Forest Service launches scoping for massive Bitterroot Front Project

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The subject line is the headline of a Missoula Current article. 144,000 acres. Thanks to Nick Smith for the link. An excerpt:

The U.S. Forest Service this week announced it was beginning scoping efforts on the proposed Bitterroot Front Project affecting forestlands from northwest of Florence south to Conner and Trapper Creek.

Since scoping is the first step in the public process, the documents consist of a series of maps showing areas where a group of agencies want the focus on timber, prescribed burns or other activities. The agencies include the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Ravalli County, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and other federal agencies.

If the project sounds familiar, that’s because Bitterroot National Forest supervisor Matt Anderson held a series of “pre-scoping” meetings in 2019 to give the public more of a heads-up on the project. It led to some confusion as to what the public was to do, but Anderson told the Bitterroot Star in 2019 he just wanted to describe the “desired future condition that we want and then look at the various ways we can achieve it.”

The Forest Service describes the project as it does many others: a “fuels reduction, vegetation management, and forest health improvement project” that will provide timber projects and related jobs. Calling it “a landscape-scale proposal,” the Forest Service proposes a “Shared Stewardship Approach” to encourage vegetation treatments across ownership boundaries. Private landowners along the forest boundary will be invited to participate in the project through Bitter Root Resource Conservation and Development and Good Neighbor Authority.  

Yale Forest Forum (Western) Fuel Treatment Residues/Bioenergy Webinars of Interest

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Here’s a link to all of Bioenergy series webinars organized by the Yale Forest Forum. They have links to the recordings and the slides.

I took the slides above from the presentation by Matt Donegan, the Chair of the  of Oregon Governor’s Wildfire Response Council.  This should be of particular interest to Oregonians. If you only have a bit of time/interest, just check out the slides.

Summary:

The Potential Role of Bioenergy in Mitigating Wildfire in the West

Record wildfire seasons continue across the US West, increasingly comprised of unnatural and catastrophic events owing to climate change, excessive fuel accumulation and development within the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI).  The comprehensive costs of these wildfires are staggering, when considering costs of suppression, property and ecosystem degradation, carbon emissions, human health impacts, infrastructure damage including water, and numerous other direct and indirect effects.  To contain these costs, excess fuels must be removed to restore wildfire-resilient landscapes and to protect vulnerable communities.  Fuel treatments, in turn, entail significant costs, potentially combined with carbon emissions if wood waste is left to burn or decompose.  An oft-proposed solution is the development of wood waste markets including biofuels, potentially combined with carbon capture technologies.  To develop biofuels markets at the scale needed to address the growing wildfire problem in the West, a complete system must be designed including economic incentives recognizing multiple public values, and policies to stabilize supply sources and ensure adequate workforce development.

I watched this one, it’s really good and goes into the nitty-gritty of the technologies of interest.

Daniel L. Sanchez – Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension, University of California-Berkeley
Daniel L. Sanchez studies engineered biomass & bioenergy systems that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Trained as an engineer and energy systems analyst, Sanchez’s work and engagement spans the academic, nongovernmental, and governmental sectors. As an Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension, he runs the Carbon Removal Lab, which aims to commercialize sustainable carbon dioxide removal technologies, and supports outreach to policymakers and technologists in California and across the United States

Innovative Wood Products for Carbon-Beneficial Forest Management in California
Natural carbon sinks can help mitigate climate change, but climate risks—like increased wildfire—threaten forests’ capacity to store carbon. California has recently set ambitious forest management goals to reduce these risks. However, management can incur carbon losses because wood residues are often burnt or left to decay. This study applies a systems approach to assess climate change mitigation potential and wildfire outcomes across forest management scenarios and several wood products. We find that innovative use of wood residues supports extensive wildfire hazard reduction and maximizes carbon benefits. Long-lived products that displace carbon-intensive alternatives have the greatest benefits, including wood building products. Our results suggest a low-cost pathway to reduce carbon emissions and support climate adaptation in temperate forests.

