Alan Gregory’s Conservation NewsI remember when this interest group held enormous power, rivaling the livestock associations, although they were not rivals, of course.
Timber association will disband after 75 years. By Becky Kramer. Spokesman-Review.
Although the first article below has a somewhat pessimistic tone, this certainly seems better than the current trend in boreal Canada. There is more value to the vast boreal forest than caribou.
Caribou still at risk under historic forestry deal. Industry, environmentalists band together for sustainability. By Hanneke Brooymans, edmontonjournal.com
-Ducks Unlimited is plenty happy. DU celebrates boreal wetlands protection announcement. Vital wetland systems in Canada’s Boreal Forest conserved.
This pact will not stop the biggest threat in the area, the open pit mining of “tar sands,” conversion of which into synthetic oil is tremendously polluting and has relatively poor net energy efficiency.
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*Methane, CH4, is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, CO2
This is an opinion in the Billings Gazette by Stewart Brandborg who was executive director of the Wilderness Society when the Wilderness Act became law.
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My take on Tester’s bill is that is very much the stuff ex-Idaho senator Larry Craig was always pushing — mandated levels of logging completely unrelated to the conditions of the market. One big difference in favor of Tester is he does designate some Wilderness.
Craig simply pushed artificial levels of logging. I used to call them Craig’s Soviet forestry because of their similarity to the way production goals were set in the former Communist Soviet Union.
Brandborg fills out the whole rooster of violations of past law and public oversight embodied in the Tester Bill.
Guest opinion: Tester logging bill proposes a calamitous precedent. By Stewart M. Brandborg. Billings Gazette.|
More recent opinion on Tester bill.
USFS Retiree [Bill Worf] on Tester Bill: Gutting the USFS is not the Solution. Unfiltered in New West. By Matthew Koehler,
“Biomass” fuel, as it is often called, is said to be environmentally friendly and carbon neutral. It may be that way sometimes, but cutting down dead forests, hauling them off and burning them to make steam for electricity is not.
Dr. Thomas Power discusses why this is so.
Guest Column (in New West). Biomass Potential for Old Montana Mill Raises Many Questions. By Thomas Power.
One additional problem Dr. Power doesn’t mention is what happens when the beetle killed forest fuel is exhausted or too much decayed and a green stand of trees is on the horizon?
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More recent wildlife relevant news on biofuels.
Both of these article say monocultures of biofuels are environmentally harmful projects.
Diverse Landscapes Are Better: Policymakers Urged To Think Broadly About Biofuel Crops. Science Daily
Jan.26, 2010. Biofuel Crop Diversity Adds Value, Researchers Say. Science Daily.
Two stories:
Montana Wood products industry losing a big player. By Rob Cheney of the Missoulian.
Western Montana forest fuel reduction projects will take a big hit. By Perry Backus. Ravalli Republic
Events like this may make the mandatory logging goals in Senator Tester’s “wilderness bill” completely irrelevant. In fact, the anticipation of this effect of the recession may be one reason some conservation organizations are supporting his bill.
Basic economics. When the supply is huge (all the dead wood) and the demand low (due to recession), price will drop and the industry will shrink.
Timber law becomes vast entitlement. By Matthew Daly and Shannon Dinninny. Associated Press Writers
The article below is related to the one posted about “Sen. Udall sponsors bill to attack pine beetles.”
It’s good to finally see some attention to the role of forests as carbon sinks, but it is not clear how to maximize their role as sinks, or even how to prevent them from becoming carbon sources.
On thing the article doesn’t discuss the the amount of carbon stored in forest soils. In the dry interior forests with shallow soils, it probably isn’t much. In the wet, big tree forests west of the Cascades up into British Columbia and coastal Alaska , the kind of logging done in the past, clearcuts followed by burning slash, has a horrible effect on the carbon storage.
Every kind of forest probably needs to have a different carbon management plan.
Story in the New York Times by William Yardley. Note that the Times headline is misleading as a description of the article’s content.
He explains that the “bill would set aside just over 600,000 acres of Wilderness, withdraw current protection from nearly 250,000 acres, and require that 100,000 acres be made available for logging and roading in an already fractured landscape.”
Senator Tester Betrays Montana Wilderness
By Brian Peck, New West Unfiltered 11-03-09
In May, the Obama administration announced its intention to give Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack top level oversight over incursions into roadless areas. The move was said to be Obama’s re-commitment to the Clinton Roadless Rule.
Obama administration inches away from ‘time out’ for roadless forest logging – The Oregonian
Now it appears the administration is backing away from that directive, if only a little.
This month, the Agriculture Department returned to the Forest Service the authority to undertake certain projects in roadless forests without the secretary’s approval.
More fallout on the costs to conservation Montana Senator Jon Tester’s new Logging Bill (couched in “W”ilderness designation) may have to Montana’s wildlife.
