No TRO for the Rim Fire Salvage!

As I predicted, there will be no TRO for the Rim Fire, from District Court. Once the sales are sold, restoration work can begin. Let’s hope that SPI has an army of fallers, ready and waiting. I also hope that they will leave the plantation salvage for last. *smirk*

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Sonora, CA –A Federal Judge in Fresno has denied a temporary restraining order regarding the lawsuit filed against the Rim Fire Recovery Record of Decision.

Forest Service Spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle says, “We are pleased with the court’s decision.” He would not comment further.

As reported earlier this month, three environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity were seeking an injunction to halt logging within the 37 occupied California spotted owl territories within the burned area. The Chair of the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) group and President of Sierra Resource Management, Mike Albrecht, worked with local environmental groups and the Forest Service to hammer out a compromise on the Rim Fire Record of Decision. He applauds the Judge’s decision.

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/223061/logging-injunction-denied.html

“Wild Buck” Timber Sale Undercuts Forest Restoration

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By Jay Lininger
http://www.azcentral.com/opinions/articles/20140202old-growth-logging-undercuts-forest-restoration.html

The old “yellow-belly” ponderosa pines anchoring the majestic forests of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim grew up long before European settlement. Precious few remain.

More than 1,000 of them will be lost forever in the “Wild Buck” timber sale later this year, undercutting U.S. Forest Service claims that it is restoring this fire-adapted forest ecosystem.

Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that 38 percent of timber volume in the Wild Buck sale will come from logging 1,174 trees larger than 24-inches diameter. Field surveys by the Center for Biological Diversity revealed that many of those giant trees stood tall when the United States declared independence well over 200 years ago.

Old-growth pines are rare as a result of past logging. Their towering canopies and thick bark make them naturally fire resistant.

Hundreds of thousands of smaller trees that would have burned off as saplings during natural fire events have encroached on the forest during a century of fire suppression. Small trees now blanket Arizona’s forests like kindling.

Wild Buck is part of a larger project spanning 20,000 acres on the north rim with a stated purpose to reduce fire hazard and restore historic forest conditions.

The Forest Service assured the public last year that “little more than 1 percent” of trees to be removed from the North Rim are larger than 16 inches diameter.

However, nearly 30 percent of trees to be cut in the Wild Buck sale — 78 percent of total volume — are larger than 16 inches diameter. In other words, the Forest Service’s first move out of the gate in a “forest restoration” project is to sell thousands of large and old trees for commercial purposes rather than meeting its own mandate to clear small trees for fire safety.

Ponderosa pine forests need small-tree thinning to safely reintroduce natural low-intensity fires without causing undue harm to wildlife and the amenities that people cherish.

Recognizing this, the Center for Biological Diversity collaborated with partners of all political stripes to develop an old-growth protection and large-tree-retention strategy for the historic Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) that will expedite thinning across millions of acres.

Unfortunately the Forest Service dismissed the collaborative 4FRI strategy and routinely rejects good-faith restoration proposals from the public, opting instead to log big, old trees, as evidenced by the Wild Buck timber sale.

Wild Buck is separate from the 4FRI, but it is on the same national forest (Kaibab) dressed with the same restoration purpose. It demonstrates the Forest Service’s willingness to exploit a lack of accountability and mine large, fire-resistant trees from the landscape.

At a time when the Forest Service claims to be working with stakeholders to do the right thing, the Wild Buck timber sale is a vivid example of what’s wrong with the agency. Its addiction to logging big, old trees and its refusal to collaborate in management of public forests demonstrate a need for better leadership and reform.

Reform should start with permanent protection of the irreplaceable old-growth pillars of our region’s unique natural history.

Jay Lininger is a senior scientist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. Read him via email at [email protected].

Payson Roundup: 4FRI Contract Bombshell

This blog has had numerous posts, debates and discussions about the Four Forest Restoration (4FRI) in Arizona, including this article, “Is the US Forest Service killing the last best chance to save the Southwest’s forests?”

Well, the latest development via the in-depth reporting of Pete Aleshire with the Payson Roundup in an article yesterday titled, “Forest Contract Bombshell.” Below are extensive snips from that article:  [Note: emphasis added – mk]

Amid fresh furor, the U.S. Forest Service is considering letting a troubled timber company transfer the biggest forest restoration project in history.

