Colorado Roadless and So-Called Gap Leases Redux

As media stories come out about the final rule, the concept of Colorado Roadless increasing natural gas development in Colorado may well be stated again. As in Bob Berwyn’s piece here.

The state version of the rule leaves the door open for more coal mining, as well as natural gas development, both seen as critical to the state’s economy. Since the original national rule was first published in 2001, new energy leases have been issued on identified roadless areas, which is another irritation to conservation groups.

Here’s what happened. When the 2001 Rule was not in effect due to being enjoined by one court or another, leases went forward (as people can’t legally follow rules that are thought to be illegal by the courts; makes sense, no?). Now, there were different stages of time with different requirements in place. Nevertheless, lawyers I’ve spoken with who are familiar with this issue say that the the legality depends on the facts of each lease. So they were either issued legally or they weren’t. The key point is that whether it’s the Colorado Rule or the 2001 Rule, if they are legitimately issued allowing roads, they are; if they weren’t they weren’t. Now some people don’t like this and tried to use the “gap lease” issue to a) torpedo an independent Colorado Rule (in my view due to ideological attachment to the 2001) or b) to get the USG to buy back the leases (good investment in this economic climate? you decide) or c) simply to hold it out as a negotiating tool to get other concessions. I wonder if some groups selected this issue because it is so complex that they think people are more readily hornswoggled?

I think the correct thing is that both 2001 and Colorado don’t allow roads for new leases, and upper tier requires no surface occupancy (no roads, no wellpads). Which is actually more restrictive than 2001.

Anyway, for the curious, more on these leases here on this blog. I remember a discussion with Ted Zukoski of Earthjustice somewhere (High Country News? This blog? But can’t find it this morning..).

Here’s a link to a blog post I wrote in High Country News on roadless being possibly too complicated for newspapers and a dialogue with Pete Kolbenschlag on some related topics.

Colorado Roadless Rule Finally Final

The efforts of thousands of folks, three state and two federal administrations, and seven glorious years (six or seven comment periods? I lost track a while back) have come to an end. Well, except for litigation, which seems like the dessert to every policy meal worth eating, especially ones where ideology figures in.. as it does in all things Roadless. If fireworks were allowed in Colorado right now, I’d be shooting them!

Here’s the prepublication copy at the Federal Register. It says it will be published tomorrow.

Here’s a story from KOAA, and here’s the TRCP press release.

DENVER (AP) – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has finalized a rule governing how 4.2 million acres of national forest roadless areas in Colorado will be managed.

Colorado started developing a state-specific rule following legal challenges of a 2001 national roadless rule, which the state of Wyoming and others have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review.

The Colorado rule is similar to the national policy, but Vilsack said Monday it provides flexibility to allow for thinning of forests to lessen threats of catastrophic wildfires, ski resort expansion and coal mining in the North Fork area. It includes stronger protections for 1.2 million acres of the 4.2 million acres of roadless national forests in Colorado.

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership says it’s pleased the final rule includes changes including more protection for cutthroat trout.

Secretary Tom Vilsack has finalized a rule governing how 4.2 million acres of national forest roadless areas in Colorado will be managed.

Colorado started developing a state-specific rule following legal challenges of a 2001 national roadless rule, which the state of Wyoming and others have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review.

The Colorado rule is similar to the national policy, but Vilsack said Monday it provides flexibility to allow for thinning of forests to lessen threats of catastrophic wildfires, ski resort expansion and coal mining in the North Fork area. It includes stronger protections for 1.2 million acres of the 4.2 million acres of roadless national forests in Colorado.

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership says it’s pleased the final rule includes changes including more protection for cutthroat trout.

Colorado Roadless- The Little State That Could

Wildflowers and Italian Mountain near Stewart Mine in the Elk Mountain-Collegiate Roadless Area in the Gunnison National Forest.
Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project

Colorado Roadless may win the prize for most comment periods (6th?). Perhaps the USG should have Regulation Oscars.. I have ideas for categories.
FYI- I will do the same kind of media watch for this as for the planning rule, so please send any press pieces I haven’t posted here..
Here’s the link to the press release.
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces Proposed Colorado Roadless Rule

WASHINGTON, April 14, 2011 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the publication and start of a 90-day comment period for the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule, developed collaboratively to address the needs of Colorado’s unique and precious roadless areas.

“We are committed to the protection of roadless areas on our national forests, areas vital for conservation of water resources, wildlife and for outdoor recreation,” said Vilsack. “These areas also provide an important driver of economic opportunity and jobs in rural Colorado communities.”

This proposed rule, in development since 2005, reflects the interests of thousands of Coloradoans and stakeholders from across the country who contributed to its development.

“The Forest Service cares deeply about protecting Colorado’s roadless areas,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Through collaboration, I believe we have developed a proposal that will afford better, lasting protection to these treasured areas, and we welcome additional comments in order to develop a successful approach for conservation of this special resource.”

The proposed Colorado Roadless Rule:

Puts more than half a million acres into a higher category of protection than the 2001 Roadless Rule;
Provides an updated inventory to protect high-quality backcountry areas with true roadless characteristics by removing substantially altered acres from the inventory and adding new acres containing a high level of roadless characteristics;
Removes existing ski areas from the roadless inventory;
Provides special protection for the headwaters of cutthroat trout streams;
Provides flexibility for temporary road construction for underground coal activities, such as methane drainage wells, on 20,000 acres in the North Fork coal mining area; and
Provides flexibility for temporary road construction for fuels treatments and ecosystem restoration to within one-half mile of communities.

