Randy Moore to become US Forest Service's first African American chief

 Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will appoint Randy Moore as the new chief of the US Forest Service, making him the first African American to lead the agency once sworn in, Vilsack announced Monday.

Moore, a longtime employee of the Forest Service, will take the agency's reins just as it braces for the 2021 wildfire season, which officials say could be longer this year due to record-high temperatures in the Southwest and an intensifying drought in the region.

Vilsack said in a statement that Moore, who had been serving as regional forester in the Pacific Southwest Region in California since 2007, "has been a conservation leader on the forefront of climate change, most notably leading the Region's response to the dramatic increase in catastrophic wildfires in California over the last decade."

...Moore's historic appointment follows a series of leadership shake-ups at the Forest Service, whose current chief, Vicki Christiansen, came into the position in 2018 after then-Chief Tony Tooke resigned amid reports that the agency was looking into misconduct allegations against him...MORE

About Tooke's resignation, PBS reported:

The news comes days after a PBS NewsHour investigation revealed a widespread culture of sexual harassment and assault within the agency, and retaliation against those who reported it.

That investigation also revealed claims of sexual misconduct against Tooke, including relationships with his subordinates before he became chief.

The United States Department of Agriculture confirmed last week it had “engaged an independent investigator” to look into claims about Tooke’s behavior.

Anybody know what became of the investigation of Tooke? 

Ag secretary orders environmental rollbacks for Forest Service

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Friday ordered the U.S. Forest Service to expedite environmental reviews on its land, paving the way for more grazing, logging and oil development on public lands. The directive, announced by Perdue on a trip to Missoula, Mont., comes in the form of an unusual memo to Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen. He called it “a blueprint for reforms to further provide relief from burdensome regulations, improve customer service, and boost the productivity of our National Forests and Grasslands.” The move could be welcome news in Montana, where the state’s ranchers, miners, and oil and gas workers have long argued for increased access to public lands. But environmentalists say the memo affirms a number of dangerous strategies already underway by the Trump administration. “This is a roadmap to national forest destruction, and it’s painful to read,” said Randi Spivak, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s public lands program. The recommendations align with other efforts already taken by the Trump administration and in some cases regulations already underway at the Forest Service. The Forest Service is already in the process of rolling back its role under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which requires robust environmental reviews of any major action taken by the government on public lands. The White House is pursuing a similar rollback of the law through its Council on Environmental Quality...MORE

You can view the memo here

Republicans and a labor union work together to preserve wasteful Forest Service program

The Trump administration, under heavy pressure from Congress, will withdraw plans to end a U.S. Forest Service program that trains underprivileged youth, spokespersons for the Agriculture and Labor departments told POLITICO. The Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers, a program within the Job Corps, trains low-income young people to to become first responders to natural disasters, to work on rural infrastructure projects, and to maintain national forests. The administration’s reversal on its shuttering the centers comes after significant pushback from lawmakers of both parties — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — and also from the union that represents USDA Forest Service employees...MORE

You will notice my headline is different from the POLITICO article and I believe is a more accurate description of the situation. I've had personal experience with this program which I wrote about here. 

Nice try Perdue.

Forest Service chief set to testify before congressional committee on workplace abuse

In an ongoing battle of harassment and misconduct allegations at the U.S. Forest Service, its chief, Vicki Christiansen, is set to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday along with a former employee from the agency who claims to have been harassed by the former chief. Shannon Reed, an air quality specialist, claims in her written testimony she was viewed as a "sexual object" and that the former Forest Chief Tony Tooke grabbed her buttocks. "I did not report Mr. Tooke because I feared retaliation," Reed wrote. Tooke resigned after an investigation looking into the allegations made against him of sexual misconduct began. Shortly after, Christiansen, the interim chief at the time, issued a mandatory full-day training about harassment and safety in the work place. One hundred current and former female employees of the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wrote an open letter Wednesday to Christiansen, echoing Reed's fear of retaliation and to "expose serious issues of discrimination, harassment, and workplace violence against female employees."...MORE

New female Forest Service head launches review of harassment, sexual misconduct in the agency

