In its report on the New Mexico prescribed burn that got away several hours after ignition to burn 341,471 acres so far, the Chief places the blame on climate change: “Climate change is leading to conditions on the ground we have never encountered.” Washington Post commenters aren’t buying it.
1) Loosely translated, some USFS employees screwed up badly by ignoring the weather reports, and are using climate change to cover their mistake.
2) All lies and a coverup. Any first grader in New Mexico can tell you not to light a fire in the spring. The Forest Service operates under a blind and arrogant determination to set fires at any cost.
3) This actually isn’t a climate change issue. This is actually an issue of outright negligence! The Forest Service in New Mexico ignited a controlled burn on a week with red flag days, and strong winds that were gusting to gale force. That’s actually very normal weather for the higher elevation areas in New Mexico at the time those controlled burns were started. If this isn’t an example of outright negligence by the Forest Service, then I don’t know what is! “Climate change” is just a dodge that is a pile of cow crap a mile high!
4) This is BS. Who is running the agency? Larry, Moe, and Curly? The day I heard about the prescribed burn, I thought this is a terrible day to start a fire. It was windy as all get out in Santa Fe. And it is just about always less windy in the city than NE in the higher elevations (where they fires were started). At that time we had experienced no significant rain since last summer and little snow in the last two winters.
“U.S. Forest Service proposed land management plan for Pisgah and Nantahala forests has drawn thousands of objections, leading to extension of time to review concerns. Forest Service chief now calls plan revision process that took more than a decade unsustainable. ”
Fuel treatment projects designed to reduce wildfire risks, including mechanical treatments and prescribed burns, often take longer to implement than other U.S. Forest Service projects because they are more likely to require rigorous environmental review or be litigated.
Once the Forest Service initiates the environmental review process, it takes an average of 3.6 years to begin a mechanical treatment and 4.7 years to begin a prescribed burn.
For projects that require environmental impact statements—the most rigorous form of review—the time from initiation to implementation averages 5.3 years for mechanical treatments and 7.2 years for prescribed burns.
Given the time it takes to conduct environmental reviews and implement fuel treatments, it is unlikely that the Forest Service will be able to achieve its goal of treating an additional 20 million acres over the next 10 years.
I just returned from a driving trip from Colorado to Los Angeles California, and to Sacramento, California, passing through New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, including passing through one of my favorite highways, US 50 in Nevada, “the loneliest road in America”. Shout out to the BLM and the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF! In many places, NPR was the only station I could get (in rental car, because my 252K car was receiving a well-earned rest). It was fascinating to listen to NPR’s ideas of what was happening in “the West” and relate them to my own observations. It’s interesting to check every story you read about “the West” and wonder “do they mean Malibu, Eugene, Baker, Fallon, Red Feather Lakes, Chugwater, Silver City, Raton, Helena, Wenatchee, Republic or…?”Well, you don’t have to think very far to think “those places are incredibly different.. historically, which Tribes, which folks settled, which folks are there now, where folks are moving to these areas from, and so on.” And money, of course, is a thing.
Poverty rates US counties 2022 https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-county-rankings/poverty-rate-by-county
Counties in the “West” range from among the richest in the country (say around the SF Bay area) to some of the poorest. It’s an amazing diversity of peoples and cultures.
A year or two ago, I was on a Zoom session with folks from the Society of Environmental Journalists on people covering “western” federal lands issues. Most of the folks were not from what I’d call the Interior West, that would be from the crest of the Cascades/Sierra/Angeles to the Great Plains. They were (to me) surprisingly focused on “we need to cover people in “the West” who are planning to overthrow the government” (this was after January 6). I’m not kidding, of all our issues, really? Of all the issues we (I’ll call us Interior Westerners) face, these folks seem to believe that we in the IW are infested with incipient Bundys. And what surprised me the most is that these people seemed to really believe it and thought it was important to impart this (misplaced, IMHO) fear to the rest of the world. Of all the local papers I’ve read over the years, I haven’t seen many other Bundys.. but why the Bundobsession?
Many thanks to Matthew for posting the High Country News piece that illustrates my point. From Mr. Segerstrom (who resides in Spokane, definitely the Interior West):
THE WESTERN U.S. isn’t the only place where anti-government sentiment festers, but here the wounds are open, frequently endured and historically recent. Violence and the threat of violence in the region occur within the context of a nation founded on the genocide of Indigenous people. Leaders of anti-federal movements lean into this violent history and include factions that are specifically anti-Indigenous. In defending his right to graze cattle on federal land in Nevada — a claim he successfully defended at Bunkerville in 2014, when federal authorities withdrew after being outgunned by militiamen — Bundy argued that his claim to the land was more legitimate than the Southern Paiutes’ because “they lost the war.”