The proposed Colorado Roadless Rule and Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) will be printed tomorrow in the Federal Register, but today are available for review and comment online either at the Office of the Federal Register’s website or at the Forest Service website at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/colorado.shtml. Upon tomorrow’s printing, the Forest Service will take comments on this proposed rule for 90 days. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Chief Tidwell will consider public input prior to making the decision on the final Colorado Roadless Rule and EIS, which is expected to be signed in late 2011.

Udall Sends Letter to President Obama Urging Swift Approval of Colorado Roadless Rule

Here’s the link.

Praises Locally-Driven and Collaborative Public Process

 
Posted: Thursday, April 26, 2012

Last week, Mark Udall sent a letter to President Obama urging him to quickly approve a Colorado Roadless Rule that has been under development since 2005 in order to alleviate uncertainty for communities and businesses.  A thorough, locally-driven public process took into consideration hundreds of thousands of public comments to produce a rule that protects 4.2 million acres of Colorado backcountry.  These National Forest lands are storehouses for clean water and protecting them also ensures that skiers and hikers have beautiful vistas, anglers have clean streams in which to fish, and hunters have healthy big-game herds. These resources attract visitors from all over the nation and world and are a critical component of our quality of life.

“Coloradans can and should be proud of this process; hard work, compromise and dedication to transparency produced a compromise in which almost no party got everything it wanted, but nearly all have agreed is fair.  I believe this collaborative work deserves recognition,” Udall wrote in the letter.  ”Delays in the adoption of a Colorado Roadless Rule have led to confusion and uncertainty and I urge its approval as soon as possible.”

The Colorado Roadless Rule was developed in an open and transparent process by Coloradans from a wide range of backgrounds including state and local elected officials, representatives from the ski industry, and the ranching, water law, forest management and environmental communities. The Rule protects 4.2 million acres while allowing some limited flexibility based on legitimate needs, such as to address forest-fire threats and insect infestations near certain communities, to accommodate ski area management, to continue underground coal production in the North Fork coal mining area, and to access and maintain water and utility corridors.  However, because of a recent 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, some have urged the president to set aside this extensive public process and instead impose a federal rule. A swift approval of the Colorado Roadless Rule will acknowledge the collaborative work that has been underway since 2005, and provide certainty for our land managers, small businesses and the public.

Here’s a link to the letter.

A Roadless Geek Reviews: NY Times Article

With the recent 10th Circuit decision to reject Wyoming’s rehearing request, Roadless has once again reared convoluted and drama-filled head. Also, as the current legal framework becomes clearer (at least until someone initiates another lawsuit claiming that the NEPA is now out of date, does not consider climate change mitigation and adaptation, and is not reflective of the more site-specific analysis requirements found by for a programmatic EIS,) the Colorado Roadless Rule is again in the news.

What I like about it, compared to the planning rule, is that planning rule discussions are about what the FS “might could” do; whereas the Colorado roadless rule is pretty straightforward in what is OK and what is not. Consequently, assertions about it are fairly easy to check. So it makes a good topic for checking on different news coverage. As I’ve said before, both on this and the HCN blog here and here, the topic of Colorado Roadless may be just too complicated for news stories in general. Even so, anyone could simply read the proposed regulation or the summaries on the web; here are the chief points about the rule and here about the further restrictions on “upper tier” acres. I can never forget that after working on this project, one of my colleagues said “I’ll never believe anything I read in the paper again.”

As usual, my comments are in italics.
Here’s a New York Times piece from a couple of weeks ago.

State Goes Its Own Way to Regulate Forest Roads

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/us/colorado-seeks-own-roadless-rule-for-national-forests.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: February 5, 2012

My comments are in italics.

DENVER — A road into the piney woods can be fraught with consequences. That was the premise, more than a decade ago, behind a Clinton administration rule that restricted road building on millions of acres of national forests in the West.

Not just in the west, as some of our readers might point out. In the interests of those who would like to see more stuff about the Eastern U.S., I found this from 2004 by Jim Furnish for Heritage Forests. I don’t think is a good way to start, though. Easily checked.

The so-called roadless rule, fought over in court from the start, was validated last year by a federal appeals panel, setting off a wave of euphoria among supporters and consternation among critics.

But there is a big wrinkle here in Colorado, which was one of only two states — Idaho was the other — that at the urging of the Bush administration developed their own rules about roads in the wild.

I don’t know if they were “urged by the Bush Administration”, or “allowed to”. perhaps semantics; but the original State Task Force thought the 2001 could be updated and improved. I think the folks in Idaho consciously wanted to improve the 2001 Rule. The way this statement is phrased tends to “partisanize” the issue (which I would frame as rather one of “particular” izing).

The state restrictions are supposed to be at least as stiff as the national rule, and a decision on Colorado’s draft plan, now under review in Washington by the United States Forest Service, is expected within weeks. But conservationists say the plan is much less protective of forestland and creates the likelihood that a state many Americans identify with the very aeries and woods the national rule was designed to protect could become a kind of orphan.

