New brigade prompts Piñon Canyon fears
By Randy Woock, Trinidad Times Independent, February 15, 2011 [here]
Plans by the U.S. Army to station a new Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) at Fort Carson has raised concerns among some southeast Coloradoans that the swelled numbers will result in forcing an expansion of the base’s training site at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS).
The Army recently released a Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), which “compares and evaluates the environmental impacts associated with stationing and training” the CABs at various sites, including training at the PCMS, as well as at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington State. In the PEIS, the Army states that its “preferred” option is to establish CABs at both mentioned bases. …
Not 1 More Acre! President Mack Louden, who is also a Las Animas County commissioner, when asked if the organization was concerned with the possible swelling of population numbers at Fort Carson would lead to an excuse for the Army to expand the PCMS, said that the CAB placement was, “probably good for Colorado Springs.” “We’re fine with them moving the brigade in there, as long as it doesn’t facilitate the expansion of the (PCMS).”
Louden also emphasized the importance of attending the public meeting regarding the Army’s Environmental Assessment of increased usage of the PCMS, currently scheduled for Las Animas County residents on February 17 at Trinidad State Junior College’s Sullivan Center at 6:30 p.m.
Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition President Lon Robertson said there existed a concern that the Army could, through the stationing of the CAB, “Create the need that they haven’t been able to (in the past), to justify the expansion of (PCMS).” …
As was previously reported in the Army’s 2008 document, Department of the Army Response to the National Defense Authorization Act; Section 2831, “Army units are transforming from ‘bigger and slower, to smaller and faster,’ the training of which allegedly requires a 156 percent greater area than previous training requirements.”
The Colorado Division of Wildlife also expressed concerns about possible impacts to local wildlife from the CAB at Fort Carson and associated training at Fort Carson. …
U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, who has been “advocating for (the CAB) for years,” touted the potential economic development that stationing the CAB could bring to portions of the state, adding to the reported $5.281 billion in “total direct and indirect impact of military spending in our region (El Paso County).” …
Lamborn’s communications director, Catherine Mortensen, said. “Throughout the whole process, that was never part of their consideration. They made a point to emphasize and stress that to our district because we recognize that there are those concerns, those lingering fears that the Army has an idea of expanding (PCMS) or whatever, but this is separate from that.” … [more]
See also The Piñon Canyon War [here]
Protesters march against Forest Service
Demonstrators at Dolores office oppose road closures, travel plans
By Kimberly Benedict Cortez Journal, Durango Herald, February 05, 2011 [here]
DOLORES – Unsatisfied with progress being made through government channels, members of the public took matters into their own hands Friday, participating in a protest march against U.S. Forest Service actions on public lands.
Carrying picket signs and banners, more than 100 people marched from the intersection of Colorado highways 145 and 184 to the Dolores Public Lands Office, where a short rally was held to express public dissatisfaction with road closures and policy changes on public lands.
The event was organized by Doug and Kim Maxwell and Louie and Hellen Edwards. Officers from the Colorado State Patrol and Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office monitored the route.
“It’s one right after another the government is taking away, and it has got to stop,” Doug Maxwell said before the march began. “We want to possibly get national attention to the issue and get the whole nation to wake up to what is going on.”
Public discontent with Forest Service decisions has been growing in the wake of the release of the Mancos-Cortez and Rico-West Dolores travel management plans over the last four years. The fervor reached a new pitch last fall when the Forest Service released the Boggy-Glade travel management plan, which called for the elimination of motorized cross country travel and game retrieval and the closure of 155 miles of Forest Service roads.
Displeasure with the plan led Montezuma County commissioners to create the Public Lands Coordination Commission to study the impact of Forest Service decisions on the county.