This white-plus-might-makes-right sentiment is a pervasive feature of Western mythology and cowboy culture. Over the last half-century, anti-government leaders have rallied to that image as the West’s population swelled and control over its natural resources became more contested and regulated. The original Sagebrush Rebellion of the mid-to-late-1970s — which inspired the modern Bundy-led standoffs but were not nearly as paramilitary — came in response to federal public-land laws like the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Wilderness Act and Endangered Species Act, which increasingly restricted how natural resources could be used.
Those restrictions were seen as unconscionable overreach by rural Westerners who were accustomed to using public-land resources as they wished. “The hardest thing to do in American politics is to withdraw a right,” said Daniel McCool, a political science professor at the University of Utah. Even though those rights were privileges in the legal sense, the perception that they were rights, and that they were being taken away, fueled the original Sagebrush Rebels, McCool said. “The roots of the Sagebrush Rebellion were when they no longer got what they wanted,” he said. “There’s a direct line from there to the Bundy groups active today.”
Hmm. So the East, South, and Midwest, weren’t founded on the “genocide of Indigenous people.” And, of course, as a native of Southern California, there are all kinds of racial complexities, as there colonization was accomplished by the Spanish. But today’s descendants of these folks are not considered exactly “white”(although I think some have been called “white-adjacent”. And cowboy culture has included diverse folks..this Smithsonian story says that one in four were black.
And originally cowboys (vaqueros) were of both Spanish and Native origin. Think of words like bronco and reata.
While classic Westerns have cemented the image of cowboys as white Americans, the first vaqueros were Indigenous Mexican men. “The missionaries were coming from this European tradition of horsemanship. They could ride well, they could corral cattle,” says Rangel. “So they started to train the native people in this area.” Native Mexicans also drew on their own experiences with horsemanship and hunting buffalo in order to refine vaquero techniques further, says Rangel.
In addition to herding cattle for Spanish ranchers as New Spain expanded westward, vaqueros were also enlisted as auxiliary forces in skirmishes between native communities and others.
This stereotype of “westerners” are always rural sometimes well-off, sometimes not (interesting to watch) people ( I don’t think they mean Cher or Steve Jobs), thought to be ignorant and violent.
Lest you think the Coastal Gaze is something new, I ran across this statement in a book written in 1891 by a Mr. W. L. Holloway.
“There are two classes of people who are always eager to get up an Indian war-the army and our frontiersman”. I quote from an editorial on the Indian question, which not long since appeared in the columns of one of the leading New York daily newspapers. That this statement was honestly made I do not doubt, but that instead of being true it could not have been further from the truth I will attempt to show. I assert, and all candid persons familiar with the subject will sustain the assertion, that of all classes of our population the army and the people living on the frontier entertain the greatest dread of an Indian war, and are willing to make the greatest sacrifices to avoid its horrors.”..
“As to the frontiersman, he has everything to lose, even to life, and nothing to gain by an Indian war. “His object is to procure a fat contract or a market for his produce” adds the journal from which the opening lines of this chapter are quoted?…First our frontier farmers, busily employed as they are in opening up their farms, never have any produce to dispose of, but consider themselves fortunate if they have sufficient for their personal wants. .. The supplies are purchased far from the frontiers, in the rich and thickly settled portions of the States, then shipped by rail and boat to the most available military post..”
So seeing (some rural) Westerners as the “bad guys” is nothing new. And writing op-eds about what people in the “rural West” should be doing from New York.
I find this all, and its longevity through time, somewhat puzzling. Especially since various places in the Interior West are increasingly full of people from elsewhere..who may find these stereotypes laughable. Oh, and there’s the LDS folks in Utah, for whom we should feel a great deal of compassion due to their history as a religious minority persecuted by the US Federal Government. Or not?
It sounds a bit like “othering”
On an individual level, othering plays a role in the formation of prejudices against people and groups. On a larger scale, it can also play a role in the dehumanization of entire groups of people which can then be exploited to drive changes in institutions, governments, and societies. It can lead to the persecution of marginalized groups, the denial of rights based on group identities, or even acts of violence against others.
So.. when a story talks about “the West” what part are they talking about? And what’s up with Bundobsessing, and why is it such a popular activity among some in the journalism community?
