By Bob Zybach, Opinion, Eugene Register Guard
For Oregonians with a strong interest in doing something about global warming and climate change, the logical starting point is our forests. That is where most of the carbon is, and where the most immediate and profound actions can take place to affect statewide carbon dioxide emissions.
Here are five practices that can be implemented within a few months or years. These practices would achieve dramatic results in Oregon’s efforts to address this issue: 1) Prevent forest fires by rapid response and 2) by mechanical thinning to reduce ladder fuels, 3) by salvaging dead trees, 4) by planting new trees and 5) by creating log banks. … [more]
April 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News, Latest Forest News
Forest Service gets back to work on forest plan
By K.C. Mehaffey, World staff writer, March 20, 2008 [here]
WENATCHEE — The Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests will soon resume work on its Forest Plan — the document that guides what happens on the national forest over the next 15 years — a year after the process was put on hold due to a court decision.
Last March, a ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco overturned a Bush Administration policy that allowed forests to develop new forest plans without a lengthy environmental review.
The Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests, which started developing its new Forest Plan in 2003, was using the new policy to revise forest plans adopted for the Wenatchee National Forest in 1990, the Okanogan National Forest in 1989 and the Colville National Forest in 1988.
A new planning rule, expected to be published in the Federal Register next week in response to the court ruling, will allow each individual national forest to determine which level of environmental review is necessary, said Margaret Hartzell, the Forest Plan revision leader for the forests.
“What we will do, when we revise the Forest Plan, is we will use the appropriate level of NEPA documentation to do that,” she said.
That means the plan could require an environmental impact statement, or it could be reviewed through an environmental analysis or a categorical exclusion, which are lower levels of scrutiny than the EIS.
“We are going to honor and pay attention to … what people have provided to us for the past couple of years, and we will be coming back and talking to even more people over the next year,” she said.
The team now hopes to have a draft Forest Plan ready for review by November, she said, and a final plan could be adopted in late 2009.
Debbie Kelly, spokeswoman for the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests, said the Forest Service will soon begin to schedule public meetings to continue the planning effort. Those interested in becoming involved can provide contact information through the Forest Plan Web site or at the Forest Service office in Okanogan, 1240 S. Second Ave., Okanogan, 98840.
March 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
Cites administration’s failure on issues of rural Oregon
By KATHY GRAY, The Dalles Chronicle, March 28, 2008
Oregon Sen. Ted Ferrioli (R-John Day) resigned in protest Thursday from the Federal Forest and County Services Taskforce.
“The [taskforce] has done nothing to move forward on solutions that will work in rural Oregon, and instead has concerned itself with revenue restructuring ideas, which if adopted, will drive tax increases far beyond the capacity of citizens residing in damaged rural counties,” Ferrioli wrote in a letter to Gov. Ted Kulongoski dated March 27.
In a related press release, Ferrioli said the governor, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate have given “lip service” to rural Oregon, but turned their backs on the threats it faces.
“When I heard someone on the taskforce float a ‘trial balloon’ for a proposal for a statewide property tax, I knew it was time to walk,” Ferrioli said.
He described the taskforce as an “exercise in misdirection.”
The Federal Forests and County Services Taskforce was convened by the Governor to develop “recommendations regarding administrative, budgetary, statutory and, if necessary, constitutional changes needed to provide stable and adequate funding for the provision of essential services at the county level,” according to the Governor’s executive order 07-21 creating the task force. … [more]
March 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
by Gary Jason, Liberty Unbound [here]
A review of Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health, by John Berlau. Nelson Current, 2006, 250 pages.
For the last half century, the environmentalist movement has been a dominant influence on the cultural and political scene. This is widely viewed as a blessing, whose progressive result has been without exception the improvement of our society. John Berlau has written a book aimed at kicking that smug sense of green achievement smack in the teeth.
Gary Jason is an adjunct professor of philosophy and a contributing editor to Liberty. He is the author of Critical Thinking: Developing an Effective World View and Introduction to Logic.
