Category Archives: Public lands

Forest Planning & Transit Planning

In 1985, the Hoosier Environmental Council hired the Antiplanner to review the Hoosier National Forest plan, which called for clearcutting most of the southern Indiana federal forest. My review uncovered a document admitting that planners had fabricated data to justify money-losing timber sales. Looking at the plan that was then in effect, I discovered that the forest had attempted to meet legal requirements for public involvement by having the forest’s own soils scientist and biologist review the plan.

Wildflowers in the Hoosier National Forest. Forest Service photo.

Since this proved that the existing plan was illegal, and the proposed new plan was not credible, the Forest Service responded to my visit by shutting down the Hoosier Forest’s timber program for more than a decade. Even after that time, it cut very little timber compared to what it had been cutting before 1985.

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Congress Still Perplexed by Wildfire

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“U.S. runs out of funds to battle wildfires,” misstates a Washington Post headline. “In the worst wildfire season on record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service ran out of money to pay for firefighters, fire trucks and aircraft that dump retardant on monstrous flames,” continues the article, making two more errors.

Smoke from the Pole Creek Fire billows above Black Butte Ranch, near Sisters, Oregon, on September 9, 2012.

First, 2012 is hardly the worst wildfire season on record. We only have to go back to 2006 to find a year that had burned more acres, as of October 5, than 2012. Before 2006, several years in the 1930s and 1950s vastly exceeded 2012′s number: an average of nearly 40 millions acres a year burned in the 1930s.

Second, no one, least of all the U.S., has “run out of funds.” Instead, the Forest Service spent its budgeted amount on fire. This has happened many times in the past, and when it happens, the Forest Service continues spending money on fire by borrowing it from other line items, then expecting Congress to reimburse the borrowed funds. Admittedly, this is, more or less, what the article goes on to say.

What the article doesn’t say is that this tradition has grown out of a long history of the Forest Service spending too much on fire suppression. That history began in 1908, when Congress gave the Forest Service a blank check to suppress wildfires. Under this law, the Forest Service could spend as much as it needed on fires with full confidence that Congress would reimburse the funds at the end of each fire season. As far as I know, no other legislature in history has ever given any agency a blank check.

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Be Careful What You Wish For

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A House Natural Resources Committee bill would turn national forests into fiduciary trusts mandated to produce both a minimum amount of timber and a minimum amount of revenues for the counties in which the forests are located. Thus, the Antiplanner’s original proposal to turn federal lands into fiduciary trusts become increasingly warped.

A fiduciary trust requires a trustee (who manages the trust), a beneficiary (who gets the benefits of the trust), a trustor (who sets up the trust), and a trust corpus or assets that are to be managed. Trusts differ from ordinary government agencies in that the trusts are obligated to manage the assets solely for the beneficiaries, which is a lot simpler than the multiple jobs of most agencies (create jobs, help local clients, keep politicians happy, etc.).

The Antiplanner’s original idea was that public lands would be managed by two trusts. One would produce maximum revenue by selling, leasing, or otherwise permitting various land uses. Some of the revenues would go to the Treasury but some would go to the second trust which would be obligated to maximize the value of any non-revenue producing resources such as endangered species. The amount of revenues the first trust would produce would depend on how much it could profitably produce without harming the long-term productivity of the land (which trustees are also obliged to protect). The second trust could use some of the revenues to buy or lease resources from the first and not use them if it felt that would be the best way to achieve its mission of maximizing non-market values.

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Life in the WUI, 2011

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Unlike much of the rest of the country, the Northwest has had a mild summer. But at the end of August we finally had a few thunderstorms, and they naturally lit some wildfires. So we are getting another lesson in modern wild land fire suppression.

Mary Bernsen photo of backfires started by a helicopter. Click any photo for a larger view.

The Shadow Lake Fire is far from the biggest fire in our area–that distinction probably belongs to the High Cascades Fire, though that is really several fires so it is hard to tell. But the Shadow Lake Fire is right next to a major highway where the Antiplanner often cycles. It also seems to be sending more smoke our way than any other fire.

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Debate Over Future of BLM Lands

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Andy Stahl debates the DeFazio forest trust proposal with Douglas County (Roseburg) Commissioner Doug Robertson. Robertson also chairs the association of counties that collect revenues from the lands in question.

Instead of dividing the lands in two, Robertson proposes to give all the lands to a single board of trustees set up something like the collaborative stewardship groups that have sprung up around the country. “Tens of thousands of acres” would be available for wilderness (instead of the roughly 1.2 million acres of land preserved under the DeFazio plan) and timber could be rationed out more slowly, providing counties with a more even flow of revenues.

