FORESTS: USDA Releases Sweeping Draft Management Policy

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

The Forest Service today released a draft planning rule for managing more than 198 million acres of national forests and grasslands addressing controversial issues of climate change, timber harvest and conservation.

The agency says the new rule will speed planning efforts, incorporate best available science, engage the public and ensure forests' resilience to climate change, pests and other threats. It aims to provide a framework to guide collaborative, science-driven land management planning to keep forests both ecologically robust and productive, the agency said.

The planning rule determines how 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands develop individual forest plans, governing activities from logging to recreation and protecting endangered plants and animals.

The two previous administrations tried to revise the rule but ultimately had their efforts stymied in court. In 2009, a federal court sided with environmentalists and threw out a planning rule put in place in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration; that decision marked the third time a court rejected revisions of the regulations over the past decade.

The pre-publication rule seeks to balance the social, economic and ecological benefits of forests, which include the sometimes competing uses of recreation, mineral extraction, motorized recreation, grazing and watershed and species protections.

"This proposed rule is going to provide a framework for land management planning, to restore the health and resilience of ecosystems and watersheds to protect wildlife, and respond to changing climate, as well as connecting people more closely to our forested lands," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The rule, to be accompanied by a draft environmental impact statement (EIS), will govern the revision, amendment and development of individual national forest and grassland management plans, the agency said. It will update a 1982 planning rule and address deficiencies in the discarded George W. Bush-era rule.

"It's important to give direction and guidance in terms of how the forests are to be managed," Vilsack said. "There have been numerous attempts to do this without much success."

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said the new planning rule -- the result of a multiyear planning effort that included more than 40 roundtables and drew more than 26,000 comments -- would emphasize early planning and require managers to engage with the public and identify missing data. Agency personnel would be required to conduct regular monitoring of resources so forests can adapt quickly to new stressors, he said.

"Frankly, I think our existing planning rule has been somewhat inefficient. It's been expensive, and it's been very time-consuming," Tidwell said. "We have a more efficient and focused planning rule than we've had in the past."

The agency said it hopes to trim the planning process to three years, down from the five to eight years it currently takes to amend a plan.

Vilsack and Tidwell used the current mountain pine beetle epidemic that has ravaged much of the northern Rockies forests as one example of where past planning had gone wrong. Forests had been left to become densely packed with even-aged trees that allowed the beetle to essentially hop easily from tree to tree.

Identifying such risks earlier would have allowed planners to thin forests and ensure a diversity of species including Douglas firs that would withstand the beetle's attack, they said.

"If you do a proper job of focusing on resilience, you're going to focus on maintaining an appropriate distance between these trees," Vilsack said.

Early public participation will also increase consensus on difficult issues such as timber removals and will allow the agency "to spend less time in the courts and more time in the forests," he said.

The proposed rule would include a pre-decisional administrative review process to provide groups an opportunity to resolve issues before final approval of a plan, an amendment or revision, the agency said.

The rules also will include components to maintain or restore ecosystem and watershed health and resilience; protect key ecosystem elements, including water resources; and provide for plant and animal diversity, the agency said.

The Bush rule had failed to analyze the effects of removing requirements guaranteeing viable wildlife populations, according to a 2009 ruling by Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Greenwire, July 1, 2009). Several environmental groups also challenged an attempt in 2000 by the Clinton administration to revise the planning rule.

Vilsack said changes to the rule are not intended to favor species at the expense of forest or mineral resources but would emphasize best available science to keep forests resilient to new threats, including pests, catastrophic fire and climate change.

"Each forest has particular uses that we obviously want to showcase," Vilsack said, each of which can give rise to economic opportunities for rural communities. "This is really not, at the end of the day, about pitting one use against the other."

Publication of the 94-page draft planning rule in the Federal Register will open a 90-day public comment period ending May 16. The agency will webcast an open forum on the proposal March 10 in Washington, D.C.

An official draft of the rule will be available Monday.
Mixed reaction

Cecilia Clavet, policy analyst at the Wilderness Society, said that while more time is needed to sift through the draft material, she was impressed with many aspects of the rule, specifically the greater emphasis placed on protecting watersheds that provide drinking water to millions of Americans.

"This is definitely a step in the right direction; it's a 21st-century rule," Clavet said.

Some early suggestions, she said, would be to mandate more protections for fish and wildlife and less discretion to local managers; enhance opportunities to identify potential wilderness areas; and place more emphasis on climate change, although the issue is discussed throughout the proposed rule.

"You'll have to do quite a bit of fine-toothed combing through it to get a good description," she said.

