Guest guest Posted December 2, 2008 Report Share Posted December 2, 2008 440 - Western North American Tree News --Today for you 27 news articles about earth's trees! (440th edition) http://forestpolicyresearch.org --To Subscribe / to email format send blank email to: earthtreenews- OR earthtreenews- --Deane's Daily Treeinspiration texted to your phone via: http://twitter.com/ForestPolicy Index: --British Columbia: 1) Timber thieves, 2) Petition to end exports of ancient forests, 3) Survey says citizens support protection for the Flathead, 4) Fraser's fragile forests, 5) Stumpage way, way down, 6) Save the Great Bear Rainforest, 7) Bogs have threatened forests too! 8) Export every last log and every last job to Asia,--Western US: 9) Book: The American West at Risk:--Pacific Northwest: 10) More Spotted owl lawsuits and lawsuit interventions, 11) Spotted Owl Decline? Pay no attention to the logger behind the curtain,--Washington: 12) 61trees per person, 13) Tarboo Creek Restoration taken it to a whole new level, --Oregon: 14) Logging equipment destroys soils, 15) New spotted Owl Lawsuit filed, 16) Citizen's in John Day say: Our survival depends on collapsing industry? 17) Madrone Wall turned into a park, 18) New forest board member just barely to the left, --California:19) Bohemian Grove elite still trying to log their old growth, 20) Central Valley Vision Implementation Plan, 21) Jackson State Logging to begin for the first time in nine years, 22) Climatic aftermath of the moonlight fire, 23) How Ventura county ended up with less sprawl,--Arizona: 24) Governor says there's plenty of public support for National Forest thinnings? --Montana: 25) Fires work better in unmanged forest, 26) Logging along 750 miles of roads, 27) B-D Consensus-based wilderness bill is messed up,Articles: British Columbia: 1) Something awful is happening in the pristine backcountry. Thieves are killing massive old-growth cedars, carving out shingle blocks and leaving 98 or 99 per cent of the trees littering the forest floor. Todd Smith, compliance and enforcement technician with the Ministry of Forests Salmon Arm office, says the most recent theft occurred near Seymour Arm. " Somebody stole about 10 or 12 old-growth cedars north of Seymour Arm last spring, " says a disgusted Smith. " They're four to six feet across on average and easily hundreds of years old. " Smith says the thieves only want shake blocks so they take only a small portion of prime wood, usually 24-inch blocks, which are free of knots and straight grained. " The number they get depends on the tree, but from what I've seen, they're only taking one or two per cent of the tree out, " he says. " This is the second one we've found. As the price of cedar and the need for cedar shakes increased so did the incidents of theft. " He says the cedar shake market fluctuates from week to week and is not an easy one. And, legitimate cedar shake manufacturers work hard to find the raw material, he adds. Smith says the thieves go into the biggest and the best cedar stands and don't care whether the trees fall into creeks or other sensitive areas. " I don't know how they're selling it without a timber mark, " Smith says, noting the wood is likely transported from the forest in 24-inch square blocks. 'Everybody that harvests legally will have a timber mark. " Smith believes the prime-quality wood is most likely destined for the Lower Mainland and elsewhere. He says the stolen material is probably transported in a van or pickup truck. " They go up in the night, we've dealt with this before, " he says, noting another theft site was discovered in the North Shuswap in the fall of 2007. " They don't think of the consequences until they're caught, but it's actually very serious environmentally and criminally, " Smith says, noting penalties vary for those found guilty of cutting the cedars and stealing the wood. " In this case, it would be a criminal code offence for theft over $5,000. " Smith says visitors to the backcountry are asked to be vigilant and report illegal cuts to the Vernon office of the Ministry of Forest and Range at 250-558-1700. " We want to get public's attention, " he says. " It's sad to see the trees cut down and there are legitimate workers still out there and it hampers them. " By Barb Brouwer, Shuswap Market News2) Campaign supporters have so far collected over 24,000 signatures (21,000 hardcopies and 3,200 online) for our petition to end old-growth logging on Vancouver Island and to ban raw log exports. We're shooting for 6,000 more signatures by December 15 before we hand them in at a major media event. PLEASE help us! DOWNLOAD hardcopies (and sign it if you haven't already) at http://www.viforest.org You can also PICK-UP hardcopy sheets at our downtown Victoria store and office at 651 Johnson St. Phone 250-388-9292 CIRCULATE copies in class (up and down aisles), work, home, church, among friends and family, door to door, and at busy street corners ( " Hi, would you like to sign our petition to protect ancient forests and to ban raw log exports? " Simple.). RETURN signed petition sheets to us at WCWC, 651 Johnson St., Victoria, BC V8W 1M7 Do petitions work? YES! If done on a large enough scale, they indicate to governments that significant numbers of people who could potentially toss them out of power care about the issue. Combined with letters, phone calls, and protests, the petition will greatly contribute to putting the destruction of Vancouver Island's last ancient forests and the loss of thousands of coastal forestry jobs on the BC Liberal government's agenda for consideration - only 6 months before a BC election in May. http://www.viforest.org 3) Seven out of ten Kootenay residents want to protect the Flathead River Valley as a national park, according to new polling results released today by Wildsight and Sierra Club BC. The poll, conducted by McAllister Opinion Research, found that 73 per cent of residents in East Kootenay, Nelson-Creston and Columbia River-Revelstoke favour protecting the Flathead River Valley in southeastern B.C. And 50 per cent of those are strongly in favour of the park proposal. The Flathead River Valley is compared to Africa's Serengeti for its richness of plant species and was recently called "a nursery" for wildlife by Canadian Geographic magazine. The valley is under threat from proposals for coal strip mining, coalbed methane drilling and unbridled mineral extraction. Only 16 percent of residents polled said they oppose a national park in the Flathead. Sierra Club BC and Wildsight are calling for the lower one-third of the Flathead River Valley to be protected as a national park and for a Wildlife Management Area to be established in the rest of this biologically-rich valley. B.C.'s Flathead River Valley is a key area in the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and an integral part of the "Crown of the Continent" eco-region that includes Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in Alberta and Montana--a World Heritage Site and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. "People who live here know the Flathead River Valley deserves the same level of protection and recognition as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park," said Casey Brennan, Wildsight's Southern Rockies program manager. "These polling results confirm the impression we get from talking to people around the Kootenays—that they love nature and want to make sure it's properly protected.The Flathead River is one of North America's last wild rivers and has some of the purest