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DeFazio: Turn BLM Lands into Trusts

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Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio is floating a proposal to turn the Bureau of Land Management’s “Oregon and California” lands into two trusts, one focusing on timber production and one focusing on environmental protection. This plan was partly developed by frequent Antiplanner commenter Andy Stahl.

The Oregon & California (O&C) Railroad land grant lands now managed by the BLM are shown in orange; green is national forests; click for a larger view.

The Antiplanner has long supported the idea of turning public lands into fiduciary trusts. My most-recent proposal would also create two trusts: one driven by markets and the other to protect non-market-resources. Some of the revenue from the first trust would go to fund the second.

The DeFazio-Stahl proposal is slightly different, more like the New Zealand solution, which is to divide the lands into two. One chunk of land would include mainly old-growth forests that have not been logged; the other would mainly be partly or fully logged forests. The latter forests would be the base for the timber trust; the former would be in the care of the environmental trust.

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BLM’s Investment in Dishonesty

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The Bureau of Land Management has always labored in the shadow of its sister agency, the National Park Service, and its cousin, the Forest Service. While the national parks are America’s “crown jewels” and the Forest Service represents the best (and worst) of the Progressive era, the BLM manages the federal lands left over after everyone else took what they wanted. Possibly because it simply isn’t as romantic as those other agencies (and so Congress has less reason to throw money at it), the BLM manages its 245 million acres of land far more efficiently, spending an average of about $5 an acre compared with $37 for the Park Service and $32 for the Forest Service.

To help overcome its “romance” deficit, the BLM recently published a four-page flyer titled, “BLM: A Sound Investment for America.” The BLM, the flyer claims, “raises more money each year for the American taxpayer from the use of these lands than it spends.” It goes on to say that the agency’s “management of public lands contributed more than $112 billion to the national economy in 2010.”

It turns out this isn’t exactly true.

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New Fire Plan: Burn More Money

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In the late 1990s, the Forest Service spent about $300 million a year on fire and the Department of the Interior spent another $100 million a year. Then came the 2000 Cerro Grande fire, which burned a billion dollars worth of homes in Los Alamos, NM. After that, Congress opened up the checkbook and told the agencies to spend whatever it takes to keep such a fire from happening again.

The agencies have taken full advantage of this. In 2010, the Forest Service budget for fire was $2.1 billion and USDI’s was more than $850 million. That’s just the budget; the agencies had another $500 million or so to draw upon if they ran over their budgets; if they didn’t go over their budgets, they got to keep the surplus for future years.

Here’s an indication of how expensive fire has become: In 2010, for the first time in at least 60 years, if not the entire 105-history of the Forest Service, the agency spent more money on fire than on all other national forest operations, construction, and maintenance combined.

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Update on Yellowstone Wolves

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“Many people hoped that introduction of wolves into Yellowstone would bring down elk populations and allow ecosystem restoration,” the Antiplanner noted last week. “While the wolves have changed park dynamics (to the detriment of coyotes but in favor of foxes), they havenâ€™t made much of a dent in elk numbers.”

On the prowl in Yellowstone.
Flickr photo by TBanneck.

While this isn’t entirely wrong, it turns out I am behind on the latest science. Oregon State University ecologist Robert Beschta has shown that, while wolves haven’t greatly reduced elk numbers, they have greatly changed elk behavior. Specifically, by forcing the elk out of meadows and into forests, the wolves have promoted the recovery of willows. That, in turn, is leading to the reestablishment of beaver colonies, which are creating wetlands and promoting habitat for other species.

Video of wolves in Oregon taken December 30, 2010.

WIth wolves now entering Oregon and Washington, we can expect to see more ecological changes. Thanks to Andy Stahl for this information.

Who Should Pay for America’s Jewels?

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National parks are one of the most popular programs of the federal government. Yet the National Park Service is also an increasing burden on taxpayers. Appropriations to the agency have doubled since 1991, and even after adjusting for inflation they have grown by a third.

What have taxpayers received for this money? One of the most important outputs of the parks is recreation, but national park recreation use peaked in 1987 and has stagnated or declined since then. Visitors spent 11 percent fewer days in national parks in 2010 than in 1987.

By coincidence, 1987 was also the year Alston Chase released his book, Playing God in Yellowstone, which for many people (including the Antiplanner) was the first signal that all was not well within the National Park System. Ironically, Chase started working on the book at the request of the Yellowstone Park Foundation, which wanted him to write a puff-piece that it could sell in its stores in park visitor centers.

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