes on the heels of legislation passed last year requiring the Forest Service to plant 1.2 billion trees in national forests, called the REPLANT Act.
*********
But this replanting effort could be stymied by the very conditions that precipitated it, as many seedlings won’t be able to survive to adulthood due to climate change. That’s according to Joe Fargione, science director for North America at the Nature Conservancy.
“You’ve got to be smart about where you plant,” he said. “There are some places that the climate has already changed enough that it makes the probability of successfully reestablishing trees pretty low.”
If changes will be such that seedlings won’t be able to survive to adulthood due to climate change, one wonders how we would know whether such changes will affect young trees more than old (presumably less vigorous) trees. I actually don’t think that that’s known by anyone.
I’m also not sure that there are places on FS land where “the climate has changed enough that it makes the probability of successfully reestablishing trees pretty low.” Everywhere I look that has been burned (and where seed is available) I see the same species growing back (without being planted). What does it look like where you live?
193 Million Acres: Toward a Healthier and More Resilient Forest Service covers a lot of territory. Taken most literally, the title refers to the lands that the US Forest Service stewards across the United States. But it also evokes the reciprocal dynamic of that stewardship: the different ecosystems—forest, grassland, and wilderness, to name a few—have had a profound impact on the federal agency’s actions; it is also true that the Forest Service, by its policy decisions, budgetary outlays, and managerial schemes have altered conditions on the ground. This feedback loop is of prime importance.
It is vital for another reason. Whether read individually and/or collectively, the contributions to 193 Million Acres reveal alterations in how researchers have analyzed the interplay between the agency and the public lands over the years, a process of rethinking and revising which stretches back to the establishment of the Forest Service in 1905.
The probing the significance of these revisions—historical, scientific, political—form the crux of my chapter in the anthology, “Future Imperfect: The Forest Service and Federal Land Management in a Climate-Charged Environment.” The title and text are self-consciously framed in the concise, three-word description of the historian’s narrative strategy—change over time. And what better way to illustrate some of these historic forces than by starting in the present? A present in which a warming planet is rearranging ecological relationships and thereby disrupting the capacity of the Forest Service, among other institutions, to manage as they once did.
Here’s the set up:
How will the agency steward its 193 million acres of forests and grasslands as the climate and landscapes shift in relation to one another? The Forest Service and its agency peers “know enough now to begin taking decisive action at the local, state, regional, and federal level to implement adaption strategies on public and private forest lands” (Malmsheimer et al. 2008). That said, these agencies have encountered “bottlenecks,” based not so much on the “limitations of our science as on limitations in the policies and existing institutional framework within which forestry is practiced” (Sample, Bixler, and Miller 2016).
These confounding situations have arrived at a fascinating moment in the agency’s history. Founded in 1905, in the immediate aftermath of its centennial celebrations the Forest Service found itself with a golden opportunity to (re)consider whether its prior commitments would allow it to celebrate its bicentennial. That may seem an odd statement. After all, the Forest Service has managed to weather serious challenges in the past, a legacy suggesting it might prove as nimble when confronted with future trials, however unpredictable those posed by global warming may be. Would the agency’s history offer a useful guide to a future layered with the dilemmas a warmer Earth currently is producing? However traumatic climate change is already proving to be, however disruptive its impact on the agency’s previous patterns of behavior and action, analyzing the agency’s past still may provide insight into its future. How will its leaders, line officers, rangers, and staff face the daily complexities posed by an integrated series of forces that may overwhelm their capacity to manage landscapes? How will they respond to the welter of opportunities and challenges that already have emerged and will arise? These are not just policy questions; they also have a historical dimension, for as Richard Neustadt and Ernest May (1986) observe in Thinking in Time: “[S]eeing the past can help one envision alternative futures.”
The bulk of the chapter then explored three possible paths that could redefine the Forest Service’s structure and mission.
Scenario One: Evolutionary Dynamics
The Forest Service has evolved in relation to the lands that it manages, establishing a dynamic interaction between the environment and the professional conservationists who seek to steward it, which confirms a broader claim: “History has repeatedly demonstrated that the health and welfare of human societies are fundamentally dependent on the health and welfare of their forests” (Thompson 2008). This reciprocity, in its particularity and broad sweep, may prove the key to the agency’s long-term survival. Because over time it has had to adapt to shifts in political temper, scientific knowledge, and social concern, its legacy of resilience also may define its 21st-century behavior in an era of climate change, enabling it to morph as required while retaining its core responsibilities and organizational structure.
