[Senate Hearing 113-341]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 113-341
FOREST MANAGEMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVING FOREST MANAGEMENT ON
FEDERAL LANDS
__________
JUNE 25, 2013
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Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
RON WYDEN, Oregon, Chairman
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont MIKE LEE, Utah
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan DEAN HELLER, Nevada
MARK UDALL, Colorado JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
AL FRANKEN, Minnesota TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
JOE MANCHIN, III, West Virginia LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
Joshua Sheinkman, Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
Karen K. Billups, Republican Staff Director
Patrick J. McCormick III, Republican Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
Page
Farquhar, Ned, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals
Management, Department of the Interior......................... 12
Imbergamo, Bill, Executive Director, Federal Forest Resource
Coalition...................................................... 35
Johnson, K. Norman, Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society,
Oregon State University........................................ 17
Maisch, John ``Chris'', State Forester and Division Director,
Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry... 29
Miles, Aaron, Member, Clearwater Basin Collaborative............. 45
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, U.S. Senator From Alaska................... 4
Tidwell, Thomas, Chief, Forest Service, Department of Agriculture 6
Wyden, Hon. Ron, U.S. Senator From Oregon........................ 1
APPENDIXES
Appendix I
Responses to additional questions................................ 75
Appendix II
Additional material submitted for the record..................... 87
FOREST MANAGEMENT
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TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 2013
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in
room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Wyden,
chairman, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, U.S. SENATOR FROM OREGON
The Chairman. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
will come to order.
Today the committee meets to give long overdue attention to
the issue of managing our Federal forests. In my view too many
of our forestry programs are not working for forest-dependent
communities, for taxpayers or for the cause of protecting
America's natural treasures. The fact is current forestry
programs do not provide a stable source of funding of jobs or
funding for local communities. Instead of generating revenue,
too often Federal forest lands have become a burden to our
taxpayers.
Too often valuable timber lands are neglected to the point
they become tinder boxes for catastrophic fire. The status quo
is unacceptable. So today the committee begins to look
specifically at the cause of forestry reform.
One of our Nation's most creative thinkers on the issue,
Norm Johnson of Oregon State University, is here from my home
State. He's going to be presenting testimony on behalf of
himself and Dr. Jerry Franklin. I think it would be fair to say
wherever there is a challenging forestry issue, that is where
we are lucky enough to have Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin. We're
very pleased that he could come.
At town hall meetings that I hold across our State, I am
told continually of the frustrations of reduced harvest rates,
reduction in hazardous fuel programs, and other active
management programs on lands held by the Federal Government in
the Bureau of Land Management. I know that a number of Senators
are here to describe the same experience that they have had.
Over the past two and a half decades the amount of timber
produced off Federal forest lands has declined at an
extraordinary rate from a high of 12 billion board feet per
year in the 1980s to two to 3 billion board feet per year in
the last decade. You only need to look at the massive wildfires
that are burning in Colorado, New Mexico, and elsewhere through
beetle-infested stands and threatened homes to see the
consequences of failed management. Meanwhile our resource-
dependent communities are losing jobs and they're losing mills
that are critical to restoring forest health.
As expected this steep drop in timber production over the
last few decades corresponds with a dramatic drop in the number
of the Nation's timber mills with a loss of about half of our
mills in the last two decades. When those mills go away too
often communities lose jobs. Federal forest managers lose
customers who buy lumber and wood products that help pay for
badly needed restoration.
It has been said more than once here in this committee that
the cut needs to go up. We need to get people back to work in
the woods. It's an absolute prerequisite to make sure that we
have healthy forests and healthy communities. It's our view
that this can be done in line with common sense, practical
application of the environmental laws.
Now there are 3 recurring themes that have hindered forest
management operations around the country.
The first is lack of funding to prepare sales.
The second is environmental analysis and review time
associated with the management activities.
The third is litigation that stalls much of the work that
is important to actually get done.
In this hearing we're going to explore ways to address each
of these 3 challenges and free up resources to get more
restoration work done.
The first item is Federal agencies have to do the best
possible job of budgeting and planning for forest management.
The status quo is spending more and more money fighting
wildfires instead of working to prevent those fires is just
unacceptable. In a hearing a few weeks ago we made it clear
that the Office of Management and Budget ought to drop its
obstruction of hazardous fuels reduction funding which is a key
element of healthy forest planning.
Just yesterday I had a spirited discussion with the folks
of OMB, the Director specifically, so that we can create a plan
to fix the problems with our current approach to fire budgeting
and stop the pilfering of funding for restoration work and
hazardous fuels reductions.
In the same area I have concerns about the amount of money
that is spent on overhead in administration. When the Forest
Service refers to as its cost pool charges pays for just about
everything except the actual work on the ground that makes a
difference. The Forest Service has also identified this as a
problem, but according to the agency's last budget documents
last year, the Forest Service spent 18.2 percent of their
forest products and restoration funding on overhead.
In contrast, it's our understanding that other agencies in
the Department of the Interior and USDA spent about 10 percent
on overhead for these programs. If the Forest Service cuts its
overhead to just those levels an additional 24,000 acres could
receive commercial thinning just from the forest products and
restoration account savings. If the agency devoted all the
savings generated across the agency's programs to commercial
thinning, and of course, I wouldn't say that is a realistic
target any time soon, the Forest Service could thin an
additional 485,000 acres per year.
The second area we're going to look at is how agencies can
reduce the upfront cost of planning forestry management
projects. The last time it was measured apparently the Forest
Service spent $356 million on the needed environmental review
of the projects--some 70 percent of Federal forest management
project costs are environmental analysis and document
preparation.
So the question on this point is, is there a way to improve
the NEPA process to reduce the, frankly, staggering costs in
the planning time without short-changing the important
environmental protections in the law?
Finally, once timber sales or management decisions are
complete there ought to be a way to address the prospect that
there may be protests or litigation. In my part of the world
folks, have seen that collaboration is one way to bring the cut
up just as we've seen in Eastern Oregon while reducing the
number of lawsuits.
I particularly want to commend Chief Tidwell's point for
stressing at every opportunity, as the Chief has, the value of
collaboration because what we've seen in Eastern Oregon is we
had a historic agreement between the environmental community,
between industry and environmental folks. It's yielded
significant progress on the ground with more collaboration and
agreement leading to more landscape scale efforts.
We're pleased that the agency announced a 10-year
stewardship contract for the Malheur where a collaborative has
been working very hard to address forest restoration needs.
We're going to keep working with the parties and the Chief on
the East side to advance those efforts and look at the rest of
our State and country.
Let me wrap up also by way of saying that we want to hear
about creative approaches to reduce the number of protests to
the projects and to get the thoughts of our witnesses with
respect to the other challenges in Oregon starting with the O
and C lands.
The Oregon and California lands are truly unique both in
their legal history and their status going back to the 1937 O
and C Act. The idea was to provide stable revenues and jobs for
communities affected by what is a unique and, for all practical
purposes, crazy checkerboard of public and private ownership.
But since the Northern Spotted Owl listing in 1990, timber
harvests have plummeted and the Bureau of Land Management has
not been able to significantly get the volume of harvest up.
So we are very anxious to hear, particularly from Dr.
Johnson, about some of the innovative work that they're doing
there to look at riparian areas, the work done for the Fish and
Wildlife Service, and particularly the effort to get more
inter-agency coordination.
Despite that, the sales are still tied up with protests and
litigation and a number of obstacles ahead: Endangered Species
Act listings, Federal survey and management requirements, that
are a much larger burden than certainly were anticipated, and
as mentioned, the checkerboard pattern of ownership.
So I will shortly be jumping in with legislation that
builds on the work that's been done by the Oregon delegation
and Governor Kitzhaber and look forward to hearing from Dr.
Johnson and the BLM on this as well.
We've had a number of witnesses make the long trek from the
West. We appreciate that.
Let me recognize Senator Murkowski for her opening remarks.
I appreciate the Senators being in attendance and please
proceed, Senator Murkowski.
STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR
FROM ALASKA
Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin my comments I want to acknowledge our newest
member on the committee, who came in while you were speaking.
But Senator Baldwin has joined the committee. We're going to
miss Senator Coons and his contributions, but know that we will
enjoy working with you as well.
I think Senator Heinrich appreciates the fact that he's
moved up a chair.
[Laughter.]
Senator Murkowski. He's not sitting at the tail end. But
that doesn't mean that participation from that end of the dais
is quiet. We appreciate your participation and look forward to
it as well.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that you have stated that this
hearing, as we look at forest management practices is long
overdue in your State, in my State. In fact as I look at those
who are here today on the committee, we all have a keen
interest in ensuring that when it comes to our U.S. forests
that we have active management, that we actually do see some
harvesting of timber to provide for jobs, economic opportunity.
I think far too often we see policies that really do restrict
or limit that.
So an opportunity to be discussing this today is greatly
appreciated. I think that your opening statement was really
quite all inclusive in terms of the issues and the challenges
that we have in front of us.
I agree wholeheartedly with you on the importance of
increasing the timber harvest on our Federal lands. You've
heard me describe the situation in Southeast Alaska before on
the Tongass. But I think it bears repeating.
95 percent of the land base in Southeast Alaska is Federal,
95 percent. The Tongass is 80 percent of that Federal land.
It's about 17 million acres.
It's larger than West Virginia. Senator Manchin was here
just a little bit ago. But the area of the Tongass that we're
talking about is larger than his State.
Southeast Alaska is now and has historically been a
resource dependent economy directly tied to the Federal land
that dominates it. Over the past 20 years the forest industry
which was once the second largest industry in the State has
been in decline. Both political and economic pressures,
increased Federal land withdrawals and more stringent
regulatory climate and environmental lawsuits forced the
closure of Southeast Alaska's two pulp mills.
The Tongass Land Use Management plan movement toward
ecosystem management and the reinstatement of the roadless rule
have also sharply reduced our allowable harvest levels leading
to a closure of most of the sawmills. We have one, single large
sawmill left. That's down in Wrangell. We've got a handful of
Mom and Pop operations that are left.
The Chief and I have discussed the situation on the ground
there in the Tongass. I look forward to the opportunity in
August when you will have a chance to visit some of these.
Mr. Chairman, you noted the declining levels of harvest
around the country. In the Tongass, on average right now, we
are harvesting just 35 million board feet which is really
unacceptable in my view. What's left of the timber industry
I've described folks are just kind of hanging on by their
fingernails. It impacts jobs, schools, the future of many of my
constituents.
So I look forward to a rigorous discussion about the
Federal policies and management practices on our Federal lands
that are affecting the timber harvest and how we might be
working together to remove these obstacles that exist to
providing sufficient timber supply, long term, to sustain a
vibrant forest industry well into the future.
I'd also like to welcome Mr. Chris Maisch, the State
Forester from Alaska. I look forward to your testimony and
acknowledge the Chairman's comments that you've come a long way
here. We appreciate it. I look forward to not only your
comments, but that of the entire panel.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murkowski. As we have on
so many issues, I know we're going to work in a bipartisan way
on this as well.
Senator Baldwin was just waiting until Senator Murkowski
made her remarks until I was going to give you the boisterous
welcome that you really deserve here.
Senator Murkowski. I didn't mean to steal your thunder.
The Chairman. No, you launched it well. The fact is Senator
Baldwin has a long track record of fresh, creative thinking on
issues like the environment and health care. You're sitting
with Senator Heinrich down at your end of the rostrum. We're
going to be running with the right crowd by having these new
members with fresh approaches.
The fact is and Senator Murkowski and have touched on it.
That's what it's going to take to really address the issue
we're talking about here today. When we think about trying to
strike the balance between getting the harvest up without
compromising our environmental values, I think about places
like Wisconsin that have had fresh ideas on these natural
resources issues for quite some time.
So I want you to know, Senator Baldwin, we're very pleased
that you've joined us. As you know, there's a long link between
Oregon and Wisconsin because my predecessor, Wayne Morse, was
from Madison, your hometown. We're very proud of Senator Morse,
one of two in the Senate, who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution.
So there's a long, long connection between Wisconsin and
Oregon. We are very lucky to have somebody who consistently
comes up with fresh, creative kinds of ideas to the big issues
of our time. We welcome you and your end of the rostrum, with
Senator Heinrich. This is going to be the place to be on a lot
of these debates. We're glad you're with us.
Let's go.
Chief, you start it off. Let's hear from all of our
witnesses. I know there's almost a compulsion to read every
word in your prepared statement. If you can just summarize your
key views, we'll make your prepared comments a part of the
record in their entirety. Then we can get into questions. I
think we'll have a fair amount of Senators coming in.
So Chief, welcome.
STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS TIDWELL, CHIEF, FOREST SERVICE,
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Mr. Tidwell. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Murkowski and
members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be
here today to discuss the challenges and opportunities for
forest management on our national forests.
I think we've been very clear about the need to restore the
resiliency of forest health on our national forests. That's why
we came out last year with our accelerated restoration strategy
that laid out the need to treat somewhere between 65 and 82
million acres of our national forest to be able to restore the
forest health, the resiliency.
Part of that strategy was also to move forward and increase
the amount of work we were doing by 20 percent between then and
what we put out in 2014. We were on target. Had a great year in
2012 and slowed down a little bit in 2013, but we plan to get
back on pace in 2014 to be able to continue to increase the
amount of work we're getting done, along with the key outputs
such as the board feet that's produced, the miles of stream
that are restored, the overall watershed health conditions that
are improved.
It is essential that we manage and maintain these forests,
not only for the products that they produce, but simply for the
health and the water that they produce.
Sixty million Americans rely on the water that comes off of
these national forests, and 166 million people visit these
forests every year for their recreational activities.
It's a big, key part of their lives.
It's essential that we manage these forests so that it
provides for the full mix of multiple use benefits that all of
our communities rely on. it's what contributes and supports
over 450,000 jobs. So there are challenges.
We've laid out the conditions of our forests. The thing
that's adding to that is the changing climate both from a
gradual shift in temperatures but also a more abrupt impact
from the disturbances that we're seeing whether it's the longer
fire seasons we're seeing today, the increase in insect and
disease, the extensive droughts that we're dealing with in
different parts of this country. These conditions are going to
continue, but there are things that we can do to make sure that
our forests are more resilient and that so we can actually
reduce the impact from these disturbance events.
The other key thing is with the infrastructure. I've said
numerous times we have to maintain an integrated wood products
infrastructure so that we have people to do the work, to be
able to harvest the trees, remove the biomass that needs to be
removed from these forests. The infrastructure in a lot of
places in this country we've, like, we've lost it. Senator
Murkowski, you mentioned the conditions we have up in Southeast
Alaska.
The other key thing we need to focus on is markets. As
markets shift and change there's a need for us to be able to
not only expand existing markets, but we also need to develop
new markets, especially to be able to find economical use of
the smaller diameter material that also needs to be removed in
conjunction with our timber harvest.
Then the other challenge that we have is agency capacity.
Since 1998 our national forest system staff has been reduced by
35 percent. Our forest management staff has been reduced by 49
percent; these are our foresters, our biologists, our
engineers.
In 1998 we sold 2.95 billion board feet. We were on target
for next year to be at the same level with half the staff. So
the opportunity that we have is to be able to continue--we know
what we need to do on the forests.
We have the science today. We have the support especially
through our collaborative efforts where people understand the
work that needs to be done on our forests. That's what's
enabled us to be able to move forward, to get more work done,
and reduce some of the appeals and lawsuits that have plagued
us in the past.
Today our science is so clear that for us to be able to
maintain forest dependent species like the Northern Spotted
Owl, we need active forest management or we are going to lose
critical owl habitat to fires or insect and disease. This is a
significant change from where we were a decade ago, we
recognize the importance of forest health when it comes to
maintaining the viability of these key species.
When we come to the capacity issue, that's where we
continue to focus on our NEPA efficiencies. We have several
projects across the country where we've been able to
demonstrate that by taking a look at larger pieces of landscape
like with the forest initiative in Arizona, with the Black
Hills project where we did one analysis for 248,000 acres.
We're finding that not only is this a better way, but it's much
more efficient.
We have a series of pilots that we want to move forward
with across the country this year to be able to use those types
of models throughout all of our national forests.
The other thing we're continuing to work on is just doing a
better job to focus NEPA on the issues that need to be
addressed.
The other thing we want to move forward with is improving
our objection process to replace our appeals process that in
the past has definitely added to the time that it's taken us
for to be able to get our projects completed.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your having this hearing today.
I look forward to working with the committee to find ways that
we can increase our efficiencies to be more effective to get
more done. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tidwell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Thomas Tidwell, Chief, Forest Service, Department
of Agriculture
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to present the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) regarding national forest management.
The national forests and grasslands were established to protect the
land, secure favorable conditions of water flows, and provide a
sustainable supply of goods and services. National Forest System (NFS)
lands are managed using a multiple-use approach with the goal of
sustaining healthy terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems while addressing
the need for resources, commodities, and services for the American
people. Rural and urban communities depend on the forests for a variety
of resources, commodities, and services. For rural communities in
particular, national forest management can impact local economic and
social conditions. With our many partners, the USDA Forest Service (FS)
is working to maintain the functions and processes characteristic of
healthy, resilient forests and watersheds. Through delivery of our
programs, we continue to maintain and enrich the social and economic
environment of our local communities.
Secretary Vilsack and the US Forest Service recognize the
importance of increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration in
our National Forests. We must manage and restore more acres to reduce
the threat of catastrophic wildfire, to address insects and disease and
to restore the ecological health of forests for the benefit of all
Americans. Today, I will talk about a number of the approaches we are
taking to restore and maintain the health of our National Forests.
vegetation management
Our forests are important to all of us, and people understand that
forests provide a broad range of values and benefits, including
biodiversity, recreation, clean air and water, forest products, erosion
control, soil renewal and more. Forests, which cover a third of the
country's landmass, store and filter more than half of the nation's
water supply and absorb 20 percent of the country's carbon emissions.
Our mission of sustaining the health, resilience and productivity of
our Nation's forests is critically important to maintaining these
values and benefits. Restoring the health and resilience of our forests
generates important amenity values. A study by Cassandra Mosely and Max
Nielson Pincus, University of Oregon, has shown that every million
dollars spent on activities like stream restoration, hazardous fuels
reduction, forestry or road decommissioning generates from 12 to 28
jobs. Through implementation of the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Program--which relies heavily on stewardship contracting--
the proponents of projects on NFS lands maintained 4,174 jobs and
generated $147,485,912 in labor income in FY2012.
I've stated in prior hearings the need for increasing the scope and
scale of our restoration efforts in the face of the threats we're
facing today from wildfire, insects, disease and invasive species and
the compounding implications of a changing climate. More than 40
percent of the contiguous United States is in a moderate or more severe
stage of drought--with over 4 percent of those areas experiencing
exceptional drought conditions. In addition, insects and disease have
weakened the resilience of America's forests. Nationally, approximately
80 million acres of trees are projected to be at risk of severe
mortality due to insect and disease. Over the past 10 years in the
west, approximately 45 million acres across all land ownerships have
been affected by 20 different species of bark beetles.
Facing these threats, we've recognized for some time the importance
of increasing our restoration efforts. We continue to explore new and
existing tools to become more efficient. In February 2012 the FS
outlined a strategy for increasing restoration activities across large
landscapes through more efficient implementation of existing programs
and policies, as well as pursuing new initiatives. This increase will
allow the FS to increase the number of acres and watersheds restored
across the system, while supporting existing infrastructure and jobs.
Through these efforts, in FY 2012, the FS attained 2.6 billion board
feet (BBF) volume sold and exceeded a number of restoration targets
such as moving nine watersheds to an improved condition class (the
target was five watersheds); decommissioning 2,103 miles of road (the
target was 2,028 miles); and restoring/enhancing 3,704 miles of stream
habitat (the target was 2,670 miles).
1. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Landscape Scale
Projects
The FS recognizes the need for science-based accelerated
restoration and has made significant recent improvements in the pace
and scale of its projects on NFS lands. The FS plans to highlight some
projects that demonstrate accomplishment of high priority restoration
work across a broad scale and/or reflect innovative approaches and
efficiencies in collaboration, project planning, data collection, and
NEPA analysis. These projects will serve as demonstration areas and
learning centers as individual units develop approaches to accelerate
the pace and scale of restoration.
The agency is also saving costs by gaining efficiencies in our
environmental review process under NEPA. We are identifying NEPA
efficiencies by focusing on improving agency policy, learning, and
technology. These NEPA process improvements will increase decision-
making efficiencies, resulting in on-the-ground restoration work
getting done more quickly and across a larger landscape. The agency has
initiated a NEPA learning networks project to learn from and share the
lessons of successful implementation of efficient NEPA analyses. The
goal of this effort is to ensure that the agency's NEPA compliance is
as efficient, cost-effective, and up-to-date as possible. Specifically
we are looking at expanding the use of focused Environmental
Assessments (EAs), expanding categories of actions that may be excluded
from documentation in an EA or an EIS, and applying an adaptive
management framework to NEPA.
Our landscape-scale NEPA projects will also increase efficiencies.
For example, our Mountain Pine Beetle Response Project on the Black
Hills National Forest is implementing a landscape-scale adaptive
approach for treating current and future pine beetle outbreaks within a
200,000 acre area. Since signing the decision last December, the forest
has sold one timber sale and has two others planned for this fiscal
year. Sales for next fiscal year are identified, along with plans to
treat existing and newly infested areas in subsequent years. This
decision has given the forest greater flexibility in treating existing
and new infestations in a timely and strategic manner. All of these
efforts are aimed at becoming more proactive and efficient in
protecting the Nation's natural resources, while providing jobs to the
American people.
On the Tongass, in Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, the forest received
an allocation of funds to be used to plan larger scale projects
designed to provide an even flow of timber volume over a 10-year period
in order to provide a stable supply. This is part of our effort to
successfully transition the Tongass timber sale program from one based
on old growth to young growth. The first project in the planning phase
is the Big Thorne 10-Year Contract; the NEPA contract was awarded in FY
2011. This project will be offered under the stewardship contracting
authority, and is expected to be 100 million board feet (MMBF). The
project is expected to combine timber harvest and other restoration and
service treatments and the NEPA decision is expected in late 2013.
2. Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR)
The 23 CFLR projects emphasize restoration across large scale
landscapes. In addition to finding efficiencies in planning and
treating larger landscapes, CFLR emphasizes collaboration.
Collaboration with our partners and stakeholders from all interest
areas is one of the tools to becoming more efficient through shared
development and understanding of the desired condition, objectives, and
issues at the outset of projects. In 2012, these projects exceeded the
targets for the majority of performance measures.
In Arizona, the Four Forest Restoration Initiative project is
contributing to healthier ecosystems, safer communities and supporting
rural communities. In addition to a range of other restoration
activities, this project has treated hazardous fuels on more than
171,900 acres, produced more than 168 MMBF of timber and more than
878,817 green tons of bioenergy since 2010.
Colorado has two CFLR projects which are having a measurable impact
on rural economies. The Uncompahgre Plateau as well as the rest of the
lands administered by the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National
Forests will play a key role in support of the newly opened lumber mill
in Montrose. To date, the Uncompahgre project has generated 12 MMBF of
timber, and reduced hazardous fuels on more than 11,500 acres. As part
of the Colorado Front Range project, Denver Water contributed more than
$1,000,000 in 2012 for restoration efforts. Since FY2010, the Front
Range project has reduced hazardous fuels on more than 17,000 acres,
and generated more than 17 MMBF of timber.
The two CLFR projects in New Mexico--the Southwest Jemez, initiated
in 2010, and the Zuni Mountain, initiated in 2012--together have
treated fuels on more than 9,900 acres, and generated more than 5 MMBF
of timber and more than 3,000 green tons of bioenergy.
The three CFLR projects active in Oregon are building strong
relationships between the U.S. Forest Service and forest stakeholders,
supporting local industry, and protecting communities from the risks of
uncharacteristic wildland fires. The Deschutes project has generated
more than 19 MMBF of timber and 56,700 green tons of bioenergy as
products of restoration activities that include more than 31,900 acres
of fuels reduction in the wildland-urban interface. The Lakeview
Stewardship Project and the Southern Blues Restoration Project, in one
year of implementation, produced a combined total of more than 24 MMBF
of timber, generated more than 13,000 green tons of biomass, and
treated more than 31,000 acres of hazardous fuels.
Three CFLR projects are underway in Idaho, creating measurable
shifts in ecosystem resilience and supporting local economies. The
Selway-Middle Fork project has sold more than 13 MMBF of timber and
harvested more than 2,000 green tons of biomass. The Weiser-Little
Salmon Headwaters project, selected for funding in FY2012, has already
maintained or generated 136 direct full or part-time jobs. The project
plans to generate 50,000 green tons of biomass annually and
approximately 25 MMBF of saw timber annually. In FY2012 the Forest
completed a major NEPA analysis that approved vegetative treatments on
more than 25,000 acres. The Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative, also
selected for funding in FY2012, will treat 39,430 acres mechanically
over 10 years. The project generated more than 10 MMBF of timber and
produced more than 2,700 green tons of bioenergy.
In Washington, the Tapash CFLR has generated more than 23 MMBF of
timber and treated hazardous fuels on more than 10,000 acres, and the
Northeast Washington Forest Vision 2020 project, selected in 2012,
treated 8,012 acres of hazardous fuels.
3. Improved Business Practices
We are reviewing our business practices around timber sale
preparation, specifically regarding designation of timber for harvest
and accounting for merchantable volume, to determine how to reduce the
cost to the government for selling timber.
4. Stewardship Contracting
Although timber sales remain the mainstay of our restoration
efforts, stewardship contracting is another critical tool that allows
the Forest Service to more efficiently complete restoration activities.
Permanently reauthorizing stewardship contracting and expanding the use
of this tool is crucial to our ability to collaboratively restore
landscapes at a reduced cost to the government by offsetting the value
of the services received with the value of forest products removed. In
FY 2012, 25 percent of all timber volume sold was under a stewardship
contract. Stewardship contracting authorities allow the Agency to fund
watershed and wildlife habitat improvement projects, invasive species
removal, road decommissioning, and hazardous fuels reduction
activities.
All of these efforts help us be more proactive and efficient in
protecting the nation's natural resources, while providing jobs to the
American people.
support of industry
We know we cannot achieve all of this without a strong integrated
forest products industry that can use all parts and sizes of trees to
help us accomplish our restoration work. Our best opportunity for
reducing the cost of these restoration treatments is through timber
harvest and stewardship contracting. The benefits of maintaining a
robust forest industry flow not only to local communities but also to
the Forest Service itself. We rely on local forest contractors and
mills to provide the workforce to undertake a variety of restoration
activities.
Wood energy projects make forest harvests more economically viable
by providing a productive use for woody biomass which previously was a
cost to remove. The USDA Wood to Energy Initiative combines programs
from the Forest Service and USDA Rural Development to expand renewable
wood energy use, from rural community schools, hospitals and National
Guard facilities across the country. Wood to Energy projects are
underway in Alaska, Oregon, Montana, Minnesota to Maine as well as
industrial applications such as the 11.5 megawatt power plant under
construction in Gypsum, Colorado. This plant will receive a substantial
portion of its wood from a 10-year stewardship contract with the
Stoltze Land and Lumber sawmill in Columbia Falls, Montana. This
project will replace 100 year old boilers for their wood driers and
sell 2.5 megawatts of electricity to the local electrical cooperative.
The FS continues to be a leading agency in the federal government
to preferentially select domestically harvested wood products in
building construction projects while increasing its commitment to green
building standards. All FS building projects incorporate green building
principles such as energy efficiency, locally produced wood products,
and recycling and reuse of building materials. New building
construction and major renovation projects for administration
facilities or research laboratories over 10,000 square feet must be
registered and certified using an accredited third-party certification
systems.
The FS and USDA, as well as the forest products industry and
resource management organizations, support a science-based approach to
evaluate the benefits of using wood and wood-based products in green
building in the U.S. The inherent benefits of using wood go beyond
economic gains. Conservation components such as increased forest
productivity, cleaner air and water, and enhanced wildlife habitat will
be realized as we actively manage our nation's forests. The process of
harvest, transport, manufacturing and use of wood in structures creates
less greenhouse gas emissions than other building products such as
concrete or steel. (``Life-cycle inventory and assessment research at
the Forest Products Laboratory: Wood products used in building
construction, U.S.D.A. Forest Service'').
The forest products industry workforce is larger than either the
automotive or chemical industries, currently employing nearly 900,000
workers. Encouragingly, there have been recent upturns in the housing
market and lumber prices, resulting in higher demand and prices for
sawtimber. The capacity exists within the current industry
infrastructure to meet this increased demand for lumber through adding
extra shifts, reopening mills, and efficiency gains. The higher demand
and prices for timber will enable the FS to complete more restoration
treatments. In spite of flat budgets in the past few years the FS
increased the volume sold, from 2.38 billion board feet (BBF) in 2008
to 2.64 BBF in 2012. However, even though we will continue to search
for efficiencies, due to increased budget cuts in 2013 and projected
cuts in 2014, we project a slight decline in restoration treatments in
both years.
Through the recession and downturn in the housing market, the FS
has continued to find ways to support local infrastructure. We have
increased our funding of the timber sale program over the last 17 years
from a low of $180 million in 1995 to $335 million in 2012. The Agency
provided timber sale contract relief through price adjustments and
contract extensions. We also provided Substantial Overriding Public
Interest (SOPI) to grant additional relief for certain qualifying high
priced, older contracts; and through SOPIs, we mutually agreed to
cancel some contracts. We continued to sell timber at a lower price
reflecting market values. Purchasers continued to purchase FS timber at
these lower prices, providing more flexibility through combining these
lower priced sales with earlier, higher priced sales.
challenges
At the completion of fiscal year 2012, we were on a trajectory to
increase treatment acres, along with timber harvest. In 2013, at a time
when lumber prices are increasing and the additional value can help pay
for other restoration work, we received a reduced budget with the same
reduction projected for 2014. We have had to decrease the amount of
acres we could treat, along with timber volume to reflect these budget
reductions. This leads me to my final topic, the challenges impacting
our Restoration Strategy. In addition to declining budgets, we are
facing another active fire year. Costs of fire suppression have
increased to consume nearly half of the entire FS budget. In FY 1991,
fire activities accounted for about 13 percent of the total agency
budget; in FY 2012, it was over 40 percent. In the 1980s and 1990s the
10-year average of suppression costs remained relatively stable, as did
the number of acres burned nationwide. This was a wetter period in the
United States and fire activity was relatively low. However, beginning
in the extreme fire season of 2000, which cost $1 billion, this trend
started to change. The cost of the FY 2000 fires alone caused the 10-
year average to rise by over $80 million--a 16 percent increase. Since
FY 2000, the 10-year average has risen almost every year--from a little
over $540 million to over $900 million in 2012.
Post-wildfire rehabilitation costs exceed the costs of suppression
by 2 to 30 times as shown in the ``The True Cost of Wildfire in the
Western U.S. (Western Forestry Leadership Coalition 2010). Over the
last two fiscal years the FS Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER)
program spent almost $94 million in emergency stabilization efforts on
NFS lands immediately after fires to help with erosion, flooding, and
other threats to human health and safety, and threats to resources.
Treatments were as diverse as hillside stabilization, road protection,
hazardous material stabilization, and hazard tree removal, as well as
myriad other treatments. And this does not include the long-term costs
of reforestation and monitoring.
Staffing within the Agency has also shifted to reflect an increased
focus on fire. Since 1998 fire staffing within the FS has increased 110
percent from over 5,700 in 1998 to over 12,000 in 2012. Over the same
time period, staffing levels for those dedicated to managing NFS lands
have decreased by 35 percent from over 17,000 in 1998 to over 11,000 in
2012. In particular, Forest Management staffing has decreased by 49
percent from over 6,000 in 1998 to just over 3,200 in 2012.
Litigation is another challenge we face in striving to increase our
restoration efforts. The Agency fully supports collaboration with our
partners and stakeholders from all interest areas as one way to be more
efficient, through a shared understanding of the desired condition,
across the landscape. The threat of litigation, however, slows down the
collaborative process, discourages some parties from participating, and
adds to the Agency's overall costs, as our teams try to improve our
environmental documentation and decision making to reduce the risk of
litigation.
Despite these challenges, we remain optimistic that through
collaboration with our many interest groups and officials the FS can
improve accomplishment of our restoration objectives. I want to thank
the committee for its interest, leadership, and commitment to our
national forests and their surrounding communities. I would be pleased
to answer any questions you may have.
The Chairman. Chief, thank you. That's very helpful. I
especially appreciate your mentioning the climate issue.
With a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
having recently passed over 400 parts per million, according to
the NOAA analysis. I think that's a point well taken. I
appreciate your bringing it up.
Let's go now to Mr. Farquhar, Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Land and Minerals Management, Department of the Interior.
STATEMENT OF NED FARQUHAR, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, LAND AND
MINERALS MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Farquhar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Murkowski. I worked in the DNR where Chris is from in the mid
80s. I also spent a number of years in New Mexico. So it's
great to see the members in the committee today.
I'm Ned Farquhar, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and
Minerals Management at Interior. In my position I oversee work
done by the Bureau of Land Management and 3 other bureaus. The
BLM manages a total of about 60 million acres of forest and
woodlands of which about two million acres are the O and C or
Oregon and California lands in Western Oregon and about 58
million scattered among the other 11 Western states.
Of these 50 million acres of public domain lands the BLM
manages forests to restore and maintain forest ecosystems,
reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and generate a
sustainable flow of forest products to support rural
communities.
These forests imported $129 million in economic activity in
2011 through timber sales. They also support local businesses
that depend on tourism and outdoor recreation.
In addition to these economic effects, the BLM managed
forests help to provide clean water, recreational opportunities
for our communities and they also, as the Chairman just said,
help store carbon as well.
As the impacts of drought, wildfire, pests and invasive
species have grown the BLM has increasingly adopted
collaborative and landscape style, scaled approaches to forest
management. Working with our partners on strategies such as the
Cohesive Wild Land Fire Strategy and the White Bark Pine
Restoration Strategy and these, obviously, include the State
agencies represented by Chris, but also the Forest Service with
whom we work very closely.
In 2012 the BLM conducted nearly 200,000 acres of hazardous
fuels treatments, HFR, in forests. In addition to treating
20,000 acres in forests using timber sales as our technique.
The BLM uses a variety of tools to manage its public domain
forests including stewardship contracts, timber sales, service
contracts and in Colorado, Good Neighbor agreements.
On the topic of the O and C lands, which I know is of great
importance to the committee, on the 2.2 million acres of BLM
managed Oregon and California grant lands the Department
manages the lands under the O and C Act of 1937 to provide a
permanent source of timber to protect watersheds, regulate
stream flow, to contribute to economic stability and to provide
recreational opportunities consonant with the act.
The capacity to offer timber sales on these lands involves
a number of complex and sometimes competing goals for resource
management. Over the past 3 years the BLM has offered about 650
million board feet for sale generating about $54 million in
timber receipts.
In recent years over 5.5 million visitors per year have
also come to Western Oregon to enjoy these lands.