Others said the draft plan fails to provide concrete provisions to protect water and wildlife and would roll back a requirement put in place by the Reagan administration that the Forest Service maintain healthy and sustainable species populations.

"Our nation's wildlife is getting the short end of the stick in the Obama administration's proposed forest policy," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement.

"The administration appears to be looking to do the bare minimum for wildlife and is abandoning its responsibility for keeping common species common. The public expects a lot more from President Obama."

The plan also gives too much discretion to individual forest managers who could "give up" on protecting at-risk species with little public accountability, the group said.

Defenders will be reviewing the document more carefully and at a minimum will ask for binding standards to protect resources on agency lands, which include more than 150 national forests and 20 grasslands.

"Sportsmen have a stake in ensuring a Forest Service planning rule that sustains significant hunting and fishing opportunity, fish and wildlife populations, conservation and restoration of key fish and wildlife habitat, species adaptation to the effects of climate change, and retention of roadless area values," Webster said in a statement. "We'll be reviewing the proposed rule issued today -- and working with our sportsmen partners and the Forest Service in the months to come -- to safeguard these critical public resources."

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Environmental groups say a sweeping new proposal by the Forest Service to guide management on 198 million acres of forests and grasslands fails to provide needed standards to protect native species and gives too much discretion to local forest managers.

Groups including Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, the Wilderness Society and the Pew Environment Group had mixed feelings after yesterday's release of an early draft of the rule, with some saying it rolls back protections put in place by the Reagan administration.

Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders, said the Obama administration proposal falls short of the 1982 rule that currently guides forest management and lacks critical standards to monitor the abundance of common species and ensure they do not fall prey to habitat disruptions.

"The public's got a right to be disappointed," Schlickeisen said in an interview this morning. "To this point, [species] have been protected, and the Obama administration is going to make it voluntary."

While the new rule would give forest managers new discretion to monitor plant species, it would lack a "wildlife viability" standard that made the previous rule so strong, he said.

"The Forest Service [under the current rule] can manage its land for all of the multiple purposes that the law says it can, but it has to do so in a manner that keeps that land itself healthy," Schlickeisen said. "And the way you judge whether the land is healthy or not is weather the native species that should be there are there in viable quantities."

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a conference call yesterday said the proposed rule maintains a strong emphasis on protecting and enhancing water resources and providing functioning habitat.

"The goal is to keep common species common," while also ensuring the recovery of threatened and endangered species, conserving candidate species and protecting species of concern, he said.

But such goals lack explicit protections and allow local managers to decide which fish, wildlife and plant species are of conservation concern, said William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society.

"We give the Forest Service a mid-term grade of a solid 'B' for developing a 21st century proposal for a new forest planning rule," Meadows said in a statement. "The Forest Service has made a tremendous improvement over the failed policy of the past decade by improving protection for supplies of clean drinking water, recreational access and wildlife habitat."

But he added, "The magnificence of our national forests, however, are too important to settle for that grade."

The group is also urging the Forest Service to consider broadening ways to identify lands deserving wilderness protections and said the final rule must address shortcomings on timber harvests.

Jane Danowitz, public lands director for Pew, also backed calls for the agency to maintain concrete standards to protect viable plant and animal species and protect watersheds critical to public health.

"Our national forests are the source of drinking water for more than 120 million Americans and host more rare species than even our national park system," she said in a statement. "We hope that the administration will back up its proposal with clear standards for water and wildlife protection."

Jan Poling, vice president and general counsel for the American Forest & Paper Association, said the rule must also allow forests to provide jobs and maintain their productivity.

"Our national forests must be managed to provide for their multiple uses as directed by Congress," Poling said in an e-mail statement. "We look forward to working with the Forest Service throughout the rulemaking process to make sure our national forests meet the needs of the American people by providing a sustainable supply of wood fiber to support forest products mills and local economies as well as providing for wildlife, recreation and other uses."

The Forest Service draft represents the agency's fourth attempt since 2000 to revise the regulations governing national forests. Three previous attempts were challenged in court by the CBD, Defenders and other groups, and were found to be unlawful.

The agency says the new rule will speed planning efforts, incorporate best available science, engage the public and ensure forests' resilience to climate change, pests and other threats (E&ENews PM, Feb. 10).

It also aims to involve the public earlier in the planning process and sets goals of trimming forest planning to three years, down from the current five- to eight-year time frame.

A draft environmental impact statement of the rule is expected to be made available next Monday. The agency will allow 90 days of public comment and will webcast a public forum on March 10 in Washington, D.C., with additional meetings planned for Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, California, Oregon, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Alaska.