I haven’t checked out the others but they are probably good as well.  My pet peeve (as discussed with the organizers) is that western fuel treatment residue bioenergy tends to get ignored in national/Coastal  discussions of bioenergy around the world or chips for European export in the SE, so that’s why I focused on these two.  As always, anyone is welcome to view and write a post or comment about what they think is interesting about them.

The two western webinars are not so much about bioenergy itself, but more about “what the heck are we going to do with all this material?”

WGA Webinar Tomorrow on Implementing Forest Investments in the Infrastructure Bill

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For those of you curious about strategies for pulling it off, this webinar sounds interesting.  Written highlights or particular points of interest from any TSW reader would be appreciated.

 

Register for the Working Lands, Working Communities webinar series
The Working Lands, Working Communities webinar series will continue this week with a new slate of regional experts ready to delve into the complexities of western conservation. The third webinar in the series, Implementing Forest Investments in the Infrastructure Bill, will take place on April 26 from 10:30 a.m. to noon MT. Panelists from the Idaho Department of Lands, Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, U.S. Forest Service and the Watershed Research & Training Center will examine strategies for increasing the capacity of western communities to plan and approve forest management projects, as well as to acquire the infrastructure, equipment, workers and contractors to do the work. The final webinar in the series, Invasive Annual Grasses Management, will start at 10 a.m on April 28 and feature a conversation between panelists from the National Invasive Species Council, Western Integrated Pest Management, Wyoming Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Conservation Service about management tools for effectively managing cheatgrass, medusahead, and ventenata. Register now to join in the conversations. If you missed any of the previous webinars in the series, you can watch recordings here.

Executive Order on Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies: Text of “Mature and Old-Growth Forest” EO

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It’s interesting that the EO was leaked to “five individuals” who gave it to the WaPo.  So those news stories had certain spins.  After reading it, there are other items of interest. Note the actual title mentions both communities and local economies.

Here’s the link.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) I signed into law provides generational investments in ecosystem restoration and wildfire risk reduction.  As we use this funding, we will seek opportunities, consistent with the IIJA, to conserve our mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands and restore the health and vibrancy of our Nation’s forests by reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires through ecological treatments that create resilient forest conditions using active, science-based forest management and prescribed fires; by incorporating indigenous traditional ecological knowledge; and by scaling up and optimizing climate-smart reforestation.

I could interpret that to mean.. where sections of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill say “do treatments for restoration and to protect communities” the agencies will also take into account old forests. Note that this says forests, not individual trees.  So if you need to thin individual old trees to ultimately protect the old forests, then you will.  This seems pretty innocuous.

In section 2, the EO starts to mention reforestation.  Actions are intended to

further conserve mature and old-growth forests and foster long-term United States forest health through climate-smart reforestation

I don’t exactly see how reforestation directly conserves mature and old-growth forests (more like develops replacements) but OK. And here’s the guts of the domestic land management actions:

(a)  The Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture (Secretaries) — the Federal Government’s primary land managers — shall continue to jointly pursue wildfire mitigation strategies, which are already driving important actions to confront a pressing threat to mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands:  catastrophic wildfires driven by decades of fire exclusion and climate change.

(b)  The Secretary of the Interior, with respect to public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and the Secretary of Agriculture, with respect to National Forest System lands, shall, within 1 year of the date of this order, define, identify, and complete an inventory of old-growth and mature forests on Federal lands, accounting for regional and ecological variations, as appropriate, and shall make such inventory publicly available.

(c)  Following completion of the inventory, the Secretaries shall:

(i)    coordinate conservation and wildfire risk reduction activities, including consideration of climate-smart stewardship of mature and old-growth forests, with other executive departments and agencies (agencies), States, Tribal Nations, and any private landowners who volunteer to participate;

(ii)   analyze the threats to mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands, including from wildfires and climate change; and

(iii)  develop policies, with robust opportunity for public comment, to institutionalize climate-smart management and conservation strategies that address threats to mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands.