Here we go again.. “conservationists say” “much less protective”. Heritage has a unique and important role in roadless see Ray Ring’s piece in High Country News here. Asking Pew/Heritage Forests about a state roadless rule is like asking .. (make up your own analogy) the Hatfields about the McCoys, the Broncos about the Raiders, the Shiites about the Sunnis, and so on.

Also, Idaho seems to be doing just fine with its state rule.. I wonder if they feel like “orphans”.. or people whose diversity within this diverse country is recognized and appreciated.

“It would give Colorado, at the end of day, fewer protections than any other state,” said Jane Danowitz, director of the public lands program at the Pew Environment Group, a nonprofit organization in Washington. “It’s a runaway train.”

You can’t just assert that it has “fewer protections”; there are many things more protective and some things “less protective”, which we can debate here. For example, linear construction zones are restricted which the 2001 Rule does not do. And how one state can become a “runaway train” is not really clear. There are not a bunch of states lined up to do this, even when there was a state-specific rulemaking allowed, most states deferred to the 2001 Rule. That’s how we ended up with Idaho and Colorado.

State environmental managers strongly disagree, saying that Colorado’s plan would be as protective over all as the national template, if not more so, but that it would just get there a different way.
They say that bipartisan support through six years of discussion under three governors, two Democrats and one Republican, created a package suited to the special needs of the state, and that tough economic times have only accentuated the need for a system that takes jobs and core industries into account. The political backdrop touches a debate raging in many other state capitals as well: local versus federal authority and the limits of the 10th Amendment’s declaration of state autonomy.
Some economic interests, both sides agree, stand to benefit from the state plan. Coal mines and ski resorts, for example, would get access to backcountry areas the national plan could bar.

What is an “environmental manager”? Doesn’t anything we do have an environmental component? Is State Highways not an environmental manager, or the State Department of Agriculture? I’ll have to do another post on “whatever happened to natural resources?” later.

The ski area thing is a bit odd as those areas are adjacent to existing ski areas and already allocated to skiing. How can that be really “backcountry?” Underground coal mines access via roads would be restricted access and restored after 3 years of so. Notice that actual acreages are not mentioned here..I don’t know them off the top of my head but I think it’s about 1700 for ski areas and 15K acres for temporary coal roads (the estimate used below may not take into account allowances grandfathered in under 2001 and its current reinstitution) and methane drainage wells out of 4.2 million acres total.

More logging, for fire prevention and possibly commercial sale, could be allowed as well. And natural gas drilling could expand into areas that the national rule would hold off limits.

It’s not fire prevention, it’s protection of communities, and you either sell the products or take them offsite and burn them, or burn them in place.
Most people would think a use that sequestered carbon and saved the USG some bucks would be a good thing. This is carefully phrased (or not) to imply that fire prevention and commercial sale are two different things, not the question of “one we remove trees for fire prevention, should we sell them or just burn them?” As previous posts on this blog, from Colorado and Arizona at least, have shown, most folks would like to do something other than burn the piles, especially if it provided reduced carbon emissions and jobs.

If I were writing this piece, I would say “tree-thinning and removal of dead trees would be allowed for reasons of community defensible space, in addition to that allowed by the 2001 rule for ecosystem maintenance and restoration and for improving wildlife habitat and TES species.”

The natural gas drilling part is not true, as we have discussed here before and also on the High Country News blog. There are a variety of leases issued when the 2001 rule was not in effect whose legal status depends on the situations when they were issued, not related to what rule is in effect now. The Colorado Rule does not allow roads, same as 2001.

But while environmental groups argue that special interests are trumping the public good, and that the state is underestimating the long-term economic value of undisturbed land, some state and federal officials say a special case for Colorado makes sense.

Two things about this statement. What environmental groups? There is only once cited so far. I’m not saying that there aren’t more who think this way, but it would be good to know who and how many.
First, the two major “disturbances” compared to 2001 are 1. thinning trees within 1/2 mile of communities (undisturbed land?) and 3 -5 year roads for methane drainage wells above underground coal mines (if it’s the “long-term” value, then they will still have the value after 3-5 years and maybe 5 more for grass to grow back).

Are people trying to protect their communities “special interests”? And aren’t lives and property saved the “public good?” Note that it’s “some” state and federal officials here, but not “some” conservationists above. Just sayin’

“It’s not one prescription fits all,” said Mike King, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “We are moving forward with the Colorado rule because we believe it’s better for Colorado — that we are able to address our unique environmental circumstances, and our unique economic circumstances, in a way that the 2001 rule simply couldn’t and didn’t.”
Environmental protection is still in there, Mr. King said, but so is economic protection, with exemptions — temporary roads that would be restored or allowed to return to nature after years of use — for industries that the state considers vital. Operators of three underground coal mines in western Colorado that have said they could face a shutdown or constriction as early as this summer without access to nearby land could get the use of 20,000 adjoining acres to build gas vents. The ski industry, which mostly operates on or next to Forest Service land in Colorado, would have access to 8,000 acres.

Again, this implies 8000 more than the 2001 Rule, but it’s actually 1700 or so more, 8000 total ..

