Open EAJA Act of 2010
From: Budd-Falen Law Offices, LLC
300 East 18th Street
Post Office Box 346
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82033-0346
Call To Action
Tuesday March 2, 2010 Is the Day!!!
Western Legacy Alliance is proud to announce that on Tuesday, March 2, 2010, Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy) and Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.Dak) will introduce the “Open EAJA Act of 2010.” This Act is a start to bringing transparency and accountability, and level the playing field in the payment of attorney fees. Research has documented that radical environmental groups are reaping millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer funding from suits against the federal government which push their radical agendas and beliefs — $42 million and counting. These groups are being paid by the federal government to sue the federal government using American taxpayer dollars.
If passed, the “Open EAJA Act of 2010″ would require the federal government to create a publicly searchable database of all attorney fees awarded under the Equal Access to Justice Act (”EAJA”) including the total amount of attorney and expert fees paid in each case, the hourly attorney fee charged and who is collecting the American taxpayers’ money. This is the first step to leveling the playing field and stopping the abuse of the legal system.
I have a short-term request and a long-term request for you.
Short-term: By Tuesday morning, March 2, 2010, please e-mail or mail a note of support for this legislation. We need as many groups and organizations as possible to support the introduction of this bill.
Long-term: Upon introduction, please contact your Congressmen and request that they co-sponsor this legislation.
Shedding light on the payment of taxpayer money under EAJA will start to bring the transparency and accountability to this system. Please help to get this bill started on the right track.
Letters of support from organizations and individuals may be sent to me for forwarding or can be sent directly to Congresswoman Lummis. Please also copy <WesternLegacyAlliance at gmail.com> on your letters.
Thank You!!
Karen Budd-Falen
February 25, 2010
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Science Desaparecidos
From the Vanished Gallery [here]
Desaparecidos is the Spanish word for “The Disappeared.” For thousands of Argentine families, this word has become a symbol of a long harrowing nightmare.
In a coup on March 24, 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorism with terror far worse than the one they were combating. Between 1976 and 1983 - under military rule - thousands of people, most of them dissidents and innocent civilians unconnected with terrorism, were arrested and then vanished without a trace.
In 1983, after democracy was restored, a national commission was appointed to investigate the fate of the disappeared. Its report revealed the systematic abductions of men women and children, the existence of about 340 well organized secret detention centers, and the methodical use of torture and murder. According to former president, Carlos Menem, records of the atrocities were destroyed by the military, following the 1982 Falklands War. The disappeared have not been heard of to this day.
What does this have to do with forests? Consider this essay by Donna Laframboise:
Let There Be No More Scientific Consensuses
NOconsensus.org, Feb 26, 2010 [here]
[C]limate science problems extend far beyond one man. In my view, they can be traced in large part to a phrase that should be struck forever from the scientific and journalistic vocabulary: “scientific consensus.”
Science is about doubt – not certainty. … When media outlets vigorously trumpet said consensus, they “disappear” highly-qualified, dissenting scientists.
There’s nothing wrong with saying there’s a prevailing or dominant view among scientists on a particular topic. There’s nothing wrong with saying there’s a preponderance of opinion in one direction. But those phrases do something the term “scientific consensus” does not. They acknowledge the existence of other points-of-view. …
When I began examining the climate change debate I was shocked to discover a huge disconnect between how the media described matters and what a few hours of independent research revealed. The Economist, a publication I normally trust and respect, spoke of a “consensus on global warming” as though it were gospel that had been hand-delivered by Yahweh himself.
The once stodgy Time magazine insisted there was “a clear scientific consensus connecting the rise in man-made greenhouse gas emissions” to physical changes in the natural world. …
Forestry education Politics and politicians Useless and Stupid
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More Junk Forest Science from OSU
By Mike Dubrasich
Destruction and Sabotage
I write this essay with a heavy heart. As a professional forester for 35+ years, I have always professed good forest stewardship backed up by the best forest science. But over the last 20 years or so, forest science has been polluted and degraded by political advocacy of a pernicious and destructive nature, and so too have our priceless, heritage forests been destroyed by horrendous and catastrophic fires.
There is a crisis in our forests and in our forestry schools and those crises are interconnected. Bad forest science, junk or pseudoscience if you will, has sunk to the level of promoting forest destruction. Instead of commitment to saving forests from destruction, our forestry schools now promote that destruction on the most tenuous and disingenuous grounds.