“These are our public lands,” said Dennis Atwater, a member of the commission who spoke at the rally. “They are supposed to belong to the public, and the federal government cannot own these lands. This is not a short war. It is a long war. We are not asking for anything that doesn’t belong to us.” … [more]
Six Rivers plans ‘Rivers to Ridges’ restoration
National Forest aims to step up ecological efforts at a landscape level
by John Driscoll, Eureka Times-Standard, 02/05/2011 [here]
The Six Rivers National Forest wants to pick up the pace of restoration efforts on the land as part of a larger push to address climate change, population growth and wildfires across the nation.
Just what that effort will look like is the subject of an upcoming public meeting on Feb. 16. Six Rivers Supervisor Tyrone Kelley said that the event is meant to air plans for hardwood stand restoration, sediment reduction, road work, plantation thinning, the use of prescribed fire and recreation, as well as economic opportunities that may exist.
The stepped-up restoration program, called “Rivers to Ridges Ecological Restoration” is part of a landscape-level approach. One of the largest parts of the proposed efforts would be restoring hardwood and oak woodlands on some 120,000 acres of Six Rivers, and on 145,000 acres of plantations and other logged lands.
”Those stands are overcrowded and they need to be thinned,” Kelley said.
That should help make those areas more resilient to wildfires, tree diseases like sudden oak death and to encroachment of human habitation, Kelley said. The pace of the work is currently not fast enough to deal with the growing effects of wildfires on the land, he said.
At the same time, Kelley said that while the current administration and leadership in the U.S. Department of Agriculture is focused on ecosystem restoration, there is not much money directed toward the effort. Instead, Kelly said that partnerships with state and county agencies, with tribes and the general public must be utilized to most efficiently direct the effort. … [more]
GOP lawmakers demand repeal of wilderness policy
by Phil Taylor, E&E News, January 31, 2011 [here]
Nearly 60 Republican lawmakers, mostly from the West, on Friday asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to rescind a new policy that directs field managers to inventory and protect wilderness-quality lands, arguing that it would significantly affect rural economies.
In a letter from the Western caucuses of both chambers, the members of Congress warned that Interior’s decision to announce the policy after last month’s recess and without congressional input threatens future wilderness cooperation and sows public distrust.
“As best we can tell, Congress was left in the dark regarding any process the DOI may have undertaken in the preparation of this decision,” said the letter authored by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and co-signed by 55 others.
They argued that Interior’s new “wild lands” policy flouts the intent of the Wilderness Act — which gives Congress authority to designate wilderness — and “appears to be an underhanded attempt by DOI to circumvent Congress and the federal rulemaking process by designating millions of acres of publicly owned lands in Western states as de facto wilderness.”
The lawmakers urged Salazar to withdraw the order and asked the agency to consult with Congress if it discovers lands worthy of wilderness protections. … [more]
Note: List of letter signers is [here]
9th Circuit Supports Five Buttes Thinning
by Scott Horngren, American Forest Resource Council News, January 28, 2011 [here]
On January 19, the Ninth Circuit denied the League of Wilderness Defenders’ (LOWD) petition for a rehearing en banc, which would have allowed an 11 judge panel to possibly reverse the three judge panel’s favorable decision last August upholding the Five Buttes restoration project on the Deschutes National Forest. The August decision deferred to the Forest Service’s interpretation of the Northwest Forest Plan that timber harvest could occur in eastside late successional reserves to reduce fire risk and provide long term benefit to spotted owls.
The basis for LOWD’s petition for rehearing was that the three judge panel gave too much deference to the Forest Service’s interpretation of Northwest Forest Plan and that the Ninth Circuit needed to clarify that the Mission Brush en banc decision does not mean that the courts must give unlimited deference to Forest Service decisions. LOWD’s petition was rejected in a one line order.
Lawsuit against U.S. Forest Service Norbeck project dismissed
By Kevin Woster, Rapid City Journal, January 31, 2011 [here]
A federal judge in Rapid City has dismissed a lawsuit filed by two environmental groups against the U.S. Forest Service to stop a management project in the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve.
