WILL IDAHO AND MONTANA BE LEFT OUT?
Another Public Lands Omnibus Bill Coming Soon, Maybe
The 111th Congress could come up with another massive public lands omnibus bill before convening in January. Congressman Mike Simpson's (R-ID) Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act and Senator Jon Tester's (D-MT) Forest Jobs and Recreation Act could be included, or not.By Bill Schneider, 7-28-10
Boulder White Clouds, Idaho's next Wilderness? Photo courtesy of the Idaho Conservation League.
With the severe escalation of partisan politics and divisiveness in recent years, it has become basically impossible to pass a Wilderness bill or any other type of public lands or outdoor recreation legislation on its own. Time on the Senate and House floor is so scarce and closely guarded and partisanship so bitter that the only way public lands legislation has any realistic chance is a relatively new invention called the omnibus bill.
As you may remember, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed S. 22, a massive public lands omnibus bill on March 30, 2009 after a long, heated debate and lots of last-minute maneuvering. The 1,300-page bill was the combination of 170 pieces of legislation creating new national parks and monuments, plus park expansions and national recreation trails, protecting hundreds of miles of wild and scenic rivers, and designating more than 2 million acres of Wilderness.
Amazingly, the vote was moderately bipartisan, which I suspect is the inherent strength and strategy of an omnibus bill i.e. putting something sweet from so many congressional districts, both red and blue, into one package that it more or less assures success. You know, sort of like the Department of Defense putting a base in every state to get the votes it needs.
Now, there’s a lot of chatter about another huge omnibus bill coming out of the 111th Congress, which ends on January 3, 2011. There’s nothing official yet, and it all rests in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). He has power, and he has to decide to make space for such a bill. Currently, there is no official word that he’ll do so.
Senator Reid is getting a few calls, though. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has already reported out (i.e. approved and sent to the floor) over 100 pieces of public lands legislation, and all of their sponsors know it’s unlikely any of their bills will even get a vote unless they’re all piled together into an omnibus bill. If not, they all die and have to be re-born in the 112th Congress.
Unless, of course, Senator Reid agrees to an omnibus bill.
Unfortunately, he’s locked in a big re-election battle to keep his membership in America’s most elite club. Normally, that’d make him gunshy about doing anything controversial like a big bill that contained the “W” word, Wilderness. He’d probably have to vote against it.
Fortunately, the Nevada primary gave him a weak, over-the-top radical opponent, Sharon Angle, who has suggested “Second Amendment remedies” if Congress doesn’t change its ways, not to mention privatizing Social Security and eliminating the departments of energy and education, so Reid’s chance of re-election appears excellent. Angle has, in fact, become known as “the only Republican Reid could beat.”
If Reid allows an omnibus bill, it will probably come up in the lame-duck session after November 2. If it does, both Idaho and Montana hope to have a dog in the fight, but neither state is in the game, yet.
With the support of the entire Idaho delegation, Congressman Mike Simpson (R-ID) is trying again to pass the Central Idaho Economic Development Act (CIEDRA). The 2010 version, H.R. 3603, is a slightly improved version of the bill that died at the end of the 110th Congress.
CIERDA had a hearing on June 16 before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. Idaho Senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both Republicans, and Walt Minnick, a Democrat, support Simpson’s bill, but Governor Butch Otter, a Republican, opposes it because he doesn’t want any more Wilderness designated in Idaho.
Among its many provisions, CIEDRA finally gives permanent protection as Wilderness to a downsized, but still spectacular, 332,828-acre Boulder White Clouds Wilderness Study Area, which has been managed like Wilderness for many years.
In other words, even though CIEDRA doesn’t really change the management of the Boulder White Clouds, Governor Otter considers it “new” Wilderness. Ironically, even though the state’s Republican congressman and both Republican senators support CIEDRA, the state’s Republican party passed a resolution opposing it. Go figure.
Anyway, as I write this, the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests is working through the testimony from the hearing and may vote on the bill in the near future. And if the committee sends it to the floor, it could end up in the next omnibus bill and become law of the land.
That’s what happened last year when under the leadership of Senator Crapo, Idaho won approval for its first Wilderness designation in 29 years, the Owyhee-Bruneau Wilderness (517,000 acres in six units) along with 316 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers in southern Idaho. This was all part of the Owyhee Initiative, a 20-year collaborative effort, which morphed into one of the 170 bills in S. 22.