The U.S. Forest Service is implementing what it’s calling a 30-day action plan to address harassment, sexual misconduct, and retaliation in the agency. The changes come weeks after a PBS NewsHour investigation into these issues, especially in the agency’s firefighting ranks, along with the departure of Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke amid allegations of his own sexual misconduct. Interim chief Vicki Christiansen announced the plan on an all-staff call last week, and in an email to staff Wednesday. Recent news reports, she said, had “focused a bright light on a problem the agency has been combating for years” and “made it painfully clear that the policies prohibiting such behaviors are not enough.” Christiansen called the problem a “cultural” one, and said it was time to “really drill down deep” to examine what needed to change. The 30-day plan, called “Stand Up For Each Other,” includes “employee listening sessions,” staged across the country by senior leaders, counselors and civil rights officers to discuss issues of harassment and retaliation with employees. In last week’s call with staff, Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Lenise Lago said these listening sessions would help the agency develop a kind of curriculum to deal with the problem...MORE

Forest Service names female interim chief while agency faces harassment allegations

The Trump administration named a new interim U.S. Forest Service chief on Thursday, just days after the prior head of the agency stepped down due to sexual misconduct allegations. The appointment of Vickie Christiansen, an experienced deputy chief and former forest firefighter, came at the end of "a difficult week," Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue wrote in an email to the agency's 35,000 employees, according to The Associated Press. Perdue accepted the resignation of Tony Tooke on Wednesday, following a "PBS NewsHour" report where dozens of former female employees accused Tooke of inappropriate touching and workplace harassment. Perdue is reportedly implementing measures to prevent retaliation against victims of workplace harassment, including hiring outside investigators to look into future complaints of sexual misconduct...more

With Tooke’s resignation, scandal continues to burn the U.S. Forest Service

Months before U.S. Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke abruptly resigned, his superiors at the Agriculture Department were made aware of the scandal that brought an end to Tooke’s 30-year career. As early as September, the office of Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) informed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s office of a letter from a Forest Service retiree who wrote that Tooke wasn’t deserving of the post he was appointed to by Perdue the month before. Isakson’s office confirmed its receipt of the letter Thursday, a day after Tooke tendered his immediate resignation following a “PBS NewsHour” report that he was under investigation for improper behavior. A spokeswoman for Isakson would not reveal the letter’s contents, but Energy and Environment News and the Daily Caller each reported that it claimed that Tooke offered a newly created staff position to a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair when he worked at an office in Florida. Agriculture officials appointed an independent investigator to look into the claim. The accusation against a top official is especially stinging because the agency is investigating dozens of harassment claims, particularly from women in its firefighting division. PBS, as well as The Washington Post, interviewed women who claimed that they had been raped, spied on while showering, groped, berated, pressured to quit and retaliated against for reporting abuses. During the reporting of both stories, women firefighters who spoke to reporters later rescinded their comments for fear of losing their careers...more

They reported sexual harassment. Then the retaliation began

Harassment of women in the Forest Service has been a problem for years. As far back as 1972, women have joined together to file class action complaints and lawsuits about gender discrimination and sexual harassment. More recently, in 2016, a congressional hearing was held to address the problem within the Forest Service’s California workforce, which had also been the focus of previous complaints. The PBS NewsHour investigated what’s happened since then, and found the problem goes much deeper. In interviews with 34 current and former U.S. Forest Service women, spanning 13 states, the women described a workplace that remains hostile to female employees. They complained of a pattern of gender discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment and assault by crew members and supervisors. Three women said they were raped after-hours by co-workers or interagency firefighters while working for the Forest Service. Many women alleged retaliation after reporting these incidents. The retaliation they described took different forms: verbal threats, bullying notes, duties stripped, negative performance reviews, and demotions. Myers applied to work another season with the Forest Service and said she received interest from several states, but not Oregon, where she reported the abuse. ‘It’s like I’m on some Oregon blacklist, the Oregon #MeToo blacklist,” she said. Some women interviewed said they never reported the harassment for fear of retaliation. In a survey of nearly 2,000 Forest Service employees in California, conducted by the USDA Office of Inspector General last summer, the majority of respondents said they knew of the agency’s “zero tolerance” policy for harassment. But the survey, released in February 2018, also showed that most who experienced harassment did not report it, either because they didn’t trust the reporting process, didn’t believe that the process would be confidential, or feared a negative impact on their job...more