Declining timber harvest levels since the early 1990s have
affected jobs in Western Oregon and resulted in decreased
timber revenues paid to the O and C counties of which there are
18. The Secure Rural Schools Act expiring in last year, in
fiscal year 2012 provided supplemental payments to these
counties. The BLM has made the payments to the counties for
2012 and the President's budget proposes reauthorization of the
Secure Rural Schools Act for the next 5 years.
The complexity of the forest management issues in Western
Oregon makes it necessary to address these problems in a
collaborative manner to meet the needs of industry and rural
communities while protecting habitat for threatened and
endangered species and providing recreation opportunities. We
appreciate the leadership that Senator Wyden and others have
shown toward the development of this collaboration on these
issues in a very complex situation.
The BLM is currently implementing 3 secretarial pilot
projects with the help of my co-panelist here, Dr. Norm Johnson
and his colleague, Dr. Franklin. These pilot projects provide a
demonstration of the use of the active forest management
techniques in Western Oregon within the BLM's Roseburg, Coos
Bay and Medford districts. These ecological forestry pilot
projects will help inform BLM's management of the O and C lands
to develop future timber sale proposals. As we revise the 6
resource management plans governing management of BLM lands in
Western Oregon.
As the BLM moves forward with these revisions we will
continue to work with our 25 cooperating agencies and to obtain
public input through a series of public meetings.
The BLM is committed to managing both public domain forests
and the O and C lands in a manner consistent with applicable
authorities. We look forward to continuing to work with the
members of the committee and our partners to manage forests and
their many resources and values. We thank you again for the
opportunity to discuss these programs.
I'll be glad to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Farquhar follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ned Farquhar, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land
and Minerals Management, Department of the Interior
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the management of forests
and woodlands on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM), including both public domain lands and the Revested Oregon and
California Railroad and Reconveyed Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands (the
O&C lands). A total of roughly 60 million acres of BLM-managed lands
are forests or woodlands, including 2.2 million acres of O&C forest
lands.
public domain forests & woodlands
The BLM manages forests on public domain lands to restore and
maintain forest ecosystems, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire,
and generate a sustainable flow of forest products that can be sold
through commercial and salvage timber sales and personal use permits
that support rural communities. Resilient forests store and filter
water for aquifers and reservoirs, offer opportunities for recreation,
provide habitat for thousands of species, store carbon, provide clean
air, support timber and other jobs, and provide millions of board feet
of lumber and thousands of tons of biomass for alternative energy.
According to the Department of the Interior's 2011 Economic Impact
Report, timber harvested from public domain forests supported $129
million in economic activity in 2011, and biomass from BLM forests has
become part of the feedstock that meets various State and Federal
renewable energy portfolio standards. BLM forests also support local
businesses dependent on tourism and outdoor recreation. Additionally,
the value of forests for biological carbon storage is being
increasingly studied and understood and can help the United States
toward a better carbon balance.
Extreme drought, wildfires, pests, and invasive species
infestations have plagued much of the West over the past decade,
causing significant impacts to both forest health and local economies.
The BLM has worked collaboratively with Federal, State, and other
partners to develop strategies for addressing forestry issues such as
the mountain pine beetle outbreak and whitebark pine tree decline. In
2012 fire affected over 287,000 acres of BLM forests and a cumulative
1.7 million acres of BLM forest mortality have been attributed to bark
beetles, other insect attacks, and pathogens. Overall, the BLM
estimates that about 14 million acres of BLM-managed forests outside of
western Oregon are at elevated risk of insect and disease attacks or
catastrophic wildfire. In 2012, as part of the Bureau's hazardous fuels
reduction program, the BLM conducted restoration and hazardous fuels
reduction treatments, including thinning, salvage, and prescribed
burns, on more than 465,000 acres of BLM-managed forests, woodlands and
rangelands.
Because potential threats to forest health often cross
jurisdictional boundaries, the BLM has increasingly adopted a landscape
approach to resource conservation and treatments to reduce the buildup
of hazardous fuels. The BLM has begun developing vegetation management
policies that consider entire landscapes, through integrating a number
of programs--including forestry, rangeland management, riparian
management, plant conservation, invasive weeds, and fire
rehabilitation. This integration should result in more coordinated
policies. On BLM managed lands outside of western Oregon, the BLM also
offered over 35 million board feet of timber and other forest products
for sale and used timber sales to treat over 20,000 acres of vegetation
in fiscal year 2012. In addition, the BLM routinely works with partner
agencies, organizations, and landowners to engage in land and watershed
restoration and hazardous fuels reduction activities on Federal, state,
and private lands, and the BLM has used the pilot Good Neighbor
Authority in Colorado on projects where small parcels of federal lands
were interspersed with state and private lands.
Stewardship contracts, timber sales, and service contracts are
tools that the BLM uses to manage our forested lands. Stewardship
contracting authority allows the BLM to award contracts for forest
health and restoration treatments, including hazardous fuels
reductions, for a period of up to ten years and to use the value of
timber or other forest products removed as an offset against the cost
of services received. The BLM has enjoyed many successes in using
stewardship contracting authority, thereby achieving goals for forest
and woodland restoration, and conducting both hazardous fuels reduction
and habitat restoration treatments. In addition, stewardship contracts
create jobs and revenue growth for local communities, and protect local
communities from wildland fire. From 2003 through 2012, the BLM entered
into over 400 stewardship contracts on approximately 108,000 acres of
BLM-managed lands. This important authority expires in September, 2013,
and the President's Budget for FY 2014 proposes to make the authority
permanent.
the o&c lands
The 1937 O&C Lands Act placed the 2.2 million checkerboard acres of
Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road grant lands
under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Under the O&C
Lands Act, the Department of the Interior manages the O&C lands for
``the purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply,
protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow, and contributing to the
economic stability of local communities and industries, and providing
recreational facilities.'' The Act also provides that the 18 O&C
counties receive yearly payments equal to 50 percent of receipts from
timber harvests on public lands in these counties.
After the historic highs in the late 1980s, timber harvests and the
associated payments to counties decreased significantly in the mid-
1990s due to many factors, including business cycles, industrial
logging practices such as outdated clear-cut techniques and herbicide
spraying that are not employed today, and a better understanding of
conservation requirements for threatened and endangered species such as
the Northern Spotted Owl, coho salmon, and marbled murrelet. The 1994
Northwest Forest Plan was developed by Federal agencies in consultation
with the public and industry to be a balanced, long-term management
plan providing a stable supply of timber along with protection of fish
and wildlife habitat for 24.5 million acres of Federal forest, most of
which is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, in western Oregon, western
Washington, and northern California.
The Department of the Interior continues to manage the O&C lands
under the Northwest Forest Plan, along with management recommendations
derived from the 2011 Northern Spotted Owl recovery plan, and the 2012
Final Critical Habitat Rule, and a number of court decisions. The BLM's
capacity to offer timber sales involves a number of complex and
sometimes competing resource management goals, including providing a
predictable and sustainable yield of timber and other forest products,
maintaining endangered species habitat, providing clean water,
protecting older forests, restoring fire-adapted ecosystems, and
providing recreational opportunities. Over the last three years, the
BLM in western Oregon has offered approximately 650 million board feet
of timber and generated over $54 million dollars in timber receipts.
During this same period, 32 thousand acres have been harvested on the
O&C lands. Over 5.5 million visitors per year come to the BLM-managed
lands in western Oregon to enjoy hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, and
boating. The BLM's total land management budget in FY 2013 was reduced
in total by $69 million from the 2012 enacted level, including a $5.8
million sequestration reduction for the management of O&C lands. Since
implementing timber sales requires a 2-3 year planning process, the
reduced funding in FY 2013 will impact BLM's capacity to maintain and
increase timber harvest levels in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Declining timber harvest levels, a result of the increasingly
complex issues in the area and increasing litigation, have impacted
jobs in western Oregon and have resulted in decreased timber revenues
paid to the O&C counties. Congress has developed a number of
legislative solutions over the years to supplement revenues to
counties, including the Secure Rural Schools Act, which was originally
enacted in 2000, but expired at the end of FY 2012. If the Secure Rural
Schools Act is not reauthorized, payments to the 18 counties in western
Oregon will revert to receipt sharing as provided under the O&C Lands
Act. The President's 2014 Budget proposes to reauthorize the program
for five years beginning in 2013 and continuing through 2017.
Collaborative Approaches
The BLM is aware that in western Oregon, the need for a predictable
and sustainable timber supply, local jobs, and revenues for public
services provided by the O&C counties must be balanced with the goals
of maintaining recreational opportunities, conserving older forests,
and aiding the recovery of the Northern Spotted Owl and other
threatened and endangered species. Despite decades of controversy
surrounding these issues, many in Oregon continue to work hard to
develop feasible solutions that meet the needs of industry, rural
communities, local governments, and the conservation of habitat,
species, and water resources. For example, as provided under Title II
of the Secure Rural Schools Act, the BLM has collaborated with Resource
Advisory Committees to prioritize and allocate funding for restoration
projects. As part of the Administration's ongoing commitment to improve
forest health, aid in the recovery of the Northern Spotted Owl, and
support economic opportunities for local communities in the Pacific
Northwest, leaders from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, BLM, and
U.S. Forest Service met in April with employees from all three agencies
to articulate a common vision and intent in approaching these goals. In
the past year, Governor Kitzhaber; Senator Wyden; and Representatives
DeFazio, Walden, and Schrader have initiated collaborative efforts to
better understand and address these multifaceted concerns. Because the
issues surrounding forestry in western Oregon are both complex and
contentious, the various collaborative approaches undertaken by the BLM
and others have all met with challenges in reaching consensus among the
wide range of stakeholders.
Secretarial Pilot Projects
To promote the maintenance of healthy forest systems in western
Oregon, the Department of the Interior has initiated three
collaborative pilot projects applying the principles of ecological
forestry in the Bureau's Roseburg, Coos Bay, and Medford districts.
Ecological restoration--an array of principles and techniques developed
in partnership with Dr. Norm Johnson, Professor of Forestry Resources
at Oregon State University, my fellow panelist, and Dr. Jerry Franklin,
Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Washington--applies
variable retention harvest techniques that create early successional
ecosystems while conserving high-value habitat across large watersheds.
These pilot projects have been underway since December 2010, and
have involved collaboration with resource professionals from the BLM,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and
the Coquille Indian Tribe, as well as industry and the conservation
community. The objective of the pilots is to demonstrate the ecological
and economic merits of the restoration strategy outlined by Professors
Johnson and Franklin in moist and dry forests. The pilots serve as
examples of how active management may be applied in critical habitat
for the Northern Spotted Owl, and lessons learned through these pilot
efforts will help inform the BLM's approach to future management of
these lands.
Resource Management Plans
The BLM is revising the six Resource Management Plans that govern
management of the O&C lands. The BLM will continue to have significant
engagement with the public in this effort, striving for a cooperative
approach to the complex issues associated with managing these lands.
The BLM in western Oregon is employing a series of collaborative
approaches and meetings to engage over 25 formal cooperators in
addition to interested public stakeholders during the current efforts
to revise the Resource Management Plans. The revised plans will provide
a management framework for O&C lands that furthers the recovery of
threatened and endangered species, produces a sustained yield of timber
products, provides for clean water, restores fire-adapted ecosystems,
and ensures diverse recreational opportunities. In 2012, scoping for
the plan revisions was completed, and the BLM has used input derived
during the scoping period to determine the Purpose and Need for the
planning effort. The BLM has also begun hosting a series of meetings to
conduct outreach on issues important to the public as we move forward
toward developing a draft. The revised plans will consider lessons
learned from the ecological forestry pilot projects, the revised
recovery plan and final critical habitat designation for the Northern
Spotted Owl, and the 2008 planning effort. As the BLM moves forward
with the planning effort, it will also continue to work with Senator
Wyden, Governor Kitzhaber, and other leaders in Oregon in their efforts
to develop a collaborative resolution to forest management issues in
western Oregon.
conclusion
The BLM is committed to managing both public domain forests and the
O&C lands in a manner consistent with applicable authorities, including
the O&C Lands Act in western Oregon. The BLM will continue to offer
timber sales consistent with our Resource Management Plans and the
Northwest Forest Plan for the benefit of rural economies and forest
health. We look forward to continuing to work with the Committee and
with our partners to manage forests and their many associated resources
and values on the public lands. Thank you again for the opportunity to
discuss the BLM's forest management programs.
The Chairman. Thank you and also thank you to all the
people at the agency helping us with the technical assistance
to get that O and C bill ready.
Mr. Farquhar. We'll be very happy to help with that,
Senator.
The Chairman. Very good.
Dr. Johnson, welcome.
STATEMENT OF K. NORMAN JOHNSON, DEPARTMENT OF FOREST ECOSYSTEMS
AND SOCIETY, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Johnson. Good morning. Thank you for the invitation,
Senator Wyden, to speak before your committee.
I'm speaking today for myself and Dr. Jerry Franklin. I
must say that the comments represent our own views and not
necessarily of our respective institutions. Jerry is at the
University of Washington and I'm at Oregon State University.
My testimony today focuses on how we might improve
attainment of a key goal of the 1937 O and C Act that set the
initial management direction for the BLM O and C lands. That
specific legislative direction for a sustained yielded timber
harvest that contributes to the economic stability of local
communities makes these lands unique, with different
responsibilities from our national forests.
In addition the lands are confined within a single State,
Oregon, also making them different from other Federal lands.
The Northwest Forest Plan which BLM now operates under
designated matrix as a land base for sustained yield management
including regeneration harvest. In the face of public protest
and litigation though, the agency has retreated to a short term
strategy of young stand thinning and fuel reduction while
waiting for a political and Administrative decision which will
allow it to set a sustained yield level. The current strategy
has a limited timeframe, perhaps 15 years, until it will
exhaust harvest opportunities. Also, it produces only very
modest payments to the counties in which the forests lie.
Our experience suggests that timber harvest will be
difficult to sustain unless there are evident, ecological and
social benefits. The broad support gained for both plantation
thinning and fuel reduction illustrates this concept and
explains why BLM has limited its recent harvest activities to
those treatments.
With these observations in mind we suggest an ecological
forestry approach to the management of the O and C lands, an
approach that incorporates principles and natural forest
development including the role of natural disturbances. As part
of this we first divide the forest into two categories, moist
forests and dry forests because of their contrasting
disturbance regimes and responses to management and the
fundamental need for differing policies with regard to the
protection of old growth forests.
Within the last 2 years we've worked with the Department of
the Interior and Oregon BLM to design and implement ecological
forestry projects on the BLM O and C lands, as Ned just said.
We'll discuss below the potential of both types of forests to
contribute to our permanent timber supply. Much of our
discussion centers on moist forests, the classic rain forest of
the Northwest, as they hold most of the timber volume growth
and economic value of these lands.
Under the Northwest Forest Plan the matrix is a long term
timber supply. Over the last 20 years the affected moist forest
matrix on BLM has been significantly reduced for a variety of
biodiversity concerns. We estimate that currently at most 10
percent of the moist forest acreage could be included with some
certainty in the land base for sustained yield management.
We also have concluded that reversing these trends and
providing a robust, long term timber supply from the O and C
lands will require two things.
Utilizing management strategies that provide both
ecological and social benefits.
Expanding the land base for long term timber production in
ways that sustain environmental values.
As we mentioned our experience suggests that the moist
forest regeneration harvest and essential component will be
difficult to implement unless there are evident ecological
benefits. To restart generation harvest we recommend a
silvicultural strategy that utilizes variable retention harvest
followed by the nurturing of diverse early seral ecosystems and
the growing of stands and rotations long enough for a
biocomplexity to occur.
While this strategy will not provide the per acre harvest
equivalent to those obtained under intensive management such an
approach would provide a permanent timber supply. There are
pictures in our report demonstrating these ideas from the
pilots. This does not involve the harvest of old growth trees
and does not utilize clear cutting.
Given the goals of the Northwest Forest plan and recovery
plans for threatened and endangered species the younger forest,
outside of Northern Spotted Owl critical habitat is a likely
current source of acres for sustained yield management.
We do suggest 3 potential changes that would increase the
moist forest land base.
Adoption of a new stream buffering strategy that we helped
develop with Dr. Reeves, who took part in the development of
the Northwest Forest plan.
Re-evaluate the need for younger stands in the late
successional reserves and limiting survey and manage
requirements to species known to be in decline.
In addition we recommend that the BLM accelerate its
collaborative effort with the Fish and Wildlife to understand
the potential role of moist forests variable retention harvest
in critical habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl and identify
the potential level of activity over the next 5 to 10 years.
In total all of these changes could double or triple the
land base for sustained yield management in moist forests.
In dry forests which are around Medford and Grant's Pass
are immensely important to the people of Southwest Oregon in
many ways. Numerous ecological and social tensions surround
their conservation and use. Increasing stand density threaten
neighboring homes and communities on the forests themselves.
Yet harvests under the restoration strategies often do not
yield substantial revenue, making it difficult to pay for
actions that are address public concerns and increase forest
sustainability.
For these dry forests we need a strategy tailored just to
them with retaining and nurturing old trees and other
significant structural elements of the dry forest, as a
starting point, and the application of ecological forestry. In
addition retaining some denser forests and patches scattered to
the landscape in an untreated or a lightly treated condition is
an important element.
We think that this strategy should be applied across ages,
land allocations and locations across the entire matrix and
LSRs, inside and outside of critical habitat. In so doing we
expect that about one third of the dry forest we retain in
denser patches and half to two-thirds would be treated.
In sum these approaches should help address the issues
surrounding how to increase timber harvests on the O and C
lands while still retaining environmental values.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of K. Norman Johnson, Department of Forest
Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University, and Jerry F. Franklin,
School of Environmental and Forest Science, University of Washington,
with the technical assistance of Debora Johnson, Applegate Forestry
I speak today for myself and Dr. Jerry Franklin. These comments
represent our own views and not those of our respective institutions.
The BLM in western Oregon administers a collection of land
ownerships resulting from various Congressional actions. They include
the Oregon and California Railroad Lands, Coos Bay Wagon Roads and
Special Act lands, totaling over 2.1 million acres. Collectively, we
will call them by their popular name of ``BLM O&C lands'' (Figure 1)*.
In addition, some O&C lands are within the national forests and are
administered by the Forest Service, the ``Controverted Lands''
(approximately 450,00 acres outside of Wilderness) (Figure 1). We will
discuss the Controverted Lands later in this report.
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* All figures have been retained in committee files.
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Our testimony today focuses on how we might improve attainment of a
key goal of the 1937 O&C Act that set the initial management direction
for the BLM O&C lands--attainment of sustained yield of timber harvest
that enables a permanent source of timber supply and contribution to
the economic stability of local communities.\1\ By sustained yield, we
mean organization of a property for continuous timber production, under
the silvicultural prescriptions, rotation ages, and cutting cycles
reflective of the goals for the forest (Helms, 1996).
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\1\ Congress directed that the O&C forests be managed for `` . .
.permanent forest production. . .in conformity with the principle of
sustained yield for the purpose of providing a permanent source of
timber supply. . . ., protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow,
and contributing to the economic stability of local communities and
industries, and providing recreational facilities.''
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This specific legislative direction for sustained yield of timber
harvest that contributes to the economic stability of local communities
makes these federal lands unique, with different responsibilities than
our national forests. In addition, the lands are confined within a
single state--Oregon--also making them different from other federal
lands.
As other acts have been passed, such as the Endangered Species Act
and the Clean Water Act, managers of O&C forests have gained added
responsibilities that have significantly impacted the sustained yield
level of timber harvest (Tuchman and Davis 2013). They are currently
managed under the Northwest Forest Plan (USFS and USBLM 1994).
Perhaps the most elusive and frustrating part of managing the BLM
O&C lands has been failure to establish a sustained yield of timber
harvest that enables a permanent source of timber supply as mandated in
the 1937 O&C Act. The Northwest Forest Plan, under which BLM now
operates, designated ``Matrix'' as the land base for sustained yield
management, including regeneration harvest. In the face of public
protest and litigation, though, the agency has retreated to a short-
term strategy of young stand thinning and fuel reduction, while waiting
for a political or administrative decision that will allow it to
establish a sustained yield level and proceed with the harvests to
achieve it (Johnson and Franklin 2012, 2013). The current strategy has
a limited time-frame (perhaps 15 years) until it will exhaust harvest
opportunities; also, it produces only very modest payments to the
counties in which these forests lie.
We base on our recommendations on the experience of the last three
years in which we assisted the BLM in setting up a number of
demonstration projects to help them move beyond the current strategy to
one that will be more long lasting. Our experience suggests that timber
harvests will be difficult to implement unless there are evident
ecological and social benefits--the broad support gained for both
plantation thinning and fuel reduction illustrate this concept and why
BLM has limited its recent harvest activities to those treatments.
Also, a recent survey of Oregonians showed that they favor
ecological forestry approaches to the BLM O&C lands over more
traditional intensive management approaches even though they would
produce lower harvest and revenue. These results also hold in the
downstate counties most impacted by the reduction in O&C harvest
(Taylor 2013).
With these observations in mind, we suggest an ``Ecological
Forestry'' approach to management of the BLM O&C lands--one that will
provide both ecological and economic benefits now and into the future.
``Ecological Forestry'' incorporates principles of natural forest
development, including the role of natural disturbances, in the
initiation, development, and maintenance of stands and landscape
mosaics (Seymour and Hunter 1999, Franklin et al. 2007, Franklin and
Johnson 2012). Ecological Forestry is based, therefore, on application
of our best current ecological understanding of forest ecosystems in
managing these ecosystems to achieve integrated environmental,
economic, and cultural outcomes.
We wish today to describe Ecological Forestry concepts and how they
can assist in providing a sustained yield of timber harvest from the
BLM O&C lands.
recognition of moist forests and dry forests
For management and discussion, we divide the BLM O&C forests into
Moist Forests and Dry Forests, because of their contrasting disturbance
regimes and responses to management, and the fundamental need for
differing policies with regard to protection of old-growth forests and
trees (Franklin and Johnson 2012) (Figure 2).
Over the last two years, we have worked with the Department of
Interior and Oregon BLM to design and implement Ecological Forestry
projects in Moist Forests and Dry Forests on the BLM O&C lands--
projects that have both ecological and economic benefits (Johnson and
Franklin 2012, 2013) (Figure 2).
We will discuss below the potential of both types of forest (Moist
and Dry) to contribute to a permanent timber supply. Much of our
discussion centers on Moist Forests as they hold most of the timber
volume, growth, and economic value of these lands.
ecological forestry in moist forests
Moist Forest ecosystems undergo many centuries of stand development
and change following major disturbances, such as severe wildfire or
windstorm, before achieving the massiveness and structural complexity
of old-growth forests (Franklin et al. 2002). Composition, structure,
and function of existing unmanaged old-growth Moist Forests generally
are relatively unaffected by human activities, except at stand edges
(Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team 1993). Management
activities in these existing old-growth Moist Forests, such as
thinning, are not needed to sustain desired conditions in these forests
and can actually cause old-growth Moist Forests to diverge widely from
natural forests in structure and function or become destabilized
(Franklin et al. 2002). Wildfire suppression is typically consistent
with efforts to retain such forests--i.e., it is not known to result in
significant changes in Moist Forest ecosystems (Agee 1993).
Restoration may be needed in Moist Forest landscapes in which old-
growth stands are embedded, however. Many Moist Forest landscapes are
currently dominated by dense young plantations, which are low in
biodiversity and deficient in the early (pre-forest) and late (mature
and old-growth) successional stages, which are richest in biodiversity
(Wimberly 2002, Spies et al. 2007). Late-successional Moist Forests
provide habitat for thousands of species including the Northern Spotted
Owl (NSO) (Strix occidentalis caurina) and other habitat specialists
(Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team 1993); past timber
harvests have greatly reduced their extent and continuity (Forest
Ecosystem Management Assessment Team 1993, Wimberly 2002, Spies et al.
2007). Continued decline in NSO populations across much of its range
have heightened the importance of retaining late successional forests
(Forsman et al. 2011).
Early successional or seral Moist Forest sites are highly diverse,
trophic-and function-rich ecosystems that develop after a severe
disturbance but before the re-establishment of a closed forest canopy
(Swanson et al. 2011). Conceptually, disturbances of either natural
(e.g. wildfire) or human (e.g. timber harvest) origin are capable of
generating this stage.
Large natural disturbances often produce high-quality early seral
ecosystems provided they are not intensively salvaged and replanted
(Swanson et al. 2011). However, such disturbances are unevenly
distributed in time and space.
Areas devoted to traditional intensive timber production (clearcut,
site preparation, dense planting and control of competing vegetation to
ensure rapid dominance of the next forest crop on the site) provide
little high quality early seral habitat for several reasons. First, few
or no structures from pre-harvest stands (e.g., live trees, snags, and
logs) are retained on intensively managed sites, although they are
abundant following severe natural disturbances (Swanson et al. 2011).
Additionally, intensive site preparation and reforestation efforts
limit both the diversity and duration of early seral organisms, which
are often actively eliminated by use of herbicides or other treatments
(Swanson et al. 2011). Consequently, many Moist Forest landscapes
currently lack sufficient representation of high-quality early seral
ecosystems due to harvest, reforestation, and fire suppression policies
on both private and public lands (Swanson et al. 2011, Spies et al.
2007).
Functional early seral habitat potentially can be created using
regeneration harvest prescriptions that retain biological legacies and
use less intensive approaches to re-establishment of closed forest
canopies (Franklin and Johnson 2012). Such approaches would produce
more modest timber yields than the intensive management described above
but could provide significant ecological benefits.
Given all these considerations, and others, we utilize the
following Ecological Forestry strategy for Moist Forests on BLM O&C
lands (Franklin and Johnson 2012):
Retain existing older stands and individual older trees
found within younger stands proposed for management, using a
selected threshold age;
Accelerate development of structural complexity in younger
stands, using diverse silvicultural approaches;
Implement variable retention regeneration harvests in
younger stands (stands generally less than 80 years of age),
retaining such structures as individual trees, snags, and down
logs and intact forest patches;
Accommodate development of diverse early seral ecosystems
following harvest, by using less intense approaches to site
preparation and tree regeneration;
Embed the preceding objectives in a silvicultural system
that includes creation and management of multi-aged, mixed-
species stands on long rotations (e.g., 100-160 years); and,
Develop landscape-level plans for distributing variable
retention regeneration harvests to assure desired placement and
appropriate scale of implementation.
Sources of a Permanent Timber Supply from BLM Moist Forests
Under the Northwest Forest Plan, the ``Matrix'' is the source of
long-term timber supply--the part of the BLM O&C lands that has long-
term timber production as a goal. Over the last 20 years, the effective
Moist Forest Matrix acreage available for sustained yield management
has been significantly reduced from that originally identified in the
Northwest Forest Plan (Figure 3). Four major reasons for this shrinkage
are: 1) Critical Habitat for the NSO covering Matrix (USFWS 2012), 2)
Recommended Actions in the NSO Revised Recovery Plan that result in
protection of older stands in the Matrix (USFWS 2011), 3) Habitat for
the Marbled Murrelet discovered over time in Matrix, and 4) Buffer
requirements for Survey and Manage Species. It must be added that
public protest of harvest of mature and old forest in the Matrix often
predated these administrative actions and effects, contributing in many
ways to the shrinkage in this land base. We estimate that, at most, 10%
of Moist Forest acreage--the ``available'' Matrix--can currently be
included, with some certainty, in the land base for sustained yield
management.
We have concluded that reversing these trends, and providing a
robust long-term timber supply from the O&C Moist Forests will require:
1) utilizing management strategies that provide both ecological and
economic benefits and 2) expanding the land base for long-term timber
production in ways that sustain environmental values. We will discuss
each in turn.
Moist Forest Management Strategies That Provide both Ecological and
Economic Benefits
As mentioned above, our experience indicates that Moist Forest
regeneration harvests---an essential component of sustained yield
management---will be difficult to implement unless there are evident
ecological benefits. BLM has limited its recent activities in Moist
Forests to plantation thinning where such benefits can be demonstrated.
To restart regeneration harvests, we recommend a silvicultural
strategy that utilizes variable retention harvest followed by the
nurturing of diverse early seral ecosystems and the growing of forests
stands on rotations long enough for bio-complexity to appear--an
approach that sustains important elements of biodiversity and creates
desired ecosystem structures and processes while providing timber
harvest and revenue. While this strategy would not provide per acre
harvest levels equivalent to those attained under intensive management,
such an approach would provide a permanent timber supply.
We are currently working with four BLM Districts to demonstrate
this approach on the O&C lands (Figures 4 and 5).
These Moist Forest Ecological Forestry Projects have been
misrepresented in some quarters: 1) they do not involve the harvest of
old growth trees and 2) they do not utilize clearcutting. Rather they
use variable retention harvest, which has different ecological effects
than clearcutting (Lindenmayer et al. 2012, Gustafsson et al. 2012). We
find it difficult to understand how such harvests can be described as
clearcutting when 30% or more of the pre-harvest forest on the harvest
units is retained for the next rotation!
Expanding the Moist Forest Land Base for Sustained Yield Management
While Maintaining Environmental Values
To help in the discussion of land base for sustained yield
management, we organized the BLM O&C forests by their major land
allocations under the NWFP, their age class, and whether they lie
within recently designated Critical Habitat for the Northern Spotted
Owl (Johnson and Franklin (2013).
Given the goals of the Northwest Forest Plan and recovery plans for
threatened and endangered species, the younger forest outside of NSO
Critical Habitat (less than 80 years of age) is the likely current
source of acres for sustained yield management (see Johnson and
Franklin 2013 for more discussion). The acres are shown in the far left
bar of Figure 6. Also, some of the more simplified stands in the 80-120
class might be available.
We suggest three potential changes that would increase the Moist
Forest land base for sustained yield on the BLM O&C lands while still
meeting the goals of the Northwest Forest Plan and recovery plan goals:
1) Apply one of the alternative stream buffering strategies
of Reeves et al. (2013) to modify Riparian Reserves within the
Matrix;
2) Re-evaluate the need for younger stands, outside of the
Critical Habitat designation for the NSO, to remain in Late
Successional Reserves;
3) Limit Survey and Manage Requirements to species known to
be in decline or some difficulty;
Each of these changes is described below. It should be noted that
these changes may come with special provisions to address remaining
concerns about effects on species and ecosystems.
In addition, we recommend that the BLM accelerate its collaborative
effort with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to understand the
potential role of Moist Forest variable retention harvest in Critical
Habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl and identify the potential level
of activity over the next five to ten years.
Finally, we recommend considering these ideas for the Controverted
Lands now managed by the USDA Forest Service along with the application
of Ecological Forestry to those lands.
Reshape Riparian Buffers
Use scientifically credible methodologies to modify the Riparian
Reserves of the Northwest Forest Plan, while still achieving the
aquatic ecosystem goals of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy (ACS)
(Reeves et al. 2013) and other ecological goals provided by those
forests.
Interim buffers (aka Riparian Reserves) of two-site potential tree
heights on fish-bearing streams and one-site potential tree height on
non-fish bearing streams occupy at least 40% percent of Moist Forest
Matrix under the (Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). These interim buffers
were identified as part of the NWFP in 1994, with the expectation that
subsequently they would be revised as the NWFP was implemented. With
rare exception, the interim buffers have not been revised (Thomas et
al. 2007, Reeves et al. 2006, Reeves et al. 2013).
Recently developed science and analysis tools (Benda et al. 2007)
have opened the way to possible refinement of those buffer sizes.
Applying these tools and science to streams in BLM Matrix, Reeves et
al. (2013) concluded that alternatives exist to the current
implementation of the ACS that reshape and reduce the buffer area
needed to meet the goals of the ACS. One alternative has fixed widths
and one has variable widths based on stream segment features. Both
alternatives utilize ``tree tipping'' to ensure that thinning within
buffers does not negatively affect wood delivery to the stream.\2\
Also, both alternatives limit harvest to younger stands (stands
generally less than 80 years of age).
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\2\ See Reeves, et al. (2013) for detail on the analysis and
alternatives beyond that covered here.
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Alternative A applies fixed-width buffers of one site-potential
tree height for both fish-bearing and non-fish bearing streams.
The buffer on fish-bearing streams and the inner half of
non-fish-bearing streams would continue to be devoted solely to
ecological goals as defined in the Aquatic Conservation
Strategy.
Ecological Forestry (with tree tipping) could be applied in
younger stands in the outer half of the non-fish bearing
streams to achieve ecological goals and sustained yield goals.
The second tree height on fish-bearing streams would no longer be
included in the riparian buffer. Thus, that area would be available for
the application of Ecological Forestry to younger stands. Use of
Ecological Forestry would enable that portion of the forest to continue
providing a variety of functions for the many terrestrial species that
use areas near streams while also providing sustained timber harvest.
Under Alternative A, Riparian Reserve acreage in Matrix under
current implementation of the ACS in the Northwest Forest Plan, would
be allocated as follows: half would continue to be solely devoted to
ecological goals and half would be devoted to both ecological and
sustained yield goals, with harvest limited to younger stands.
Alternative B also applies fixed-width buffers of one site-
potential tree height for both fish-bearing and non-fish bearing
streams, but divides the area within the site-potential tree height
between different goals for each stream segment based on its
contribution to aquatic ecosystem values and then places each segment
into one of two categories: 1) more ecologically sensitive and
productive and 2) less ecologically sensitive and productive.
The buffer on the more ecologically sensitive and productive
stream segments would continue to be devoted solely to
ecological goals as defined in the Aquatic Conservation
Strategy, as would the buffer on the first 100' on less
ecologically sensitive and productive fish-bearing stream
segments and the first 50' of less ecologically sensitive and
productive non-fish bearing stream segments.
Ecological Forestry (with tree tipping) could be applied to
younger stands in the outer portions of the less ecologically
sensitive and productive stream segments to achieve ecological
goals and sustained yield goals.
As with Alternative A, the second tree height on fish-bearing
streams would no longer be included in the riparian buffer. Thus, that
area would be available for the application of Ecological Forestry to
younger stands. Use of Ecological Forestry there would enable that
portion of the forest to continue providing a variety of functions for
the many terrestrial species that use areas near streams while also
providing sustained timber harvest.
Under Alternative B, Riparian Reserve acreage in Matrix under
current implementation of the ACS in the Northwest Forest Plan would be
allocated as follows: approximately two-fifths would continue to be
solely devoted to ecological goals and approximately three-fifths would
be devoted to both ecological and sustained yield goals, with harvest
limited to younger stands. The exact distribution between the two
categories varies by watershed.
The modeling in Alternative B takes a landscape approach that makes
it possible to understand the location of the most ecologically
important stream segments across multi-owner watersheds. The Reeves, et
al. work (2013) showed that many of the most important segments are on
private lands that have much less extensive stream buffer requirements
than federal lands, especially on small non-fish streams. This
capability should enable the targeting of aquatic conservation and
recovery across ownerships--a truly ``all lands'' approach.
Implementation of this revised buffer strategy should also include
an examination of road systems near streams and removal/decommissioning
of problem roads. Without such an effort, it will be difficult to
achieve the goals of the ACS.