(d)  The Secretaries, in coordination with the heads of other agencies as appropriate, shall within 1 year of the date of this order:

(i)    develop a Federal goal that charges agencies to meet agency-specific reforestation targets by 2030, including an assessment of reforestation opportunities on Federal lands and through existing Federal programs and partnerships;

(ii)   develop, in collaboration with Federal, State, Tribal, and private-sector partners, a climate-informed plan (building on existing efforts) to increase Federal cone and seed collection and to ensure seed and seedling nursery capacity is sufficient to meet anticipated reforestation demand; and

(iii)  develop, in coordination with the Secretary of Commerce, with State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, and with the private sector, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and the scientific community, recommendations for community-led local and regional economic development opportunities to create and sustain jobs in the sustainable forest product sector, including innovative materials, and in outdoor recreation, while supporting healthy, sustainably managed forests in timber communities.

I can’t comment on the international parts of the EO, but there are some “nature-based solutions to tackle climate change and enhance resilience” actions as well.  “Nature-based solutions” seem to be doing good things for climate without them counting as offsets.

(a)  The Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Assistant to the President and National Climate Advisor shall, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense (through the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works), the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce (through the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security (through the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency), the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Administrator of the Small Business Administration, and the heads of other agencies as appropriate, submit a report to the National Climate Task Force to identify key opportunities for greater deployment of nature-based solutions across the Federal Government, including through potential policy, guidance, and program changes.

(b)  The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall issue guidance related to the valuation of ecosystem and environmental services and natural assets in Federal regulatory decision-making, consistent with the efforts to modernize regulatory review required by my Presidential Memorandum of January 20, 2021 (Modernizing Regulatory Review).

The stated reason to “Modernize” in the PM is:

As we do so, it is important that we evaluate the processes and principles that govern regulatory review to ensure swift and effective Federal action.  Regulations that promote the public interest are vital for tackling national priorities.

It doesn’t seem to me that adding more things to calculate would necessarily lead to increasing swiftness or effectiveness. It could simply deepen the regulatory word-swamp;.

(c)  Implementation of the United States Global Change Research Program shall include an assessment of the condition of nature within the United States in a report carrying out section 102 of the Global Change Research Act of 1990, 15 U.S.C. 2932.

An assessment of the “condition of nature within the US” sounds like it could be duplicative.

All in all, it seems like any regulatory changes would be further down the road after the inventory, and with lots of public involvement. All that is good.  More work for the poor FS and BLM who are trying to spend Infrastructure $ and do fire suppression; and start hundreds or thousands of NEPA processes.  But they might not get to the end of rulemaking before 2024, and politicians tend to be sensitive to making controversial decisions in an election year (with some notable exceptions).  So we’ll see how it all plays out.

Old Growth and Mature Trees.. And Spirits?

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While we’re waiting for the text of the mature/old forest EO, let’s look somewhere different than the old western wet forest/dry forest challenges. Plus it’s Friday and the weekend approaches, so…

I think that this may be the first TSW link to the Wine Enthusiast. Turns out that for barrel staves, white oak trees need to be 80 to 100 years. And some of the practices to keep white oak in the mix for future generations include “crop tree release”, which might involve cutting old trees of white oak and other species. But white oaks are important for wildlife and biodiversity, so we definitely want to keep them the mix.

Suppose that there were a policy that no 80 year old trees could be cut on the national forests that have white oak? Looks like people are seriously concerned about losing that species, due to competition from other species, as well as other factors. Yes- if you don’t cut them, they will be around longer; but it looks like if you leave the stands alone in many cases you won’t get white oak back. Suppose the old white oaks die naturally; but then the formerly understory species would be old, and you couldn’t cut them either. So adios white oak on national forests?

Anyway, for those unaware of the White Oak Initiative, IMHO those folks have done a tremendous job of bringing researchers, practitioners and landowners together to figure out what the species needs and how to manage for it. It’s really an impressive effort.  I don’t know whether any people or groups are against it. Maybe because success depends on private landowners, it’s not so ideological as our own western debates.

