Dialogue in an Era of Divisiveness: ACR 2013 Conference

On LinkedIn, I joined the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and they posted this meeting announcement for the Association for Conflict Resolution Environment and Public Policy Section 2013 meeting in Washington, D.C.. The title is “Dialogue in an Era of Divisiveness” which sounds very germane to the goals of this blog. Here’s a link to the agenda.

If I were in DC, I would definitely attend. There are many Forest Service and other agency speakers and a variety of interesting topics. I bet that there are some lessons we could learn from these collaboration and conflict resolution experts. If any blog readers are attending, one or more posts on what you find out would be appreciated.

Note: “collaboration” seems to be used in this agenda without the negative undertones associated with it sometimes in the Forest Service context. It would be interesting to observe this at the meeting.

Kissing the Past Gently Good-bye

Yesterday I spent the day doing other things, so didn’t see Bob’s post on the Tinder Box book until last night.

We have posted on the book before (last October, even with a photo on the cover) with some interesting discussion here.

Here is a bit of my take and another side. But as folks can tell, it is kind of silly on the surface. I was in Region 5 before the Consent Decree and people were grumpy about “losing herbicides” and not having as much money as Region 6. They also didn’t understand how women in fire wouldn’t move down from Region 6 to take a downgrade! There was something very strange about the way it was (mis) managed in 5 compared to 6. But since the people running things at the time were not women, then it really couldn’t have been women’s fault. Similarly, the CD was only in Region 5, which is not equivalent to the Forest Service as a whole. Region 6, where I started, seemed to have an attitude “just get on with it, if we don’t do it on our own terms, we’ll do it on someone else’s.” Of course, they had more money.. and so on the conversation could go.

But I think Travis said something very pertinent in his comment here, and after all, as I understand it, Travis is one of the future generation:

I also liked that Travis quoted Faulkner “the past is not dead, it’s not even past”.

This is “a new century” for the Forest Service, as the blog title suggests. Misogynistic, spiteful, morally-wrong and legally-impossible arguments are not helpful in a debate about the direction of the agency in the 21st century.

I read that comment, and then saw the Mandela quote posted above.

What would it take for us to leave our past (timber wars in Oregon, diversity wars in California) behind and imagine a future as good as we could all mutually make it?

US boom transforming global oil trade

National Forests produce more than trees and recreation, hence this post. This article may have only been in the Denver Post due to the energy industry here, but is probably of interest to all of us.

The surge in oil production in the U.S. and Canada and shrinking oil consumption in the developed world is transforming the global oil market.

The threat of chronic oil shortages is all but gone, U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil will continue to dwindle, and oil will increasingly flow to the developing economies of Asia, according to a five-year outlook published Tuesday by the International Energy Agency.

The changes will have “significant consequences for the global economy and oil security,” the IEA says.

The report paints a picture of a world with plenty of oil to meet modestly growing demand. Where the oil is coming from, and where it is going, is changing dramatically, according to the IEA, an energy security and research organization based in Paris that serves 28 oil-importing countries, including the U.S.

The report does not address oil prices directly, but analysts do not expect the changing oil market dynamics to lead to sharply lower oil or gasoline prices. The abundance of oil does, however, greatly reduce the risk of sustained price surges that curtail economic growth.

The chief impetus for the changing world oil picture is the increase in production in the U.S. The U.S. created the world oil market more than a century ago and is the world’s biggest consumer, but domestic production was thought to be in permanent decline. Then drillers, inspired by high prices and armed with improving technology, learned how to produce oil from previously inaccessible rock under several U.S. states.

and

Production is also projected to rise in Canada and elsewhere in the Americas, such as Brazil and Columbia. At the same time, oil demand in the U.S. and other developed nations is expected to fall slightly, a result of improved vehicle efficiency and weak economic growth. That means the U.S. will be able to satisfy most of its own needs with domestic production and oil from neighbors – and that could have geopolitical implications.

“It will affect relationships between countries. Most leaders believe they have to be nice to whoever they buy their oil from,” says Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a recent book on the U.S. energy boom called The Power Surge.

Colorado: Green Industries With Wood

Meanwhile, while Montanans and Oregonians seem to be ambivalent about the industries they have, entrepreneurial Coloradans are still working on getting an industry so as to avoid burning dead lodgepole in piles.

Check out this story in the business section of the Denver Post.

Mark Mathis was looking pretty smart in early 2008.

