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treeswarper
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PostFri Feb 05, 2021 8:19 am 
Logbear wrote:
brineal wrote:
Crown fires can be mitigated, through fewer crowns. But I understand your point.
Well I think we can agree that if there are no trees, there will be no tree fires.
brineal wrote:
Do you know where in GP they burned? My experience is that by and large burning is a no no in coastal and west slope WA.
I mapped a few of the coords I found. 12 miles south of Randle, 5 miles north of trout lake. 5 miles west of trout lake. That sort of area.
brineal wrote:
The info about soils is interesting, did your experience with thinning also include prescriptive burning of logging slash and grasses after? I’ve seen that process be used with great utility in N Idaho.
The thinning that occurred was not involved with logging per se., Firewood permits removed most of the down and dead, and the USFS took down more trees to make the firewood people happy. During one of those government shutdowns, USFS crews with "Fire" on the side of their truck were cutting down trees for firewood. Fire crews were exempt from the shutdown. When they were done , they left all the little stuff and it became a tinder box and it got scary. Now they gathered all the little stuff into burn piles, covered them with plastic and wait until the snow comes. On the other side of the highway they have been actively managing wildfires and it doing very well. I'm getting carried away discussing wildfire management. The point I meant to make was that all these management actions took place in the face of all kinds of "pressure". Public concerns, maybe even threats of lawsuits, came from several different directions, mostly air pollution concerns I believe, but there was never any real litigation.
The GPNF has different weather conditions. The Trout Lake area has east side forests along with west side forests. West side forests are very hard to get a fire going--I'm thinking in terms of "cool" underburning which is what we want, unless it is too easy to get a fire going. FS burning consists of slash piles now, in that climate area. Brineal mentions Bethel Ridge. The Naches District has been putting along doing fuels reduction using both burning AND timber sales to get the job done around the summer homes areas, and elsewhere. The big trees were left standing, and the junk/flammable trees were removed. With a timber sale, there was funding for the fuels work to be completed after the logging. That works for that ecosystem. It wouldn't work too well on the Olympic, where winds are strong, soils wet, and tree species are different. What many folks don't understand, or are unwilling to understand, and I've stated it over and over so I think it is the latter, is that there is NO SIMPLE ANSWER to forest management. There are different ecosystems to deal with and in those areas even smaller micro systems. A south slope is a different animal from a north slope. To just say that the GPNF is doing controlled burning and implying that burning will work all over the GPNF and elsewhere is not the way to go. Hell, the GPNF was doing controlled burning for a long time--broadcast burns of clearcut slash to make room for replanting. Forestry is complicated. The "discussions" are similar to the "discussions" of our current health crisis. Experts are ridiculed. Lay people with access to Google know more. The very threat of a lawsuit has been affecting forest management. Benign little treatments are planned, anything the least controversial must be tabled, or whittled down. You all seem to be using 2020 as an example of how there are few adverse judgements. Go back to the 1980s if you can, and work forward. It's hard to do, articles have disappeared since then. Look at how many lawsuits the Center for Biological Diversity has threatened and implemented. Read up on projects that were worked on by collaboration groups with members from all walks of life. Those groups would agree and come up with a project only to have a group from another state file an appeal or go the lawsuit route. Look up one of the first groups--the Quincy Library group. Montana has also had that happen. There have been a few instances of the FS changing under pressure and quashing the project--the Colville NF has had that happen after county commissioners applied pressure.

