Crapo on Collaboration

From Political News here.

Nov 13,2011 – Crapo: Collaboration Taking Higher Profile in U.S. Forest Service Notes promotion of Region 1 Forester Leslie Weldon to Deputy Chief

Washington, D.C. – The use of collaboration and increased public involvement to address contentious federal land management issues is a welcome development, according to Idaho Senator Mike Crapo. Crapo noted the promotion of Region 1 Forester Leslie Weldon to become the new Deputy Chief for the U.S. Forest Service.

Crapo said Weldon has been an active supporter and participant of the Clearwater Basin Collaborative (CBC), an advisory group Crapo helped establish more than three years ago to find solutions to contentious land management and wildlife issues in Idaho’s Clearwater Basin.

“The U.S. Forest Service has been an active participant in the Collaborative and I credit the agency with being at the forefront of this collaborative, problem-solving effort and working with Congress to fund joint initiatives that are bearing fruit,” Crapo said. “Regional Forester Leslie Weldon, working with the leadership team of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest and all of our collaborative members, is advancing a template for land management that could lead to fewer fights in the courts and more on-the-ground land use agreements. We have seen collaborative successes with the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management with the Owyhee Initiative in Southwest Idaho. Now, we are seeing collaboration work with the Forest Service and I commend today’s announcement and promotion of Ms. Weldon to help lead the Forest Service team.”

The CBC has spawned new discussions of job creation through timber harvesting and landscape improvements, which could benefit habitat for elk, fish and other wildlife. Collaborative members have also discussed land protections, recreation and transportation issues to settle long-running disputes on federal lands in central Idaho. The Idaho collaborative effort was one of ten in the nation singled out by Forest Service management as pilot projects under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act for funding to promote problem-solving through consensus building and on-the-ground decision-making on the management of federal lands.

Collaboration Can’t Fix What Ails Public Forest Management

Thanks to Matthew Koehler for sending this..

Collaboration Can’t Fix What Ails Public Forest Management

By Steve Kelly, Friends of the Wild Swan

For decades, forest activists have performed vital oversight, monitoring and enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. Caused by the rapid rise of neoliberalism, beginning in earnest during the Reagan administration, Congress and administrative agencies largely avoided policy responsibilities associated with our environmental laws. Politicians and agency bureaucrats have been screaming bloody murder about grassroots environmentalists and “gridlock” ever since. The simple fact remains, the primary cause of “gridlock” is the government’s systematic refusal to follow environmental laws and regulations.

The steady rise of neoliberalism in the Clinton years led to the now commonplace sharp political rhetoric, which directs its attacks toward the legitimacy of local grassroots forest activism. Add to this a proliferation of market-based, professional “problem solvers” touting “win-win” solutions and jobs, and one can see the game is rigged in favor of those with a vested financial interest in subsidized commodity extraction. This approach is typically dismissive of science and the law and grassroots activism.

Stakeholder partnerships prefer to engage in consensus and collaboration processes which favor a narrow, economics-based view of forest ecosystems. When challenged, collaborative stakeholders say one thing, and do the opposite, which usually leads to more old growth logging, and bulldozing new roads to access the remaining pockets of big, old trees.

One recent example of collaboration gone wild is the Southwestern Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, which was authorized in 2009 under the Omnibus Land Management Act. The stated purpose of this collaborative program is to encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes.

In practice, normal environmental assessment procedures, required by the National Environmental Procedures Act (NEPA), are being undermined by making decisions that may affect thousands of acres of public forest before conducting proper analysis of forseeable environmental impacts, especially cumulative impacts. Full funding has already been allocated by Congress and the Obama administration to a program that lacks a programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). NEPA just becomes a speed bump at the end.

Once a project has been selected a work plan and business plan must be developed within 180 days. These plans describe how projects will be implemented, treatment costs, infrastructure needed, projected supply of woody biomass and timber and the local economic benefits.

The work plan is then submitted to the Regional Forester for approval. Project
implementation may begin once the requesting unit has been notified that the work plan
has been approved.

