Fly on the Wall: The Northwest Forest Plan Federal Advisory Committee meeting in Eugene (Part 1)
The Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) working on the USFS' Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) amendment held their third in-person meeting in Eugene, Oregon in January. Comprised of 21 volunteers representing diverse interests and groups from across the Pacific Northwest, the FAC has done a remarkable job of producing policy recommendations for the upcoming Environmental Impact Statement. In fact, they delivered 81 single-spaced, double-sided pages full of recommendations divided among the six subcommittees they created (Climate, Fire resilience, Old-growth, Tribal inclusion, Communities, and Biodiversity).
FAC members have been doing a tremendous amount of work, often at the expense of their personal lives, jobs, and families. The USFS stunned the group during its first in-person meeting in Portland last November when they announced that instead of two years to work on the Amendment, the timeline would be cut in half and the amendment had to be finished in 2024. The reason? Politics and the fear of a possible regime change in January 2025 in which the next occupant of the White House would likely throw the whole planning process into the toilet (along with other presidential briefings and memos).
Oddly enough, the FAC meeting was scheduled the day before the public scoping comment period ended on the agency's "Notice of Intent." But the agency informed the FAC that they will have another in-person meeting in April where the agency would consider the committee's final consensus recommendations for possible inclusion in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).
That was the good news for the FAC.
The bad news: the USFS had decided to narrow the scope of the Amendment and toss out two of the main topics that the FAC had demanded at their first meeting in Portland last September to be included in the planning process: Communities and Biodiversity. The agency relented at the second FAC meeting in Seattle last November and included Communities and Biodiversity in the scope of planning, and the FAC formed two subcommittees and labored hard to produce specific policy recommendations. The topic of communities was also included in the Notice of Intent, presumably receiving comments from hundreds of people addressing the impacts on rural communities from the NWFP. But what the left hand had given, the right hand chopped off.
That sudden thud people in the room heard was sound of FAC members' jaws dropping on the table.
Instead, the designated federal official that convened the Eugene FAC meeting announced that the NWFP Amendment process will be narrowed to only include only four (4) main topics: 1) climate change adaptation; 2) wildfire resiliency; 3) Tribal inclusion; 4) mature/old-growth forest conservation. The exact wording of these issues are still undergoing wordsmithing, with important implications on the kind of analysis the DEIS will deliver for each issue.
Public Commenters Lead Off With 'Inflammatory' Speeches
It was an awkward first day of discussions for the FAC. For one thing, there was a complete change of personnel convening the meeting, both the USFS officials and the contract facilitator, so the relationship of trust that had been built between the FAC and the USFS/facilitator in the first two FAC meetings had to start over. And there was a fair amount of cognitive dissonance by FAC members when it came time to discussing the policy recommendations crafted by the Communities and Biodiversity subcommittees--basically it seemed like an empty exercise since all of their policy ideas were dead on arrival from the agency removing them from the scope of the Amendment process.
One bright spot was the period of public comments delivered to the FAC after the USFS ended their official announcements. Individuals had exactly two minutes to deliver their own recommendations to the FAC and USFS before they were unceremoniously cut off by a loud alarm buzzer. Over two dozen people stepped up to the mic to speak. There was a remarkable showing of speakers making eloquent and at times passionate pleas for the agency. One after the other asked the agency to prioritize Indigenous perspectives and needs, end its obsolete fire exclusion and suppression policies, and protect remaining mature and old-growth stands wherever they appeared on the landscape.
The many speakers addressing the USFS's obsolete fire exclusion policy and its adverse impacts on Indigenous communities--one Native speaker called it "cultural genocide"--made a palpable impression on FAC members. The parade of public commenters who were mostly young adults of college age, visibly nervous-excited while delivering their two-minute pitches, bolstered the spirits of some FAC members and set the tone for later discussions over fire resilience.
What follows are fragments of comments made by FAC members during their free-flowing discussions. I listened to the entire meeting from the seats reserved for public observers. I took copious notes, but all errors or omissions in hearing, remembering, or reading my scribbled handwritten notes should be forgiven. Following along the discussions over the three-day meeting with no coffee in the room felt like what combat veterans claim war is like: long periods of utter boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror. The following observations are organized into the key issues that unfolded over the three day FAC meeting.
Narrowing the Scope of the Amendment
The news that the agency decided to narrow the scope of issues to be included for analysis in the DEIS was begrudgingly accepted by FAC members who had knocked themselves out to deliver 81 pages of thoughtful ideas. To mollify the group and rescue their morale, USFS announced that the long list of FAC recommendations would sorted into two "buckets": one would be the "Amendment bucket" and be included in the DEIS analysis, and the other would be a "Leadership Commitment bucket" that offered a vague promise the agency would deal with those ideas in some other planning process some other day. The point the USFS made was that the NWFP was going to be narrowly amended not broadly revised. This was not a matter of interest--it was apparent that the entire FAC felt that conditions had changed significantly over the last 30 years to warrant a full-on revision. But it boiled down to a matter of timing: the USFS had to complete the Amendment before the next presidential election and possible change of resident in the White House.