On the other hand, Montana, a major public lands state, had nothing in that historic, far-reaching omnibus bill. It could be different this time around, but right now, it looks like another loss for Montana.
It all depends on Senator Jon Tester’s willingness to change course on his beleaguered Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, S. 1470. Tester’s bill has had a hearing before the same subcommittee, back on December 17, but the bill has yet to be reported out of committee because of major disagreement among subcommittee members on parts of the bill. The subcommittee won’t report it out onto the floor in its present form, so it can’t get in an omnibus bill, which means it has no chance of becoming law.
It’s complicated, but in short, other subcommittee members and the U.S. Forest Service don’t like Tester’s mandated logging provisions, nor his special intrusions on the Wilderness Act of 1964 by allowing ATVs and helicopters in certain designated Wilderness areas. The committee suggested removing these provisions from S. 1470, but Tester refused.
If this impasse continues, we can expect another public lands omnibus bill with nothing for Montana.
To regress, as I’ve already recommended several times, Tester shouldn’t try to do mandated logging and Wilderness in the same bill. Splitting with my green friends, I’m okay with mandating some logging in already roaded landscapes, and I wouldn’t mind seeing even more than the measly 10,000 acres per year called for in Tester’s bill, but I think this issue should be taken up in a separate piece of legislation, which could also be included in the same public lands omnibus bill.
This doesn’t seem that hard. Take the subcommittee’s recommendations to make S 1470 a true wilderness bill creating 668,000 acres of new Wilderness, as it now does, and do what needs to done to help Montana’s struggling wood products industry and try to address the pine beetle blight in a separate (and hopefully more aggressive) piece of legislation.
Slip both pieces of legislation into the next omnibus bill and get ready to celebrate its passage.
Foootnote: For extensive NewWest.Net coverage on the issue of wilderness in the northern Rockies, click here.
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Sure looks like Senator Tester and the collaborators should have taken more seriously the substantive concerns expressed for over a year now from many public lands conservation organizations in Montana and around the country, as well as from the Forest Service, Obama Administration, ENR Committee and a host of retired Forest Service chiefs and officials. Instead, we've been treated to a dumbing down of the Wilderness and forest management debate, while we all watched the collaborators spend hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on polling, messaging and the type of advertising campaign we normal only see during election cycles.
However, none of those slick ads or feel-good, flowery rhetoric could gloss over the very real substantive concerns with key provisions within the FJRA.
If this bill doesn't pass, Montanans should not forget that it was the unwillingness of Senator Tester and the Collaborators (including Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Trout Unlimited, National Wildlife Federation, RY Timber and Sun Mountain Mountain Lumber) to compromise a little bit. Over the past year they've done a fine job selling and promoting their proposal as the best thing since sliced bread through one-sided meetings and panels, but Senator Tester and the Collaborators weren't so great at working together with those who had concerns with the substantive parts of the FJRA, including the Senate's ENR Committee, the U.S. Forest Service, the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, Beaverhead County and a host of other citizens, who are equal owners of these public lands.
On the other hand, if the bill does pass, it will only be because the concerns brought up for over a year now by the likes of the U.S. Forest Service, the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, Sierra Club, NRDC and others have finally been addressed. As I've been saying all along, the ENR Committee will not let Tester's bill move forward with the mandated logging, profoundly negative budgetary implications and motors and military helicopter landings in Wilderness, among other issues.
Finally, I should point out that the Senate's ENR Committee version of the bill is not a Wilderness only or a true Wilderness bill. In addition to protecting over 660,000 acres in Montana as Wilderness, the ENR Committee draft also establishes a "National Forest Jobs and Restoration Initiative" that would "preserve and create local jobs in rural communities...to sustain the local logging and restoration infrastructure and community capacity...to promote cooperation and collaboration...to restore or improve the ecological function of priority watersheds...to carry out collaborative projects to restore watersheds and reduce the risk of wildfires to communities." Much of this work would be carried out through stewardship contracting. The ENR Draft also adds language requiring that any project carried out under the bill must fully maintain old growth forests and retain large trees, while focus any hazardous fuel reduction efforts on small diameter trees.
That ENR Committee draft doesn't sound half bad, eh? Too bad Senator Tester, Montana Wilderness Association, MT Trout Unlimited, National Wildlife Federation and some Montana timber mills oppose it.