water in the world," said Sierra Club BC spokesperson Sarah Cox. "The water is used by scientists as a benchmark by which to measure water quality in rivers around the world. The Flathead is much more than just another pretty valley and it deserves permanent protection." Parks Canada has included the Flathead Valley in its National Parks Action Plan but needs approval from the B.C. government before proceeding. Check out TV coverage of this story here - Wildsight #2 - 495 Wallinger Ave. Kimberley, BC V1A 1Z6 Phone: (250) 427-9325 | info Find out more and take action at http://www.flathead.ca 4) Roy Howard knows better than anyone how difficult it can be to reach that kind of happy, or at least friendly, compromise. Howard has lived in Dunster for 33 years. In the late 1990s, as president of the Fraser Headwaters Alliance, he sat on the Robson Valley land use management committee. When yelling matches would break out between loggers and environmentalists, friends say Roy was the peacemaker to whom both sides would listen. One of the most heated arguments was over logging near the Upper Goat River, a tributary of the Fraser about 35 kilometres northwest of McBride. Despite being identified as important habitat for the endangered bull trout and mountain caribou, as well as wolves, grizzlies, lynx and wolverines, the area received no special zoning under the region's land use management plan. Intent on raising the profile of the Goat as one of the last pristine valleys in the region, Howard spearheaded the task of promoting it as a premier hiking destination in the province. The Goat River Trail is a historic route from Barkerville to McBride via a pass in the Caribou Mountains. It was first cleared in 1886 by a crew of men under orders from Gold Commissioner John Bowron, though First Nations likely traveled this way long before they arrived. We meet Howard at the confluence of the Goat and Milk Rivers, on an old forest service site northeast of West Twin Provincial Park. The Cedar Spirit is parked in a cutblock -- the only one so far in this valley -- where we've set up camp for the night. After three days paddling north, we will travel by van from here to Prince George, where the river curves like the top of an 'S' and heads south. While we're here, Howard has agreed to lead our group down a 5-kilometre section of the Goat River trail to the first ford, where he and his son installed a cable car back in 2001. " We got all kinds of shit from the Forest Service for building the cable car, " he says, as we file along the narrow path that follows the river, flanked on either side by blueberry bushes and prickly devil's club. Some of the locals weren't too happy about the trail promotion either, says Howard as he hacks at some overgrowth. " Log it! There's no money in tourism, only logging. Tourism only pays eight dollars an hour for jobs, and there's not very many of them, " Howard recalls hearing. " It seems to me that's the minor part of it. It's the ecosystem protection you should be worried about. " Jobs in tourism will never replace those in the forestry industry. But in recent years, researchers in British Columbia have tried to put a dollar value on forests, not just trees. http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/26/FraserForest/ 5) Bell said stumpage revenues for 2008-09 were forecast to be $952 million at the beginning of the year, but now have been revised down to $652 million. Stumpage is an easily trackable but small piece of forestry's total contribution to government coffers, normally close to $3 billion a year. That $3 billion contribution is also expected to shrink. " There is no industry that is more important to British Columbia than the forest industry. We need to get this industry working under the right framework, " Bell said in an interview. He added that B.C. is opposed to Ottawa's recent throne speech promise to single out the auto industry for aid. " Our position is: What's good for the goose is good for the gander, " Bell said. " Whatever we do should apply to all industries across Canada. " We are not supportive of direct payments to industry. We are supportive of additional tax relief, international marketing, and research and development spending, specifically on things like bioenergy. " Premier Gordon Campbell delivered that message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday. " It doesn't make long-term sense in terms of the economy to pick one group of workers in one sector in one province of the country and treat them differently than other workers, " Campbell said in an interview Tuesday. He said both Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty are aware of the challenge. " There's not a worker . . . in Mackenzie right now who is saying to themselves, 'I would like to send my tax dollars to one of the big three automakers in either Canada or the United States to help them get through this time'. We're all having to work to get through this time, " Campbell said. Mackenzie, north of Prince George, has lost all its major forest industry employers, putting more than 1,500 people out of work in the town of 4,700. In Prince George, Terry Tate, a forest worker coordinator for the United Steelworkers Union, said layoffs in the industry have never been so bad. He said out of 5,000 sawmill workers in the Prince George region within the union, 2,200 are either out of work or face losing their jobs. Unemployment benefits are starting to run out. Tate said a " second wave " of panic is starting to set in for people who have been unemployed for months already but now see no hope. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=f5e248fb-5fb4-41f7-a774-db2d69e0d996 6) The old-growth coastal rainforests of western Canada are estimated to sequester from 250 to 520 tons of carbon per acre, and extract another ton every year, helping reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that reportedly cause global warming. These forests, filled with 1,000-year old trees standing nearly 300 feet tall, are the habitat not only for the rare white bear, a genetic anomaly descended from black bears, but also for 50 percent of Canada's grizzly bear population. They also contain such notable species as black-tailed deer, Roosevelt elk, grey wolves, mountain goats, and three-quarters of Canada's breeding populations of woodpeckers, tree swallows, chickarees and owls. These are truly lands that time forgot, filled with mists and ferny forest floors, and the amnesia has been a blessing for rare ecologies. Unfortunately, some key components of the conservancy were never hammered out or enforced, and now - with a March 2009 deadline approaching - the Great Bear Rainforest faces further challenges as loggers, developers and others salivate over the prospect of a wilderness open to plundering. Keep the Promise , a nonprofit conservation organization backed by the original proponents of the 2006 legislation, has set up a website to encourage Canadian citizens (and others) to sign a petition demanding Campbell and the BC government institute all of the provisions recommended under the original agreement. To do less, the organization maintains, is to jeopardize all the progress made so far. A supporting nonprofit, GreatBearWatch, is now maintaining a site with a countdown clock marking the days and hours until the deadline. Please visit one, or both, sites and make your voice heard. Time is running out for the Great Bear Rainforest, the world's largest temperate rainforest, and for its inhabitants. A spirit totem is nothing