The root cause of both crises is a corrupt political movement that seeks to impose centralized control and oppression, authoritarianism if you will, in the name of environmental protection. But protection is the furthest thing from the minds of the advocates and activists; diminution of freedom and liberty is foremost. The propaganda about environmental protection is a smokescreen, and behind the smoke lays a wasteland of environmental abuse on a landscape scale.
This essay is not about the crass political motivations of the neo-authoritarians, however. It is about catastrophic forest fires and corrupted forest science, and how the two go hand-in-hand.
It is an essay written in grief, grief for the loss of our heritage, our rationality, our institutions of higher learning, and most especially grief for the priceless forests incinerated by exceedingly bad decisions founded on exceedingly hateful and hurtful lies.
The Rape of Forest Science
A case in point: an article in Science Daily dated Feb 25, 2010 and entitled More Frequent Fires Could Aid Ecosystems [here] (unsigned but “adapted from materials provided by Oregon State University”).
The article reeks, of myths, half truths, and out and out lies.
Its ostensible purpose is to promote a conference taking place today at OSU, where the pseudoscientific justifications for forest holocaust will be preached to the public, the paying public mind you, and we all pay for it in more ways than one.
Its actual purpose is promotion of catastrophic and irreparable forest fires.
The pernicious fallacies in the article are numerous, and I shall demolish them one by one. This exercise may be tedious, but I see no other way to thoroughly deconstruct the lies.
Nicholas Dennis: Put National Forests To Work For Community
Note: This guest editorial appeared in the February 14th edition of the Redding Searchlight [here], and at Evergreen Magazine Online [here]
By Nicholas Dennis
Last August, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited Seattle to deliver a speech laying out the Obama administration’s goals for conserving the national forests. Vilsack noted that polarization has long dominated the national forest agenda, but that the threats currently facing the forests make it imperative to move toward a shared vision “that conserves our forests and the vital resources important to our survival while wisely respecting the need for a forest economy that creates jobs and vibrant rural communities. Our shared vision begins with restoration. Restoration means managing forest lands first and foremost to protect our water resources, while making our forests more resilient to climate change.” Closer to home, California Regional Forester Randy Moore lists five strategic priorities for managing the state’s national forests on the region’s Web site. Unfortunately, sustaining rural communities isn’t mentioned.
Restoration forestry is not the way national forests were managed before the spotted owl listing. Restoration does not involve clear-cutting, at least not in our mixed-conifer forests. It involves selecting smaller trees from crowded patches in the forest understory, patches that if unmanaged would likely fall prey to insects, diseases or stand-replacing wildfires. Who would oppose forest restoration? Professional appellants, such as the Montana-based Conservation Congress, who make their living filing claims for legal fees have used appeals and litigation to stop or stall several local restoration projects that would otherwise have improved forest health and created dozens of well-paid jobs. These self-serving outsider legal challenges have increased unemployment, decreased revenues for schools and county governments, and undermined economic opportunities in our rural communities.
Last year, a Natural Resources Defense Council spokesman lauded the 700,000-acre addition to the federal wilderness system in California, proclaiming wilderness the “gold standard for forest protection.” Shasta-Trinity and Klamath National forests neighbors will see the irony in this statement after the fires that burned uncontrolled through the forests, including wilderness areas, in three of the past four summers, causing sickening air quality. Protecting forests takes more than Congress redrawing maps. It requires the hard work of restoration by a skilled forest work force.
Rural communities in Shasta, Siskiyou and Trinity counties are not economically vibrant today. The recent recession has only deepened a downward trend that’s continued since federal timber harvests plunged in the early 1990s. Layoffs and social service cutbacks have taken a heavy toll on families. Essential public infrastructure repairs have been postponed indefinitely. Empty storefronts are gradually dominating our main streets. The Siskiyou County district attorney recently opted not to prosecute an alleged child murderer based on fiscal considerations. But bad as things are, wait until Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act funding runs out in three years, as it surely will. Then the pinched budgets for the three counties will have to absorb an additional $18 million hit and our collective belt-tightening will take on a different specter.