He was harvesting Colorado beetle-kill and converting the state’s flood of dead trees into pellets for affordable home heating. Then the price of oil collapsed — falling by more than $100 a barrel in a year — and suddenly, pellets were no longer the inexpensive option for heat. Mild winters further eroded pellet demand, and Mathis’ once-boundless plan withered along with the entire biomass and alternative-energy industries.

Five years later, Mathis’ Kremmling-based Confluence Energy is surging with a new mission.

“We are taking on kitty litter,” he said.

Mathis is doubling down on his plan to capitalize on environmental concerns, this time with a
biodegradable beetle-kill product that cleans up oil, gas and solvent spills better and cheaper than the widely used clay-based products, such as cat litter. The company’s Eco-Sponge is becoming popular with oil and gas operations across the country, and strong sales — already passing the company’s heating pellets — have enabled Confluence to acquire its competitor, Rocky Mountain Pellets in Walden, doubling its capacity and making Confluence the largest pellet maker in the West.

Mathis’ Eco-Sponge aims to end the reign of clay-based absorbents in environmental cleanup work with its simplicity. Where those clay bits need to be removed once they absorb oil, gas or benzene spills, Eco-Sponge’s patented army of microorganisms consume the hydrocarbons and can be left on site as an inert material.

Mathis calls it “a composting process on steroids.”

“How often in life do you get to offer solutions for cleaning up an environmental mess like the pine beetle while making a renewable energy source and cleaning up another environmental issue? And make money doing it?” said Mathis over the din of the Walden plant’s maze of pellet-making machines.

Court Upholds Forest Plan for Black Hills

Black Hills MPBR Project

So we have the sale-by-sale focus of groups in Montana. We have the “timber wars” narrative continuing to play out in Oregon. Then we have the little old Black Hills where peace seems to have broken out. What does it take? Good environmental work and local people who work with each other. Supportive state governments and reasonable courts. Small timber and logging firms. A FACA committee?

Interesting because the next step is their adaptive NEPA large scale project (248K acres), which could be a lead example of how to streamline NEPA and follow the current legal framework. They had three objection, so far no litigation and are about to start implementation. Here’s a link to the documentation.

Here’s one article..from radio KOTA.. this one has more history in it about the Norbeck lawsuit..

Attorney General Marty Jackley announces that the Wyoming Federal District Court has again upheld the current Black Hills Forest Plan. The 1990 Forest Plan was amended in 2005 after a top ranking forest service official sent it back for more study of its effects on wildlife.

During the review, the amendment process also included extensive consideration of the rampant mountain pine beetle infestation which grew exponentially from 1997-2005…

South Dakota has vigorously urged the Forest Service to fully consider the mountain pine beetle and its damaging effects on trees and the increased risk of fire damage…

Jackley said that the timbering activity has been ongoing because the courts have sided with the National Forest Service and the state of South Dakota during these litigations..

In 2011, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the related plan for the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve that also provided for diversity in timber management for game animals and bird habitat in a portion of the Forest. Within weeks after losing their Norbeck challenge in the Eighth Circuit, the same environmental groups and others filed suit in Wyoming Federal District Court, seeking to set aside the 2005 overall Forest Plan. The South Dakota Attorney General intervened on behalf of the State of South Dakota in support of the 2005 Forest Plan. The Wyoming Federal Court upheld the Forest Plan in late 2012 and has now rejected a motion by the environmental groups to reconsider the ruling. The environmental groups will have until mid-June to appeal the District Court’s ruling.

Here’s another article on the court decision from the Rapid City Journal.

Idea for Congress: Give Forest Service Flexibility

Two articles of interest this morning.. reductions in firefighter hires due to sequestration.. as in the LA Times story here…

Here is an excerpt:

The U.S. Forest Service will hire 500 fewer firefighters this year, the result of “line by line” budget reductions required by Congress, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a conference call with reporters. The reduced staffing also means 50 fewer fire engines will be available, Vilsack said.

Vilsack and Interior Secretary Sally Jewel said much of the West would face severe fire danger this summer.

“We will no doubt be seeing some fires of significant size,” Vilsack said.

The Interior Department is also expected to cut its firefighting forces.

The Forest Service hires firefighters in spring and retains them through fall, Tom Harbour, the Forest Service’s national director of fire and aviation management, said in an interview Monday. Last year, when 9.3 million acres burned in the United States, the Forest Service hired 10,500 firefighters. The Interior Department fielded another 2,500.