But a spokesman for one of the groups said an appeal is likely.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Viken filed an order Friday dismissing the lawsuit filed by Friends of the Norbeck and Native Ecosystem Council. Viken ruled the environmentalists had failed to show that the Forest Service acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner and violated federal law when it approved the project, which includes tree thinning and prescribed burns.
Viken had previously rejected a motion for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped an initial stage of tree-thinning work on the project from starting. He allowed the first phase of work in the Sunday Gulch area to start, pending his decision on the overall merits of the case, which came Friday.
With that decision in, Black Hills National Forest supervisor Craig Bobzien said the project is ready to proceed beyond the work in Sunday Gulch.
“We are pleased with the judge’s dismissal of this case on its merits,” Bobzien said. “The Forest Service implemented the Sunday Gulch project immediately after Judge Viken denied the preliminary injunction, and we will now proceed with other important projects in the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve.” …
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said Monday that Viken’s decision will allow work to proceed for a “healthier forest in the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve for everyone to enjoy.” … [more]
Thanks for the news tip to Julie Kay Smithson, Property Rights Research [here, here]
Grant County ranchers fear financial hit from court-ordered loss of grazing territory
By Richard Cockle, The Oregonian January 30, 2011 [here]
John Day, Oregon - Rancher Ken Brooks is standing in his ranch yard near the ghost town of Fox , his eyes sweeping the timber-covered Malheur National Forest that holds the key to his future and that of 18 other Grant County ranching families.
“They’re all pretty angry,” he said. “We’re all in the same boat. We’re unsure what we’re going to do. And most of all, we’re unsure of the reason we have to do it.”
A December 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty prohibits the ranchers from turning their cattle out on seven summertime U.S. Forest Service grazing allotments to protect threatened Middle Columbia River steelhead.
The latest decision in a years-long battle over the effects of grazing on stream habitat bans cows on 16 percent of the 1.7 million-acre forest, which has one the largest grazing programs of any forest in the Pacific Northwest.
The ban starts in June and would affect almost 4,000 mother cows and their annual calf crop valued at $2.8 million, ranchers and forest officials said.
Environmentalists [The Oregon Natural Desert Association, Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project] who filed the steelhead lawsuit said the Forest Service and National Marine Fisheries Service must do a better job enforcing laws to preserve stream banks from roaming cattle. …
But outside the courtroom, Grant County is bracing for the economic repercussions, said county Commissioner Boyd Briton.
“There are families involved, there are employees,” Briton said. “All those cows, the feed stores, the Les Schwab tire store downtown, the grocery stores; it affects all of us.” …
The county already is coping with unemployment higher than 14 percent. The 19 ranchers affected by the judge’s decision represent about 20 percent of those who hold grazing permits on the Malheur.
The overall hit from the ban, perhaps 60 jobs, is the equivalent of losing roughly 7,000 jobs in Multnomah County, said Mark Webb, Grant County commission chairman. … [more]
Note: Last July the El Paso Corporation announced a $20 million contract between the company and the super-litigious environmental groups involved above. El Paso will pay $15 million over 10 years to the Western Watersheds Project and $5 million will be paid to the Oregon Natural Desert Association. See [here, here, here, here, here]
Thanks for the news tip to Julie Kay Smithson, Property Rights Research [here, here]
Park County and Wyoming fight for right to sue feds
By C.J. Baker, The Powell Tribune, January 27, 2011 [here]
Park County and the state of Wyoming are fighting for their right to sue the federal government over lowered snowmobile limits in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
The county and state are appealing a September decision by federal District Court Judge Alan Johnson in Cheyenne that said they lacked the legal standing to challenge the National Park Service’s rules for winter use in the two parks.
“If anybody has standing, it’s Park County,” said Park County Commissioner Tim French in a Wednesday interview, adding later, “We should absolutely be allowed to argue our point of view in the court.”