All conceptions of forest sustainability give social and economic resources equal priority to environmental resources. The Northwest Forest Plan was intended to restore national forests and rural communities. Yet of all the major commitments in that plan, only one has never come close to being met: the commitment to harvest enough timber to sustain reasonable levels of forest-sector employment. Over the past decade, the Shasta-Trinity and Klamath National forests have sold less than half the timber called for in their land management plans.
The need to manage our national forest assets so as to provide sustainable income sources is as valid today as ever. A 2009 economic study for the National Association of Forest Owners found that the average per-acre contribution to gross domestic product from public forests in California was only 18 percent of the average contribution from privately owned forests. When public forests don’t do their share to create wealth, they become more of a liability and less of an asset for rural communities.
The U.S. Forest Service has been doing its best to get forest management projects approved and implemented, but it’s fighting a losing battle. The ground rules are stacked against it, varying from abuses of the Equal Access to Justice Act, which rewards nearly all litigants, to planning rules addressing sensitive species that are so complex that even in-depth expert assessments can’t pass legal muster. Former Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth aptly described this as “analysis paralysis.”
Two things need to happen to put the national forests to work for our communities. The agency’s planning rules must be changed to make it feasible to get projects through the environmental compliance process. And we must align behind a shared vision for forest restoration and make clear to its opponents that their obstructionism is counterproductive and unwelcome.
Nicholas Dennis is chairman of the Northern California Society of American Foresters. He lives in Weed.
Climate and Weather Federal forest policy Politics and politicians
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NEPA Process to Include Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
THE CEQ announced today in the Federal Register that “climate change and greenhouse gas emissions” must be considered in future NEPA processes.
The Council On Environmental Quality (CEQ) is the Federal board charged with implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Enacted in 1970, NEPA mandates that Federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of their proposed actions before acting, principally through the preparation of Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) or Environmental Assessments (EA’s).
The announcement [Federal Register: February 23, 2010 (Volume 75, Number 35)][Notices][Page 8046] requests that public comments be submitted before the CEQ adopts the new “guidance” regulations.
The proposed new regulations also modify language related to Categorical Exclusions (CEs) and mitigation and monitoring.
More information is available at the following CEQ websites:
New CEQ NEPA Guidance [here]
In conjunction with NEPA’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, CEQ is publishing three draft NEPA guidance documents for review and comment. Below are links to the draft guidance documents and instructions for submitting comments:
- ESTABLISHING AND APPLYING CATEGORICAL EXCLUSIONS [here]
Comments are due 45 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.
Submit Comments to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/initiatives/nepa
- MITIGATION AND MONITORING [here]
Comments are due 90 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.
Submit Comments to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/initiatives/nepa
- CONSIDERING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE [here]
Comments are due 90 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.
Submit Comments to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/initiatives/nepa
Additional information is available at www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives
Global Cooling, Not Warming, Is the Problem
An excellent summary and discussion of Holocene temperature trends has been posted at JoNova Blog. JoNova is the creation of Joanne Nova, an Australian science writer, former TV host, and the author of The Skeptics Handbook [here].
Her recent post, The Big Picture: 65 Million Years of Temperature Swings [here], was written primarily by David Lappi, Alaska geologist and President of Lapp Resources, Inc.
Of special interest are two graphs derived from ice core proxies, one of Greenland temperatures over the last 10,000 years and one of Antarctica over the last 12,000 years. They clearly demonstrate that polar temperatures have been declining since the Hypsithermal of 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.
The next graph of temperature from the ice core for the last 10,000 years (the current interglacial period) shows that Greenland is now colder than for most of that period (vertical scale in degrees C below zero). We can see the Medieval Warm Period 800 to 1,000 years ago was not particularly warm, and the Little Ice Age 150 to 650 years ago was one of the longest sustained cold periods during this interglacial. We are now recovering from this abnormal cold period, and the recovery started long before anthropogenic greenhouse gases were produced in any quantity. … Our current warming is well within natural variation, and in view of the general decline in temperatures during the last half of this interglacial, is probably beneficial for mankind and most plants and animals. The graph clearly shows the Minoan Warming (about 3200 years ago), the Roman Warming (about 2000 years ago), and the Medieval Warm Period (about 900 years ago). Great advances in government, art, architecture, and science were made during these warmer times.
Graph by David Lappi based on GISP2 Temperature Reconstruction and Accumulation Data [here], NOAA icecore-2475, reported in Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226 [here]. Click for larger image.