Shift Portions of Late Successional Reserves to Sustained Yield
Management
Shift younger stands in LSRs outside Critical Habitat to Matrix--
i.e., aligning LSRs and NSO Critical Habitat. A major purpose of LSRs
was to provide reserves of sufficient size to maintain self-sustaining
populations of NSOs. They were drawn using the best available
information 20 years ago, but new knowledge and more advanced
techniques have made an improved placement possible. While there were
other justifications for LSRs, especially within the range of the
Marbled Murrelet (near the Coast), conservation of the NSO was the
major justification for the size and placement of the LSRs.
Thus, Critical Habitat is somewhat ``out of sync'' with the
original landscape allocations of the Northwest Forest Plan; redesign
of the LSRs to better align them with NSO Critical Habitat would
increase the area available for sustained yield management using
Ecological Forestry.
This reallocation should focus on shifting younger stands and
stands in the LSRs. Provisions of the Revised Recovery Plan (Recovery
Action 10 and Recovery Action 32) call for protection of historical owl
activity areas and protection of older, more complex portions of
forests in Matrix outside of Critical Habitat.
Substitute a Sensitive Species Policy for the Survey and Manage Policy
Focus species-specific management on species of concern. The
Survey-and-Manage (S&M) element of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP)
represented an unparalleled attempt to protect rare, little-known
species associated with late-successional and old-growth forests on
more than 25 million acres of federal lands (Molina et al. 2006). The
FEMAT mission included ``...maintenance or restoration of habitat
conditions to support viable populations, well distributed across their
current ranges, of species known (or reasonably suspected) to be
associated with old-growth forest conditions.'' Therefore, the
persistence of 1,120 individual species and species groups associated
with late successional and old-growth (LSOG) forest were evaluated
relative to achieving the viability objective in FEMAT and the
subsequent environmental impact statement (Molina, et al. 2006).
The FEMAT analysis concluded that insufficient knowledge was
available to determine whether the NWFP's system of reserves would be
adequate for 427 species--some LSOG forest was still available for
harvest in the Matrix. The S&M list included amphibians, bryophytes,
fungi, lichens, mollusks, vascular plants, functional groups of
arthropods, and one mammal--the Red Tree Vole (Molina et al. 2006). To
remedy this deficiency S&M provisions were added for these species,
which typically required surveys to determine whether they were present
on sites proposed for activities, such as timber sales, and mitigation
measures, such as protective buffers, when they were found.
We suggest substitution of a ``Sensitive Species Policy'' for
``Survey and Manage'' as a way to focus analysis on those LSOG species
that are of concern. We suggest this approach for two reasons: 1)
Continued harvest of LSOG forest in the Northwest Forest Plan caused
the need for S&M. Yet, that harvest, by and large, did not happen and
will not happen under the NSO Revised Recovery Plan and NSO Critical
Habitat. Therefore the need for such an approach has greatly
diminished. 2) The species-specific approach taken in the NWFP, in
attempting to maintain or restore habitat conditions for viable
populations for all species associated with LSOG forests, followed the
``viability rule'' in the regulations implementing the National Forest
Management Act. That regulation has been revised to focus on species
about which there is ``conservation concern.'' We will discuss this
second point below.
The viability objective quoted above and utilized in the NWFP
originated from regulations associated with implementing the National
Forest Management Act (USDA 1982) and was specifically limited to
vertebrates in that regulation. However, in FEMAT, it was applied to
invertebrates as well as vertebrates and to BLM lands as well as
National Forest lands, an interpretation ruled by courts to be within
the discretion of the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to adopt
and implement (Seattle Audubon Soc'y v. Lyons 1994).
Species were put in the S&M category because there was insufficient
knowledge about how the NWFP might influence their habitat and
population dynamics. Thus, the burden of proof was on the land manager
to show that these species would not be harmed by a proposed activity.
Given an ecosystem management plan in place, like the Northwest Forest
Plan complemented by the NSO Revised Recovery Plan and Critical
Habitat, an alternative approach would be to require evidence that
population levels and trends for the species indicated concerns and, if
concerns were established, to apply special protocols. This approach
would be similar to that taken in the recently revised regulation
regarding implementation of the National Forest Management Act (USDA
2012) in which consideration of individual species is limited to those
for which the responsible official has determined that a proposed
ecosystem management plan would not be sufficient.\3\ A comparable
approach here would use the ecosystem plan in place (like the NWFP
supplemented by Critical Habitat) to conserve species, except where
evidence exists that additional measures are required.
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\3\ ``The responsible official shall determine whether or not the
plan components required by paragraph (a) of this section provide the
ecological conditions necessary to: contribute to the recovery of
federally listed threatened and endangered species, conserve proposed
and candidate species, and maintain a viable population of each species
of conservation concern within the plan area. If the responsible
official determines that the plan components required in paragraph (a)
are insufficient to provide such ecological conditions, then
additional, species-specific plan components, including standards or
guidelines, must be included in the plan to provide such ecological
conditions in the plan area USDA 2012, 219.9 (b)''. Paragraph (a)
states: ``the plan must include plan components, including standards or
guidelines, to maintain or restore the ecological integrity of
terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and watersheds in the plan area,
including plan components to maintain or restore their structure,
function, composition, and connectivity (USDA 2012 219.9(a).)''
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In Moist Forests, this change could increase the availability of
younger stands. Mature and old growth stands would not be affected
since they are already committed to recovery of Threatened and
Endangered Species, as discussed earlier, and other goals.
The recent analysis of the status of the Red Tree Vole by USFWS
(USDI 2011) may offer an opportunity as described above. The Department
of Interior decided that ``After review of the best available
scientific and commercial information, we have determined that listing
the North Oregon Coast population of the Red Tree Vole as a DPS
(distinct population segment) is warranted. However, the development of
a proposed listing rule is precluded by higher priority actions. . .
Upon publication of this 12-month petition finding, we will add this
DPS of the Red Tree Vole to our candidate species list (USDI 2011, p.
63720).'' This DPS covers the Oregon Coast Range north of the Siuslaw
River. Thus, Survey and Manage considerations relative to the Red Tree
Vole might be limited to the stands north of the Siuslaw River. Such a
change could reduce the need for special Red Tree Vole buffers in a
stand like the one in the Coos Bay Pilot (a ``younger stand'' as
described above)--requirements that helped push retention amounts in a
variable retention regeneration harvest to higher levels than would
otherwise have been needed. In addition, this change could
significantly reduce the cost of timber sales by eliminating expensive
surveys of proposed projects.
assess potential harvest activities on moist forest within nso critical
habitat
Both the NSO Revised Recovery Plan (USFWS 2011) and Critical
Habitat rule (USFWS 2012) emphasize the potential application of
Ecological Forestry within Critical Habitat (USFWS 2012 p. 30):
``In sum, vegetation and fuels management in dry and mixed-
dry forests may be appropriate both within and outside
designated critical habitat where the goal of such treatment is
to conserve natural ecological processes or restore them
(including fire) where they have been modified or suppressed. .
. Likewise, in some moist and mixed forests, management of
northern spotted owl critical habitat should be compatible with
broader ecological goals, such as the retention of high-quality
older forest, the continued treatment of young or homogenous
forest plantations to enhance structural diversity,
heterogeneity and late-successional forest conditions, and the
conservation or restoration of complex early-seral forest
habitat, where appropriate. . . (italics added)
In general, actions that promote ecological restoration and
those that apply ecological forestry principles at appropriate
scales as described above and in the Revised Recovery Plan for
the Northern Spotted Owl (USFWS 2011, pp. III-11 to III-41) may
be, in the right circumstances, consistent with the
conservation of the northern spotted owl and the management of
its critical habitat.''
Currently, the form and extent of such active management is too
problematic for forests within NSO Critical Habitat to be part of the
Most Forest land base for sustained yield management. Discussion and
demonstration will be necessary to clarify the type, amount, and
landscape pattern of timber harvest that is acceptable in Critical
Habitat. That activity has already begun in the Roseburg and Eugene
Districts and elsewhere, where variable retention harvest projects have
been developed, and are being developed, within Critical Habitat.
Shifting from individual project development to landscape assessment of
the magnitude and pattern of variable retention harvest over time will
be a key to determining the contribution Critical Habitat to sustained
yield. This will require a major collaborative effort by BLM and USFWS.
Perhaps, a five or ten year commitment of project acreage for harvest
activities could be the outcome of such an effort.
apply these ideas to the o&c controverted lands managed by the forest
service
Some Oregon & California Railroad lands are administered by the
Forest Service, referred to as the Controverted Lands (Figure 1). These
Controverted Lands reside within the boundaries of the national forests
and cover lands equal to approximately 20 percent of BLM O&C lands.
Some are in Wilderness or other Congressional and Administrative
withdrawals, but many could be considered for sustained yield
management. We classify approximately two-thirds of these lands as
Moist Forest and one-third as Dry Forest. The younger Moist Forests on
Controverted Lands, especially in the Cascades, provide useful
locations to demonstrate Ecological Forestry on the national forests
and also to apply the ideas mentioned above for expanding the land base
for sustained yield management.
ecological forestry in dry forests
Composition and structure of existing Dry Forests landscapes have
been dramatically altered by decades of fire suppression, grazing by
domestic livestock, timber harvesting, and plantation establishment
(Noss et al. 2006) resulting in: (1) fewer old trees of fire-resistant
species, (2) denser forests with multiple canopy layers, (3) more
densely forested landscapes with continuous high fuel levels, and,
consequently, (4) more stands and landscapes highly susceptible to
stand-replacement wildfire and insect epidemics (e.g., Hessburg et al.
2005, Noss et al. 2006, Johnson and Franklin 2012).
In southwest Oregon, Dry Forest sites that have not been previously
harvested are largely occupied by dense maturing Douglas-fir stands,
which often appear to be the first generation of closed-conifer forests
on these sites. Scattered old pines and hardwoods are being crowded out
by these younger Douglas-fir trees. Historically, many of these Dry
Forest landscapes were occupied by more diverse communities including
open grasslands, shrub fields, oak savannas, and mixed hardwood and
conifer woodlands (McKinley and Frank 1996).
Given these considerations, we suggest the following Ecological
Forestry strategy for Dry Forests on the BLM O&C lands (Franklin and
Johnson 2012):
Retain and improve survivability of older conifers by
reducing adjacent fuels and competing vegetation;
Retain and protect other important structures such as large
hardwoods, snags, and logs; some protective cover may be needed
for cavity-bearing structures that are currently being used;
Reduce overall stand densities by thinning so as to (1)
reduce basal areas to desired levels, (2) increase mean stand
diameter, (3) shift composition toward fire-and drought-
tolerant species, and (4) provide candidates for replacement of
old trees;
Restore spatial heterogeneity by varying the treatment of
the stand, such as by leaving untreated patches, creating
openings, and providing for widely spaced single trees and tree
clumps;
Establish new tree cohorts of shade-intolerant species in
openings;
Treat activity fuels and begin restoring historic levels of
ground fuels and understory vegetation using prescribed fire;
and,
Plan and implement activities at landscape levels,
incorporating spatial heterogeneity (e.g., provision for denser
forest patches, such as those needed by the NSO and its prey
species) and restoration needs in non-forest ecosystems (e.g.,
meadows and riparian habitats).
The Dry Forests on BLM western Oregon Forests are immensely
important to the people of southwest Oregon in many ways and numerous
ecological and social tensions surround their conservation and use.
Increasing stand densities threaten both neighboring homes and
communities and the forests themselves (Johnson and Franklin 2012).
Yet, harvests under restoration strategies often do not yield
substantial revenue, making it difficult to pay for actions that
address public concerns and increase forest sustainability. Also, some
challenge the need for action. Thus, application of Ecological Forestry
to the federal Dry Forests of southwest Oregon remains extremely
challenging.
Retaining and nurturing older trees and other significant
structural elements of the Dry Forest stand is the starting point in
the application of Ecological Forestry to Dry Forests. That will
require active management. Although many Dry Forests include older
trees, almost all such forests are highly modified structurally and
compositionally by past management, which has greatly reduced older
tree populations and resulted in increased stand densities. Both
remaining old trees and the forest in which they are embedded are
currently at risk from intense wildfires, epidemics of defoliating
insects, and competition, the latter resulting in accelerated mortality
due to bark beetles. Selection of a threshold age for older trees is
particularly important for Dry Forests, since it is applied to all Dry
Forest stands. In our work we usually use 150 years as the threshold
age for older trees because: (1) trees in Dry Forests generally begin
exhibiting some old-growth characteristics by this age, and (2)
significant Euro-American influences that disrupted historical
disturbance regimes were underway by 1860, e.g., introduction of large
domestic livestock herds and mining.
Retaining some denser forest areas in an untreated or lightly
treated condition is an important landscape-level planning component of
our Dry Forest restoration strategy. Most Dry Forest landscapes include
species and processes that require denser forest as habitat, such as
preferred nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for the NSO and its
prey species (USFWS 2011). Maintaining approximately one-third of a Dry
Forest landscape in denser patches of multi-layered forest has been
proposed for the NSO (Courtney et al. 2008) and the need for a mosaic
of denser patches and treated areas is acknowledged in the NSO recovery
plan (USFWS 2011). In general, landscape amounts and distributions will
be a function of topographic and vegetative factors along with wildlife
goals. Untreated patches in the hundreds of acres could be
preferentially located in less fire-prone areas, such as steep north-
facing slopes, riparian habitats, and sites protected by natural
barriers, like lakes and lava flows. The longevity of the dense forest
patches should be increased by reducing stand densities in the
surrounding landscape matrix (Ager et al. 2007, Gains et al. 2010).
Losses of denser forest patches are inevitable, but--since the
surrounding restored matrix would still be populated with older, larger
trees under this Ecological Forestry approach-suitable dense
replacement habitat can be regrown. The Pilot Joe and Pilot Thompson
projects in the Applegate Watershed illustrate these Dry Forest
principles (Figures 7 and 8). Dense patches that will be retained in
this project, called Late Successional Emphasis Areas (LSEAs).
Commercial and non-commercial treatments were then planned around them
to increase the sustainability of the treated areas and reduce the
potential for the dense patches to be caught by a running crown fire
from the valley below.
Some key points about our Dry Forest landscape strategy are:
1) LSEAs are not reserves. Rather they are part of a dynamic
landscape; over time some of these dense forest patches are
expected to be lost to wildfires and new ones will have to be
created by allowing restored forest areas to grow into a denser
forest state.
2) Management is not prohibited. While we did not suggest
entry into LSEAs in Pilot Joe, limited activities can be
considered to reduce fuels and to achieve other goals as long
as a forest structure is retained that will meet the needs for
the species of interest. Cooperative efforts by BLM and USFWS
to determine needs and actions would be desirable.
3) This strategy is intended for the entire landscape--Matrix
and LSRs and both inside NSO Critical Habitat and outside NSO
Critical Habitat.
Given this strategy for Dry Forests, distinguishing stands by age,
land allocation, and location relative to Critical Habitat for the NSO
(Figure 9) is much less useful than in Moist Forests in determining
where and how Ecological Forestry might be applied. As described above,
this strategy is intended to be applied across land allocations,
Critical Habitat determinations, and age classes.
In summary, we suggest a number of principles to guide application
of Ecological Forestry in Dry Forests:
Don't put ``old'' stands off limits to active management,
including removal of trees--they will need action to save the
old trees within them. These stands often require harvest of
younger trees around old trees to reduce ladder fuels and
competition and improve their longevity. Stand age thresholds
to limit actions, such as those suggested previously for Moist
Forests, are not appropriate in Dry Forests if the intent is to
sustain these forests and the older trees that they contain.
Don't allow Survey and Manage restrictions to prevent
actions that will reduce stresses on old trees--consider a
Sensitive Species policy as described above or prevent
treatments to reduce stand densities and increase heterogeneity
outside of the denser patches. A strategy for Survey and Manage
species in Dry Forests, similar to that which we discussed for
Moist Forests above, might be considered--focus on individual
species where a concern has been demonstrated.
Don't create large reserves in which harvest is prohibited,
since that will increase the probability that the forests
within them will not survive. The LSR network of the NWFP
originated as part of a Moist Forest conservation strategy that
called for large, contiguous areas of reserves where late-
successional forests would develop and where natural processes
would be allowed to function. This approach was carried over to
Dry Forests where it was not appropriate, which is why the NWFP
actually allowed for active restoration treatments in LSRs in
Dry Forest landscapes. It is important that the reserve
strategy of the NWFP be allowed to evolve into a network of
modest-sized dense forest patches across the Dry Forest
landscape.
Do develop a landscape plan across the Dry Forests,
including stands within NSO Critical Habitat, which identifies
the portions of the landscape that will be treated to provide
greater resilience and the portions that will be left in a
denser condition. As a starting point we recommend that
approximately 1/3 of the forest might be left in this denser
condition.
It is difficult to identify a static land base for sustained yield
management in this dynamic system, as it will shift over time. We
recommend that the unique properties of Dry Forests drive the
management strategy for them utilizing the principles we describe above
and that a landscape plan be developed that implements these
principles. Even that landscape plan, it is possible to make an first
estimate of both short-run harvest and long-term yields.
summary
To increase timber harvest on the O&C lands while maintaining
environmental values, we recommend:
1) Application of Ecological Forestry across O&C lands to
provide both ecological benefits and economic benefits;
2) Recognition of Moist Forests and Dry Forests with their
own unique Ecological Forestry strategies;
3) On Moist Forests:
a) Continue a thinning program that emphasizes
variable retention thinning in younger stands;
b) Reinitiate regeneration harvest in younger forests
in Matrix using a variable retention approach followed
by nurturing early successional ecosystems;
c) Reclassify younger forests in Riparian Reserves
and Late Successsional Reserves to sustained yield
management through a cooperative effort of BLM, USFWS
and NOAA Fisheries;
d) Shift from a Survey and Manage Strategy to a
Sensitive Species Strategy;
e) Undertake a major cooperative effort by BLM and
USFWS to identify the pattern and magnitude of
Ecological Forestry within Northern Spotted Owl
Critical Habitat;
f) Also apply these recommendations to the O&C
Controverted Lands in the Cascades managed by the
Forest Service.
In total, these changes could double or triple the Moist Forest
land base for sustained yield management.
4) On Dry Forests:
a) Apply a partial cutting strategy across all age
classes in both Matrix and Late Successional Reserves,
and inside and outside NSO Critical Habitat, to reduce
threats and increase sustainability
b) Reclassify some forest in Riparian Reserves to the
upland restoration strategy
c) Develop a landscape plan for the O&C Dry Forests
identifying the portions of the landscape that will be
treated and the portions that will be left in a denser
condition through a collaborative effort by the BLM,
FS, USFWS, and NOAA Fisheries.
We would expect that half to two-thirds of the O&C Dry Forests will
need treatment through commercial and non-commercial activities.
Estimating Likely Sustained Yield Harvest Levels
The changes suggested here should enable a higher harvest level on
the O&C lands both in the short-run and in the long-run. Estimating the
likely harvest level from these changes with detailed accuracy, though,
takes thought and analysis. It is important that land management
agencies and regulatory agencies be involved in such an analysis.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson.
Particularly those ideas for increasing the land base for
forest management and doing it consistent with the
environmental laws. That's what this committee wants to hear
and we thank you for coming.
Mr. Maisch, welcome, from Alaska.
STATEMENT OF JOHN ``CHRIS'' MAISCH, STATE FORESTER AND DIVISION
DIRECTOR, ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, DIVISION OF
FORESTRY
Mr. Maisch. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair, Ranking
Member Murkowski and members. My name is Chris Maisch, Alaska
State Forester and Director of the Division of Forestry.
I'm here today to speak on behalf of our Governor Sean
Parnell.
The purpose of today's hearing is to discuss how important
forest management on Federal lands is and to examine different
ideas and options including State management. But before I get
into the specifics about the Alaska situation, I'd like to talk
about the working forest concept.
The importance of community, economy and environment and
the balance between these elements which is often described as
a measure of sustainability or the triple bottom line.
Senator Baldwin, I'd like to say if you've ever had the
chance to visit the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin you will know
that that's one of the best examples in the country of long
term forest management there is. But unfortunately in many
locations across the Nation and in Southeast Alaska there
exists an imbalance between these elements.
If you'd please refer to Figure 1 in your packet there's
some larger figures in the very back.
Figure 1 is--well, as you all know Alaska is a big place.
The top of the diagram represents all of Southeast Alaska, 17
million acres. The arrows departing to the left remove acreage
for Congressional designated lands. The arrows departing to the
right remove acreage for Administrative reasons.
The take home message is bottom center where you see two
small slices, black and green, where about 600,000 acres of
land, which is all that is left and is available for active
forest management.
If you'd please refer to Figure 2. During a 16-year period
this graph depicts trends for timber volumes sold on Federal
and State lands in Southeast Alaska. Blue is State land. You
can see it is steady with a slow increase.
Green is Federal land. Drastic decline.
In 1990 there were 4,600 jobs in the timber industry in
Southeast Alaska. Today a few hundred at best.
To address this situation Governor Parnell via
Administrative Order 258 formed the Alaska Timber Jobs Task
Force in 2011. Members come from a broad slice of Alaska and
represent State agencies, community groups, timber industry and
a Federal observer. Charged with State-wide duties and 8
specific tasks including recommendations on how to improve
Federal land management on the Tongass.
The Task Force wanted to document the current situation in
Southeast and decided that population and school enrollment
trends would be good indicators of community health. Over the
past decade regional population is down 5 percent. But even
more startling since 1990 school enrollment is down 15 percent
and 5 communities have lost their only school. A school is the
lifeline of a community, literally its heart, its soul and its
mind.
The State has worked from within the system to try and
change management direction including seeking cooperating
agency status in the 2008 forest plan process and the ensuing
forest plan implementation.
We have also participated in a collaborative process known
as the Tongass Futures Roundtable with a goal of producing a
broadly supported alternative for an operable land base. After
5 years with little result the Governor withdrew and formed the
task force. The task force made 34 specific recommendations
across 8 subject areas.
A priority statewide recommendation was the creation of a
consistent and stable timber supply. To achieve this goal in
Southeast Alaska the State should pursue ownership of two
million acres. It should work jointly with other organizations
and groups to seek change to the management on Federal lands
including the concept of trust or other land tenure changes
such as State forests.
The State of Alaska has a strong and well regulated forest
resources practices act that requires mandatory steam buffers
and has focused on the protection of fish habitat and water
quality.
State forests are actively managed and have a primary
purpose, timber management, that allows other multiple uses
including job creation from a range of resources on the forest,
tourism, fishing, mining and yes, active forest management.
In contrast this is not the Federal focus. It is on
restoration, primarily of the environmental portion of the
working forest concept and not enough attention is being given
to the community or economic portions of a sustainability
model.
The Forest Service can't solve this problem unless Congress
provides relief from burdensome regulations, confusing policy
and litigation by third parties. All challenges to active
forest management. I predict there will be no significant
change in the scope, the scale or pace of management that we
need on our Federal lands to help balance or re-balance the
triple bottom line.
I urge Congress to continue this important discussion,
provide new approaches and tools to address this national
issue.
Mr. Chairman, there is a better alternative. You only need
to look at how the states and tribes of this great country are
actively managing their forest resources and the impressive
accomplishments they have achieved.
With that, I conclude my testimony and thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Maisch follows:]
Prepared Statement of John ``Chris'' Maisch, State Forester and
Division Director, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of
Forestry
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Murkowski, and Members
of the Committee. My name is Chris Maisch and I am the Alaska State
Forester and Division Director for the Alaska Department of Natural
Resources, Division of Forestry. On behalf of the Governor of Alaska,
thank you for the opportunity to submit written and public testimony to
the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources regarding
challenges and opportunities for improving forest management on Federal
lands. We appreciate your attention to the important economic and
environmental issue of national forest management. Modern forestry is
the greenest of green industries and yet communities located in and
near national forests are desperate for the restoration of green jobs
that could result from proper stewardship of our nation's unmatched
forest endowment.
I would like to begin my testimony by discussing a concept we
believe is essential to considering a topic of this nature, before
describing the current situation in Southeast Alaska, and potential
scenarios for management, including State management.
The State of Alaska embraces the concept of a Working Forest, which
is further described as the utilization of forest resources to create
jobs and healthy communities through active forest management. A
healthy environment should support a strong social structure, which
will in turn support a robust economy. The State of Alaska and others
use the phrase ``Triple Bottom Line'' to refer to this relationship,
which is also described as sustainability.\1\ When any one of these
elements is emphasized disproportionately, the other elements suffer in
measures of quantity and quality. Unfortunately, in Alaska and other
parts of the Nation, an unbalanced relationship between the three
``bottom lines'' is causing major challenges for state and local
governments and communities. Federal policy on National Forest System
lands has shifted away from the Working Forest concept to
disproportionately embrace a protection-oriented approach.
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\1\ USDA, 2011. National Report on Sustainable Forests-2010, United
States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, FS-979.
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Alaska's forest endowment is massive. Alaska's two national
forests, the Tongass and the Chugach, are the largest in the country.
Together they are nearly equal in size to the 52 forests located in the
Forest Service Eastern Regions' 8 and 9--over 22 million acres.
Unfortunately, the economic ``bottom line'' of Alaska's federal forest
endowment has been short-changed, to the detriment of Alaska's
communities.
This is illustrated by federal management of the Tongass National
Forest in Southeast Alaska. The Tongass is the largest national forest
and encompasses about 17 million acres of land. Not all of this land is
suitable for timber management, but through a series of legislative
withdrawals and policy changes, the suitable timber base available for
management has declined to only 672 thousand acres--or 4% of the
Tongass acreage (Figure 1).*
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* Figures 1-2 have been retained in committee files.
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Nearly six million acres are managed as wilderness in the Tongass.
That is more wilderness acres than the Forest Service manages in
Washington, South Dakota, West Virginia and Oregon combined (about 5.0
million acres).
Also at play are two unique conditions that pertain to the Tongass,
the Alaska National Interests Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980
and the administratively promulgated 2001 Roadless Rule. In recognition
of the huge amounts of land set aside for conservation in ANICLA a
section was included that is know as the ``no more clause''. This
section of the law simple states: no additional wilderness or
conservation withdraws can be made in Alaska without the explicit
approval of Congress.\2\ The 2001 Roadless Rule was and administrative
effort (emphasis added, administrative) and effectively created another
2.2 million acres of wilderness on the Tongass NF. The State of Alaska
sued in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska in
2001 and won a settlement agreement with the FS that prohibited
application of this Rule in the Tongass. A third party litigant
recently won a reversal of this settlement and the State is once again
asserting its legal rights and this case is pending decision in the
Ninth Circuit. In addition, the State also has pending an action on the
Roadless topic in the United States Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia. In the meantime, the removal of additional acres from the
Timber Production Land Use Designations (LUDs) in the Forest Plan of
2008 makes it impossible to fully implement the selected alternative.
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\2\ Executive branch actions can withdraw up to 5,000 acres without
Congressional approval, 16 USC 3213.
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The limitations mentioned, in combination with an unwieldy U.S.
Forest Service policy, have led to a precipitous decline in timber
volume offered for sale (Figure 2). In contrast, the State has been
able to increase volume offered over the same timeframe on only 50,000
acres of state forest land in Southeast. At the same time logging and
wood products employment remains a mere shadow of its past, falling
from 4,600 jobs in 1990 to approximately 307 logging jobs and 150 wood
products manufacturing jobs in 2011.\3\
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\3\ Alaska Department of Labor
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Conditions have continued to deteriorate since 2011 and the
Southeast Alaska timber industry has nearly collapsed as a result of
federal timber policy which does not emphasize active timber
management. The few jobs left are attributable to forest management
activities by landowners such as the Sealaska Corporation and the State
of Alaska. Since 2007, what remains of the timber industry in Southeast
Alaska has lived from timber sale to timber sale. Because of this
policy, the harvest level on federal lands has decreased to a point
where only one medium sized mill remains open. This facility is almost
entirely dependent on federal timber and can only operate at one shift,
even though with adequate timber supply, it could operate at least two
shifts year round.
Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force
In 2011, Governor Parnell issued Administrative Order 258 which
established the Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force to recommend ways to
revive Alaska's timber industry. The task force was a combined federal,
state, private industry, and community group appointed by the Governor.
The Administrative Order charged the task force with considering and
attempting to address a number of specific tasks, several of which were
directly related to timber management on federal lands and the need to
utilize these renewable resources to benefit local, regional and
national public interests. The final report from the task force was
completed in June 2012.\4\ A copy of this report is attached to my
testimony and I ask that it be made part of the Committee's hearing
record.
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\4\ Available at http://forestry.alaska.gov/pdfs/
timber_jobs_task_force_report_final.pdf.
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The task force gathered information from numerous state and federal
agencies to capture the social implications of developments in the
Southeast timber industry. The task force found the decline in
Southeast Alaska's timber industry impacted social measures, such as
regional population and school enrollment. Statistics from the 2010
U.S. Census show that total population has declined by 5% over the past
decade. Furthermore, 24 out of 34 Southeast communities (71%) have lost
population ranging from -2 percent (Hydaburg) to -57 percent (Point
Baker).\5\ The Southeast region of Alaska, dominated by the Tongass
forest, is the only region to lose population during the last two
censuses.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force 2012, Report to Governor Sean
Parnell, Prepared By Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force, Administrative
Order 258: Final Report, Appendix 8 p3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schools are the leading indicator of community health. The Task
Force found that while ``[n]early all (31 of 34) Southeast communities
have had a public community school at one point in time . . . the
majority of communities have experienced enrollment declines over two
decades. In total, there has been a 15 percent decline in Southeast
student enrollment since 1990. During the past 20 years, six
communities (19%) have seen their school close (one school has since
reopened in Kasaan). Of the 31 communities with schools, the majority
(87%) have experienced a declining student enrollment sustained over
nearly two decades; only (10%) have increasing school enrollments.''\6\
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\6\ Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force 2012. Appendix 8 p 3-5.
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The Southeast Island School District serves residents of the
islands of Prince of Wales, Baranof and Kosciusko--all located in the
heart of the Tongass National Forest. Those islands were the most
intensively managed during the peak of timber harvest. In 1995, the
district served 381 students in 12 schools. Today, nine schools serve
160 students.
Recent news from the USFS concerning Secure Rural Schools payments
and sequestration could exacerbate an already troubling situation. The
State and school districts have received an invoice for $826,331 as a
result of the 5.1 percent cut in funding in our Title I-III
allocations.\7\ This unwelcome development underscores the need for a
better approach to funding school districts dependent on this income.
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\7\ USDA Forest Service Correspondence, March 19, 2013
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Despite these grim realities, the region is fighting to survive and
reinvent itself. The Timber Task Force identified timber supply as one
of the ``priority statewide issues that presented the greatest
impediment to job creation and economic development for Alaska's timber
industry.'' It also found that the challenges and opportunities vary by
region, including Southcentral, Interior and Southeast Alaska. These
former two regions are experiencing slow, but steady growth as wood
biomass projects are developed to meet community needs for economic
space heating and electrical generation. Projects at both small and
large scales are made possible by state forest management policies that
provide a sustainable, long-term supply of wood from state forests and
other state land.
In contrast, the Task Force found that the principal barrier to job
creation in southeast Alaska is insufficient timber volume from the
Tongass National Forest. Since the 2008 Forest Plan amendment, the
Tongass NF has offered only 33% of the volume the agency deems
necessary to comply with Section 101 of the Tongass Timber Reform Act
(TTRA), which requires he United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) to ``. . .seek to provide a supply of timber from the Tongass
National Forest which (1) meets the annual market demand for timber
from the forest and (2) meets the annual market demand from such forest
for each planning cycle.''\8\
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\8\ To the extent consisted with providing for the multiple use and
sustained yield of all renewable forest resources.
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The state has worked from within the system to change management
direction on the Tongass and was granted cooperating agency status in
the 2008 Forest Plan amendment process and is a co-implementer of the
current plan. The state invested fiscally in working with the FS to
improve timber sale process and economics and has funded two full-time
positions, one in the Department of Fish and Game, Habitat Division and
the other in the Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry,
to accomplish this objective. In addition to the dedicated employees, a
state ``Tongass Team'' was created within state government that reached
across department lines to coordinate timely input to ongoing projects.
This effort has not been without its challenges, but both parties have
worked well together within Region 10 in an attempt to meet the plans
goals. Third party litigants, policy changes and capacity issues within
the FS have prevented full and effective implementation of the plan. A
five year review of the 2008 Forest Plan is currently underway.
The state also participated in a collaborative process known at the
Tongass Futures Roundtable. This effort was convened with the goal of
informing the 2008 planning process with a broadly supported
alternative for an operable land base where active management could
occur. The group was unable to meet this initial objective and
continued to meet in an attempt to resolve ongoing management issues.
The Roundtable operated by consensus and had 35 primary members from
all walks of life, all interested in management of the Tongass. After
five years of participation and little real change on the ground, the
Governor withdrew the state from the process in 2011 and created the
Alaska Jobs and Timber Task Force. A much reduced Roundtable continued
to meet, but at their 2013 spring meeting, the remaining members
decided to disband.
Uncertainties and exorbitant costs associated with the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and invalidation of the Tongass
Exemption to the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule exacerbate the
challenge of supplying sufficient timber volume from the Tongass NF to
maintain an integrated timber industry capable of contributing
meaningfully to the region's economy.
The state's ongoing efforts with the FS and our experience in the
collaborative process had a profound effect on how the Task Force
approached its work and crafted their final recommendations for Tongass
National Forest land ownership and management. It was clear that reform
of the current management system would be difficult at best, and time
was not on the side of the region's communities. The following three
recommendations were made by the Task Force\9\:
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\9\ Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force 2012, Report to Governor Sean
Parnell, Prepared By Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force, Administrative
Order 258: Final Report, p8.
1. Pursue state ownership and/or management authority of two
million acres of National Forest System lands in the Tongass NF
to support an integrated timber industry in Southeast.
2. Work jointly with other states/entities seeking change in
the management of federal lands. Possible changes include the
concepts of ``trust'' or state management of federal lands, the
transfer of federal lands into state ownership, adjustments to
the Alaska Statehood Act by Congress and measures to force the
federal agencies, primarily the USFS, to increase timber
harvest.
3. Support finalization of Sealaska's outstanding land
entitlements, Alaska Mental Health Trust's\10\ administrative
land exchange with the USFS, and settlement of the land
entitlements for the unrecognized Southeast Alaska Native
Communities.
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\10\ The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority is charged with being
a catalyst for change and improvement in the systems that serve Trust
beneficiaries, who include people with mental illness, developmental
disabilities, chronic alcoholism and other substance related disorders,
Alzheimer's disease and related dementia, and traumatic brain injury
that results in permanent brain injury.
In April, I had the opportunity to address elements of
recommendation #2 and #3 in the House Committee on Natural Resources,
where several legislative proposals are attempting to accomplish
similar objectives, and I'd like to offer the following observations
concerning the benefits of state-managed forests in comparison to the
current form of management.
The Alaska Forest Resources and Practices Act (FRPA) governs forest
practices on state, municipal, and private land, including the Alaska
Mental Health Trust and University of Alaska Trust lands. The Act, in
place since 1989, has been updated several times as new science becomes
available. Scientific findings are reviewed in a two-step process via
Alaska's Board of Forestry. The Act includes effectiveness and
implementation components to ensure the best management practices
(BMPs) remain current.