LMAO @ foto's pleas for all the good forestry things...sure foto such as logging low elevation old growth.
Get a life you forestry/fire obcessed old cook.
Simpson's bill, CIEDRA, was the same case. While the obstacle now is Risch (on behalf of Otter), it's Simpson's own years of digging in his heels and insisting his bill could not be changed that doomed it. You can wear a big belt buckle or a bolo tie or a brush cut, but if your ego is what drives your actions, you're not any more down to earth than the wingtip-wearing DC lifers you like to hold in contempt.
However, that's not the point I'm driving at. The appeal isn't what really stalled the thinning-it's a lack of market. Of course the CBD is the one who destroyed the market. And there's a "sea change" in the publics attitude. The public now sees the radicals as controlling the timber harvest level on the national forest. They have become the establishment. They're in charge of timber harvest levels. In short, the two news stories highlight something your going to be seeing again and again in the future. With every wildfire, the public won't be blaming the USFS, they won't be blaming the loggers, they're gonna be blaming the radical enviros. It doesn't matter if they've stopped litigation Mathew-all that matters is the public knows they are the ones that destroyed the infrastructure to thin the forests around their homes-and they're the reason no infrastructure will be built. No GAO study will change that perception.
Now the CBD has agreed to allow "thinning" on 30,000 acres/year on Arizona's national forests in conjunction with plans to build a 200 million dollar OSB mill (I hear theres a pulp mill for sale in Montana). I think the CBD sees the "blame the enviro" writing on the wall. I also don't think theres a bank in the world that would loan money to a mill dependent on USFS timber. The CBD has destroyed any "long term supply" gaurentee. So now you will have a future cycle of more fires, followed by more public demand to log to mitigte hazard, followed by more public frustration because there is no infrastructure. And the heat is gonna get turned up on the radicals. They're the ones in charge of your forests now. Oh there will be mandated logging when a 100,000 acres burns off in Senator Bingamans back yard. It's inevitable.
I'm just putting out a crazy theory, that in five years, the CBD will be begging a mill to open in Arizona. It's either that or they loose NEPA. It will now be in their "best interest" to start meaningfull thinning. The debate will shift from "wilderness" and "old growth" to how the hell do we get someone to log these WUI acres. Nobody wants the wood! You see that right now in Colorado and Arizona. All these "collaborations" that are all the rage, will mean nothing if nothing gets done on the ground-only more public frustration. They all "assume" someone will open up a sawmill. The only "constant" is the public knows the radicals are the ones who destroyed the infrastructure, and their presence is the reason no infrastructure will be built. The radicals are gonna have to "turn back the clock" on the very "unfreindly business climate" they've created. They will have to admit they went too far. And I doubt that's possible.
Another intrigueing possiblility-is the idea that those who oppose the radicals may find it in their best interest to "begin" litigating WUI thinnings just to "prevent' any infrastructure to be built. The best way to get legislation passed that would "exempt" timber sales from NEPA revue would be a "continuation of the present circumstances". The burden of defending the status quo is now on the radicals shoulders. Litigating timber sales in Bozeman Mt and Breckenridge CO, both hot beds of enviro activism, would only "bring home" the frustration of NEPA litigation to the people who support it.
I certainly wouldn't endorse it(But then again, the radicals don't seem too concerned about fire fighter safety). No, the best advertising for logging and thinning will be when future generations compare "burned" goshawk habitat to "unburned" WUI thinnings. Let's hope a media untainted by 60's environmentalism will report it. The Arizona Daily is starting to question it.
ahttp://www.azdailysun.com/news/opinion/columnists/article_fb584a6c-46c3-5521-9b42-4d5d3b1a3330.html
http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_320591b2-b939-5865-aa4d-f33cd801bb6a.html
For what it's worth, the following guest opinion is from Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. It does a decent job setting the record straight regarding Mr. Wheeler’s column and Mr. Weidensee’s account of the Schulz Fire.
THE ARIZONA DAILY SUN
Guest opinion
http://www.azdailysun.com/news/opinion/columnists/article_e58a5ffb-2e7a-562c-9d6a-3a5811a6bcfc.html
Coconino Voices: Pointing fingers won’t fix forests
By TAYLOR McKINNON | Tuesday, July 27, 2010
After decades of working on complex forest issues in Arizona and across the West, we were dismayed to read Jim Wheeler’s divisive column blaming the Center for Biological Diversity for damage caused by the Schultz fire.