Global Warming: The Economics of a Scare
by Gordon J. Fulks, Ph.D.
Presentation to Oregon Economic Roundtable, February 17, 2010
GLOBAL WARMING: THE ECONOMICS OF A SCARE
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
The scientific hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming has completely collapsed. That is to say, human emissions of carbon dioxide due to everything from the burning of coal and oil on a massive scale to the respiration of six billion humans on this planet are not now having any measurable effect on the global climate, nor will they likely EVER have catastrophic consequences. Although this is my conclusion, based on an excellent education and a lifetime of experience, science is not determined by what I say, nor by my seniority or pedigree.
Although 31,000 American scientists, 9,000 of us with PhDs, have signed the Oregon Petition Project against Global Warming hysteria, science is not determined by a popular vote. Although one of the signers was the late Dr. Edward Teller, one of the great physicists of the 20th century and another was Professor Richard Lindzen who is widely acknowledged as the greatest meteorologist alive today, science is not determined by hierarchy or authority.
How then can I be so sure of my conclusion? How is science determined, even if it is never completely settled? EVIDENCE! Any scientist is welcome to come up with a hypothesis about how the world works. A clerk from a patent office did so in 1905. He published papers on both his Theory of Relativity and the Photoelectric Effect. His name was, of course, Albert Einstein. Evidence supporting his explanation for the Photoelectric Effect was easily obtained but evidence for his Theory of Relativity was much more difficult to find, because among other things, radioactivity had not yet been discovered.
Einstein famously pointed out that “One man can prove me wrong.” No one did and he eventually received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, when the Nobel Committee thought that there was then sufficient evidence to back up Einstein’s theoretical conjectures.
Proponents of Global Warming would like you to believe that their nearly two hundred year-old hypothesis is valid, if only because it has not been discarded over the centuries. But bad ideas seem to have a way of resurfacing every so often. WHY? We will get to that in a moment.
Proponents also will never accept Einstein’s comment that “One man can prove me wrong.” WHY? We will get to that in a moment.
Many scientists have pointed to fatal flaws in the Global Warming arguments. One of the simplest and therefore most elegant arguments comes from our own State Climatologist, George Taylor. Yes, I know that Governor Kulongoski forced George out, but he is still MY State Climatologist! George reasons that if Global Warming is really happening, then ALL observing stations should be seeing the warming. That is not the case, even in Oregon. Well sited and well maintained stations in rural areas do not show net warming. In contrast, urban stations show net warming in conjunction with the urbanization that has occurred around them. End of story. Localized warming is not Global Warming.
In science as in the law, the burden of proof lies with proponents, not opponents of a hypothesis. After spending a monumental 80 billion dollars in search of evidence to back up their conjecture, advocates have fallen back on substitutes for real evidence like computer simulations of the climate that seem real to the average guy but are no more realistic than a Hollywood movie. Aside from the fact that these simulations can easily fool the unwary, why do Global Warming proponents keep promoting them? … [more]
Ecology Politics and Crocodiles
In a post last week [here] we discussed certain aspects of a recent paper: Duncan, Sally L., Brenda C. McComb, and K. Norman Johnson. 2010. Integrating Ecological and Social Ranges of Variability in Conservation of Biodiversity: Past, Present, and Future. Ecology and Society 15(1): 5.
One claim made in that paper is worth deeper examination:
The role of burning by Native Americans is a subject of debate, but the general consensus is that humans individually and collectively had only a marginal impact on the creation of this [conifer early seral forest] condition.
There are at least three problems with that statement.
First, the authors are making a quantitative statement in a science paper. They claim a “consensus” exists. A consensus is defined as general agreement, unanimity, agreement in the judgment or opinion reached by a group as a whole. But the authors provide no evidence to support their claim. They did not take a poll of scientists, or if they did, they did not present the data or a summary of the data.
Second, the paper appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, Ecology and Society [here]. The editorial board is extensive [here]. Yet neither the unnamed peer-reviewers nor the editorial board questioned the claim. They did not request or examine the polling data, which frankly we do not believe exists. They accepted the quantitative statement in a science paper without question, a complete failure of the peer-review system.