Biden to issue Earth Day order to safeguard old-growth forests: WaPo Story

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It’s always interesting to see how our issues as complex and convoluted as they are, are addressed by folks in the media. What struck me is that based on future definitions of mature trees and forests, we could have planted forests that now need to be protected in the west, and certainly in other parts of the country.

From the WaPo today 

While scientists agree that forests are important to slowing climate change, many say that years of wildfire suppression policies have led to dense forests that are fueling more extreme fires. Some of the strategies to address this involve thinning out small trees, clearing dry brush and intentionally setting beneficial fires. But federal agencies have also contracted with timber companies to clear land for fire breaks and cut down larger trees that they say threaten homes and communities.

Critics have argued that this approach amounts to a giveaway for timber companies who they say helped make American forests crowded by logging the largest, oldest trees. The many younger trees that sprung up in their place burn more easily and often don’t survive the more destructive wind-driven wildfires that have torn through the West in recent years.

Whose views are not incorporated in this story? Federal agencies nor the timber industry. Remember when the Trump Admin was bad and federal agency folks were good? Now the Biden Admin (new policy!)is good and things federal agencies have been doing questionable things…

Below is the rest of the article. More details tomorrow.

President Biden will sign an executive order on Friday in Seattle laying the groundwork for protecting some of the biggest and oldest trees in America’s forests, according to five individuals briefed on the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was not yet finalized.

Biden will direct the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to inventory mature and old-growth forests nationwide, three of the individuals said. He will also require the agencies to identify threats to these trees and to use that information to write policies that protect them.

(I remember inventorying once before (90’s?); I think we know the threats, but it could easily take two years to do all this and to write policies (regulations?) to”protect” them.  This doesn’t seem like the most proactive approach IMHO; but maybe it’s a political (symbolic) act.)

The president’s order, however, will not ban logging of mature and old-growth trees, they added, and the administration is not considering a nationwide prohibition. It will include initiatives aimed at curbing deforestation overseas, promoting economic development in regions with major timber industries and calculating the economic value of other natural resources such as wetlands.

While Democrats and environmentalists will likely welcome the order, it does not have the same force as legislation and could be reversed under a future president. The new order would not go as far as a bill Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.) have written, which would restrict the trade of commodities linked to forest clearing, such as palm oil and beef.

The move reflects the administration’s broader strategy to fight climate change by conserving more land in the United States — and more of the trees that store the most carbon. A 2020 study of six national forests in the Pacific Northwest, for example, found that just 3 percent of the largest trees contained roughly 42 percent of the carbon.

Earlier this year, more than 70 environmental groups launched a campaign calling on Biden to enact new protections for mature and old-growth trees — generally, those over 80 years old — which currently aren’t prohibited from being turned into lumber.

In November, Democratic members of Congress wrote to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, urging him to protect older forests and warning that allowing these trees to be harvested would undermine the president’s climate goals because it would release a massive amount of planet-warming pollutants.

“Allowing logging of mature and old federal forests should become a practice of the past,” they wrote.

Scientists consider forests to be critical carbon sinks, meaning they absorb more carbon dioxide than they release into the atmosphere. Old-growth trees, such as California’s redwoods and giant sequoias or the mammoth Sitka spruce and red cedar trees in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, collectively store billions of tons of carbon dioxide in their trunks, branches and roots. Protecting them could help avert the worst effects of climate change.

Placing safeguards on older trees could be hugely controversial.

Timber companies are likely to object to any new limits on their access to trees in federal forests, and experts will debate what counts as a mature tree. A loblolly pine in the Southeast and a ponderosa pine in the West grow at vastly different rates, complicating efforts to define maturity as a set number of years across multiple species.

In writing new policies, the administration will also have to walk a line between preserving older trees on federal land and giving managers enough flexibility to assure those forests’ health.

