Wolf
Advocate Wants to Control Human Population
The discussion in Kalispell on the MT Wolf
Management Plan focused on predator control and population
numbers. The plan uses breeding pairs of wolves as the yardstick
for population control - 10 breeding pairs, 15 breeding pairs
etc.
During the discussion, Susie Waldron said, "I
would like to see limitations on human breeding pairs. 15 sounds
great to me." Then she ranted on about 6.2 billion
people in the world being too many yah-da-yah. Although I
was in shock, I managed to ask if she thought we needed predator
control for humans and she indicated that she thought that would
be a good idea.
Susie is a California immigrant who is very
active with environmentalist and population control groups in
Montana and California. She is a member of Montana Wilderness
Association.
MWA brought us the snowmobile ban among other
things. Susie received a "prestigious" Brass Lantern
award at the 2002 MWA convention last December.
Even though Waldron's statement is so
outrageous that it is almost unbelievable, these kind of
anti-human sentiments are fairly common among the leadership of
the environmental movement. I have literally pages of similar
quotes on file. Gary Hall, MFMU
Newsletter Editor and Webmaster
Sierra
Club’s "economics" are grossly in error
Forum: Public
Lands Management in the 21st Century
The following article was posted on the internet, 05/07/02, on a
public forum by James Armstrong, Associate Professor of Wood
Science and Technology, West Virginia University
I wish to comment on the validity of the
economic data presented by the Sierra Club’s scientists. Their
letter claims, "Annually, timber produces roughly $4 billion
per year while recreation, fish and wildlife, clean water, and
unroaded areas provide a combined total of $224 billion to the
American economy each year." A brief review of the literature
reveals gross innaccuracies in these numbers.
The source of the Sierra Club data is
"Seeing the Forests For Their Green: The Economic Benefits of
Forest Protection, Recreation, and Restoration, August 2000
Report" which was prepared by ECONorthwest, a Eugene, OR
consulting firm, and is accessible on the Sierra Club web site.
Much of the data in the ECONorthwest report was taken from the
1995 Draft Resource Planning Assessment (RPA) of the U.S. Forest
Service ( http://www.fs.fed.us/pl/rpa/95rpa/tocmain.htm),
a document that was seriously flawed as demonstrated in a
peer-reviewed scientific journal article (Schallau, C., W.
McKillop, and W.R. Maki. 1998. "Some flaws in the Draft 1995
RPA Program." Forest Products Journal 48(11/12):43-47), and
in testimony before Congress.
The ECONorthwest report estimates the specific
values for "recreation, fish and wildlife, clean water, and
unroaded areas" as follows: $108 billion for recreation; $14
billion for fish and wildlife; $4 billion for clean water; and
$108 billion for unroaded areas. (To point out the obvious, the
sum of these numbers is $234 billion, not $224 billion as reported
in the Sierra Club letter and the press release that accompanied
release of the ECONorthwest report.)
The 1995 Draft RPA’s estimated value for
recreation was based upon a grossly overestimated number of
recreational visitors to National Forests (approximately 920
million). Criticism of this estimate led the Forest Service to
undertake a scientific survey of National Forest visitors that
identified approximately 209 million recreational visits to the
National Forests - a reduction from earlier estimates of nearly
three quarters of a billion visitors (USDA Forest Service. 2001.
National Forest Visitor Use Monitoring: National and Regional
Project Results. USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC. May 2001. http://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/recuse/reports/year1/National_Report_Yr1.html).
Schallau et al. also pointed out serious flaws
in the economic analysis methods used to derive the values for
recreation, wildlife and timber in the 1995 Draft RPA. They
propose an alternative analysis employing economic assessment
tools used previously by the Forest Service, that estimates the
value of timber to be $35.4 million, not $4 million. Their
analysis estimated the economic benefits for recreation to be
$14.7 million and wildlife and fisheries to be $1.9 million.
In their report, ECONorthwest came up with a
value of $108 billion for "unroaded" areas by matching
dollar-for-dollar the value they attribute recreation. They
provide no quantifiable justification for using this number. The
idea that roadless areas contribute to the national economy is a
stretch. Who is paying the $108 billion and who is receiving that
value? Roadless areas may be better described as a cost to
taxpayers, not a benefit. The Federal Government is paying to have
roads removed from many National Forests. In addition, roadless
areas represent an "opportunity cost" in terms of lost
revenues from timber, grazing. mining or recreation that could
otherwise have been realized if the areas had not been designated
"roadless."