All of this indicates that any NEPA will be front-loaded.

Here is a copy of the Friends of the Wild Swan Newsletter
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I read this piece, but I don’t understand it. I know some things about NEPA but perhaps not as much as I should about CFLRP, so perhaps readers could enlighten me.

What does Mr. Kelly want a programmatic EIS on? A specific project?

NEPA doesn’t say that agencies can’t work with the public in developing proposals to be analyzed, in fact one of the ideas in NEPA is fostering public involvement. Doesn’t it make sense to develop a proposal before you analyze it? How else could it work? Would it be better for agencies to develop proposals without the public? Maybe I’m missing something here…

And I wonder about this quote:

Stakeholder partnerships prefer to engage in consensus and collaboration processes which favor a narrow, economics-based view of forest ecosystems. When challenged, collaborative stakeholders say one thing, and do the opposite, which usually leads to more old growth logging, and bulldozing new roads to access the remaining pockets of big, old trees.

It is a pretty broad brush statement about “stakeholder partnerships.” I think that some of the collaborators around the country might question whether their view is “narrow, and economics-based”. They might see themselves as seeing the big picture of sustaining the land and people, and working respectfully with each other to understand different views and find the best solutions. They might see others as “lawsuit-happy ideologues.”

Sharon

Forest Planning- Invitation to Artistic Collaboration

I’ve always wondered if the feel of planning would be different if we kicked off revisions with a, say, Blank National Forest art week or weekend, with readings, visual arts, music and theater (possibly with juries and prizes provided by NGOs?) around what the forest means to people. Aspects of this art might then become touchstones in the often head and not heart-filled planning discussions. Anyway, I guess right-brain planning remains unexplored for now, although here’s a contribution from a planning practitioner who prefers privacy (how’s that for alliteration?) who feels the same longings. I wonder how many of us feel this way?

As for me, I have implemented 1982 Rule

Planned to implement the 1994 draft (remember?)

Participated in the evaluation of 2000

Worked on training modules for the 2005

Attempted to implement the 2005

Attempted to implement 2008

Attempting to implement 1982 – again

Anticipate implementing 2011-12 before I retire.

So I offer as a practical exercise and a bit of fun (but I don’t want this classified as “planning humor”) a real online attempt at collaboration of a different kind – an artistic collaboration if you will. But as you may garner, I believe this very concept can transfer into real forest planning collaboration, although perhaps not in rhyme or free verse.

I have for you a poem. You may or may not agree with its contents. Some stanzas are perhaps well formed, some in obvious need of refinement. Maybe some readers who have not made entry or comment will choose to participate. I hope so. Use your creative powers. If you have a replacement for a stanza, reply with the stanza number. Here goes:

The Planning Rule Poem

1. Forget “the best science’

And admit this way’s useless

To “manage” a forest

And follow a plan

When the buzz words change

More than the public can stand

2. New perspectives, no

Ecosystem management, better

EMS, AMS, CER, now ASSESS

All the same, but it’s DIFFERENT

THIS TIME and responsive

To everyone everywhere always, you bet

3. We agree we adore it

We plan to “restore” it

We want it to be

What WE want it to be

And our science is better

Than your science, you see

4. I have this idea

I may be a heretic

To blaspheme “the best science”

As relates to a forest

And employ in its stead

The best ART – there, I’ve said it

5. In the segments of planning

I completely agree

Assess, plan, monitor

One, two, three

And back ‘round again

As the case may be

To adapt, but collaboratively

6. Which is not to say

That Americans should outsource

Our need for the things

That come from the forest

Or underneath it

Of course that IS what we practice today

6. By law forests should

And must in the future

Provide goods and services

(Oh – I’ve heard that before)

With all the new jargon that only confuses

National forests are still about “multiple uses.”

7. ADMIT IT, ADMIT IT, ADMIT IT, I say

Congress has never left NFMA

Behind, so just say to the interested parties

Let’s work together to create in these woods

An artistic collaboration of goods

And services to provide for us and our children to be.