The idea of cordoning off some forestland as roadless — about 30 percent of the 193-million-acre national forest system was designated, with sharper lines of defense against developers, all-terrain vehicles and loggers — was a political firecracker from the moment it was proposed in late 1999.

What kind of “developers”? the 2001 rule was about roads and tree-cutting and allows ATV’s, it should also be pointed out that ski towers and other kinds of structures, have been built in roadless areas without roads, and that is OK with the 2001 Rule. It’s a “roadless” rule not a “structureless” rule.

Critics denounced it as an end run around Congress, creating wilderness protection by presidential fiat. President George W. Bush, taking office just as the rule was supposed to take effect, invited states to blaze their own way.

I think it was Mark Rey’s idea, as articulated in an interview with Martin Nie, in a link posted somewhere on this blog. See for yourself here.

Wyoming fought for years in federal court, a challenge that was overcome only last fall when the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver said the Forest Service had discretion over the land it administered. Idaho also broke from the pack with a state-specific roadless plan, but unlike Colorado’s it has drawn mostly praise from conservation and recreation groups.

Aside: I think this is probably true for a variety of reasons, including the existence of the RACNAC and not so much the technical specs of each rule. It will be very interesting for future students to compare the two processes.

The push-pull of politics has caught some groups that advocate for the public lands, or depend on them economically, squarely in the middle.
“We’re not full-on opposing it,” said I Ling Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Outdoor Industry Association, a national trade group for recreation companies, which has its headquarters in Colorado. “We’ve been supportive of development of the Colorado rule, but we do feel that right now there are some things under the current draft that are not strong enough.”

Interestingly, in November, there was an advertisement in the Denver paper by mostly local environmental groups as we discussed here. Just the other day there was a similar ad see press release here by OIA (an industry group) and TRCP (a non-local environmental group) paid for by TRCP. I just think it’s interesting who chosen to be interviewed in this NY Times article. Also, previously OIA and OA teamed up to give comments, many of which were addressed as described here. So if we tracked it, it would be interesting to see how their positions shifted through the different versions. It would also be interesting to know which concerns are important to them today, though not described in this article.

Several independent forestry experts said that on paper, at least, Colorado’s plan was clearly less stringent than what the Clinton administration proposed.

This fellow is not “several”; he doesn’t seem to be associated with forests in the West, and it sounds like he hasn’t read the rule. I don’t know what it means to be “independent”; that’s what we try to achieve on this blog by hearing both sides.

“No question that in some respects it’s less protective,” said William S. Keeton, a professor of forestry and forest ecology at the University of Vermont. But whether the net effects would truly leave forests in Colorado less protected is not as clear, he said.

The plan, for example, would allow more latitude for temporary roads needed for power-line construction, which could be harmful to delicate areas, Dr. Keeton said.

I think it’s interesting that they picked this person to interview, who seems to be operating from knowledge of a previous proposal. Actually, the current proposal restricts construction zones for power lines more than the 2001 Rule, because the 2001 doesn’t have any restrictions on linear construction zones, based on the 10th Circuit in the Bull Mountain case, see previous discussion.

But it also would allow more fire-restoration work like the thinning of trees and prescribed burning, which he said could have ecological benefits if planned carefully. “The devil is in the details,” he said.

It sounds like he doesn’t really know, and hasn’t read the current proposal, so why interview him? Prescribed burning and thinning of trees are also allowed under the 2001 Rule, but thinning is restricted unless it’s for ecological reasons.

A forest supervisor for the Forest Service in Colorado, Glenn P. Casamassa, said the directive from Secretary Tom Vilsack of the federal Agriculture Department, the Forest Service’s parent agency, is that any exception to the national plan must be as strong as or stronger than the national rule. Colorado’s meets that standard, Mr. Casamassa said.

But he said the West, and maybe Colorado in particular, has also changed significantly in the intervening years. More people are living near national forests. An outbreak of pine-killing bark beetles that has its epicenter in Colorado and several major fires over those years that roared out to touch the edge of urban life have also changed thinking about intervention in the wild, Mr. Casamassa said.
“Not only has the landscape changed, but also the view of what is appropriate to do in these areas,” he said.
Ms. Danowitz at the Pew group said part of her concern about Colorado was that other states might follow its example. A patchwork system of rules and special interests that can speak loudly in state capitals was part of what the national rule was intended to fix, she said.

One person’s “patchwork of rules and special interests” is another person’s “one size does not fit all.”

But Mr. King at the state natural resources agency said he thought the critics overstated Colorado’s differences, partly out of that broader concern about what other states might do. Economic life in the woods, he said, can be balanced with protection.
“It’s one less hoop to jump through, but not a jailbreak,” he said.

***************************************

I think it’s worth hearing the reason for the state petitions rule in Mark Rey’s own words from the Nie interview (link above).

So when we came in, we looked at that history and we concluded that the crux of the problem with this issue is that it’s—on the one hand—an intensely political debate because it’s a basic resource allocation question over resources that people feel very strongly about. On the other hand, it’s a very technical debate because you’re trying to decide the fate of individual areas, putting boundaries around them that are based upon site specific data and so therefore you have to be able to amass and work with a substantial database to make good decisions.