The Forest Service announced on Monday that it has received a request from Pioneer Forest Products to transfer the 10-year, Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) contract to thin 300,000 acres in Northern Arizona to another, unnamed company.

“We are in the process of reviewing the application,” said Cathie Schmidtlin, media officer for the Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service, “to determine whether the transfer of assets is in the best interest of the government. If we determine it is not, the contract would stay with Pioneer. If it is determined to be in the best interest of the government, then the contract liability would transfer to the new owner, who would be contractually obligated to carry out the terms and conditions of the 4FRI contract.”….

At least one of the key groups that helped develop the 4FRI plan immediately responded to the announcement by calling for an inspector general’s investigation of the “potential irregularities” in the award of the contract.

“Many of us saw this one coming right from the start. Pioneer’s business plan read like a fantasy novel,” said Todd Schulke, with the Center for Biological Diversity, which helped develop 4FRI in collaboration with representatives of the timber industry, forest health researchers and local officials like Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin. “But the Forest Service chose Pioneer despite having more realistic options. Either Pioneer misled the agency about its financial viability or the Forest Service chose to look the other way when there were serious questions. Why?”

Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin said, “this could be the best thing that has happened to 4FRI — or it could be abysmal business as usual. Anyone who has the financial backing to buy this contract, the willingness to ‘take on’ the whole social functioning/disfunctioning that has grown around it and the desire to fulfill it definitely has my attention … and my respect if they can actually pull it off.”….

The Forest Service awarded the contract to Pioneer more than a year ago. The contract originally required Pioneer to thin about 15,000 acres in 2013 and 30,000 acres annually after that. The plan called for feeding those small-diameter trees into new mills in Winslow to produce biodiesel fuel and a type of “finger-jointed” furniture.

Several months ago, the Forest Service modified the terms the contract so that Pioneer only had to thin 1,000 acres in the next 18 months, amid reports that the company was having trouble getting financing for its proposed mills in Winslow.

The Forest Service statement released on Monday said “we cannot disclose the names of the potential new owner as this information is confidential while the proposed agreement is under review. The first task order of the contract, the Ranch task order located on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests is progressing satisfactorily and expected to be completed ahead of schedule.”…..

The stakeholders generally expected Berlioux Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) to win the bid for the contract, since he had helped develop the approach behind 4FRI.

Instead, the Forest Service’s contract review office in Albuquerque awarded the contract to Pioneer Forest Products. One of the principals in the company was Marlin Johnston, who was a longtime Forest Service official who formerly ran the agency’s regional timber harvest office. In that post, he battled demands of environmentalists that the Forest Service quit cutting the remaining old-growth, fire-resistant trees.

Supporters of the 4FRI approach, like Supervisor Martin, questioned the award of the contract to Pioneer. She noted that Berlioux had not only offered to pay more money to the Forest Service for the contract, but had also agreed to monitor whether the thinning projects had the intended effects on tree growth, fire patterns and wildlife.

Moreover, Martin and others questioned Pioneer’s plan to compete with overseas markets in making finger-jointed furniture and use branches and slash to make diesel fuel, although previous efforts had failed.

By contrast, Berlioux proposed using the trees to make Oriented Strand Board — a sort of high-tech plywood that currently represents a $2 billion industry. Berlioux ran Europe’s first OSB factory.

Moreover, Pioneer principal owner Herman Hauck, 84, hasn’t operated a timber company or mill since Hauck Mill Work Company went bankrupt in 1969, according to an investigation by freelance writer and radio reporter Claudine LoMonaco, published in The Santa Fe Reporter, an alternative weekly. She had prepared a story on Pioneer’s dubious background for the public radio station in Flagstaff, but station officials killed the story.

The Forest Service contracting office declined to release many key details of Pioneer’s proposal and has never explained why it awarded the contract to the company that offered to pay the least.

Forest Service officials on Monday remained tight-lipped. In an e-mail to the Roundup accompanying the release Schmidlin said “this is all the information I’m able to provide at this time. The Forest Service will gladly share additional information in the near future, when the review process is completed. I don’t know how long the process will take.”

The swirl of questions about the contracts have forced the very people who developed the 4FRI approach to become increasingly vocal critics of the Forest Service’s implementation.

