Exploding targets banned on NW USFS lands

As of Tuesday, visitors to national forests in Oregon and Washington are prohibited from possessing, discharging or using exploding targets, the U.S. Forest Service announced.

The agency said exploding targets are a documented cause of wildfires, and have been associated with at least five wildfires on National Forest System lands since 2012, resulting in more than 15,600 acres burned and approximately $30 million in suppression costs.

“Exploding targets are an increasing concern on National Forests in this Region due to their potential to harm the public and for the high temperatures—and often flames—generated when they explode,” said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Michael Loudermilk.

source:  http://www.ktvz.com/news/exploding-targets-banned-on-nw-usfs-lands/-/413192/20909446/-/63rs5e/-/index.html

*******

did not find a notice on the USFS website, but imagine the source is reliable

GAO Report: 1/4 of USFS trails meet standards, maintenance backlog over $520 million

GAO Report: 1/4 of USFS trails meet standards, maintenance backlog over $520 million

July 8, 2013Matthew KoehlerLeave a commentGo to comments

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) titled, “Forest Service Trails: Long- and Short-Term Improvements Could Reduce Maintenance Backlog and Enhance System Sustainability” was released recently.

According to the report, one-quarter of the Forest Service’s 158000 miles of trails met the agency’s standards, and the estimated trail maintenance backlog is $314 million, with an additional $210 million for annual maintenance, capital improvements and operations.

Add this big-ticket maintenance backlog to the growing $8.4 billion maintenance and reconstruction backlog the Forest Service current has on it’s 380,000+ miles of roads (and the fact that the Forest Service only receives 20% of the annual maintenance funding it needs to maintain its existing 380,000+ mile road system to environmental and safety standards) and one gets a sense just how far the Forest Service (and Congress) has dug the Forest Service’s backlogged maintenance hole.

Click here for a copy of the GAO report. A Missoulian article about the report is available here.

*****

The rest of the blog post is http://ncfp.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/gao-report-14-of-usfs-trails-meet-standards-maintenance-backlog-over-520-million/

Forest Service Fails to Defend its Decision in the Face of Scientific Controversy

For Immediate Release – June 26, 2013

Forest Service Fails to Defend its Decision in the Face of Scientific Controversy; Agrees to Halt Construction and Will Attempt Restoration Work First

Contact: Ralph Bloemers, Attorney, Crag Law Center - ralph@crag.org - Tel. (503) 504-2432 Rhett Lawrence, Sierra Club, rhett.lawrence@sierraclub.org, (503) 238-0442, x304

Mt. Hood, Oregon, June 24, 2013. On June 4, 2013, four conservation groups – Bark, Friends of Mount Hood, Northwest Environmental Defense Center and the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club – filed a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking a court order restraining the Forest Service and RLK and Company (“RLK”), the operators of Timberline Lodge, from proceeding with construction of over 17 miles of downhill mountain bike routes and a skills park in the sub-alpine headwaters of Still Creek and the West Fork Salmon River. In response, the U.S. Forest Service and RLK chose to not defend their decision and the court entered an order enjoining construction of the downhill bike routes and skills park until the court reaches a decision on the merits. In their motion the conservation groups did not object to the Forest Service and RLK going forward with much-needed restoration work, and so this summer the Forest Service and RLK plan on attempting restoration of areas that are degraded from previous ski-lift construction and road building. The order grants the conservation groups the exact relief they sought in the motion.

The conservation groups filed suit against the Forest Service on May 15, 2013, claiming violations of National Forest Management Act’s substantive standards that protect aquatics, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act for the agency’s final approval of RLK’s plan to develop a lift-assisted downhill mountain bike park on Mt. Hood. (For background, visit http://crag.org/2013/05/18/case-will-decide-future-of-hoods-alpine-flanks-at-timberline/ and see attached Memo in Support of Motion).

After the suit was filed, RLK stated on its website:

The lawsuit essentially makes the same arguments put forth in this same group’s formal appeal which was subsequently rejected by the Regional Forester in February, 2013 after a rigorous environmental analysis by the USFS. Our proposal has been studied extensively through a 3-year process that included substantial input from the public, as well as State and Federal agencies. The Decision Notice and its Finding of No Significant Impact was made back in November 2012.