In the case of trying to do a nationwide rule, you know you can get all the political closure you want to finally end the debate. You can have the president of the United States stand on the side of a ridge in southern Virginia and announce the outcome, but as the courts have told us, it’s hard to do justice to all the technical detail that is required to make the decision sound from the standpoint of a reviewing judge.

On the other hand, if you deal with this on a forest-by-forest basis, you can—by virtue of the fact that you have a lot less data to deal with—deal with it more intelligently.

The problem is that you can’t really get political closure to the decision because the decision is going to be made by a GS-14 or a GS-15 career civil servant and everybody knows that you can take the debate on up the food chain to see if you can get a better result. So you don’t get any real closure to the issue, both because of where it’s made and also because you don’t engage national interests to the same degree that you do in a national debate.

So we thought if we tried to find a middle road or a third path by working on a state-by-state basis, we could, on the one hand, reduce the size of the decision down to a manageable level, and on the other hand engage for the purposes of bringing better political closure to this, the one person who’s arguably elected to represent all the citizens of the state and that’s the governor, and that in a partnership with the governor we could get the right balance.

More Roadless Courtroom Drama

For those who just can’t get enough Roadless…

US Appeals Court Asked To Rehear Roadless CaseDecember 5, 2011 4:08 PM

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2011/12/05/us-appeals-court-asked-to-rehear-roadless-case/

DENVER (AP) – The state of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association want a federal court in Denver to reconsider a rule prohibiting roads on nearly 50 million acres of land in national forests across the United States.
In a motion filed Monday, the plaintiffs say the U.S. Forest Service’s roadless rule was a “sham process” designed to circumvent Congress.
Last month, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Lawyers for the state of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association contended it was a violation of the law. Monday’s notice to the court asks for a rehearing.
The roadless rule was put in place by the Clinton administration in 2001, just before George W. Bush took office.

Another Confusing Roadless Story: Aspens, Intervention, and Upper Tier

Scott Fitzwilliams, left, and Glenn Adams discuss the health of an aspen grove in the White River National Forest near Silt, Colorado. Photo by Michael Brands.

Thanks again to Terry Seyden for this catch!

It’s a bit hard to tell in this news story, but the story is about a couple of different things that if you weren’t following this story closely, might be confusing. I will try to help.

Chain saw environmentalism at cutting edge of forest fight

Aspen, Colo. • Here is the next front in America’s fight for its Western forests.

Too late to head off a wave of climate-fueled beetles that have altered the evergreen landscape for generations — if not forever — foresters still believe they can rejuvenate this resort town’s namesake. They say the white bark and fluttering yellow heart-shaped leaves that announce fall in the Rocky Mountains are due for a pruning.

It’s chain saw environmentalism, and some of the West’s most ardent wilderness lovers have signed on. They face strong opposition from groups that believe Mother Nature can best repair her own, and their struggle over how best to legally protect untrammeled wild lands will profoundly shape the future of these hills.

“It’s no longer as easy as just saying wilderness is good and everything else is bad,” said John Bennett, a former Aspen mayor and current executive director of the advocacy group For the Forest.

Will aspen shoots — food to elk and other cherished Rocky Mountain wildlife — keep springing from the slopes in a warming and drying region? Can they without human help?

Government foresters want to start cutting down swaths of century-old aspens in hopes that young “suckers” will sprout from the roots to build a new forest. It’s how many of the aspens would have reproduced naturally during the 1900s had Americans allowed fire to scour more of the old trees from the land.

Today, there is some urgency because a widespread collapse that accelerated during a 2004-08 drought foreshadowed dire predictions of climate-linked losses over the next 50 years. The die-off blighted nearly a fifth of Colorado’s aspen stands, researchers say, thinning about a quarter of the forest crown in most of them with precious little regrowth.

Cutting aspens now, in the absence of drought, could regrow vigorous young trees before the next dry spell strikes.

“We certainly don’t have any silver bullets,” said Jim Worrall, a U.S. Forest Service Forest Health Protection pathologist in Gunnison, Colo., who studied the past decade’s so-called Sudden Aspen Decline syndrome. “But we do know that aspen stands less than about 40 years old were not really affected by Sudden Aspen Decline.”

Thus, cutting for regrowth is a prescription that’s taken firm root with foresters and opened a divide among environmentalists who might have unified against logging — if not for the wild card of climate change.

“Nature knows best,” said Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of Colorado’s Wilderness Workshop and a skeptic of the rush into forest interventions. He supports efforts to clear beetle-killed pines posing fire hazards and watershed threats around communities, but believes the aspens and other trees deep in the woods should adapt on their own.

“History is writ with many examples of humans monkeying in natural systems that have gone awry.”

OK, so the above is a question about cutting aspen for the purpose of trying to regenerate them.

That’s why Shoemaker and others with a more traditional wilderness ethic favor a hotly debated revision of Colorado’s roadless forest rule. The state and U.S. Forest Service are considering local changes to a nationwide 2001 rule protecting pristine forests from road construction, and one of several proposals under review would tighten restrictions considerably. It would generally ban tree cutting on 2.6 million acres of “upper-tier” protection zones — two-thirds of the state’s roadless areas.

Millions of acres of dead pines and spruces naturally give aspens new areas to colonize, Shoemaker said, while foresters seem fixated on old aspen stands in areas that aren’t likely to support them in the future. They want to prevent oak brush and other dryland species from taking over slopes that he believes are becoming ill-suited to aspens.