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treeswarper
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PostFri Feb 05, 2021 8:19 am 
Logbear wrote:
brineal wrote:
Crown fires can be mitigated, through fewer crowns. But I understand your point.
Well I think we can agree that if there are no trees, there will be no tree fires.
brineal wrote:
Do you know where in GP they burned? My experience is that by and large burning is a no no in coastal and west slope WA.
I mapped a few of the coords I found. 12 miles south of Randle, 5 miles north of trout lake. 5 miles west of trout lake. That sort of area.
brineal wrote:
The info about soils is interesting, did your experience with thinning also include prescriptive burning of logging slash and grasses after? I’ve seen that process be used with great utility in N Idaho.
The thinning that occurred was not involved with logging per se., Firewood permits removed most of the down and dead, and the USFS took down more trees to make the firewood people happy. During one of those government shutdowns, USFS crews with "Fire" on the side of their truck were cutting down trees for firewood. Fire crews were exempt from the shutdown. When they were done , they left all the little stuff and it became a tinder box and it got scary. Now they gathered all the little stuff into burn piles, covered them with plastic and wait until the snow comes. On the other side of the highway they have been actively managing wildfires and it doing very well. I'm getting carried away discussing wildfire management. The point I meant to make was that all these management actions took place in the face of all kinds of "pressure". Public concerns, maybe even threats of lawsuits, came from several different directions, mostly air pollution concerns I believe, but there was never any real litigation.
The GPNF has different weather conditions within the GPNF. The Trout Lake area has east side forests along with west side forests. The Cowlitz Valley district is a whole different animal. West side forests are very hard to get a fire going--I'm thinking in terms of "cool" underburning which is what we want. When it is dry enough to get an underburn going in westside stands, it is too dry to burn. FS burning consists of slash piles now, in that climate and maybe some small attempts at broadcast burns for berry growth. Brineal mentions Bethel Ridge. The Naches District has been putting along doing fuels reduction using both burning AND timber sales to get the job done around the summer home areas, and elsewhere. The big trees were left standing, and the junk/flammable trees were removed. With a timber sale, there was funding for the fuels work to be completed after the logging. That works for that ecosystem. It wouldn't work too well on the Olympic, where winds are strong, soils wet, and tree species are different. What many folks don't understand, or are unwilling to understand, and I've stated it over and over so I think it is the latter, is that there is NO SIMPLE ANSWER to forest management. There are different ecosystems to deal with and in those areas even smaller micro systems. A south slope is a different animal from a north slope. To just say that the GPNF is doing controlled burning and implying that burning will work all over the GPNF and elsewhere is not the way to go. Hell, the GPNF was doing controlled burning for a long time--broadcast burns of clearcut slash to make room for replanting. Forestry is complicated. The "discussions" are similar to the "discussions" of our current health crisis. Experts are ridiculed. Lay people with access to Google know more. The very threat of a lawsuit has been affecting forest management. Benign little treatments are planned, anything the least controversial must be tabled, or whittled down. You all seem to be using 2020 as an example of how there are few adverse judgements. Go back to the 1980s if you can, and work forward. It's hard to do, articles have disappeared since then. Look at how many lawsuits the Center for Biological Diversity has threatened and implemented. Read up on projects that were worked on by collaboration groups with members from all walks of life. Those groups would agree and come up with a project only to have an enviro group from another state file an appeal or go the lawsuit route. Look up one of the first groups--the Quincy Library group. Montana has also had that happen. There have been a few instances of the FS caving under pressure and quashing the project--the Colville NF has had that happen to a Forest Plan after county commissioners applied pressure.

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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 8:43 am 
Just for grins, I thought I'd take a look at what was going on here this morning - taking a break from something else I'm working on.
Tom wrote:
Dude, this is getting comical. Click on the updated link that catsp posted: https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1205432#1205432
Hey thanks! up.gif I might take a look at that later. (That is, if I have nothing better to do with my time.) I probably would have seen that post if I hadn't had that member on ignore for the last several months - one of the downsides of the "ignore" feature here. === Okay, so let's say that all the dollar numbers were/are all wrong, and agree that the dollar amount is insignificant in the larger picture.
treeswarper wrote:
The very threat of a lawsuit has been affecting forest management.
^ Which is really the crux of the issue, and is a a subject that (as near as I can tell from some of the posts here - regardless of whether or not YOU like that phrase) that some of you care not to address. When National Forest and National Park management and policy decisions and practices are guided by what might cause any potential for litigation, I'd say there's a problem. And that's exactly what's been going on now for at least a couple decades, and if you're not aware that it's a problem, then you really haven't been paying attention, or you haven't been talking one-on-one with people who are working at USFS or NPS. == Okay, you can go back to arguing about what you want to argue about now. I'm currently getting through about 1.5 *.pdf file every two days, and I have a folder containing about 50 of them right now... this is a rather slow and tedious process. See you later.