The Sierra Club’s claim that only four
percent of the nation’s wood supply comes from National Forests
may be true but is misleading. Timber harvests on National Forest
land have been reduced drastically during a time when U.S.
consumption of wood products has increased. Douglas MacCleery of
the U.S. Forest Service ( http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/consumption_ethic2.html)
notes that reductions in timber harvest from National Forests that
occurred between 1987 and 1997 amounted to "a 15 billion
board foot reduction in lumber that could have been processed from
it — or about one-third of U.S. annual softwood lumber
production. A significant effect of this reduction, in the face of
continuing high levels of per capita wood consumption, has been to
transfer harvest to private forest ecosystems in the U.S. and to
forest ecosystems in Canada." I might add that we have also
turned to importation of wood from sensitive ecosystems in Latin
America to replace supplies that could come from U.S. National
Forests. This raises the moral question: is the United States
engaging in "environmental imperialism" by shifting the
burdens and environmental consequences of resource extraction to
countries with less stringent environmental regulation and
policies?
MacCleery adds this alarming statement,
"Today, the harvest of softwood timber in the southeastern
U.S. exceeds the rate of growth for the first time in at least 50
years." In other words, Federal policy is contributing to
unsustainable timber harvest on private lands in the southeastern
United States and perhaps elsewhere.
In my opinion, the most serious flaw in the
arguments made by the Sierra Club is the underlying assumption
that recreation, clean water, and wildlife are incompatible with
timber harvest. This flies in the face of a century of forestry
research. While the Sierra Club letter speaks in vague and
value-laden terms such as "devastated habitat" and
"damaged ecosystem health, clean water, and recreational
opportunities" they offer no concrete evidence to
substantiate their claims. They do not address the risk and
consequences of catastrophic wildfire on National Forests and
ignore the economic impacts of banning commercial logging upon
local, resource-dependent communities.
Unfortunately, the public tends to believe that scientists all
speak with the same voice and view the world in the same way.
Those of us in the sciences understand that each discipline views
things differently and employs different approaches to arrive at
"truth." The Sierra Club’s letter does not reflect, by
any measure, the thoroughness and critical thinking that the
public has a right to expect from the scientific community.
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Montana
Wilderness Convention
On December 6 and 7 your editor
attended Montana Wilderness Association’s annual convention at
the Outlaw in Kalispell. This is my report on that convention. My
comments are italicized.
On Friday, Dale Burk, former
reporter for the Missoulian spoke on the founding of Great Bear
wilderness which he had a hand in bringing about. He did a major
story on the proposed roading of the area which helped focus
national attention on the effort to convert this area to official
wilderness. He and others developed an influential constituency
for the GB by setting up free pack and float trips through the
area for legislators and a group called the "Grizzly
writers". This is a repeated pattern
for MWA. Enlist artists and writers to build public support and
bring in politicians for trips to build political support
Here are some examples of the
kind of hyperbola that Mr. Burk and many others at the convention
used repeatedly during the convention. Burk said that $10,000,000
worth of timber in the area was "exactly the value of one
bull trout."
Mr. Burk also said that it is
very difficult hiking in the GB because all the trails go up and
down rather than following the ridge tops. That
would make it off limits to the very young, very old, the infirm
and handicapped.~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kate Kendall, a grizzly bear
researcher, discussed her completed bear population study and the
one that is planned for the entire Northern Continental Divide
Ecosystem, (NCDE).
She showed a map of the
historical grizzly bear range from the west coast clear east into
Ohio, Tenn, KY and south to the gulf and into Mexico.
Current science estimates:
400+ gb in Yellowstone
30 in Selkirks
15-30 Cabinet/Yaak
Occasional gb in N. Cascades
0 in Bitteroot
Largest # in NCDE
Using two different formulas she
estimates roughly 280 bears in the northern part of NCDE in 2000.
However during that same time period in the same area 63 bears
were captured by other agencies and hair samples taken from them.
Only 30% of these bears had shown up in the Kendall study. This
proves that the 280 figure is low and may be only 30% of
the actual total.
Proposed project
Because the recovery plan
requires that the mortality of gb not exceed a certain percentage
of total population it is important to know how many bears we have
in order to delist them. The study will cover entire NCDE. She
still does not have all funding in place. Final report will come
out in 2006 if all goes well. You can learn more by going to
nmsc.usgs.gov/research.beardna on the internet.
Kate Kendall gave a very
objective no-nonsense overview of her work. She struck me as a
true scientist rather than an advocate/scientist like the next
speaker. ~~~~~~~~~
Troy Merrill works for LTD
Landscape Ecology Institute and he is also associated with Yukon
to Yellowstone. He studies what bears and carnivores need. Unlike
Kate Kendall he is "melding scientific into advocacy." How
then can we trust his results?
He claims that in 1850 there
were 100,000-200,000 grizzlies in North America. How does he
know this? Now he thinks there are only 1500 in the lower 48.
"Bears die because we kill
them.", he said. How did they die
before we came along?