Collateral damage: Experts wonder what Tester’s bill may kill Missoula Independent
While much of the critique coming from conservationists focuses on the negative impact of the logging on other-than-wilderness public lands of which existing protections are traded away in the bill, Ralph Maughan previously leveraged a convincing repudiation of Tester’s logging bill pointing out that much of the Wilderness will be Cow-trashed Wilderness, “Wilderness” designated landscapes allowed to be grazed to the dirt as before. How’s that for “untrammeled” ?
More controversy has been in the news concerning what has been framed the Beaverhead-Deerlodge “W“ilderness bill in Montana.
Paul Richards has taken a candid approach to the spread of this nominal Wilderness in Montana – he’s calling it what it just as fairly might be called, a logging bill :
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana? : Counterpunch
In the Tester Logging Bill, we are witnessing the worst of hardball politics. The Tester Logging Bill ignores economic, scientific, and environmental reality. It circumvents the public and environmental laws designed to serve the public good, such as the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
Paul points out many of the problems with the bill, including one of the quid pro quo’s being the loss of already protected Wilderness Study Areas :
The Tester Logging Bill “undesignates” the Axolotl Lakes Wilderness Study Area, Bell/Limekiln Canyons Wilderness Study Area, East Fork Blacktail Wilderness Study Area, Henneberry Ridge Wilderness Study Area, and Hidden Pasture Wilderness Study Area. All of these roadless wildlands would be subjected to “logging without laws,” as the Tester Logging Bill specifically excludes them from the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
Rocky Barker looks at the same bill and sees what some might suggest as more important than the pesky details concerning wildlands lost. He sees sweet, sweet *compromise* :
Montana wilderness (sic) bill similar to Idaho approach – Letters from the West
“Just building the road will cost four times as much revenue as the Forest Service is going to get from the timber sale,” said Waldo of Earthjustice.
Ketchikan mill is awarded Orion North timber
Deal marks first timber sale in roadless area under Obama
Spotted-owl recovery gets another look from Obama administration. By Warren Cornwall. Seattle Times environment reporter “The Obama administration signaled Tuesday that it wants to scrap a controversial Bush-era plan for spotted-owl recovery, asking a federal district court judge to let them rewrite it, rather than defend it against lawsuits from both environmentalists and the timber industry.”
Groups sue to stop timber sale on shore of Hebgen Lake. Billings Gazette. AP
The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) sent a 60-day Notice of Intent to sue the Department of Interior over its decision to list Polar Bears under the Endangered Species Act. From PLF’s News Release:
The PLF letter is filed on behalf of ranching and forestry interests that, along with employers nationwide and the economy in general, would be harmed by heavy-handed regulations that could proceed from the listing of the polar bear.
Hunting Season is Open on Polar Bears’ ESA Listing – Mother Jones
The following “guest essay” in New West is by Dr. Chad Hanson, a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California at Davis.
My view is that the logging industry has always used forest fires to try to stampede people into supporting policies that are bad for the forests, the environment, and most people except the logging company executives.
Logging Industry Misleads on Climate and Forest Fires. By Chad Hanson, Ph.D. New West.
The net effect of most logging is to increase the release of greenhouse gases.
Regrowth after a forest fire results in more update in carbon dioxide than regrowth after logging.
The New Colonialism. Our Forest Legacy. The Flathead Beacon. The Plum Creek matter is a growing issue. Here is another article.
George Wuerthner recommended a link to this article.
This has got to be one of my favorite stories. It is too rare these days that public officials are directly held to account. The court date for Rey is set for Tuesday.
Agriculture chief may face jail time
As the story illustrates, and we’ve gone over before, Rey spent much time with disgraced Sen. Larry Craig and as a former timber lobbyist before being appointed undersecretary for natural resources and agriculture by the Bush Administration. Rey moved to privatize your public land, dismantle the legal safeguards for wild places, and so much more.
Although I am skeptical about the possibility that Rey will indeed be thrown behind bars for this particular contempt, he should be – the lawlessness and public land profiteering personified by this man ought be reprimanded, he’d make a fine example.
Idaho’s roadless plan is good but it needs tweaking, Risch says. He says it needs to further restrict logging, but conservationists say that revision is not enough. Idaho Statesman. By Erika Bolstad.
This roadless area plan was developed by Risch in 2006 while he was briefly governor. He was one of just a few governors who took up Bush’s offer to states to let them resolve the roadless area issue (subject to Bush Administration approval). Most governors preferred President Clinton’s total protection plan.
The Administration’s final approval was for a modified plan that provided significantly less protection than Risch had proposed (more logging). Now Risch is running for the U.S. Sentate to replace Larry Craig (his Democratic opponent will be Larry LaRocco, a former Idaho congressman).
There is no doubt, the hoopla surrounding ID Senator Larry Craig is a well deserved condemnation of hypocrisy that’s been years in the coming and nobody is celebrating his descent more than progressives throughout the Northwest. Now, he has resigned effective September 30.