Wyoming and Park County had challenged a 2009 Park Service decision which, in part, dropped Yellowstone snowmobile limits to no more than 318 commercially-guided trips per day — down from 720 in earlier years — and also lowered snowmobile levels in Grand Teton National Park.
The county and state argued the lower limits were environmentally unnecessary and would damage their tax base and tourism efforts, among other concerns.
However, siding with attorneys from the National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association, an environmental group, Johnson found the state and county’s concerns of being harmed economically by lower snowmobile limits were “speculative, conjectural and hypothetical.”
Further, he said the state didn’t have the legal authority to sue on behalf of its citizens. Pointing to prior case law, Johnson wrote, “it is no part of its (the state’s) duty or power to enforce the rights of citizens in respect of their relations with the federal government.” … [more]
Thanks for the news tip to Julie Kay Smithson, Property Rights Research [here, here]
‘War on the West’: New Wild Lands designation could lock Wyoming residents out of public lands
By Brad Devereaux, Lovell Chronicle, January 26, 2011 [here]
Following an order by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in December, local officials in Big Horn County are asking questions and fighting back to make sure 256,000 acres of local land aren’t locked away with a new designation that would allow no surface occupancy.
Salazar’s Secretarial Order 3310 is “a war on the West,” Big Horn County Commissioner Keith Grant told the Chronicle Monday.
The order creates a new designation of “Wild Lands” that the BLM could use to classify its public lands. Wild Lands are defined as areas with wilderness characteristics and would be protected from any man-made occupancy in the future.
Gov. Matt Mead wrote a letter to Salazar dated Jan. 17, in which he states his opposition to Order 3310.
“A Wild Lands designation will further drag out (if not permanently halt) the permitting process while local economies suffer. The BLM currently does not have the appropriate resources or track record for approval of plans and projects; and this will make the problem greater and delays longer.
“Only the elected Congress is given the power, by law, to designate official wilderness areas. But, the policy seeks such designations by administrative fiat. With all due respect, the BLM cannot achieve these ends through this means.” … [more]
Forest board names new Oregon state forester
By The Hillsboro Argus, January 28, 2011 [here]
SALEM — The state Board of Forestry Wednesday selected Doug Decker as Oregon’s next state forester. Decker will assume his duties Feb. 1, succeeding Marvin Brown, who resigned at the end of 2010.
Decker has been acting chief of the forestry department’s state forests division. He started working at the agency in 1987 as a public affairs specialist and served as public affairs director from 1990 to 1996.
He led development of the Tillamook Forest Center, an interpretive facility in the Tillamook State Forest, from 1996 to 2006. Most recently, he oversaw acquisition in Central Oregon of the Gilchrist State Forest, Oregon’s first new state forest in more than 60 years.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Montana.
As Oregon’s state forester, Decker oversees about 650 employees and a two-year budget of about $303 million.
Study ties pine beetle to severe Wash. wildfires
The Associated Press, Seattle Times, January 26, 2011 [here]
YAKIMA, Wash. — A new study mapping the mountain pine beetle outbreak in north-central Washington shows that infested areas were more likely to experience larger, more destructive forest fires.
The study, which was a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Forest Service, aimed to detect bark beetle infestations and to evaluate the link between them and forest fires in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
Satellite data showed regions of the forest experiencing water and vegetation stress, and analysis tied these regions to beetle infestations. Additional review showed highly infested areas that subsequently burned had more intense forest fires than areas without infestations.
The forest has experienced severe wildfires in recent years, including the Tripod Fire, which burned on more than 273 square miles.
Editorial: Herger bill brings sense to road plan
The Redding Record Searchlight, January 10, 2011 [here]
It won’t draw the national attention of this week’s scheduled House of Representatives vote to repeal the health care law.
On the upside, though, a bill introduced Friday by Rep. Wally Herger might not be doomed to failure in the politically divided Congress. And, if it passes, the bill could defuse an increasingly bitter feud between the U.S. Forest Service and Northern California off-road recreationists and county governments. …
Herger’s bill would specify the commonsense point that, when it comes to off-roading, rough dirt roads through the backwoods (maintenance-level 3 roads, in Forest Service parlance) are not “highways.”