Third, the statement is demonstrably false. We have posted numerous papers (and reviews of books) wherein the authors (who are environmental scientists) make the opposite claim; that indeed humans have individually and collectively had major impacts on the creation of a wide-range of vegetation conditions, including early seral conifer conditions, for millennia, across the continent. Therefore, the “consensus” claimed in support of the paper’s contention does not exist. QED.
Climate and Weather Politics and politicians Saving Forests
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Trick or Treaty?
Tim Findley of Range Magazine has written lovely article about the apocalyptic kleptocrat roots of the global enviro swindle movement, entitled Trick or Treaty?: One-world socialists want to save the planet by spreading the weath and collapsing the economy. Range Magazine has generously placed the article (Sp, 2010 issue) on the Web, free for the downloading [here].
Mr. Findley is the premier rural West journalist today. Whether you agree with his investigative findings or not, you have to enjoy and admire his literary style. His musing may also be read at RangeFire [here], the new blog produced by Range Magazine.
Range Magazine [here] is an award-winning quarterly devoted to issues that threaten the West, its people, lifestyles, lands, and wildlife. It has consistently great articles and great photos. I subscribe. So should you.
Federal forest policy Forestry education Private land policies Saving Forests
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The Fire Next Time
By Jim Petersen, Co-founder and Executive Director, the non-profit Evergreen Foundation
Remarks at the Annual Meeting of Intermountain Forestry Association, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, December 10, 2009
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
…[M]y friend Dick Bennett asked me recently… if I knew where we might find a map showing all of the timberland ownerships in northern Idaho — not just an ordinary map, but one that had an overlay that shows at risk federal forest lands — these being lands that pose an insect, disease or fire risk to adjacent private and state timberland owners.
I thought for sure that the Forest Service’s Region 1 office in Missoula would have one, but they don’t.
How strange that the very public agency charged with protecting our region’s great forests from catastrophic fire would not have such a map. …
If we had the map Dick hoped I would find we could illustrate the problem with the very cavalier attitude the federal government seems to be taking toward dying national forests and resulting big fires.
Among other things, we could show the public what will happen when the Day of Reckoning finally arrives — and we have another 1910-scale fire or perhaps something even larger, which I think is entirely possible. …
I have photographs of my grandfather’s first mill. It doesn’t look like much, but it was all that he had, so I can’t begin to comprehend what he must have felt on the afternoon of August 20, 1910. That was the afternoon when all hell broke loose in northern Idaho: Day 1 of the three-day holocaust we still call the Great 1910 Fire.
Much has been written about the 1910 fire, not just in Evergreen Magazine but also in many other publications by other fine writers who were drawn to it as I was — all of us like moths to a flame. …
I won’t bore you with the reasons why the West’s forests are burning in horrific wildfires because you already know the story as well as I do. But if you are one of the fortunate few who saved their copies of The West is Burning Up, our first big 1910 story — portions of which still grace the Idaho Forest Products Commission website — you know that the fire made front page news all across the nation. …
In two terrifying day and nights, more than 3 million acres of timber and grassland in northern Idaho and western Montana was incinerated. It is all very difficult to comprehend until you realize that the Great 1910 Fire was not one big fire when it started. It was several hundred smaller fires that were blown together by the force of 80-100 mile an hour winds that blew in from the Palouse on the afternoon of August 20. It was the wind that transformed all of those little fires into one big blowtorch.
Along the Idaho-Montana border, south of the Lookout Pass ski area, there are still spots were nothing grows. Heat from the fire melted the organic layer in which early succession plants normally take root after a fire. The area is windswept, so it may be hundreds of years before the slowly accumulating soil is again deep enough to support plant life.
People who know that I know a little bit about the 1910 Fire sometimes ask me if I think there is another fire like it in our future. The odds certainly favor it. All we need are a few hundred spot fires - probably set by lightning - and a big wind. The stars in this terrible constellation have been in near-perfect alignment several times in recent years.
James D. Hays Awarded 2010 Milutin Milankovic Medal
The European Geosciences Union (EGU) has awarded Dr. James D. Hays, professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University [here], the 2010 Milutin Milankovic Medal [here].
The Milutin Milankovitch Medal is awarded to James D. Hays for his pioneering, fundamental and continuous work on the reconstruction of Cenozoic climates and for his Science 1976 seminal paper on the astronomical theory of palaeoclimates.