Lands designated as State Forest are managed per state forest
purposes, as defined in Alaska statute (AS 41.17.200). The statute
states, ``[t]he primary purpose in the establishment of state forests
is timber management that provides for the production, utilization, and
replenishment of timber resources while allowing other beneficial uses
of public land and resources.'' The focus is on providing a consistent
well managed supply of wood to private sector businesses that
subsequently produce a range of products and services that will benefit
local communities. The State has emphasized job creation over
maximization of revenue in its management of state forests, but the two
State Trusts follow the maximum fiscal return approach to ensure
beneficiaries are well served.
In contrast, federal lands have numerous conditions and guidelines
that prevent the USFS from generating significant revenue and job
creation from forest management activities. The new 2012 National
Planning Rule includes language that states: ``the plan must provide
for ecosystem services and multiple uses. . .'' and contains additional
language concerning integrated resource management planning that must
address a long list of criteria, which in part include: aesthetic
values, air quality, ecosystem services, habitat connectivity, scenery,
view sheds, wilderness and other relevant resources and uses.\11\ The
National Forest Management Act (NFMA) also includes a section to
``insure that timber will be harvested from the National Forest System
lands only where the harvesting system to be used is not selected
primarily because it will give the greatest dollar return or the
greatest unit output of timber.''\12\
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\11\ 36 CFR 219 Subpart A-National Forest System Land Management
Planning (2012 National Planning Rule) Sec. 219.10 Multiple use (a)
(1).
\12\ U.S. Code 1604 (g)(3)(iv) (National Forest Management Act
(NFMA)).
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These conditions and numerous others complicate the timber sale
process for the USFS and often result in below cost sales that can't be
offered or sales that are only marginally economic. Here, state
management would offer clear advantages. The State public process is
less cumbersome and allows prompt reaction to market changes. With the
ability to offer long term timber sales up to 20 years or longer, the
states encourages the investment of private capital in manufacturing
facilities.
conclusion
In closing, I would like to leave you with this thought: Alaska's
federal and state forests have the potential to be a model of
sustainability, including environmental, social, and economic
objectives. The ``working forest'' concept embraces diverse and broad
objectives related to utilizing natural resources, providing jobs,
stimulating local economies and supporting communities. These broad
objectives have the potential to unify diverse stakeholders and
interest groups.
The Forest Service is not able to solve this problem unless
Congress provides relief from over burdensome regulations, confusing
policy and litigation by third parties. These are all challenges to
active management, and I foresee no significant change to the scope,
scale and pace of management that needs to take place to rebalance the
triple bottom line.
Despite more than 50 years of timber harvest in the Tongass, a mere
2.5 percent of the old growth forest has been harvested. The Tongass
alone is bigger than West Virginia, yet today, there are 181 sawmills
and 30,000 people employed in that state's timber industry. By allowing
the State of Alaska the opportunity to manage a portion of these
federal lands, hundreds of jobs--the equivalent of an auto factory--
would be created and sustained forever--the ultimate green industry.
Thank you again for the opportunity to discuss federal forest
management and scenarios for more active management. I urge Congress to
continue this important conversation and provide new approaches and
tools to address this national problem. Without action, communities
near federal lands will continue to suffer, forest health issues from
insects and disease will accelerate and the wildland fire challenges in
the west will grow. Mr. Chairman, there is a better alternative and you
only need to look at how the States and Tribes of this great country
are actively managing their forest resources and the impressive
accomplishments they have achieved. We stand ready to continue this
discussion. This concludes my testimony and I would be happy to address
any questions the Committee may have.
The Chairman. Very good. Thank you.
Mr. Imbergamo.
STATEMENT OF BILL IMBERGAMO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FEDERAL FOREST
RESOURCE COALITION
Mr. Imbergamo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the
opportunity, Ranking Member Murkowski. I will say hello to my
old boss, Ms. Stabenow. Appreciate the opportunity to get out.
The chairs behind the dais are more comfortable, I will note
that.
I do appreciate the opportunity to be here today on behalf
of my 650-member companies in 28 States including every State
on the panel. We have over 390,000 employees and over 19
billion in payroll. Our members have survived the worst
downturn in the forest products industry since the Great
Depression.
We look forward to continuing our long partnership with the
Forest Service, but the challenges facing the agency make that
future very much uncertain. I have a rather lengthy written
statement, but I thought I would focus on one example and that
example is right here in front of me. It exemplifies the
challenges facing the Forest Service and the BLM in managing
these Federal lands.
These obstacles are practical, budgetary and legal. They
require legislation to clarify both the management direction
for the land and the compliance process with other
environmental laws, particularly NEPA. The depth of the crisis
is illustrated by this 1,400 pages of documentation which is
relating to the Colt Summit Forest Restoration Project on the
Lolo National Forest in Montana. It is because of this type of
exhaustive analysis that the agency spends over 350 million
annually on compliance with NEPA.
This project proposed to thin some 2,000 acres on a forest
that covers over two million acres. It was designed to reduce
hazardous fuel loading and improve wildlife habitat while
protecting homes and decommissioning 7 miles of permanent road
for every one mile of temporary road created. It's part of the
Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration project. It was called for in the Community
Wildfire Protection plan. It's being executed through a
stewardship contract.
In other words it's done in response to all the
Congressional direction to carry out reductions in fuel loads,
reduce fire threats and collaborate with the communities. Yet
the Forest Service, in order to do it, had to create this mound
of paper including an air quality report, a botany report, an
aquatics report, a fisheries report, a hydrology report and 11
others. So in spite of the collaboration, the Forest Service
knew that they had to analyze the project to the Nth degree
because they would likely face legal challenges from groups
that neither participated in the collaborative process nor care
that Congress has directed the agency to address these other
significant threats.
Unfortunately they were right. A small environment group
filed suit bringing over a dozen allegations. It's clear that
they are more concerned with procedural blunders in the
preparation in the project than in the substance of it.
In other words, they knew they had a legal hook to block
the project and they used it.
In the end the judge dismissed all but one of their claims.
Yet he granted an injunction based on the speculative impacts
of hypothetical future actions. As a result of this injunction
7 million board feet of timber could have been on the market
right now and would likely be being harvested this summer.
Instead the agency continues to spar with Judge Malloy over a
2,000-acre project.
In the meantime one of two nearby mills almost folded.
There's only two mills that are within any reasonable sourcing
distance of this. They almost folded this winter due to a lack
of logs.
I know you know very well, Mr. Chairman, when you lose a
mill, you lose the ability to defray any of your management
costs. It's very difficult to get that back. The agency has
seen that first hand this year.
Using the courts to compel endless analysis is what drives
the $350 million the agency spends on NEPA every year. The
Forest Service spends its time bullet proofing its decisions
rather than preparing land management projects.
Unfortunately it's Congress that created this tangle of
laws that have become the playthings of lawyers and judges.
Judges have allowed disputes between resource managers to
override other clearer mandates such as the mandate for
multiple use and the National Forest Management Act and the
myriad of laws the Congress has passed in the last decade
directing the agency to reduce hazardous fuels.
There are a few steps the agency can take to reduce their
unit costs and treat more acres and increase harvest off the
National Forest. I'd be happy to talk about those and some are
mentioned in my testimony. These steps, however, will provide
marginal help at best.
What is needed is legislation to clarify that Congress
expects the Forest Service to manage some portion of the
National Forest for timber production. We already identified
these lands and forest plans, but this designation does not
translate into harvest levels. Instead after exhaustive
planning we get further analysis and judicial fly specting of
even modest forest management projects.
The expiration of Secure Rural Schools provides an
opportunity to reconnect land management with the welfare of
our rural communities. We believe a trust approach on a portion
of the national forest will provide some clarity that will
allow the agency to address the problems the Congress has
identified.
About 23 percent of the national forest are identified in
current national forest plans as being suited for timber
production. If Congress would clarify the mandate on those
lands it will free up resources to conduct non-commercial work
in the wild land urban interface that everyone recognizes needs
to be done. In providing clarity on the resource management
objectives on this timber base also opens the possibility of
moving forward with land conservation on other acres. But we
cannot support land set aside that move independently from
basic land management reform.
The Forest Service's current situation is analogous to a
mouse that's been dropped into a maze with a piece of cheese at
the exit. Unfortunately the cheese has now been removed. The
exit has been sealed. The maze has been set on fire.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Imbergamo. We can expect a high level of activity from
the mouse, but we certainly can't expect a good outcome. Only
Congress can fix the maze.
We look forward to working with this committee and the
Chief to fix that.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Imbergamo follows:]
Prepared Statement of Bill Imbergamo, Executive Director, Federal
Forest Resource Coalition
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Murkowski, my name is Bill Imbergamo,
and I am the Executive Director of the Federal Forest Resource
Coalition, a national non-profit trade association representing a
diverse coalition of federal timber purchasers, conservation groups,
and county governments. With over 650 member companies in 28 States,
FFRC members employ over 390,000 people and contribute over $19 Billion
in payroll.
Our members purchase, harvest, transport, and process timber and
biomass from the National Forest System and lands managed by the Bureau
of Land Management. We live and work in communities near to or
surrounded by Federal public lands. Our businesses rely upon healthy,
productive forests and a sustainable and growing supply of raw
materials from these lands.
FFRC members are survivors. Our mills have survived the worst
recession since the Great Depression, which caused about half the solid
wood manufacturing capacity in the United States to close. Our members
continued to make investments in our facilities and our communities
because we believe we can be a part of a more prosperous future, both
for our communities and for our National Forests.
introduction
We were encouraged by your May 23rd announcement that you would
seek to modernize and update the legal framework that is severely
limiting the management of the Bureau of Land Management's O&C lands in
Oregon. We agree that the laws need to be modernized to provide for the
implementation of the O&C Act, and certainty to rural communities.
These communities have suffered severe economic dislocation due to
decades of litigation-driven set asides that have failed to recognize
the need to provide sustained, reliable supplies of timber or maintain
forest health.
As we wrote you last month, many of the same economic conditions
and forest health problems which plague the O&C lands exist throughout
the National Forest System. As the Administration noted in February of
last year, there are up to 82 million acres of the National Forest
System which are experiencing severe forest health problems. Bark
beetles in the Central and Northern Rockies are impacting some 48
million acres. As overstocked stands experience drought conditions, the
Forest Service is increasingly falling behind on management as they
annually shift resources away from needed harvest to fire suppression.
Less fire prone National Forests suffer as resources are redirected to
fight fires and restore damaged lands.
We are now entering our third decade of drastically reduced harvest
from the National Forest System. Many who advocated for this approach
to management (primarily through the courts) claimed that by harvesting
fewer trees, harvesting them on fewer acres, and making it more
difficult for land managers to select those acres, we would improve
forest health, create more vibrant populations of wildlife, and improve
rural economies. The results on each of these counts have proven
otherwise and actually have proven to be more harmful. Judging from the
inability of the Forest Service to address these problems, the legal
and administrative tools available are inadequate to the task.
As you evaluate the legal framework for managing the O&C lands, we
urge you to consider and pass legislation which addresses the
management challenges plaguing the National Forest System as well.
Rural communities have suffered decades of reduced economic prospects,
watersheds have deteriorated, and county governments have been strained
to the breaking point. We stand ready to work with you to address these
challenges.
forest health has deteriorated significantly
Over 82 million acres of Forest Service lands are at elevated risk
of catastrophic wildfires, insect, or disease outbreaks. These problems
are often the most severe in the States which have lost most of their
wood using industries, such as Colorado and New Mexico. Large scale
wildfires cost billions annually to suppress, and cities such as Denver
have been forced to spend tens of millions of dollars restoring damaged
watersheds.
In other National Forests, such as those in the Lake States and New
England, passive management has allowed forests to develop into closed
canopy stands where little sunlight reaches the forest floor. These
forests have limited value as wildlife habitat and are susceptible to
fire and insects, while sensitive species which require early
successional habitat, such as the ruffed grouse and Kirtland's Warbler,
continue to disappear.
The extent of the problem is not in doubt. The Government
Accountability Office recognized the urgency of the need to reduce
hazardous fuels in 1999\1\. The Forest Service acknowledges that over
73 million acres of their lands are a high priority for management and
that ``one time treatment of all high fire risk areas would not fully
address the fuels problem, as landscapes continue to change over time
and fuels would build up on many lands currently in historic condition,
without periodic maintenance treatments.\2\'' The Western Governors
Association has adopted numerous resolutions acknowledging the extent
and severity of the forest health crisis\3\.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy is Needed to
Address Catastrophic Wildfire Threats; General Accounting Office,
April, 1999.
\2\ http://www.fs.fed.us/publications/policy-analysis/fire-and-
fuels-position-paper.pdf
\3\ See, among others: Western Governors Association Policy
Resolution 12-01: Wildland Fire Management and Resilient Landscapes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
unhealthy forests demand action
Last year, over 9 million acres of forests, farms, and rangeland
burned across the U.S. This included over 2.5 million acres of National
Forests. There are millions of acres of National Forests which are
experiencing extreme forest health problems, including millions of
acres of overstocked, fire prone forests in the Western United States.
At present, various bark beetle outbreaks cover some 48 million acres,
most of which is on National Forest lands.
The Forest Service has made efforts to address these problems, but
increasingly evidence is coming in from the field that these efforts
are being stymied by groups philosophically opposed to active
management, utilization of timber, or rural community stability. Groups
that sit out collaboration have no investment in the outcome, and
instead use appeals and litigation to kill collaborative efforts and
badly needed forest management projects.
While collaboration is not the answer on every forest in every
locale, many FFRC members are actively engaged in collaboration across
the country, and purchase timber through traditional timber sales,
Stewardship contracts, and Stewardship agreements. While collaborative
groups often come together with common aspirations of improving the
health of their forests, watersheds, and local communities, they must
then attempt to advance their projects through the gauntlet of appeals,
litigation, and obstruction.
In other cases, the Forest Service, even without substantial
opposition, reacts slowly to changed forest condition because they must
prepare to defend their actions against the maze of regulations and
likely litigation. In the process, they forgo opportunities for
management, and economic activity. In other instances, the
collaboratives lack concrete goals in terms of outputs, whether those
are timber outputs, intensity of thinning treatments, or acreage
objectives. The result is projects which can be economically
infeasible, unsustainable, and fail to meaningfully improve stand
conditions. Examples of this abound:
in montana
The Lolo National Forest has worked for years to develop local
consensus on thinning projects that would help protect watersheds,
communities, and habitat. One of these projects proposed conducting
thinning on 2,300 acres. The Colt Summit Project had broad-based
support from local industry, local and national environmental groups,
and sportsman's organizations. This Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Act (CFLRA) project was being implemented through a
Stewardship Contract, on a 3 million acre National Forest within a few
hours drive of several large wilderness areas. A local extremist group,
the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, filed a lawsuit alleging multiple
violations of environmental and procedural laws, 14 counts in all.
While 13 of them were dismissed, the Judge issued an injunction based
on the 14th count.
While the agency is working diligently to revise the project to
meet the court's concerns, the volume offered by this project is still
not on the market, and there are only 2 mills left within a reasonable
sourcing distance of this forest. One of them very nearly failed this
winter for lack of logs.
This same environmental group has recently filed challenges against
many forest management projects in Region 1. This time, they allege
that the Forest Service failed to conduct consultation under the
Endangered Species Act when the Fish and Wildlife Service designated
critical habitat for the lynx. Since every forest in Region 1 and
Region 2 conducted a forest plan amendment when the lynx was listed,
it's hard to see what benefit conducting another round of consultation
would do, except as a purely dilatory exercise.
It is very clear in Region 1 that collaboration, though helpful, is
not the end all answer for the environmental litigants who refuse to
participate in these efforts.
in new mexico
The Southwest Jemez Mountains CFLRA project proposed to improve
forest health on 210,000 acres on the Santa Fe National Forest and the
Valles Caldera Trust-Valles Caldera National Preserve. The project has
support from more than a dozen government agencies, wildlife and
sportsmen's groups, tribes, and conservation groups such as the Nature
Conservancy. In the two years since the project was first funded, very
little thinning has taken place on the ground. Unfortunately, two large
fires, the Las Conchas fire in 2011 and the Thompson Ridge Fire this
year, have burned over 55,000 acres in the project area. Restoration
work becomes far more difficult when a forest suffers a catastrophic
fire. Meanwhile, the public which has worked hard to support the
project have been told that the NEPA documents will be completed this
September, the Record of Decision will be signed in January, 2014, and
work should start in March or April of 2014.
Obviously the project was meant to bring together a variety of
entities to make a measurable improvement to forest health in north
central New Mexico, but given the length of time it has taken to
complete the NEPA documents, coupled with the recent fires in that
area, it seems that the Southwest Jemez CFLRP will need to divert money
previously proposed for treatment to address long term erosion control.
We hope the project can still be a success even though a third of the
USFS/Valles Caldera lands have burnt prior to any major implementation.
in minnesota
On July 2, 2012, a severe thunderstorm caused damage on a path 10
miles wide and 40 miles long. About 110,000 acres of the Chippewa
National Forest sustained damage. The storm damaged several stands with
existing timber sales. The Forest Service spent over three months
negotiating with the purchaser over a modification to the contract,
even though it was apparent within days that the timber, sold to a
telephone pole manufacturer, was no longer useful for that purpose.
Beyond that, the agency spent the next 10 months doing NEPA
analysis and has not been completed as of today. In all likelihood,
projects will not be implemented until late this year or early next. By
this time the timber would be in very poor condition and very likely
will no longer have any economic value. Depending on the alternative
decided upon, only 5,000 to 7,000 additional acres would be harvested.
A substantial amount of acres would be burned without harvest. At most,
the Forest Service may treat 17,000 acres by harvest. The remaining
blowdown would be left as a ``representative sample'' of natural
disturbance. As of today, the Forest Service has only conducted salvage
on about 9,000 acres, or 8% of the total. By contrast, the State of
Minnesota and county governments have conducted extensive salvage and
restoration activities on the lands they manage that were impacted by
the same storm.
in washington
The Tapash Collaborative Forest Restoration Project on the
Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington State was chosen in
the first round of CFLRP projects in 2010. The project covers 1.6
million acres. Over the projected 10 year life of the project, the
agency plans to harvest only 3% of the project area. The Tapash project
called for zero acres of timber harvest in FY 2010; 5,614 acres in FY
2011; and 3,150 for FY 2013.
According to their 2011 CFLR annual report, nearly $1.2 million
dollars has been spent on the project, without a single acre of timber
harvest. The 2012 report notes an expenditure of $870,000 with no
harvest acres claimed, although by including timber harvest planned
before the selection of the CFLRP project, the agency is able to claim
a modest amount of timber supply provided over the three years of the
project. Environmentally and economically, this project is a failure;
very few acres have been treated, there has been no increase in timber
harvest from the Forest, despite the expenditure of over $3 million
earmarked dollars. Meanwhile, about 61,000 acres of the project area
have burned. No salvage has been done on the burned areas.
Some forests in some regions have consistently proposed projects
which pro-actively create healthier forests, and have been more
responsive to changing conditions. On balance, however, it is apparent
that the public and Congressional consensus that our forests must be
more actively managed is difficult to translate into projects which
directly improve stand conditions, reduce fire danger, and stimulate
local employment in frequently economically depressed communities.
seizing the opportunity to manage our federal forests
The Forest Service and BLM have not traditionally been responsive
to market demand. As lumber prices ran up to historic highs during the
boom of the 2000's, Forest Service outputs remained static. As large
fires dominated the news and Congressional thinking about the National
Forests, lumber output remained stagnant.
To their credit, the Obama administration, in its first term, has
steadily increased timber outputs. It is worth noting, however, that
the Forest Service consistently counts free or low cost firewood--
``sold'' by permit--as part of its timber sale accomplishments, and
during this timeframe firewood accounted for between 11 and 14 percent
of NFS timber ``sold.''
Further, in February, 2012, the Administration released the report
entitled ``Increasing the Pace and Scale of Restoration and Job
Creation on Our National Forests.'' This report called for increased
efforts to reduce hazardous fuels, restore forests, and supply up to 3
Billion Board Feet of timber from the National Forest System.
The signs of recovery are showing up across the country. New
sawmills have been announced in Georgia, Louisiana, and Arizona. Mills
teetering on the brink of bankruptcy have been saved, including the
mill in Montrose, Colorado. A mill, shuttered for more than a decade in
Wyoming, has reopened. As you can see by the following chart, this is
an auspicious time to take advantage of the nation's wood using
infrastructure and make serious headway in reducing these historic fuel
loads.
While we were glad to see timber outputs inch upwards to 2.62
Billion Board Feet last year, we have now learned that because of the
sequester, progress towards the Administration's goal of 3 Billion
Board Feet in 2014 will now not be met. Further, the Administration's
goal of 2.8 Billion Board Feet in 2013 will not be met, falling below
last year's output by approximately 200 Million Board Feet. Not only
will this cause needless delays in badly needed forest management
projects, but significant job losses in communities which routinely
experience higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and population loss
than the surrounding non-NFS counties.
Regardless of where blame for the sequester lies, we now have an
Administration budget for Fiscal Year 2014 which proposes to lock in
the sequester cuts to hazardous fuels, timber sales, and capital
improvement and maintenance funding, even while substantially
increasing spending on land acquisition.
Further, the agency's budget presentation states that they have a
$6 billion infrastructure maintenance backlog, up from $5.3 billion in
2012. This backlog does not just affect the roads my members depend on
to access timber, but the trails, campgrounds, and visitor centers
millions of Americans use for recreation. To cut these programs further
goes right to the heart of the visitor experience and raises serious
questions about the governments continued commitment to manage these
lands for the greatest good.
While this is not a budget hearing, it must be pointed out that
budget is policy and that the Administration's budget for 2014 does not
prioritize active management, hazardous fuels reduction, or prudent
management of the basic forest infrastructure. This is a wrong turn and
we appreciate this committee's forceful oversight on this matter.
restoration in action
Last summer, the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing
during the peak of the fire season. At that hearing, the Forest Service
said they had ``restored'' 3.7 million acres in 2011. The Committee
asked for a breakdown of those numbers, which we've provided in the
following chart:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percent of
Acres Restored by: Acres: Total:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prescribed Fire: 1,081,318 29%
Lake, water & soil, noxious 2,563,595 69%
weed:
Mechanically Treated: 1,136,405 30%
Pre-Commercial Thin: 145,928 3.90%
Commercially Thinned: 195,477 5.20%
-----------------------------
Total: 3,700,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some acres received more than one treatment, so the numbers don't
total up.
Over 1 million acres were ``treated'' with prescribed fire; over
400,000 of these acres were ``treated'' by wildfires burning within
prescription. This is 10% of the total, and 37% of the prescribed burn
acres.
The Forest Service only harvested usable wood fiber from 195,000
acres that were commercially thinned. This means that on 3.5 million of
the acres restored, the Forest Service was generating no revenue
whatsoever, and on 90% of the acres restored, there was no thinning of
any kind.
In other words, when Congress provides substantial funds to pay for
restoration work and encourages the agency to provide jobs and usable
wood fiber, it is important for Congress to know how little of the
National Forest System gets treated every year. If we accept the 82
million acre figure in the Administration's ``accelerated'' restoration
strategy, they are on pace to complete a thinning of these acres in a
mere 241 years, in the unlikely event that these forests do not succumb
to insects, disease, and/or wildfire before then.
the role of harvest in forest restoration
After nearly three decades of drastically reduced harvest, the
National Forest System is facing an ecological and managerial crisis.
Overstocked stands, drought, climate change, insects, and fire threaten
to reconfigure the landscape and damage watersheds throughout the west.
The large fires that result from this overstocking threaten management
on the rest of the National Forest System. Resources--money and
people--are redirected away from forest management throughout the
System; last year, over $400 million was redirected from forest
management programs for this purpose. Non-fire prone forest, such as
the Superior in Minnesota, the Ottawa in Michigan, and the Francis
Marion in South Carolina, still lose the ability to manage when key
staff are diverted to firefighting rather than managing.
And yet a great deal of research, including research conducted by
the Forest Service, indicates that active management which produces
valuable timber can help meet a wide variety of restoration goals.
Active forest management and timber harvest have been shown to have
multiple long-term benefits, including reducing fuel loading, reducing
potential for crown fires, increasing structural stage diversity,
increasing age class diversity, reducing stand density and thus
susceptibility to mountain pine beetles and other bark beetles, and
improving wildlife habitat. Wildlife habitat can either be directly
improved or indirectly improved by reducing the potential for
catastrophic fires
Forest Service Researchers Ken Skog and James Barbour, for
instance, found that thinning which produces sawtimber can treat more
than twice as many acres as treatments which rely solely on non-
commercial thinning. The thinning projects that produce timber, the
researchers found, could treat 17.2 million acres, whereas non-
commercial thinning could only treat 6.7 million acres. This study
eliminated roadless areas and stands on steep slopes from
consideration, and evaluated treatments on whether they reduce stand
susceptibility to insect attack, fire, and windthrow\4\.
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\4\ Evaluation of Silvicultural Treatments and Biomass Use for
Reducing Fire Hazard in Western States, Kenneth E. Skog and R. James
Barbour, et. al, Forest Service Research Paper FLP-RP-634, 2006
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most productive National Forests in the country, the
Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas, is actively restoring significant
wildlife habitat through the use of commercial timber sales,
Stewardship contracts, and active support from conservation groups such
as the National Wild Turkey Federation (an FFRC affiliate member) and
the Nature Conservancy. While producing commercially valuable shortleaf
pine timber, this forest is also creating habitat for the Red Cockaded
woodpecker, prairie warbler, yellow breasted chat, and common
yellowthroat. The Forest noted that red cockaded woodpeckers had
increased by almost 300% due to the improved habitat. Researcher Larry
Hedrick noted that ``The ability to sell valuable wood products is at
the very heart of restoration efforts . . . . All commercial thinning
or regeneration cutting is accomplished through the use of timber sales
that are advertised and sold to the highest bidder. Further. .
.portions of the proceeds from these timber sales are retained to pay
for most of the follow-up midstory reduction and prescribed burning
needed to restore the stands.''\5\
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\5\ Shortleaf Pine-Bluestem Restoration in the Ouachita National
Forest, Larry D. Hedrick et. al. Transaction of the Sixty-Second North
American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Washington, DC, 14-
18 March, pp. 509-515
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent research in Minnesota suggests that aging forests may be
contributing to a decline in forage for moose populations, which have
declined dramatically in recent years. Dr. David C. Wilson and Dr. Alan
R. Ek found last month that significant decreases in forest
disturbance--including reduced harvest on the Superior National
Forest--explained 80% of the year to year variation in moose population
in the State. Unfortunately, moose have declined from more than 8,000
in 2005 to just 2,760 today.\6\
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\6\ Minnesota Moose Population: Using Forest Inventory Data to
Assess Changes in Habitat, D. Wilson , A. Ek., Minnesota Forestry
Research Notes, No. 296, May 2013.
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In the case of northern goshawks, present forest conditions in the
southwestern United States may be adversely affecting goshawk
populations. Management of goshawk habitat focuses on creating and
sustaining a patchy forest of highly interspersed structural stages
ranging from regeneration to old forest throughout a goshawk territory.
Managing the forest, through timber harvest and other treatments, to
thin the understory, create small openings, and provide different tree
sizes across the landscape will help produce and maintain desired
forest conditions for goshawks and their prey\7\.
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\7\ Implementing Northern Goshawk Management in Southwestern
Forests: A Template for Restoring Fire-Adapted Forest Ecosystems, James
A. Youtz, Russell T. Graham, Richard T. Reynolds, and Jerry Simon;
Proceedings of the 2007 National Silviculture Workshop.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Committee recently heard from Diane Vosick, who noted that
research indicates that hazardous fuels treatments are effective at
reducing large fire costs, protecting property, and preserving
watersheds. She also noted that there is a substantial opportunity cost
to delaying thinning projects, meaning that delays don't just wind up
deferring costs, they increase them\8\.
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\8\ The Efficacy of Hazardous Fuel Treatments: Ecological Research
Institute, May 2013.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Certainly not all acres of the National Forest System are suited to
be managed for timber. FFRC members value wildland as much as the rest
of the public, and frequently our members don't just earn their living
in these remote places, but they depend on them for recreation,
hunting, and family time as well. But ample research indicates that
active management can produce a multitude of benefits, well beyond
timber harvest.
In the current budget environment, it makes sense to look at this
research and see how the value of the trees and other forest products
can help pay for the management that science says need to take place.
restoring the connection between communities and forest management
Counties with National Forest and other Federal lands within their
borders cannot tax or develop these Federal public lands. Recognizing
this, the Federal government has for decades provided payments, both in
lieu of taxes and as a share of revenues from economic activities, to
these counties. Congress enacted a law in 1908 which requires the
Federal government to share 25% of the gross revenues derived from U.S.
Forest Service activities (e.g.--timber sales, mineral leases, and
grazing fees) with the counties. These revenues supported schools and
the maintenance of infrastructure, and grew to become a significant
source of revenue for National Forest counties.
By 2000, as a result of litigation and changes in policy, the scope
of land management on Federal forests, particularly National Forest
timber sales, had fallen by more than 80%, and these revenues dwindled.
At the time, these drastic reductions were justified as necessary
measures to protect ``old growth'' dependent species, watersheds, and
other ecological values.
Many argued that recreational activities would supplant timber
management as the driving economic force in National Forest counties.
This approach to managing Federal forests has not produced the
ecological, social, and economic outcomes its proponents have suggested
would result. National Forest counties suffer disproportionately from
high unemployment, poverty, and population loss. Forest health has
declined drastically alongside the economic health of these
communities. Economic dislocation from loss of year round manufacturing
has threatened the viability of many rural counties, forcing many to
near bankruptcy. Poor forest health and large fires limit recreational
opportunities.
In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community
Self-Determination Act (SRSCA). This legislation provided guaranteed
payments to these forested counties, based on some of the highest years
of timber revenue in the history of the Forest Service. Congress
provided extensions of these guaranteed payments in 2006 and again in
2008.
This legislation expired in October of 2011, although Congress
extended a greatly reduced guaranteed payment program for one year as
part of the 2012 Transportation bill. Just last week, this Committee
approved a one-year extension of these payments, financed by the sale
of non-renewable resource, helium. It makes no sense to use non-
renewable resources to pay for local governments in communities with
abundant, renewable resources which should be both driving the local
economy and supporting local government.
It has become apparent that continuing to rely on guaranteed
payments from the treasury is no longer a viable option for forested
counties. Further, it has become apparent that the passive management
of the National Forests has failed to produce promised benefits, and
the current approaches to land management will meet neither the needs
of the counties nor the needs of the forests. A fundamentally different
approach, which focuses management on the 23% of Forest Service lands
which are currently under a timber objective is needed.
The guaranteed funding provided under SRS was never intended to
permanently replace shared revenue from active management on Federal
public lands. Congress should not provide further extension of
mandatory funds without ensuring a transition that makes improvements
in both the health of Federal forests and the economic condition of
forest dependent counties through active forest management.
principles of reform
Payments to forest counties should be linked to fundamental
reforms which streamline the process of proposing, analyzing,
executing, and resolving conflicts over forest management
projects on Federal forest lands.
With due recognition of the need for a transition period,
payments to counties must be linked to revenues produced by
viable economic activity on Federal forests, including
substantial, sustainable increases in timber outputs.
All revenues generated on Federal forests, including a
portion of revenues from Stewardship contracts, should be used
to develop additional sustainable forest management projects as
well as to provide revenue sharing to counties.
A trust approach, focusing on the 23% of National Forest
acres already identified as suited for timber production, can
provide stable funding on a trust-trustee basis, while
restoring and strengthening the overall multiple use framework
on Federal forests.
The concept of ``trust lands'' is familiar to most Westerners. Most
trust lands in the West are under State management. The Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy notes that ``Unlike other categories of public
lands, the vast majority of state trust lands are held in a perpetual,
intergenerational trust to support a variety of beneficiaries,
including public schools. . ., universities, penitentiaries, and
hospitals. To fulfill this mandate, these lands are actively managed
for a diverse range of uses, including: timber, grazing, mining for oil
and gas and other minerals, agriculture, commercial and residential
development, conservation, and recreational uses such as hunting and
fishing.\9\'' Several large State Trust lands forestry programs have
been certified under one or more forest management certification
program\10\.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Trust Lands in the American West: A Legal Overview and Policy
Assessment; Peter W. Culp, Diane B. Conradi, & Cynthia C. Tuell, 2005,
Sonoran Institute.
\10\ See, for instance, WA DNR: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/Publications/
frc_fsc-sfi_certification_factsheet.pdf, PA DCNR: http://
www.dcnr.state.pa.us/forestry/stateforestmanagement/Certification/
index.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Legislation is needed which streamlines compliance with several
environmental statutes on the small portion of the National Forest
System already identified as having a timber management objective,
which can serve as the basis of a Federal forest trust. With the Forest
Service currently spending $356 million annually on NEPA compliance,
reform legislation must:
Streamline NEPA analysis, ESA consultation, and judicial
review for projects conducted on lands designated for timber
production.
Set clear volume and acreage treatment targets to ensure
accountability.
Clarify to the courts that timber production is the primary
objective on this relatively small portion of the National
Forest System, not one use among many.
Focuses on timber economics in the design, operation, and
management of projects on lands designated for production.
steps short of comprehensive reform
As noted above, FFRC members are actively engaged in collaborative
projects across the country. We share the optimism that these projects
bring, with people recognizing that land management is necessary, and
the greatest threats from our forests come from failure to manage them
and prepare them for climate change and the large fires we know are
becoming more prevalent.
The Administration's position seems to be that if the Forest
Service continues to implement the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Act (CFLRAP), receives renewed Stewardship Contracting
authority, and is allowed to implement their proposed Integrated
Resource Restoration line item, they will have all the tools they need
to cope with the forest health threats they are facing.
FFRC believes the CFLRP program--and any other collaborative
efforts--needs hard targets--for acres treated and for timber outputs--
to assure these projects are producing the promised benefits at a lower
cost. Thus far, evidence on this front is inconclusive at best. We
strongly oppose national implementation of the IRR budgeting approach
because we feel it will diminish accountability with no obvious
increase in project efficiency. And while we strongly support renewed
Stewardship Contracting authority, we stress that Stewardship was not
intended to replace or supplant the traditional timber sale program,
which can still play a very positive role in accomplishing land
management goals.
And as noted above, evidence suggests that simply collaborating, or
using Stewardship contracts, does very little to reduce either the
likelihood of a dilatory lawsuit or to reduce the unsustainable costs
associated with ``bullet proofing'' even modest management projects
from administrative and legal review.
Even if we agreed 100% with the Administration's approach, it is
obvious to us that CFLRP, Stewardship Contracting, and IRR would be
insufficient to reduce the level of conflict, obstruction, and delay
created by a small minority of extremist groups. Leaving the status quo
in place leaves a long and established roadmap to obstruction on the
books without creating any benefit to the environment. We currently
have a system which requires multiple layers of analysis, impenetrable
public comment processes, forest plans which undergo revision so
frequently (or not at all) as to make a joke of the idea of a ``plan,''
and which forces the Forest Service to spend over $350 million a year
doing NEPA analysis.