8. Sure we folks in the forest are going to leave evidence

Of our presence, our passing, our needs at this time;

As we need to use resources we know they aren’t limitless

As we play in the forest and know that it succors us

We must simply take care that we don’t take too much

Is that really so hard? Why such a big fuss?

9. Art’s a translation of human sensations

Into a thing that can be experienced

By others as substance, or form, or event

Art is creation, not explanation

Or a scientific finding of association

And a plan’s not a “fact,” it’s a human creation

10. Art moves us ways that can’t be explained

By pieces and bits of data contained

In findings of science

And forests move us in that same way

We plan to create, not to explain or reveal

We know what we like, we know what we feel

11. Having stated what should be obvious

To those who are blinded by dogmatic adherence

To any one notion of “truth” when it comes

To the realm of forest “management”

Be it “preserve it” or “use it” or even “sustain it”

Or “make it resilient” as if WE understood it

12. But “plan” we will, and we’ll to it together

And attempt to find harmony among all the elements

Harmony – a musical artistic term that also is fact

That science can explain, but the notion came first;

It’s the combination of observation and imagination

That artistic collaboration makes a scientific reality.

Collaboration and Fire Impacts in Northern Arizona- from Derek Weidensee

Derek wrote in to say:

Just wanted to share a couple links to a couple news stories in today’s “Arizona Daily” in Flagstaff AZ. The first is a flood resulting from the Schultz fire of a couple weeks ago. The second is an OP-ED by a member of the Greater Flagstaff forest partnership voicing his frustration at the lack of “collaboration” between moderate enviros (GFFP) and more radical enviros at the Center for Biological Diversity. The CBD appealed and stalled a collaborative effort between the GFFP and the USFS to thin 12,000 acres that covered the Schultz fire. It doesn’t have much to do with planning-but it does have a lot to do with the frustrations of collaborative planning. And I think its represents a schism that is developing, and may develop much more in the future, between moderate greens and radical greens.

Ortenburg on Collaboration and the Red Lodge Experience

Here’s a link to a piece by Art Ortenburg on collaborative conservation in the Huffington Post.

The current grass-roots disaffection with federal involvement in land use is undeniable. Utah would like to float off and control all of its federal lands. “Return them to the people” is the slogan. That slogan is being heard repeatedly in the west. This is the time for a major push on the part of the administration to reawaken the collaborative spirit. Instead it is in the process of possibly reversing the “roadless area” principles of the Clinton administration so that new roads on public lands will be available for mining.
.

P.S. I don’t know what he’s talking about with regard to new roads on roadless public lands and mining.

The Right Mix For Collaboration

We have had a number of discussions about collaboration and the right mix of communities of interest and communities of place.

Here’s a real world example, the National Forest Advisory Board for the Black Hills National Forest. Here’s a link to their charter.

They incorporate many of the concepts we have discussed, including being advisory beyond planning. Here’s the mix:

OFFICERS AND MEMBERSHIP

a The membership of the Board shall consist of not more than 16 people, each of whom will represent a particular interest or point of view. The committee shall be representative of the Black Hills community interests and fairly balanced. Membership
shall be representative of the interests shown in the following three categories:

(1) Five persons who—

(a) Represent economic development;
(b) Represent developed outdoor recreation, off-highway vehicle users, or commercial recreation;
(c) Represent energy and mineral development;
(d) Represent the commercial timber industry; or
(e) Hold a Federal grazing permit or other land use permit within the area for which the committee is organized.

(2) Five persons representing—
(a) Nationally recognized environmental organizations;
(b) Regionally or locally recognized environmental organizations;
(c) Dispersed recreation;
(d) Archaeology and history; or
(e) Nationally or regionally recognized sportsmen’s groups, such as anglers or hunters.
(3) Six persons who hold—

(a) South Dakota state-elected office or elected-officer’s appointee;
(b) Wyoming state-elected office or elected officer’s appointee;
(c) South Dakota or Wyoming county- or local-elected office
(d) Tribal government-elected or -appointed office;
(e) A position as a South Dakota State natural resource agency official; and (f) A position as a Wyoming State natural resource agency Official.