It would also require further review of the use of existing “unauthorized routes” — many of which are long-popular trails, though not officially part of the Forest Service road system, rendered illegal by the Travel Management Rule — before the travel maps would take effect.
This legislation would tweak, not scrap, the Travel Management Rule, and it would do so in a way that would heed the people who live nearest and use the forests. Not coincidentally, it would remove the largest beef that is driving many Northern California counties toward expensive litigation with the Forest Service. … [more]
NE China province bans logging in China’s largest forest for 10 years
People’s Daily Online (English version), January 10, 2011 [here]
Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province has banned logging in the country’s largest forest for 10 years, to protect the natural environment and reduce China’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Lumbering will be forbidden in the Great and Lesser Hinggan Mountains (GLHM) in Heilongjiang Province from 2011 until 2020, in accordance with the GLHM Forest Protection and Economic Reform Program issued recently by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and State Forestry Administration.
China’s largest natural forest reserve, the GLHM forest is over 430,000 square kilometers in size. It spreads across Heilongjiang and into neighboring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In Inner Mongolia, logging in the GLHM will be reduced by more than half, to 1.27 million cubic meters in 2011, and be completely banned by 2020, Zhang Guobao, deputy director of NDRC, said Sunday at a meeting in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang.
The GLHM forest reserves are expected by 2020 to increase by 400 million cubic meters, Zhang said. … [more]
The Prehistoric Treasure In The Fields Of Indiana
by Micah Schweizer, NPR, January 3, 2011 [here]
It’s 1988. Workers building a road in Mt. Vernon, Ind. damage an ancient burial mound, causing a treasure trove of silver and copper to pour from the ground. A bulldozer operator decides to grab some of the treasure. He ends up in prison for looting.
It sounds like the plot of an Indiana Jones film, only it’s not a movie. The treasure belonged to a mysterious and advanced culture that flourished in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. nearly 2,000 years ago. Because it predates the written record, this prehistoric culture doesn’t have a Native American name but in the 1800s, archaeologists dubbed it the Hopewell Tradition.
Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites Clay figurines discovered on the Mann Hopewell Site show faces with slanted eyes, which were not a Hopewell feature. Some believe the figurines show a connection between Indiana and Central or South America.
An exhibit of artifacts from the Hopewell site, curated by the Indiana State Museum and on display at the Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville, Ind. through Jan. 14, is raising some fresh questions about these ancient Americans. …
The fields are called the Mann Hopewell Site, after the farmer who owned their sprawling 500 acres. Two of site’s earthen structures are among the biggest mounds built anywhere by the Hopewell, which was not a tribe so much as a way of life that flourished in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. between about A.D. 100 and 500. … [more]
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Judge Molloy to step aside in 2011
The Western News, December 28, 2010 [here]
From the largest environmental crime trial in U.S. history to Forest Service logging projects to the status of gray wolves, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s decisions have certainly impacted Libby and Troy residents.
Molloy, 64, recently announced plans to take “senior status” in August – a term used in his profession as retiring from active service. Senior judges are periodically invited to hear cases heard by appeal courts.
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) announced the formation of a search committee to find Molloy’s replacement. A committee made up of attorneys Milton Datsopoulos of Missoula, James Goetz of Bozeman, Karla Gray, former state Supreme Court chief justice, Candace Fetscher of Missoula, and Martha Sheehy of Billings will recommend a candidate to Baucus, who will then in turn make a nomination to President Barack Obama.
Molloy has been at the center of some of the most controversial court rulings in state history. Among those were placing wolves in Montana and Idaho back on the endangered species list, halting various logging sales, stopping Forest Service plans to drop retardant on fires and blocking Montana and other states from opting out of federal gun laws. … [more]