to mess with, and a vision quest may reveal truths closer to reality than we imagine. http://www.celsias.com/article/canadas-great-bear-rainforest/ 7) It isn't just the forests and their wildlife that is at-risk. Three percent of the earth's surface is covered with peatlands and they store twice as much carbon as all the world's forests. We are so busy in BC looking up at our beautiful giants that we are missing what is happening at our feet--the destruction of our peatland and other wetlands with nary a wimper! Right now people are sitting back and thinking that because 4 levels of government purchased half of the original Burns Bog that is safe. It is at greater risk now than when it was in private hands. Our local government which has the right under the Conservation Covenant and Metro Vancouver that also has the right to invoke Section 5 (the dispute risolution) over the South Fraser Perimeter Road. Guess why? I just received a phone call a week ago from someone alerting me to the fact that a farmer is placing 150,000 cu metres of landlfill right next to the Conservation area. The land fill is sinking and the trees next to it are leaning. In follow up phone calls, I discover the Agriculture Land Commission give the " farmer " permission based on are report produced by a Corp. of Delta staffer. The good part of Ingmar's and Karen Wonders email, it gives me an opportunity to bring this to the attention of a larger community. This would not be happening in Ireland or Germany. In both countries, when a cutover bog is completely harvested, the harvesting company has to rewet the area and monitor it constantly to ensure that it will not dry out and will eventually regenerate. What do we do in British Columbia? Why we say the area is degraded so let's build roads and put up houses and industrial buildings on the cutover bog. LOOK DOWN! Look at what is disappearing at your feet. It is the bedrock of the forests--our peatlands.--Eliza Olson http://www.burnsbog.org also à International Mires Conservtion Groups http://www.imcg.net the website. 8) The skeleton of a pulp mill that provided work for generations in Squamish is sitting in a Nanaimo port, awaiting shipment to China. Its final contribution to the B.C. economy is the rent taken by the Nanaimo Port Authority to store the disassembled mill until the new owner, China International Tourism & Trade Ltd., can load it and ship it out. To Bill Mills, chief executive officer of the port authority, the massive components lining the back lot of his Duke Point terminal are a source of needed revenue. But he sees the danger those parts represent. " I hope it's not going to be a trend. " In his 22 years running the facility, Mr. Mills has had a unique perch from which to observe the fortunes of the province's forest industry. The Nanaimo port has lived for forestry - its website still shows a bright image of the terminal stacked to capacity with sawed B.C. timber - and now the port, too, is struggling. " What was our bread-and-butter operation is now a weight around our neck, " he said. " We used to have two mills right on our property downtown; they'd been there for 30 years. Now they have been dissembled and exited, stage left. " As he prepares for his retirement in January, Mr. Mills is leaving an operation that is also trying to find a new groove. The yawning spaces that once stored B.C. lumber products are now filled with whatever can generate rent, including a stockpile of road salt for a contractor getting ready for winter. Plans for a cruise ship terminal are on hold pending federal funding. In the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, Mr. Mills recalled, the port was handling 400 million to 450 million board feet of lumber annually. In 2007, the volume dipped below 55 million board feet. Steve Hunt, Western Canada director for the United Steelworkers of America union, said he is saddened by the image of the Squamish mill being shipped off to create jobs in China. " Squamish used to be a vibrant forestry community and now, the community is pinning its hopes on the Olympics. After 17 days it'll be gone, and a way of life is gone. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081201.wbcforestry01/BNStory/National/home Western US: 9) Book: The American West at Risk: When discovered by European explorers and later settlers, the west boasted rich soils, bountiful fisheries, immense, dense forests, sparkling streams, untapped ore deposits, and oil bonanzas. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few " renewable " resources. The importance of this story is that preserving lands has a central role for protecting air and water quality, and water supplies--and all support a healthy living environment. The idea that all life on earth is connected in a great chain of being, and that all life is connected to the physical earth in many obvious and subtle ways, is not some new-age fad, it is scientifically demonstrable. An understanding of earth processes, and the significance of their biological connections, is critical in shaping societal values so that national land use policies will conserve the earth and avoid the worst impacts of natural processes. These connections inevitably lead science into the murkier realms of political controversy and bureaucratic stasis. Most of the chapters in The American West at Risk focus on a human land use or activity that depletes resources and degrades environmental integrity of this resource-rich, but tender and slow-to-heal, western U.S. The activities include forest clearing for many purposes; farming and grazing; mining for aggregate, metals, and other materials; energy extraction and use; military training and weapons manufacturing and testing; road and utility transmission corridors; recreation; urbanization; and disposing of the wastes generated by everything that we do. We focus on how our land-degrading activities are connected to natural earth processes, which act to accelerate and spread the damages we inflict on the land. http://www.amazon.com/American-West-Risk-Politics-Recovery/ Pacific Northwest: 10) A large alliance of environmental groups is joining its foes, the timber industry, in opposing a federal blueprint for protecting the northern spotted owl, the threatened Northwest bird that has stood in the way of logging federal lands. The timber industry argued in a lawsuit filed last month in Washington, D.C., that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to designate too much land as critical habitat for the owl. On Monday, 18 wildlife and conservation groups asked to intervene in the lawsuit, arguing the Fish and Wildlife Service isn't designating enough critical habitat. The standoff highlights the role of the spotted owl as a key tool in the argument over how much of the Northwest forests should remain easily accessible to logging. Owls favor large, older forests that were a key source of Northwest timber. While logging on federal land has fallen sharply since the 1990s, owl numbers are still declining. Scientists increasingly believe that's also because of invading barred owls, a more aggressive cousin of the spotted owl that has arrived from the East. Conservation groups argue that makes protecting owl habitat all the more important. The 18 groups also argue that a new federal recovery plan for the spotted owl -- closely linked to critical habitat -- isn't based on the best available science and was undermined by political meddling. The groups include Oregon Wild, the Audubon Society of Portland, Sierra Club and the Gifford