We have had several discussions of the “villainous” behavior of oil and gas companies. The harm caused by their role in climate change misinformation is being litigated in a number of lawsuits across the country. The defendants have initially hung them up for as long as five years arguing against hearing the cases in state and local courts. If companies can keep the lawsuits in federal courts, they’re more likely to be dismissed under federal laws such as the Clean Air Act. On February 28, a Hawaii court became the first to decide that state courts are the appropriate venue.
That long-fought battle over the appropriate venue is evidence of the lengths companies will go to in throwing up hurdles before trial, Lewis & Clark Law School professor Lisa Benjamin said.
“The disclosure of deceptive information and misinformation will be one of the most reputational damaging parts of this litigation, even if the cases themselves are not successful, so I think companies will be very sensitive to that,” Benjamin said.
Another case filed by the city of Baltimore is currently in federal court to determine which court it should be in.
A federal district court issued an order on May 17 requiring a private ranch to allow the public and the government to use Teaters Road to access the BLM North Fork Crooked River area and the Ochoco National Forest while litigation is ongoing.
On May 25, Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild challenged the Bureau of Land Management’s Siuslaw Field Office’s plan to log public lands across seven watersheds in Oregon in the agency’s “N126 Late Successional Reserve Landscape Plan Project” without completing an environmental impact statement. The plan is designed to generate 380 million board feet of lumber. Logging of over 16,000 acres of Late-Successional Reserves and Riparian Reserves is also alleged to be inconsistent with the applicable resource management plan and therefore a violation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. (The news release includes a link to the complaint.)
Sierra fishers
Unite the Parks v. U. S. Forest Service (E.D. Cal.)
In late May, the district court again denied a request by conservation groups to stop 31 logging projects in Pacific fisher habitat on the Sierra and Sequoia national forests after the Forest Service completed further review on remand from the Ninth Circuit (which was discussed here).
The Idaho Conservation League and Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court in early June to stop Excellon Idaho Gold’s Kilgore Gold Exploration Project in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest west of Yellowstone National Park. The Forest Service had produced a new plan after losing a lawsuit in 2018. Plaintiffs allege violations of the Forest Service Organic Act and NEPA, where the Forest Service used the Trump administration’s 2020 rewrite of the CEQ regulations and did not prepare an EIS.
The U. S. Supreme Court announced June 6 it would hear Wilkins v. United States, a case regarding the Quiet Title Act, next term. The plaintiffs in the case claim that the Forest Service exceeded the scope of a previously agreed upon easement by providing public access across their properties to the Bitterroot National Forest. The Supreme Court will decide whether a statute of limitations precludes a court from considering such claims. The Ninth Circuit opinion is here.
On June 7, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a change in its rule governing the reintroduction of listed species. (The article includes a link to the proposed rule.)
“To provide for the conservation of certain species, we have concluded that it may be increasingly necessary and appropriate to establish experimental populations outside of their historical range if the ability of the habitat to support one or more life history stages has been reduced due to threats, such as climate change or invasive species.”
Center for Biological Diversity v. Williams (E.D. Ill.)
On June 8, The Center for Biological Diversity and Hoosier Environmental Council sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for denying Endangered Species Act protections to the Kirtland’s snake. It is found in forested riparian areas in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee (and has been extirpated in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as over half the counties where they were once found). (The press release has a link to the complaint.)
Almond Alliance of California v. Fish and Game Commission
On May 31, reporters were handed a gift by a California court:
Is a bee a fish? California court says it could be
California Court Rules that Bees are a Type of Fish
When Is a Bumblebee a Fish? When a California Court Says So
“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. But a new California court ruling means that if it looks like a bee, flies like a bee and buzzes like a bee — it’s a fish.”
California’s Third Appellate District Court of Appeal ruled that bees could be protected under a state law to protect endangered species because bees meet the state’s legal definition of fish.”
Read on for a lesson in how a court interprets laws and regulations.
Here’s a press release about a lawsuit just filed on an issue that has been discussed and debated here on this blog for a number of years now. If you have any specific questions about the lawsuit, a copy of the complaint is linked below. The press release also lists email addresses and phone numbers for the groups involved, as well as the attorney. People are encouraged to reach out to them directly. However, in keeping with the spirit of this blog, some people are welcome to continue attacking me for posting a press release or offering up a bunch of conspiracy theories about why environmental groups want to protect larger trees on public lands (and we can pretend that environmental groups haven’t been trying to do that for many decades). Thanks. – mk
Pendleton, Oregon—Six conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging a Trump-era rule change that allows logging of mature and old growth forests on no less than 7 million acres across Eastern Oregon and Washington. The coalition filed its suit over the Forest Service’s decision to eliminate a provision of the Eastside Screens that prohibited the logging of trees larger than 21” in diameter.