California is expected to be the most imperiled of the dry Western states. The state this year has received only 25% of the rainfall that it received in the same period for 2012, National Interagency Fire Center fire analyst Jeremy Sullens said. Other states expected to be hit hard are Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Idaho, along with portions of other states.

Because of the danger California is in, the Forest Service does not plan to reduce hiring there, Harbour said. The reductions will more likely affect Eastern states, where the danger is less serious this year.

I also saw this here:

The U.S. Forest Service is awarding $772,820 to help national forests improve or implement conservation education programs for kids in 16 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This award is part of the more than $2.26 million dedicated to connecting American kids to Nature. It includes more than $1.49 million in partner contributions, according to a spokesperson for the Forest Service.

“Forest Service conservation education programs inspire young people to start exploring the natural world around them, which develops a life-long appreciation for the environment,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Our partnerships help ensure that we bring the great outdoors to children, whether in an urban or rural setting.”

Remember, the same Forest Service had to ask for money back from States (asked for money back) but is also giving out new grants…

It seems to me that if Congress would let USDA/FS switch among line items.. then we could apply my bureacratic prioritization process, or some other rational process that could be explained to the public.

1. Real danger to people, fish, soil, air, tourism, water storage, and properties. Fires yes, lack of conservation education, not.

2. Critical as to timing- fires this year, either there is real danger of bad fires this year or it’s fire hype.. someone in government should be able to tell the difference. Not so timing-critical is conservation education.

3. Across the government, how many uncoordinated efforts are there? Just in my everyday dealings before I retired, I ran across the National Park Service, NSF and EPA having some form of conservation education. Maybe Congress could ask for volunteers (retirees) from all these agencies (and the others no doubt) to review the different programs (I’m sure other agencies do it as well) and make recommendations for combinations and coordination. They might even be “educating” at cross purposes.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against conservation education, it is a great and important program. I do have something against apparent inability to prioritize and coordinate among federal agencies. And if it would take some freeing action by Congress to allow agencies to do it, then let’s ask Congress to do it.

What are your thoughts? How would you prioritize?

Federal workers would get cash for pinpointing government savings

Thanks to an alert reader for this submission:

Hope there is a panel of (volunteer) externals to review these for each agency..otherwise we’ll we might have suggestions like “answering the phone even less often when federal retirees call OMB..”

I think the FS might have done something like this during the Pilot period. It was very incentivizing! Hopefully retirees can also input suggestions and maybe get a half of one percent? How about contractors and the public?

P.S. I don’t know anyone who believes that end-of-year spending flurries are the optimum use of federal resources.

WASHINGTON — By MICHAEL COLLINS

Federal employees could soon have a big incentive to help the government save money: They could take home a share of the savings.

A bill filed Thursday by U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., would give bonuses to federal workers who come up with ways for the government to save money. The employees could receive 1 percent of the total cost savings, or up to $10,000.

Fleischmann said offering the bonuses would not only be a way to encourage workers to cut wasteful spending, it also could return to the U.S. Treasury millions of unused tax dollars that could then be applied toward deficit reduction.

“This is a bill that I think will appeal to all fiscally responsible members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — because it’s just a good, common sense bill,” Fleischmann said.

Federal agencies are appropriated a certain amount of funds every year. “Right now, sadly, what happens is when a government agency is allotted funds, sometimes those funds are not really needed,” Fleischmann said.

Regardless, critics say, agencies rush to spend unused dollars in the last quarter of the fiscal year, encouraging a “use-it-or-lose-it” mentality.

Fleischmann’s bill, known as the EASY Savings Act, seeks to end that practice by encouraging government workers to look for and suggest ways to stop frivolous spending. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has filed the Senate version of the bill.

The legislation has bipartisan support and has been endorsed by the American Taxpayers Union and other government watchdog groups.

“In order to bring spending reform to Washington, we need to make fundamental changes such as improving the incentive structure,” said James Valvo, director of policy for Americans For Prosperity. “The EASY Savings Act would provide better incentives for federal agencies and grant recipients to return unused funds for deficit reduction.”

“Sustainable Recreation”: USDA /Forest Service Bites the Hand that Feeds Them?

First, let’s go back to the Mike Dombeck quote I cited previously from this article in Forest History:

The most enduring and powerful maxim of business is that “money flows to things people want.” People want their cultural heritage protected, clean air and water, healthy forests and rangelands, good hunting and fishing, sustainable supplies of timber and forage, etc.