Pinchot Task Force. " We think the recovery plan is fatally flawed for its failure to use the best science, the misuse of the science it did use and the political interference that marked the whole process, " said Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice lawyer representing the groups. They're asking for a court order " to ensure that northern spotted owls and their habitat do not suffer irreparable harm pending resolution of the merits of this action. " The Fish and Wildlife Service revised its critical habitat for the northern spotted owl as part of a deal between the Bush administration and the timber industry to resolve an earlier industry lawsuit. The revision reduced the amount of critical habitat from about 6.9 million acres to 5.3 million acres. But the American Forest Resource Council, an industry group in Portland, and other timber companies and groups were not satisfied. They argue the remaining critical habitat protections will unnecessarily hamper efforts to thin overgrown forests before they burn up in wildfires, wiping out the owl habitat for decades. " This is going to do nothing but make the populations go down even more, " said Tom Partin, president of the Resource Council. http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1227585325157840.xml & coll=7 11) Across their entire range in Washington, Oregon, Northern California and British Columbia, there are thought to be fewer than 5,000 northern spotted owls left. In the dense forests of the Olympic Peninsula last year, spotted owls were found in 19 of the 54 sites they had once populated. Their numbers have declined by a third since the 1990s, when old-growth logging across the Pacific Northwest came to a virtual halt in an effort to protect their habitat. The declines have been so persistent -- averaging 4% a year -- that a growing number of scientists have come to think the most immediate culprit is not logging but the aggressive barred owl, which has crept into the West Coast forests from Canada over the last few decades. Bigger, more fertile and with an appetite less finicky than its threatened cousin, the barred owl has taken over in forest after forest, experts say -- claiming spotted owls' nests in the warmer, lower elevations. Now, as the spotted owl continues to decline, the federal government is taking what many conservationists say is the worst step possible: reopening more of the bird's forests to logging. In what is likely to be one of the final environmental battles of the Bush administration, 18 environmental groups filed motions in federal court last week to block a massive remapping of federal lands in the Pacific Northwest. Proposals by the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which officials hope to have in place by the end of the year, would open up for logging large tracts that had been set aside as breathing space for the owls -- nearly 1.8 million acres.... http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2008/12/spotted-owl-disappearing-act-across.html Washington: 12) As Evergreen State College student Nalini Nadkarni recently found out, if you take those two vast quantities and divide the number of trees living on the planet by the number of people, the number you get is surprisingly fathomable. Nadkarni used data from NASA satellites to estimate the number of trees at 400,246,300,201. That means there are roughly 61 trees per person here on Earth. Think about your one little self standing next to 61 big trees, and it seems like we're in good shape. But then think about all the ways in which people use trees: home building, furniture building, all of the various forms of paper that most of us use each day. If you're like me, suddenly you'll start to feel a sense of worry in the pit of your stomach -- 61 doesn't sound like so many anymore. And we are destroying the forests that remain at an alarming rate. According to this report from the WWF, for example, 55 percent of the Amazon's forests could be gone by 2030. These numbers represent not only the ruin of beautiful natural area and crucial wildlife habitat, but also the loss of vital carbon sinks that are no longer helping absorb greenhouse gases that human activities produce at staggering rates. http://www.worldchanging.com/local/seattle/archives/009087.html 13) The revival of Tarboo Creek, in a small valley feeding into Hood Canal, the slender western arm of Puget Sound, is the story of a few dreamers who fell in love with a stream. When Peter Bahls comes to a valley, one of the first things he does is walk the streams. Like a cardiologist tracking a patient's blood vessels, the lanky 47-year-old looks for signs of sickness: Undersized culverts that block the way for spawning salmon, ditches that drain water from marshes, and creeks forced into straight lines that send water rushing too fast for baby fish. In 1992, when Bahls first set foot in the Tarboo Valley as a biologist working for the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, it had been transformed by waves of settlement. The valley bottom, which once bristled with massive Sitka spruce and western red cedars, was a chain of pastures. An occasional stump, big as a kitchen table, offered a clue to what was once there. Tarboo Creek, the valley's main artery, met a fate familiar to nearly every river around Puget Sound. It was dammed to make ponds for lumber mills and rerouted to clear pasture for dairy farms. Ditches were dug to drain marshes for farmland. But the valley has been spared some of the worst damage. Far from any business center, much of the shoreline is untouched by concrete sea walls. Forests, regrown since the ravages of early logging, blanket the hillsides. The acres of pavement that come with subdivisions and shopping malls haven't reached here yet. Tarboo and Dabob bays — which are fed by Tarboo Creek and flow into each other — are so clean they host shellfish nurseries supplying many companies around Puget Sound. So in 2001, when Bahls got fed up with a job at an environmental consulting firm, hopping from project to project, his thoughts returned to Tarboo Valley. He was looking for a place to try a more grand plan. Not just a single Band-Aid but a methodical restoration of a whole stream system from the headwaters to the saltwater. Bahls started small. He and his group removed a culvert in the stream that was too steep for spawning coho. The culvert lay under the driveway leading to the home of the Olympic Music Festival. Bahls' group replaced it with a picturesque wooden bridge. " We've built a lot of bridges with landowners, literally, " he says. Now they are awaiting a critical decision by the state Department of Natural Resources that would set the stage for protecting more than 3,500 acres of forest and shorelines. The proposed designation of much of the watershed as a natural area would enable the department to buy land from private landowners who want to sell. The state could also swap state-owned land there that's logged to raise money for schools with land elsewhere, effectively putting the state land inside the natural area off-limits to chainsaws. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2008434384_pacificptarboo30.html Oregon:14) Logging equipment destroys soils: " Ecological as well as economical consequences of mechanized harvesting procedures are of great importance in forestry, not only because of an intense increase in machine mass during tree cutting and transportation, but also because of a drastic increase in the stress application due to more pronounced vibration energy created from the harvesting machines themselves.... Generally, the data obtained for the measured soil stresses and the natural bearing capacity prove that sustainable wheeling is impossible, irrespective of the vehicle type and the working process. Top and subsoil compaction, an increase in precompression stress values in the various soil horizons, deep rut depth and vertical and horizontal soil displacement associated with shearing effects take place and affect the mechanical strength of forest soils... " Regards, Jon Rhodes, Hydrologist Planeto Azul Hydrology PO Box 15286 PDX, OR 97293 Now on the interweb thingy at http://www.planetoazul.com 15) Conservation groups are suing the Bush administration to undo the northern spotted owl recovery plan that is making it possible to ramp up old growth forest logging in Oregon. A coalition of conservation groups filed motions Monday to intervene in a timber industry lawsuit over the owl in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Seattle Audubon Society and the others argue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was politically influenced by the Bush administration and violated the Endangered Species Act by ignoring the best available science, both in the plan for saving the owl from extinction and in deciding to reduce protections for old growth forests where the owl lives by 1.6 million acres. The spotted owl was declared a threatened species in 1990 primarily because of heavy logging in old growth forests. Lawsuits from conservation groups led to the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging on federal lands by more than 80 to protect habitat for the owl, salmon and other species. The declining log production led to economic pain in the region, particularly in small logging towns, and the Bush administration has been trying since 2000 to relax environmental laws and regulations to boost logging levels, with little success. The owl recovery plan twice flunked peer reviews by outside scientists who said it contained no scientific basis for allowing more logging of the old growth forests set aside under the Northwest Forest Plan as habitat for the owl. The plan also identified wildfire and the invasion of spotted owl territory by the barred owl as factors in the threatened bird's decline. Dominick DellaSala of the National Center for Conservation Science & Policy, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, served on a team of scientists who worked on the owl recovery plan before it was taken over by the Fish and Wildlife Service. He said they were prevented from doing their jobs by a group of Bush administration officials in Washington, who needed an owl recovery plan that would allow logging in old growth forests in order to push through the so-called Whopper, or Western Oregon Plan Revision, which dismantles the Northwest Forest Plan for saving owls and increases logging on federal lands in western Oregon. Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, the public interest law firm representing the conservation groups, said the owl recovery plan, smaller critical habitat and the Whopper, " are the final pieces to the puzzle the Bush administration has been putting together the last eight years to undo the Northwest Forest Plan and deliver unsustainable amounts of timber to the timber industry. " http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gOIl4eHuVn0GmiY4YGDokffLbpEgD94LSA4O0 16) Shelk said he'd rather see collaborative efforts move faster, but he also called collaboration " the only game in town. " He noted the transformation of the eastside forests over the past 25 years, from " an absolute timber orientation " to a near shutdown of logging in recent years. The Malheur National Forest was selling about 250-280 million board feet a year in the early 1980s, he said. Today, the cut is closer to 10-15 million board feet, and it has dipped to zero in recent years. " We desperately need industry to be retained in this valley, " said John Shelk of the Ochoco Lumber and Malheur Lumber companies. " Ultimately, it comes down to collaboration. " However, he also acknowledged that collaboration - a process in which environmental, industry and community advocates hash out their differences on forest projects - is cumbersome and time-consuming. " And it doesn't currently produce the outputs that our company needs to survive, " Shelk said. The Forestry Board traveled to John Day last Friday, Nov. 21, to tour several U.S. Forest Service project sites and discuss forest health with local experts. The session drew about 60 people to a meeting room at the Malheur Nationa¬¬¬l Forest headquarters. The board is considering a report from the Oregon Department of Forestry's Federal Forestlands Advisory Committee regarding the 58 percent of Oregon forestlands that are federally managed. The committee's draft details a vision, goals, challenges and actions for those forests, and it emphasizes the interconnected nature of state, federal and private forest lands. " Across Oregon's forested landscape ... federal forestlands should help deliver a set of environmental, economic and social benefits sufficient to ensure that the State's forest resource in total is sustainable, " the report states. The report also notes a " sense of urgency " as the federal forests become increasingly overstocked and unhealthy, leaving them vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire and insect damage. At the same time, the state report notes that the infrastructure - the mills and logging industry - needed to clean up the forests is rapidly disappearing, particularly in Eastern Oregon. A local panel urged the ODF Board to push ahead with the report's recommendations, including creation of a federal forestland liaison program to work with local communities and federal forest managers. In addition to Shelk, the panel included Boyd Britton, Grant County commissioner; Tim Lillebo of the conservation group Oregon Wild, and Diane Vosick of the Nature Conservancy. Panelists called for better funding of the U.S. Forest Service to move sales off the drawing boards. They also asked for the ODF's technical assistance in preparing sales. http://www.myeaglenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=1 & SubSectionID=12 & ArticleID=18784 & TM=68106.03 17) Clawing up the 100-foot Electric Everything route of the Madrone Wall, Keith Daellenbach knew he'd discovered an Oregon jewel. A haven for native wildlife, ancient basalt formations and unusual trees, the climbing area in eastern Clackamas County epitomized the reasons the engineer had moved back from New York. But a few months later, in 1997, Daellenbach stumbled upon a secret plan by the local government to close the area and blast the 600,000-year-old rock face into gravel for roads. Saving the Madrone Wall looked unlikely. To Clackamas County, the soaring cliffs and twisting madrone trees were known as tax lot R23E17 03400, a timber harvesting spot that sometimes went by Hardscrabble Quarry because it could provide a cheap source of gravel. When Daellenbach returned to the Madrone Wall after climbing it the first time, he encountered a metal fence and " No Trespassing " signs. His climbing buddies didn't know why it was closing. Government workers wouldn't officially say anything, but rumors swirled that the county planned to turn it into a rock quarry. When Daellenbach and others forced Clackamas County to reveal its intentions, the commissioners said it was too late to stop them. It has taken more than a