Berlau makes a sharp and vigorous presentation of the view that the environmentalist movement has had some very unfortunate consequences. He begins by reviewing the history of the successful campaign by environmentalist organizations to demonize DDT and other pesticides. DDT was first discovered in the 1870s and found to be a potent insecticide in the 1930s. But it was the U.S. military that pushed its mass production at the outbreak of World War II. With the troops facing both malaria and typhus — which had killed millions in World War I — the army knew it had to find some way to combat the vectors, i.e., the disease-carrying insects (lice and mosquitoes). It gave the assignment to Merck, and one of Merck’s top chemists (Joseph Jacobs) was able to set up a plant to mass produce DDT. Starting in 1943, DDT was widely used; it stopped a number of wartime typhus epidemics.
It was then used worldwide in the 1950s and early 1960s to stop malaria, which it almost eliminated. But after Rachel Carson’s popular book “Silent Spring” (1962), in which she alleged that DDT and other pesticides were killing wildlife and hinted that they were causing cancer in people, DDT was banned. As Berlau notes:
In 1948, Sri Lanka had 2.8 million cases of malaria. By 1963, after years of DDT use, that number had dwindled to 17 cases. But then in 1964, U.S. environmentalists and world health bodies convinced Sri Lankan officials to stop spraying. By 1969, the number of malaria cases had shot back up to pre-DDT level of 2.5 million. … [more]
March 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
Jeff Munson, Tahoe Daily Tribune, March 18, 2008
Dozens of recommendations on how to avoid disasters such as last June’s Angora fire will come to a head this week when the California-Nevada Tahoe Basin Fire Commission meets at the South Shore.
With a looming Friday deadline imposed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, the hand-picked, bi-state commission has met monthly and sometimes twice monthly since August to pore over thousands of documents and hundreds of public comments.
The end result of the commission’s work will be a report that provides recommendations for the protection of those in the Tahoe Basin while preserving the environment, said Todd Ferrara, spokesman for the commission.
At the heart of the matter are recommendations that could change policies or create new ones on how dead and dying trees are removed from the forest and place new responsibilities on homeowners.
The final meetings will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday and at 9 a.m. Friday in the Lake Tahoe Community College boardroom. Final recommendations will be made at Friday’s meeting.
Also at stake is how public agencies such as the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the U.S. Forest Service can put measures in place to remove fire fuels in the basin without causing environmental damage to Lake Tahoe.
Finally, the commission will recommend how both states should pay for these policies.
This week’s gathering represents the last set of formal meetings. After Friday, the 70 or so recommendations will go up for a 30-day public review before being sent to the governors for action. … [more]
March 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Fire News, Latest Forest News
More than 50 environmental organizations have attacked Idaho’s proposed roadless plan, saying that if it is adopted by the Bush administration it could set a bad precedent for roadless areas in other states.
In a report released Thursday, the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups looked at how management of Idaho’s roadless areas would change if the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule developed by the Clinton administration was replaced by the new plan. …
The 2001 rule banned road building and logging on 58 million acres of remote national forests, mostly in the West. Idaho’s total of 9.3 million acres of roadless areas is second to Alaska, where 14.8 million acres are designated as roadless.
The Bush administration in 2005 allowed states to opt out of the 2001 rule. States were told they could petition the federal government with their own plans.
Idaho submitted its plan in 2006. At a January public hearing in Washington, D.C., Lt. Gov. Jim Risch said the Idaho plan would protect remote forests while allowing some activities in areas that should never have been designated as road-free in the first place.
A federal plan for Idaho closely follows the state’s proposal. It could be adopted this fall, said David Hensley, counsel to Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter. … [more]
March 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
By Boaz Neumann, Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel [here]
“How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment and Nation in the Third Reich (Ecology and History)” by Franz-Josef Brueggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller, Ohio University Press, 288 pages, $22.95
“The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany (Studies in Environment and History)” by Frank Uekoetter, Cambridge University Press, 246 pages, $23.99
Nazism and ecology? The Nazi party as a green movement? At first glance such analogies seem ridiculous, absurd, outrageous. In 1985, historian Anna Bramwell published a book in which she claimed outright that the Nazi party was a “green party.” She focused on Richard Walther Darre, the agricultural minister of Nazi Germany, and his “Blut und Boden” (”blood and soil”) ideology. Darre, wrote Bramwell, was the head of the “green” faction of the Nazi party, which greatly influenced the thinking of leading Nazis, among them Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Bramwell called Darre the “father of the greens” for his support of organic agriculture, restrictions on the use of mechanized farming methods, and so on. In its time, if I am not mistaken, the book was quite esoteric.