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Randito
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 12:29 pm 
treeswarper wrote:
The very threat of a lawsuit has been affecting forest management.
Just as the threat of a speeding ticket affects driver behavior. Back in the '60s the USFS policy was manage forests to maximize timber employment. Negative effects on wildlife populations , pollution and harvesti sustainability were not factors. People concerned with those things organized politically and got laws enacted to require the USFS to consider those aspects. The legal fees policy was enacted later to prevent the USFS from simply ignoring the law.

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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 1:58 pm 
treeswarper wrote:
What many folks don't understand, or are unwilling to understand, and I've stated it over and over so I think it is the latter, is that there is NO SIMPLE ANSWER to forest management
This the core. If you add to the sentence ‘...for resilience reaction to fire’ you’ve still left out all the other goals the USFS is required to meet. Then add in that on the hottest, driest, windiest days, it all burns too fast for fire suppression to make a difference. The fire that burned down Malden burned across miles of wheat stubble with some sage steppe in the gullies. We are not going to put less fuel out there unless we pave the whole state. Within Malden all you need to do is look at Googleearth and streetview to come up with a list of projects that would have reduced number of ignitions and intensity. Would that have been enough to markedly change the result? I don’t know. There isn’t one answer.

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brineal
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 2:37 pm 
Randito wrote:
Just as the threat of a speeding ticket affects driver behavior. Back in the '60s the USFS policy was manage forests to maximize timber employment. Negative effects on wildlife populations , pollution and harvesti sustainability were not factors. People concerned with those things organized politically and got laws enacted to require the USFS to consider those aspects. The legal fees policy was enacted later to prevent the USFS from simply ignoring the law.
Do the Feds just not want to log or manage today? Again, maybe I am completely off here but it seems the complete lack of forest projects indicates that they either want to leave things alone in large swaths of national forests (?) or they face real roadblocks which stop proposed actions (litigation?) or that they are essentially like beaten dogs and cower at the idea of even attempting to push plans through because of past experiences of not being successful and/or punitively punished if things go wrong? Thoughts? I'd still love to hear the Forest Service's take on the route and events over the past 100 some odd years that has led to the current state of affairs. Maybe they are content with how things stand now but my instinct doubts that.

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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 3:08 pm 
brineal wrote:
Do the Feds just not want to log or manage today?
Well it might also be that the vast majority of the highly profitable unprotected timber has already been harvested. The stuff remaining either has protected status (Wilderness area) or wasn't worth harvesting due to terrain or access issues or was harvested previously, but the regrowth hasn't yet reached the point that it will be profitable to harvest yet. The requirment that timber harvest must follow the legal requirments set out by the National Environmental Policy does require more work and requires USFS do their job competently. I guess what the OP would prefer is that the USFS to be able to ignore the law or do a half-assed job following the law in order for there to be more timber employment. The suing organizations are only entitiled to their legal fees if they prevail in court showing that the USFS didn't follow the law. If the USFS does their job correctly and are sued and the USFS show in court that they did their job properly, the suing parties get nothing.

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brineal
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 3:29 pm 
Randito wrote:
Well it might also be that the vast majority of the highly profitable unprotected timber has already been harvested. The stuff remaining either has protected status (Wilderness area) or wasn't worth harvesting due to terrain or access issues or was harvested previously, but the regrowth hasn't yet reached the point that it will be profitable to harvest yet. The requirment that timber harvest must follow the legal requirments set out by the National Environmental Policy does require more work and requires USFS do their job competently. I guess what the OP would prefer is that the USFS to be able to ignore the law or do a half-assed job following the law in order for there to be more timber employment. The suing organizations are only entitiled to their legal fees if they prevail in court showing that the USFS didn't follow the law. If the USFS does their job correctly and are sued and the USFS show in court that they did their job properly, the suing parties get nothing.
I understand about the legal fee payouts, but are these legal actions (paid out or unpaid) in amalgam creating the climate of inaction? Is the inaction deliberate regardless? I am not sure that is correct, there is plentiful marketable timber in National Forests which are not old growth, are not wilderness areas and which are easily accessible. Timber sale plans require planning and careful consideration but aren't exactly rocket science; you have to perform the necessary evaluations for stream impacts etc. Again, it doesn't need to be "illegal" per se to be defeated in court. I think something as simple as a process error, clerical error (say forget to submit a stream management document) can prevent approval. There is still no real good answer here for why the forests go largely left to their own devices across the west. I genuinely can't see that answer being that they just don't want to do it.