decade to scale the political walls to rescue the Madrone Wall. But this month, the climb reached a summit: Clackamas County has agreed to turn the area into a park and selected a plan for the park's design. For Daellenbach the victory is bittersweet. Now 41 and past his prime climbing years, he can't pull himself up rocks the way he used to. And although the inclusion of a climbing wall in the park looks likely, it's not set in stone that the county will allow climbers to use the area. The fight has changed him, too. Daellenbach once saw the outdoors as mostly as a playground. Now with a wife and a son, he sees it as more of a classroom and the park as crucial to sustainability efforts because it allows people can see why wilderness matters. " We too infrequently have the chance to preserve an irreplaceable wild treasure, and it is a social imperative that we save them for future generations, " he said. " I had that chance. " http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/up_against_the_wall_and_saving.html 18) John Blackwell, whose first job out of college was as a forester in Astoria and later led construction of the World Forestry Center in Portland, was among three nominations to the Board of Forestry the governor announced Friday. Blackwell said neither the timber industry nor environmentalists were ever completely happy with the World Forestry Center because each wanted their message to dominate. He said he expects management of Oregon's signature state forests will require similar navigation of strongly divided opinion. The nominations to the Board of Forestry have been a long time coming, with the board operating absent a chairman and short one member much of the year. Conservation groups have pushed for a stronger environmental voice on the board, which they have long viewed as dominated by the timber industry. An earlier attempt to install such a voice backfired when Kulongoski's nomination of former congressman Les AuCoin created a bitter divide in the Legislature. Blackwell is more moderate and built alliances with groups on all sides of forestry issues while at the World Forestry Center. Kulongoski has urged the Board of Forestry to take a leadership role in pushing for sustainable forest management throughout Oregon and has pressed members to deal with the troubled strategy for managing state forests in northwest Oregon. The Board of Forestry adopted the strategy in 2001, but it has fallen short of logging targets that coastal counties were expecting to generate millions of dollars in new revenue. The counties now want the strategy revised to increase logging, while environmental groups say that would sacrifice vital fish and wildlife habitat. Kulongoski spokeswoman Jillian Schoene said Friday that the governor is " hopeful that these appointments will create a balanced board that represents the diverse interests in Oregon forests. " http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2008/11/governor_seeks_balance_with_ne.html California:19) We are hearing that the Bohemian Club, in close coordination with the CA Dept of Forestry, is planning to slip its controversial permanent logging plan through the final administrative step ( " second review " ) during the holiday season while the public is distracted and - they hope - not paying attention. The scuttlebutt is that the hearing will occur on Thursday, December 18. We will have environmentalists and local opponents on hand if this occurs. We understand another controversial NTMP on the lower Russian River is also being set up for " holiday review. " That's the Ricioli Ranch NTMP on Sheephouse Creek. Both the Ricioli ranch NTMP and the Bohemian Grove property include important steelhead and coho habitat which is not fully recognized by the agencies. The Bohemian Club owns the entire watersheds of two fish-bearing tribs of the Russian River - Smith Creek20and Kitchen Creek. Another stream originating on the Grove property - Duvoul Creek - flows into Dutch Bill Creek, a stream in which a lot of public money has been used to restore as a spawning stream. More updates at http://savebohemiangrove.org 20) The draft "Central Valley Vision Implementation Plan" is a twenty-year plan that focuses on meeting the public's recreation needs in the Central Valley.To read the report, go to: http://parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23483 The lawyers say: "This document is for long-range planning purposes only and does not imply a land acquisition or development commitment. The maps and text indicate potential land uses and suggests ways in which the plan may be carried out. Funds to implement most of the plan's recommendations are not yet available. Many proposals, especially those that are not high priorities, may not occur for many years. If lands are to be acquired, they will be purchased only from willing sellers. Development proposals will be subject to full environmental review and regulatory approvals prior to moving forward." When implemented, the Central Valley Vision initiatives will enhance outdoor recreation opportunities by: 1) Almost tripling the number of campsites, from 1,200 to 3,200, 2) More than doubling the number of picnic sites, from almost 900 to almost 2,000 sites, 3) Almost doubling the acres of state parks land in the Valley, from about 110,000 to over 200,000 acres. --- Add 13 new parks to the California State Park System: 1) six new parks in the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Basin to provide recreation for rapidly growing and underserved populations and protect special resources; 2) two new parks in the northern Sacramento River Valley near Red Bluff , to link existing Sacramento River parks to Redding recreation areas; 3) two new museums in Sacramento and two new parks in Yolo County—four new park areas to serve the State Capital's growing metropolitan region; and 4) one new park in Solano County that will help link other conserved areas to the Delta. 5) Also recommended are five heritage corridors to interpret the Valley's history and culture and boating trails to link outdoor recreation areas on rivers and waterways. http://rare-earth-news.blogspot.com/2008/11/13-new-state-parks-are-proposed-for.html 21) I and many others have worked for almost nine years to safeguard Jackson Forest for our community and the public at large. Our work has created a great opportunity for a new way of managing Jackson Forest. Now it is up to you and your friends. This is the time to step forward to work with the staff of Jackson Forest. Otherwise, the opportunity will be lost. If you care about how logging in Jackson Forest will affect you as a neighbor or recreation user, don't miss the meeting this Saturday, December 6, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon at Jackson Demonstration State Forest Headquarters, 802 North Main Street. For nearly nine years there has been no logging in Jackson Forest, and for even longer no logging plans have occurred near the residential areas of Fort Bragg and Mendocino. That is about to change. Whether this change works out for the better or the worse is up to the community. The first logging plan on the west side of Jackson State Forest is scheduled for the Hare Creek watershed to the east of the end of Simpson Lane (map). The Timber Harvest Plan (THP) adjoins private land along its entire western boundary. Within the plan are a number of forest roads used for hiking, biking, and horse riding. They are also used illegally by off road vehicles (ORVs). The harvest area is located primarily