What should be at best disagreements over approaches to land
management have instead been turned into points of law, as the Courts
have been invited to second guess and overanalyze even the smallest and
most benign forest management projects. The resultant delays, reduced
harvest levels, and uneconomic land management projects have helped
drive out forest management capacity in most States where the Forest
Service controls a substantial portion of the available forest lands.
Lack of management, fire suppression, overstocked stands, and climate
change have created a perfect storm that we now see manifested on the
landscape. The 48 million acres of bark beetle outbreaks and the 25% of
Arizona's pine forests which have burned catastrophically in the last
11 years are a monument to the status quo.
alaska
The Governor of Alaska, Sean Parnell, has worked with local
communities in Southeast Alaska, including native corporations, local
governments, and the timber industry, to develop a proposal for a State
Forest to be designated out of the Tongass National Forest. Given the
ongoing process of land allocation, and the apparent unwillingness of
the National Forest System to market logs which meet the needs of the
local industry, FFRC strongly supports this approach. The proposal by
Gov. Parnell would keep harvests below levels proposed for the Tongass
decades ago but never attained, while providing clarity to the local
industry that the Forest Service is unwilling to provide. Experiments
such as this are to be encouraged.
locking in conservation and sustainable timber production
A trust approach on lands which can support commercial timber
production would focus on the small portion of the National Forest
System which is supposed to be producing timber. Lands which have been
set aside after countless hours of public involvement, Congressional
review, and official designation as wilderness would remain off-limits
to commercial harvest.
Agency resources, currently wasted by over-analyzing even modest
timber sales or hazardous fuels projects, would be freed up to offer
economic timber sales, or to fund restoration work through Stewardship
contracts.
On acres designated for timber production, concrete management
requirements would help spur investment in wood using industries and
land management capacity. Existing mills would receive some assurance
that the National Forests they depend on will produce reliable supplies
of timber into the future. Economic development, currently stymied by a
declining forest products sector and extreme wildfires, would be
encouraged.
The American public would no longer be forced to bankroll a
litigation driven analysis machine, and instead could spend the few
dollars available to actually improve the condition of the National
Forest System.
The situation currently facing the Forest Service is akin to a
mouse, dropped into a maze with a piece of cheese at the exit. Only in
this case, the exit has been sealed, the cheese removed, and the maze
set on fire. While we can expect the mouse to work very hard, we can't
expect a good outcome. Unfortunately, the maze here is the tangle of
laws--and their interpretation in the courts--that Congress passed.
Only Congress can provide an exit.
The current system is unsustainable, socially, economically, and
ecologically. Piecemeal reforms hold little promise. The opportunity to
change the management paradigm is here.
The Chairman. A good challenge. Fix the maze.
I know you represent lots of people who do business with
the Forest Service. We're going to want your input. Thank you,
Mr. Imbergamo. We'll have some questions in a moment.
We've got Mr. Miles, please.
STATEMENT OF AARON MILES, MEMBER, CLEARWATER
BASIN COLLABORATIVE
Mr. Miles. Sorry about that. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Aaron
Miles and I work as the Manager for the Department of Natural
Resources for the Nez Perce Tribe. I am also a member of the
Clearwater Basin Collaborative.
I'd like to thank Senator Mike Crapo, Senator Jim Risch,
for their support of our communities in the Clearwater Basin,
located in North Central Idaho, as well as the invitation to
participate in this hearing of the Senate's Committee on Energy
and Natural Resources. Particular, Senator Crapo chartered the
CBC in 2008 to address Federal land management issues in the
Basin.
The CBC was formed out of frustration with the gridlock and
status quo. The inability of the Forest Service to effectively
manage forest landscapes in today's litigious climate. Our
vision is to enhance and protect ecological and economic health
of our forests.
As a member of the CBC I would like to list some of our
commitments to one another in our agreement and work plan which
is an honor based agreement work plan to resolve long standing
issues in the Clearwater Basin.
So the first one is active timber management which I'll
touch on a little bit more.
Rural economies honoring tribal, sacred and special places.
Wilderness and other management designations.
Outfitters and guides and wildlife management.
I list all 6 of these focus areas because the CBC is
committed to the interest of a diverse array of people and
needs and our walk on all these interests together is a big
part of success which includes timber harvest on the Nez Perce
Clearwater National Forest. As part of my representation for
the Nez Perce tribe, the tribe shares in all these diverse
interests which in particular, Pilot Knob is a special place, a
sacred place to the Nez Perce.
In addition to all the work that we've done for road
obliteration, culvert replacement to enhance tribal fisheries.
That's a huge part of our efforts.
Then last we have joined forces with Iowa Fish and Game,
U.S. Forest Service on elk and ungulate species to enhance
these species and tie elk body condition to forest habitat
conditions on the forest.
So, overall the health and welfare of the Nez Perce people
is interdependent upon the forests. It still provides our
spiritual sanctuary and sustenance for my people.
In terms of for the purposes of this hearing I will focus
on some of the challenges and obstacles associated with the
increased timber management.
The Forest Service has become an agency focused on the
costs, resources and time invested in NEPA. Planning and often
based on an anticipated challenges, appeals and litigation
rather than the desired future outcomes. In the years since
NEPA was passed into law there have been numerous lawsuits
resulting in a mountain of case law that has transformed the
way the agency approaches and conducts NEPA analysis.
Current Forest Service regulations are filled with
controversy, complexity and excessive scientific analysis
requirements and legal barriers that delay or block needed
management of much of the public land area. These regulations
and analysis requirements are applied across landscapes whether
needed for the resource or not and result in redundant and
often unnecessary actions.
To complicate matters the multitude of regulations is
sometimes at crossed purposes with what is needed on the ground
or in conflict with other regulations. Rather than sound
professional practices applied on very different landscapes
with distinctly different needs, the agency is often hamstrung
to produce in their insurmountable focus on regulatory
compliance. I believe there needs to be a hard look at the
intent of the original law, NEPA, and how the analysis have
been shaped by case law.
Second, there is a discussion about making NEPA more
efficient. From my perspective the agency is trying a couple of
things.
First as evidenced in the Clear Creek project on the Nez
Perce Clearwater forest, are trying to propose and analyze more
activities in a project that covers a larger area.
Over my career I have seen the pendulum swing back and
forth between large scale and small scale approaches. Large
scale projects are en vogue until one or two were successfully
litigated causing a forest to lose a major portion of its
overall timber program. It took the forest years to rebuild its
program. The forest then opted for small scale projects so the
loss of one didn't have just a major adverse impact to the
forest's overall vegetation program.
It is now working its way back to larger, more complex
projects. It is critical that these projects succeed. The
stakes are high.
So as a Nez Perce Indian my people have witnessed the
conversions of these landscapes from grassland savanna to
closed forest canopies and list our desirable conditions. The
Nez Perce sustenance way of life was built around those types
of ecosystems for our food source, to support diversity of
wildlife and populations. As a member of the CBC I've
personally witnessed the shift in dialog and change in attitude
toward the Forest Service to a more working relationship.
I wholeheartedly believe that our collaborative has created
a different atmosphere in the Basin. We have made progress over
time. We will need to continue working together with the Forest
Service in order to meet the needs of the people and the
resources that we all depend upon.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Miles follows:]
Prepared Statement of Aaron Miles, Member, Clearwater Basin
Collaborative
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Aaron Miles
and I work as the manager for the Department of Natural Resources for
the Nez Perce Tribe at Lapwai, ID. I am also a member of the Clearwater
Basin Collaborative. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you
today.
I would like to thank Senator Mike Crapo and Senator Jim Risch for
their support of our communities in the Clearwater Basin located in
North Central Idaho as well as the invitation to participate in this
hearing of the Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. In
particular Senator Crapo chartered the Clearwater Basin Collaborative
(CBC) in 2008 to address federal land management issues in the basin
where the majority of acreage is National Forest System lands. The CBC
was formed out of frustration with the gridlock and status quo or
inability of the Forest Service to effectively manage forest landscapes
in today's litigious climate. Our vision is to enhance and protect the
ecological and economic health of our forests, rivers and communities
within the Clearwater Basin by working collaboratively across a
diversity of interests.
I would like to share my thoughts about some of the challenges we
have seen in our efforts to promote:
1. Active timber management to support ecological restoration
2. Rural economies
3. Honoring Tribal Sacred and Special places
4. Wilderness, Wild & Scenic Rivers and Special Management
Designations
5. Outfitters and Guides
6. Wildlife Management
I list all 6 of these focus areas because the Clearwater Basin
Collaborative is committed to the interests of a diverse array of
people and needs and our work on all of these interests together is a
big part of our success which includes increased timber harvest on the
NezPerce/Clearwater National Forest.
The Nez Perce Tribe shares concerns in a number of these diverse
interests. The Tribe still experiences high unemployment and many of
our members work during the seasonal months for the Tribe's Department
of Natural Resources and Department of Fisheries Resource Management.
At one time the Tribe employed nearly 300 employees in forest products
jobs when active management was the major part of our operations and
took place on 50,000 acres of land with nearly 15 to 20 MMBF(million
board feet).
The tribe has also worked towards the restoration of Pilot Knob, a
well-known sacred vision quest site on the Nez Perce/Clearwater
National Forest. Pilot Knob has a number of radio telecommunications
towers because of the locale and elevation needed for communications.
The Tribe believes we are nearly at a time where technology will allow
for changes that will support communication needs and the return of
mountain to its original use and sanctity for the Tribe. The CBC is
committed to resolving these issues.
The Tribe is working towards restoration of many of the anadromous
fish bearing streams on the Forest. Much of the work includes road
obliteration and culvert replacement to reduce stream sedimentation and
is in conjunction with the Tribe's anadromous fisheries outplanting
efforts to restore fisheries in major tributaries on the Forest.
Special designations such as Wild & Scenic and Wilderness protect some
of the pristine places for these efforts and is a positive net gain in
the amount of protection of these important resources.
The Tribe has joined forces with the Idaho Department of Fish and
Game, and the US Forest Service in the CBC's Wildlife Initiative. This
effort ties elk body condition to forest habitat conditions on the
Forest. Through the effort it is our hope to address wildlife concerns
in the basin for elk and ungulate species as well as other wildlife.
The Clearwater Basin once boasted one of the nation's largest elk herd
and changes in forest conditions has negatively affected population
viability. The Tribe's culture is also interwoven with these species.
Overall the health and welfare of the Nez Perce People is
interdependent upon the Forest. It still provides the spiritual
sanctuary and sustenance to my people. It will always be a place called
home for the Nez Perce just as it has since time immemorial.
For purposes of this hearing today, I will focus on some of the
challenges and obstacles associated to increased timber management.
tools and obstacles--challeges and opportunities to getting more work
done in the woods
The FS has become an agency focused on the costs, resources and
time invested in NEPA and Planning and often based on anticipated
challenges (appeals and litigation), rather than on the desired future
outcomes. In the years since the National Environmental Policy Act was
passed into law, there have been numerous lawsuits resulting in a
mountain of case law that has transformed the way the agency approaches
and conducts NEPA analyses.
Current FS regulations are filled with controversy, complexity and
excessive scientific analysis requirements and legal barriers that
delay or block needed management of much of the public land area. These
regulations and analysis requirements are applied across landscapes
whether needed for the resource or not and result in redundant and
often unnecessary actions. To complicate matters, the multitude of
regulations is sometimes at cross purposes with what is needed on the
ground or in conflict with other regulations. Rather than sound
professional practices applied on very different landscapes with
distinctly different needs, the Agency is often hamstrung to produce in
their insurmountable focus on regulatory compliance.
I believe there needs to be a hard look at the intent of the
original law (NEPA) and how the analyses have been shaped by case law.
Secondly, there is discussion about making NEPA more efficient. From my
perspective the agency is trying a couple of things. First, as
evidenced in the Clear Creek project, the Nez Perce-Clearwater Forests
are trying to propose and analyze more activities in a project that
covers a larger area. Over my career, I have seen the pendulum swing
back and forth between the large-scale and small-scale approaches.
Large scale projects were in vogue until one or two were successfully
litigated, causing a Forest to lose a major portion of its overall
timber program. It took the Forest years to rebuild its program. The
Forest then opted for small scale projects so the loss of one didn't
have just a major adverse impact to the Forest's overall vegetation
program. It is now working its way back to larger, more complex
projects. It is critical that these projects succeed--the stakes are
high.
The second approach the Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest has tried is
upfront collaboration designed to build understanding and support with
stakeholders prior to starting NEPA analyses. The Clearwater Basin
Collaborative believes this is the desired approach to project
development and appreciates the Forests' efforts. The various
perspectives brought in up front helps the Forests to design a better
project. In the end, if there are challenges, collaborators are able to
work behind the scenes to facilitate resolution. If there is no
resolution, collaborators can stand with the Forests to defend
proposals. The agency benefits when it has that kind of support in
appeal negotiations or in a courtroom.
A serious in-depth review of NEPA and its application over time
along with a review of the regulations guiding the Forest Service could
help Congress make informed decisions about whether or it is time to
consider NEPA and regulatory reform. The value of true collaboration
and its positive effects on the ground is happening all over the
country and certainly in the Clearwater Basin of Idaho.
In terms of agency spending and overhead, it always makes sense to
look for efficiencies and eliminate unnecessary and/or redundant
functions. Recently, the NezPerce and Clearwater National Forest were
consolidated. This move has reduced the cost of two stand-alone
administrations, is saving money and is resulting in management
consistency across the landscape. We suggest similar options could be
explored at other locations.
Each level of the Forest Service serves a specific and useful
function and our belief is that elimination of any of the levels would
negatively impact good public service. The CBC has worked in
partnership with the District, Supervisors, Regional and Washington
Office level on issues and believes much of our success is due to those
working relationships.
It would be unfair to leave the issue of spending without saying
something about the ever declining budgets of the Forest Service. While
appropriated dollars decrease with time, more resources are needed to
fight escalating fire activity. The buildup of fuels, increased urban
interface challenges, escalating fire complexity and costs all
contribute to the Agencies inability to actively manage their lands. If
a third or more of the budget is being used for firefighting--it is no
wonder the Forest Service is not providing the level of public service
they once did. The many dedicated professionals I have known over the
years are capable of good work but the number of employees funded and
the active management programs continue to be sacrificed for
firefighting efforts.
approaches on how to tackle forestry challenges
The Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests and Clearwater Basin
Collaborative have been working together for five years. Progress has
definitely been made in terms of trends and today the Forests are more
successful achieving targets and reducing unit costs than before
collaboration with the CBC was a reality. This change is multi-faceted
and time consuming because it is founded on mutual trust, open
dialogue, diverse interests, and willingness to consider new and
different approaches. We commend the Forest Service for their
willingness to work with the CBC and are proud that CBC members are
committed to science based and sound resource management and the
interests of the public as well as their own.
In addition to providing valuable support for NEPA analyses,
collaborators can serve as advocates for the Agency and for specific
projects with other members of the public. Collaborative groups can
help the Forests secure funding and recruit partners and leverage
matching funds for special initiatives. The collaborative groups
represent the diverse array of interests and provide input to the
Agency to consider in their land management activities. The structure
of Collaborative groups is critical in ensuring results that are
scientifically sound and should have diverse representation and members
who will work together to ensure projects achieve scientifically sound
outcomes.
additional considerations
We think it might be timely to take a look at the agency's mission.
The Forest Service has been tasked with being all things to all people.
This is perhaps the most difficult mission in the federal government to
fulfill. The agency is doing its best to redeem its mission, but it is
increasingly difficult in this time of declining budgets and a society
that is so divided and often lacks the skill/will to have a civil
debate about land management issues. Fewer people are willing to have
the difficult discussions that lead to win-win outcomes and decreasing
personal contacts when project issues develop is counterproductive.
As a Nez Perce Indian, my people have witnessed the conversion of
these landscapes from grassland-savanna to closed forest canopies and
less desirable conditions. The Nez Perce sustenance way of life was
built around those types of ecosystems for our own food source and to
support diversity of wildlife populations. As a member of the CBC, I
have personally witnessed the shift in dialogue and change in attitude
towards the Forest Service to more of a working partnership. I
wholeheartedly believe that our collaboration has created a different
atmosphere in the basin. We have made progress over time and we will
need to continue working together to meet the needs of people and the
resources we all depend on.
Thank you for your time.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Miles.
We've got 6 Senators here. So I think what we'll do is
we'll have 5 minute rounds. Then get the possibility of a
second round.
Chief, I am trying to make sense out of the timber sale
numbers specifically because at first glance the timber sale
funding doesn't mirror the timber sale output. I want you to
walk me through how this works.
We looked at your testimony. You state that the agency
increased its funding for the timber sale program over the last
17 years from a low of 180 million in 1995 to 335 million in
2012. Yet, when you look at the data on actual harvests and the
number of mills over the same period of time you see a
significant decline, the decline of more than a third.
Now, in your testimony you state and it seems to me,
appropriately so, that efficiencies are part of this. But at
the same time you look at those facts and it seems that we're
getting less efficiency rather than more. So, can you walk me
through how those numbers, which to me suggests that timber
sale funding doesn't mirror output?
Give me your reaction to that kind of analysis just looking
at the numbers?
Mr. Tidwell. Senator, we need to also factor in that
inflation over that period of time that has reduced the
spending power of dollars. So that's one of the changes.
You know, the other part of it is we track how much it
costs to produce a thousand board feet from the start of when
we initiate a project to when we actually sell that project and
that also includes the contract administration.
So over the years we've tracked those costs. Those costs
have gone down by about 23 percent since 1998, so that's why we
talk about we have gained some efficiencies. Even though our
budgets have gone up a little bit, but just the cost of
inflation, the cost of doing the work has also gone up during
that same time.
I'm pleased with the efficiencies that we've gained. But
it's just a start of where we need to be. When I talk about
these landscape level analyses and Aaron made a very good point
that we've tried this in the past. Then we get challenged and
we have to take a step back.
But today there is the support for this type of analysis
that we haven't had in the past. So I think that's another area
we'll be able to continue to increase our efficiencies.
The other thing that we're working on is with our sale prep
efficiencies. We've been stuck doing it the way we've always
done it in the past. We're finding that there are different
ways to create some efficiencies more than just how we do sale
preparation to be able to reduce the amount of time that we're
spending there and the amount of personnel. These are the
things we want to continue to work on to be able to increase
those efficiencies.
But there's no question that what's happened with the
agency, and I use 1998 because that's when I saw the change in
the fire seasons from my personal view. Our fire seasons have
increased and we've had to shift more and more of our funding,
from the national forest systems into suppression and
preparedness. It's had an impact on these programs.
Our budgets have been basically stable for the last decade
plus. But we've had to shift a significant amount of money. So
that has impacted our capacity to be able to do more work.
I'll tell you I'm proud of our employees regarding what
they've been able to do and working through our collaboratives,
with our partners, we've been able to get more work done with,
I think, probably with less capacity. But we've got to find a
way to be able to increase those efficiencies. Then we also
need to find a way to be able to stop the impact of the fire
seasons on the rest of our programs.
The Chairman. We're going to have more discussion about the
fire season. I just want it understood that if the agency comes
in and says we're getting more money and people see the harvest
going down and the number of mills going down, people are going
to say that sure doesn't seem to connect.
So we've got more work to do, particularly on getting the
harvest up. I think we can do it.
Let me just ask a question with respect to collaboration
because Mr. Imbergamo, you and the Chief seem to have striking
differences on this point.
We have seen collaboratives work. In Eastern Oregon, for
example, we have a historic agreement, an agreement that's
really a national model between the timber industry and the
environmental community. Harvest up, litigation down. I mean
down significantly, largely because of the trust.
Mr. Imbergamo, what do you think the Chief ought to be
doing on the collaboration issue, specifically? We're going to
get into the question of streamlining NEPA here in a bit. But
specifically, what do you think he needs to do on collaboration
to make that Eastern Oregon model the standard.
Because I think the Chief makes a good point that the
projects he's taking on actually exceed their performance
targets for this year.
What should he do more of on collaboration? We'll make this
the--because I'm 13 seconds over already.
Mr. Imbergamo. Collaboration is fine. I have members who
are involved, founding members of collaboratives including the
Clearwater collaborative. One of my members in Idaho is a
founding member of that and my Oregon companies are involved in
the various collaboratives around the State.
It's not so much a matter of whether they should do more or
less collaboration. I guess for me, the question ultimately is
if the collaborative project then must continue to run the
gauntlet of endless NEPA analysis and the presumption that any
basic forest management project should get judicial review.
We're not going to see a reduction in the unit costs.
Even if they don't get litigated they spend the same amount
of money doing the NEPA to try to make sure that if they wind
up in court, they can defend it. Again, it's a diversion of
resources into bulletproofing the project rather than undoing
what the same types of projects on more acres.
That's the big problem. Then the diversion of resources to
fire fighting which is really put the agency in a bind.
The Chairman. Let me go on to my colleague.
Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Maisch, I'm going to ask you in a minute here to kind
of describe what we have gone through in Alaska with our
collaborative effort with the Tongass Futures Roundtable. The
fact that it lasted 5 years is actually pretty good evidence
that we really did give it a very good try.
But as you noted in your testimony, the Governor pulled out
and moved to the task force. But it is an example where, you
have pointed out, Mr. Imbergamo, you can have all the
collaborative process but if at the end of the day it still
takes forever, the uncertainty, the litigation, the regulation.
If you're no further ahead, collaborative processes are good.
But we still haven't gotten to the point where we're seeing
more timber actually being harvested.
Chief, you have heard the comments from many on the panel
here the clear frustration about policies that really have
taken us to the point that we are now. We're, certainly in
Alaska, when you look at the rate of decline of the harvest so
much of it comes because of policies that have been put in
place, the regulations that have been put in place. The
uncertainty that we see. The litigation that follows.
There have been several legislative proposals that would
set treatment levels or timber supply mandates that basically
put you, as an agency, in a place where you have to provide
that certainty. We do it through legislation. As Mr. Maisch has
indicated in Alaska the recommendation is let us, as a State,
manage our own forests. Let us have a State forest here.
What is the agency's position on legislative, legislated
supply mandates? Is this how we're going to get to a better
place if we can't do it at the Federal level do we have to
legislate here? Do states, like Alaska, that are looking to
different ideas? Is this the direction that we have to go?
Mr. Tidwell. Senator, outputs are based on our planning
process, the input we receive from our communities about how
these lands should be managed. I think no one's been more clear
about the need to do more work on our national forests than I
have.
So when we look at the proposals to legislate certain
outputs, unless we go back and really address everything that
builds up to the current program of work, it puts the agency in
a very difficult spot to actually be able to carry out that
direction. So when those are proposed it's very problematic
because we still have our forest plan. We still have what the
public wants us to be, the outputs, the overall outputs from
these lands.
So it puts us just in a very difficult situation to be able
to move forward on just one piece of multiple use. You know, I
think the set of laws that we have today, they're a good set of
laws. They reflect how the public wants their national forest
managed.
Now there's no question that sometimes how the laws are
interpreted are a little bit different. If there's one thing
that I think that might be beneficial is to find ways to maybe,
clarify, our current laws.
For instance, you know, we find ourselves having to analyze
numerous alternatives with a lot of our analyses. There's no
requirement for that. NEPA doesn't require that you do 6 or 7
or 8 alternatives.
Senator Murkowski. Why don't you do that then?
Mr. Tidwell. It's been pointed out that because of certain
court rulings that we find that if we go ahead and just put in
one alternative, then we often are faced in court. So it's
just, part of it's easier to go ahead and do it so that we will
not have to, you know, deal with litigation.
So but at the same time through some of our collaboratives
we get down to really having an agreement on one action
alternative, with the No Action, which we're required to do.
So we are able to move forward with those. But that, to me,
is a better way to be able to find ways to clarify what our
current laws are. Congress could send a message to clarify that
this is what NEPA says. It need not say anything more than
that.
I think those are the things that would also be helpful.
Senator Murkowski. Let me ask you, Mr. Maisch, in my
remaining time. The task force has, again, come up with this
recommendation as to State forest.
Is this kind of a last ditch effort for the State to bring
some certainty into the process so that we can have a
sustainable level of harvest? Can you just speak to the
proposal that came from the task force?
Mr. Maisch. Yes, Senator Murkowski.
I would say, yes. I don't know if it's a last ditch effort,
but it's certainly a well reasoned, thought out effort. A lot
of due diligence has been applied to the situation we have.
Senator Murkowski. Right. I don't mean to suggest it was
hurried. But we've tried everything else.
Mr. Maisch. Yes. I think we have definitely made an example
of trying everything else. We've been and continue to work with
the Forest Service in Region 10 as a cooperating agency.
We've tried the collaborative process. We just did not get
results. As you noted, 5 years in collaboration and no action
on the ground.
So we feel that the diversification of ownership in
Southeast Alaska is needed. It's, as you noted, primarily owned
by the Federal Government and where there's a diversified land
base there is more certainty and a more stable timber supply.
Senator Murkowski. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. Chief, I want to start with a couple of
questions for you. I want to go back to what you were just
talking about in terms of the laws, what works, what doesn't
work and the goals here.
Rather than mandating a timber harvest level wouldn't it
make sense to sort of define what the healthy forest condition
is that you want on a particular national forest depending on
the balance between, you know, moist and dry forests, the
specific condition of that forest. Then using your harvest
levels to try to move the forests toward the condition that you
actually want for a healthy forest.
Mr. Tidwell. Senator, yes.
That's our current approach through our planning process to
be able to identify what type of treatments need to occur to be
able to improve the overall forest health, the resiliency, and
provide that full mix of benefits and then to develop the
projects to actually implement that.
Our challenge has just been that there's work that needs to
be done. We have to find more ways to be more efficient to be
able to basically overcome the loss of capacity to be able to
get more of this work done.
In your part of the country, losing the infrastructure, the
mills, the loggers, that's really set us back. We're trying to
do some things too, especially through stewardship contracting,
where we can provide some certainty over a 10-year period of
time that a certain amount of harvest is going to occur so that
folks can justify investing in new equipment and new
infrastructure. Those are the things that we want to continue
to work on.
Where we're seeing those in places where we have these
strong collaboratives, we're making good progress.
Senator Heinrich. OK.
Let me follow up on that because you mentioned stewardship
contracting. You've mentioned timber harvest and small woody
biomass removal. Another important tool, obviously, in the
Southwest is prescribed fire.
Each of these tools has costs. They have benefits.
Sometimes the right choice for one forest is absolutely wrong
for another.
In Southwestern Ponderosa Pine forests, which are
definitely not moist forests, we've seen these restoration
projects focus largely on removing the small diameter trees,
low hanging branches, leaving the fire resilient trees which
are the large trees, that have a market for them.
How does the Forest Service decide what the best tool for
managing that forest is? How do you make the restoration that
needs to happen, happen when most of it, in our forests, are
focused on these small diameter trees that really don't have a
market.
Mr. Tidwell. There is a challenge that we need to find some
better economic markets for this smaller diameter material.
But what drives the project proposal is really the science
that we have that indicates what we need to do on that
landscape. In many places in your country, your part of the
country there, we do need to thin out our Ponderosa Pine
stands.
Senator Heinrich. Good.
Mr. Tidwell. They definitely have too many stems per acre
without any question. But at other times there's also a need to
remove some of the larger diameter material to be able to deal
with the overall forest health.
We need to be able to apply the science we have today that
will help us to understand what needs to be done on these
landscapes.
We need to be able to go in there, instead of doing
multiple entries every few years, and take a step back to see
what needs to be done every 20 or 30 years versus multiple
entries. That means that we have to usually take out a little
more material--it's more trees.
But in the long term it makes that forest much more
resilient.
Senator Heinrich. Mr. Farquhar, I want to bring up one of
the things that, I think, is working within the Forest Service
side of the House is the collaborative forest landscape
restoration program. We've seen that be very successful in New
Mexico, as you know, in the Zuni Mountains.
The Zuni Mountains project is expected to treat about
56,000 acres, create 93 jobs and save 37 million in future
wildfire suppression costs, all for a little over $7 million in
Federal investment.
Is that a model that you've looked at on the DOI side as
well? If not, what are some of the collaborative model examples
that you're excited about and that you've seen work within the
BLM side of the House?
Mr. Farquhar. Thank you, Senator.
It's a great model. One of the strengths of the Bureau of
Land Management's overall system is that it really grows from
the field offices up. There's a lot of communication with
people in the communities, with the industry, also with people
who are concerned about fire, obviously.
We've seen good examples in Socorro Field Office, I think,
there's a project there that we're working on with local
communities. We've got examples in other states as well.
Colorado, where we're doing some good neighbor work. So we
aren't actually able to work under the exact same statutory
authority that the Forest Service has.
But we do see the value of that kind of project.
Particularly now when we're seeing a reduction in funding
across the board we're going to rely more and more on the
communities. We're also able at times to go to the Forest
Service and apply for grants to help with some of these local
projects.
Unfortunately we don't have a huge, in the Bureau of Land
Management, a huge forestry budget. So a lot of times we blend
that kind of work with another funded program to try to achieve
the same results. We're looking in the hazardous fuels program
right now at addressing the highest priority threats some of
which are in the wild land urban interfaces that we all are
concerned about and seeing more and more damage occurring. But
we're also looking at places where habitat might be a concern
as well.
So in sum, it's a very good model that we look at from the
Forest Service.
Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank my colleague.
Senator Risch.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Tom, first of all let me say that I, after sitting through
all these hearings and again today, a common thread that runs
through this is people aren't very happy with the Forest
Service. This isn't your fault. This is Congress's fault.
As you point out, you didn't write the NEPA law. More
importantly, you really didn't--weren't involved in the cases
where the courts have tightened the NEPA law down even more
that hamstrings your agency.
Having said that, your suggestion and it was very modest,
you said so very modestly, but it's important and that is
Congress should have a look at this again.
You know, you've heard me over and over again talk about
how Idaho, on their school lands. We've got 2.4 million acres
and we took 330 million board feet off last year. You've got 20
million acres. You took off 79 million board feet.
Now admittedly there are some reasons for that. But that
gap is stunning, really.
What I might suggest you do is your modest suggestion
really didn't have any meat on the bones. The Forest Service
really should step up. Say, OK look, if you want us to do what
Americans want as far as managing their forests, this is what
you ought to do, Congress, with NEPA.
Now let me give you a suggestion. Those of us that have had
formal training in forest management focus on something
different than the politicians do and others do. That is the
fact that every single acre is different.
When I was Governor, as you know, I wrote a roadless rule
which is the only roadless rule, State roadless rule in effect
in America. When I looked at this and it was put on my desk and
the States were invited to do this, it was obvious to me just
what I said. That is every acre is different.
For 40 years I've been trying to write a roadless rule that
applied the same to every acre in America. So what I did is I
divvied it up into a half a dozen different themes, if you
would, with the help of the Nez Perce Tribe and with the help
of lots of other people. We wrote a roadless rule that I then
had to go out and sell the environmentalists. I had to sell to
industry.
More importantly I had to sell to the Administration. First
the Bush Administration and then the Obama Administration, both
of whom were equally enthusiastic about supporting us. You,
yourself, I sincerely appreciate that help.
But we ought to probably take a look at NEPA, No. 1. As you
know that is not going to be an easy task. It's a heavy lift.
But if we do it collaboratively and we do it with an idea
that everyone is going to have some input into this. Maybe we
can make some progress in this. We ought to do it the way
trained forest managers do it. That is not try to write a law
that applies to every acre.
I mean, you guys administer some incredibly sensitive and
incredibly beautiful and incredibly unique acres that should be
left alone. On the other hand, you've got lots and lots of
acres that are general forest that should be managed the way
you and I learned about multiple use. That was a good concept
then and it's a good concept now. It's not for every acre. But
it's for a lot of acres.
So I'd invite you to put some of your best minds to work on
this and say, Congress, look, you want us to do this. You want
us to quit spending all this money on NEPA. How about if we
take NEPA and apply it differently to different categories of
land? I think that maybe we could make some progress in that
regard.
So I hope you'll give that some thought. Again, I
understand the tremendous challenges that you have. But you
know, you've been to enough of these hearings that people are
not happy with the Forest Service either with the fire
management or the production management.
Mr. Tidwell. Senator, I want to acknowledge all your
support and leadership to help deal with our roadless issue in
Idaho.
I want to clarify that when I look at NEPA I think it's a
good law. I see how it's been interpreted and sometimes applied
beyond really what I believe was the original intent.
CEQ has been working very closely with us to help us to
actually focus our analysis because they too agree, that we're
doing much more analysis than we need to. They've been very
supportive like on this Black Hills project. One of the reasons
we were able to do that analysis on a quarter of a million
acres was because the CEQ was there to help us really focus the
NEPA.
So the law itself I think is a good law. It requires us to
do a lot. We would be doing a lot of that analysis anyway to be
able to have the information we'd need to be able to go out and
do the right thing on the land.
I do think that there is some opportunity to clarify the
intent of these laws that we have on the books, that would be
helpful.
Senator Risch. Thank you. Tom, I appreciate that.
Aaron, just in closing let me say thank you to you and to
the Nez Perce Tribe for your work on the CBC, for the work on
the roadless rule. The government would be, the Federal
Government would be well served to look at what the Nez Perce
Tribe is doing, in particularly in the Department that you
head.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Risch.
As always, Senator Risch, you make important points. You
make important points that reflect that not only do you have a
degree in forestry, you've been out there trying to bring
people together. I think, particularly, this point that Senator
Risch has made today, that not all acres are created equal, is
a very compelling point.
Dr. Johnson, you essentially made that point when you
talked about the moist harvests in the O and C areas.
Senator Risch, what Dr. Johnson was essentially talking
about was how some of his ideas like reducing some of the red
tape and bureaucracy in survey and management and stream
buffers and the like would triple the land base for management.
So you said we really need to take a look at NEPA as it relates
to forestry in this committee. As far as I'm concerned, that
look begins this morning.
I'm going to spend the rest of my time specifically on
questions about NEPA. I just want to thank you, Senator Risch,
because you have, as always, brought your best game to this
debate. I've highlighted just with your questions what our job
is.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, this stuff is not news to anybody who is
sitting at the panel. I mean people who've had formal training
and that know that trying to manage public lands from marbled
halls in Washington, DC, is not the way to do this.
The goals of NEPA are probably supported by 99 percent of
the American people. As with all things that Congress does, we
have these lofty goals. We try to put it into legislative
language. Then when the thing gets on the ground it turns into
a real wreck. That's what's happened with NEPA.
The goals of NEPA are good. It was a like an experiment
really in the world. No culture in the world has ever done what
we did when we enacted NEPA. We had the goal of preserving and
protecting our natural resources and at the same time being
able to use them.
The difficulty is we tried to lay one rule over every acre
in America that is subject to the rule. It's not working in
practicality.
So it's time to take a look at this thing. This is not
going to be an easy lift. It will be a difficult lift. I don't
know if Congress is up to the task. Indeed historically when we
question that. But nonetheless I think it's worth the effort.