However, when push came to shove, RLK and the Forest Service caved and refused to defend their decision. A look at the scientific controversy surrounding the project explains why they did so. To secure an injunction, the conservation groups submitted expert statements from two top scientific experts and from Steve Wise, Executive Director for the Sandy River Basin Watershed Council. The experts underscored how the Forest Service has engaged in a results-driven process riddled with erroneous and unsupported assumptions regarding the project’s likely impacts on the natural environment. Rhett Lawrence stated, “We asked that the restoration move forward so the public could have an opportunity to field verify numerous scientifically controversial claims. Given our knowledge of the challenges of restoration on Mt. Hood, we expect it will be many years, if not a decade, before Timberline has actually achieved its restoration goals.”

In a filing submitted to the court, Robert Wisseman stated that the project will increase sediment delivery to Still Creek and the West Fork of the Salmon, which would likely contribute to a trend towards

loss of viability and Federal ESA listing of the Scott’s apatanian caddisfly. In its Environmental Assessment the Forest Service concluded without any analysis that the project would not have such an impact on the species. Mr. Wisseman is a widely recognized expert in his field who was retained by the Forest Service to conduct surveys for the Scott’s apatanian caddisfly in Still Creek and the West Fork of the Salmon in 2010. Mr. Wisseman actually trained Forest Service personnel to conduct such surveys. In his technical declaration filing, Mr. Wisseman sharply disagreed with the Forest Service’s conclusions and identified a number of key issues that the Forest Service must address before moving forward with new degrading activities.

The Scott’s apatanian caddisfly is a glacial relict species that has only been found in the West Fork Salmon River between about 4,000 and 5,000 feet of elevation and in the nearby Iron Creek drainage at about 4,000 feet of elevation. Only a few individuals have ever been collected from Iron Creek, and the West Fork Salmon River population is the only known potentially viable population of the species. Mr. Wisseman believes that the Scott’s apatanian caddisfly historically occurred in the headwaters of Still Creek. Caddisflies are an integral component of many freshwater ecosystems and are important in fish diets. Portions of Still Creek within the project area are designated critical habitat for the federally-listed Lower Columbia River steelhead. Further increases of fine sediment loading into Still Creek and the West Fork of the Salmon will impair the survival and reproduction of the Lower Columbia River steelhead and other salmonids.

In a filing with the court, Jonathan Rhodes – an expert hydrologist with over thirty years of experience – stated that the Forest Service’s analysis fails to adequately describe and assess the limited effectiveness of restoration in ameliorating the significant impacts of bike route construction and operation on soils, watersheds, water quality and aquatic habitat. Mr. Rhodes supplied the Forest Service with numerous scientific studies, many authored by Forest Service personnel, which contradicted the agency’s controversial conclusions and assumptions about the project. One of the most controversial claims that the agency made was that the proposed restoration work would be immediately effective. Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Wisseman stated that RLK’s previous attempts to re-establish vegetation on areas that were disturbed by construction had failed and that further attempts to re-establish vegetation to counter erosion may take years, if not decades, to succeed. Mr. Rhodes questioned how the agency was able to conclude that just six acres of restoration work in this fragile sub-alpine environment would immediately and completely cancel out the impact from twelve acres of newly degraded, bare mineral soils that would be created by the bike routes and skills park.

The Sandy River Basin Watershed Council also prepared a declaration that was submitted to the court and recommended against construction of the bike park for several reasons. First, the project area contains significant aquatic and watershed resources for listed salmonids and other wildlife. Second, the project area is currently in a “not properly functioning” condition. Third, the project would have an individually and cumulatively significant impact on habitat, water quality and other important ecological factors. The Sandy River Basin Watershed Council is a non-profit, citizen-led organization that has worked in partnership with the Forest Service, other state and federal agencies, private landowners and volunteers for over 12 years to restore portions of the Sandy River Basin.

Dennis Chaney, a member of Friends of Mt. Hood stated, “Given the degraded condition of the sub-alpine lands around Timberline ski area from previous construction activities, we agree that the Forest Service and RLK should first proceed with plans to attempt the restoration work this summer while holding off on further damaging this sensitive area.” The groups also delivered a public settlement statement to the Forest Service offering “to meet with the Forest Service, the ski area operator(s) and the mountain biking community to discuss appropriate locations for more mountain biking opportunities on Mt. Hood National Forest.”

What does lift-assisted downhill-mountain biking look like?

Ski Bowl Summer 2013 Racing Schedule and News

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/nw-cup-4-results-2012.html

June 20, 2012, NW CUP #4 – Ski Bowl, Mt. Hood Oregon Recap Includes pictures of downhill mountain bikes (including one dubbed “Earth Ripper” by its owner) and downhill mountain bike racing.

http://www.hurricaneracingoregon.com/assets/MtnBike_RaceCalendar.pdf

Schedule of racing events at Ski Bowl this summer.

Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r9VvEdaaOSo#! Video: Stevens Pass Bike Park - Rock Crusher This high-elevation trail is being ridden while it is wet and muddy despite promises from the Forest Service and the park operator that the facility would only operate in dry conditions. The Forest Service and RLK have made the same promises here that Timberline’s park will only operate in dry conditions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw8DRDAtJEQ

Video: Mt. Hood Pro Course Note that the bike routes are frequently as wide as a road rather than all “single-track.” In some cases they are single-track and narrow like a hiking trail, in many cases they are wide like roads. The Forest Service admitted in its analysis that the trails would function like roads on the landscape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6KmGYenh4A

Video: Mountain Biking 2012 – Ski Bowl

Bike Photos

http://www.bikerumor.com/2010/05/17/revealed-pivot-cycles-all-new-phoenix-downhill-mountain-bike/ http://oldglorymtb.com/2013-intense-cycles-951-evo-27-5-650b-downhill-mountain-bike/ Ski-Bowl Trails Map

http://www.skibowl.com/summer/sites/default/files/skibowlimages/mtBikingMap.jpg

There are over 40 miles of trails for all skill levels just minutes away from Timberline, yet in papers that Timberline filed with the Court it failed to mention that there are other lift-assisted downhill mountain bike parks in Oregon. Steve Kruse, Timberline’s Director of Mountain Operations, wrote: “Although Hood River, Bend, and Oak Ridge, Oregon, offer mountain biking, they do not offer full-service, lift- accessed (or assisted) mountain biking for all ability levels.” Timberline’s misleading filing was completely silent about the fact that there is a bike park just across the way at Ski Bowl in Government Camp, one at Willamette Pass, and that one more is under construction at Mount Bachelor. As this link to the Ski-Bowl trail map shows, Ski Bowl does offer full-service, lift-assisted mountain biking for all ability levels. Willamette Pass also offers lift-assisted mountain biking for all ability levels, and Mt. Bachelor will likely do the same.

Re: Federal fire program budgets

 FYI - copy of letter

June 28, 2013

Director Sylvia Burwell

Office of Management and Budget

725 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20503

Secretary Tom Vilsack

Department of Agriculture

1400 Independence Ave., SW

Washington, DC 20250

Secretary Sally Jewell

Department of the Interior

1849 C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20240

Dear Director Burwell, Secretary Vilsack, and Secretary Jewell:

            We write to request an action plan regarding the current budget framework for fire suppression and prevention activities and what can be done to move forward to ensure both suppression and prevention are adequately funded in future budgets.  In a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing earlier this month on wildland fire management it was clear that the current approach is unacceptable.     

Federal fire program budgets, wildfire frequency and intensity, and associated losses have been a concern for many years.  Because the Administration’s annual budget requests to Congress propose to fund the increasing 10-year rolling average for wildland fire suppression costs within the current funding level of the Forest Service and Department of the Interior’s discretionary appropriations, increases in suppression expenditures have caused significant decreases in funding for the non-fire programs including those that keep wildfire suppression costs down, such as hazardous fuels reduction, cost-share programs for the acquisition of fire apparatus with local partner agencies, and assistance for community wildfire planning. This shift in funding to fire suppression has taken a toll on the agencies budgets.  Just ten years ago, fighting fires accounted for 13 percent of the Forest Service budget; last year it was over 40 percent.

In a time when fire activity and costs are steadily rising, the 10-year rolling average budget formula that the agencies have used to set the annual budget request for suppression expenditures has translated into shortfalls in available suppression funds nearly every year since the mid-1990s. When the budgeted amount is insufficient, the agency continues to suppress fires by reallocating funds from other non-fire programs. This practice is called fire borrowing. This approach to paying for firefighting is nonsensical and further increases wildland fire costs.

            The Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement (FLAME) Act was enacted in 2009 to address these very issues.  The FLAME Act authorized the establishment of two reserve accounts to provide additional suppression funding for large, emergency wildfire incidents, above and beyond the 10-year average annual suppression expenditures. In addition, any balances remaining in the FLAME accounts were to carry-over into future years so that funds would be available for the inevitable, high cost years and not have to be borrowed from other program accounts.  Despite Congressional intent, OMB has forced the agencies to implement the FLAME Act in a manner that makes it ineffective:  instead of funding the FLAME account in addition to the 10-year average cost of suppression, the account is funded as part of the 10-year average cost of suppression.  Although authorized, no additional funding has been requested for the FLAME reserve accounts above the 10-year average cost of suppression.  Thus, fire borrowing has continued to occur. 