Actually, Mike’s only listing of recreation was hunting and fishing on this list, but recreation is clearly the #1 use of the national forests by people of the U.S. (and other countries).

Friday, I reviewed the history of the sustainability concept in various planning rules. In the 2012, a new concept hit the street. This is “sustainable recreation”. I know all of you who are specific and careful about words are wondering “what’s up with that?” doesn’t everything have to be sustainable? Why single out recreation to be called “sustainable recreation” every time?

Well, it’s not really clear but I guess it’s because there is an internal strategy/framework about “sustainable recreation.” Here is a link to a document about the strategy from 2010. The strategy is an easy read, and makes a great deal of sense. I thought it was well done, even though I’m not usually a fan of “strategies.” I didn’t find anything particularly novel, although I’d be interested in what readers of this blog think.

However, I wonder about the “sustainability” (ink, paper, electrons) of adding an extra word (sustainable) every time you write about one of the multiple uses in a regulation when it’s already required to be sustainable.

So let’s see how it is talked about in the 2012 Rule.

The final rule provides direction for sustainable recreation throughout the planning process. The final rule retains the term ‘‘sustainable recreation’’ to recognize that planning should identify, evaluate, and provide a set of recreational settings, opportunities and access for a range of uses, recognizing the need for that set to be sustainable over time.

Again, everything has to be sustainable so…??

Ah so now we encounter the Directives, let’s look at BRC’s comments:

E. The draft Handbook at 23.22b – “Sustainable Recreation Resources” and “Opportunities to Connect People with Nature” Does Not Properly Track the Rule

The draft Handbook inappropriately modifies the definition of Sustainable Recreation. Again, the Handbook contradicts the Rule, and whether intentionally or otherwise sets up the agency to fail the newly-configured duty to provide “sustainable recreation.” The Rule states: Sustainable recreation. The set of recreation settings and opportunities on the National Forest System that is ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable for present and future generations.
(36 CFR 219.19)

The draft Handbook modifies this definition here:
Plan components must provide for sustainable recreational settings, opportunities, and access. Sustainable recreation opportunities and settings are those that are economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable for the future. To be sustainable, the set of recreational settings and opportunities must be within the fiscal capability of the planning unit, be designed to address potential user conflicts among recreationists, and be compatible with other plan components including those components that provide for ecological sustainability.
(Chapter 20 at 23.22b Page 80 underline emphasis added) I

Ironically, the Rule’s definition of “sustainable” recreation troubled agency recreation staff, who proposed changes to the definition that they feared would “set the bar too high.” See email correspondence dated Oct. 13, 2011 (AR 0125036-0125039). The draft Handbook not only ignores but builds on these fears, again with the effect of creating an unnecessarily high burden.

Most, if not all, USFS Programs are not adequately funded. Indeed, the shortfall in the roads maintenance budget, and the trail maintenance backlog for trails in designated Wilderness, is well documented. The language here raises the concern that the agency may attempt to rely on lack of funding as an excuse for lack of effort and creativity in comprehensive recreational planning and motorized recreational travel planning specifically.

That’s the BRC point of view.. my point of view is … let’s call things as they are and not redefine commonly used expressions like sustainable, (or restoration, for that matter) to mean something different. It seems like you are trying to put something over on the public rather than clarifying your intentions and being transparent.

If the FS means ” there’s a great many multiple uses, but only recreation will be subject to the “fiscal capacity” test. I wouldn’t call that “sustainable” because it doesn’t have the same meaning as other uses of the term. I would call it “fiscally prudent” recreation approach. Other proposed terms are welcome in the comments. In English, are they thinking:

We fully recognize that recreation is the most popular to the citizens of the US who provide this funding. We also value our partnerships, volunteers and other ways (outlined in the Sustainable Recreation Framework).

But we are holding recreation to a higher standard than any other use, because ______.

I’m trying to understand how they would fill in the blank.

It seems to send a message “we’re not so sure we want you recreationists out there, despite all the partnerships and volunteering” which could ultimately be a funding death spiral. Not enough money, we’ll kick you out, you won’t want to fund the FS, therefore fewer people and shoddier facilities, so more will be kicked out..

As Mike Dombeck said above, “money flows to things people want.”