While scientists agree that forests are important to slowing climate change, many say that years of wildfire suppression policies have led to dense forests that are fueling more extreme fires. Some of the strategies to address this involve thinning out small trees, clearing dry brush and intentionally setting beneficial fires.

But federal agencies have also contracted with timber companies to clear land for fire breaks and cut down larger trees that they say threaten homes and communities.

Critics have argued that this approach amounts to a giveaway for timber companies who they say helped make American forests crowded by logging the largest, oldest trees. The many younger trees that sprung up in their place burn more easily and often don’t survive the more destructive wind-driven wildfires that have torn through the West in recent years.

The fight over old-growth forests has been going on for decades. In 1991, a federal judge blocked all logging of old-growth trees in the Pacific Northwest’s national forests to protect the northern spotted owl’s shrinking habitat. Republican and Democratic administrations have put in place dueling logging rules since then, and environmentalists have brought lawsuits that have curtailed several timber sales.

By 2020, the spotted owl had lost about 70 percent of its habitat, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it could go extinct. The Trump administration stripped away protections from more than a third of the bird’s total protected habitat, but Biden officials reversed that decision, writing a Federal Register notice that the rollback had “defects and shortcomings.”

“Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands” Book Release Event Virtual Tonight at 5PM MT

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Many stalwarts of federal lands scholarship will be there (I don’t like to be pedantic, but strictly speaking “America’s public lands” would include state and county lands as well; I always wonder why people use “public” when they mean “federal”). And I’ve always enjoyed contrasting scholarly histories with my own experiences.  Fellow dinosaurs may enjoy that as well.

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It will be interesting to see how they talk about these efforts (from Center for Western Priorities today)

The Biden administration says it’s on track to nearly double the capacity of renewable energy projects on public land by the end of 2023. The projection came in a new report to Congress that shows rapid progress towards an additional 10 gigawatts of renewable capacity by the end of next year, and 25 gigawatts of wind, solar, and geothermal energy on public lands by 2025.

Just this week, the Bureau of Land Management issued its first competitive lease for solar energy, leasing nearly 5,000 acres for a 600-megawatt solar array in Utah’s Escalante Desert. When the project is fully developed, it’s expected to create 200 construction jobs and 15 ongoing operations positions while powering 170,000 homes.

Interior’s report to Congress says it has over 50 renewable projects in early review stages right now. The agency is also working to update land use plans across 11 Western states that are part of the Westside Energy Corridor, identifying 3 million acres of public land suitable for transmission lines while also “providing enhanced conservation of public lands.”

I couldn’t find acreages impacted by the proposed buildout (other than the 3 mill suitable for transmission lines). Lots of gigawatt estimates, though.

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Here’s a link to register.. or if you can get to Boulder you can probably register to go in person.

Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands
Book Release Event
John Leshy, Author
Emeritus Harry D. Sunderland and Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California, Hastings College of Law

Thursday, April 21
5:00 p.m.
Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom
Livestream option available

Attendee Information (Parking/Zoom/Logistics)

Zoom Webinar Link: https://cu.law/CommonGround

The event will include an overview of the book by the author and Professor Emeritus John Leshy, followed by a panel discussion of the topics covered.

Registration

Panel Moderator

Professor Mark Squillace, University of Colorado Raphael J. Moses Professor of Law

Panelists

Eric Dude, U.S. Department of the Interior, Attorney/Advisory (2019 Colorado Law Wyss Scholar)

Alison Flint, The Wilderness Society, Senior Legal Director

Maria Handley, The Wilderness Society, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships & Organizing

Professor Patty Limerick, University of Colorado Center of the American West

Johnsie Wilkinson, Colorado Law rising 3L (2021 Colorado Law Wyss Scholar)

Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands

The little-known story of how the U.S. government came to hold nearly one-third of the nation’s land and manage it primarily for recreation, education and conservation.