Scenario Two: Devolutionary Progress
Yet what happens when the rate of change is so rapid and/or radical that organisms emerge as something else altogether? Indeed, a proposed alteration that the Forest Service has faced—and to date has fended off—is the devolution of its lands and authority to the individual states in which its forests, wildernesses, and grasslands are located. Those who have argued for this outcome have drawn on a powerful strain in American political thought, starting with the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.” In attempting to define the precise relationship between federal and state sovereignty, a central issue in the United States since the 18th century, the amendment makes clear that this relationship is in tension. The Forest Service knows this full well, for the agency long has been a flashpoint in the heated political debate between states’ rights and national prerogatives. What followed was a comparative analysis of how and why the national forest-management agencies in Canada and New Zealand—which initially replicated the US model that Gifford Pinchot and his successors had developed—lost their managerial authorities and foci. Were their experiences suggestive of what might lie in store for the US Forest Service in the 21st century? (Hint: I don’t think so).
Scenario Three: Revolutionary Impulse
Would the creation of a new Department of Conservation in the executive branch be more likely? With a seat in the cabinet, this department might house the nation’s most important land management agencies—the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, Geological Survey, National Resources Conservation Service, and National Park Service, among other entities. By creating economies of scale and greater efficiencies of action, this new department could save money and serve as a standard-bearer for the modern environmental movement. That said, this approach flies in the face of contemporary environmentalism, which stresses local agency over national solutions, and would upset those restive elements of the sagebrush opposition for whom increased federal authority is an anathema. Yet an unreflective dismissal of this possibility may lead conservationists to miss a chance to restructure federal land-management institutions and their delivery of environmental services. It may turn out that the most effective way to secure much-desired bottom-up reform is through simultaneous top-down change, which is particularly pressing in this climate-shifting era.
I knew enough to know that by themselves—and even in combination—these three scenarios are more evocative than prescriptive. My goal, after all, was to suggest ways by which institutional change might occur, despite knowing that so many unforeseen contingencies and unknown conflicts could arise to redirect the Forest Service’s future and thus the later narrating of its history. This is precisely what makes my job so much fun: The past and present, like writing itself, is in a constant state of revision.
***********************
Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. His new book, Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril will be published in September. He is also the author of America’s Great National Forests, Wildernesses, and Grasslands and the award-winning Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, among others.
It’s summertime.. Time to watch out for rattlesnakes in reservoirs! Thanks to the Cowboy State Daily. (I forgot to put the link previously so here it is.)
“They actually cross Boysen all the time. I’ve seen it probably 20 times at least on Boysen, I’ve seen it on the Seminoe Reservoir down by Sinclair, the Glendo Reservoir… Flaming Gorge,” he said. “They’re not afraid to get in the water.”
About 20 years ago, a rattler tried slithering into the boat while Edwards and his dad fished.
*************
“It’s the ones you can’t see that you’ve got to worry about,” he said, adding that many people have approached him since he made the viral post, and have told him they paddleboard and play in the lake water.
Edwards tells those people to pay close attention to what’s in the water, watch for graceful serpentine movement. And paddle away.
“I always worry about people who are waterskiing,” Edwards said. “You can run over a rattlesnake.”
Since this is a roundup, feel free to add your own news items of interest in the comments.
(1) * My favorite podcast of the week.
Tisha Schuller interviewing Toby Rice on Energy Thinks. He thinks a great and doable transitional global decarbonization strategy would be to substitute LNG for coal, wood and other more CO2 and particulate producing energy sources to help countries both move off coal and escape energy poverty.
Caution: Rice talks very fast.
Virtual fencing, a relatively new technology, allows ranchers to control livestock distribution in rangeland landscapes without physical fences. Livestock wear collars that communicate with GPS and reception towers to form a virtual fence set by the rancher or land manager. When the livestock reach the limit of the virtual fence, auditory stimuli (often a series of loud beeps) emit from the collar. If livestock pass the fence limit, they receive a benign shock. Cattle have demonstrated the ability and tendency to rapidly learn the virtual fencing cues, eventually responding to the audio cue alone. Several studies have documented success with sheep and goats as well.
Virtual fencing could prove to be an effective climate adaptation strategy, as it can be used to contain animals within a desired area, exclude them from undesired areas, or move them across the landscape. Virtual fencing has the potential to diminish soil erosion associated with overgrazing and to improve soil and water quality through managed grazing. Managed grazing is careful management of livestock density and the timing and intensity of grazing. It can stimulate plant regrowth and add manure to the soil. While ranchers with traditional fences can also practice managed grazing, it requires much more planning and labor, and animal movements are limited to pastures defined by permanent fence boundaries. Virtual fencing allows managers to frequently and efficiently move livestock from one pasture to the next and to define new within-pasture boundaries.
(3) Artificial lights are bad for wildlife-see this Popular Science article. You may wonder, what about lights on wind turbines (so-called “aviation obstruction lighting”)? Well it turns out that in fact people have studied that for birds. Here’s a summary from Nature Scotland.