I think if you actually could do something like that you'd
get rid of this tremendous amount of money that's spent, the
tremendous amount of wasted effort that court cases take up in
dealing with this. Instead we could all pull the wagon together
and use this money to make public lands better.
The Chairman. Well said.
Let's start in with exactly the kind of task that Senator
Risch has defined is looking at NEPA. Let me just frame this
very specifically. Our objective is to get the harvest up
without compromising these bedrock environmental values that we
care about in Oregon. I think people care about all over the
country.
Let me start with the time and expense associated with
this.
The Forest Service noted, in response to a House hearing
question, that on average 70 percent of the costs of preparing
and administering a timber sale goes for environmental review.
Of course in discussion with respect to how you might look at
NEPA, streamlining in that context I've described.
Harvest up. Not compromising environmental values. You
always hear discussion about whether this should be done on the
landscape scale, programmatic planning. These are the words
that just get hurled about.
Here's how I wanted to start this topic which Senator Risch
has correctly raised. The agency has put a fair amount of
effort into pilot projects in this area. I think, Chief, it
would be very helpful if you could explain in something
resembling English because this is pretty dense stuff.
You can get off into NEPA language and it sort of sounds
like prolonged root canal work. How is the agency able to save
time and money, at least on the basis of these streamlining
projects? How what you've learned in the pilots could be
applicable generally? Because I think what we're talking about
here there's very little difference.
You aren't going to see Democrats and Republicans beating
each other's brains out over the idea of getting the harvest up
while keeping environmental values.
So if you would tell us what you think are the lessons out
of the pilot projects that we can begin to use as we go forward
with what Senator Risch has correctly described as a big lift.
I mean, anybody who's talking about NEPA, this is not an
exercise for the faint-hearted. This is a big, big lift.
So if you can tell us what you've actually found in your
pilots that's worked for purposes of our going forward. Let's
start with that.
Mr. Tidwell. Simply put, we have to do the same level
analysis, and documentation if we're looking at 5,000 acres or
a quarter of a million acres. So instead of doing hundreds of
projects at 5,000 acres a shot versus doing one at 250,000
acres. That's one of the lessons that we've learned.
The other thing is when we look at these larger----
The Chairman. That is, again, so I can start talking to
colleagues and people in language that people can convey, these
big landscape projects. They're a better investment. Is that
what you're saying?
Mr. Tidwell. It's one environmental analysis for these
large areas versus having hundreds of smaller analyses. It
takes a little more time, but it's so much more efficient.
The Chairman. But that would put points on the board. Let's
just be very clear because all this is so hard to follow. That
would put points on the board for the cause of streamlining
NEPA in a way that would be good for getting harvests up
without sacrificing the environmental values.
Mr. Tidwell. Yes.
The Chairman. Is that right?
Mr. Tidwell. Yes.
The Chairman. OK.
Mr. Tidwell. The second approach we're using is what we
call adaptive management, it looking at things which are going
to occur over the next few years. So it gives our managers
flexibility.
For instance, when you get an insect and disease outbreak
you don't have to go back and do additional analysis because it
was covered under the first analysis. You can quickly go in
there without any additional analysis, which is what we've been
working on.
Adaptive analysis looks at these large landscapes. That
frees us from having to go back and do additional analysis when
there's a change in condition out there because as much as we
like to think that we know everything that's going to happen,
say over the next 10 years, we'll get a wind storm that comes
through or get an outbreak of bark beetle.
This allows us to go ahead and do the work that needs to be
done without additional analysis.
The Chairman. Without going back, in effect, you would do
it once.
Mr. Tidwell. Yes.
The Chairman. So we have big landscapes, do it once, and
this concept, this adaptive analysis, in effect, factors in
weather conditions and the like.
Those are two things on the basis of your pilots that you
think would help streamline NEPA, and again, strike the balance
that I've been describing.
Anything else?
Mr. Tidwell. Just by looking at larger landscapes it gives
us more flexibility to actually do enough treatment where it
makes a changed condition. When we talk about restoring forest
health, reducing hazardous fuel risk to communities, we have to
do it on a large enough scale where it really makes a
difference. So it's actually easier for us to be able to
justify that this is the work that needs to be done when we
look at these large landscapes versus these smaller projects
that we used to focus on.
The Chairman. My time is up. But other witnesses, you know,
buckle up, because we're going to ask you all the same
question.
Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. To just kind of follow on the Chairman
here. We've been quizzing you, Chief, on the agency's approach.
But Mr. Farquhar, from the BLM's perspective and ideas that
could be put in play to achieve what we've been talking about
here. Anything that you would add?
If you would also comment on Dr. Johnson's proposal here
for this ecological forestry and how we deal with wet forests,
dry forests?
Mr. Farquhar. Thank you, Senator.
I agree with a lot of what the Chief just said. The Bureau
of Land Management is also embarking on some landscape scale
projects to try to look at larger areas so that the
environmental--it's the same as what we're doing actually for
renewable energy projects and a lot of other things on the
public lands where we're trying to say let's do a large look.
Then we've eased the way for the eventual, actual, project or
proposal from a developer or for a timber sale or whatever it
might be. Then what we're able to do is streamline the eventual
sale process.
Now just to take what the Chief was saying a little
further. Chairman Wyden has proposed some principles for forest
management, potentially in Western Oregon. Having public
agreement on principles when you start that process, I think,
is very important.
We have just issued a purpose in need statement for the
Western Oregon lands that are really the most intensive we
manage for timber across the country. So I think there's the
most analogous. I'll focus on that with the Forest Service.
Once we get those principles out there and get the purpose
in need out there, get the public to respond to those. Then
we're much more able to say, let's grab techniques like what
Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin have been bringing forward. How
those techniques fit in a larger fabric for that landscape.
There's no question that what Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin
are doing in Western Oregon is introducing new concepts for how
to go about removing larger volumes of timber in an
ecologically safe way. In fact a way that enhances the ecology
in many respects in the biodiversity actually.
So you have to start from a larger perspective, a landscape
perspective and work down. It takes more time. But you don't
end up with as many protests and appeals that are able to stop
the presses later on because you've got the logic and the
public support built in at the beginning.
We're seeing that in a lot of different areas that we work
in not just in timber.
Senator Murkowski. When I think, this goes to your point,
Mr. Chairman, and that Senator Risch raised which is, you know,
every acre of forest is not the same.
When you and I went to West Virginia and flew over pretty
much all private lands in West Virginia looking at that and
understanding how that State has actually done pretty well with
their timber. But I recognize that it has a certain amount of
flexibility or freedom, if you will, under State management as
to the Federal issues.
The fact that unfortunately, too often, we have this one
size fits all mentality here. Not only when it comes to forest
management but in so many other policies that come out of
Washington, DC. It's just one size fits all.
What you have in the Tongass, a very moist forest, is far
different than what you would have in my colleague's forest
down in Arizona. So recognizing that we have to deal
differently if we're going to get good results, good management
on our forests is key.
Chief, I wanted to ask you one last question. This relates
to the Big Thorn sale based on Prince of Wales. It's my
understanding that the record of decision for the EIS was going
to be here any day. It was imminent. We would be able to get
started by the end of the summer.
In your written testimony you're now saying that the record
of decision for Big Thorn is expected in late 2013. What is
happening here? Why are we seeing this slippage in the time?
Really for those that have been counting on Big Thorn. We
all know that we've been counting on Big Thorn to come along.
What am I going to tell them?
Mr. Tidwell. We expect to have the record of decision out
by the first of July.
Senator Murkowski. OK.
Mr. Tidwell. Then be able to award the contract in
September at the latest. The Forest Service has had to do some
additional cruise data, additional cruising to be able to have
the right information that they need.
But I'll tell you they're working very hard to be able to
get that forward. It is a key project for all of us, which
we're committed to get done.
Senator Murkowski. OK, so July 1 we should see the record
of decision.
Mr. Tidwell. Yes.
Senator Murkowski. September we're going.
Mr. Tidwell. Yes.
Senator Murkowski. OK.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senators are coming in and out. Just in order
of appearance. Our next two questioners will be Senator Flake
and then Senator Barrasso, if that's alright with my
colleagues.
Senator Flake. Thank you. Thank you and wish I could have
heard more of the testimony, had to go kind of back and forth.
But mostly to Chief Tidwell and if we can go with this,
stewardship contracting, we've got to reauthorize by September
30. Tried to do that as part of the Farm bill, the fate of the
Farm bill, obviously, is uncertain.
But as we consider reauthorizing the stewardship program
how can we improve it to enable the Forest Service to enter
into more contracts than we've been able to do already to treat
even larger swaths of land?
For example, I offered an amendment to the Farm bill that
would have required parity among the fire and liability
provisions in the stewardship contracts and timber contracts as
well as a means of incentivizing stewardship work on the land.
Likewise, GAO issued a report in 2008 that recommended revising
the cancelation of ceiling provisions that are applicable on
the stewardship contracts.
How are those kind of preventing the Forest Service from
moving ahead and treating larger swaths of land?
Mr. Tidwell. Senator, first of all I want to thank you and
all the members of the Senate for the support of the Farm bill.
I believe it is one of the best forestry titles we've ever had.
I would hope that there's a way that it can move forward. Once
again, without the Farm bill we need to find some way to get
stewardship contracting reauthorized. I'd appreciate your
support on that.
The language that was in the Senate Farm bill does address
some of the problems that would help us be a little more
efficient with stewardship contracting and eliminate one of the
questions that we've had in the past. That language will be
very helpful if we can get that to move forward. You know, the
liability we need to look at between the stewardship contract
and a timber sale are very similar. So that liability needs to
be consistent between the two.
So there is an additional burden put on a contractor that's
willing to take on a stewardship contract versus a timber sale
contract. That's not what this is about. It's to be able to
just get more work done.
We've been able to work with a lot of our purchasers and
contractors to a point now that there's more comfort and the
improvement that was offered in the Senate version of the Farm
bill, would be very helpful.
Senator Flake. Thank you.
There's some question that about the Forest Service
commitment to move ahead with timber sales and not just
stewardship contracts. Is the Forest Service committed to both?
Mr. Tidwell. Yes, without any question. We will always use
the timber sale contract when that's the right tool, a
stewardship contract when that is the right tool. We have to
remember that the integrated timber sale contract is within the
stewardship contracting, actually, it's a combination of both,
which just gives us some additional flexibilities.
Senator Flake. Appreciate that and appreciated working with
your office on a number of issues that we have, a number of
them, in Arizona and others who have worked on this. We've just
got to ensure that we can treat even larger swaths of forest
here.
Because we've had two, once in a lifetime, fires in just 10
or 12 years. So appreciate your work on this. So we want to
work with you in the future. If there are issues and there are
tools that you need as we go through this reauthorization
process, please let us know and let us help you as you have in
the past.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Barrasso.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to follow
up with what Senator Flake has said to Chief Tidwell, you know,
as a doctor I think about doctor/patient relationship is about
patients.
If the forest were a patient, you know, the time you put on
life support, find a new doctor, the forests are weak or
unhealthy. They're suffering from neglect, infected with
diseases, beetles, burdened with excessive fuel load weight,
running a very high wildfire fever. The time has really come, I
think, to actively treat the patient before it's too late.
So, you know, following up on Senator Flake's comments.
Does active forest management in timer sales have a role in
restoring forest health?
Mr. Tidwell. Yes. More so I think in the future than we
have recognized in the past.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.
Mr. Imbergamo, if I could?
In your testimony you describe declining health conditions
on federally managed forests. I'm going to ask NEPA, the
Endangered Species act, are they contributing to poor forest
health by blocking needed management activities?
Mr. Imbergamo. I think there are not only blocking it,
they're driving up the cost. That's what is the problem is the
agency clearly we're in a declining budget environment and
we're not going to get unending amounts of money to make the
investments we need to. So we need to lower the costs.
Senator Barrasso. As you know and members on both sides of
this committee agree that timber harvest needs to be increased.
Is there an opportunity for the Forest Service to substantially
increase timber outputs on acres treated without entering
sensitive areas? Do those opportunities exist?
Mr. Imbergamo. In many cases, yes. Alaska is a somewhat
different situation. In most places they can enter a lot of the
landscape that is already roaded and do a significant amount of
work.
The roadless rule does have some exceptions in it. Those
are important in places like Idaho and Wyoming. So if we need
to look at those and really actually utilize those exceptions
for forest health.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Mr. Maisch, from the standpoint being a State forester, if
I could ask you about your perspective there. Do you see a
positive correlation between active management and forest
health?
Mr. Maisch. Yes, definitely. Those two go hand in hand, in
my opinion.
Senator Barrasso. In your testimony you said that the over
burdensome regulations and litigation are challenges to add to
the active management that you noted, and as you said go hand
in hand. Is the NEPA and the Endangered Species act attributing
to some of the deteriorating forest health by blocking needed
management activities?
Mr. Maisch. Yes, in my opinion, yes. Those two laws do
definitely cause a lot of challenges even with the process
works perfectly there's a record decision to implement. It only
takes a third party to file a litigation action and then the
process stops. That's a real serious issue.
Senator Barrasso. Mr. Miles, I see you're nodding your head
up and down.
In your testimony you also said that burdensome regulations
and litigations are challenging to active management. My
question is the same to you. Could you talk about NEPA and the
Endangered Species act contributing to deteriorating forest
health by blocking needed management activities?
Mr. Miles. I guess the frustration is that, you know, once
the Forest Service, they follow all the laws, they do the
regulations, following guidelines for pack fish in fish. All
the things that are necessary to set the stage in order to get
a project done. Then as Mr. Maisch had alluded to then a third
party comes in to delay that process. That is frustrating
because everybody holding hands on the project thought that it
would be something that would be a slam dunk at that point when
you're following the letter of the law.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank you, Senator Barrasso.
I think before you came, we and Senator Risch, asked some
very good questions. Senator Murkowski and others started
talking about how we are going to make a major effort on this
NEPA issue to show that it's going to be possible to get the
harvest up and keep these bedrock environmental values. That's
going to require some thoughtful effort to streamline NEPA.
We're looking forward to working with you. OK.
Let's continue with other witnesses who would like to get
into this question that I started to ask Chief Tidwell and
Senator Murkowski asked you all at the BLM.
Why don't we even go right down for you other four, so each
of you have a chance to say it?
Give us a couple of ideas from your perspective that meet
our test, streamlining NEPA, getting the harvest up, keeping
environmental values. To the extent you can, I mean, models
like landscape-size projects just strikes somebody from your
seat of your pants as sensible. Why not do the analysis once
for a big project then eight, ten, fifteen times for these
smaller projects.
So let's start with you, Dr. Johnson. Each of you have a
chance here to tell the U.S. Senate your ideas with respect to
streamlining NEPA and the balance that we're talking about.
Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Johnson. Thank you, Senator Wyden. I want to use for my
analogy the Eugene District of the BLM.
Fifteen years ago harvest in the Eugene District of the BLM
under the Northwest Forest plan about came to a halt. It had
been sharply declining and the district realized they needed a
new approach. They started shifting to plantation thinning. By
the way much of that thinning is in reserves.
They started. They had a lot of fits and starts. They had a
lot of challenges. In the last decade they haven't had hardly
any protests or appeal including thinning and reserves that
produce saw timber.
Now why is that?
The Chairman. I was going to ask that question.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Johnson. They've made their case. They have made their
case that in fact that these actions have ecological benefits
and they have economic benefits. In addition they have left a
forest that the public can support, just in terms of its
appearance.
So streamlining NEPA. Procedurally it's very important. But
the notion that if we're going to get over these hurdles we
have to effectively make our case is at the heart of this.
We now are working with Eugene BLM to startup this
variablely retention harvest which does create openings. The
Eugene BLM has totally stopped that even though it had
historically done it because they couldn't make their case.
We now are working with them on major projects to do this.
At least in the short run we're probably going to solve the
problem they haven't gotten any appeals or protests for the
last decade because they'll be starting this up again. Starting
to make the case.
So I, Jerry and I, Franklin have concluded that at the
heart of this that on these Federal forests you have to
convince people this is both good for forests and good for
people and good for all the creatures within them. That is the
approach we're taking to do this.
The Chairman. Alright.
Mr. Maisch.
Mr. Maisch. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd go back to my original testimony to that triple bottom
line. You know, it has all 3 elements that have to be
considered if you're going to sustainably manage forests. But
more specifically I think Chief Tidwell is on the right track.
I think especially with his two suggestions about larger
project areas and perhaps describing a condition a forest
should be in from a healthy standpoint. Of course, as was
already pointed out by Senator Risch, different forests have
different needs. So I think there needs to be flexibility in
how NEPA is applied across the landscape. It's not one size fit
all.
Also within the agency itself, I think it's a very
cumbersome process and economics need to be considered right up
front. They have a series of gates that they go through when
they design a timber sale. Gate one is the first gate. You need
to look at economics of what you're proposing to do at that
step as opposed to the end of the process when it's very
difficult to change what the alternatives might look like.
Also within the Forest Service the IDTs that they use to
prepare these NEPA documents. I think there's some real room
for really targeting a smaller group of people that are the
experts that do these documents, time and time again. So it's
spreading it out over a larger part of the agency.
The Chairman. Let's see if we can get our other two
witnesses in. Then recognize Senator Murkowski.
Mr. Imbergamo.
Mr. Imbergamo. Very quickly, sir.
One of the biggest things we could do is one of the things
you were involved in with the Healthy Forest Restoration Act
which is in areas where there was fire prone lands and wild
land urban interface. They're only compelled to analyze one
alternative and perhaps one alternative that's suggested by a
local collaborative group. The Chief alluded to that.
Reducing the number of alternative study, you know,
certainly could make these piles of paper smaller.
The Chairman. You can save some time for the next round of
questioning because what you're in effect saying is that you
ought to give some extra advantage in the regulatory process
when there is a collaborative, where there are industry and
environmental folks working together and coming up with a
suggestion, for example, as we were seeking to do with the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act. You would give that an
advantage in the queue for consideration?
Mr. Imbergamo. I certainly think that's one thing you could
look at. Of course, I think collaboration, in our view,
includes collaboration at the bid table. Some of the most
successful timber sale programs across the country.
The Chairman. Understand.
Mr. Imbergamo. Have just been commercial timber sales and
they've used KV to do all the ecological work. They had the
support of a youth swath of the environmental community.
I particularly point out the Ouachita National Forest in
Arkansas has paid for all the habitat work with traditional
timber sales. As overhead has killed KV, they've switched to
stewardship contracting. That's kind of the Forest Service
discovering capitalism when they only get 35 cents on the
dollar out of KV they have to go to something else to get the
work done.
So I think that collaboration can include collaborating at
the bid table with the industry.
The Chairman. Fair enough.
Mr. Miles.
Mr. Miles. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
So my perspective is that why I'm here today as part of the
Clearwater Basin Collaborative. You know, we have been
fortunate that collaboration has worked in our area. We've come
a long ways, but we still have a ways to go with some of our
projects.
It would be much harder for us to do this if we all on
individual terms. So, you know, moving from something like from
a watching these forest systems condition change all the way to
being an active in supporting the Forest Service. That's huge,
you know, for these areas in rural America.
That's where we need to be at being able to help the Forest
Service. Giving them the social license to be able to feel
stronger in the recommendations and moving forward. The line
officers actually doing their jobs.
So that's ultimately our message.
The Chairman. Very good.
Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know we talk a lot about balance in this committee.
Balancing our desire to advance energy solutions against the
environment, the economy. But Mr. Maisch, you made a comment in
your response to the Chairman here that we need to look at the
economic benefit, the economic factors right up front rather
than on the back end.
I think in your initial comments you mentioned that it's
your sense that within the Forest Service currently there is
perhaps too much focus on restoration rather than on the
economy itself. You cite to the situation at home in the
Tongass where the regional population is down 5 percent, school
population is down 15 percent. Five communities or excuse me, 5
schools within these communities have closed.
Those are economic indicators of a dying economy. So as we
look to the solutions out there, as we look to how we find this
balance between our environmental laws which we all recognize
are there for good reason. We have to make sure that they do
not bury our communities.
Really deny them of an existence. So how we are able to
access our resource, do so in an environmentally responsible
way and in a timely way is going to be key to the
sustainability.
I know that I'm not just talking about Alaska. The Chairman
has had communities in Oregon that they are literally drying up
and blowing away when the mills closed down. So how we can be
working together, Mr. Chairman, as a committee to try to
advance some of the suggestions that we have heard today, I
think is going to be key.
They're going to be key to so many of the small communities
in my State and in rural Oregon and other parts of the country
as we try to reckon with a policy that has taken us away from
this concept of multiple use to a point where we're just not
seeing reliable, certain supplies coming out of our forests
that will help, not only with healthy forests, but healthy
communities economically.
So we've got a lot of work to do, Mr. Chairman. But I
really applaud you for moving us forward on this discussion and
look forward to advancing some solutions.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murkowski.
As we've talked about so often there are really, in our
part of the world, some models that work. We're starting to see
them in the questions. I've got just a few more questions for
all of you that all go to Senator Murkowski's point.
We have talked about this often in the past. But the two of
us are committed on a bipartisan basis now to stay at this
until some of these issues like streamlining NEPA,
collaboration, to really use this as a time for major forestry
reform. Let me just go through a few other areas that I want to
touch on and let Senator Murkowski wrap up.
First, for the record, I'd specifically like to hold the
opportunity out for each of you to give your suggestions for
how we might advantage the collaborative groups. Are there ways
that we can reduce their paperwork, where we can reduce the
amount of time and review processes? Ways in which we can
insulate that work from a needless, really gratuitous stalling.
I mean, Mr. Imbergamo mentions the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act. One of the key factors in that is we did not
lock the door to the courthouse. But we also said there's no
constitutional right to a 5-year delay and just have delay
after delay after delay.
There's got to be something practical to do here. I
particularly like to say when the environmental community and
the timber industry come together as they did in Eastern
Oregon, we ought to find some ways, as part of the regulatory
system, to ensure that's rewarded.
So we'll hold the record open on that point.
Now the next area I would like to get a sense of with
respect to you, Chief and Mr. Farquhar, is something that all
of us from resource-dependent areas hear constantly. That is
the frustration in rural communities as to when a forest or a
district's timber target is not hit.
The people often come up to us. I'm sure Senator Murkowski
has exactly the same experience. Say at a town hall meeting,
they put in the newspaper that they were going to hit this
target. They didn't even come close. Even despite this one
thing that went wrong over here, they didn't even come close.
So my question for both the Forest Service and Mr. Farquhar
is what's going to be done about this? The additional point
that's often made in rural communities is hitting the target
doesn't seem, for harvesting timber, doesn't seem to be as
important as hitting other targets.
So how would you two respond to that? How can we begin to
lock in to some of these reforms that we're talking about?
Something that ensures that a timber target is something
meaningful and not something that's honored more in the breech
than in the observance?
Chief, why don't you start and then Mr. Farquhar, get you
into that too.
Mr. Tidwell. Senator, I'll start with the change that we
made a few years ago that we used to have a target of how much
timber you offered. What we found is that you'd make an offer
and of course we'd get an appeal or a lawsuit. Nothing would go
forward.
So we changed that to hold our line officers more
accountable, it's timber that's actually sold so they have to
be able to get it all the way through the process before they
actually accomplish their target.
That's what we focus on. We track this in our regions. When
we have a region that's not meeting their target, they need to
be able to justify it. I'll use our region one, Montana,
because the court cases have gone against us last year we do
factor that in, but they will also ask, what are you doing now
to be able to address timber targets so that next year that's
not the case?
So we do track that very closely and hold people
accountable.
We also look at where we can make a better investment, as
we don't have a lot of flexibility in our budgets. They're
very, very tight.
But within the regions they look at where, if they have an
opportunity, they might be able to get a little more work done
in one area verses another depending on it might have been a
bad fire season or whatever is factored into that. We also
shift funds around to get more work done every year.
So I really track the targets based on the regions.
Regional foresters, they track it based, you know, going down
to the forests.
The Chairman. The only thing I'd say, Chief. I know you're
trying to be constructive in this area. We're already hearing
some of this in the discussion of the O and C areas and where,
because, you know, we're talking about a partition with some
lands segregated for harvest protection.
People come and say, well, Ron, all the harvest is going to
be outside the small rural areas and they're still going to get
flattened.
So I understand what you're trying to do. But the targets
have got to be representative of the area, and if people feel
that the small rural areas are going to be left behind, then
we're still going to have a problem with that.
Mr. Farquhar, on the target question.
Mr. Farquhar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think historically there was more of a problem with that
than maybe there is right now.
The Chairman. You've got to come to one of my town hall
meetings because the problem is now. People come and they will
literally bring newspaper articles where they say so and so
from the local BLM or the Forest Service office said we're
going to harvest this amount. Then they produce the article
that comes a year later or 8 months later where it just
harvests a fraction of amount.
So if you think this problem is gone, come by one of my
town hall meetings in rural Oregon sometime because people
bring those newspaper clippings and they're doing their
homework in good faith. These are people who have actually kept
tabs on it. They're not acting like this problem is gone.
Mr. Farquhar. I hear you, Senator.
I think it was especially big in the 90s is what I'm
referring to because the, you know, there was a sudden----
The Chairman. I've been to almost all my counties this
year. This is not something from the 90s. I don't want to
belabor. This is something I hear all the time.
Mr. Farquhar. Let me give you some of the numbers. We have
actually met the targets the last 3 years of 200 million board
feet.
We also have a pretty good record because these are the
thinning type projects. They aren't as controversial. As Dr.
Johnson said, you know, we only have a certain time horizon
that we can be doing this with these thinning projects. They
don't produce, as Dr. Johnson said, as much revenue as some of
the larger sales.
But we offered 609 million board feet over the last 3
fiscal years and 124 or about a quarter of those, a little less
than a quarter, were protested or appealed or litigated. We
were able to resolve 92 million board feet out of those 124 and
that leaves an unresolved 32 million board feet out of those 3
years which is about 5 percent of the total that we offered.
So I think it was--what I meant to say earlier--the problem
of off--which I think the Chief talked about too, of offering
and then getting into appeals and it doesn't really count if
half the stuff you offer goes into appeals and you never get it
back out. I think we were doing better on that than we had
been, partly because of what we're trying to harvest.
I think we do have a challenge moving forward, a
significant challenge, coming up with a good volume based on
what the forest can produce and what the public will accept
with these new techniques that we've introduced today and
talked about a little bit today and are presented more
thoroughly in Dr. Johnson's testimony.
I think there's a prospect that we will be able to increase
the harvest.
We will have the public buy in.
We will show the ecological and economic benefits of these
types of sales.
We will be able to say that we've reduced the protests or
appeals as well.
So the prospects are, I hope, getting better.
As we do these 6 land use plans we're hoping we'll also
accomplish something of what you're talking about of trying to
map out the future a little bit and streamline the future NEPA
process for the individual sales.
The Chairman. That certainly sounds constructive. What I'm
concerned about, in addition to this question of not meeting
the targets, is the sense that if you don't hit other resource
management targets what happens is you get more staff and more
funding in the next year. But that hasn't been the case with
respect to the timber harvest.
So I think we're going to want to follow up with both of
you on that.
Let me go to you, Dr. Johnson, if I might because it seems
to me that we all take away from what you and Dr. Franklin have
been doing is you're essentially making a case for saying you
can get the harvest up without clear cutting and some of the
old approaches, the old intensive forestry approaches.
Can you describe for the public, sort of in shorthand, how
that is and some of what's already gone on in the O and C
debate? What Senator Murkowski and I were already talking
about.
I asked Senator Murkowski about her moist forests. She
tried not to laugh too much in the public square here. Because
we're up in front of everybody in the rostrum as they have
really moist forests, like very soggy forests.
So your ideas could be very helpful, particularly if they
move us to getting the harvest up without some of the old clear
cutting and intensive forestry strategies.
So summarize for us how that is. How you make that
possible?
Mr. Johnson. Yes, Senator.
Senator Murkowski, yes, I've been to your forests. You
definitely are on the wet side.
Just a very short story. When we were first starting these
ideas, the ecological forestry ideas, and I try them out in my
classes first, to give my classes the assignment, to see if
they can do them. I'll never forget a student came in and said
to me, well I talked to my mom last night and I tried to tell
her what the project was. We're doing this variable retention
of harvest. It's a regeneration harvest.
It took 45 minutes for me to convince her it wasn't clear
cutting. A student actually said that to me. How's it
different? How's it different because that's the reaction you
get from people.
It's different fundamentally. It's different in almost
every way in terms of the philosophical underpinnings. They're
not agriculturally economic. They're natural disturbance and
natural development.
It's different in terms of instead of trying to achieve
simplicity. You're trying to achieve complexity.
Most fundamentally how is it different on the ground? There
are some examples in my testimony. Some pictures with classic
clear cutting you come in and basically remove all or almost
all of the stems. Start over.
With this approach you don't really start over, you're
trying to have some continuity. You try to reflect the kind of
legacy forest you might have after a major disturbance with
some patches of trees, some individual trees. Keeping the old
trees, those sentinels that almost always are best at
withstanding disturbance, keeping them there.
But as much and the part that was really the change in
Oregon, and we're still working out, was what happens after
that?
So now you do have some openings. They're intermixed with
patches of leave trees and individuals. But what you do then is
fundamentally different.
What we do then is try to emulate how the forest would
reappear if in fact there was a disturbance. Generally, at
least in the Northwest and in the moist forests there, you go
through a stage where trees are not dominant. Where it's the
shrubs, that forge, the flowers, the fruits and they are, that
stage is, the most biologically diverse in terms of
butterflies, such as the golden hair streak.
Debbie, my wife is right here. She's my butterfly expert.
The Chairman. Definitely pro butterfly.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Johnson. Golden hair streak which if you have
Chinquapin, which is a pioneer plant. It can grow in older
forests too, but it really thrives out in the open. It starts
to flower again. That's where butterfly will appear.
That's amazing.
In terms of here's the famous, my favorite from my friend,
Dr. Franklin, the beetle complement. I'm sorry, but the beetle
complement in the early stage forest is entirely different.
Deer and elk thrive on these.
How is it different than a classic clear cut?
Because after the classic clear cut and now you see it out
in industrial land, it's very good growing wood. You suppress
that vegetation. That's not what you want generally with
herbicides.
What you want is to clear the land to grow commercial
trees. Thus it's a very sterile environment. Whereas what we're
talking about is letting the little trees come back through.
There is a modest amount of planting. I mean these are lands to
produce timber, but there's a modest amount of planting.
But it's a whole different progression. It's a progression
that you would generally see in the natural process. That is
fundamentally different from the way we've thought about
forestry in my college and out in the profession. It's really
to create this stage after harvest, before the next forest
comes, that what we call this diverse early successional stage.
It's really important. We're lacking it. We're lacking it
significantly.
The openings we create in forests generally are on
industrial land. We don't have this anymore. There is a series
of species from bluebirds to some butterflies and months that
we're worried about because of the lack of this vegetation, let
alone our deer and elk populations and where they head when
they don't have this.
We feel this is important enough that I make this statement
to my students. Some of them came to me and said, can we write
a children's book on the importance of this as our last
assignment? I said yes.
They've written a first draft which is in fact with
drawings. One of them is such a great artist. I'm going to try
to move forward with it. It really is the search of a little
girl for the bluebird and the kind of forest she goes through.
She goes and sees a Northern Spotted Owl, says you won't
find them here. She goes on and on and finally gets out in the
open in this wonderful, botanical, amazing botanical
environment in the post harvest environment if you let this go.
It is fundamentally different.
The Chairman. Well said. I don't know if we've ever
introduced material from a children's book, Senator Murkowski,
into the record. But you just heard from my colleague she'd
like to read it too.
I just have one last question and I want to let Senator
Murkowski finish up. That is for the BLM folks on the spotted
owl critical habitat question. Because I think this is
interesting.
Obviously it's of great importance to all of us that we
wrestle with the O and C issue. But it has real implications
nationally in terms of what people are looking at. The Chief
and I have talked a little bit about this as well.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has recently issued critical
habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl and has provided guidance
that some harvest in the habitat can occur and actually, as the
Chief and I have discussed, help retain the habitat for owls in
the long run. In other words, this is a way to try to figure
out how you can get the harvest up and be sensitive to habitat
and environmental values that, in effect, fish and wildlife is
saying that habitat and habitat conservation and the harvests
can go hand in hand.
My question to you all at the BLM is how do you intend to
work with the Fish and Wildlife service to ensure that projects
are implemented in critical habitat and are consistent with
their recommendations?
Mr. Farquhar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
That is a new opportunity both to improve the ecology and
the ecological balance but also to make sure we're protecting
the owl. A lot of it has to do with the kind of things that Dr.
Johnson has been talking about. It's important for us to make
sure the public understands that as well.
I think one of the points Dr. Johnson made earlier is that
sometimes, and I'm going to paraphrase. I'll probably do him
harm in the process. But the public might not understand that
yet. They might think that critical habitat needs to remain
undisturbed.
That's why the principles that you have introduced, Mr.
Chairman, for this management approach, this vision, if you
will, for what we're trying to achieve needs to come first and
people need to buy into that. Then we start talking about the
techniques of achieving it.
We've seen in these pilot sales that Dr. Johnson has helped
the Bureau of Land Management with that, you know, we aren't
getting a whole lot of appeals. We are getting some, but we're
also able to do things that are pioneering and that they start
with this idea of pilot, you know, that's a very important
word. We're a little beyond the pilot's phase right now in some
respects.
But we're engaging the public. We're trying to help them
understand yes, it's going gradually. Yes, it's largely
emphasizing projects that are pretty small. But it's a very
good start for trying to create that public understanding, that
public support.
Dr. Johnson, I think you'd probably be able to add to that
or improve on that a little bit, if you could.
Mr. Johnson. Very briefly.
One of the real delightful things with pilots and now the
ecological forest is how U.S. Fish and Wildlife stepped up and
said we'll work with you from the beginning to make these
projects happen. You're still the land management agency.
You've got to make your decisions. We'll work with you and boy,
have they.
This new critical habitat rule in which Paul Henson and
also the recovery plan says we're really going to focus on the
ecosystem on which the species depends like it says in the
Endangered Species Act and all aspects of it and both
maintaining and enhancing all aspects and understanding the
role of timber harvest to do that. They've been doing that.
It's the reason why we've gotten this far with the pilots. It's
that simple because of their tremendous cooperation and the
BLM's willingness to do it.
It may be my last chance to say something. I just want to
say the reason that Jerry Franklin and I are optimistic. We
have some pretty lively meetings, as you can imagine, Mr.
Chairman, with the public, is because of the young people in
the BLM and their desire to think creatively. It's great.
The Chairman. Well said, Dr. Johnson and very appropriate
because there are a lot of good people in these agencies.
In the Forest Service, the Chief and I have talked about
that. Mr. Farquhar, a lot of good people. We're going to need
them all because as I tried to touch on a little over 2 hours
ago, the status quo is just unacceptable.