Merrill said Yellowstone could
support 600 bears according to the model that he has built. But he
personally thinks Yellowstone can support more so they are
"tweaking the model to get it where we believe it should
be." This is a perfect example of
the unreliability of science melded with advocacy. Scientific
outcomes are pre-determined by agenda of the
"scientist/advocate."
As to objectivity and tone,
Merrill’s presentation of "science" was just the
opposite of Ms. Kendall’s. ~~~~~~~~~~
The last speaker on Friday was
Doug Chadwick, husband of Karen Reeves, and
in my opinion, the most outrageous speaker of the convention. The
purpose of his entire talk was to convince us that the grizzly
bear is not a dangerous, fierce, and sometimes deadly wild animal
but an animal that we would not fear to have running around in our
back yard.
He did this by mocking those who
see the grizzly as a dangerous animal and by indirectly
comparing wild grizzlies to grizzlies raised in captivity. He
showed several slides of trained show bears cavorting with humans
while implying in his speech that these bears were somehow similar
in behaviour to wild bears. He showed one slide of wild bears
mixing with humans on an Alaskan stream during a salmon run. At a
later time in his talk Chadwick pointed out that the bears are
less aggressive during these feeding frenzies, presumably
because they are well fed and focused on stuffing themselves even
more. But when he showed the slide of humans and wild bears
together his point was that the bears are basically sociable
animals that mean us no harm.
Here are some quotes from Mr.
Chadwick,:
Bears "sometimes eat
people, more or less evening things out." Big
laugh from audience
When digging for roots, bears
act as "heavyweight wild flower gardeners." Sounds
like every gardener should have one..
Chadwick claims grizzly sows
associate with humans to protect their cubs from male bears. He
claims they use humans to "baby-sit their cubs."
Because we are filling the
prime grizzly habitat in the valleys, there is increased bear-
human conflict. "…plenty would live in cornfields,
backyards, and… if we let them."
And "We are going to have
to accommodate bears." In our
backyards!!!!!
To be fair to Mr. Chadwick I
must say that he did acknowledge that some grizzlies are dangerous
and aggressive, but he believes that depends on the
bear. ~~~~~~~~~
On Saturday morning John
Gatchall, MWA conservation director, and Sally Ferguson, from
Winter Wildlands Alliance discussed winter recreation.
According to JG walking is the
most popular (75%) winter activity in Montana and 97% of Montanans
do not own a snowmobile. I think he is wrong. Breathing (100%)
is the most popular winter activity and more Montanans own
snowmobiles than birkenstocks or walking sticks. One of his
slides showed a snomo with the words "Think of it as a bullet
on wheels." Wheels??
~~~~~~~~
Sally Ferguson said,
"Skiers and snowshoers are being shoved out of the
backcountry.(by snowmobilers)" Actually
Sally and MWA just refuse to share the same landscape as a snomo
rider.
She also said, "BLM and FS
manage primarily to accommodate motorized users." That
would be the best news I’ve heard in a long time if it were
true.
Forcing snomos out of public
lands are "victories" for Ms. Ferguson. She and Gatchall
are completely intolerant of snowmobilers ~~~~~~~~~
Art Noonan, former aide to
Pat Williams for environmental issues advised MWA on how to move
Congress to make new wilderness designations.
Since significant use
disqualifies an area for wilderness, He urged MWA to work to
eliminate motorized use in areas they want for wilderness.
"Conservationists have responsibility to go out and make the
case for that land," he said. "The land mass is being
divided up." Sic; between motorized and non-motorized. Noonan
advised that in order to pass wilderness legislation, both
senators from that state must support it.
MWA presented a panel on forest
collaboration with John Konzen, Lincoln Co Commiss, Robyn King,
Yaak Valley Forest Council and former civil rights activist from
Alabama, Loren Rose, controller for Pyramid Mtn. Lumber, and Brad
Powell, Region 1 Supervisor.
Other than Kate Kendall's
presentation this was the least strident, "my way or the
highway" part of the program. There was a lot of talk
about "collaboration" and "trust". The theme
of this section was working together to accomplish forest
preservation and what else was not real clear. It was made clear,
though, in the Q and A period that even if one greenie might agree
to a collaborative solution another would oppose, possibly
litigate, that same solution. ~~~~~~~~~
MWA year in review
Flathead snomo agreement. MWA
negotiated because they had a favorable initial decision (which
gave them a superior negotiating position) and there were
"strange aspects in the case." MWA is proud of the Daily
Interlake’s favorable opinion piece on agreement.
MWA apparently proactively
solicits favorable media op-eds and news articles.
Budget = 800K per year.
They hire pro artists, writers,
consultants etc. for their campaigns.