The Milutin Milankovitch Medal is reserved for scientists for their outstanding research in long term climatic changes and modeling. Originally established by European Geophysical Society in 1993, the Milankovitch Medal has been awarded to some of the world’s greatest paleoclimatologists, including Sir Nicholas J. Shackleton, John Imbrie, André L. Berger, George Kukla, and Pinxian Wang. (The EGU was established by the merger of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) and the European Union of Geosciences (EUG) on 7 September 2002.)
Dr. Hays was the lead author of J.D. Hays, J. Imbrie, and N.J. Shackelton, 1976. “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” Science, Vol. 194, pp. 1121-32 [here], now recognized as one the greatest breakthrough papers of modern science. His research proved that the timing of major ice ages is controlled by variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun, known as Milankovitch Cycles.
In 1938 Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch published “Astronomical Methods for Investigating Earth’s Historical Climate”. His theory was that variations in the Earth’s dance around the Sun caused fluctuations in the global climate of the Ice Ages, one such fluctuation being our current Holocene.
Milankovitch described and calculated three astronomical “wobbles” in the shape of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, in the degree of tilt of the Earth’s axis, and in the direction (into the cosmos) that the axis points toward [here].
When Milankovitch presented his theory, it was received with skeptical curiosity. There was no way of dating fossils past 40,000 years or so, the limit of the carbon-14 method. That method was still in its earliest development, so it was impossible to test his theory.
By the 1970’s, however, researchers were extracting mud cores from ocean bottoms. The sediment cores were color-banded by different fossil planktons, each assemblage indicating ocean temperatures at the time of deposition. Some long cores dated all the way back to the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic polarity reversal of 780,000 years ago. Using that marker, the bands in the cores could finally be dated. The types of fossil plankton in each band, and later their oxygen isotope ratios, allowed researchers to estimate global temperatures back deep into the Pleistocene.
The researchers came up with a graph of global temperature verses paleo-time. Lo and behold, the graph had fluctuations of 100,000 years, 41,000 years, and in faint signals, 23,000 and 19,000 years, matching Milankovitch’s predictions.
Dry Rot Eating Away At Ron Wyden’s Eastside Forests Bill
Told you so! Sen. Ron Wyden’s proposed “Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection, and Jobs Act of 2009″ (OEFROGPJA) is dead in the water and sinking fast. Dry rot is eating away the timbers, and worms are attacking the hull.
Yesterday an eco-litigious group, the Hells Canyon Preservation Council (HCPC), sent Ron an 11-page letter [here] that says, in short, goodbye Charlie.
Previous posts regarding Wyden’s bill (OEFROGPJA) are:
Wyden Proposes the End of Forest Stewardship in Eastern Oregon [here]
AFRC Sells Out [here]
The Principal Defects in Wyden’s Forest Bill [here]
Harris Sherman on Jon Tester’s Forest Bill (same problems in both bills) [here]
What’s wrong with the eastside forest compromise (by Jack Ward Thomas) [here]
Summarizing the Defects in Wyden’s OEFROGPJA [here]
That last one lists and numbers all the flaws in OEFROGPJA. The eco-lits missed all those, except for #11: will not limit or preclude obstructionist lawsuits. The HCPC plays the litigation card in a few places in their letter:
If a main purpose of this Act is to reduce litigation over timber harvest projects, then the elimination of the administrative appeals process during the Interim Period is, simply put, a mistake. HCPC has a long-history of successfully using the appeal process to negotiate with the Forest Service and to ultimately avoid litigation in the vast majority of cases.
The vast majority? But of course, not all. Have lawyers, will sue. That EAJA pot o’ gold is just too tempting.
The HCLP also played the climate change card (no surprise there) and bemoans the switch from a 20-inch-diameter cut limit to a 21-inch-diameter cut limit. Horrors!
Perhaps most amusing is the backbiting against Oregon Wild, the eco-litigious extremist group that engineered the “compromise”.
The non-inclusive process by which the bill was developed was not an auspicious start. We find it highly ironic that a bill encouraging eastside local collaboration was developed without input from any eastside conservation groups. While we have much in common with our westside conservation partners, we could have brought well-needed on-the-ground knowledge to the drafting of this bill. …
In our opinion, excluding eastside groups from the drafting of the bill was also a strategic error. When we have discussed the bill with other interest groups they have reacted strongly to the exclusion of eastside groups. As this bill makes clear, to be effective, collaboration must include all stakeholders, especially those with a long history of committed involvement in the issues and areas at stake. To proceed without the involvement of local stakeholders has undermined the very goals that the bill purports to establish.