If we're going to leave on one note, that is the note to
leave on. Clearly you can talk about efficiencies, litigation,
and all the rest. The amount of timber produced off Federal
forest lands has declined dramatically. It's declined
dramatically. We've got to figure out a way to get the harvest
up and do it consistent with our environmental values.
I think we received a lot of good suggestions here today.
Chief, you explained the question of landscape size
projects for purposes of addressing NEPA issues. Get the
harvest up and protect environmental values in plain simple
language that I'm going to use in a town hall meeting. I'm
going to describe how we started talking about the ways in
which instead of having 20 of these time-consuming analyses, we
could have one for a major project.
So that's what we're going to need to do in the days ahead
is we're going to look at the host of issues that we talked
about here today that could go into forestry reform. We are not
going to duck the big ones.
Senator Risch correctly said you've got to talk about NEPA.
NEPA is now something we are going to work through here. For
anybody who is sort of on the extremes and hears those words
they ought to know that I do not believe increasing the harvest
and protecting our environmental values are mutually exclusive.
I do not buy that false choice.
I believe that it's going to be possible working with
people of good will and good faith, like yourselves, to do
both. That's what this committee is going to take as its load
star.
I thank you all for your patience. It's been a long hearing
this morning but a very valuable one.
With that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIXES
----------
Appendix I
Responses to Additional Questions
----------
Responses of Thomas Tidwell to Questions From Senator Wyden
Question 1. In the Chiefs written testimony he cited the funding
increased from a low of $180 million in 1995 to $335 million in 2012.
Please explain the discrepancy between the increased funding for the
timber sale program over the last 17 years and the sharp decline of
timber harvests on federal lands--by more than a third--over that same
time period.
Answer. The funding mix has changed substantially between 1995 and
2012 as displayed in the following table. As you can see, the
appropriations for timber sales have increased but the use of Salvage
Sale Funds has dropped significantly. When adjusted for inflation (CPI)
the value ofthe funding in 1995 is greater than 2012.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Funding Source 1995 2012
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appropriations $180 mill $335 mill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salvage Sale Funds $155 mill $23 mill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knudsen-Vanderburg Funds $0 mill $10 mill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nominal Total $335 mill $368 mill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inflated Total $505 mill $368 mill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fire transfer and sequestration have also created instability.
The volume sold in 1995 was 2.89 billion board feet (bbf). In 2012,
the Forest Service sold 2.64 bbf, or 91 percent of the 1995 volume. In
summary there has been a 27 percent reduction in funding ``purchasing
power'' but only a 9 percent reduction in output.
Question 2. Chief Tidwell, Bill Imbergamo raised in his testimony
the litigation surrounding the Colt Summit Project on the Lolo National
Forest being conducted as a part of the Collaborative Landscape
Restoration Program (CFLRP). CFLRP is a very successful program,
particularly in my home state of Oregon where excellent collaborative
restoration work is being conducted under the program. Can you confirm
that Colt Summit is the only CFLRP project that has been litigated to
date?
Answer. Yes, we confirm that Colt Summit is the only CFLR project
that has been litigated to date.
Question 3. Chief Tidwell, can you provide a short analysis of the
number of projects, funded through the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Program, (CFLRP) that were appealed and that were
litigated, and how these percentages compare to the percentages
nationally for appeals and litigation?
Answer. The CFLR program was authorized in 2010 with only 10
projects. Subsequently, Congress authorized additional projects in FY
2012 and FY 2013. However, the number of project decisions is still
relatively small, and so it is difficult to discern the true patterns
of appeals and litigation. In some cases, discussion has successfully
forestalled litigation. As of February 2013, of the 44 decisions that
have been made that included commercial harvest of forest products, 20
percent (9) had been appealed and 2.3 percent (1) had been litigated.
Those nine appeals were on five projects with four of those appeals on
only one project.
Between 2008 and 2012, of 1539 Forest Service decisions that
included commercial harvest of forest products, 22 percent (339) were
appealed and 2.5 percent (39) were litigated.
Question 4. I believe we should highlight the successes of
collaboration and incentivize collaborative efforts to get restoration
work accomplished. Assuming some minimum standards for defining a
collaborative group were established, would it make sense to afford
restoration projects endorsed by a collaborative group a lighter
paperwork burden, less administrative review, and/or more protection
from stalling litigation?
Answer. We have not considered this. However, we have been
exploring opportunities for efficiencies with the Council of
Environmental Quality (CEQ). To accomplish more effective vegetation
management, the Forest Service is fostering a more efficient National
Environmental Planning Act (NEPA) process by focusing on improving
agency policy, learning, and technology. These NEPA process
improvements will increase decision-making efficiencies and public
engagement, resulting in on-the-ground restoration work getting done
more quickly and across a larger landscape. In addition to the Forest
Planning rule the agency has initiated a NEPA learning networks project
to learn from and share the lessons of successful implementation of
efficient NEPA analyses. The goal of this effort is to maintain
decision making transparency for the public and ensure that the
Agency's NEPA compliance is as efficient, cost-effective, and up-to-
date as possible. Specifically we are looking at expanding the use of
focused Environmental Assessments (EAs), iterative Environmental Impact
Statement documentation (EISs), and applying an adaptive management
framework to NEPA.
Our landscape-scale NEPA projects will also increase efficiencies.
Question 5. What minimum criteria for the local collaborative
should the Forest Service or BLM use to trigger a lighter
administrative burden for NEPA?
Answer. We have not considered this.
Question 6. How specifically should the implementation ofNEPA be
different for projects endorsed by a collaborative group?
Answer. This has not been determined.
Responses of Thomas Tidwell to Questions From Senator Baldwin
Question 1. Members of Wisconsin's timber industry have expressed
to me their strong concerns with the level and timing of timber
harvests allowed on federal forest land. One of the things I hear most
frequently is the need for certainty -that includes long-term certainty
in the time of year contracts are made available, and the time a
contract takes to be finalized. In what ways is the Forest Service
addressing these challenges of certainty and timing within the current
contracting framework?
Answer. I agree with you that providing an amount of timber for
sale that is consistent and predictable is an appropriate goal. We have
worked hard to become more efficient in preparing timber for sale.
Between 1995 and 2012, accounting for inflation, the value of our funds
for preparing timber have declined 27 percent but our timber sold has
only decreased 9 percent. The amount of money appropriated has a
significant effect on the level of timber that is offered. It takes 2-3
years to plan and prepare a project for sale. Therefore, an abrupt
change in funding year to year is problematic.
Question 2. Members of the timber and forest products industries in
Wisconsin have been carefully watching the progress of stewardship
contracting projections. First, please address the way that you measure
the effectiveness of these projects. Second, please describe some of
the challenges stakeholders face when entering into these stewardship
contracts?
Answer. The Forest Service collects a variety of data to measure
the accomplishments of stewardship contracts and agreements, including
the amount of timber sold, wildlife habitat improved, fuels treated,
invasive species treated, trees planted, and road improvements.
Stewardship contracting has proved to be a valuable tool in many
locations to implement restoration activities and meet multiple land
management objectives including hazardous fuels reduction, wildlife
habitat improvement, forest health improvement, and other projects that
produce timber. These contracts result in 25 percent of the timber
volume produced by the agency with the remaining 75 percent coming from
traditional timber sale contracts.
The Forest Service has contracted with the Pinchot Institute for
Conservation for programmatic multiparty monitoring of stewardship
contracts and agreements as another way of measuring their
effectiveness. The results of the FY 2012 programmatic monitoring
efforts by the Pinchot Institute are available online at: http://
www.fs.fed. us/:forestmanagement/stewardshiplreports/i ndex.shtml .
The following answer addresses some challenges that contractors
have had as a result of bidding on and implementing stewardship
contracts:
Stewardship contracts usually include work items not
traditionally included in timber sale contracts, such as
precommercial thinning, reforestation, hazardous fuels
treatment, fisheries or wildlife habitat improvement, trail
maintenance, etc. Traditional timber sale contractors often
need to find the expertise and subcontract the work if they do
not have the expertise to complete the contract.
Since stewardship contracts are based on best value to the
government, rather than only on price, contractors have
additional information they must provide, depending upon the
criteria included in the bid request. This can be a challenge
when a contractor first starts competing for contracts.
Question 3. As climate change has been predicted to cause greater
pressures on forest health from both pests and fires, is the agency
considering timber harvesting to Annual Sale Quantity levels as a
method to reduce the effects of climate change on national forests?
Answer. The Forest Service's approach to climate change has and
will continue to be directed at building resilience to climate-driven
and other stressors as you described. We implement timber harvests and
other management actions aimed at restoring the resilience of
ecosystems, thus making them more adaptive to a changing climate.
Thinning forests improves stand vigor, reduces hazardous fuels, and
reduces vulnerability to wildfire, disease, and insect attack while
also providing forest products, other ecosystem services such as clean
water, wildlife habitat and rural jobs. The Agency continues to explore
new ways to become more efficient, as outlined in the February 2012
strategy for increasing restoration activities across large landscapes,
including more timber harvesting. Through these efforts, in spite of
flat or declining budgets, fire transfer, and sequestration, in the
past few years the Forest Service increased the volume sold, from
2.38bbfin 2005 to the 2.64 bbfin 2012, though budget cuts resulted in a
slight decline in 2013. The use of harvesting timber as a tool to
address climate change is affected by the level of appropriations,
litigation, and other competing values from the forests. The Annual
Sale Quantity is an upper limit of timber volume that can be sold from
a forest. Appropriations have not been sufficient to meet this upper
limit. In addition, in the new Planning rule there is no ASQ, as
activities are based on restoration needs.
Question 4. How does the Forest Service intend to utilize funding
available from stewardship contracting retained receipts? Will they be
used to maximize forest health treatment across all of the National
forests?
Answer. Stewardship contracting retained receipts become available
when the sale of forest products exceeds the cost of the service work
obtained under an integrated resource contract. The retained receipts
are used to complete resource work, including:
Improving, maintaining, and restoring forest and rangeland
health
Restoring and maintaining water quality
Improving fish and wildlife habitat; reestablishing native
plant species
Reducing hazardous fuels that pose risks to communities and
ecosystem values
Decommissioning roads
Stewardship Contracting retained receipts remain on the unit where
the receipts were collected for use on other authorized stewardship
projects. Funds can be used on other units after approval by the
regional forester in the region where the receipts were collected.
Responses of Thomas Tidwell to Questions From Senator Murkowski
Question 1. Generating a more certain and predictable flow of
timber from our national forest to support rural economies is a
challenge the agency and Congress are grappling with. One approach to
create that certainty is to legislate treatment levels or timber supply
mandates for a particular forest or forests that the agency would be
required to meet. What is the Forest Service's view of legislated
treatment levels and supply mandates? Does the Forest Service support
this approach to create more certainty with respect to timber supply?
Answer. Legislating treatment levels will not assure that a
particular forest or the agency as a whole will be able to meet those
levels. It may impact the discretion that the Forest Service has to
provide for the needs across a region or the nation. In addition,
legislating treatment levels does not ensure that the Forest Service
will have the funds to do the work. It also does not take into account
appeals or lawsuits that may prevent the Forest Service from achieving
the targets. Legislative mandates also remove the opportunity and
flexibility to address important needs resulting from catastrophic
natural or economic events, or for changes across the system over time
that may arise during the budget cycle.
Question 2. In your written testimony, you state that timber sales
remain the mainstay of the agency's restoration efforts, yet all the
highlighted examples of restoration work being undertaken across the
country appear to be using stewardship contracting. What percentage of
your restoration work is actually accomplished through traditional
timber sales (not Integrated Timber Resource Contracts under
Stewardship authority)?
Answer. 75 percent of the timber volume sold by the Forest Service
in FY12 was sold through traditional timber sale contracts. Both our
timber and stewardship contracts support restoration goals.
______
Responses of John ``Chris'' Maisch to Questions From Senators Murkowski
and Wyden
Thank you for your interest in my presentation to your committee
and your follow-up questions. I apologize for not being able to respond
more promptly, but a long and difficult fire season in Alaska precluded
me from devoting time to this response until recently. As you may know,
over 1.3 million acres burned in Alaska this fire season and two Type I
incidents were close to communities, with the Stuart Creek fire near
Fairbanks causing evacuations of over 800 individual homes and
businesses. As our wildland fire season finally slowed in late August,
we shifted our attention and full support of fires in the Lower-48.
Both your questions are good ones and not easy to answer. The topic of
collaboration and how to apply this technique for decision making,
usually among very diverse parties, has been around for a long time.
The U.S. Forest Service and other land management agencies have turned
to this concept in an effort to have a more transparent decision making
process and to involve the various stakeholders in discussing,
crafting, and ultimately supporting a specific direction or action for
management activities.
I've personally participated in this type of process on several
occasions, both at the state level and more recently with the Tongass
Futures Roundtable as convened by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and
other organizations. When a collaborative process is successful, it can
create an enduring environment for agreement and productive activity in
our forests, but when it fails, the old battle lines are quickly re-
established or a long, drawn out collaborative process leads to no
action or decision. Is it worth the effort? I've thought a lot about
that aspect of the process, and overall I would answer ``yes'', but
with some qualifiers. With this as my preamble, I'll do my best to
answer your specific questions and share my experience.
Question From Senator Murkowski
Question 1. There has been a lot of positive talk about
collaboration as a process or means for building trust and
accomplishing mutual goals, such as, increasing forest restoration and
timber harvest on federal lands. I understand you have some experience
with collaboration in Alaska on the Tongass. Can you describe that
experience?
Answer. In 2006 the State of Alaska was invited to participate in
the Tongass Futures Roundtable (TFR) process along with a variety of
local government officials, NGOs, a number of environmental
organizations from both the national and local level, industry
representatives from the major business sectors in Southeast Alaska,
Native organizations, both tribal and corporate, foundations, and the
U.S. Forest Service. This very diverse and large group consisting of 35
primary members was charged with crafting an alternative to be
considered in the Forest Management Plan amendment process that was
underway for the Tongass National Forest. The effort began with a joint
meeting of the invited parties in Bothell, WA in May of 2006 with a
subsequent agreement to launch a ``collaborative'' process.
Oversight, staffing, and organization of the TFR were primarily by
The Nature Conservancy with funding from a number of foundations and
organizations. A meeting facilitator was utilized for all the full TFR
meetings. As the group began organizing internally, various working
committees were established to address specific issues identified by
the group. In an effort to be even more inclusive, the working
committees were open to participation by individuals or organizations
with an interest in the topic, especially if they were not a primary
member.
One of the work products desired by all early on in the process,
was a land use allocation map that would identify the areas where
active timber harvest could occur on the forest\1\. A tremendous amount
of time, effort, and resources were devoted to this goal, but it was
never achieved. I think the best agreement the sub-group tasked with
this effort were able to reach, was about 2/3rds of the acreage needed
to sustain a forest products industry.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ In Forest Service planning language a Forest Development Land
Use Designation (LUD).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the course of the next six years, the Roundtable would meet as
a full body 20 times. The various working committees would meet more
frequently and the Framework Committee which I chaired met 21 times in
a three year period (2007-09). Progress was slow and much of the first
year was spent building some relationships between parties that could
barley sit in a room together. The Tongass has been a difficult issue
for a long time, a battle ground for environmental, fishing, and timber
interests all bent on their version of what the Tongass should be, how
it should be managed. Often the communities, businesses, and residents
of SE are the ones caught in the crossfire while allegiances and allies
at both the local and national levels shift issue by issue.
While there were some small successes, they were limited in scope
and scale and the full body was never able to achieve the type of
breakout from the past that the process envisioned. A lot of people
worked very hard and took personal risks to try and move forward, to
find a route that could lead toward a common vision, something better,
but we couldn't get there. I still find that part of the experience
very frustrating, in part, because I don't like to fail, but also
because of the eventually unrealized hopes people had at the beginning
of the process. A few members who were unwilling to compromise, to
truly collaborate, won the day, and that leads me to a key observation
of the process. All the primary members must have something at risk,
something they will lose if the group can't reach a decision, something
that puts them at greater risk to stand alone. Without this motivation,
they have little to lose and can actually use a process like this to
buy time, knowing in the end that they have veto power by not agreeing.
Question From Senator Wyden
Question 1. I believe we should highlight the successes of
collaboration and incentivize collaborative efforts to get restoration
work accomplished. Assuming some minimum standards for defining a
collaborative group were established, would it make sense to afford
restoration projects endorsed by a collaborative group a lighter
paperwork burden, less administrative review, and/or more protection
from stalling litigation?
What minimum criteria for the local collaborative should the Forest
Service or BLM use to trigger a lighter administrative burden for NEPA?
How specifically should the implementation of NEPA be different for
projects endorsed by a collaborative group?
Answer. I would agree with your opening statement and endorse the
concept of providing stronger support and protection or limits to
litigation for projects derived from a collaborative process. This
would help address the issue of litigation by ``outlier'' organizations
or individuals that did not participate in a collaborative process, but
are able to derail a project agreed to by this process.
I'm not an expert in this area, but would suggest that reform to
the NEPA process as currently practiced might provide fewer
opportunities for the appeal and legal process to play out. For
example, a Forest Plan\2\ goes through an extensive NEPA process and
then almost every action to implement the Forest Plan also goes through
another exhaustive process. Individual projects, such as timber sales,
can take 18-30 months to complete the process.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ A Forest Plan has a shelf life of 15 years and is reviewed
internally about every five years to ensure it is relevant to the
criteria used in creating the plan. If there are significant
departures, then a plan amendment is typically recommended.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What if there was only one NEPA process at the Forest Plan level
that would allow projects that are implementing the Forest Plan to move
forward without a separate NEPA review. This type of programmatic
review would save considerable time and funding and allow active forest
management to proceed in support of economic, restoration, and forest
health goals across the country. Efforts to stall or challenge work
would be kept at the Forest Plan level and limit the constant
challenges that have slowed the process of implementing Forest Plans.
To more specifically address your question concerning ``What
minimum criteria for the local collaborative should the Forest Service
or BLM use to trigger a lighter administrative burden for NEPA?'' I
would suggest that a lighter administrative process shouldn't be tied
to collaboration. While this technique works well in some situations,
it can be very time consuming and take many years to achieve even
modest results. I would contend that we need less NEPA process across
the board to implement Forest Plans that have already been through an
extensive public process. If you want to demonstrate how this concept
will work in a few areas of the country, consider choosing locations
with a functioning collaborative and others with none. It could provide
a real time test of how this concept would work in practice and lead to
useful insights on how to modify and expand the concept beyond initial
pilots.
Another area for improvement would be the Forest Planning process.
For example in the Tongass, a new Plan Amendment was completed in 2008
after 18 months of work. In 2013, as required in the Tongass plan, a
five year review was undertaken and determined there had been
significant changes in the operating environment of the Forest,
including demands from the pubic\3\. This triggered a Forest Plan
amendment process, which at its best will take two years to complete. I
believe this is an extreme example, but we have a burdensome amount of
planning taking place that again ties up funding and staff time which
should be directed toward Forest Plan implementation. The new Planning
Rule doesn't improve this situation and should be carefully evaluated
with a goal of streamlining the planning process.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ USFS press release 10-31-13, Tongass National Forest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
______
Responses of Ned Farquhar to Questions From Senator Wyden
Question 1. I understand Oregon BLM is revising its resource plans
for Western Oregon at this time. Part of that effort will require
greater coordination and consultation with the agencies that manage
endangered species--both the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It will be important to
consider a planning process that builds on the successful coordination
in recent projects by closely integrating these agencies in the
planning. What plans do you have to integrate these agencies in the
resource planning process?
Answer. The BLM in western Oregon is coordinating consultation on
threatened and endangered species issues with both the US Fish and
Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). First, the BLM has employed the DOI's
Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution (CADR) process and an
independent facilitator to finalize an agreement between the BLM, FWS,
and NOAA on how consultation will be addressed in the new plans.
Second, in April of 2013, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, FWS
Director Dan Ashe, and BLM Principal Deputy Director Neil Kornze
conducted a series of meetings in the Pacific Northwest to discuss
implementation of the 2012 Critical Habitat Rule for the Northern
Spotted Owl, including the application of active forest management.
Finally, at the local district level, the FWS and NOAA have consulted
with the BLM on the Secretarial pilot timber sales, including
developing signed biological opinions on each of the pilots. This
ongoing coordination and collaboration, with not only with the
consulting agencies but other public stakeholders and cooperating
agencies, is setting the framework for how the BLM plans to integrate
input into the planning process, analysis, and final decisions.
Question 2a. I believe we should highlight the successes of
collaboration and incentivize collaborative efforts to get restoration
work accomplished. Assuming some minimum standards for defining a
collaborative group were established, would it make sense to afford
restoration projects endorsed by a collaborative group a lighter
paperwork burden, less administrative review, and/or more protection
from stalling litigation?
Answer. The BLM shares the belief that successful collaboration and
incentivizing collaborative efforts are important to advancing
restoration work. The BLM has embraced collaboration when conducting
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses to inform land use
planning or project decisions, including for restoration projects.
While the BLM is open to more efficient ways to accomplish
restoration work, the BLM believes that current NEPA regulations and
guidance provide a sound framework for review of federal actions.
Current NEPA regulations and guidance encourage Federal agencies to
reduce paperwork and conduct more efficient administrative review by
meeting with partners and stakeholders early in project planning, using
``scoping'' to narrow the issues warranting detailed NEPA analysis, and
preparing concise NEPA documents of a length that reflects the scale of
potential environmental impacts and mitigation. The BLM encourages its
field offices to pursue these and other efficiencies through
collaboration and to implement the guidance in the Council on
Environmental Quality's Collaboration in NEPA Handbook. The BLM updated
A Desk Guide to Cooperating Agency Relationships and Coordination with
Intergovernmental Partners in 2012 to assist the BLM and other agencies
in collaborative efforts. In addition, the BLM maintains a
Collaboration and Dispute Resolution Program and a Partnerships Program
to provide support and guidance to the field in engaging stakeholders
and partners.
The current NEPA framework is designed to provide for public review
and engagement, and our hope is that a process that provides for
opportunities for input reduces the likelihood of litigation as well,
particularly where a restoration project is endorsed by a collaborative
group. Where the endorsing group has addressed issues, bridged
differences, and built support for a project throughout project
planning and design, group members have less incentive to pursue
litigation challenging the project.
Question 2b. What minimum criteria for the local collaborative
[effort] should the Forest Service or BLM use to trigger a lighter
administrative burden for NEPA?
Answer. A collaborative process facilitates efficiencies throughout
the NEPA process, including those that improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of NEPA analysis and document preparation. The BLM finds
that highlighting the benefits of a collaborative process and applying
general principles for preparing NEPA documents (e.g., concise
documents that discuss issues in proportion to their significance) are
generally useful for addressing the administrative demands under NEPA.
Question 2c. How specifically should the implementation of NEPA be
different for projects endorsed by a collaborative group?
Answer. For the reasons noted above, the BLM believes that the
current framework for implementing NEPA provides effective
opportunities to seek the endorsement of a collaborative group brought
together for a specific project. The current framework also allows a
lead agency that obtains the endorsement of a collaborative group
(e.g., for a preferred alternative or particular mitigation measures)
to document that endorsement, use it to inform their decisions, and to
defend any subsequent legal challenges.
______
Response of Bill Imbergamo to Question From Senator Wyden
Question 1. I believe we should highlight the successes of
collaboration and incentivize collaborative efforts to get restoration
work accomplished. Assuming some minimum standards for defining a
collaborative group were established, would it make sense to afford
restoration projects endorsed by a collaborative group a lighter
paperwork burden, less administrative review, and/or more protection
from stalling litigation?
What minimum criteria for the local collaborative should the Forest
Service or BLM use to trigger a lighter administrative burden for NEPA?
How specifically should the implementation of NEPA be different for
projects endorsed by a collaborative group?
Answer. As noted at the hearing, while FFRC members are--in many
regions--actively involved in collaborative processes, we cannot
support a policy solution that basically institutes an additional layer
of mandatory local involvement in order to be eligible for NEPA
compliance procedures that are widely acknowledged to be necessary
across the National Forest System.
The hearing record clearly indicated that NEPA--and the court's
interpretation of it--have led the agency to overanalyze even the most
modest forest management projects. This level of analysis is what
drives annual expenditures of more than $350 Million. These funds
should be available to design an implement projects, not develop mounds
of paperwork that serves only as fodder for litigators.
Collaborative projects such as the CFLRP projects cover only a
small percentage of the National Forest system, and primarily only in
fire prone regions of the country. Giving these projects a lighter
paperwork burden only intentionally leaves in place what is widely
regarded as a wasteful, inefficient, and unwieldy process for the
majority of the National Forest System. Even if collaborative projects
were to receive this preferential treatment, all you would have
succeeded in doing, in effect, is creating a second, even more
elaborate public involvement process, layered on top of the existing
exhaustive analysis required by forest plan development, amendment,
revision, and project development and proposal.
At what point would we simply be making collaboratives a substitute
for forest planning? If that is the goal, then eliminate forest
planning, or take other steps so that Congress is not simply accreting
another layer of public involvement and analysis on top of the existing
layer cake.
Moreover, simply giving collaborative projects a ``leg up'' in the
various administrative and legal hurdles only leaves in place the
existing underlying problem: a complete lack of clarity on the agency's
mission and no direction from Congress to manage a portion of the
landscape for timber production. If the agency is forced to cope with
its untenable NEPA burden with no direction from Congress,
collaboratives, the normal timber sale program, and other hazardous
fuels reduction efforts are destined to founder because of continued
litigation, analysis, and lack of funds.
Ultimately, we believe a legislated trust mandate and legislative
reforms to NEPA on lands identified as suited for and/or available for
timber production in current forest plans is the best way to provide
this clarity. We have outlined the basics of a trust approach in our
testimony.
Whether projects are developed through a collaborative or as part
of needed forest management treatments, the Forest Service should be
given streamlined NEPA authorities for other lands identified as being
at risk of catastrophic insect outbreaks or fire. The Committee should
adopt legislation directing the Forest Service to implement streamlined
NEPA on lands identified as being at risk of catastrophic insect
outbreaks or fire.
1. Declare an emergency on all Federal lands designated as
condition class 2 or 3 on wildfire risk maps, as well as and
lands identified as priorities for treatment in a Community
Wildfire Protection Plan.
2. Adopt alternative arrangements for all such lands for
compliance with NEPA, including:
a) Allow any hazardous fuel reduction project, including
creation of fuel breaks, thinning, creation of defensible space
around developed property, campgrounds, or other facilities, to
be carried out concurrent with development of NEPA
documentation.
b) Require the Forest Service to analyze at most the proposed
action and the no action alternative on any project conducted
on condition class 2 or 3 lands, and explicitly limit required
cumulative effects analysis to the current conditions the
project area rather than exhaustive attempts to chronicle the
effects of previous management.
c) Grant a categorical exclusion to any hazardous fuels
reduction project on condition class 2 or 3 lands recommended
by a collaborative group.
d) Put a firm page limit on EA's for projects on CC 2 or 3
lands in order to expedite action.
Further, the Forest Service should be required to adopt the
following policies:
Direct each forest with a known bark beetle infestation to
develop large scale control projects along the lines of the
Black Hills Mountain Pine Beetle Response Project within the
next 6 months. Directing these units to use HFRA will allow
rapid analysis and allow expedited judicial review.
Develop a model forest plan amendment to allow each National
Forest to plan, in advance of any catastrophic event, an active
salvage and recovery program that allows the Forest Service to
capture carbon from damaged trees and re-establishes green,
growing, and carbon-sequestering forests as rapidly as
possible. In general, on lands designated as suitable for
timber production or otherwise designated as general forest,
the Forest Service should adopt a requirement to salvage at
least 75% of damaged acres.
Response of Bill Imbergamo to Question From Senator Baldwin
Question 1. Members of the timber and forest products industries in
Wisconsin have been carefully watching the progress of stewardship
contracting projects. Please describe some of the challenges
stakeholders face when entering into these stewardship contracts.
Answer. Stewardship contracting is an important tool for the
management of the National Forest, and FFRC supports reauthorization of
this program. We must stress, however, that Stewardship contracts were
not intended to--and should not be allowed to--supplant or replace
normal timber sales as a means of accomplishing forest management on
the National Forests. FFRC also has concerns about the growing impact
Stewardship contracts are having on potential timber receipt revenue
sharing with local governments.
As far as challenges facing stakeholders and timber purchasers, we
view the lack of liability limitations in Stewardship Service Contracts
as a potentially major obstacle. Already, this has figured into the
thinking of major conservation groups who opted to stop pursuing
Stewardship Service Contracts. Under current timber sale contracts,
there is a distinction made between ``operations fire'' and ``negligent
fires.'' The amount of a purchasers liability is limited for operations
fires to the amount specified in a bond that must be posted before
beginning work. There is no distinction between operations and
negligent fires in Stewardship Service Contracts. This exposes
purchasers to potentially ruinous liability.
Sen. Flake introduced a bi-partisan amendment during the recent
Farm Bill debate that was ruled to be budget neutral by the CBO that
would direct the Forest Service to correct this problem. In any
reauthorization of Stewardship Contracting, we urge you to support this
important reform.
An additional challenge for our companies is finding the time to
analyze what the Forest Service is actually looking for in a
Stewardship contract. Frequently, selection criteria are unclear and
almost entirely subjective, and seem to be based on who spends the most
time attending meetings. While we don't doubt the value of
collaboration, we question the fairness of a bidding process that seems
to expect very lean businesses to operate more like non-profit social
services agencies. The Forest Service should develop more explicit,
easy to understand selection criteria, and should follow through on
Congressional direction to conduct adequate debriefing with
unsuccessful bidders. Further, for the Forest Service, we are concerned
that management staff are being pressured to take successful timber
sales and repackage them as Stewardship contracts. While the needed
management gets done and the wood winds up at a mill either way, there
are pitfalls to this approach. By driving agency staff to develop new
partnerships, we're concerned that they can sometimes become estranged
from their industry partners. We've seen successful timber forests
offer up sales that go no-bid for the first time in decades after
normal timber sales were converted to Stewardship sales.
Again, we hope Congress directs the agency to maintain a vital
timber sale program, which can be very effective at managing a variety
of forest types, including those found on the Chequamegon-Nicolet, for
a variety of benefits.
Responses of Bill Imbergamo to Questions From Senator Murkowski
Question 1. There has been a lot of positive talk about
collaboration as a process or means for building trust and
accomplishing mutual goals, such as, increasing forest restoration and
timber harvest on federal lands. What has been your membership's
experience with collaboration?
Answer. Our members have had a variety of experiences with
collaboration, ranging from the extremely positive to extremely
negative. Our members in Alaska, for instance, engaged in good faith
collaborative negotiations for over 5 years, attempting to find a
solution that produced the type of timber the local industry needs
while meeting the objectives of local and national environmental
groups. At the end of the day, both participating and side-line sitting
environmental groups conducted end runs around the process that have
destroyed the good faith needed to make the collaborative successful.
In other cases, FFRC members are involved in collaborative efforts
that are far ahead of the National Forest System. The Northeast
Washington Forestry Coalition in Washington State, for instance, has
the support of a wide variety of environmental and industry
stakeholders and publicly supports harvesting 80 Million Board Feet of
timber annually. Thus far, the Forest Service has failed to propose
harvesting even half this amount. Long-running collaboratives in
Arizona have experienced similar failures.
As noted in our response to Senator Wyden, however, we note that
whether collaboratives are successful or not, they should not become a
default additional mandatory process in the already cumbersome forest
management system that governs our National Forest System. Congress
should not continue to sit on the sideline while the agency engages in
endless gymnastics in the hopes that it will satisfy the courts.
Clarity in direction--and bold experimentation, including designation
of State forests--is needed.
Question 2. Dr. Johnson testified regarding an approach he calls
``ecological forestry'' to increase timber harvest levels on O&C lands
to get to a ``sustained yield'' of timber harvest that enables a
permanent source of timber supply and contributes to the economic
stability of local communities. My understanding is that there have
been some pilot projects on O&C lands testing these ideas. What was
your Oregon membership's experience with these pilot projects?
Answer. FFRC's Oregon membership has closely followed the Johnson/
Franklin ``pilot projects'' as well as the broader implications of
applying their management approach to the BLM O&C lands in western
Oregon. In the drier forests of southwest Oregon, these small scale
pilot projects have removed less timber volume per acre and resulted in
reduced levels of receipts for local governments when compared with
management as intended under the Northwest Forest Plan. The Johnson/
Franklin pilot projects in wetter forests are promoting variable
retention regeneration harvests, but they have been no less
controversial--as witnessed by the administrative appeals and protests
by environmental groups. In fact, the White Castle timber sale on the
BLM's Roseburg District is currently occupied by numerous tree sitters.
The Johnson/Franklin management approach, including changes to
reforestation practices following harvests in wetter forests, raises
many policy and legal concerns--particularly as it relates to
compliance with the O&C Act.
Applying the Johnson/Franklin approaches more broadly to the BLM
O&C lands would result in serious economic, fiscal, and environmental
impacts. A Task Force convened by Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber
modeled a number of alternatives for managing the O&C lands, including
an ecological forestry approach similar to that proposed by Johnson/
Franklin. The modeling showed that it would only generate a 200 million
board feet (mmbf) timber harvest and $27M in receipts for the O&C
counties. These lands grow over 1,200 mmbf of timber each year. The
Task Force modeling also showed that the Medford and Roseburg districts
in southwest Oregon would be hit particularly hard under ``ecological
forestry'' as harvest volumes would fall to anemic levels in these more
fire prone forests--the exact opposite of what we should be doing to
reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and insect infestations. It is
clear that the Johnson/Franklin ecological forestry practices are
unlikely to produce adequate, geographically distributed timber
harvests across western Oregon or adequate revenues to meet the needs
of local counties.
While FFRC does not question Dr. Johnson's qualifications as a
silviculturist and researcher, we do question what lessons Congress can
learn from his testimony. While he no doubt has a fine grasp of the
ecology of Douglas Fir forests in the Pacific Northwest, we note that
the entire National Forest System spans the subtropics of Florida to
the Temperate Rainforests of Alaska. Ecological conditions vary
greatly, even within each National Forest. What passes for ecological
forestry in Oregon may make no sense--in fact quite likely makes no
sense--in the mixed oak-pine forests of Arkansas or the Birch-Beech-
Maple forests of New Hampshire.
Congress should no more attempt to adopt the management
recommendations of Dr. Johnson than they should adopt the latest
research of management of the Allegheny Plateau. We have over 24,000
Forest Service employees and researchers who develop detailed
management plans for each National Forest. Rather than identifying one
approach that may be appealing in one region (and only to certain
groups), we should enable the Forest Service to carry out the
management plans they spend so much time and money developing.
______
Response of Aaron Miles to Question From Senator Wyden
Question 1. I believe we should highlight the successes of
collaboration and incentivize collaborative efforts to get restoration
work accomplished. Assuming some minimum standards for defining a
collaborative group were established, would it make sense to afford
restoration projects endorsed by a collaborative group a lighter
paperwork burden, less administrative review, and/or more protection
from stalling litigation?
What minimum criteria for the local collaborative should the Forest
Service or BLM use to trigger a lighter administrative burden for NEPA?