"…aggressively went after…"
the Montana Pilot s Assoc. airstrip in Beartooths. "Couldn’t
let this monster out of the box."
Litigating against Rock CR Mine.
They have published their
Strategic Plan for 2002-2005 we need to
get this even if someone has to join MWA
Bob Decker, exec.director, said
in context of sending comment letters to RMF about their new
travel plan, "This organization is about politics."
He and every MWA staff or
moderator person pushed for conventioneers to send comment letters
on the proposed travel plan for the Rocky Mountain Front. There
were 4 laptops set up in the hall with sample letters posted on
the wall and on the computers with one or two staff always on
hand, practically looking over the shoulders of respondents. Staff
aggressively asked the people walking past to send in a letter.
Letters were printed, signed (presumably) and sent in by MWA. The
message about the urgent need to send in comments was repeated at
least 2 dozen times and every attendee had to walk by those
computers to re-enter the hall after every break.
~~~~~~~~~~
Marcia Argust, a Washington
lobbyist for Campaign for American Wilderness, formerly Pew
Wilderness Trust spoke on what it will take to get more lands set
aside as wilderness.
n Tools:
lobbying, media, grass roots, constituency building.
n Only
1 out of 8 roadless areas is in wilderness. They
want it all.
n A
successful campaign requires senator involvement and public
awareness
n Need
to court moderates for support.
n Congress
may "overreach in rolling back (environmental regulations)
and cause a backlash after which Bush may make some pro-green
gestures.
n As
election approaches Bush will move to left.
n Under
100K acres. Collaboration and consensus would be important. Good
reason not to collaborate.
n "Think
Big. Act Incrementally."
n Don’t
compromise too much.
n Be
vigilant
Carol Daly spoke about the
benefits of stewardship forestry. It
seemed a little off topic for this convention.
~~~~~~~~~~
Edwin Fields, Whitefish general
contractor and president of Flathead/Kootenai chapter MWA, spoke
about MWA in the Flathead. He wants every acre of roadless
designated as wilderness. Wilderness is the imperative,
overriding goal of MWA. Fields was the un-official
cheerleader for MWA. "I believe it is time for an
offense," he said and "Get loud and proud."
Mr. Fields discussed at length a
brand new wilderness proposal named after Winton Weydemeyer, a
Fortine rancher. It is a brand new proposal and he did not have
literature to hand out yet. WW Wilderness would include 171K acres
in Ten Lakes, Thoma, Two Chuck and some other areas. The Whitefish
Range. He said that they must have the snomo agreement in place to
accomplish this or else the wilderness could be trumped by
snowmobilers. We must stop the agreement.
When I signed up to receive the
info on www, I asked him if the wilderness would include the
Thierrault lakes. He said yes and that the roads would be closed.
~~~~~~~~~~
WE HAVE GOT TO STOP THIS. STOP
IT EARLY; STOP IT COLD.
Congressman Jay Inslee, a
democrat from Seattle, claimed the roadless initiative was a
"democratic process." WHAT A LOAD OF C__P!!!! He
says that he is going to craft a roadless rule and if he can get
it to floor of house he can pass it. He was solidly green on every
issue. Inslee wants to repeal the 1892
mining law. ~~~~~~~~~~~
The last speaker on Saturday
evening was introduced by Rick Bass, environmental writer who
lives in the Yaak. Bass was given MWA’s highest award earlier in
the day. Bass told about how school kids in Houston, TX raised a
lot of money to raise an old battleship (to honor war veterans?)
which he characterized as an effort to "glorify our
bloodthirsty past." This got a big laugh from the audience.
~~~~~~~~~
Author Terry Tempest Williams
wound up the convention on a warm and fuzzy note although she did
get a little hard-edged while attacking the Bush administration.
n "Any
wilderness we save now is still too little."
n "Earth
is a dynamic, soulful, big place."
n "Environmental
degradation is its own form of terrorism."
n She
described a conversation between herself, her father and a third
party and either she or the third party said that "if
somebody bombed the Tetons or Yellowstone or Grand Canyon,…"
it would be worse than 911. In any case TTW agreed with the
statement.
n "The
American West is being ravaged by oil and energy
companies."
n "All
life is intertwined."
n "…align
science and spirituality."
n "…shift
emphasis from American Independence to American
interdependence."
n "…exchange
rights of humans for rights of all living creatures."
n She
advocated the "…scouring ( decimating?) of
sacrosanct ideals such as property rights."
n "Protect
what is wild to protect what is gentle."
I must say I do believe that she
feels these things deeply as many of the people at the convention
must. But they are overlooking the impact on real people outside
their own circle as well as the consequences to our constitutional
liberties. At the same time, I believe that most if not all of the
staff and leadership of these movements have agendas other than
environmental protection.