            We are also concerned about the dramatic cuts to hazardous fuels treatments proposed in the FY2014 President’s budget request.  For example, the Forest Service treated 1.87 million acres for hazardous fuels in FY2012, but expects to treat only 685,000 acres in FY2014.  Our understanding is that these cuts were based on OMB’s continued skepticism about the efficacy of hazardous fuels treatments. We whole-heartedly disagree with OMB on this point. 

We look forward to hearing from you.  If you or your staff should have any questions, please contact Meghan Conklin (202-224-8046) on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Majority Staff or Lucy Murfitt (202-224-4971) on Minority Staff.

Sincerely,

_____________________________                          _____________________________

Ron Wyden                                                                 Lisa Murkowski

Chairman                                                                     Ranking Member

Energy and Natural Resources Committee                 Energy and Natural Resources Committee

_____________________________                          _____________________________

Mark Udall                                                                 James Risch

United States Senator                                                 United States Senator

Oregon OKs killing wolves that attack livestock

By Shelby Sebens | Northwest Watchdog

Killing wolves that prey on livestock just got a little easier in Oregon.

The state legislature has passed a bill that lets ranchers kill wolves that are biting or killing their animals while still protecting the endangered species in Oregon. The bill passed unanimously in the Oregon Senate on Thursday.

The bill is part of a much worked-on compromise between ranchers, wolf advocates and the state. The bill included a settlement between the state and environmental groups that had filed a lawsuit which blocked the killing of wolves to protect livestock.

source: http://watchdog.org/92851/oregon-zeros-in-on-wolves-attacking-livestock/

Center for Biological Diversity issued an interesting press release on this subject:
Endangered Species Act’s Science-based Mandate Sidestepped for Political Expediency

Here’s the Press Release:

For Immediate Release, June 27, 2013

Contact: Brett Hartl, (202) 817-8121

WASHINGTON— Documents obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show last month’s proposal to remove most federal protections for gray wolves was preordained three years ago in a series of meetings with state wildlife agencies.

Under the Endangered Species Act, decisions to list and delist species must be made solely on the basis of the best available science. In this case the newly obtained documents suggest the Service pushed ahead to delist wolves without scientific support in order to obtain a political outcome desired by state fish and game agencies.

Specifically, the documents show that the Fish and Wildlife Service constrained the possible geographic scope of wolf recovery based on perceptions of “what can the public tolerate” and “where should wolves exist” rather than where suitable habitat for wolves exists or what is scientifically necessary for recovery. The meetings left state agencies in a position to dictate the fate of gray wolves across most of the lower 48 states.

Documents Reveal State Officials, Not Scientists, Led Decision to Strip Endangered SpeciesWolf_FOIA_document_excerptsProtections From Wolves Across Country

“This process made a mockery of the spirit of the Endangered Species Act. These documents show that years ago the Fish and Wildlife Service effectively handed over the reins on wolf recovery to state fish and game agencies, many of which are openly hostile to wolves,” said Brett Hartl, endangered species policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “In order to ensure this politically contrived outcome, the Fish and Wildlife Service has spent the past three years cherry-picking scientific research that justifies the predetermined outcome that wolves don’t need protection anymore.”

In August 2010 officials from a select group of state fish and game agencies were invited to a week-long workshop at the Fish and Wildlife training center in West Virginia to effectively decide the future of gray wolf recovery in the United States. The decisions made at the meeting were largely adopted in the agency’s June 2013 proposal to end federal protections for gray wolves across most of the lower 48.

As part of this process, the Fish and Wildlife Service also excluded any consideration of further protection for wolves in Colorado and Utah for either gray wolves coming from the north or Mexican wolves coming from the south. This was based solely on the opposition of the two states’ wildlife agencies and despite extensive wolf habitat in the two states. The documents also show that Fish and Wildlife promised that the input of state wildlife agencies “with a cooperative management role” would be given greater weight in any future decision-making and that it would develop a wolf delisting rule to “implement [the] understanding” reached at the 2010 meeting.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service’s actions demonstrate a near total lack of transparency and scientific integrity,” said Hartl. “If the Service had followed this same logic 20 years ago, there would be no wolves in Yellowstone National Park today — and no wolves roaming across the northern Rocky Mountains. The Service needs to go back to the drawing board and let the scientific facts guide how to recover wolves across the millions of acres of suitable wolf habitat remaining in the western United States and the Northeast.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 500,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Over 30 Million Bees Found Dead In Elmwood Canada