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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 3:51 pm 
brineal wrote:
why the forests go largely left to their own devices across the west.
That's the assertion by the "we want more timber jobs" crowd. But what evidence is there to support that? There has been a timber harvesting operation on USFS lands the last several years in the North Fork Teanaway River valley -- so I think there needs to b some evidence presented that "timber sales are being supressed" beyond just claiming it to be true.

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brineal
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 6:28 pm 
Randito wrote:
That's the assertion by the "we want more timber jobs" crowd. But what evidence is there to support that? There has been a timber harvesting operation on USFS lands the last several years in the North Fork Teanaway River valley -- so I think there needs to b some evidence presented that "timber sales are being supressed" beyond just claiming it to be true.
Um...drive through any National Forest...look at the land block parceling on google maps...there is almost no activity going on except for state and private. The biggest I’ve seen in recent years is the stewardship work done around Mt. Bonaparte. There was some thinning along I 90 near Tinkham probably 15 years ago? Packwood? Rimrock? Again I’d take it from the horses mouth, would be great to discuss with an insider.

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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 8:11 pm 
brineal wrote:
Um...drive through any National Forest...look at the land block parceling on google maps...there is almost no activity going on except for state and private. The biggest I’ve seen in recent years is the stewardship work done around Mt. Bonaparte. There was some thinning along I 90 near Tinkham probably 15 years ago? Packwood? Rimrock? Again I’d take it from the horses mouth, would be great to discuss with an insider.
Blah, Blah, Blah isn't evidence. The Okanogan-Wenatchee USFS does list their timber sales on their website: Here is the list for 2020 -- a total of 3759 acres of timber sold https://www.fs.usda.gov/resourcedetail/okawen/landmanagement/resourcemanagement/?cid=FSEPRD679514 But sure tell me again how lawsuits are resulting in no timber being harvested.

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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 10:10 pm 
Have you ever talked to a land manager or other government official? I haven't about timber sales, but do about other topics. There are absolutely cases out there where they simply de-prioritize projects (read: on hold forever) because they don't want to deal with the potential lawsuit. Not because what they are doing is illegal or wrong in any way, but because lawsuits are expensive and a distraction, and have a chance of going sideways. Heck, I know of a land stewardship non-profit which was suspended because they can no longer get insurance because they were sued. They weren't even involved in the alleged bad action, they just happened to have projects somewhat nearby. But the cost of defense was extraordinary. However that doesn't mean that all lawsuits are wrong, nor awarding legal costs. Because there are also certainly land managers and others out there who are bad actors, and suits and threats of suits are the method the public has to deal with it.

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brineal
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 10:41 pm 
Randito wrote:
Blah, Blah, Blah isn't evidence. The Okanogan-Wenatchee USFS does list their timber sales on their website: Here is the list for 2020 -- a total of 3759 acres of timber sold https://www.fs.usda.gov/resourcedetail/okawen/landmanagement/resourcemanagement/?cid=FSEPRD679514 But sure tell me again how lawsuits are resulting in no timber being harvested.
😂 this one said 3,759 acres. Out of how many, sir?

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Randito
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 10:41 pm 
More blah blah blah, no specific evidence.

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brineal
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PostFri Feb 12, 2021 10:45 pm 
Randito wrote:
More blah blah blah, no specific evidence.
I figured you’d run the regression and had data to talk about. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Blah blah blah

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