between the western boundary of JDSF and Roads 450 and 454. Recreation use in the THP area and on Roads 450, 454, and 400 will be affected. Other timber harvests in Jackson Forest near Fort Bragg and Mendocino are in the planning process. (map shows the Hare Creek plan, " J,H,I,J,K " , and other pending harvest plans). People who live further west on Simpson Lane or to the north on Highway 20 may recall another Hare Creek Jackson Forest timber plan in 2000 that paid no attention to the use of the plan area by local residents for recreation. Many trails and destinations were made unusable or not worth using. This does not have to happen again. The new management plan for Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) mandates that recreation shall be an important value in the forest. The staff of JDSF is serious about fulfilling this mandate, and the independent Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) is equally determined to see that recreation is a priority. Hare Creek is only the first of a number of harvest plans on the west side that are in the works. As the first, it provides an opportunity to set a model precedent for integrating recreation and neighborhood desires into harvest planning and operations. An accompanying article in the newspaper provides more details on the harvest plan, the upcoming meeting, and a tour of the harvest area following the meeting. http://jacksonforum.org/blog/2008/11/28/logging-returns-to-jackson-forest/ 22) In a shallow basin called Indian Flats, he comes to an abrupt stop. " Let's say hello to this guy, " says Halsey. The rangy naturalist strides across a ditch as if he's meeting a long-lost friend. He climbs the side of a boulder, crouches in the shade of a 15-foot manzanita and gazes at the burnished red skin of its bark against the mountain sky. " This guy might be 125 years old, " he says, giving it a pat. He knows many forest managers would call this old hardwood " senescent " or " decadent " -- terms for native vegetation that has supposedly gone un-burned for too long and is thus an unnatural fire hazard. Halsey, 53, likes to point out the absurdity of this theory, as he sees it, by simply calling the plants " senile, " as if the manzanita were in an advanced state of dementia. Chaparral, he says, does not need to burn to the ground every 30 years to remain healthy. Just the opposite. Too much fire will eventually decimate the native flora -- some of the most diverse in the nation -- leaving a biological wasteland of invasive weeds. Halsey is on a campaign to correct the record about California's most widespread, misunderstood and maligned type of vegetation. In doing so, he hopes to limit brush clearance plans to the edges of suburbia, away from the backcountry. The former high school biology teacher founded the California Chaparral Institute, a nonprofit environmental group, and gives talks all over the state. Through science, Halsey wants to show chaparral's subtle beauty and the limits of its remarkable adaptations to survive. It is a lesson in the ecology of drought and fire. The story of the senile Eastwood's manzanita, its muscular root anchored to fissures in the granite boulder, is as good a way as any to start the lesson. The stocky stalwart with a bright green head of leaves was actually born of fire. As a seed, it fell from its parent and, by good fortune, landed in a crevice in the rock where water and dead leaf matter naturally amassed. It may not have sprouted for years. In fact, the seed may have just sat there, dormant, for more than a century. Then came a fire. He said these old stands are the ones the grizzly bear on our state flag loved, with a canopy high enough that the bears could lumber through corridors looking for food. Halsey has been working with county staff, trying to change the fuel management plan they're proposing. " One, it's not going to work, " he said. " Two, it's a waste of taxpayer money. Three, it's not science-based. It's just political expediency. " Halsey is all for targeted brush thinning and clearance near homes and even favors strategic prescribed burns of old-growth chaparral near communities. But burning the backcountry over and over is going to deal the fatal blow to the natural ecosystem. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-halsey26-2008nov26,0,2745875,full.story 23) Between 1995 and 2000, voters in Ventura County overwhelmingly approved a series of ballot measures – the SOAR initiatives – which effectively created the most comprehensive protection against urban sprawl of any county in the United States. In contrast to Los Angeles and Orange counties, Ventura County has not turned into a single large urban mass. Our cities remain distinct, each with a unique sense of identity and place, defined in no small measure by the intact expanses of open space and farmland that surround them. Analysis by the countywide SOAR organization determined that today, one in four acres of open space and agricultural land is at risk of sprawl development within the next 10 to 20 years, and much more will be at risk if the SOAR boundaries are allowed to expire. To read the full 32-page report, go to http://soarusa.org and click on the " At Risk Report " link. http://rare-earth-news.blogspot.com/2008/11/ventura-county-sprawl-fighters-not.html Arizona: 24) Janet Napolitano, Governor of the State of Arizona, writes to Corbin Newman, Regional Forester Southwest Region to request that the U.S. Forest Service " accelerate restoration work across northern Arizona, " and " translate into on-the-ground action the good work done by Arizona's citizensover the past several years. " In a letter to Corbin Newman, Regional Forester Southwest Region (3) USFS dated November 13, 2008, Janet Napolitano, Governor of the State of Arizona, stated: " The explicit and strong level of broad-based consensus reached in the Supply Study builds on agreement defined in the Statewide Strategy and is unprecedented in the history of the national forest system in Arizona. It comes at a critical time, providing a foundation of social support and scientific justification for substantially accelerating restoration of degraded forests across northern Arizona. We absolutely cannot afford to lose this opportunity to move substantially forward with effective and efficient landscape-scale forest restoration. By accelerating our work and placing it in a landscape context, we can meet ambitious community protection, restoration, and fire management goals across northern Arizona, over the next twenty years. By honoring well-developed social agreement in the process, we can break the gridlock that has stymied forward-thinking forest management across the state for decades. With social agreement in place, we can identify and engage appropriately scaled industries that can dramatically offset per-acre restoration costs. With industry working as part of the forest management solution, we can generate hundreds of jobs, and millions of dollars in revenue for rural communities at a time when we need those jobs and that revenue. We have come much too far to do anything but honor, carry forward, and translate into on-the-ground action the good work done by Arizona's citizens over the past several years. In this vein, and in the context of your deliberations about accelerating restoration work across northern Arizona, I request that you take the following actions: 1) Validate and institutionalize the consensus agreement reached in the Statewide Strategy and the Analysis of Small-Diameter Wood Supply; 2) Establish