Advertisement
In recent years, however, a growing number of articles and books, primarily academic texts, have been written on the subject. One of the more dominant titles is “How Green Were the Nazis?” In other words, the question “Were the Nazis green?” has already been answered. Another book with a no-less- provocative name is “The Green and the Brown.” Brown, for those who have forgotten, was associated with the Nazis because it was the color of the shirts worn by their stormtroopers.
So this is clearly a difficult and emotional subject, like all historical and historiographic issues related to Nazism. Were the Nazis “green,” and if so, how green? What does that say about them? Does it change our perception of their crimes? In what light does this place the green movement and ecological activism in the 20th century?
In July 1935, Germany’s Nazi regime headed by Adolf Hitler passed the Reich Nature Protection Law. It was one of the most progressive laws of its time. First of all, it was a federal law that applied to the whole country and not just a local ordinance, as had been customary in the past. It was also unprecedented in scope: The law protected nature and the environment in the name of the German people and for their sake, and prevented damage that might have been caused by economic development in undeveloped areas. Anyone whose actions were liable to harm nature or alter the landscape in any significant way, such as developers and building contractors, had to obtain permission from the Reich nature protection office. This legislation also protected bridges, roads, buildings and other landmarks perceived as having German historical-cultural value. It imposed restrictions on advertisements that marred the landscape and, in some cases, banned them altogether. In Britain, legislation of this scope was only introduced after World War II, and in France, as late as the 1960s. … [more]
March 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
A new study has found that California wildfires emit more greenhouse gases than previously believed largely through the post-fire decay of dead wood, a finding that is raising questions about how effective the state’s forests are at storing carbon and slowing global warming.
The study by Thomas Bonnicksen, a retired forestry professor at Texas A&M University, found that four major wildfires – from the Fountain fire near Redding in 1992 to the Angora blaze at Lake Tahoe last year – are responsible for the release of 38 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, far more than the 2 million tons the state estimates that fires produce on average each year.
“Up until now, we have not fully appreciated the magnitude of the impact of wildfires on climate change,” Bonnicksen said. “This is a very important part of the problem.”
His study, which is not peer-reviewed and has been found lacking by some, is one of a flurry of reports that have begun to explore the critical role that forests play in regulating carbon dioxide, the principal atmospheric gas responsible for global warming. Traditionally, forests have been viewed as green reservoirs of landlocked carbon, soaking up and storing CO2 from the atmosphere in their leaves, needles, roots and soil.
Bonnicksen’s study casts that view into question. Forests today are so overcrowded with spindly, unhealthy trees – partly the result of decades of fire suppression – that as they burn and decay they are turning into an actual source of greenhouse gas pollution.
His study, for example, estimates emissions from just one blaze alone last year, the Moonlight fire in Plumas County, at more than 19.6 million tons, three-quarters of which are expected to occur over the next century as trees killed by the fire decay. That much carbon is roughly equivalent to the emissions from 3.6 million cars for a year.
Overall, California fires are producing so much CO2, he said, that they will defeat the state’s pioneering efforts to respond to climate change by reducing emissions elsewhere.
“No matter what anybody does in California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as long as these forests are burning, they are wasting their time,” Bonnicksen said. … [more]
For the full text of Dr. Bonnicksen’s reports, see W.I.S.E. Forest and Fire Science [here]
March 15, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News, Latest Fire News, Latest Forest News
By Dick Little, Paradise Post [here]
Once again, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal has gone off the deep end. They ruled the United States Forest Service should not have allowed expedited logging in the National Forests, although Congress approved the process. (This process calls for “thinning” certain areas by taking only a few trees at a time from a given region).
The three judge panel said the Forest Service failed to, ” properly analyze the rule, causing ‘irreparable injury’ by allowing more than 1.2 million acres of national forest land to be logged and burned each year without studying the ecological impacts.”
The Forest Service told the court they took the actions to provide a secure “fire safe” environment, using a program approved by Congress that allowed selective logging (a process where a small number of trees in a given area are cut to thin the forest land so fire will not spread rapidly). The Forest Service told the court their actions saved thousands of homes in Southern California during last year’s San Diego fires, a statement that fell on deaf ears.