What do y’all think of this mix?

QLG – Granddaddy of Place-Based Collaboration

The granddaddy of place-based national forest legislation is the 1998 Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act (“QLG”), which resulted from a 1993 collaborative group “community stability proposal.”  So how has the law worked out?  Here’s what the Forest Service reported in its latest QLG monitoring report:

Implementation of the Pilot Project continues to be affected by litigation and appeals. Court decisions are pending on cases that have been in litigation for up to four years. In FY08, approximately 90 percent of all timber sales or service contracts across the HFQLG Pilot Project area were stalled due to litigation or appeals. As a result, volume of both sawlogs and biomass sold declined by 50 percent from FY07 levels.

Since 1998, QLG-area sawlog volume sold averaged less than 20% of the 1992-1997 average level.  Forest Service expenses have stayed constant, but timber revenues have declined to 35% of pre-QLG law levels.  Forest industry jobs have dropped 25% and several of the area’s largest sawmills have closed.

The Forest Service bureaucracy is the major beneficiary, as QLG proved to be a magnet for federal spending.  But few would argue that the original “community stability” goal was realized, nor, perhaps, could changes in natural resource policy alone alter the downward economic trajectory suffered by most of the West’s rural communities.

Modern-day proponents of similar schemes, e.g., Beaverhead-Deerlodge and eastern Oregon legislative proposals, would do well to learn from QLG’s experience.

Project-based Forest Planning and Collaboration

People collaborate best when they are in the woods talking about real forests and what to do with them.  On the other hand, put them in a conference room to debate the merits of hypothetical silvicultural standards and you end up with the sort of nonsense we are seeing in northern Arizona. There several prominent, litigious environmental groups have made peace with local timber mills and workers regarding which trees to log on several national forests.  The Forest Service, however, doesn’t want to play ball.  Instead, its regional staff in Albuquerque is busily re-writing northern Arizona NFMA plans to include silvicultural standards that are inimical to agreements reached in the woods between the green groups and industry.

This bureaucratic passion play could be avoided altogether if NFMA plans were based on projects, not standards.  Recall that NFMA requires only one thing of forest plans:  “the planned timber sale program and the proportion of probable methods of timber harvest within the unit necessary to fulfill the plan.”  Recall also that NFMA does not mandate one forest plan for each national forest.  The Forest Service has broad discretion to decide the geographic scope of each plan, i.e., a single national forest can be divided into several NFMA plans.

Under the current two-tier planning regime, the Forest Service and its protagonists get to fight twice over what to do with national forests.  The forest plan fight is all about the adequacy of standards, the aspirational zoning of land, and the magnitude of largely irrelevant allowable sale quantities.  The second fight, at the project level, often repeats all of the above (because forest plan standards become ripe for legal challenge only when implemented in a project), with plan-consistency arguments thrown in for good measure.

Let’s just cut out the middle man altogether.  A forest plan should be no more than the logging projects the Forest Service proposes for the next several years.  The plan’s NEPA document (probably an EIS, but an EA is not inconceivable if the logging projects are environmentally modest) would evaluate alternatives, disclose effects, and form the basis for any required inter-agency consultation.  The plan’s Record of Decision would set forth the site-specific projects to be undertaken,  eliminating separate project-based planning and decision-making.  Forest planning collaboration, if pursued, would consist of people talking in the woods about each of the projects.

Barriers to collaboration: NEPA concerns?

Interesting story. from the Billings Gazette.. I noticed a couple of things..

First, the FS process looks good- so having a cooperators group is clearly something that can work well. Right now it is not a requirement of any rule but something that makes some sense (at least it is popular in Wyoming).