In Rural New Mexico, Ranchers Wage Their Battle Through The Courts

Kirk Siegler

...Near the town of Cloudcroft, in a meadow of crusty, old snow, Stone hops out of a pickup and walks toward a small stream by the side of a dirt road. There's a fence around it to keep the cattle out. Federal biologists determined this area is critical habitat for the endangered New Mexico jumping mouse, and plants it relies on. "I understand endangered species, they need to be protected," Stone says. But he says environmentalists have pressured the government to close off areas like this using the Endangered Species Act as a tool to get cattle off the land. That claim is denied by most mainstream environmental groups. "They want to preserve a jumping mouse and they want to kill an American culture and heritage," Stone says. In arid New Mexico, the origin of pretty much any fight over the land is water, or what's left of it – it's feared that New Mexico is slipping back into drought. And the story around this fence is complicated. The land Stone stands on is public land. The ranchers don't own it. But they've long argued they do own the rights to the water flowing through it. Those rights were granted by the state before the U.S. Forest Service came into the picture. "It is a personal property right, that water that's flowing down that creek right there," Stone says. The cattle mostly couldn't get to the water. Things got tense. This was around the same time that government agents had squared off with militia supporters of Cliven Bundy in an unsuccessful attempt to round up the family's cows that were grazing without permits on federal land. But in southern New Mexico, the ranchers got together and decided to take a very different course: the courts. They believed the law was on their side, and alleged in federal court that the government violated constitutional rights by not compensating them after their property was condemned. At one point, Gary Stone recalls having to turn away supporters of the Bundys. Some had even offered to come in with bulldozers and tear the fences down. "We have not allowed that, because we don't want to go to guns," Stone says. Late last year, a federal judge sided with the ranchers. And the drama started to die down...

Here on the Lincoln National Forest, all 74 permit holders are in good standing. But count at least one of those, maybe more, as a reluctant holder. "We have never not signed our permit," says Spike Goss. "But we have always signed it under protest, at least for the last twenty years or so." Spike and his wife Kelly and their cattle company the Sacramento Grazing Association first brought that lawsuit over the fencing around the water sources back in 2004. One frigid evening, while checking on one of their largest corrals, the couple said they feel somewhat vindicated. But there could be appeals. "We just aren't going to resort to violence," Kelly Goss says. "As important as these issues are, and as much as we're going to keep fighting for them, we're going to fight through the courts." Like in much of the Southwest, vast tracts of range land here are owned by the federal government. Many ranchers depend heavily on their federal grazing allotments, which tend to be passed down through generations. "You do own something, you know," Kelly says. "We don't own the dirt, but we do own the water rights and the forage rights and you pay for that."

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See the Goss court opinion here.

This Land Is No Longer Your Land

Brad Wilson is following a forest trail and scanning the dusky spaces between the fir trees for signs of movement. The black handle of a .44 Magnum juts prominently from his pack. If he stumbles on a startled bear at close range, the retired sheriff’s deputy wants to know the gun is within quick reach, in case something stronger than pepper spray is needed. Wilson isn’t the type who likes to take chances; he’s the type who plans ahead. Before setting foot on this path, he unfolded a huge U.S. Forest Service map and reviewed the route, Trail 267. He put a finger at the trailhead, which was next to a ranger’s station, then traced its meandering path into the Crazy Mountains, a chain in south-central Montana that’s part of the northern Rockies. Like many of the trails and roads that lead into U.S. Forest Service land, Trail 267 twists in and out of private properties. These sorts of paths have been used as access points for decades, but “No Trespassing” signs are popping up on them with increasing frequency, along with visitors’ logs in which hikers, hunters, and Forest Service workers are instructed to sign their names, tacitly acknowledging that the trail is private and that permission for its use was granted at the private landowners’ discretion. Wilson hates the signs and the logbooks, interpreting them as underhanded attempts by a handful of ranchers to dictate who gets to enter federal property adjacent to their own. Several of the owners operate commercial hunting businesses or rental cabins; by controlling the points of ingress to public wilderness, Wilson says, they could effectively turn tens of thousands of acres of federal land into extensions of their own ranches. That would allow them to charge thousands of dollars per day for exclusive access, while turning away anyone—hikers, anglers, bikers, hunters, locals like Wilson, or even forest rangers—who didn’t strike a deal...He trudges up a rooty slope and, after a blind bend, sees something straddling the trail that stops him cold. It’s a padlocked metal gate. He hiked this trail a couple of weeks before, and the fence wasn’t there. A sign on it reads, “Private Property: No Forest Service Access, No Trespassing.” It’s exactly the kind of sign he’d been bad-mouthing a few minutes earlier, but he wasn’t expecting to see one here. The locked gate feels like an escalation, a new weapon in an improvised war...Before Wilson turns around and walks back to the trailhead, he vows that he’ll be better prepared next time. Alongside the .44 he’ll pack a pair of super-heavy-duty bolt cutters, and he swears he’ll tear that gate down...more