America’s public lands include more than 600 million acres of forests, plains, mountains, wetlands, deserts, and shorelines. In this book, John Leshy, a leading expert in public lands policy, discusses the key political decisions that led to this, beginning at the very founding of the nation. He traces the emergence of a bipartisan political consensus in favor of the national government holding these vast land areas primarily for recreation, education, and conservation of biodiversity and cultural resources. That consensus remains strong and continues to shape American identity. Such a success story of the political system is a bright spot in an era of cynicism about government. This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about public lands, and it is particularly timely as the world grapples with the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Presented by the Colorado Law Wyss Scholar is U.S. Lands Conservation, the Colorado Environmental Law Journal, and the Getches-Wilkinson Center.

Our Common Ground is free and open to the public, but registration is required to attend and/or receive the livestream link.

During registration, please indicate your intent to join in person or remotely.

In consideration of continued Covid mitigation measures at Colorado Law, there will not be a reception following the event. We hope to resume these networking opportunities later in the year.

 

 

Let’s Discuss: The Levine et al. Paper on High-Severity Fire and Industrial Forests in California

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Many thanks to Anonymous for sending a link to this paper. I wrote to the primary author and (quickly, thank you, Jacob!) received a copy, attached here.

What the paper does is correlate observations of high severity fire with landownership patters. When we talk about top-down versus bottom-up research, this is definitely a top-down. And for many of us bottom-up types, it can be great fun to hypothesize the mechanisms for these correlations, whether our own observations support these findings or not, compare with similar research (although the authors did that) and possibly dream up studies that have not been done to test the hypotheses.

So, bottom line, more acres of high severity fire on private industrial than private non-industrial and USG land (Forest Service, Park Service, BLM combined).
I can’t say anything about the technical details of their analysis, but they have a number of caveats in the discussion and conclusions section on page 5.

What would you do with this paper?

Based on the places I’ve formerly lived and worked, I’d want to look at each fire and the industrial forest landowners’ practices. My first thought was perhaps the private folks ended up with the most productive (able to grow high biomass) of the area. That would explain the fires reaching into nearby landowners’ properties, because nearby properties would have the same high biomass.

It also seems a bit counterintuitive.. in many places I’ve worked, jackstrawed dead trees are on the forest floor, conceivably leading to high severity impacts, while industrial landowners tend to remove dead trees, so you’d think there might be less fuel, at least on the ground.

In my experience, industrial landowners vary widely in their practices (think Basin and Range (NE Calif) versus the Coast Range). Some may be barely distinguishable from FS practices. So I think if you looked at each landowners’ practices, and looked at the ground where the high severity fire occurred, you might be able to explain for each landowner/fire combination, based on, I guess, four factors I can think of:

For each fire:

1. Did the industrial landowners (ILs) tend to have a certain location (topographical/soil) differences?
2. Did the ILs tend to have different age classes or other historical effects?
3. What IL practices may have influenced fire intensity?
4. Was the IL forest in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Other ideas?

It seems to me that building up from each fire, although labor intensive, might yield a great deal more information. Including how much sense it makes to combine over fires, ecoregions and industrial landowners. For a mere $300k, I’d do it; I see lots of fun interviews and field trips. Anyway, I know there are many Californians in TSW ranks and I’m curious what you think.

Public Lands Litigation Update – March 2022

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The last Forest Service “weekly” we received was dated March 11.  In lieu of their summaries for the rest of the month …

(Links are to court documents or articles.)

Court decision in Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Munoz (D. Mont.)

On March 8, the district court ruled that the logging in the Elk-Smith Project did not violate the Roadless Area Conservation Rule because logging 1393 acres within a roadless area was “incidental” to the fuel treatment purpose in accordance with the exception provided by the Rule:  “The Forest Service has limited its proposed timber cutting in several well-delineated ways to ensure that it remains secondary to the primary purpose of the controlled burn.”  The court first held that this exception could be used for fuel reduction projects even though there is another exception that specifically mentions fuel reduction.

Court decision in Montana Wildlife Federation v. Bernhardt (D. Mont.)