HCLP fails to mention that everybody in Eastern Oregon was excluded, not just the wackos. In fact, everybody everywhere was excluded, except for a handful of eco-nazis from Eugene.
Even the fawning Oregonian, which kisses the ground Wyden walks upon upon, had to admit his bill is twitching and gasping [here]:
Despite the unique coalition backing the bill, its chances in congress are uncertain.
“Uncertain” is a code word for all but six feet under. Is that the dirge music I hear?
Told you so. And good riddance, too.
Redwood Fog Bomfoggery
California fog is disappearing due to global warming! It’s a disaster! The redwoods will die!
“If the fog is gone, we might not have the Redwood forests we do now.”
So says Professor Todd Dawson, Director of the Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry at UC Berkeley, according to Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, UK Telegraph [here].
Fog over San Francisco thins by a third due to climate change
The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, UK Telegraph, 15 Feb 2010
The coastal fog along the Californian coast has declined by a third over the past 100 years – the equivalent of three hours cover a day, new research shows.
And it is not just bad for scenery, the reduction in the cooling effect of the fog could damage the health of the huge Redwood Forests nearby.
“Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 per cent to 42 per cent, which is a loss of about three hours per day,” said the study leader Dr James Johnstone at the University of California.
He said that it was unclear whether this is part of a natural cycle of the result of human activity, but the fog is receding because of a reduction in the difference between the temperature of the sea and the land. …
Professor Todd Dawson, co-author, said the decline could be disastrous for the nearby ecosystems.
“Fog prevents water loss from Redwoods in summer, and is really important for both the tree and the forest,” he said. “If the fog is gone, we might not have the Redwood forests we do now.”
This news is all over the MSM (Main Stream Media). It’s in the Orange County Register, the SF Chronicle, Reuters, the NY Times. Science Daily, USA Today, and who knows where else. It’s on all the TV news. It’s a Big Deal, a science breakthrough!
Or is it?
Could it be that it’s all a steaming pile of bull manure?
W.I.S.E. Comments on the USFS Planning Rule
We have discussed the US Forest Service intention to create a new Planning Rule [here] and offered some guidance, written by NAFSR Exec Dir Darrel Kenops, for drafting comments [here].
Now we present our own Comments, submitted today [here].
Some other excellent comments include those written by W.I.S.E. member Randy Shipman [here], by the National Association of Forest Service Retirees [here], and by Julie Kay Smithson of Property Rights Research [here]. And comments by Tim Bailey, Natural Resource Project Planner, Willamette National Forest are [here]. And the comments from the Coalition of Local Governments of Wyoming are [here].
Some excerpts from the W.I.S.E. Comments on the Scope of Analysis for the DEIS [here]:
*****
The biggest threats to forest and grassland health are catastrophic fires that alter ecosystems, destroy forests, and convert forests to fire-type brush. … Those impacts are immediate and also accumulate over the long-term. …
In addition, other threats to forest and grassland health are insect infestations, disease epidemics, and passive-reactive management. Litigation due to over-reliance on the unnecessary National Planning Rule and LRMPs instead of project-by-project EISs is also a major threat to forest and grassland health. …
Forest restoration means active management to bring back historical cultural landscapes, historical forest development pathways, and traditional ecological stewardship to achieve historical resiliency to fire and insects and to preclude and prevent a-historical catastrophic fires that decimate and destroy myriad resource values.
Forest restoration requires active management to remove, through mechanical means and with scientific silviculture, a-historical fuel loadings. Follow-up treatments with prescribed fire are also required, but not until forests are prepared to receive fire without catastrophic results.
Landscape-scale forest restoration is an alteration of the USFS mission. More attention must be paid to restatement of the mission, preferably by Congress. As it stands, the USFS has lost sight of any coherent mission. …
Landscape-scale forest restoration is an alteration of the USFS mission. …
The current Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, and the current Chief Forester, Tom Tidwell, have both made public vision statements that specifically incorporate forest restoration as the overriding goal of their respective tenures.