TOP
Forest
Service Will Use U.N. Protocol to Develop Long Range Planning
The USFS has officially
announced in the Federal Register that it is updating its
strategic plan over the next 12 months. We have until December 30,
2002 to submit comments. According to the announcement, "The
intent of the strategic plan is to outline long-term
goals and objectives that will help guide the agency’s current
actions and future plans."
The last time the strategic plan
was revised was during the klinton administration. It was a bad
plan that confirmed and reinforced the green agenda that the USFS
had already embarked upon. That plan needs to be scrapped and
completely redone.
However that is not going to
happen if the USFS follows through on their stated intention of
using the Montreal Process to develop the new plan. The Montreal
Process is a product of the 1992 Earth Summit sponsored by the
U.N.. It is a collection of seven criteria for managing northern
boreal forests such as those we have in America. Because 5 of the
7 criteria are totally concerned with sustainability and because
the Montreal Process is greatly influenced by the radical agendas
of global environmentalists, we can only expect that the new
strategic plan will be an extension of the klinton/gore plan.
This is yet another example of the voluntary and
completely unnecessary surrender of our national sovereignty to
the one-world socialists.
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USFS
Playing Favorites? Nah!!
Have ever sat in your car with
anger and frustration boiling up inside while facing a closed FS
gate where you used to go hunting, fishing, berrying or ______???.
You probably took some consolation in the fact that everyone else
who wanted to use that road was in the same boat. Tain’t
necessarily so!!
Recently some hikers in the
Jewel Basin area walked past a locked gate only to find the
vehicles of a group of hanggliders parked at the end of the road.
They took videos of the cars. When they reported the incident to
the ranger, they learned that the hanggliders had been given a key
to the gate many years before.
Remember this area is well
within the boundaries of the NCD Grizzly Bear Recovery Area. I
guess that some people’s vehicles are more offensive to the poor
bears than others. This favoritism shown to the hanggliders is not
their fault, in fact I hope they continue to be able to use the
area as they have since 1988. But it is definitely partial and
wrongful behaviour on the part of the Flathead FS.
I am certain that the bears have
not been harmed by the hanggliders or the gliders would have been
evicted. Now everybody should get a shot at the road behind that
gate. It’s only fair. That gate must come down!!
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TOP
Spreading
Weeds
October 2002
By Don Fife
San Bernardino National Forest, Southern California.
A Forest Service Wildlands Conservation Botanist, a
deep-ecology, rain-forest individual, refused our use of our
existing RS 2477 access roads; but the Powers That Be in
Washington D.C. told him that he must allow us access for drilling
in Lone Valley. So he let us use the existing RS 2477 roads,
right? Wrong! He had us build NEW roads, destroying more of the
forest, for our access.
The existing RS 2477 roads had been planted with native
vegetation (sometimes huge boulders are considered native
vegetation). When I found a Forest Service crew replanting another
RS 2477 access road on my property with native vegetation, I
struck up a conversation with the botanist in charge. I introduced
myself and my associate, Buster LaMoure. I asked him if it would
be o.k. to videotape his "restoration work" on the road.
He said it would be fine.
I asked him where he went to college. This young botanist who
had been on the job for just a few months told us he graduated
from a small university in eastern Indiana. I said, "Gee, I
went to the University of Dayton. We used to play you guys all the
time." His response was, "Yeah, the Flyers just kicked
our rear ends last week."
Since he was now thoroughly disarmed, I asked him about these
"endangered weeds" that the Forest Service had listed
under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). How could they be
endangered, every time you clear a firebreak or there is a
wildland fire, they thrive in the newly cleared land? The response
was, "Everybody knows these aren't really endangered. We just
need them to stop mining."
Standing next to me was my associate, Buster LaMoure, former
Director of Land and Minerals (Chief Geologist) for the U.S.
Forest Service, Washington D.C. office, now retired and working
with me as a consultant. His mouth dropped open when he heard the
botanist say this! Two weeks later we were in Spokane, WA telling
this story to the Deputy Chief to the Forest Service.
A former Forest Service employee signed an affidavit that the
San Bernardino National Forest (SBNF) staff had volunteers collect
the seeds from these ESA-listed plants and spread them in the
forest to stop mining and recreation on up to 44,575 acres of the
mineral-rich forest.
On January 24, 2002 Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA) brought
this abuse of the ESA to the attention of hundreds of members of
Congress on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The
SBNF is now under closer scrutiny by headquarters in Washington
D.C. In fact, Under Secretary of Agriculture Mark Rey and Forest
Service Chief Dale Bosworth would like to hear from others who
have been victims of arbitrary and capricious acts by Forest
Service officials.