Since I live fairly close to a windfarm, I thought this was an interesting technological solution.
An alternative approach is to only switch lighting on when aircraft are near. There are a number of systems that react when aircraft approach an operational turbine. For example, the Obstacle Collision Avoidance System (OCAS) is designed to alert pilots if their aircraft is in immediate danger of flying into an obstacle. OCAS uses a low power ground based radar to provide detection and tracking of an aircraft’s proximity to an obstacle such as a power line crossing, telecom tower or wind turbines. This capability allows the visual warning lights to remain passive until an aircraft is detected and known to be tracking on an unsafe heading. This leaves the night-time sky free of unnecessary light thus decreasing public annoyance issues, and limiting situations where bird-strike may occur.
(7) And this AP story on how wildfire risk is being used to stop housing development in California.
That’s not the only time California’s escalating cycle of fire has been used as a basis to refuse development.
Environmental groups are seeing increased success in California courts arguing that wildfire risk wasn’t fully considered in proposals to build homes in fire-prone areas that sit at the edge of forests and brush, called the wildland-urban interface. Experts say such litigation could become more common.
Sketch of Cherokee Village Historic painting of a Native American village in the Southeastern United States Painting by Lloyd Kenneth Townsend
In responding to a comment by Jim Furnish, I found this fascinating paper on the fire history of the southern US and Native American burning. Quite a bit of interesting info. I had no idea that bison migrated into the area after 1500.. I actually didn’t know bison had been there at all.
Some historical texts mention fire without commenting on the purpose or whether it was intentionally set or not. White (1600, cited in Russell 1983), for example, saw from his ship rising smoke, when he was searching for the colony on Roanoke.Others describe habitats that may have been fire-maintained including large treeless zones, canebrakes, park-like forests, and pastures occupied by grazing bison. The fact that fallow fields grew into forests within decades after Indians abandoned an area (Day 1953; Maxwell 1910) and Indians’ lack of metal tools to clear forests (Bass 2002) support the proposition that Native Americans used fire to clear forests. Vast open areas or grasslands in western Virginia and along the Virginia-North Carolina line were describedbyBeverly(1947)andLederer(1891,citedin Maxwell 1910), who traveled through different parts of Virginia in 1669 and 1670.In 1705, Beverly (1947) described the hundreds of acres of grasslands on the Virginia Piedmont. In the 1720s Mark Catesby noted that in the Carolinas there were large meadows with overgrown grass (Barden 1997). In Ashley County, Arkansas survey records from the General Land Office note the presence of grasslands (Bragg 2003). Severalsources,includingGeorge Washington’swritings from 1752 (Brown 2000), mention large grassy areas in the Shenandoah Valley and conclude that Indians used fire (Fallam 1998; Fontaine 1998; Maxwell 1910).The presence of the bison in the Southeast provides indirect evidence of wide-spread grassland resulting from Indian burning practices. The bison migrated into the region sometime after 1500 AD. Their eastward movement was probably a combination of the open areas created by anthropogenic burning and the lack of predation after the decrease of the Indian population through European diseases (DeVivo 1991; Bass 2002).
……..
The exclusion of fires from southern landscapes caused changes in vegetation.When fires became less common, forests began to regenerate or the composition of existing forests began to change.The Appalachian hardwood forests recovered in the almost complete absence of fire, which had detrimental effects on fire-tolerant oak and fire-dependent pine stands (Brose et al. 2001a). The establishment of oaks (Q. rubra, Q. alba) had formerly been facilitated by Native American fire—possibly over thousands of years—and by logging, burning and the chestnut blight from the time of European settlement until the beginning of the 20th century. However, during the time of fire suppression these sites have been invaded by late-succession species. Abrams et al. (1995) studied an old growth white pine (P. strobus) and mixed oak community in southern West Virginia and came to the conclusion that fire and other fairly frequent disturbances maintained this forest over the past 300 years. After the exclusion of fire, oak recruitment ceased in favor of maple (mainlyAcer rubrum), beech (Fagus grandifolia) and hemlock (Tsuga canadensis). Today, sites that have been cut over since 1930 are often dominated by maples (Acer rubrum, A. saccharum), yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) and hickories (Carya spp.). Only on drier or nutrient-poor sites do oaks still regen- erate successfully (Lorimer 1993).
Analysis of soil charcoal samples demonstrated that fires became more frequent about 1,000 years ago. This coincides with the appearance of Mississippian Tradition Native Americans, who used fire to clear underbrush and improve habitat for hunting, Christensen said.
Fires became less frequent at the site about 250 years ago, following the demise of the Mississippian people and the arrival of European settlers, whose preferred tools for clearing land were the axe and saw, rather than the use of fire. Active fire suppression policies and increased landscape fragmentation during the last 75 years have further reduced fire frequency in the region, a trend reflected in the analysis of samples from the study site.