July 1, 2013 by Arjun

Shortly after 50,000 bees were found dead in an Oregon parking lot (read more here), a staggering 37 million bees have been found dead in Elmwood, Ontario, Canada. Dave Schuit, who runs a honey operation in Elmwood has lost 600 hives. He is pointing the finger at the insecticides known as neonicotinoids, which are manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. This also comes after a recent report released by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) that recorded its largest loss of honeybees ever. You can read more about that here.  The European Union has stepped forward, having banned multiple pesticides that have been linked to killing millions of bees. You can view the studies and read more about that here.

The loss comes after the planting of corn. Neonicotinoid pesticides are used to coat corn seed with air seeders. This results in having the pesticide dust blown into the air when planted. The death of millions of pollinators was studied by Purdue University. They discovered that Bees exhibited neurotoxic symptoms. They analyzed dead bees and found that traces of thiamethoxam/clothiandin were present in each case. The only major source of these compounds are seed treatments of field crops. You can view that study here (1).

Bee deaths are increasing exponentially. An international team of scientists led by Holland’s Utrecht University has concluded that, “large scale prophylaxic use in agriculture, their high persistence in soil and water, and their uptake by plants and translocation to flowers, neonicotinoids put pollinators at risk. This is some of the research that led to the European Unions ban of the pesticides, as mentioned and referenced earlier.

Can we really debate this much longer? The evidence linking pesticides to bee deaths is overwhelming. It’s not only bees, but an array of other insects as well. The last thing we need is more events to occur that companies can use to push the manufacturing and development or more genetically modified foods. One reason that has been used for justification of GMO’s is a food shortage, and we all know how critical bees are to our food supply. There is a huge conflict of interest here, the pesticides used to spray the crops that are killing the bees are developed by biotech corporations such as Monsanto.

Time to make the connections, time to speak up!

Sources:

http://www.thepost.on.ca/2013/06/19/bees-dying-by-the-millions

(1) http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/publications/E-53.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/?tool=pubmed

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11585.html

post is from http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/07/01/over-30-million-bees-found-dead-in-elmwood-canada/#_

Young men and fire

written by Jon Talton is a journalist and author living in Seattle, where he is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times.

Young men and fire

Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened... — Norman Maclean 

Smokejumpers and other wildfire-fighters call them "shake and bakes," the portable shelters they carry. These cocoons of foil and fiberglas offer the firefighters at best a 50-percent chance and are deployed as a last resort, as when the wind shifts and the living devil of fire traps and turns on them. The hope is that the fire will pass over quickly. Otherwise, "the only thing your shake and bake will do is allow you to have an open-casket funeral,” one crew supervisor told Wired. Such dark humor is a necessary component of dangerous, sometimes deadly jobs. The Prescott Fire Department's Granite Mountain Hotshots team reportedly deployed its shake-and-bakes Sunday in a conflagration at Yarnell, amid triple-digit temperatures and high winds.Nineteen died. As I write, the fire is at zero containment.

This is the deadliest event for wildfire-fighters in modern history. Deadlier than Colorado's South Canyon fire in 1994 on Storm King Mountain. Deadlier than the 1949 Mann Gulch blaze in Montana, which inspired Norman Maclean's classic study, Young Men and Fire. a book both elegiac and forensically definitive.

Here is what I don't want: Cheap sentimentalizing and cynical religiosity from politicians who are otherwise hostile to public employees, adequate government budgets and sensible land-use policies. The ones who use public pensions and unions as evil hand-puppets to distract citizens from the screwing they are getting from the plutocrats. The tax cutters and climate-change "deniers." Please spare me your sudden compassion for public servants and first responders. Spare me your flags and "USA! USA!" and endless evocation of "heroes" if this is mere denial and lazy thinking. Look: I get the shock and grief. I used to be a first responder myself, cross-trained to deploy with forestry fire teams, and more than once was nearly killed (in the city). I know those men are with the Lord and all their tears have been dried, and I pray that their families are given comfort and grace. But I am not going to endlessly tweet this or post it on Facebook. We owe them more. Read on if you agree. This will not be a popular column. It is a necessary one.

for the whole blog posting, go to this link 

http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2013/07/young-men-and-fire.html