Don Fife is an environmental and economic geologist with more
than 20 years experience in government, private practice and
academia. He was the advisor to four Secretaries of the Interior
over a period of 8 years for Geology, Energy and Minerals on the
25,000,000-acre California Desert Conservation Area. Don
co-authored the comprehensive 699-page book, The Geology and
Mineral Wealth of the California Transverse Ranges, with John
Minch in 1982, and has authored several scientific and position
papers on related topics.
Don may be reached at 714-544-8406 or donfife@earthlink.net.
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Strategic
Fire Fuel Management
By Fred D. Hodgeboom
The Fires of 2002 have sparked a National debate on management
of Federal Lands. Each fire season confirms what forest and fire
ecologists have been warning us about for decades.
Due to effective fire suppression and a lack of access with
timber management on Federal Lands, there is massive overstocking
of trees and loss of natural diversity that was previously
maintained by Native American burning and natural wildfires. The
continuous canopy of excess biomass predisposes tens of millions
of acres to catastrophic wildfires that cannot be controlled. What
we continue to see this year are fires that, despite all our
technology and mechanization, exceed the largest fires on record
for the region.
What is incredible is the obstruction of any significant
progress on ameliorating the problem by so-called
"conservation" and "environmental" lobby. How
can these organizations see the effects of these fires on
watersheds, soils, wildlife, habitat, timber resources, government
treasuries, communities, and people's lives, then sabotage
solutions? We probably only have to look at their source of
funding. Many national and local conservation organizations
started out legitimately representing their members. Now these
organizations have been captured by big money foundations that
have extreme political agendas that have little to do with on the
ground conservation. A few of these foundations are Cinnabar,
Brainerd, Bullitt, Kongsgaard-Goldman, Patagonia, Rockefeller,
Turner, Wilberforce. When the out of state foundations finance the
largest percentage of the organizations' budget, who is
represented, the foundations or dues paying members?
You have heard the sound bytes distributed by every tax exempt
preservation organizations' paid lobbyist/propagandist whether it
is a national organization like the Sierra Club, or your local
Native Forest Network cell.
Science shows that only a 40 meter area next to homes
needs treatment, concentrate on urban interface boundaries.
This is propagandist use of some fact to tell a lie. A study
was done on the distance various housing materials ignited from a
hot crown fire. However the study is conducted under nearly ideal
calm wind conditions and no research has been done in 30-50 mph
winds that are typical of conditions when lives and property are
lost in real holocaust type fires. People who advocate treating a
few hundred feet along a Federal boundary as a solution have not
seen a large fire that is releasing energy at the rate of an
atomic bomb every 5 minutes. When a 2000 degree convection column
is blown by high winds, life and property damage will occur for
thousands of feet. The real solution is to manage the forest fuels
in more natural diverse patterns that preclude the A-bomb type of
fire from developing.
No large fire-resistant trees should be cut, only the
undergrowth and small trees should be removed.
There are some large trees that have more fire resistance than
others, but being a large tree does not make it fire resistant.
The crowns of large trees burn with greater intensity and flame
length than small trees and when the crowns of large trees are
overlapped with no open space in between they will carry a
catastrophic crown fire. How large is large? Forests are to
diverse to write a legislated prescription. Federal agencies have
professional foresters on staff to determine the on-the ground
treatment needed to accomplish a desired condition. To specify
some limit or write a prescription in legislation is absolutely
the wrong thing to do. For example a current epidemic of
Douglas-fir bark beetles is killing large Douglas-fir all over the
Northern Rocky Mountains. It is very poor stewardship to have
loggers in the woods thinning and then have to leave a beetle
infested tree to hatch its brood because some imposed rule
prohibits harvest of a tree over a certain size. When beetles
attack a tree, it is killed, but the tree will not turn brown
until the next summer after the beetle larvae have matured and
flown to the next tree.
Thinning is too expensive to treat the large area needed,
where is the money going to come from?
If forest thinning is done as proposed by the Sierra Club and
all the related tax exempt preservation corporations, then the
statement is true. The preservation lobby attempt to legislatively
exempt "big" trees is just one of the ways they work to
make thinning the forest uneconomical. The fact is that most of
the forests at risk are "commercial forests" where most
of the trees forming the forest canopy have commercial value. A
recent University of Montana study uses real timber inventory and
timber value data to model the benefits and costs of various
thinning prescriptions in Montana. The study shows that the
"thin from below" preservation lobby prescription is
extremely expensive, had little effect on crown fire potential,
and that the tiny benefit to fire control was short lived. In
comparison a "comprehensive" prescription that removed
larger trees in addition to the small ones would return an average
of $624/acre statewide, practically eliminated the possibility of
a crown fire, and that fuel reduction was effective for more than
thirty years. The financial benefit was based on the sawtimber
market alone. If a sustained market for pulpwood and biomass
(limbs and trees too small to chip) were available, the total
benefit would be even greater.