The relative absence of fire over the past 250 years has altered forest composition and structure significantly, Christensen said.
“The vegetation we see today in the region is very different from what was there thousands or even hundreds of years ago,” he noted. “Early explorers and settlers often described well-spaced woodlands with open grassy understories indicative of high-frequency, low-intensity fires, and a prevalence of fire-adapted species like oak, hickory and chestnut, with pitch pines and other (low-moisture) species on ridgetops. Today, it’s become more mesic – we find more species typical of moist ecosystems. They’ve moved out of the lower-elevation streamsides and coves, up the hillsides and onto the ridges.”
Aside from any inherent historic and scientific interest, knowing more about pre-settlement fire regimes in the region may help forest managers today understand the likely responses of species to the increased use of prescribed fire for understory fuel management, Christensen said.
However, he cautioned that because of widespread changes that have occurred in the forests as a result of centuries of fire suppression and other human activities, as well as climatic changes, “prescribed burns may or may not behave similarly to fires that occurred in the past. Fires today likely would burn hotter and more intensely than fires did in the past.
“Also, although history tells us what could be restored, it doesn’t tell us what should be restored,” he added. “That depends on which species, habitats and ecosystem services we wish to conserve.“
Thanks to Forrest Fleischmann for sending this University of Minnesota 2022 paper on proportions of women and minorities in natural resource and other federal agencies.
Here’s the abstract:
Natural resource management in the United States has long suffered from a lack of workforce diversity, with women and minorities generally underrepresented in natural resource careers. Workforce diversity is particularly important for federal natural resource organizations given their importance as major environmental employers and policymakers as well as their legal obligation to ensure a representative federal workforce. This analysis examined workforce trends in gender (from 1998 to 2018) and race/ethnicity (from 2006 to 2018) for nine federal natural resource departments and agencies. Employee demographic data were examined intraorganizationally over time and inter-organizationally in comparison with the federal government overall and the civilian labor force. The results demonstrated that over the last two decades: (1) federal natural resource organizations experienced large losses of employees, in contrast to gains in the number of employees in the federal government overall and the civilian labor force; (2) the percentage of female and minority employees in federal natural resource organizations increased even as the number of employees decreased; (3) federal natural resource organizations had lower percentages of female and minority employees than the federal government overall and civilian labor force; and (4) gaps in female and minority employment between the federal natural resource organizations and the civilian labor force generally remained stable or grew larger over time. Overall, the results indicate that federal natural resource organizations have continued to experience remedial levels of workforce diversity compared to the federal government overall and the civilian labor force.
One of the difficulties I had in hiring was that I actually couldn’t tell if people fit into a diversity category or not, if they didn’t self-identify. Checking out their social media seemed a little stalker-ish. Or trying to figure it out from the groups they were involved with… many non-diverse folks would be active in those groups. I felt like we should have a budget to hire detectives. This suggestion did not go over well. Anyway, reading the below, from the report, reminded me of those experiences.
For the NPS (and by extension, the DOI), the percentage of employees in the young age range (under 30) with an unspecified race/ethnicity experienced a large increase beginning in 2016. From 2006 to 2018, the number of young employees with an unspecified race/ethnicity in the NPS increased from 1 employee to 463 employees (+462). This is in stark contrast with the number of minority and white young employees in the NPS which both decreased over the 13-year period (-17 and -505, respectively) (Table 3). Comparing the NPS’s young workforce from 2015 (just before the sharp increase in employees with an unspecified race/ethnicity) to 2018, the percentage of white NPS employees decreased from 85% to 70%, the percentage of minority NPS employees stayed the same at 15% (Figure 6), and the percentage of NPS employees with 65 an unspecified race/ethnicity increased from 0% to 15%. It therefore appears that, in the NPS’s young age range, employees with an unspecified race/ethnicity were primarily replacing white employees during this period, rather than minority employees. It is also particularly notable that the NPS’s young workforce had equal percentages of minority employees and employees with an unspecified race/ethnicity in 2018 (both 15%). The only other selected organizations in which employees with an unspecified race/ethnicity made up more than 1% of the young workforce over the 13-year period were the FWS (2% in 2017 and 2018), the NRCS (3% in 2009), and the EPA (2% or more from 2007 to 2013, with a maximum of 5% in 2010). None of these agencies had more than 70 employees with an unspecified race/ethnicity during those years, nor more than 1,500 total young employees.
Source: USFS, Draft Record of Decision, SNF Revised Land Management Plan June 2022
FOREST PLAN REVISIONS
The current schedule for national forests that are revising their plans is here:
Individual links are to Forest Service web pages.