FAC members complained, some of them bitterly, about the agency's lack of clarity and confusion over the scope of the process, and some members felt that they had largely been spinning their wheels and wasting their time, at great personal sacrifice, over the previous months. Questions about the so-called "Leadership Commitment bucket" arose because some FAC members realized that their community's interests were no longer going to be part of the Amendment, and they wanted some assurance that one day their contributions of policy recommendations would matter. One member whose prime topic of interest was going to be excluded encouraged the USFS to "think expansively within the narrower scope" of the Amendment. The designated federal official basically offered an apology: "I wasn't as transparent as I could have been." Or should have been.
In my view, it was not a "lack of transparency" that was the problem, it is the fact that the real decisionmakers were not/are not sitting in the room. All the "designated federal officials" sitting at the table can do is to stall for time when FAC members ask them tough questions that have to be passed up the USFS chain of command for a response. In fact, at the first in-person FAC meeting in Portland in September, the committee was so outraged that the timeline had been cut in half from two years down to one that they wrote a collective letter to the Secretary of Agriculture asking for the original two-year timeline. The FAC had compelling arguments, including the fact that if President Biden is re-elected then they would have the full two years or more to complete the Amendment process. But the FAC did not receive a response from the Secretary--denying their request--until two months later. Regardless of whoever in the USFS is sitting at the table, the real power over the Amendment process is held 3,000 miles away.
Fire Resilience vs. Fire Exclusion
The most interesting discussions centered on fire management and specifically Indigenous cultural burning. Again, several public commenters spoke out against the agency's fire exclusion policies and the rumored plan to "protect" old-growth with aggressive fire suppression aiming for absolute fire exclusion. One speaker linked Tribal inclusion essentially with fire inclusion because so many Indigenous communities are clamoring for their sovereign right to steward the land and sustain cultural resources with cultural burning.
FAC members implored the NWFP amendment to make it as easy as possible for Indigenous fire practitioners to do cultural burning without seeking USFS permission first. It is expected that the agency will hear more of that desire when it meets with several Tribes in March. With each accidental slopover of a USFS prescribed fire that ends in disastrous destruction of private property, the agency reacts by making it harder for its own fire managers to do controlled burning. The USFS is steadily going in the wrong direction with its own people. So it's hard to imagine the agency willingly loosening its control of fire by a permissive stance on non-agency Indigenous people doing cultural burning. But this is what needs to be done for the sake of environmental justice and ecological restoration. Ultimately, the agency's monopolization of fire management must cease, and must be shared with communities and citizens as part of democratization of public lands management. The NWFP Amendment's DEIS offers a great opportunity to include Indigenous Knowledge and educate the public about the merits of Indigenous cultural burning along with the need for Native leadership over its implementation.
The topic of fire management got real interesting when the discussion turned to old-growth. Over 40% of existing Late-Successional Reserves (LSRs) are young plantations that are intended to be grown into old-growth a couple centuries from now. But currently and for several decades into the future they are very vulnerable to climate-driven wildfires. Perhaps ways of excluding high-intensity wildfires from young plantations are worth pondering, but the USFS in general and one FAC member who represents forestry interests believe that all fires must be excluded from all old-growth stands, too.
That prompted FAC member, Ryan Reed, to point out that fire suppression and fire exclusion in old-growth is both bad policy and bad science (specifically, bad western science). Keeping fire out of old-growth is neither desirable nor workable--the last 30 years of history of large wildfires in the Pacific Northwest should have revealed its futility. Instead, there is widespread scientific evidence and consensus within the wildland fire community that we need to manage fires, live with fire and work with fires, not exclude them.
When it came time to wrap up the meeting on the final day, the USFS decided to type up and display on the big screen all remaining "sticky issues" of potential tension among FAC members. Repeatedly, fire ecology and fire management were offered as controversial issues worthy of more discussion, but revealingly, the USFS failed to capture it and display it on screen. Fighting fires goes way back to the origins of the agency and has defined its internal culture, identity, and economy. There seems to be intellectual antibodies that treat all critical comments about fire suppression and fire exclusion like some alien virus that must be repelled. Indeed, the poor USFS employee tasked with typing up the FAC's comments for the big screen seemed literally paralyzed from posting critiques of fire management.
When FAC members protested that fire ecology, fire management, and cultural burning were getting excluded from the list of topics for further discussion, the facilitator (an outside contractor hired for the role) promptly stated that "Let's assume that we'll have more conversations about fire." Well, I wouldn't assume that's going to happen at all!
The NWFP presents a remarkable opportunity to integrate Indigenous Knowledge with western fire ecology science and blaze a new path towards ecological fire management. The DEIS should include at least one, preferably several, alternatives that propose an expanded regimen of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and ecological fire use during wildfires. Fire management touches upon all the other main issues of climate, old-growth, and of course, Tribal inclusion. The agency must not miss this opportunity in the NWFP Amendment process to shift its obsolete, unsustainable, and unjust fire management paradigm.
TO BE CONTINUED...