But the shamefull manner in which a powerful Republican Senator squandered his standing is thankfully failing to completely overshadow just what it is many in Idaho and throughout the West are celebrating:
In the meantime, his actions in backrooms of the nation’s capital deserve attention. Call it a Craig’s List of how to block good deeds, or at least see that they don’t go unpunished.
This is great news for fisheries and clean water. Abandoned logging roads often don’t heal. In fact, they can generate more and more erosion as the years go by, the culverts wash out, and small disturbances turn into gullies. In addition, there are many “use” ways — roads never constructed that were made simply by people driving. Because they were never planned or located to fit the land, these too are major sources of erosion.
Unfortunately, the Service doesn’t have the money to to this, but there is a bill moving through the House that would provide the money. “The ‘Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative’ under consideration by the House would set aside funding for road decommissioning, road and trail repair and maintenance, and the removal of fish barriers.”
Story in the Missoulian. Forest Service seeks closure of worn-out roads. By Perry Backus.
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Here is more on the big victory, slapping down the Bush Administration’s new grazing regulations. Rocky Barker goes on to tie it with the recent Bush defeat on the roadless issue ruling.
One point about the headline — ” Cowboys and loggers.” Cowboys and loggers are the employees. Like so many of us, they are the ones who get the “short end of the stick.” It’s ranchers and forest developers who lost in two courtrooms. The condition of injured or “retired” loggers and cowboys is often not a happy one.
Barker’s blog in the Idaho Statesman.
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Information on the big victory on roadless areas- June 8, Rocky Mountain News. Roadless rule survives challenge By Todd Hartman.
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Western Republicans should really take a political hit for this, although they probably won’t.
Idaho’s Senator Craig, for example, has been braying how he got money for the rural schools and rural county services (formerly dependent on timber revenues funded). The Bush Administration had wanted to do it by selling off national forest land around the country. A public opinion firestorm stropped that bad idea.
Because the Republican Congress failed to pass a budget for FY 2007 budget, the school funding was about to expire and the only legislative “vehicle” available that would stop these schools from running out of money was the military appropriations supplemental which President Bush just vetoed, claiming it contained a “surrender” date and “pork barrel spending” (spending such as this).
Now the funding is gone, and it won’t come back easily, if at all. How did Senator Craig and the other Western Republicans vote? Yes, to defund the schools and rural counties so the President could continue his occupation of of Iraq.
The New York Times tells part of the story in this article, but it is not just a rural Oregon disaster. Timber (and Its Revenues) Decline, and Libraries Suffer. New York Times.
The Challis Messenger tells the story more directly. Challis is about the most Republican place in Idaho, although they do have one Democratic county commissioner.
School, county road funding again in limbo. Challis Messenger. By Todd Adams.
Note that Custer County got far more than its share of radioactive fallout during the days of open air atom bomb testing in Nevada. Bush also vetoed the money for the “downwinders.” No doubt more pork barrel 😡
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They’ve gone and done it again — dropped public land grazing fees as low as the law allows. For a buck, thirty-five a month ranchers can let a cow stomp all over the the public land trample the banks and shit in the streams. Oh, yes, and their calves get to do it for free.
For those not so favored, you will be paying more fees this year to access your land. For $80 you can get the card below that will let you into many public land areas.
The High Country News blog has some thoughts on the new grazing fees. Buddy can you spare a cow.
The Missoula Independent has an article too. Unfair warning. Scaling back recreation on public lands, quietly. By John S. Adams
Here is an interesting post on the Western Watersheds Project blog.
This is about the Kermode bear of the central British Columbia coast and coastal islands. It is a black bear that carries a gene that makes a percentage of its numbers cream colored (not actually white). It is not an albino.
The uniqueness of the bear has helped build conservation efforts to restrain British Columbia’s normally unrestrained timber industry and to create a large reserve, which in principle, may keep the area fairly undamaged and conserve the bear, and more importantly the rain forest.
After almost every forest fire, there is a push for salvage logging based on the idea that the forest is destroyed, so some of its former value needs to be captured.
Folks who have watched salvage logging know that instead, the practice often introduces weed seeds, actually sets back forest regrowth and loses money too.
So far the controversial Biscuit fire salvage logging has fit this pattern, at least in terms of losing money. Part of the loss stems from the the Administration decison to greatly increase the logging after plans for a less ambitious project were underway. See news article. Here is the actual General Accounting Office Report (pdf file).
Note that the Biscuit fire was 500,000 acres, the largest in Oregon in many years, and maybe in the history of the state.
The Democratic side of the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee has a news release up this. See their news release.
“Lodgepole and fire go way back. It is a tree comfortable with fire. Yes, lodgepole has been burned before but still invites the old flame over to spend the night. Should fire be unavailable or otherwise preoccupied, lodgepole turns to another old friend to heighten the allure: the mountain pine bark beetle.”
Lodgepole recently killed by mountain pine bark beetle
When the needles are red, the tree is incredibly flamable
This is from one of the best written stories I have read about lodgepole pine and fire. By Paul Driscoll in New West. Read the article.
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