Missoula County: Forest lands are essential to rural communities
The Clark Fork Chronicle, April 25, 2010 [here]
Editor’s note: The U.S. Forest Service is hosting a series of public meetings in April and May 2010 to provide opportunities for public input and dialog on the development of a new planning rule. For further information about how you can participate in the development of a new planning rule, visit their website at http://www.fs.fed.us/. The Missoula County Board of Commissioners submitted its comments in advance of this month’s public meetings. The full text of the letter follows:
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the above referenced Notice of Intent. We greatly appreciate the Forest Service for its open and transparent process to consider amendments to the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement and ultimately, the Planning Rule.
Four “Substantive Principles for a New Rule” are outlined in the NOI’s Proposed Action for the EIS. We are providing comments on each, but ask that you include the two additional Substantive Principles noted below in the Proposed Action.
* In recognition of Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack’s publicly noted key objectives for the USFS, we ask that you include his sustainable communities objective as a Substantive Principle in the EIS. The Secretary has frequently noted the importance of cultural, social, economic and resource issues that link Forest Service managed lands with local communities. In western Montana, failure to make such a link can result in poor forest management, increased risks to human safety, declining wildlife values and the loss of economic opportunities that can benefit humans and wildlife alike. We respectfully request that any Forest Service Planning Rule recognize the nexus between rural communities and public lands.
* As part of the Rule, Missoula County encourages the USFS to enter into Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with local government agencies that are impacted and influenced by Forest Plans. Strong local leadership at the Forest Supervisor level has resulted in such an agreement between Missoula County and the Lolo, Bitterroot and Flathead National Forests. Other signatories include the Bureau of Land Management, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This extremely proactive and valuable agreement with local, state and federal agencies allows local input on issues ranging from Forest Plans and local economies to wildlife, fisheries, timber management, restoration and recreation. Our MOU fosters “continued and improved communication and coordination of land use planning and management that will benefit the public and all lands within Missoula County.” We encourage such agreements across all Forests.
Regarding the four Substantive Principles in the NOI, we offer the following:
1. Land Management plans could address the need for restoration and conservation to enhance the resilience of ecosystems to a variety of threats.
Missoula County strongly agrees with this principle and recommends that “restoration” must be defined at a local level as a community-based effort recognizing site-specific conditions and threats to the health of an ecosystem. Restoration implementation should be defined locally and collaboratively while recognizing national trends and needs. Implementation must be well funded and based on the best available science in concert with local knowledge.
2. Plans should proactively address climate change through monitoring, mitigation and adaptation, and could allow flexibility to adapt to changing conditions and incorporate new information.
Missoula County supports this Principle and urges data gathering, research and monitoring of threatened, endangered and sensitive wildlife species, fisheries, air quality, timber growth and regeneration. In addition, we urge the USFS to consider external factors such as land use changes on private land. More specifically, the Planning Rule must allow opportunities to address rapidly changing climatic conditions and the impact of those changes on wildlife, wildfire and local communities. The current Missoula County Community Wildfire Protection Plan provides an example of how such a proactive plan can be developed.
3. Land management plans could emphasis maintenance and restoration of watershed health, and could protect and enhance America’s water resources.
Missoula County believes that all such plans must emphasize restoration and maintenance of watershed health across all USFS and private lands and must be completed at the watershed level with site specific data gathering and implementation based on science and community input.
4. Plans could provide for the diversity of species and wildlife habitat.
Missoula County requests that the Rule address diversity on a species and habitat level. Since some species are wide ranging, while others are localized, it is imperative that the Rule allow flexibility to ensure diversity across extensive geographic scales while acknowledging species-specific individual habitats.
5. Plans could foster sustainable NFS lands and their contribution to vibrant rural economies.
Again, Missoula County supports this Principle but urges consideration, as noted on the first page, of sustainable communities as an additional guiding Principle. It is not sufficient to note that NFS lands contribute to vibrant rural economies. NFS land are actually essential to rural communities that depend on hunting, fishing, timber and bio-fuel harvest, motorized and non-motorized recreation, outfitting and natural resource protection and restoration.
Three Process Principles for a New Rule are outlined in the NOI. Missoula County’s comments follow each Process Principle.
1. Land management planning could involve effective and proactive collaboration with the public.
Missoula County encourages significant public outreach in rural communities. We encourages federal land managers to note that each community is different in how it relates to NFS lands and how each community shares information within the community and between the community and land managers. A “one size fits all” outreach program will not be successful in rural communities. Outreach must be tailored to the issues and communication needs of rural areas. For instance, public “hearings and meetings” are rarely the best method of engaging rural residents. While a public hearing or meeting on an issue may work well in urban areas, rural residents, who are often engaged in dealing with NFS land resource management, are frequently unable to attend one meeting due to work, family and other constraints and must rely on other methods of outreach and information sharing. Consequently, Missoula County requests that any new Rule be based on informed collaboration over a time frame that recognizes rural cultures, economies and the time constraints facing rural residents.
2. Plans could incorporate an “all lands” approach by considering the relationship between NFS lands and neighboring lands.
Missoula County believes the Planning Rule should recognize local government adopted land use and management plans, note opportunities for coordination and cooperation between federal and local planners, and require open collaboration between land owners and management agencies. This will permit knowledge sharing and help ensure solid working relationships that allow implementation of management plans by both government and private land owners.
3. Plans could be based on the latest planning science and principles to achieve the best decisions possible.
In its land management decisions, Missoula County staff strives to provide the best available and legally defensible science to decision-makers. We believe the Forest Service should also base plans in part on the best available science, while including the flexibility to address new information as it becomes available. Any new Rule should be guided by such principles while concurrently considering sustainable communities, advice from local government and predicted future events.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to comment. If you would like further clarification of Missoula County’s position on these matters, please feel free to contact us at your earliest opportunity.
Sincerely,
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Michele Landquist, Chair
Jean Curtiss, Commissioner
Bill Carey, Commissioner
by Ken
Why not just give the management of our national forests to the environmental industry? They are already in charge. This would do two things immediately; first it would end the conflict industry with its lawyers and endless lawsuits. Second, we could stop paying for a dysfunctional bureaucracy which now only exists to implement the desires of the environmental industry and which has created a situation where there is monetary motivation to burn down what we gave them to manage. And, finally, when the environmental industry figured out that they couldn’t go to their supporters and plead for money because the lands were being mismanaged, they would quickly decide that they were enlightened enough to utilize some of the vast resources at their disposal. Would this lead to revitalized local communities, fewer fires and moneys for our schools, roads and bridges?
Once they turn all former National Forest lands into National Parks and Wilderness, the carnage would be locked in with plenty of it “slopping over” on to private property, with the eco’s blaming owners for living on their own land, instead of in a pricey urban condo. They don’t care about rural residents, their schools, roads or bridges. Much of the general public doesn’t trust the radical eco-groups as it is, already. Now is not the time to give up on saving our forests!
Why? Why do anything if the final decision is to not fight fire? Use the money saved to hold a grand picnic each year for the residents in some copse before its incinerated fate descends upon it.
This fatalist deal in America, that we must succumb to the certainty of death and destruction, and since only rednecks and tea partiers believe in an afterlife the real issue is to live well today and let tomorrow take care of itself, is now government policy. It never occurred to me that government in the USA would become that far reaching and draconian.