First, land owners have people sign those papers to protect their own property rights. Otherwise a prescriptive easement can be established over their property.

Second, in many situations, if the land owner is approached about the purchase of an easement or the possibility of a land exchange, things can be worked out.

To show you what has happened to the concept of private property in this country, we now have a former law enforcement officer prepared to destroy property so he can trespass.
 

Forest Service tried to quash paper debunking Montana wildlife authority

The U.S. Forest Service has disavowed a legal analysis it commissioned that showed federal land managers have given state wildlife departments more authority than they really possess. In June, the agency asked the University of Montana to remove the draft report five days after "Fish and Wildlife Management on Federal Lands: Debunking State Supremacy” appeared on the Bolle Center for People and Forest's website. Three weeks later, it terminated a two-year contract with the center and its director, Martin Nie, citing the “provocative title" as a reason. “This is some of the most tedious, boring work I’ve ever done,” Nie told a group of UM students Wednesday. “That’s what’s amazing — how much controversy this has generated.” The beehive Nie and his colleagues whacked concerns who owns and controls wildlife in the nation: state fish and game departments or federal land managers. In 126 pages of Supreme Court citings, legislative history and case studies, the Bolle team argued that “the U.S. Constitution grants the federal government vast authority to manage its lands and wildlife resources … even when states object.” “The myth that ‘the states manage wildlife and federal land agencies only manage wildlife habitat’ is not only wrong from a legal standpoint but it leads to fragmented approaches to wildlife conservation, unproductive battles over agency turf, and an abdication of federal responsibility over wildlife,” the report stated. It found that claim “especially dubious when states assert ownership as a basis to challenge federal authority over wildlife on federal lands.” On August 30, Forest Service Deputy Chief for Research and Development Carlos Rodriguez-Franco wrote Nie another response. “The concerns which led to the termination … arose when a draft article, with a provocative title challenging state legal authorities, was placed on a public website without prior substantive comment from the Forest Service,” Rodriguez-Franco wrote. “(I)t became apparent that the work being conducted by the University was entering the realm of legal services — including interpreting the Constitution, laws and court cases as they pertain to the administration of Forest Service programs — rather than scientific research.” The Forest Service, he explained, was required by law to get its legal advice from the federal Office of General Counsel...more

Embedded below is the paper discussed in the article:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Yd5M8kgeNtV1JlYzNtdDlGRU0/view?usp=sharing

Amid Severe Fire Season, Finger Pointing Over Forest Management Heats Up

In the midst of Montana’s severe fire season, a heated debated has reignited over forest management, with a group of Montana Republican lawmakers arguing that lawsuits halting logging projects are elevating wildfire dangers, while critics counter that GOP lawmakers are at fault for not recognizing climate change and failing to properly fund federal agencies. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, Rep. Greg Gianforte and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recently toured the Lolo Peak Fire, which has burned nearly 40,000 acres, forced numerous evacuations in the Lolo and Florence areas and cost more than $34 million. “Montanans are saying we are tired of breathing the smoke,” Daines said on the tour, according to Montana Public Radio. “We are tired of seeing these catastrophic wildfires. And either we are going to better manage our forests, or the forests are going to manage us.” Daines blames “extreme environmental groups” that have sued the U.S. Forest Service for halting logging and thinning projects that he says could reduce large amounts of fuel and help prevent wildfires. The comments made by Daines, and similar ones made by Gianforte and Zinke, sparked backlash from others who say the GOP-led Congress has neglected to properly fund the U.S. Forest Service for fire prevention and forest management. Critics also say the GOP, including Montana’s delegation, is failing to recognize the impacts of climate change, an issue that has elicited wavering responses and inaction among a number of Republicans. A collective of conservation groups is challenging a proposed logging project along the east shore of Lindbergh Lake at the headwaters of the Swan River, saying the project would harm sensitive wildlife and damage habitat while also bucking environmental regulations. The lawsuit clams the Forest Service violated federal law by failing to analyze the environmental impacts of the project with an adjacent project, the Glacier Loon, which is located in the same watershed and would be implemented at the same time. The cumulative effects of these projects should be taken into account, the lawsuit says. The suit argues that the two projects would have combined consequences that would negatively affect grizzly bears and lynx and their habitat...more