On July 8, the Carson National Forest completed its review of objections and released its final revised forest plan FEIS and final ROD. According to a news release, “The Carson worked closely with the Cibola and Santa Fe national forests to develop consistent plan components for traditional uses, including grazing, fuelwood, and acequias, to better serve the needs of tribes, community land grants, and subsistence-based rural communities.” (Why not other consistent plan components to serve the needs of everyone else?)
On July 15, the Cibola National Forestcompleted its review of objections and released its final revised forest plan, FEIS and final ROD. According to this article, “It covers everything from how thin they would like the forests to be and the balance of different types of trees to how they will better reduce the fuel load in areas where the forest meets homes. They also address climate change and how it has changed the conditions of the forest from fires and wind events to flooding and insect infestations. They also address grazing issues and the preservation of habitats of endangered species and the preservation of historic and culturally sensitive sites.”
On July 8, the Tonto National Forestreinitiated the 60-day objection period for its revised forest plan due to an incorrect website included in the original Federal Register notice in March. “The document focuses on wildfire, recreation, the use of volunteers and other aspects that might affect policy, said Kenna Belsky of Tonto Forest.”
The Pew Charitable Trust has released reports on critical conservation areas for biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate resilience for the 17 national forests covered by the Northwest Forest Plan. These “high ecological value areas” are currently unprotected places that contain the top 10% of ecologically valuable lands within a given forest. This analysis was previously discussed for the Ashley National Forest here. The NFP forests have not yet initiated revision, but a Bioregional Assessment was prepared in 2020.
On July 13, the Bitterroot National Forestexpanded the scope of a forest plan amendment beyond elk management to include old growth, coarse woody debris and snags. According to the scoping letter (linked to this article), “Total plan revision has not yet begun for the Bitterroot National Forest, and it can be a years-long process; in the meantime, we can resolve certain long-standing problematic language regarding snags and coarse woody debris and improve our inventory of old growth forest stands by amending the current Bitterroot Forest Plan using the best current relevant science.” This would include changing the definition of old growth, which was the subject of a recent court decision in Friends of the Clearwater v. Probert on the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest next door, discussed here.
On June 18, the BLM and Forest Service signed an inter-governmental cooperative agreement with five Native American tribes to “coordinat(e) on land use planning and implementation, as well as the development of long-term resource management and programmatic goals” for the Bears Ears National Monument. According to this article, the five tribes plan to submit a land management plan for Bears Ears to the BLM. The agency will then incorporate the tribes’ recommendations into its own plan, which could take up to 18 months to finalize. (Bears Ears has been discussed a few times on this blog.)
The Least-Conflict Solar Siting projectis a voluntary, collaborative effort that brings stakeholders together to identify areas in the Columbia Plateau region where participants “would be least likely to oppose solar energy developments.” While federal lands are mentioned, they don’t appear to be a focus, but it seems like this could provide useful information, and maybe a model for federal land planning efforts.
In February, the Biden Administration initiated a new interagency working group on reforming hardrock mining laws, regulations and permitting policies in the United States, which is ongoing. One of its “fundamental principles” is: “Like other uses of public lands, mining should be governed by comprehensive federal land-use assessments and planning.”
The National Caucus of Environmental Legislatorswrote to President Biden on May 20 to ask him to establish a National Biodiversity Strategy. It was signed by 350 state legislators from 46 states.
The Hotshot Wakeup podcast last week noted this NFFE letter on Forest Service housing issues. Excerpts below.
As you know, thehousingproblemin the Forest Serviceisfundamentallyabout dignity.ForestService employees deserve to have a safe, affordable, andreliable place to livebut many donot.Youremployees and our members have shared these acute observations on the Forest Service housing crisisthatnegatively impacts a sense of dignity in the workplace and impedesrecruitment and retentionefforts: •Employeesare living in their trucks, vans, hammocks,or are “couch–surfing” while working for theForest Service. This ismostoftennot by choice but out of necessity. •No government housingisavailable to employeesin some locations. Private rentals are scarce andunaffordablein many locations.There is no housing stipend now for Forest Service employees. •Existing housing is dilapidated andin dangerousdisrepair.Frequent complaintsinclude:mold,asbestos, rodent infestations, roofs caving in, exposed wires, no insulation, inoperable windows, nolocks, non–functioning appliances, noWi–Fiand poor cellular phone service.Forest Servicehousing compares unfavorably with that in other land use agencies. •Only housing available is “males only”.No family housing orit islimited to 3–year terms. •Employees make repairs themselves or pay out of pocketbecause the FS says there is no money. •Housing is not guaranteed.Temporary employees can lose their housing if they take a permanent position.Employees can be kicked out of housingon short notice. For example,if the Agency hasposted a vacancy announcement for a position withhigher priorityfor housing, the currentoccupant must vacate. That bed will go unused until the new hire onboards. •Employees are paying market rates for substandard living facilities.Rents in government housingare high becausethey are based on the next closest municipality, which are often pricey tourist orcollege towns.Rent is not reduced when property is in disrepair. •Rents are not fairlypro–rated among government housing tenants.For example, if the onlygovernment housing available is designed for six occupants, but only one employee wants housing,that one employee must paythe entirerent even if no one else lives there.