Or perhaps recreationists aren’t organized enough across the motorized and non-motorized spectra to resist, as oil and gas, timber or ranching might be, so they are an easy target for integrity- promotion? Or maybe it just sounded like a good idea to someone and was stuck in the directives randomly?

Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

Wolverine – Case Study in ESA

The USFWS takes another step toward finalizing a wolverine recovery effort. Photo courtesy USFWS/Steve Kroschel.

Maybe we could follow this story and learn about the ins and outs of ESA as this goes through the process. When I worked for the FS, we had experts so I didn’t really need to understand all the ins and outs (I was involved with the S Rockies lynx amendment, but more in terms of trying to move it along procedurally). Bob Berwyn posted this on his blog here. It’s interesting that states currently with wolverines don’t seem to be as enthused as Colorado, which currently does not have them. Correlation or causation?

Here’s an excerpt from Bob’s story:

Just in the past few weeks, the state agency rekindled those talks to update stakeholders on the federal listing process, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton.

“We’re trying give everybody an understanding of how some of the things that are proposed would work … The way they’re doing it is kind of new,” Hampton said, referring to the proposed simultaneous listing and nonessential population proposal.

“Overall it was a productive meeting. There were concerns that came up, many related to lynx and the history of that,” he said.

The lynx listing resulted in more stringent reviews for certain types of projects on national forest lands, including logging, ski area operations and expansions, and other recreational uses.

Colorado won’t consider a wolverine reintroduction program until the federal listing is finalized. Then, the State Legislature would have have to give its approval, but Hampton said that state biologists are keen to explore the idea.

“There’s still a great deal of interest in this … Maybe to temper that, there’s biological excitement. There aren’t that many species that you can look at and say, they’re native, were extirpated, and there is general agreement that bringing them back would be a good thing,” he said.

Here’s my question: they aren’t here in Colorado. We bring them in (reintroduction) and then we have yet another creature to analyze on each federal proposal, and it seems that we need to analyze even when they are nowhere around because it could become habitat for them were their populations to grow (is this true?).

Would it be a “good thing”? Based on the same logic (native and extirpated) we would be reintroducing grizzlies to California.. I don’t know.. what is “biological excitement”? People get “biologically excited” for a variety of reasons, not all of which can be discussed on a family blog, but are not usually set into public policy…

I’m interested in a) whose opinion rules at the end of the day as this process goes forward (biologists who work for CDOW? USFWS?)
b) how and when the scientific information gets arrayed and how it is structured for the public to comment on the scientific information and its use.

In the case of the wolverine, the USFWS posits that snowmobiling, backcountry skiing, and land management activities like timber harvest and infrastructure development, don’t pose a serious threat, but nongovernmental conservation groups counter that there’s not enough good science to draw that conclusion. Intentional killing of wolverines would be banned in any case.

Did we move somehow from scientific information about impacts to needing to prove that there are no impacts..isn’t it impossible to prove a negative?

c) what happened with lynx.. at first it sounded like there was a deal with ski areas to support it, now every ski proposal needs to be examined for its impacts on lynx and I believe there’s been litigation that cited lynx.. how does that all work? Was there really a deal? How did it hold up?

d) How about people on private lands.. do they have the same restrictions as public lands?

e) If wolverine is up north and having trouble, is a choice to be more careful up north to protect it instead of moving it somewhere it isn’t? Which under climate change may get less hospitable for the species anyway? Is that a good use of public biologist time and federal planning and analysis funding?

The Incredible World of Sustainability Definitions in Planning Rules

I want to talk about “Sustainable Recreation” in the planning directives. But first we need to lay the groundwork, so we need to go back to the Rule. Clearly everything has to be (plans must promote) sustainable, as in every rule since the 2000.

Sustainability is defined in the 2012 Rule as:

Sustainability. The capability to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. For purposes of this part, ‘‘ecological sustainability’’ refers to the capability of ecosystems to maintain ecological integrity; ‘‘economic sustainability’’ refers to the capability of society to produce and consume or otherwise benefit from goods and services including contributions to jobs and market and nonmarket benefits; and ‘‘social sustainability’’ refers to the capability of society to support the network of relationships, traditions, culture, and activities that connect people to the land and to one another, and support vibrant communities.

One might wonder.. gosh, the concept of sustainability has been around for a long time (since the Brundtland report).. how did EI get into the definition?

So you might ask, how did they define ecological sustainability in 2005?