Cumulative impacts and grizzlies - NEPA and the ESA - are once again the usual suspects.

The R's can take all the tours and give all the speeches they want, but just talking won't change anything.

The concept of cumulative impacts and the need to account for endangered species are not exactly new items in planning. NEPA (PL 91-190) passed in 1969 and the ESA has been on the books since 1966 (P.L. 89-669 ), amended in 1969 (P. L. 91–135), and amended in 1973 (93-205). So after almost 50 years and numerous court cases, why can't the Forest Service implement these acts? The enviros keep suing and suing and winning and winning. And the taxpayers keep paying to reimburse the enviros' attorneys, and for the court costs and the Forest Service "redos".

If the R's don't like the two outcomes - projects delayed and taxpayers raped - then they should amend the laws creating those outcomes.  Giving speeches will change nothing.  And if the public keeps electing those who speak but don't act, then nothing will change. Just get ready for more lawsuits, more devastating fires and more speeches. 

What a difference new president makes!

By TERRY ANDERSON

...Less well known on the national scene, but visible to those of us who live in Montana, are both administrations’ stance on private property rights and access to public lands. Back when politics was more civil, land management agencies cooperated with private owners whose land provides access to national forests. They purchased or negotiated easements and acknowledged the good will of landowners who allowed access, some literally through their front yards. When trying to get public access to Indian Creek south of Ennis, for example, District Ranger Mark Petroni said in 2006: “They [the landowners] have offered to partner with us to acquire an easement across their property, assist with acquisition of an easement across their neighbor and help fund NEPA [an environmental review] and construction of a new trail location that avoids their lawn. This potential partnership is too good to pass up.”

 Such cooperation, however, changed under the Obama administration as the Forest Service took a more strident approach in asserting claims to “traditional public access” routes. The dramatic change is reflected in a posting by Yellowstone District Ranger Alex Sienkiewicz who publically advocated “NEVER ask permission to access the National Forest Service through a traditional route shown on our maps EVEN if that route crosses private land. NEVER ASK PERMISSION; NEVER SIGN IN. ... By asking permission, one undermines public access rights and plays into their lawyers’ trap of establishing a history of permissive access.”

 According to Sienkiewicz and access advocates, traditional public access is sufficient to establish a legal right, known as a prescriptive easement, to cross private property. Centuries of legal practice, however, have required that individuals or agencies wanting to establish prescriptive easements must prove that access was continuous, open, notorious, and hostile to the owner. In other words, the access must be without expressed permission by the landowner, a burden of proof that has been difficult, to say the least.

The political winds changed when the new sheriff — President Trump — came to town. This spring, the heavy-handed approach of the Obama administration was brought to the attention of Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in a letter from Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and furthered by a meeting with Montana landowner interests in May. Thereafter, Sienkiewicz was reassigned to another district in order to “create some separation between Alex ... and allegations raised concerning access issues.” According to Melissa Baumann, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Forest Service Council, this is a signal that employees are “under the gun from the administration.”