This next section is related to the aspen question because the “upper tier” acreage in the Proposed Colorado Rule does not allow tree cutting for wildlife habitat improvement, or restoration of endangered or sensitive species (fyi, aspen isn’t endangered or sensitive but it is good for wildlife). Note, this is not road building, it is tree cutting.. so people would have to walk in with chainsaws (or ride in on OHV’s) and drop the trees.

This aspect of the Upper Tier designation is of concern to some wildlife-oriented individuals as they may see the need for some cutting and burning to restore wildlife habitat in key corridors so animals can move (and also migrate based on future climate change).
Below is a quote from Colorado Roadless Q&A’s here.

“The Upper Tier designation was added based on public concern that exceptions found in the previous proposal would allow roads and tree cutting anywhere within CRAs. On Upper Tier acres, requirements are more restrictive than under the 2001 rule. The exceptions allow only road construction and reconstruction as allowed by statutes or treaties, and reserved or outstanding rights; and tree-cutting incidental to an activity not prohibited by the Colorado Roadless Rule and for personal or administrative use. “

So now back to the news story.

“Trying to freeze an aspen stand in time,” he said, “is fighting nature.”

Sitting pretty

Others who love wilderness, and indeed moved here to live among it, point to the bark-beetle infestation — which stripped more than 6 million acres of Colorado evergreens — as evidence such hard-line protections are outdated.

“I’m a total wilderness advocate,” said Tom Cardamone, who moved here to work on a student-led wilderness campaign in 1972 and now directs the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies [ACES]. “Also, I recognize the increasing importance of hands-on forest management.”

ACES has a staff of naturalists whose mission statement seeks to nurture lifelong commitments to the Earth while “restoring the balance of natural communities.” Defining and championing proper balance can be difficult in a resort community where most residents moved because they liked things just the way they were — a problem Cardamone calls “the challenge of the perception of the pristine.”

If a place looks nice and attracts hikers and mountain bikers, he said, they don’t necessarily weigh whether its ecology is out of whack. Locals have battled the center’s efforts to restore a stretch of the Roaring Fork River from gravel mining and an alpine bog from peat removal, he said, because the areas remained pretty. Both projects went forward, and now both are hailed as ecological successes.

So it is with struggling forests, Cardamone believes. Residents don’t like the idea of roads and heavy equipment trudging through pristine wilderness, but “I’m also concerned about the damage of climate change to pristine wilderness.”

Confusing, because now we are not talking about Colorado Roadless nor upper tier. No one is proposing building roads for aspen treatments in roadless.

The bark beetles that have munched through at least 40 million acres of Western evergreens since 1997 served a warning. Aided by warming winters and lengthening summers, they attacked forests that were effectively overpopulated. Individual trees competed for soil moisture and daylight to steel themselves against the onslaught, and when it was too late for people to react on a landscape level, foresters started thinning trees in an effort to save favored recreation spots or reduce fire hazards.

The question now is whether active management would avoid a similar collapse among another key forest species, or whether it’s futile to play God. Which lesson should be taken?

Dangers of drought

Aspens host their own species of native bark beetles, and those can find heightened success during droughts. But it is the drought itself — heat coupled with drying soils — that scientists believe threatens to shrink aspen range, currently stretching along the Rockies from Mexico to Alaska.

The Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station has used greenhouse-gas projections to estimate that up to half the suitable aspen range in the central Rockies will vanish under something like permanent drought by 2060, eliminating low-elevation stands.

Some ecologists believe aspens are resilient, though, and argue that something besides logging could help them thrive.

“The prime culprits are the rising elk populations in the West and, in some cases, livestock,” said Paul Rogers, director of Utah State University’s Western Aspen Alliance. Hunting more elk, restoring wolves to push them around and better managing livestock, he said, would help aspen sprouts survive in many places.

Rogers doubts Sudden Aspen Decline is as widespread as others say. He doesn’t question that, for instance, 17 percent of Colorado’s aspen stands suffered in the past drought, but he doesn’t believe the roots are dead in most of those. Protect the areas from overgrazing and browsing, he said, and many would spring back. Aspens have expanded and contracted with previous climate shifts.

Logging trees, as the Forest Service wants, would stimulate new growth, Rogers said. But none of the sprouts would climb past “mouth-high” if wildlife and livestock aren’t managed accordingly.

“Don’t do anything,” he warned, “unless you have a way to protect [new growth] afterward.”

I’m not an expert on aspen decline, but it seems like it should be pretty clear if “sprouts are not coming up” or “sprouts are coming up and being eaten.” Certainly if you are successful at “sprouts coming up” you would have to manage “sprouts being eaten.” Not sure how this relates, unless it is impossible to manage “sprouts being eaten” so why spend money to help “sprouts come up?”

But to be relevant to the Upper Tier Roadless question, you would have to say that there are no situations for wildlife for any tree species that could be helped by tree falling -ever. Again, going from the specific to the general is a bit confusing.

Buying time

If fire suppression has built aspen forests that are unnaturally old and uniform in age, shaking them up makes sense to Cardamone. Doing so might stimulate young aspens and buy the forest time for humans to slow climate change.

Roadless protections for their own sake, he said, aren’t the ultimate goal anymore.