Martin, in an e-mail exchange on Monday, said she hopes the Forest Service will now seek expert, outside help. “The FS track record on the business side of this contract conversation has been so poor that unless they get ‘outside’ help evaluating the situation, the proposal and bringing business science to bear  — I’m skeptical of the outcome … even knowing that a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while!”

Moreover, she said “for me there is still the whole social agreement concerning big tree/old tree retention that was agreed upon by the counties, enviros, industry and others that the FS have completely thrown out the window and claim that us wanting to leave them all ‘is not good science.’ Nonsense!”

She said old-growth trees constitute just 3 percent of the trees in the ponderosa pine forest of Northern Arizona, even though the Forest Service management plan calls for increasing that tally to 20 percent. “For instance, the 33,000-acre Rim Lakes thinning portion of the 4FRI proposal by Heber has only an average less than one old tree per acre to start with!”

She said she hopes the Forest Service will now agree to leave virtually all of the trees larger than 16 inches in diameter. “We’re asking that they leave ALL the big/old trees (with few exceptions) — get rid of all the dog hair thickets and get ahead of the fire danger curve — and then go back to the drawing board and see if there needs to be more mosaic, more age/structure classifications, etc. within the treated area. They claim their science shows restoration occurs faster/better with some of the old growth gone — again I say nonsense! First let them show me where they have restored a forest — ANYWHERE — and then we’ll talk about it.”

Schulke made the same point. The Center for Biological Diversity has battled the Forest Service for years attempting to prevent the harvest of old-growth trees in an effort to save endangered, old-growth dependent species like the Mexican spotted owl and the Northern goshawk. But the group promised to go to court to support 4FRI if the Forest Service agreed to leave the remaining old-growth trees.

“Ignoring the collaborative agreement was an outright breach of the social license that enabled 4FRI in the first place,” said Schulke. “Large trees are not only critically important to the survival of an array of endangered and threatened species, they’re also more fire resistant — they help to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires. We fully support 4FRI. But the Forest Service bungling has put communities at risk from the fire unnecessarily. It’s time to demand action.”

Appeal Challenges Old-growth Logging Near Grand Canyon

(Below is the press release from the Center for Biological Diversity.  Click here to download a copy of the appeal.  Photos of the Jacob Ryan project area, including old-growth trees aged by the Center and previously marked for logging by the Forest Service, can be seen and downloaded here. – mk)


Photo:  Center for Biological Diversity ecologist Jay Lininger displays the core of 180-year-old ponderosa pine marked for logging at the Jacob Ryan timber sale. Center photo.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— For the third time in a decade, the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club today administratively appealed a 25,000-acre timber sale that is slated to log old-growth trees and forests on the Kaibab National Forest near Grand Canyon’s north rim.

Approved in January, this is the Forest Service’s fifth iteration of the Jacob Ryan timber sale since 2003, each plan seeking to log old-growth trees and forests. The Center and Sierra Club blocked two earlier iterations of the sale; the Forest Service voluntarily withdrew two others.

“This forest needs a limited amount of small-tree thinning to safely reintroduce natural fires, but for a decade the Forest Service has rejected common sense and opted instead to cut down old trees,” said Jay Lininger, an ecologist with the Center. “The Jacob Ryan timber sale makes a mockery of forest restoration and exposes the need for leadership and reform within the Forest Service.

”

Today’s appeal challenges logging of old-growth trees and argues that logging will not retain sufficient forest canopy to support the rare northern goshawk — a woodland raptor. A source population of goshawks lives on the Kaibab Plateau, where Jacob Ryan is located.  According to a Forest Service report, goshawks are “vulnerable to extirpation or extinction in Arizona.”

“It is just outrageous that the Forest Service is proposing for the fifth time to log these old growth and large trees, when we have so little remaining,” said Sandy Bahr, chapter director for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter. “The old growth and large trees make up less than 3 percent of our forests and are a critical component of healthy forests and essential for wildlife species such as the northern goshawk. In a real restoration project, they would be the centerpiece, not slated for logging.”

In its last failed attempt to implement the timber sale, the Forest Service in 2009 admitted violating its own management plan in response to a Center appeal. Center staff documented old-growth trees marked for cutting, despite bogus claimsby the Forest Service that it would protect old growth.