(b) Sustaining ecological systems. The overall goal of the ecological element of sustainability is to provide a framework to contribute to sustaining native ecological systems by providing ecological conditions to support diversity of native plant and animal species in the plan area. This will satisfy the statutory requirement to provide for diversity of plant and animal communities based on the suitability and capability of the specific land area in order to meet overall multiple-use objectives (16 U.S.C. 1604(g)(3)(B)).

So we went from diversity of native plants and animals, to “its dominant ecological characteristics (for example, composition, structure, function, connectivity, and species composition and diversity).” I have called it “everything” before, because I can’t think of anything that isn’t covered, being within NRV AND resilient.

I use the ticks standard.. could lawyers argue that a project changes the compositions of species of ticks on elk (or the genetic composition of species of ticks on elk, or viruses..) ? And we see “no” in 2005, and yes in 2012. Because ticks are not plants or animals.

But in 2012, you would have to know what the species composition was during the reference period. Except like so many things, you never could know. Maybe we need historic tick ecologists and modelers? You may say, that’s silly. But it’s composition, which is listed as a “dominant ecological characteristic.”

So what does the 2000 Rule say (remember the COS gave input on that rule, and thus the Sedjo discussion and point of view, we described previously here)?

So I looked at 2000

Similarly, the Forest Service and scientific community have developed the concepts of ecosystem management and adaptive management. Scientific advances and improved ecological understanding support an approach under which forests and rasslands are managed as ecosystems rather than focusing solely on single species or commodity output. Indeed, ecosystem management places greater emphasis on assessing and managing broad landscapes and sustaining ecological processes. Ecosystem management
focuses on the cumulative effects of activities over time and over larger parts of the landscape. Planning and management under ecosystem management also acknowledge the dynamic nature of ecological systems, the significance of natural processes, and the uncertainty and inherent variability of natural systems.
Ecosystem management calls for more effective monitoring of management actions and their effects to facilitate adaptive management, which encourages changes in management emphasis and direction as new, scientific information is developed. In accord with ecosystem management, regional ecosystem assessments have become the foundation for more comprehensive planning, sometimes involving multiple forests and other public land management units. The Northwest Forest Plan, for example, affects 17 national forests and 6 BLM districts in a three-state region. The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Project encompasses 25 percent of the entire National Forest System and ten percent of the public lands administered by the BLM nationwide.

(As an aside, our appetite for these giant projects seems to have dissipated in the last 13 years. Does this have to do with the apparent lack of capacity to do any adaptation? Why is that? Would like to hear opinions of folks experiences with NW Forest Plan and ICBEP).

And what was ecological sustainability then?

Ecological sustainability: The maintenance or restoration of the composition, structure, and processes of ecosystems including the diversity of plant and animal communities and the productive capacity of ecological systems.

Hmm.
2001
Maintenance OR restoration of composition, structure and processes.

2012
Capability of ecosystems to maintain ecological integrity

Which is, again:
The quality or condition of an ecosystem when its dominant ecological characteristics (for example, composition, structure, function, connectivity, and species composition and diversity) occur within the natural range of variation and can withstand and recover from most perturbations imposed by natural environmental dynamics or human influence.”

So if we use my ticks example, under the 2000 Rule, we would be able to argue that our project was not changing (maintaining) the same tick species as on the current elk.

According to 2012, though, we would have to figure out what the reference period was and see if our project “promoted” the species composition which occurred during the “reference period.” Unless I’m missing something?

What on Earth have we gotten ourselves into?

For those who claim that this is all “science” take a gander at SY_CallicottMumford1997paper (which you can get for free through this link, but not from Wiley..)

Ideas that scientists and philosophers exchange about the world and how things should be are not “science” in the sense of hypotheses that can be verified. This paper also brings up another normative science idea, health, but lends an interesting view of how the different disciplines see what’s important (I’ll give you a hint, it’s what they spend their time studying )

I tried to copy out the salient paragraphs but it doesn’t let me, nor could I extract the page. Check out the left hand column on page 37. Note that this discussion is clearly normative, and argues that “ecosystem health” is good for managed landscapes(sustainable) and “ecosystem integrity” for preserves. Just to be clear, I think it’s fine for academic philosophers and scientists of all stripes to talk about concepts…but putting vague normative science ones into regulation is quite questionable. Indeed, then stating that it is “science” to value the “reference period” is pretty clearly.. well.. not “science”, despite the fact that some scientists espouse it.