The criticism comes at a particularly difficult time in the Flagstaff community with news earlier this week that a 12-year-old girl died in the floods in that area. We are deeply saddened and join the rest of the community in offering our condolences to her family and to all those who have been impacted by the fire and its floods.
Civic discourse amidst tragedy requires a measure of care. Our purpose here is to correct Mr. Wheeler’s inaccurate assertions about the Schultz fire and the future we all seek of living safely with fire.
The thinning originally proposed for the Jack Smith project was not, as Mr. Wheeler asserts, tried and true. The project was instead the trial run for a new Forest Service “implementation guide” for wildlife rules in Arizona and New Mexico national forests. The Forest Service’s regional office forced the guide onto local forests. That guide violated the rules it sought to implement. Such extensive, severe cutting would have been unique among past projects around Flagstaff. Indeed, it was more severe than any projects we’d seen proposed in any national forest in Arizona and New Mexico since the “timber wars” of the 1980s and 1990s. It would have wreaked needless havoc on mature forests that iconic owls and goshawks depend on.
That’s why the original project didn’t enjoy the unequivocal support that Mr. Wheeler claims it did. Even members of the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership, including state and federal agencies, raised the very same concerns to the Forest Service that the Center ultimately brought forth in objection.
The Forest Service’s own review validated that objection. The project violated the agency’s own rules. They fixed that part of the proposal. Notably, that review also prompted the agency to issue a memo directing national forests in Arizona and New Mexico not to rely on the new guide. There was nothing tried and true about it.
Mr. Wheeler’s idea that this objection somehow impeded implementation after the Jack Smith project was approved is baseless. The objection came before the approval. The approval wasn’t challenged. The project sat for two years ready to implement and nothing happened — as is currently the case with tens of thousands of other acres in northern Arizona too. Short of public agencies funding that work, this is indeed a market problem. The solution to that problem is not, as Mr. Wheeler suggests, logging big trees to pay for thinning small ones. That approach puts economy before the needs of forests. It removes the big trees that are tomorrow’s old growth in a forest where only 5 percent of the original old growth remains. That’s the wrong approach, and it’s one that’s fallen short.
The right approach is to attract industry specifically designed to use small trees. This doesn’t preclude removing larger, young trees where site-specific ecological need warrants, but it doesn’t predicate thinning small trees on logging big ones either. The Center has a long track record of success facilitating such industry in other parts of the Southwest and is dedicated to making that happen here.
We’ve been working to do so in northern Arizona for a few years now. We’ve been engaged with appropriately scaled industry that has investors lined up to permit construction of a small diameter processing facility. And we’re working with others to translate up-front agreement into 2.4 million acres of ecosystem restoration through the Four Forests Restoration Initiative-which should enable correctly-scaled industry investment. Center staff was in Washington D.C. this week for that effort’s first major funding proposal through the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act.
Taylor McKinnon is the public lands campaigns director with the Center for Biological Diversity.
http://ncfp.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/forest-role-reversal/
While we're at it. Heres a link to something the WISE Blog published. It's called "clearcuts don't burn". Intriguing? I think some of the readers here may find it interesting. Question everything you believe in. We only lie to ourselves. Read it-then defend your long held beliefs to yourself. We can't stop our minds from thinking. We can't shut our minds off like a light switch can we. heres a link:
http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2010/05/14/clearcuts-dont-burn/
Ya know, I submitted both of these to the New West. Unlike the New West, The U of M blog gives both sides of the story. When I don't get both sides of the story I start wonderin what the other side of the story is. Then I start questioning the story they're tellin me. I do thank the New West however, this stuff never would have gotten out without it. They're the technical and inovative geniuses that brought it to us. Gotta love the internet. They obviously have integrity, or they would be censoring what I say. I don't begrudge them for promoting their view.
not.
exactly correct Bill. it is a freshman senator's mistake to try to mix his legislation. if he wants to pass a logging bill in roaded, managed forests, then fine.
just don't mix it with wilderness. you're just asking for trouble. my guess is jon gets his pinkies burned on this one and goes back next year for a stab at a jobs bill in areas that aren't controversial.
our wilderness belongs in a bill of its own.
all we ever get out of you fire fear mongering, demands for destructive forestry practices and anti roadless wilderness/rants no matter the article topic.
What lies foto?
I've never advocated that.