Judges on the “Ninth Circus” have shown a callous disregard for the welfare for the people and critters who reside in forested areas of the west including those of us who live in Paradise. The Ninth Circuit Court is the most overturned one in the nation, and hopefully this decision will be quickly reversed. The suit, filed by the Sierra Club, claims the federal government went beyond what the Environmental Policy Act allowed for cleaning up forest land. The three judge panel ruled the Forest Service failed to properly analyze the rules causing what it termed, “irreparable injury.”
March 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
by KEITH TROUT, Mason Valley News
An uninformed passerby at Smith Valley High School last Wednesday evening might taken in the throng of vehicles parked outside and wondered if graduation had come early this year.
But the source of the sizeable crowd gathered at the school that night was a planned presentation, held as part of the Smith Valley Advisory Council meeting, on the proposed wilderness area designation for southern Lyon County and parts of Mineral and Esmeralda counties.
And the comments expressed during the more than two-hour session atend by an estimated 500 people, were unanimously opposed to that wilderness designation, including several elected officials who attended the meeting as well.
The presentation was organized by the newly-formed ‘Coalition for Public Access’ and drew a packed house to the SVHS gym. And those attending were not limited to Smith Valley residents, as the crowd drew folks from Mason Valley, Mineral and Douglas Counties, and other areas and organizations beyond.
Representatives of Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign were in attendance, as was another representing Congressman Dean Heller, and each said the wilderness designation was not proposed by the Congressmen, but by the wilderness groups advocating the inclusion of land in the Lyon County/Mineral County lands bill. … [more]
March 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
In a 2 1/2 hour meeting similar to the one in Smith Valley last week, nearly 200 Mineral County residents told three representatives to Nevada’s congressional delegation to “Leave us alone!” when it comes to any wilderness designations in a Lyon-Mineral Lands Bill.
Many of those residents meeting in the convention center in Hawthorne also heard for the first time a resolution adopted the previous day unanimously by the Mineral County Commissioners rejecting wilderness; and an appeal from that same commission to have Lyon and Esmeralda counties join them in such action. (See MC resolution reprinted in this edition of the MVN)
In response to requests from representatives Matt Tuma of Senator Reid’s office, Kevin Kirkeby from Senator Ensign’s office and Verita Prothro from Congressman Heller’s office for public input, MC commissioner and liason to the delegation Jerrie Tipton introduced and read the county’s resolution which drew a round of applause from the audience.
Tipton then pointed to a 1984 resolution in which the county has it “doesn’t need a lands bill” and “thanks, but no thanks” to wilderness this time around as well. … [more]
March 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
By Mike Carter and Hal Bernton, Seattle Times [here]
TACOMA — Jurors weighing the fate of Briana Waters struggled with a charge that would have sent the 32-year-old mother and violin teacher to prison for 30 years.
Their verdict, delivered Thursday in a packed federal courtroom, recognized her participation in the 2001 arson at a University of Washington research center, but also her limited role in the crime and the modest prison sentences expected to be given to others involved. The arson was committed in the name of the Earth Liberation Front.
While jurors convicted the Oakland, Calif., woman of two counts of arson, they deadlocked on three other charges, including the most serious, which would have sent her to prison for a minimum of 30 years. Afterward, some in the jury said they were sympathetic because Waters has a 3-year-old daughter.
“It’s fair to say that for a lot of us, it was very emotional,” said one male juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I mean, here was a mom with a kid. It certainly played into the deliberations.”
In convicting Waters of arson, the jury agreed with federal prosecutors who said she served as a lookout for a team of Earth Liberation Front saboteurs who firebombed the UW’s Center of Urban Horticulture because they believed, mistakenly, that a researcher was genetically engineering trees.
March 13, 2008 | 4 Comments | Topic: Latest Fire News, Latest Forest News
Joel Connelly, Seattle P.I. [here]
The Wild Sky Wilderness Area was supposed to be a slam dunk in the new Democratic-controlled Congress: But a conservative Oklahoma senator has succeeded in blocking its enactment at least until early next year.
The proposed 106,000-acre wilderness area, in the Cascades of eastern Snohomish County, sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on a voice vote earlier this year. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee reported it for action on the Senate floor.