…….
In the short term,we have identified changes thatthe Forest Service canimplementimmediatelyto improvelivingconditionsand aid intherecruitment ofnew employees.These recommendations include: 1.Expedite repairs and upgrades for existing government housing, includingadding simpleamenitiesandnewfurnishings.Instruct forest supervisors to complete deferred maintenanceby the end ofthe calendar year. Mandate that forest supervisorsreview andby default,approve, any reasonablerequest formaintenancewith a priority to those repairs that impact the hygiene, health, and safetyof employees. 2.Waive all rent paymentsfrom employeeson government housing untilissues are abated andhousing is livable.Investigate via the Inspector General any private housing providers who chargemarket or premium rates for substandard housing,or commit any violations of federal or localhealth or infestation regulations. 3.Establish a housing stipend benefitand make it available to any employee who does not live inForest Servicehousing. 4.Lay down more trailer pads with full hookups on Forest Service property.Expedite the purchaseofcampers for employees who request them and putthemto immediate use. 5.Consult the Department of Interior on best practices and get their housing blueprints for permanentbuilds.National Park Service employees have A–frame cabins with a common room with a TV,cookhouse, sharedbathroom,and private quarters. 6.Identify all sites that have been deemed “administrative site”and begin construction right away.Environmental impact assessments do not need to be completed on these sites and new constructionis subject only to public comment.
7.Hire more forest engineers andfacilities staff to keep up withregularupgrades and to build newbuildings. Contractorconstruction andrenovation maintenanceisextremely expensive.Currently,some forests only have one person responsible for this work for theentireforest. 8.Condemn and bulldoze propertiesas necessarytoeliminate safety risks andprepare for newpermanent builds. 9.Audit the QMQM fund where money employees pay in rent is held and redistributethese funds formaintenance. Ensure each region is allocating those resources fairly between forestsand is makingthose funds available forpromptly repairing andrenovatingexisting housing.
I’ve always felt that forest engineers are notoriously unappreciated, so I like the idea of hiring and, hopefully, appreciating them.
This is the third in our series of posts by the original authors summarizing, riffing on, and updating essays from the Steve Wilent-edited book 193 Million Acres.
The original title of the essay was Millennial Employees and Rural Places: A Millennial Forester’s Thoughts about Increasing Young Employee Recruitment and Retention in the National Forest System. Information on the author, Don Radcliffe, can be found at the end of the post.
Introduction
My essay for 193 Million Acres explored issues the Forest Service had with recruiting and retaining talented young employees, specifically within the national forest system. I was 26 and it was 2017 when I wrote it; I had worked for the Forest Service as a seasonal silviculture technician in a small western town in 2014 and 2015, then worked in construction with my family and did a forest policy internship with the Society of American Foresters, before going to graduate school for forestry and forest ecology. So the essay was based on personal experience, along with a bit of literature review. Working with my family’s general contracting business showed me that companies which treated their employees well usually had the best reputations for quality work, and greater longevity. My opinion was that the Forest Service was a decent place to work as a young person, but that it had a lot of room for improvement. When the opportunity arose to write for 193 Million Acres, I thought up seven recommendations for improvement in recruitment and retention of talented young employees in the Forest Service, which I’ll list out below.
But before listing out recommendations, I explored a couple important areas of background context: rural demographic patterns and attitudes of Millennials towards the workplace. The gist of the rural demographic section was that most rural spaces are becoming lonely places for people in their twenties. However, there are a few rural recreation destinations that tend to concentrate more young people, tending to focus around areas of natural beauty. These destinations have much turnover due to high housing prices in combination with unstable and low wage seasonal work. The gist of the Millennial attitudes section was that many of us Millennials want to make a positive impact in our work, seek consistent growth in our work, and we seek work-life balance. More so than past generations, we will change jobs and/or careers if these needs aren’t met. Often these characteristics are framed negatively, but I see them as an economic and survival imperative. We grew up in uncertain times with great changes in job markets and rising cost of living, and we grew up being taught about a wide variety of existential threats. If we aren’t constantly learning new skills, we risk being left behind by automation and/or political restructuring. If we aren’t making a positive impact in our work, we may not leave much of a world for our future children.