"demands for destructive forestry practices"
I prefer to have to people who studied forests manage them back to a more "natural" and resilient state. You want to paint me as an 80's era redneck, clearcutting, tobacco-chewing, big-truck driving and fawn-eating villain. Most of the knowledgable posters here understand that there are, indeed, many levels of common ground between myself and themselves. I really think you are inhibiting conservationist comments, as they don't appear to want to be associated with you!
I'm not here to counter every posting which I disagree with. I do stand up to belligerent lies, though. I cannot know everything about every forest type. However, I CAN apply scientific principles and facts to those forests, understand the issues and assess the situation.
Does the Precautionary Principle not apply to forests?
Notice I didn't join a single one of the wolf threads, Mr. Insult
Bahahahhahahaha
all you ever do is demand we cuy in roadless areas and don't loose another acre to wilderness.
Associated with conservationists here bahahahhahaa
believe me foto I do my part for conservation and I don't need anyones praises.
All you do is post the same fear mongering nonsense that all roadless areas and wilderness are tinder boxes that need to be logged and will burn catastrophically because of the enviors not fire suppression.
Continiue to post here with the likes of logger and tell me about conservation
bahahahahahhaha!
Urban congrescritters, from areas where environmental groups have their constituencies, see the flyovers as "sacrifice zones" for easy political votes. That "courageous" vote for wilderness, always in places where the affected parties can't vote in retaliation, is a cheap throwaway in most cases. If it hurts someone else's constitutents, wrecks someone else's economy, it's okay.
anyone noticed that we are BROKE?! We don't need to spend anything on anything; we NEED to shut down the damn government and close Washington, D.C.!
And if so, can you explain how the handful of Republican bills could possibley balance the overwhelming number of Democratic bills in a manner that might prevent a week-long to 11 day-long legislative slog to get an omnibus bill done?
And have you looked at the number of legislative days available to fit in that 11 day legislative death-march?
I know out there in "God's Country" hope springs eternal - but get real. Then we can talk about the reasons the Idaho and Montana will be left out.
This new report from Dr. Martin Nie at the University of Montana provides an in-depth look at some of the key issues/concerns associated with Senator Tester's "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act."
Place-Based National Forest Legislation & Agreements:
Report to U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region
By Dr. Martin Nie, August 2010
The University of Montana, Bolle Center for People & Forests
Entire report available at:
http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/usfs-cost-share-report.pdf
PREFACE
This Report assesses trends regarding place-based forest legislation and agreements. The research was requested by the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service (Director, Strategic Planning).1 The stated purpose of the cost-share agreement is to: (1) describe and analyze the recent emergence of place-based forest bills and the use of formalized agreements in the management of national forests; and (2) present alternatives to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in how it can improve place-based legislation or provide alternatives to such legislation.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Congress and the USFS should oppose forest-specific (non-wilderness) legislation until a number of fundamental and systemic concerns are addressed, including how such laws would fit into the preexisting statutory/planning framework and how they would be financed.
Most of the challenges faced by the selected cases are systemic, not place-based. Questions presented by such things as landscape-level restoration and NEPA, stewardship contracting, and funding, among others, deserve a national-level response-not a series of ad hoc remedies and site-specific exemptions.
Long-term stewardship contracts can provide as much or more certainty to the timber industry than a legislated timber supply mandate. Though imperfect, stewardship contracts are preferable to the dangerous precedent of legislating timber supply on particular national forests. Congress and the USFS should consider a number of issues related to certainty upon the reauthorization of stewardship contracting authority.
The selected place-based agreements, such as that operating on the Colville National Forest, demonstrate viable alternatives to securing greater certainty than through a legislated timber supply mandate. The Colville framework is exemplary and deserves study for possible replication or adaptation elsewhere.
Several place-based initiatives are frustrated by forest planning processes that provide little certainty and commitments by the agency. As the USFS moves forward with its new planning regulations (to be finalized in 2011), it should consider how relevant these place-based initiatives find the zoning of national forests into basic management areas, including those areas prioritized for restoration.
The best way for the agency to proceed with these place-based initiatives and their focus on restoration is to embrace a collaborative, competitive, and experimental approach. There are at least two exemplary processes and frameworks that should be fully supported, and possibly enlarged and replicated in the future: the Montana Forests Restoration Committee and the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act. These preexisting frameworks offer a possible substitute for place-based
legislation.