At that point, however, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., put a “hold” on Wild Sky, along with a bevy of other proposals. … [more]
Oklahoma senator blocks Wyden, Smith wilderness bill again
Posted by Charles Pope, The Oregonian February 28, 2008 [here]
WASHINGTON - In a move that amounted to a desperate long shot, Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith tried Thursday night to slide through the Senate a popular but tortured bill that would expand wilderness areas surrounding Mount Hood.
It didn’t work.
Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma who has been Wyden and Smith’s relentless opponent for eight months, objected to their request that the wilderness proposal be approved unanimously.
With that roadblock firmly in place, Wyden and Smith backed down. They did not offer the bill for a vote that would have been doomed.
The 15-minute exercise did nothing to minimize the frustration.
“I don’t expect the citizens of Oregon to understand the arcane rules of the Senate,” Smith said. “This is nothing extreme. This is something that is unique to Oregon.” … [more]
March 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
by Michael Milstein, The Oregonian, March 03, 2008
It was unusual enough when a high-level federal judge — who is the brother of Sen. Gordon Smith — blasted his own court for decimating the Northwest logging industry with “blunderbuss” rulings that went way too far.
But the extraordinary scolding by Milan D. Smith Jr. last year apparently got the attention of his fellow judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the top federal court in the West.
They recently took the unusual step of voting to have a full panel of judges reconsider the case that set Smith off. That could rein in the federal courts that Smith — along with timber industry leaders — blame for needlessly idling sawmills while they meddle in logging decisions beyond their expertise.
Just as the Supreme Court considers only a few important cases each year, the 9th Circuit — the largest appeals court in the country — picks only a handful for full reviews. So the decision to do so on an otherwise routine timber sale case suggests that Smith’s wrath hit a nerve with his colleagues.
“It’s very rare and unusual,” said Scott Horngren, a Portland attorney involved in the case. “It’s basically unheard of that they take a timber sale case.”
It offers a rare glimpse at the inside politics of the court that has issued momentous decisions, involving protection of species from spotted owls and salmon, with cascading effects on the Northwest economy.
Smith, like his brother the Republican senator, is from Pendleton. He founded a law firm in Torrance, Calif., and President Bush appointed him to the appeals court in 2006, adding a new, conservative voice to the court known for its liberal bent.
“Judges are troubled when they’re accused of going beyond their proper role by anybody,” said Dan Rohlf, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and director of the school’s environmental law clinic. “When the person accusing the court of that is one of its own members, they tend to be even more troubled.”
The case that led to Smith’s outburst is fairly routine: an attempt by environmental groups to block a U.S. Forest Service logging project known as Mission Brush in northern Idaho.
But the point Smith raised is much larger: How far should judges pry into the Forest Service’s rationale for the logging? Should judges evaluate the science the Forest Service uses to back its case, or defer to the agency’s expertise? … [more]
March 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian [here]
Comment online To comment on this story, go to Western Montana 360.
KALISPELL - A string of red-hot wildfire seasons has claimed millions of Western forest acres and not a few homes and lives, and Mike Dubrasich reckons he’s figured out at least part of the solution for future summers:
“If you know a Sierra Club member, please feel free to set their home on fire.”
That’s the suggestion - “I’m suggesting it, but I’m not advocating it” - Dubrasich posted on his Web site last week.
“Personally,” said Bob Clark, “I thought that was a little over the top.”
Clark is a Sierra Club representative based out of Missoula, and he keeps a whole file of death threats in his office. Some have been forwarded to the FBI, some to the state attorney general, some to the Montana Human Rights Network.
He doesn’t place Dubrasich’s post in the “death threat category,” but it did catch his attention.
“You shouldn’t have to live in your community in fear of your neighbors,” Clark said. “We live in a civil society. There are other avenues besides burning someone’s house down.”
And on that, Dubrasich couldn’t agree more.
Dubrasich, of Lebanon, Ore., describes himself as a forester, a consultant and a blogger, among other things. His Web network - the Western Institute for Study of the Environment - includes 11 separate sites. Eight are what he calls “educational colloquia,” all about forests and fires and wildlife and paleobotany and rural culture. The others are a mix of news and commentary, clippings and first-person opinion pieces.
February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Forest News