With this background of rural demographic patterns and millennial attitudes towards the workplace in mind, I listed seven recommendations to improve recruitment and retention of talented
young workers in the Forest Service. The recommendations mostly touch on issues that are much broader than the narrow context of this blog post, and I’m keeping them very brief here. And all these issues are also explored in some of the other essays in 193 Million Acres, to different degrees and with different focuses. Briefly, my recommendations were:
Recommendation 1: Diversify the work and provide more mentorship. Many 1039 seasonal employees have relatively monotonous experiences in a season with the Forest Service, and some have a greater variety of experiences. I think efforts to expand the breadth of a young seasonal’s experience is likely to increase their interest in the overall work of the Forest Service, and improve the chance they will return for a second season and beyond. Forests should place more emphasis on mentorship, which is a major factor by which millennials judge the quality of their job.
Personally, I got lucky in my seasonal position and was able to learn from working in a variety of tasks, and that was a major factor in deciding to return to the same job for a second season.
Recommendation 2: Promote on merit
Anyone reading this essay has probably at least heard stories about bad promotions and deadweight employees in government agencies. I don’t have the management experience in the Forest Service to really understand how problematic deadweight employees are or aren’t, and I’m not as sure that it’s a real problem as I used to be, as I’ve interacted with many very helpful Forest Service employees on several national forests both when I’ve been an employee and a grad student. But when I was a seasonal there was a narrative that being a good employee didn’t help you get promoted in the Forest Service, and that being a bad employee could get you promoted because it was the only way a boss could ‘get rid of you.’ Clearly that kind of narrative is going to be deterring to ambitious and talented young employees, and I think efforts to give promotions to those who deserve them will be motivating to talented young employees of the Forest Service.
Recommendation 3: Pay people what they’re worth
I’ve often seen pay raises being held back at the Forest Service. For example, a person with a college degree is supposed to make a GS-5 wage, but most people I know have been hired out of college at a GS-4 and kept there for one, two, up to four years. Even upper-level forestry positions like district silviculturists are often paid a couple GS levels less than what they’re supposed to be. Obviously holding pack pay increases doesn’t make the Forest Service an inviting place for talented young people with the skills to work elsewhere.
Recommendation 4: Hire more people
A major theme of my essay is that rural places are often lonely for young people. In a small Forest Service town, the community of seasonals is likely to provide most of the social life for employees fresh out of college. More seasonals and young permanents would mean a richer community, and more reasons to stick around. More jobs open generally may also decrease the need to move frequently to climb up the ladder, therefore increasing stability of the Forest Service lifestyle, for those who want it. Additionally, having more employees would increase the talent pool available to the Forest Service.
Recommendation 5: Make rural districts better places for young people
Those small towns with higher proportions of young people have a couple of common characteristics: ‘natural amenities’ defined by proximity to scenery, topographic variation, water, large
forested regions, and/or a pleasant climate, and access to recreation. For the most part, natural amenities are a set asset, and some places will have more than others. But Forest Service districts can work with the natural amenities they have to develop recreation opportunities that will give people of all ages more reasons to move to a town and stick with it. I won’t claim that developing recreation is a magic bullet: it can lead to well-known issues with rural gentrification, cultural clashes, and high turnover of residents. But from what I’ve seen in both the literature and from various places I’ve lived, developing recreation is the only option that small production-focused towns have for attracting and retaining young people with college degrees.
Recommendation 6: Recruit (and retain) a greater diversity of workers
The United States is becoming increasingly diverse in terms of racial identity, gender identity, sexuality, and other dimensions of identity, and the Forest Service cannot adequately serve this diverse constituency without hiring and retaining a more diverse set of employees, and making them feel included in the agency. Additionally, an increasing number of young people prioritize being in communities and jobs where they are surrounded by a diversity of identities and viewpoints, as a matter of both self-growth and societal equity. The Forest Service has made strides to increase diversity and inclusion in the agency, but there is still a widespread perception and a reality of the Forest Service dominated by heterosexual white men. The agency will not fare well in recruitment and retention of young employees if it does not improve its reputation on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Recommendation 7: Promote forestry and inspire the general public
I think this is my most important recommendation in my essay. Since the day I decided to major in forestry I’ve been fielding questions like: ‘so you want to be a park ranger?’ Most often people that I interact with either don’t have any kind of schema for what forestry is, and they go straight to one end or the other of the ‘loggers vs. tree huggers’ dichotomy, depending on where they grew up and what their experiences in forests had been. I’ve often tried to explain forestry to a friend or loved one several times, and they end up going back to the dichotomy. In my time in grad school, several people have told me to call myself a researcher of forest ecology rather than a researcher of silviculture or forestry, because I would get more grant money. For decades college departments have been moving away from using the word ‘forestry’ in their name, like my department at the University of Washington. Career is such a defining part of identity in our culture, and the forestry community is surely losing both talented young people and the money to hire them to the lack of positive public perception of forestry. I think what we’re lacking is inspiration; I haven’t seen many folks successfully communicating what an inspiring job we have, working to balance many crucial societal needs at once. If we can do a better job at being inspiring about forestry, I think it would go a long way towards improving the Forest Service’s ability to recruit and retain young people.