President Bush's thinning plan is a return to logging
without laws, citizens rights are being eliminated, loggers will
be turned loose in Federal Forests.
None of these slogans are true. There never has and never will
be logging without laws. Appeals are simply administrative
procedures, not a "right" granted by law. Even if the
appeal procedures were suspended, the courts are still available,
so no citizen rights would be lost. Loggers have never been
"turned loose" in Federal Forests. All the logging that
has ever been done is done under contract with strict
specifications and supervision by Government foresters. This would
not change under the President's plan. What is really needed is
for the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) provisions allowing
non-profit corporations to litigate free of any financial risk to
be modified. EAJA is the real reason that tax exempt preservation
corporations have been able to wrest all authority from land
management agencies by bludgeoning them with lawsuits while
enriching their coffers at taxpayer expense. The no risk
litigation factor is why the agencies are in "analysis
paralysis" and no effective management of the Federal Forests
is being implemented. Leveling the playing field for non-profits
would not eliminate any citizen rights, only require
responsibility. Only by electing people to public office with the
fortitude to reject preservationist funds and attached strings can
the current pitiful situation in Federal Forests be turned around.
Is it going to take another 1910 fire?
Fred D. Hodgeboom, Retired Forester, Bigfork, MT.
hodge@cyberport.net
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Darby
Victory
Wednesday, March 13, 2002 Michael Hawthorne,
Dispatch Environment Reporter
The Bush administration yesterday confirmed what
local landowners and lawmakers have known for months: There won't
be a Little Darby National Wildlife Refuge west of Columbus.
In the end, three years of studies, hearings and
rallies were boiled down to a few paragraphs sent to the local
members of Congress who pressured the Interior Department to
scuttle the project. "We believe that conservation of the
agricultural and natural resources of the Darby watershed is
important,'' wrote Craig Manson, assistant Interior secretary for
fish and wildlife and parks, in letters to Republican U.S. Reps.
Deborah Pryce of Upper Arlington and David L. Hobson of
Springfield. "The strong interest expressed in protecting the
rural nature of this area indicates that it is best that all
levels of government work with local citizens to find a preferred
approach to conserving those resources.''
The refuge proposal, he wrote, will be
officially withdrawn soon.
In 1997, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
officials proposed the refuge as a way to protect the Little Darby
Creek, a national and state scenic river that boasts one of the
most diverse collections of aquatic species in the Midwest.
The service wanted to purchase 23,000 acres from
willing sellers in Madison and Union counties and buy development
rights for an additional 26,000 acres to ensure that the land
would be kept as fields and woods. But federal officials soon ran
into opposition from farmers, some of whom feared that they would
lose their way of life or not receive enough money for their land.
Landowners slapped deed restrictions on 18,000 acres. Moreover,
after months of courting by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the
Nature Conservancy, a national land-preservation group, one of the
largest single landowners indicated that it wouldn't sell to the
federal government.
Mike Boerger, a Mechanicsburg farmer and leader
of an anti-refuge group, said the wildlife refuge wasn't needed to
protect the creek. "Our children witnessed the power of
concerned citizens who joined together,'' he said. "Now our
community has regained its role as the primary stewards of the
creek. And we'll continue to do a good job.''
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources also is
buying land along the two creeks. With the recent purchase of a
tract where Rt. 40 crosses the Little Darby, the department now
owns or retains conservation easements for about 400 acres.
Copyright © 2002, The Columbus Dispatch
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Letter to Secretary of
Agriculture from Retired Forester
By: Chuck Samuelson
April 6, 2001
Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Agriculture
14th Street & Independence Ave., SW
Washington, D.C. 20250
Secretary Veneman:
SUBJECT: The U.S. Forest Service is dead. The remains have not
been buried. A sad commentary to a once proud organization. The
agency is a pathetic remnant of what it once was. Politicized to
the core and to the Ranger District.
1. The current USFS no longer has the manpower with expertise
to manage our National Forests for the practice of forestry or
fire fuels reduction and other management. Fire fuels reduction in
Montana and the northwest cannot be accomplished with out removing
some merchantable timber.
2. The USFS lacks the competent leadership with direction to
manage the National Forests according to original laws.
3 The USFS has been directed down the road to convert all the
public lands to wilderness. Non-management.
4. The recently enacted forest planning regulations, roadless
rules, and transportation planning precludes and stymies active
forest management. It virtually closes down the National Forests.
Those rules need to be rescinded in entirety.
5. The Endangered Species Act will need to be revised as it is
used to supersede original acts, laws, and regulations. It has
been used to close down the National Forests and to eliminate
private property rights. It is not user friendly.