landscape scale planning, implementation, and monitoring mechanisms; 3) Aggressively pursue the development of long-term stewardship contracts; 4) Identify, bolster partnerships with, and direct contracts towards those industries with a proven collaborative record; 5) Clearly identify additional federal appropriations needed. http://groups.google.comalt.forestry/browse_thread/thread/b4f78ed6bf93598a?hl=en Montana: 25) The original intent of our monitoring trip on that October day in 2003 was to document fire behavior in the heavily logged and roaded lands of Plum Creek Timber Company compared to adjacent unlogged wildlands on the Lolo National Forest. That distinction became quite clear as our team biked six miles – and 2,500 vertical feet – up the watershed and were afforded ever-expanding views of the cut-over Plum Creek land. It was quickly evident why crews fighting this fire dubbed the Plum Creek lands "the black desert." For miles and miles all the eye could see were cut-over lands burnt to a crisp and a network of newly exposed logging roads, the density of which was mind-boggling. The stark scene before us certainly didn't conjure up the image of "leaders in environmental forestry," which the timber company's sign at the bottom of the watershed proudly proclaimed. Exhausted, yet relieved to be beyond the reach of industrial forest management, we arrived at a remote trailhead and began walking down a hiking trial that passed through a beautiful unlogged forest and eventually an officially designed Wilderness area. Our noses were overcome with the unique aroma of the recently burnt forest as we took in the mosaic patterns of wildfire across the landscape. A few trees torched over here…a light ground fire there…a hillside with jet-black snags from a high intensity fire directly adjacent to a ravine that was completely untouched. These are the mysterious, even enchanting, patterns of low, moderate and high-intensity fires I have come to know and appreciate during my many subsequent trips to recently burned and recovering post-fire landscapes throughout the northern Rockies. So, imagine my surprise, when a few months after our monitoring trip, I received notice of the Lolo's first "Healthy Forest" logging project. You guessed it! The plan was to cut down that same old-growth forest, which burned in such a beautiful mosaic. Apparently out of all the areas on the Lolo National Forest, logging along a popular hiking trail directly adjacent to a designed Wilderness Area was, quite literally, the top priority. Well, we forest activists were successful. Our success came not from an official appeal or a lawsuit, but from good old fashioned public pressure. Five years have passed since the wildfire burned across this landscape and as the sun slowly rises signs of a healthy, recovery ecosystem are everywhere: fir and lodgepole seedlings almost hip high; lightly charred bark of massive, fire-resident larch; the prehistoric call of the pileated woodpecker; the eerie bugle of a bull elk just over the ridge. This Thanksgiving, as we gather with friends and family and once again go around the circle and say what we're thankful for, I'll find myself giving thanks for wildfire and the wonders of our beautiful, burned forests. http://www.newwest.net/citjo/article/giving_thanks_for_burned_forests/C33/L33/ 26) Beetle-killed trees may be removed along 750 miles of roads, in six campgrounds and in 11 administrative sites within the Helena National Forest because the trees could fall down and hurt people. Forest officials propose felling standing dead and dying trees that are within 1.5-tree heights — between 75 and 175 feet — from the edge of scores of roads, beginning in the spring of 2009. The trees could be left on site, stacked or chipped, or removed from an area. Depending on the number of dead or infected trees in an area, the forest officials said they believe when the project is completed the impacted areas could look either like an area that's been thinned, or a clearcut with scattered regeneration. "It's for the safety of the public as well as for firefighters who might need to use those roads," said Kathy Bushnell, Helena forest spokesperson. "We're holding some informal open houses next week, with Forest Service people there, to answer any questions people might have about the project." Pine beetles are an integral part of forest health, and in typical numbers their impacts are minimal. The beetles lay eggs in the mature trees — typically larger than 5 inches in diameter —below their bark, and the larvae eat their way around the trees, "girdling" and killing them by interrupting the flow of sap and nutrients. The beetles also carry a fungus on their backs, which also can harm or kill trees. These dead trees provide shelter for a wide range of forest critters, and the beetle populations usually are kept in check by extended periods of cold temperatures. Healthy trees also can use their sap to push the beetles out of their bore holes. http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/11/28/top/65lo_081128_trees.txt 27) 25 years of frustration and infighting since we've seen a single acre of Wilderness designated in Montana. Now, several mainstream groups have joined forces with representatives of the wood products industry in a grand attempt to end it. The political reality of today requires this collaborative, "bottom-up" approach because politicians are so gun-shy about Wilderness legislation. They only want lay-ups with all stakeholders already on board, which is the motivation behind this upcoming legislation. After decades of nothing, Montana wilderness advocates have decided to play the new, quid pro quo game to have some chance of success. Regrettably, this flawed bill looks more like a half-court shot for our congressional delegation and could extend instead of end the Wilderness Drought. You have to admire the effort. After years of hard work, thousands of miles of driving, and many dozens of meetings with agencies, timber mills, bike clubs, county commissions, three mainstream green groups (Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Trout Unlimited and National Wildlife Federation) and five leaders of the wood products industry (Sun Mountain, Pyramid Mountain, Roseburg Lumber, RY Lumber, Smurfit-Stone) developed the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership (BDP) and then drafted the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Conservation, Restoration and Stewardship Act (note the absence of the word:"Wilderness " ). This bill was written two years ago, but still has not been introduced. Now, the BDP partners are pressuring the delegation to go for it when the 111th Congress opens for business in January. That still gives us enough time to fix the bill's shortcomings and turn a good idea into legislation most wilderness advocates can support, but will this happen? Hopefully, but I'm not going to hold my breath for this to happen. At this point, the partners seem locked into the current plan, even though everybody is not on board, to say the least. Many pro-wilderness groups oppose the current version of the bill, as do mountain bikers, plus all the usual anti-wilderness suspects--the motorized recreation industry, miners and other "single users," and some segments of the timber industry. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/the_beaverhead_deerlodge_partnership_right_idea_wrong_bill/C41/L41/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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