“Road or no road, if all the trees are dead because we didn’t do something wise,” Cardamone said, “we may regret that.”

That’s the plea echoing around the White River National Forest, which surrounds Aspen and shelters the nation’s largest elk herd. District rangers and Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams fear that if public pressure leads their agency bosses to choose the most restrictive alternative for their new roadless rule, the forest will shrivel. It’s not even about roads, he said, because the agency could cut trees without building any — if the roadless rule allows.

“We’re losing our aspen pretty quickly in this part of the world,” Fitzwilliams said on a recent drive into the Divide Creek Basin. And more than half the forest there is aspen, mostly tall, stout, old.

Eighty percent are mature to “overmature,” he said.

Fitzwilliams drove up dirt roads past elaborate hunting camps of tents and buses — even one big rig hauled into the woods to outfit enthusiasts — showing what draws elk hunters here, and what he believes is at stake.

Elk thrive among aspens, but here and there along Divide Creek, century-old trees are toppling under their own weight, with nothing but grass growing under them. Eventually, without active management, he believes spruces and firs will fill in some of these gaps, squeezing out elk and deer. Oak brush will creep up other slopes.

And Divide Creek, it turns out, is among those zones that his crews couldn’t touch if the Forest Service designates 2.6 million acres for full roadless protections. Step off the existing roads, Fitzwilliams said, and you couldn’t cut a tree in the name of forest health. “If this all becomes upper-tier roadless, I’m out of business.”

Those stricter protections are what the Pitkin County Commission, based in Aspen, requested in its official comments to the agency, and it’s a popular stand among lots of politicians in ski country. But Fitzwilliams has been trying to change minds.

“I’ve joked with the Town Council that they need to change [Aspen’s] name to Spruce-Fir,” he said.

‘Hidden gems’

Beyond ecology, Fitzwilliams said, there’s an economy and a people at stake.

West central Colorado’s wilds are interwoven with a string of ski resorts, highways, electric lines and forested homes. Further limitations on tree thinning would risk catastrophic fire.

Those are fears that many wilderness lovers share, and they accept logging around the edges to improve safety. But many also push not just for more roadless protections, but also for new congressionally designated wilderness areas to limit most man-made disturbances.

They’re pushing a campaign called “Hidden Gems” to expand wilderness areas by 342,000 acres in this part of Colorado, effectively moving the protected zones farther downhill into areas considered important winter range for wildlife.

Outdoor photographer Steven DeWitt, of Eagle County, Colo., is a hiking and snowboarding enthusiast who holds wildlands dear. He sees the need for action near towns and highways, he said, but “what we’ve got for wilderness now is all we’ve got left.”

The pine forest’s rapid decline saddened DeWitt to the point that he has been shooting photos since 2007 for a planned online essay that he hopes will motivate Americans to deal with climate change. But in the backcountry, he prefers to see forests regenerate on their own.

Chain saw environmentalism isn’t for him. Rooting around in wild places sets a precedent.

“It’s a bad cocktail,” he said of Forest Service hopes for logging the roadless areas. “Everybody’s good intentions before anything is cut are great, but a road in a wilderness is a bad idea.”

It seems like Scott Fitzwilliams valiantly keeps saying “we are not talking about roads, we are only talking about the ability to cut trees” but then others are quoted as “roads are bad and you shouldn’t have them.”

I think it would be really hard to understand what the issue is from reading this story. It would also have been a better story if the author had quoted someone from the wildlife community who are concerned about the prohibitions in the Upper Tier.
Some people might say that the Upper Tier acres are “more protective than the 2001″ because they don’t allow tree cutting for wildlife habitat or endangered species.. yet what are you really “protecting” by not allowing those actions? Certainly not wildlife, nor endangered species. It’s all rather ideological, and not very real, IMHO.

Further, I don’t think it’s accurate to say you are “logging”, when the material is not removed (because there are no roads). You may be “cutting” but using that darn dictionary again (Merriam Webster online):

“log
verb
transitive verb
1 a : to cut (trees) for lumber b : to clear (land) of trees in lumbering.”

It’s also interesting everyone quoted in the story agrees on a need for tree cutting around towns and highways.

Pew et al. Full Page Ad on Roadless

NOTE: THERE IS A DISCUSSION ON THIS SAME TOPIC ON THE HCN RANGE BLOG HERE. Some different kinds of comments than for NCFP readers.

In the Denver Post this morning, I saw the full page ad you see here to your right. I couldn’t figure out how to link to it, since it was an advertisement, but I did find out this on the web at Pew Environment.

Note that the Pew Charitable Trusts has on its webpage:
“The Pew Charitable Trusts is driven by the power of knowledge to solve today’s most challenging problems. Pew applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life.”

What I found questionable about “knowledge” was the statement:

“Yet your administration is considering a plan that would open up many of these areas to new drilling, expanded logging, and coal mining.“

New drilling

No one has yet explained how the proposed Colorado rule opens new areas to drilling.. it would be interesting to have that discussion here, if someone can explain the thinking.

“Expanded logging”

Is the “logging” intended to mean fuel treatments in the WUI?