6. The Forest Service appeals process will have to be amended,
and should require a non-refundable bond by appellants.
7. Lawsuits filed by 501 C3 foundation funded environmental
organizations should require bonds to be posted. Through court
actions such organizations have more power than the U.S. Congress.
8. The USFS does not control the public lands of the National
Forests. The Dept. of Interior, USF&WS controls the USFS under
the Endangered Species Act, consequently the USFS has lost control
of active forest management.
9. At this moment, the USFS is planning to continue to destroy
more forest system roads. Billions of dollars of forest system
roads have been destroyed and/or abandoned. An absolute detriment
to fire and timber management.
10. The few remaining wood processing plants (sawmills)
associated with this National Forest will not survive, even with
an immediate turnaround of forest management.
The official motto on USFS stationary is "Caring For The
Land And Serving People". It can definitely be changed to
"Locking Up The Land And Ignoring People" , if drastic
action is not taken. This has been the method of operation on our
local forest, the Flathead National Forest for the last 10+ years.
Our local National Forest lacks leadership and direction that is
conducive to good forest stewardship. The main leadership directs
specialist to study, prepare environmental analysis and is then
followed by no action.
Active management ceased many years ago as timber sales
contracts were completed. During that time as sale contracts were
finished, the destruction of valuable forest system roads
commenced in earnest. Stream culverts were excavated in a manner
that would put a private land owner in jail and on the front pages
of newspapers. Many roads were physically blocked and abandoned.
Now those abandoned roaded areas, under recent rule changes,
qualify large previously managed blocks of forested land as "Roadless"
or defacto-wilderness. Resources for the communities and the
nation are no longer provided.
The community¹s contiguous to the surrounding Flathead
National Forest have had their custom and culture vanish. The
County¹s have suffered serious loss of the 25% fund for roads and
schools only to be made up by the resident taxpayers. The wood
products manufacturing facilities have virtually disappeared. Only
private timber supplies the remaining wood processing plants which
will not survive for long. The private forested timber lands are
being professionally managed. Hundreds of workers forced to find
new employment and relocate. The vacuum created by the loss of
timber resources has been filled by Canadian imports of softwood.
Portions of national forests in eastern Washington State, north
Idaho, and northwest Montana have been suffering epidemic stages
of insects and disease for years. Meanwhile the U.S. Forest
Service is stymied by paralysis, much by design and planning from
within of the previous Administration and the foundation funded
socialist green environmental organization who have block every
proposed action by appeal. If that fails, by filing lawsuits. As a
result, there is absolutely no management of the forests. Only
regression to wildlands and defacto wilderness designed by
foundation funded C-3 organizations and the previous
administration.
The lack of rapid response by the Forest Service to the
devastating insect infestations has created the untenable
conditions of an excessive accumulation and buildup of fire fuels
in the forest that has set the stage for the possibility of
catastrophic wildfires as experienced in southwest Montana during
the fire season of year 2000. This winters snowpacks of less that
50% throughout much of the northwest is setting the stage for a
possible repeat of the fire season 2000.
With the passage and implementation of the Fire and Fuels
Reduction Funds the Forest Service will be hard pressed to
accomplish the desired results. They do not have the manpower or
the expertise. Within the last ten years the ranks of the
professional foresters and firefighters has been annihilated due
to retirements. Replacements working up through the ranks has been
nonexistent. Consequently, the organization has been placed in an
untenable position. That fact compromises safety of employees and
the public. The Fire and Fuels program will take decades to
accomplish and will only be accomplished by private industry being
offered products (timber) in return for accomplishing the desired
work. If usable wood fiber (timber) is not sold to finance the
desired fuels management, the task and goals will not be
accomplished. The U.S. Treasury will not be able to afford or
finance the goals in any other manner. That fact is plain and
simple. It has been done before up until about the late 1980¹s.
If the remnants of the wood products industry can hang on
without collapsing and going broke, they are willing and able to
help accomplish the fuels reduction program. But time is short as
the woods workers and sawmill workers are a fast vanishing breed.
They cannot wait a year and maybe even six months for Forest
Service specialists to complete the NEPA requirements. The work
has to begin this coming summer season on an emergency basis if
necessary.
From our observations, there have been many positions within
the Forest Service filled by personnel who are not qualified. Even
if they are qualified, they are hamstrung by excessive regulation
that results in undue time delays and waste of funds to attempt to
accomplish any objective. There are virtually no professional
foresters left within the Forest Service. Ologists of varied
professions have filled or replaced forestry positions. Ologists
accomplish nothing by research and planning, they are not doers.
Respectfully:
Chuck Samuelson (USFS - retired)
Public Access Director for MFMU
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