Illegal USFS ESA Snap Decisions for Wildfire “Use”
The time between the discovery of a wildfire and the decision to Let It Burn is no more than 24 hours. Once the decision is made to withhold initial attack and “use” the wildfire for “resource benefit,” there is no turning back — the wildfire usually will have grown too big to contain within a small area.
How long does it take to do a fast-tracked, emergency analysis for endangered species? The USFS says two months minimum:
USFS Delays Timber Harvest After Owls Spotted In Area
by Amelia Templeton, Oregon Public Broadcasting, July 30, 2010 [here]
The Forest Service is delaying a timber harvest in the Willamette National Forest. A pair of threatened spotted owls has moved closer to the area slated for logging.
The Seneca Sawmill agreed to pay about a half million dollars to log 150 acres of National Forest land. The harvest was supposed to begin on Monday.
But last week researchers learned that a pair of spotted owls has moved closer to the site.
Forest Service spokeswoman Judy McHugh says the logging contract has been suspended for two months to allow for a study.
Judy McHugh: “U.S. Fish and Wildlife has to do their analysis and their conclusion about what activity in the area does to individual owls and the owl population as a whole.”
Think about it. The USFS has to get permission to log from the USFWS if endangered species might be impacted. That permission comes (or possibly doesn’t) via what is called a “Section 7 consultation,” which refers to Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Normally the USFS will engage in a planning process (required by NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act) before a timber sale. The NEPA process includes Section 7 consultations with the USFWS, as well as public comment and appeal periods. The NEPA process typically takes years (plural) for each project.
However, in the case of the timber sale mentioned above, the situation changed after a pair of spotted owls allegedly “moved closer” to the project area.
By the way, the timber sale in question is the Trapper Project, a 155 acre harvest initially proposed in 1998 [here]! The Environmental Assessment was written in 2003. So the project has been in the planning and evaluation process for 12 years!
How fast can the USFWS turn around an emergency Section 7 consultation on a 155 acre area that has already been studied to death for 12 years?
Two months.
How much time is available to do a Section 7 consultation on a wildfire proposed for “fire use” that has not been studied, for which no spotted owl (or other T&E species) investigations have been made, for which the area to be burned is unknown but typically involves many thousands of acres?
Less than 24 hours.
The USFS is desperate to avoid doing any NEPA analysis on Let It Burn fires. They know that if they were required to obey the law and do a NEPA analysis on a lightning ignition, there is no way the NEPA process could be completed in the narrow time window between ignition and the decision to Let It Burn.
That’s why NEPA analyses, including Section 7 consultations, are never done for Let It Burn (or “allow to burn” or “fire use” or whoofoos or whatever unplanned, unfought conflagrations are called these days).
Criminal behavior on the part of the USFS?
What else would you call it?
Right now the USFS does NOT feel they have to do any studies in advance of Let It Burn fires, even though the areas they wish to “reintroduce fire” may have dozens of listed plant and animal species.
Remember, it is exactly those species (spotted owls, wolves, marbled murrelets, etc.) and candidate species (white pines, sage-grouse, etc.) that have shut down all other forest and range uses. Catastrophic fire is certainly impacting, as or more impacting than any other treatment.
It doesn’t matter how many jobs (in firefighting) are gained or lost. The ESA is famously inconsiderate of jobs and the economy.
Jobs, schmobs. The USA Today section of the Statesman Journal today said that Federal wages and salaries have grown by annual increments since 2000, to where they are double private sector wages and benefits, and almost double state and local government wages and benefits. What has happened is that we created the 5th Estate, the unlanded gentry, the protected for life Federal Employee. How in they got to have an AVERAGE civilian wages and benefits package worth over $125,000 a year baffles me. The Federal employee union people immediately spoke up and said it is because of all the special, educationally derived skills one must possess to work for Obama, et al. Bulls-t!!! I would bet right now that over half of all Federal civilian jobs are clerical. If that is even close to true, then Federal management types are making double what private side lower and mid management pays by a bunch. They are the Chosen Ones. The new Hoi Poloi. And just like the Politboro in CCCP of not too long ago, it is they who are getting the daschas and places on the lake.
We have been taken over by the government. Wholly taken over. They are in control, and the Legislative Branch no longer controls what goes on. They are no more than pompous talking heads for the bureaucrats of the Administration who run government. The Congress pays them well. We need, in the next 13 weeks, to tell the electorate to NOT RETURN the culls to Washington DC, since they have sold us out to the bureaucrats of the union rank and file of the SEIU, AFL-CIO, who represent government workers. Our government has become General Motors (who one CEO discovered that his job was not to make cars but to manage a health care system), and General Motors has become the Government. They are no longer indistinguishable from each other. They are the same. And now I do wonder who all the rest are who are private on the outside, and government on the inside. Who is inside the Trojan Horse we call the Administrative branch of government? Who hides there? What is their purpose, mission?
If the Congress wanted fires fought, on the old no flames by dusk deal, the killing snakes approach, Congress would mandate that to happen. If that is not how it is going to be, we have only our elected Congress to blame. They can make the USFS put out fires. All that it takes is the political will, and to buck the money machine of the EAJA supported Econazi lobby. I doubt that can now happen. Too many culls sucking on the tax forgiven teat to ever vote to cure a problem. The money comes from the attempt to cure the problem. Sort of like the pest control industry. Leave a few for reproduction so that you do have work later. Never kill them all. Not every raccoon, rat, insect, wolf, you name it. Lifetime work by benign neglect. Say, that is the USFS model, right?
Also troubling is the fact that in some areas of the west, the Forest Service is clearly the “minor leagues” of firefighting. The best of the Forest Service are often pried away, hired into state and local fire agencies, with better pay, better benefits and less politics. In southern California, they had to boost the salaries of all Forestry Technicians to try and retain some of their firefighters.
We’ll have to see how they will treat fire ignitions in certain areas. If they feel they have to do “studies” in advance of Let-Burn fires, then they might as well do the proper NEPA process.