If so, many may be interested to know that individuals from some of the same groups named in the advertisement (when arguing why state rules were not needed) have said that the 2001 allows the same “logging” under the exception:

To maintain or restore the characteristics of ecosystem composition and structure, such as to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic
wildfire effects, within the range of variability that would be expected to occur under natural disturbance regimes of the current climatic period.”

It seems intellectually inconsistent to say, on the one hand, that fuels treatments are allowed under 2001, and then to later claim that fuels treatments are “expanded logging” and only allowed under the Colorado Rule.

Aside : under 2001, “maintain or restore” fuels treatments are not restricted to 1/2 mile from communities, so it could be argued that the 2001 Rule, in fact, allows “expanded logging” compared to the Colorado Rule.

AND coal mining

Finally, the exception that allows temporary roads (2-3 years) to vent methane from underground coal mines (not exactly the same image as “coal mining”, but.. OK..) was allowed in the proposal on 16-20K or so more acres than allowed under the 2001 Rule on (I think) one roadless area.

The way the statement is made “open up many to drilling, logging and coal mining” without an “or” instead of an “and” would indicate (as the English language is commonly used) that temporary roads for methane venting would be allowed on “many” roadless areas. Since the usual idea is that it takes more than one to be “many”, this is also not a fact.

So there are three assertions and 0/3 are, strictly speaking,true. Doesn’t seem very like a very “rigorous and analytical” approach to me. Just sayin’ .

PS the Pew website refers to ” A letter from 520 leading scientists expressing concern about the Colorado proposal went to the administration in December 2009.” I remember one that was sent April 14, 2010.. (I wonder if there are really two?) that I posted this blog post about on Roger Pielke, Jrs.’ blog here.

Coming together to protect the backcountry- op ed by Jim Risch and Chris Wood

Moose in the Great Burn Roadless Area in Idaho, photo by John McCarthy

From Oregonlive here. Thanks to Terry Seyden!

October marks the fifth anniversary of the state of Idaho’s petition to develop its own rule governing the management of backcountry inventoried roadless areas on national forests within the state. When the petition was issued, it might have seemed unlikely that the two of us–one of whom helped write the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, and the other who litigated against it–would find ourselves commemorating the success of an Idaho-specific roadless rule five years later. The fact that we are is a testament to the power of collaboration and of problem-solving approaches to contentious natural resource issues.

What’s more, our success on this issue occurred as the courtroom battle over the 2001 Roadless Rule rages on. The most recent decision from the 10th Circuit Court reinstates the rule, but we have no doubt that legal maneuvers will continue.

What brought us together was the realization that Idaho’s backcountry areas are too important to allow political bickering to compromise some of the best fish and wildlife habitat and hunting and angling opportunities on the planet. Shortly after Idaho petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop the Idaho rule, numerous meetings were held throughout the state, seeking comments from each and every stakeholder including commissioners from all affected counties. With input from timber companies, counties, conservation interests and others, Idaho crafted a rule to manage and protect, where appropriate, the state’s 9 million acres of national forest roadless areas. The Idaho rule was put into effect in 2008. Today Idaho enjoys arguably the strongest protection for roadless areas in the United States.

Thanks to the Idaho Roadless Rule, Idaho has protected some of the best big-game hunting and longest hunting seasons in the region. Unlike other states, hunters in Idaho don’t have to wonder if they will draw an elk tag, because Idaho offers over-the-counter tags for backcountry hunts. Likewise, anglers can enjoy Idaho’s high-country lakes and cool mountain streams that teem with wild and native trout. As a result, the lands protected by the Idaho rule help sustain an $808 million hunting, fishing and wildlife-associated recreation economy in the state.

Conservation is most durable when it involves the widest array of interests. By genuinely listening to everyone’s concerns and interests, we were able to balance and craft a roadless rule that met the needs of county commissioners, conservation enthusiasts, timber interests, recreation users and others. The process produced a close working relationship we call collaborative stewardship. It moved away from the tired battles between environmentalists and land users where competing interests are pitted against each other and it affirmed President Theodore Roosevelt’s belief that conservation should result in the application of common sense to common problems for the common good.

We believe collaborative stewardship could help to resolve other long-standing vexing natural resource challenges. Few issues, for example, have been more contentious than the recovery of Pacific salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest. For 10 years, lawyers have filed briefs over the adequacy of a recovery plan for salmon. Recent increases in the numbers of returning salmon have done nothing to slow that debate.

The answers to this challenge need not be decided in court. As the Idaho Roadless Rule demonstrates, we can continue to find long-term solutions that are good for fish and people by bringing together those who are affected and creating a dialogue.

While the Idaho roadless petition was issued in 2006, the final rule was not published until 2008. It took time to travel the state seeking input from the public, land users and all stakeholders and to build consensus among interest groups who often disagree over natural resource issues. But in the end, we were able to achieve a result that will benefit generations of Americans. Collaborative stewardship is not fast and it certainly is not easy, but if the objectives are meeting the needs of people while protecting the health of the land, it is the right way to go and the right thing to do.

Jim Risch, elected a U.S. Republican senator for Idaho in 2008, is a former governor of Idaho; Chris Wood is the president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, with national headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Summary of 10th Circuit Decision on 2001 Roadless

Thank you to Matthew Koehler for forwarding and to Mike Anderson, the author, for allowing this to be reprinted here.

Here it is..