The Planning Rule must state or restate the mission of the USFS. …
In addition to articulation of the mission, to foster restoration the concept of Historical Range of Variability (HRV) must be dropped.
There is no such thing as HRV. Each watershed has a real and specific history. There is nothing random or stochastic about history; it is what really happened. Historical conditions were what they were. There is nothing flexible or malleable about history. It is non-fictional.
The Planning Rule must specify that real landscape history must be studied and elucidated for each planned project. History is an important part of the concept of forest restoration. …
In the case of forests, the previous condition in general was open, park-like, widely spaced trees arrayed in an anthropogenic mosaic of prairies, savannas, fields, and woodlands and maintained by anthropogenic fire. The previous condition was not wilderness but was modified from “natural” by extensive historical human influences intentionally administered by the residents.
The USFS must undertake studies, perform research, convene symposia, and encourage the full and scientific investigation of forest history on a watershed-by-watershed basis within each NFS unit.
The USFS must acknowledge and elucidate the historical human influences that helped to create and maintain historical conditions.
Heritage is not an afterthought; the protection of heritage must be part and parcel of USFS planning and actions. …
Federal forest policy Forestry education Saving Forests
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Your Story Is Your Brand
Note: I am busy preparing my comments for the National Forest System land management planning rule DEIS. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure and general edification, I highly recommend:
Your Story Is Your Brand
A speech by Jim Petersen, Co-founder and Executive Director, the non-profit Evergreen Foundation
To the Thirty-third Annual National Indian Timber Symposium, Lewiston, Idaho, April 20-23, 2009
which may be viewed [here].
Selected excerpts:
Scientific forestry has been with us for a very long time. Its principles come to us from the Prussian School of Forestry. They were first taught in our country by Bernard Fernow, who set up the old Division of Forestry, which later became the U.S. Forest Service, and Carl Schrenk, who set up the first demonstration forest at Biltmore, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s fabulous country estate in North Carolina. I believe both Fernow and Schrenk were graduates of the Prussian School of Forestry.
But there are much earlier examples of the successful manipulation of land by people in pursuit of civilization’s most basic necessities: food, clothing and shelter. One of them is referenced in the diary of a soldier who was part of the Desoto Expedition that marched the length of Florida in the 1500s. He wrote about the vast corn fields that he observed - part of the highly advanced maize-based culture Indians established along the eastern seaboard in Lord only knows when.
Archeologists were to later discover remnants of water diversion systems in the Southwest, where some of your ancestors irrigated crops hundreds if not thousands of years ago.
Early white explorers also found you using fire to manage your forests - in many ways a tool every bit as efficient as chain saws and mechanical harvesting systems.
Today, we are again using fire in our forests, and some of us think we invented it. Of course, we did not - you did - and I tend to think its modern-day use is as much for political purposes as it is for reasons have to do with the need to remove excess biomass from forests.
Although you ancestors did not have science in the same way we have science today, they were nonetheless very keen observers of nature - and equally important - they were pursuing a goal or objective, which was to feed, clothe and shelter their number by first manipulating nature. …
Somehow, we need to find a way to build on this idea. What passes for forestry on federal lands today is a travesty. Even so, it’s unlikely that the Congress is simply going to hand you the keys to the national forest system. But they might be interested in setting up some very large demonstration projects that you could manage the way you manage your own forests. What if the Colville tribe had the chance to actually manage say, half the Colville National Forest through the next rotation? What if the same opportunity were given to the White Mountain Apache or the Yakama or any other tribe that owns and manages timberland adjacent to a national forest?
Does this idea have any validity? I’d like to think so, but then I am biased in your favor. Be that as it may, I sincerely believe that a side-by-side comparison of what you are doing on your lands with what the government is doing on federal lands would give the public the opportunity they need to decide once and for all which management program yields the results they prefer: yours or the governments. I can’t help but think they’ll like what you do much better than they like what the government is doing.
As you can readily see, there is a lot to think about in the larger context of what branding is, how brands are created and what branding may bring to tribes that own and manage timberland in these United States. Since 1986, we have made it our mission at Evergreen to tell the forestry story in all of its grandeur - and where forestry converges with cultural, historic and spiritual values I know of no grander story than yours.
Always, always, always remember, your story is your brand, and thus a window on your soul. And always remember that where your story is concerned, we will be with you every step of the way.