Second, the BLM seems to be caught up in concerns of “pre-decisionality”, which is a concern about talking to people violating the NEPA process. Since this is a topic that is worrisome to FS folks, it would be useful to explore further.

My pragmatic view is that you talk to people and they talk to you, throughout the NEPA process. Unless you convene a formal group (without FACA), you don’t have to worry about FACA. At some point, the decision maker has to go behind closed doors and make a decision, and they and their staff bring all the conversations, formal public comment, views of cooperator groups and make a decision.

What really concerns me is that NEPA can become a reason for “not talking” to people, and I don’t think that is the spirit of NEPA. Anyway, perhaps some of you could shed some light on these concerns- you can see some of the issues that can be raised in this news story.

The Dangers of Collaboration: Going Deeper in Understanding the Issue

The recent discussion on another thread on this blog re concerns about local collaboration reminded me of this op-ed by Erica Rosenberg on the Dangers of Collaboration in the Christian Science Monitor op-ed a while back. I remember because I wrote a letter to the editor that got published (good) but frankly, writing within the number of word limits for letters to the editor does not add much to dialogue, IMHO.

“After years of being tarred as obstructionist ideologues, some environmental groups now have a seat at the negotiating table. Enjoying their newfound popularity, these self-appointed decisionmakers become heavily invested in reaching an accord, regardless of the science, the law, or the long-term effect on the land.”

It sounds like the author is saying 1) if local environmentalists negotiate with others in local collaborative groups they can be “wrong” (which raises the question in my mind “if national groups negotiate nationally with the Executive Branch, can they be “wrong” also?”), 2) the local groups would know less or care less about the “science”, 3) local people know less or care less about the long-term effect on the land. Caring less about the land seems difficult to understand; isn’t NIMBY a real phenomenon we’ve all experienced? This seems to be a paradox; thus, perhaps, we need to dig deeper.

I would also observe that the unpleasant consequences of the uncertainty related to protracted court decision-making tend to fall entirely on the local people, so that they have a stronger interest in making a decision and moving on. These costs are not borne by national groups, who simply tend to move on to other things, and then show up in the next act of the glacially-paced courtroom drama.

In my experience, local environmental groups usually know more and care more about a particular piece of land and what is being done. Let’s go to Dan Kemmis on this as he is infinitely more articulate than I, in this article Science’s Role in Natural Resource Decisions in the journal “Issues of Science and Technology.”

To add to what Kemmis says, in my experience, local knowledge is valuable in resolving natural resource disputes- because you are arguing about facts, not broad philosophies. I once spoke on a panel (a Festschrift for Gene Namkoong at UBC) with a medical ethicist. He said that while people had strongly held philosophies about what to do with patients and what was right or wrong, when it came to specific cases in the hospital, there was much more agreement. When I taught Environmental Ethics, my text was by Joseph DesJardins Environmental Ethics: an introduction to environmental philosophy.

In the epilogue, (in the third edition) DesJardins talks about his real world experience in dealing with a community environmental problem.
P. 269

No one got what they wanted and neither side “won.” Yet, as one member pointed out, the real winner was democratic citizenship. People came together, argued, debated and eventually found common ground. The compromise “worked” in the sense that most everyone concluded that they could live with it. In a democracy- indeed, in any situation in which diverse perspectives conflict- it is unrealistic, unreasonable and perhaps unfair to expect or desire one side completely to triumph over others. This is, in many ways, the “pragmatic” solution.

DesJardins goes on to discuss the arguments of supporters and critics of “environmental pragmatism.”

So, we could ask, is this ultimately a deep philosophical divide between pragmatists and others?

Is there a feeling that locals (westerners, in the case above, or rural people or ?), can’t quite be trusted to arrive at the “right” conclusions?

When people negotiate to end wars, or for trade agreements, we never talk about there being a “right answer” and a “wrong answer.” We would just like to have the disputes settled and move on. Why are natural resource conflicts on the public lands different, or are they?

Lots of places to go with this one, but I think it is fundamental to our forest planning world and worth exploring.