How specifically should the implementation of NEPA be different for
projects endorsed by a collaborative group?
Answer. Collaboration has become an essential modelto resolving
long standing issues among diverse interests of rural Americans
dependent upon the federal land base for their livelihoods. The
Clearwater Basin Collaborative (CBC), led by US Senator Mike Crapo and
supported by Senator Jim Risch and Congressman Raul Labrador,is an
excellent example of collaboration that showcases major accomplishments
when like-minded individuals from diverse interests are willing to work
towards a common goal. The personal commitment by each stakeholder at
our monthly meetings and subcommittee meetings,have resulted in our
Agreement &Work Plan, intended to capture our commitment in resolving
differences in land ethic and use of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National
Forest.
First and foremost, I would like to state that anadromous.and
resident fisheries recovery is paramount to our success in the basin.
The US Forest Service (USFS), Bonneville Power Administration,and Nez
Perce Tribe (Tribe) have spent millions of dollars on culvert
replacement,and road decommissioning to improve water quality for
fisheries under the PACFISH/INFISH Biological Opinion Effectiveness
Monitoring Program (PIBO). As a collaborative we believe our efforts
must be built around and supportive of the Tribe and USFS on the ground
efforts to restore the fisheries acceptable to harvestable levels. The
fish restoration goals are the first overlay on our political map as we
plan for the future.
In accordance with water quality standards and guidelines provided
through PIBO,and applicable federal laws that protect water quality,the
CBC is working towards restoration efforts for forest communities which
represent a desired future condition conducive to a healthier,more
resilient, longstanding,native forest community that has the propensity
to change severe fire regimes into a moderate to low complexity one to
withstand wildland fire as well as insects and disease.
forest restoration
One of our recommendations to the Nez Perce/Clearwater National
Forest (Forest) is to restore Whitepine back into the ecosystem through
a project called the Selway-Middle Fork Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Project (CFLRP). The CBC was awarded $10M for the project
under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act. As a pre-
cursor to the planning for this project, we recommended that roads not
in use, adjacent to streams be decommissioned and old culverts be
replaced with adequate ones to provide fish passage prior to any timber
removal. The Tribe's Department of Fisheries Resource Management
assisted the Forest in performing these contractual obligations.
In order for this project to be successful, Grand-fir is proposed
to be removed to allow for the restoration of Whitepine. This is a
major undertaking by the Forest because it is a large scale approach to
forest restoration using different forest practices to remove hazardous
fuels such as commercial and pre-commercial thinning,and other
vegetative treatments. It is our hope to encourage these types of
larger, more complex projects in the future. Currently, the project is
undergoing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review.
careful consideration of the basin needs
As a collaborative group, the CBC has carefully determined where
forest restoration is feasible. The CBC has held many discussions about
the arrangement of federal land use designations on the Forest and we
have broad understanding where active timber management can occur.
There are areas we want protected under the Wilderness Act, areas for
Tribal cultural practice sites,and tributaries that need protection
under Wild & Scenic. After identifying the geographic areas where
special land designations should occur, we have deduced the remaining
areas for active timber management called the ``Roaded Front'' which is
envisioned for the restoration and sustainability and long-term
viability of early seral forest timber types.
As a secondary benefit from forest restoration activities,these
active timber management areas provide the timber industry and rural
communities some certainty that woody biomass can be harvested
therefore generating commodities and alternative energy while
sustaining forest industry jobs. It is also important to underscore the
importance of all natural resources to the timber industry and rural
communities. Rural communities are also interdependent upon anadromous
fisheries, elk and other ungulate species,berries and other resources
for their subsistence as well as the Nez Perce people. Members of the
CBC do not wish for any resource to become limited or extirpated, and
take great pride in the sustainability of these forest resources by
harvesting what they need for consumption.
At this juncture in our collaboration, I believe it is imperative
that the Forest Service be allowed to move more quickly on our CFLRP
Project for forest restoration without any impediment. Much
consideration through the design of the project has been given to
listed species (aquatic & terrestrial) under the Endangered Species
Act. The projects have been reviewed by their respective biologists
from a scientific point of view to protect resources and to sustain
them. The CBC has also done a much more in-depth preliminary review for
the agency to ensure that overall risk and cumulative impacts are
greatly minimized. Our collaboration serves as a model for screening
environmental concerns before the Selway-Middle Fork CFLRP project
became reality. There are several environmental groups on the CBC, and
if they are not satisfied with the intended outcome of a project. The
nature of our consensus based collaboration essentially kills a project
with a ``thumbs down'' or one member's disapproval of a project. It
takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to reach consensus and
recommend a project to the USFS. Let me state, that there are no
projects without risk, but local knowledge from experienced and
knowledgeable individuals on the CBC understand these landscapes well.
This assures that these projects will not put listed species at greater
risk.
It is our intent that these forest projects take on a
``restoration'' theme. With this stated,I believe an abbreviated NEPA
review such as an Environmental Assessment rather than full-blown
Environmental Impact Statement be afforded to streamline our CFLRP
project. We would also request that any other forest land management
tools intended to restore healthy forests be given the same
consideration. These would include other collaboration sponsored
projects intended to restore healthy residual forests while reducing
the threat of fire and insects and disease. A collaborative process
should afford the USFS less paperwork and smoother administrative
process similar to the other restoration efforts for road obliteration
and culvert replacement where NEPA is streamlined.
Lastly,our collaboration was intentionally designed to bring all
the necessary stakeholders to the table as well as the polarizing
differences among us. Without the heartfelt discussions among the
cultural iconic interests that comprise our collaborative, I believe it
would be extremely difficult for a federal agency to respond and
implement a large scale project that we proposed to the USFS. A lesser
collaboration that only brought a select few of aligned interests does
not suffice for broad representative support. Collaboration has to go
through a crucible that reflects these divergent interests yet
``socially acceptable land management practices'' to move forward. It
takes a lot of time and effort to develop the working relationships in
order to be successful.
______
[Responses to the following questions were not received at
the time the hearing went to press:]
Questions for Norman K. Johnson From Senator Wyden
Question 1. I appreciate the thought and work that you have put
into determining how the BLM's O&C lands should be managed and how more
harvest can be achieved consistent with environmental values. Assuming
portions of the O&C lands were set aside for conservation purposes and
the other portions were to be managed using your prescriptions for
ecological forestry, how much acreage do you think the BLM should treat
within a 10-year period? Do you think legislation should mandate such
treatment levels to ensure the portion of O&C lands set aside for
production under your prescriptions eventually gets treated?
Question 2. I believe we should highlight the successes of
collaboration and incentivize collaborative efforts to get restoration
work accomplished. Assuming some minimum standards for defining a
collaborative group were established, would it make sense to afford
restoration projects endorsed by a collaborative group a lighter
paperwork burden, less administrative review, and/or more protection
from stalling litigation?
What minimum criteria for the local collaborative should the Forest
Service or BLM use to trigger a lighter administrative burden for NEPA?
How specifically should the implementation of NEPA be different for
projects endorsed by a collaborative group?
Appendix II
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
----------
Correction ``For the Record'' of the Prepared Statement of Thomas
Tidwell, Chief, Forest Service, Department of Agriculture
In the Testimony submitted by the U.S. Forest Service, page 6, 3rd
paragraph, second sentence was misunderstood and badly placed. The
sentence read, ``We have increased our funding of the timber sale
program over the last 17 years from a low of $180 million in 1995 to
$335 million in 2012.''
Instead, preceding that paragraph, the following paragraph would
clarify:
We have maintained our funding of the timber sale program
over the last 17 years from $335 million in 1995 to $368
million in 2012. Although this represents a slight increase in
funding, when adjusted for inflation it is actually a decrease
of $137 million. There have been dramatic shifts in the funding
sources: appropriations increased from $180 million to $335
million, salvage sale funds decreased from $155 million to $23
million, and regional K-V for forest products was authorized in
the interim and was $10 million in 2012.
______
Oregon Wild,
Portland, OR.
Hon. Ron Wyden,
Chairman, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Wyden,
On behalf of Oregon Wild and our organization's thousands of
supporters, please include the following testimony in the public record
pertaining to the Committee's June 25, 2013 hearing on ``Challenges and
opportunities for improving forest management on federal lands.''
While the Committee hearing was not focused specifically on western
Oregon BLM lands, we believe that many of the themes relate directly to
your recently released ``O&C Legislative Framework.'' The following
comments should also be considered feedback to this framework and
considered as you work to craft legislation for O&C lands.
the importance of public lands for public values
It is important to begin with a clear understanding of the
differing roles of public and private lands. Private forest lands are
great for producing logs and economic returns to landowners, but
private landowners do not get paid, and therefore have little
incentive, to produce clean air and water, wildlife habitat,
recreation, scenic views, and carbon storage. Private lands likely
produce an oversupply of wood because their prices do not reflect the
full cost of production. The timber industry does not pay for the
privilege of polluting our air and water, destroying habitat, or
diminishing scenic views. Public ownership thus helps correct these
market imperfections by ensuring that public lands provide critical
ecosystem services that the public needs and that private lands do not
adequately provide.
In recognition of the importance of public lands for public values,
the first and most important recommendation of the 1970 Public Land Law
Commission was ``Federal lands should remain under federal control and
be managed for the best use with respect to public needs and
desires.''\1\ And the primary goal for federal land planning is ``Use
of all public lands in a manner that will result in the maximum net
public benefit.''\2\ This is essentially a restatement of Gifford
Pinchot's maxim to manage public forests to provide ``the greatest good
to the greatest number for the longest time.''
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\1\ OSU Cooperative Extension. 1971. The Public Land Law Commission
Report and Its Importance to Oregon. Special Report 328. http://
ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/4390/
SR%20no.%20328_ocr.pdf
\2\ OSU Cooperative Extension. 1972. Planning Future Land Use--It's
Importance to Oregon. Special Report 349. http://
ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/4444/
SR%20no.%20349_ocr.pdf
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Legislative proposals to fund county budgets through quasi-
privatization of America's public lands have been offered in the U.S.
House of Representatives. These measures would weaken or eliminate
safeguards for clean water and wildlife and drastically increase
destructive logging, grazing, mining, and drilling. Sacrificing one of
the most valuable and enduring assets of the United States--our public
lands--is the wrong approach to solving county budget shortfalls, as
you recognized when you authored the Secure Rural Schools and Self
Determination Act in 2000.
Disposal of public land either to private ownership or to a trust
with a goal that maximizes revenue, should not be favored. The Public
Land Law Commission also said ``Public lands should be classified for
transfer from federal ownership when maximum net public benefits would
be assured by disposal. . . . Those charged with classifying public
domain land for either retention or disposal should undertake
considerable study before committance of this land. A systematic
analysis and public hearings should be included as a part of this
determination.''\3\
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\3\ Id.
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western oregon blm public lands values
The 2.6 million acres of Western Oregon forest lands managed by the
BLM\4\ include rivers and streams that provide clean drinking water\5\
to over 1.8 million Oregonians\6\, habitat for fish & wildlife that
people fish and hunt, habitat necessary to recover imperiled fish and
wildlife, recreation opportunities, scenic values, and quality of life
that help drive Oregon's economy.
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\4\ Of the 2.6 million acres of Western Oregon BLM lands, 2.1
million are Oregon and California (O&C) lands, 0.1 million are Coos
Bay Wagon Road (CBWR), and 0.4 million on public domain (PD) lands.
There is also 0.5 million acres of ``controverted'' O&C lands that lie
within the National Forest System on six Oregon national forests. We
are equally concerned about the disposition of all of these kinds of
federal public forestlands.
\5\ Seventy-three percent of the BLM lands in Western Oregon are
located in areas identified by the Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality as drinking water protection areas. The Nature Conservancy and
Wild Salmon Center. 2012. An Atlas of Conservation Values on Bureau of
Land Management Holdings in Western Oregon, Oregon Explorer http://
oe.oregonexplorer.info/ExternalContent/TNC/.
\6\ Oregon DEQ Land Ownership Summary by PWS. Table available upon
request.
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These lands are also a key element of the quality of life that
Oregonians enjoy--from providing clean drinking water for more than 1.8
million people, to providing recreation and jobs in growing fields. For
example, the most recent 2012 report from the Outdoor Industry
Association confirms that the outdoor recreation industry directly
supports 6.1 million jobs and contributes over $646 billion annually to
the U.S. economy. In Oregon alone, outdoor recreation generates $12.8
billion in consumer spending, $4.0 billion in wages and salaries, $955
million in state and local tax revenue, and 141,000 direct Oregon
jobs.\7\ According to the Bureau of Land Management, in 2010 there were
a total of 6,811 jobs on Oregon BLM lands associated with recreation,
accounting for a total of $662 million in output. Also, the most recent
data from 2011 shows about 5.5 million visits were recorded on Western
Oregon BLM associated with recreation.
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\7\ http://www.outdoorindustry.org/images/ore_reports/OR-oregon-
outdoorrecreationeconomy-oia.pdf
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In addition to the natural amenities that citizens enjoy, these
lands are a critical component of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP),
developed by former President Bill Clinton and adopted in 1994. After
decades of overcutting and mounting social controversy, this landmark
document finally brought science-based management to the publicly-owned
forests of the Pacific Northwest. The NWFP is a 100 year plan designed
to protect and restore old-growth forests, wildlife habitat, clean
water, and salmon, while allowing compatible timber production. It has
been well-documented that Western Oregon BLM lands are integral to the
Northwest Forest Plan's success, as well as to the recovery of
threatened species\8\.
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\8\ USFWS 1992. Final rule designating critical habitat for the
northern spotted owl. Fed. Reg. Jan 15, 1992.
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Because these forests belong to all Americans and are a part of our
nation's rich heritage of public lands, legislation that would alter
their management would have enormous implications for public
forestlands, wildlife areas, deserts and grasslands, and waters
everywhere across the United States.
timber harvest levels
We appreciate your dedication to, as you stated in the hearing, not
``compromising bedrock environmental values'' in your endeavor to
increase timber harvest on federal lands. But we'd like to challenge
the premise that timber harvest on federal lands has declined
dramatically, and therefore we must get it back up.
While it's true that federal harvest levels today are significantly
lower than they were prior to 1991, this is for good reason. Prior to
1990, public forestlands were subject to unsustainable logging for
decades. Watersheds were being decimated as roads and clear-cuts were
built at alarming rates. As a result, salmon, northern spotted owl, and
marbled murrelet populations faced precipitous declines. They were
listed under the ESA because their habitat was fragmented and
destroyed. To recover threatened species and to quell public opposition
to old growth clearcutting, timber harvest had to decline. The harvest
levels that followed the NWFP were the maximum allowable given legal
requirements and the degraded state of the landscape. Since then, when
the agencies have followed the Forest Plan's requirements, harvest
levels have actually remained quite steady and have been meeting
Congressionally-set targets for years.
This is nicely illustrated in the O&C Lands Report prepared for
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber\9\, which notes that since 1995 the BLM
has:
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\9\ ``O&C Lands Report: Prepared for Governor John Kitzhaber'' Feb.
6, 2013, page 29
Offered 84% of ASQ Volume
Offered 96% of the Congressionally-funded `target'
Sold 96% of the volume Offered
Sold 80% relative to ASQ and 92% relative to the
Congressionally-funded target
This harvest has been done within the science-based framework of
the Northwest Forest Plan. While there may be additional volume that
could be generated from these lands through scientifically sound
conservation-based thinning projects, any possible increase must be
carefully balanced against potential harm to clean water, endangered
species, and the ability of these public forestlands to help mitigate
the pollution that causes climate change.
In addition, it is important to consider that the vast majority of
Oregon timber mills have adopted new technology for high efficiency and
the ability to process small logs available in abundance from both
public and private lands. The few remaining mills that have refused to
adapt their business model to use smaller logs do not deserve continued
public subsidies in the form of large logs from our public forests.
While logging and wood products will always be a part of Oregon's
economy, this sector is not a growth industry. Manufacturing's share of
total employment has steadily declined for more than 2 decades (as of
2007)\10\, and a very small fraction of Oregon's employment depends on
logging federal lands\11\.
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\10\ http://www.oregon4biz.com/assets/docs/PrivEmp.pdf
\11\ http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/
CES?areacode=41010000001&action=summary&submit=C ontinue
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``modernization'' of federal laws
In your legislative framework you stated that ``The legislation
will modernize existing federal laws as they apply to O&C lands so that
harvest can continue at a steady, sustainable, and uninterrupted rate
once an initial review of all lands set aside for management is
completed and as long as subsequent timber sales comply with the
legislation.'' While it remains unclear what this might entail,
additional comments in the recent hearing by both you and Ranking
member Murkowski suggested streamlining bedrock federal laws that
embody public participation, such as the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA).
``Modernizing federal laws'' could put our nation's clean water,
wildlife habitat, and local communities at risk. The public relies on
the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and NEPA to safeguard
our natural heritage for ourselves and our children. The idea that we
may ``modernize'' federal laws suggests sufficiency language, which
would deny the public the right to review forest management. The only
law that arguably needs modernizing is the O&C Act of 1937 which over-
emphasizes timber production and unavoidably diminishes too many other
important public benefits flowing from these lands.
NEPA
Much of the hearing focused on the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA)--which has been described as America's ``look before you
leap'' environmental safeguard.
Simply put, NEPA requires federal decision-making to be rational,
informed, participatory, and accountable. Any effort to amend NEPA will
short-change one or more of these core values. NEPA guarantees that
federal agencies will carefully consider the environmental consequences
of a major government action, and that Americans who are affected by
such an action will get accurate information about its impacts, a
choice among sound stewardship alternatives, and the right to have
their voice heard before the government makes a final decision. NEPA
ensures balance, common sense and openness in federal decision-making,
and it is an effective means of ensuring accountability by federal
managers.
At the heart of NEPA is its requirement that alternatives must be
considered--including alternatives that will minimize possible damage
to our health, environment, quality of life, or to protect human life.
Comparing the relative merits of several alternatives is a core
requirement of rational decision-making. Absent this requirement, the
decision-maker might propose a ``good'' alternative, but might miss the
opportunity to consider a ``great'' alternative suggested by the
public, a cooperating agency, or a scientific reviewer.
By making sure that the public is informed and that alternatives
are considered, NEPA has helped the agencies reject harmful
alternatives and made countless projects better. Cutting corners on
NEPA review can have serious adverse consequences, especially when it
comes to spending taxpayer money on projects that might harm citizens
or the environment that sustains us. The value of our common air and
water cannot be under-estimated. The value of ``ecosystem services'' is
in the trillions of dollars. We must not diminish these services
without fully and consciously considering the consequences through NEPA
review.
Done well, NEPA can save time and money in the long run by reducing
controversy, building consensus, and ensuring that a project is done
right the first time. Limiting public involvement and weakening
environmental review won't avoid controversy or improve projects. In
fact, it will breed public distrust and discontent and slow the process
of finding common ground.
NEPA requires federal agencies to use the accurate scientific
analysis and respond to opposing viewpoints. This ensures that federal
managers use modern standards and ensures that they don't put blinders
on and ignore relevant information that has a bearing on the decision.
NEPA requires consideration of cumulative effects, which simply means
that federal managers should make decisions within the context of what
happened before and what might happen later, and that the left hand
should know what the right hand is doing.
An example of how well NEPA can work might help. Several years ago,
the Umpqua National Forest's Diamond Lake Ranger District proposed to
log thousands of acres of mature and old-growth forest (some even in
inventoried roadless areas) around Lemolo Reservoir in the High
Cascades. In the course of all stages of NEPA participation (scoping,
public meetings and site tours, Draft EIS, Supplemental Draft EIS,
Final EIS, ROD) the public was able to convince the Forest Service to
modify the project so that it could eventually move forward with a
modified design. The project was administratively appealed, but
appellants agreed to withdraw the appeal in exchange for some changes
to the design of temporary roads to be constructed and assurances about
protecting some large trees. If not for NEPA, this project would
certainly have ended up in a contentious lawsuit, but NEPA provided a
framework for data collection, disclosure, and common understanding
essential to a peaceful resolution.
Another example relates to the government's keen interest in
wildland/urban fuel reduction. NEPA ensures that the trade-offs between
fuel reduction and wildlife habitat and water quality are fully
disclosed and carefully considered. NEPA also helps ensure that fuel
reduction efforts are effective in terms of reducing fire hazards. It
is well known that thinning forests can reduce fire hazard by reducing
surface fuels and ladder fuels, but it is much less well known that
thinning can also make fire hazard worse by moving fuels form the
canopy to the ground where they are relatively more available for
combustion during a fire, and by increasing sunlight at ground level
which reduces fuel moisture and stimulates the growth of future ladder
fuels. When properly used, NEPA helps the decision-maker design fuel
reduction efforts to optimize the competing values (e.g. reducing fire
hazard vs. increasing fire hazard, degrading water quality, degrading
wildlife habitat, compacting soil, etc.)
In short, NEPA is an important law that should not be undermined.
However, there may be some ways that it can be functionally improved to
address alleged NEPA ``gridlock''. Alleged NEPA ``gridlock'' is
primarily the result of two things: (1) well-founded public opposition
to controversial projects in sensitive areas such as old growth,
roadless areas, drinking watersheds, and important habitat areas, and
(2) the agencies' own bureaucratic inefficiency.
The most effective way address the first cause is to encourage the
agencies to focus on restoration projects that have broad public
support, not to expand controversial logging of mature forests or
clearcutting. Sound decisions that restore forests and watersheds and
comply with federal laws and policies will be approved quickly without
controversy, while poor decisions that degrade wildlife habitat, log
mature and old-growth forests, or damage watersheds, have legitimate
reasons to be stopped and the agency responsible for the decision held
accountable to environmental laws and the best available science.
To address the second cause, a number of steps can be, and are
being taken. The Forest Service and BLM representatives at the hearing
mentioned a few: Planning larger scale projects under one NEPA
analysis, and transitioning to the new objection process for example.
In an issue paper signed by forty coalition partners, the Rural Voices
for Conservation Coalition\12\ identified the need for maintaining
federal environmental laws like NEPA, but recommended some
efficiencies:
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\12\ Rural Voices for Conservation Coaltion (RVCC) Issue Paper, May
2013. ``A Community-based Approach to Federal Forest Management: RVCC's
Vision and Essential Goals.'' http://www.susnw.org/uploads/resources/
2013_Community_Forest_Mgmt_Issue_Paper_final.pdf
To encourage the restoration of forest health and ecological
resiliency, an increase in NEPA efficiencies should be
considered. Several factors play into the perceived
inefficiency in following the requirements of this law. RVCC
participants have identified some of these and recommended some
changes in the context of the Blue Mountains Forest Partners
collaborative group that could be applied elsewhere. Common
barriers to an efficient NEPA process include: high agency
turnover; lack of coordinated agency response to new
information; lack of boilerplate information; inefficiencies in
the ESA consultation process; lack of funding and staff; and
poor communication and coordination between Forest Service
interdisciplinary teams.
We recommend that any new federal forest management
legislation include solutions to these barriers. Such solutions
include: entrance and exit memos for agency staff; timely
replacement of agency staff that are transferred, retired,
etc.; prompt legal and policy evaluations for circulation to
agency staff; creation of a boilerplate library; programmatic
NEPA analysis; and the utilization of a trained local workforce
to assist the agencies in gathering the information and data
necessary for these analyses.
conservation areas and protections
Senator Wyden's legislative framework suggests the creation of
``wilderness and other permanent land use designations whose primary
management focus will be to maintain and enhance conservation
attributes'' in rough equivalent to the lands designated for logging.
As recent analysis by The Nature Conservancy and others have shown,
in order to adequately safeguard clean water, old-growth forests
(current and future), and treasured recreation areas, far more than
half of the O&C landscape needs to be protected or restored.\13\
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\13\ See The Nature Conservancy and Wild Salmon Center. 2012. An
Atlas of Conservation Values on Bureau of Land Management Holdings in
Western Oregon, Oregon Explorer http://oe.oregonexplorer.info/
ExternalContent/TNC/.
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We'd like to reiterate our whole-hearted support for protecting
more Wilderness in Oregon. As such, we encourage you to continue to
move forward with the Wilderness proposals already moving through
Congress, like Devil's Staircase and the Wild Rogue, without tying them
to forest management legislation. These proposals enjoy strong support
and should move forward on their own merits.
We are concerned about the framework document's reliance on
designations other than Wilderness for safeguarding special places. For
pristine public lands, Wilderness is the strongest and most effective
tool for safeguarding conservation values. It has been our experience
that alternative designations, such as National Recreation Areas, fall
short. For instance, forests within the Oregon Cascades Recreation
Area, adjacent to Crater Lake National Park, is currently targeted for
logging by the Umpqua National Forest in the D-bug Timber Sale.
We do recognize that Wilderness is not the appropriate tool to
protect all important conservation values. It is important to note that
Wilderness cannot be a replacement for the restoration goals of the
NWFP, as there are simply too few pristine areas left on our public
lands to ensure functional terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
For achieving broad conservation and economic objectives in a
scientifically-sound fashion, it is very hard to improve upon the
Northwest Forest Plan. Senator Wyden's framework aspires to generate
legislation to ``safeguard clean water and treasured resources and
focus on long term conservation of habitat, but will also include areas
emphasizing recreation and areas that would allow for restoration based
thinning in previously managed stands.,'' This nearly perfectly
describes the existing land allocation framework of the NWFP.
forest management principles
Your framework suggests that ``a substantial portion of O&C lands
will be set aside for sustainable economic activity with ultimate
harvest levels governed by rules established in legislation.'' Your
framework goes on to say that ``Sustainable harvest will be consistent
with the most advanced forest management practices advocated by
Northwest experts and demonstrated in pilot projects and collaborative
efforts across the state, including the pioneering and successful
efforts in the Siuslaw Forest and Medford BLM district.''
Several of these points deserve specific discussion:
Fragmenting our natural heritage
Western Oregon forests have already been divided again and again.
More than half of the productive capacity of Oregon's forests is
controlled by private interests. More than half of the O&C forests have
been previously exploited for timber production. Further fragmentation
of the O&C lands to emphasize timber harvest could worsen existing
environmental problems in Western Oregon, especially if it will require
logging ecologically critical areas such as unlogged mature native
forests (80-120 years old), critical habitat for threatened species,
and areas currently designated as Riparian and Late Successional
Reserves. These lands are an essential part of the Northwest Forest
Plan, and any changes to the distribution of the reserve system in the
Plan must go through extensive analysis to ensure survival and recovery
of threatened species, while also providing other social, economic, and
ecological values.
BLM lands play an important role in the Northwest Forest Plan
system of reserves combining the LSR network, the riparian reserves
network, and critical habitat units. Together these serve as a ``land
bridge'' linking wildlife populations that live in the Cascades, Coast
Range and Klamath Mountains. Any effort to adjust land use on BLM lands
must conserve the functional role of BLM lands as habitat connectivity.
Given the degraded condition of the landscape throughout the private/
BLM checkerboard, it may not be possible to maintain this important
function of BLM lands on just one-quarter of the landscape (e.g., a
``roughly equivalent'' half of the BLM half of the checkerboard). In
addition, new information regarding the need to protect and restore
mature and old-growth habitat for threatened species should be
considered in addition to the Plan's reserve system. And newly
recognized needs for storing carbon and moderating stream flows to
mitigate global warming must be considered.
Oregon Wild's critique of the ``O&C Trust, Conservation, and Jobs
Act'' outlined by Reps. DeFazio, Schrader, and Walden lays out some of
the key reasons that further division of these lands fails to meet
these goals.\14\ Rather than focus on a further ``splitting of the
baby'' on the O&C lands, we would encourage you to look to an expansion
of the successful restoration-based thinning programs taking place on a
number of BLM Districts in Western Oregon, and on the Siuslaw National
Forest. Such an approach offers a way to improve environmental health
while increasing timber volume, without the need to change the
Northwest Forest Plan or environmental laws. And it is the only
approach that has demonstrated success in terms of both broad
scientific and public support.
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\14\ Oregon Wild 2012. Problems and Pitfalls Associated with the
Proposed ``O&C Trust, Conservation, and Jobs Act'' https://
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47741/O%26C_Trust_Act_White_Paper_FINAL_6-
5-2012_w_DeFazio_response.pdf
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A critique of ``ecological forestry'' and ``variable
retention harvest'' clearcutting
We firmly believe that the best available science must be used to
develop and implement plans for forest management. But we disagree that
the pilot projects developed by Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin
demonstrate the ``most advanced forest management practices.'' Projects
like the Buck Rising and White Castle timber sales on the Roseburg
District BLM have not demonstrated much more than the fact that
clearcutting on public lands--even with some retention trees--is highly
controversial for the public and within the scientific community.
Dr. Norm Johnson's testimony at the June 25 hearing explained his
and Dr. Jerry Franklin's recommendations for increasing logging on O&C
lands. Their logging principles are currently being demonstrated in a
series of ``pilot'' projects initiated by the Secretary of the Interior
on BLM lands. The goals of these pilot projects include 1) providing
timber, 2) increasing early seral habitat, 3) and testing new logging
principles. The projects in moist forest types utilize a harvest
prescription called ``variable retention harvest'' (VRH). Johnson and
Franklin spend a good deal of time trying to distinguish VRH from plain
clearcutting.
The Society of American Foresters defines ``clearcut'' as ``1. a
stand in which essentially all trees have been removed in one
operation--note depending on management objectives, a clearcut may or
may not have reserve trees left to attain goals other than
regeneration. . .''\15\ While the underlying goals of VRH may not be as
purely economic as most clearcutting, and while VRH may leave more
structure in the stand than a traditional clearcut, the results on the
ground are more accurately described as ``clearcut with reserves,''\16\
with similar ecological and hydrological impacts to clearcutting.
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\15\ http://dictionaryofforestry.org/dict/term/clearcut.
\16\ See http://dictionaryofforestry.org/dict/term/
regeneration_method and http://dictionaryofforestry.org/dict/term/
variable_retention_harvest_system
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Clearcutting has many negative ecological impacts, not to mention
its controversial social nature. This practice has significant negative
impacts on wildlife and natural forest components like snags and down
wood, and increases invasive weeds, blowdown, fuel loads,
fragmentation, and forest edge habitat. It harms soil through
compaction, nutrient loss, erosion, and landslides. It depletes forest
carbon stores and adds to global warming pollution. And it degrades
water quality, scenic views, recreation, and quality of life.
Furthermore, there are significant questions about the claim that
VRH is needed to improve or increase early seral habitat. The alleged
improvement of VRH over traditional clearcutting is only relative to
industrial forestry (which is not allowed on public lands). Variable
retention clearcutting is not an ecological improvement relative to
natural processes. The scientific basis for ecological forestry can be
improved with answers to some basic questions, including:
Is there really an ecologically significant shortage of
early seral habitat?
Which species are at risk? Do early seral species tend to be
mobile, generalist, and opportunist? Are there exceptions?
Does the sheer abundance of low-quality early seral habitat
on non-federal lands partially compensate for the shortage of
high-quality early seral?
Are natural processes like fire, wind, and insects creating
enough high-quality early seral on public lands? Will global
warming help those trends?
Are there ways of enhancing early seral habitat that do not
require clearcutting mature forests, such as improving
practices on non-federal lands, modifying salvage logging
practices, extending early seral conditions in existing young
stands, and embedding structure-rich ``gaps'' when thinning
dense young stands?
Without addressing these many concerns, we believe the expansion of
VRH across the BLM landscape, as recommended by Johnson and Franklin,
would have many negative impacts. It would be a significant departure
from the Northwest Forest Plan's emphasis on the need to protect and
restore old forests and the recent success enjoyed by the agencies from
focusing on thinning dense young stands that were previously clearcut.
And most importantly, there are better ways to manage our public
forests. There is no compelling reason to shift from successful and
much needed thinning to destructive and controversial clearcutting--
with or without reserve trees.
Collaboration and restoration
We do not believe that the clearcutting principles and techniques
being advanced by Drs. Johnson and Franklin should be given the same
weight in any O&C legislation as the successful collaborative and
restoration-based thinning work being done without controversy on the
Siuslaw National Forest. The Siuslaw National Forest has been
successfully producing timber as a by-product of restoration for more
than a decade. They are not practicing clearcutting as envisioned by
Johnson and Franklin, but continue to innovate in the way they thin
young forests for diversity and wildlife habitat. The Siuslaw routinely
exceeds the timber volume targets set for it through Congressional
funding, and has largely avoided the conflict and controversy that has
plagued other federal public lands logging, such as the Medford and
Roseburg BLM distrcts.
We agree with many of the comments made at the hearing regarding
the benefits of collaboration around forest management. In our
experience, collaborations between forest management agencies and
diverse interest groups and individuals can lead to agreement and
common ground unheard of a decade ago. When common ground around
ecological restoration is used as a starting point, forest management
activities can proceed with little to no controversy as trust is built
among parties--setting the stage for future on-the-ground work. This
vision was advanced in your ``Oregon Eastside Forest Restoration, Old-
growth Protection, and Jobs Act,'' and we've seen progress throughout
Oregon in this vein. In fact, in a draft report by Oregon Solutions for
the State of Oregon's Federal Forestlands Advisory Committee, they
found a strong suggestion in both data and in anecdotal comments that
the increase in collaborative groups have significantly reduced
challenges to land management actions.\17\
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\17\ Oregon Solutions. ``Oregon Forest Collaboratives: Statewide
Inventory,'' Working Draft, February 2013. http://orsolutions.org/beta/
wp-content/uploads/2011/08/OFCSI_Draft_February_20131.pdf
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We support the use of collaboration to find common ground around
forest management activities, not as a substitute for NEPA, but as a
complimentary process that can help make permanent shifts in agency
focus toward ecological restoration. Unfortunately, we do not believe
this common ground can be achieved when not restoration, but rather
increased harvest for the sake of county funding, is the goal of forest
management.
additional resources
Finally, we direct you to four important white papers developed by
our staff that are pertinent to this discussion.
Problems and Pitfalls Associated with the Proposed ``O&C
Trust, Conservation, and Jobs Act.'' Oregon Wild. 2012. https:/
/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47741/O%26C--Trust--Act--White--
Paper--FINAL--6-5-2012--w--DeFazio--response.pdf
``The Case for Protecting both Old Growth and Mature
Forests.'' Doug Heiken. 2009. https://
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47741/
Mature%20Forests%2C%20Heiken%2C%20 v%201.8.pdf
``Log it to save it? The search for an ecological rationale
for fuel reduction logging in Spotted Owl habitat.'' Doug
Heiken. 2010. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47741/
Heiken--Log--it--to--Save--it--v.1.0.pdf
``Riparian Reserves Provide Both Aquatic & Terrestrial
Benefits: A Critical Review of Reeves, Pickard, and Johnson
(2013).'' Doug Heiken. 2013. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/
u/47741/Heiken%202013.%20Review%20of%20Reev
es%20et%20al%20Riparian%20Proposal.pdf
In the months ahead, we look forward to working with your staff to
discuss the development of legislation for western Oregon. As you move
forward, we urge you to consider solutions that do not sacrifice clean
drinking water, critical wildlife habitat, or bedrock environmental
laws and values.
Respectfully submitted,
Sean Stevens,
Executive Director.