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Fiery rhetoric from California to feds over $18 million fire debt

California’s emergency services director fired off a sharply worded letter to the U.S. Forest Service this week that said the agency had stiffed local governments $18 million for fighting wildfires on federal lands last year and raised the prospect the state may stop protecting national forests during blazes. “I cannot continue to support the deployment of resources to protect federal land that ultimately may bankrupt our local governments,” Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci said in the letter sent Monday to Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell. The dispute stems from longstanding commitments that coordinate and reimburse firefighters for work on federal lands. Nearly half the land in California is federally owned, and the greatest percentage of that is in National Forests. Wildfires are fought with a combination of local, state and federal firefighters working under mutual aid agreements that often send them hundreds of miles from home. Massive encampments that sprout up at big wildfires include bean counters who tally the costs of fighting fires and figure out how to reimburse the many agencies helping out. But Ghilarducci said the federal government was shirking its responsibilities to reimburse local governments by illogically relying on a “sudden interpretation” of a 1955 law that prevents the government from paying volunteer firefighters...more

Advocates outraged over reassignment of Forest Service ranger

Conservation and public lands access advocates are outraged over the reassignment of a Forest Service district ranger who had tangled with landowners over public access in the Crazy Mountains. Alex Sienkiewicz was removed from his position as the Custer Gallatin National Forest’s Yellowstone District Ranger last week and reassigned to lead the team analyzing a potential mineral withdrawal in the Absaroka Mountains south of Livingston. He also faces an internal review. The move came after years of trail disputes with landowners in the Crazy Mountains, which fell under his jurisdiction. One such dispute resulted in a hunter being cited for trespassing. The hunter settled the case last week. Marna Daley, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service, said Sienkiewicz is filling a void the forest had been unable to fill by taking over the mineral withdrawal team. She didn’t offer any more detail on the review or its origins, other than to confirm that landowner concerns had been raised with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and that removing Sienkiewicz is meant to distance him from the issues involved in the internal review...more

US Ag Secretary Promises Big Changes For The Forest Service

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was in Great Falls Thursday for an “agriculture summit” hosted by Senator Steve Daines. Perdue promised big changes at the U.S. Forest Service, which his department oversees. Former Georgia Governor Sunny Perdue has only been Agriculture Secretary for five weeks. He told the crowd of mostly farmers and ranchers that where he comes from, trees are a crop that can be sustainably harvested. "We've got a lot of U.S. Forest [Service] land that's not healthy. Part of that's budgetary, part of that's ideology and litigation and NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] regulations that we've got to get straightened out," Perdue said. The ag secretary said President Trump is already making that happen, and there's more to come. "We're not going to roll over every time someone says 'boo' about us wanting to harvest timber to make a healthy forest," Perdue said...more

Forest Service Owns ‘National Junkyard’ of Thousands of Unused Buildings

The Forest Service oversees thousands of buildings that are unused, many that are falling apart, full of mold, and pose safety hazards, according to a new audit. The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that the Forest Service has compiled over $5 billion worth of repairs to buildings, roads, dams, and trails it operates. Officials admit they are becoming a "national junkyard" by overseeing thousands of decrepit buildings the government does not need. "During our fieldwork, we observed [Forest Service] buildings that were not inspected as well as buildings that forest officials stated had structural issues, mold growth, wide-spread rodent droppings, and other health and safety concerns including 20 buildings with concerns so severe that officials referred to them as ‘red tagged,'" the inspector general reported. "Red tag" refers to buildings and structures that are so unsafe they are closed. Some buildings had asbestos, and one residential building observed by auditors had a 15-foot hole in the roof, as well as mold and fire damage. "As a result, unsafe structures can pose health and safety risks, such as hantavirus or other concerns, to [Forest Service] employees and the public," the inspector general said. Auditors surveyed a sample of 182 dams the Forest Service oversees, and found 76 percent either had no documentation or did not receive required safety inspections. Seventy-seven percent of dams considered to be high hazards "did not receive required safety inspections within the last 5 years." Sixty-one percent had no emergency action plan, and some that did had not been updated since 1982. Dams are considered high hazards if their potential failure is "expected to cause the loss of one or more human lives."...more

Smokey management par excellence? Not hardly 

For your weekend reading, the report is embedded below:

 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Yd5M8kgeNtcFM0TEx6eXFLWFk/view?usp=sharing