Changes in my opinions since I wrote the essay in 2017
I don’t have many changes to my opinions since I wrote the original essay, but it’s possible some things are out of date already. My finger is less on the pulse of Forest Service affairs than it was in 2017; when my time with the Forest Service and with the Society of American Foresters was fresh and more relevant. Additionally, most of my experience and research was relevant to the Millennial generation that I’m a part of, but Generation Z is increasingly more relevant to discussions about young employees. There was little published research on Gen Z in the workplace when I was looking, and I haven’t had time to dig into any literature that’s been published since. My hunch is that Gen Z has similar attitudes towards the workplace to Millennials, and that it may be even more imperative for the Forest Service to pay attention to their needs and to my recommendations to recruit and retain Gen Z employees, but I don’t have a lot of hard evidence to back that up.
I am now a little more optimistic about the ability of small towns to attract and retain young people, after seeing movement patterns shift somewhat during the pandemic, when remote work untethered some employees from their employer’s location. Clearly there are some young people living in big cities for economic reasons when lifestyle preferences might lean more rural. I haven’t had time to research pandemic movement patterns in depth, but the fact that some young people did move out of cities when given the economic opportunity gives hope that small Forest Service towns will be able to attract and retain vibrant communities of talented young employees, if the Forest Service can provide a quality place of employment.
About the author Don Radcliffe is currently studying fuel treatment longevity and rotation, as a PhD candidate in Brian Harvey’s lab at the University of Washington. He has previously worked for the Forest Service in Montana as a silviculture technician and firefighter, for the Society of American Foresters in Washington D.C. as a forest policy intern, and as a project manager with his parents’ construction company in Wisconsin. He has a B.S. in Forest Science and Life Sciences Communication from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and an M.S. in Environment and Natural Resources from Ohio State University, where he studied mesophication in oak forests. He is also on Twitter here.
A firefighter in Yosemite National Park scrapes material away from a giant sequoia during the Washburn Fire in July 2022. NPS photo by Garrett Dickman.
Since Thomas Sowell is a Californian (albeit a Coastal), I thought a few of his quotes are relevant to our federal lands policy world.
“On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.”
For dry forest areas, the good intentions of “not killing lots of people and burning towns” led to fire suppression. That worked until..
Fire suppression led to fuels buildup.
And the idea..
Let’s leave forests alone and not take trees (fuels) out. An idea that developed in the more populated mesic areas of the country. That worked until..
Fuel buildups, more people igniting, climate change, and other factors.. led to large wildfires that kill people and burn towns.
Another Sowell quote:
There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
What have we learned from this cycle? Thanks to Bill Gabbert for this ..
Garrett Dickman is a biologist at Yosemite National Park.
“These next couple of years could be bad in ways we haven’t experienced yet,” Garrett says. The Park Service knows what’s coming. After 60 years trying to walk backward by managing their lands to be what conservationist Starker Leopold, who devised the agency’s guiding philosophy from the late 1960s until 2021, called “vignettes of primitive America,” the Park Service has changed course to officially recognize that park managers must intervene in ways considered antithetical to their mission two years earlier. The new policy asks the public to open its mind to everything from mechanical thinning to very limited logging. “We saw how it goes when you don’t do anything,” Christy says. “It goes terribly. It goes thousands of 2,000 year old trees burned up in an instant.”
“We don’t get to have nice things anymore,” Garrett says.”
“The Clean Water Act. The National Environmental Policy Act. The National Historic Preservation Act. The Threatened and Endangered Species Act. Fantastic laws all of them,” Christy says. “But they were built at a time when the main threat was people doing bad things—logging, mining. Now the main threat is inaction. Bureaucracy is slow. Wildfire is fast. And bureaucracy needs to get a hell of a lot faster if we want to persist and not lose everything we’ve got left.”
Aside from the difference between “mechanical thinning” and “logging”..it seems like the Park Service knows what it needs to do to protect old growth Sequoias. I wonder why the Forest Service and BLM have to go through an elaborate national process to possibly figure out the same thing. Whose ends is that serving? Is it simply an exercise (taking much agency and NGO time) to prove to certain ENGOs that doubling down on yesterday’s solutions that exacerbate today’s problems is a really bad idea?
Apparently there is something in the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 about permitting (including NEPA) reforms for energy siting that would no doubt affect Federal lands.