On March 11, the district court replicated an earlier decision by ordering that an additional five oil and gas lease sales (“hundreds” of leases) in Wyoming and Nevada be vacated because they did not comply with the 2015 sage grouse conservation plan’s requirements to prioritize leases outside of sage-grouse habitat.  (The press release includes a link to the opinion.)

Court decision in Friends of the Clearwater v. Probert (D. Idaho)

On March 12, the district court invalidated motorized use of a trail in a recommended wilderness area (for a second time) because it violated the forest plan, stating, “The Forest Service’s decision to allow continued motorized vehicle use of Fish Lake Trail — which at minimum keeps (elk habitat effectiveness) at 90% and prevents (elk habitat effectiveness) from improving to 95% — equates to non-compliance with the Forest Plan,” which favors elk habitat.  While new analysis indicated motorized use would not diminish elk habitat, the court said the forest officials could not retroactively apply new data as a basis for a decision that was not available at the time the decision was made.  The judge also said agency officials did not properly document how they planned motorized use on the Fish Lake Trail so as to minimize damage to the environment as required by the Travel Management Rule.  (See also this article.)

Court decision in Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges v. Haaland (9th Cir.)

On March 16, in a split decision, the circuit court reversed the Alaska district court’s decision and approved a land exchange that would allow construction of an 11-mile road across the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to facilitate air transportation for residents of King Cove (whose native corporation would provide lands for the exchange). The exchange was found to be in compliance with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and met APA requirements because it adequately explained the change in the government’s position, but other hurdles remain because the exchange decision does not “authorize” the road.  (The article includes a link to the opinion.)

Settlement in U. S. A. v. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Company (D. Colo.)

On March 21, the railroad agreed to pay $20 million to the federal government, and has agreed to hire a fire management officer, submit an annual fire prevention plan to the U.S. Forest Service, consult with experts on fire mitigation and prevention, and to deposit $100,000 annually into a self-insured catastrophic wildfire fund to cover future costs of putting out wildfires thought to be sparked by the train. However, the train company continues to deny responsibility for the fire or that the U.S. is entitled to fire suppression costs. (The article contains a link to the consent decree. The private lawsuit referred to has also been settled.)

Court decision in Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (D. Oregon)

On March 23, the district court denied an injunction sought against a Biological Opinion from July 2020 assessing the likely effects of the Bear Grub Project and Round Oak Project, proposed by BLM’s Medford District, on the northern spotted owl and its designated critical habitat. The court agreed with or deferred to the FWS regarding long-term effects, non-resident “floater” owls, the experimental barred owl control program, certainty of mitigation measures and incidental take provisions.

Sierra Snowmobile Foundation v. U. S. Forest Service (E.D. Cal.)

Also in March, WildEarth Guardians and the California Wilderness Coalition intervened in a lawsuit brought by snowmobiling interests in October that is challenging the Forest Service’s decision to designate over-snow vehicle (OSV) trails and use areas on the Stanislaus National Forest because the Forest Service allegedly has not properly considered the impacts on an endangered population of the Sierra Nevada red fox.  (The article includes a link to a prior press release that links to the complaint and the brief supporting intervention.)

 

AGW: The Utility of Separating Human and Natural Climate Change in Public Discourse

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John asked the question last week “what is AGW?” in the context of my throwing in acronyms to posts without explaining them.  This post is my rather-long answer to why I sometimes use the term to indicate the human-caused part of climate change (anthropogenic global warming).  I also don’t use it sometimes, I’m sure inconsistently and confusingly, because some windmills are too big for even me to tilt at (!). In this post I’ll talk about the terminology, and in the next post I’ll follow it through a recent real-world series of events.

But first I need to introduce the concept of the Climate Hydra.  It’s the mix of conscious decisions by a variety of actors that lead to how climate change is framed and portrayed by scientific communities, the media, and politicians.

But let’s start with the globally validated clump of experts.  Here’s how the IPPC SREX defines climate change:

Climate change
A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.