County calls for renegotiating Forest Service-sheriff’s Mt. Lemmon deal

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has two deputies living and working on Mount Lemmon year round for a total annual cost of about $278,000. Because so much of their patrol work occurs on Coronado National Forest land, the Forest Service chips in to help cover those costs. However, those contributions have been declining in recent years, and now the county supervisors say the arrangement needs to be renegotiated. On Tuesday, the board unanimously approved a $19,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for law enforcement costs but only extended the intergovernmental agreement for six months, at the end of which they hope what County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry called a “more equitable revenue sharing agreement” takes its place. As recently as fiscal year 2012, the Forest Service paid the county more than $42,000. The $19,000 payment represents roughly 7 percent of estimated costs, though more than 75 percent of calls “occur on USFS land,” according to a May 5 memo from Sheriff’s Department Bureau Chief Karl Woolridge...more

Could the Forest Service be shared by the Departments of Agriculture AND Interior?

The new Secretary of the Interior has considered having his department SHARE the U.S. Forest Service (FS) with the Department of Agriculture, where the FS currently resides. There have been many discussions and some serious proposals about transferring the FS from the Department of Agriculture to other departments such as Interior, or creating a new Department of Natural Resources (or Conservation). And there has been idle chatter about siphoning off the 13,000 wildland firefighters (who usually have job titles like Forestry Technician) in the Agriculture and Interior Departments to form a new National Wildfire Service, or moving them all to the Department of Homeland Security. At the recent Incident Commander/Area Commander meeting in Reno, it was pointed out that 13 out of the last 16 Administrations had proposed some version of merging the FS with the DOI and the four primary land management agencies in the DOI, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the National Park Service. But the atmosphere this time is different — there are reports that the Trump Administration is receptive to a wide scale reorganization and an alignment with leadership that is very interested in land management issues. The word is that new Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is well informed and engaged in fire and natural resource issues. Up until now none of the reorganization ideas have made it very far through the bureaucracy, but when then Montana Representative Zinke was nominated in December as President Elect Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, moving the FS was again in the conversation. As Rep. Zinke made the rounds talking with Senators before his confirmation hearing his interest in moving the FS into Interior worried some Democratic lawmakers...more

Ranchers fear Forest Service taking their grazing

Ranchers in Okanogan County, Wash., believe the USFS is trying to take away rights to graze cattle on federal land. A county commissioner says more of the same might be happening in the West. AddThis Sharing Buttons Share to Google BookmarkShare to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to PrintShare to More Dan Wheat Capital Press Published on March 24, 2017 10:18AM Calves on winter feedings grounds on a ranch in Okanogan County, Wash., last March. Ranchers are concerned the U.S. Forest Service is trying to curtail their summer grazing this year. Dan Wheat/Capital Press Calves on winter feedings grounds on a ranch in Okanogan County, Wash., last March. Ranchers are concerned the U.S. Forest Service is trying to curtail their summer grazing this year. Buy this photo Cattle on winter feeding at a ranch in northern Okanogan County, Wash., last March. Ranchers are concerned this year about losing summer grazing on federal lands. Dan Wheat/Capital Press Cattle on winter feeding at a ranch in northern Okanogan County, Wash., last March. Ranchers are concerned this year about losing summer grazing on federal lands. Buy this photo OKANOGAN, Wash. — An Okanogan County commissioner says the U.S. Forest Service has taken an aggressive stance to restrict cattle grazing in Okanogan County that may be part of a larger effort to do so throughout the West before former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is confirmed as U.S. Agriculture Secretary. The USFS issued non-compliance letters to 25 of 41 grazing allotment holders in the Tonasket Ranger District, roughly the northern third, of Okanogan County in January and February, County Commissioner Jim DeTro says. U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., says the USFS violated it’s own policies and he sent a letter to the USFS chief because local officials were unresponsive. The non-compliance letters allege over grazing, use of riparian areas and stream sedimentation aimed at restricting grazing on thousands of acres of USFS grazing allotments that have been grazed by ranchers for decades, DeTro said. “One rancher has run cattle on federal allotments since 1936 and never had so much as a note in his file. Then bang this year he gets a registered letter of noncompliance with no prior communication. It’s like the Gestapo moved in,” DeTro said. Another rancher got a non-compliance letter alleging over grazing last year who said he couldn’t have over grazed because he had sold his cows and had no cows on the allotment, DeTro said. Last season, a USFS range tech threatened to bring in federal marshals and have a rancher arrested if he didn’t have his cattle off an allotment on time, he said.