The Eastside Screens were initially put in place by the Forest Service to protect remaining habitat for old-growth-dependent wildlife; certain species were in rapid decline after decades of logging of the biggest trees in Eastern Oregon and Washington’s national forests. For more than 20 years, the Screens reined in the removal of large trees and prevented unnecessary conflict on many logging projects.
However, in the final days of the Trump administration, the Forest Service removed the long-standing protection for at least 11,000 square miles of national forest in Eastern Oregon and Southeast Washington despite overwhelming evidence that large trees play a critical role in maintaining biodiversity and mitigating climate change. The amendment has been criticized for being a politically-motivated action that circumvented public and tribal involvement and ignored an established and growing body of science that contradicts the decision.
The complaint alleges that the decision violated the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and National Forest Management Act (NFMA). The groups also notified the agency of their intent to enforce Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for fish and wildlife that depend on older forests.
“It’s no surprise the Trump administration ignored the science when it pushed this rule change through on its way out the door. Cutting down the remaining big trees harms salmon, steelhead, and bull trout by removing shade and forest cover that keeps rivers and streams cool,” explained Chris Krupp with WildEarth Guardians.
While the decision to eliminate the prohibition on logging trees larger than 21” in diameter was made with little attention to the effects on fish and wildlife that rely on these forests, it also curtailed public involvement in the rulemaking process; it ignored the opinion ofover 115 independent scientists, former agency leadership, and dozens of conservation, climate, Indigenous, and other organizations.
“Large trees play a critical role in supporting biodiversity, clean water, and native fish. It is important to retain all remaining large trees as they are scarce on the landscape after a century of high-grade timber harvests that targeted large, old trees,” said Amy Stuart with the Great Old Broads for Wilderness.
A recent scientific study found that the biggest and oldest trees covered by the rule make up only 3% of regional forests in the Pacific Northwest yetstore 42% of forest carbon. They also provide critical habitat for wildlife, keep water clean and cold, are resilient to wildfire, and are at the core of cultural values.
“The Forest Service violated its legal duty to protect wildlife and forest health when it removed protections for our biggest, fire-resistant trees. Now that these trees are being logged across six national forests, we are asking the court to halt this tragedy,” said Rory Isbell with Central Oregon LandWatch.
In addition, President Biden recently issuedExecutive Order (EO 14072, April 22), which aims to “conserve America’s mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands” as a part of a science-based approach to reduce wildfire risk and combat the climate and biodiversity crisis.
“We are facing a climate and biodiversity crisis, but the Forest Service continues to move in exactly the wrong direction. We are asking the Biden administration to take action consistent with its recent Executive Order and restore bedrock protections for mature and old growth forests on our public land,” said Rob Klavins, public lands advocate for Oregon Wild based in rural Wallowa County.
The groups ask that the current administration restore protections for large trees in our national forests to support wildlife, clean water, and carbon storage on public lands. They also ask Senators Wyden and Merkley to support mature and old growth protections in the State of Oregon.
Greater Hells Canyon Council, Oregon Wild, Central Oregon LandWatch, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, WildEarth Guardians, and the Sierra Club are represented by Crag Law Center attorneys Meriel Darzen and Oliver Stiefel.
For more information, see the FAQs; for maps and photos, see the Press Folder.
From PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility):
Our friends at Western Watersheds Project make an important observation about the connection between the January 6th insurrectionists and the small but vocal and violent groups associated with western livestock industry extremists. These extreme groups continue to mobilize against public lands and conservation efforts. Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans, including those out west, support public lands and the agencies that manage our public lands.
From an E&E News article (behind paywall) today: “The Forest Service is working out the final details of a plan to keep South Dakota timber mills open by supplying logs from other areas, agency Chief Randy Moore said.” The “other areas” may include California, which is concurrently proposing the largest logging projects in state history.
Back in the good old days, the Forest Service sold timber to the highest bidder. Exceptions to that rule included a small handful of Sustained Yield Units. These were anti-competitive, protectionist measures designed to ensure that timber was milled locally. Now the Forest Service wants to do precisely the opposite — require that timber be milled far distant from the area in which it grows.
How many tax dollars will be spent on this boondoggle? This administration won’t care; in fact, I doubt it even asked the question. With hundreds of millions sloshing around in the FS’s budget accounts there’s enough to finance any crazy idea.
I’ll be off for a week starting Monday. Please feel free to email if there are problems like the website is down, or people are being unusually fractious. Email is on the donate widget to the right.