Note that this definition  involves both human and natural causes and isn’t just about greenhouse gases (GHGs) but also about land use changes, which we know something about, at least for forests.

However, as commonly used, it can mean only the human-caused part.

Weird, huh? “Climate change” has become a shorthand for only a part of climate change.  And the natural part kind of disappears from view. You know, natural parts like glaciation, El Niño and La Niña, and so on.   It would be a bit like defining “forest regeneration” as natural and planted, and then only talking about planted.  You would miss the bigger picture.

I don’t know why this is, and I’m not assuming any bad intentions from anyone.  It could be just a natural part of the Hydra ecosystem. My current hypothesis is that it’s too hard for journalists to explain every time, and it’s definitely too hard to keep up with the details of attribution studies for specific parameters and places, so it has just fallen by the wayside.  Using AGW (albeit inconsistently) is my own way of saying “natural variation exists also.”

How do scientists determine the proportion of each?  I’ll explain that in a later post.  I’m sure it won’t surprise you that it is both complicated and contested. You’d think that there would be a great deal more written about it since it is so key to building trust.

Again, I don’t know how much variation in what aspects of climate, where and for what time periods, is natural and how much is human-caused.  But I don’t think it’s all human-caused. So let’s take a relatively simple example of something that we are all familiar with, and that has become a poster-child for the Climate Hydra: wildfire.

There have been changes in temperature and weather patterns and drought through time, but also fire suppression, more human-caused ignitions, and large-scale fires where we didn’t have the resources to put them out when they were small, so they grew big.  And different suppression strategies, and more people living and recreating (in California, but not so much in Kansas).  And grass fires are different from forest fires, and so on.. Just understanding ignition sources and how they’ve changed over time would be huge. How can you tease apart the impacts of all these different factors? And what are we trying to model for.. acres burned? Bad environmental consequences? Bad social-economic-health consequences?

What if we agreed…”bad” fire impacts are influenced by :

a) weather

b) fuels

c) ignitions (human and weather)

d)  suppression resource availability, strategy and tactics

e)  human-caused climate change (of course these would affect weather (sooner) possibly ignitions (by lightning) and ultimately fuels)

f)  natural variation climate change (think of El Nino and La Nina and longer term changes) (like human-caused, these affect weather sooner, and then will circle back to changing a b and c.)

g) luck (other fires at the same time; weather luck, convenient stopping points, resource availability and so on), or what we scientists call “stochastic factors”.

Maybe you can think of others.  And we can do a simple model.. would we still have bad fire impacts without e?  Of course, so it’s a factor- but one of many. And there were bad fire impacts (at least large fires) in our country before human-caused climate change started, so that fits.

When someone says “the average temperature in my county in July has gone up 6 degrees in the last 20 years due to climate change” it makes it sound as though we know all of that was due to human-caused climate change.  What IPCC does with this is that it calls the difference “detection” of change (any cause)  versus “attribution” which is usually done with models with and without human influences on climate (usually GHG’s and land use).

In conversations, I sometimes hear “how can people observe this difference (warmer temperatures, drought) and “deny” climate change?”  Well, they may not be “denying” climate change at all.  They may be saying “I don’t know how much is due to humans and how much is due to natural variation.” Or for something more complicated than a temperature measurement, like wildfires, they might be thinking “there are factors a to g and I don’t know how important each one is. I do know if we stopped producing GHGs today (highly unlikely), we would still have problematic wildfires.” Or they might simply distrust attribution models. Or their Grandma may have told stories about droughts in the 1930’s that seemed worse than today.  Rather than call someone a denier, we might get further by engaging in these conversations.

One of the essential missing links in climate discourse is an honest acknowledgement of all the related uncertainties. It seems like the Climate Hydra has us stuck on “if we acknowledge them, people won’t want to do anything.”  But others (and I) feel “if you’re not honest about uncertainties, people won’t trust you, even you are certain.” So this climate action strategy may be shooting itself in the proverbial foot.