Black Hills National Forest |National Forest System | Analysis Paralysis | Other News Resources | Upcoming Events

News and Events                 

Black Hills National Forest

BHNF “Phase II” Forest Plan Amendment:

Background:  All National Forests are required to devise, using public input and current scientific information, a Land and Resource Management Plan (Forest Plan) every 15 years.  Forest Plans lay out goals, objectives, standards, guidelines, and a strategic framework for the way the Forest Service will manage their land.  All projects the Forest Service proposes to perform over the life of the Plan (e.g., recreation improvements, road-building, fire risk reduction, timber sales, etc) need to comply with Plan direction. 

In 1997, the Black Hills National Forest (BHNF) completed a wholesale Revision of its Forest Plan; the product of nine years’ hard work by the BHNF and many local stakeholders.  The plan was appealed by a host of interest groups, and in 1999, former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck issued a despicable, politically-motivated blind-side decision on the appeals: he declared the 1997 Revised Plan illegal and sent it back to the Black Hills on the grounds that it did not “adequately consider” habitat for certain wildlife species, and had not “adequately analyzed” the potential for designating “Research Natural Areas” on the BHNF (RNA’s are essentially mini-wilderness areas). 

Mr. Dombeck also issued with his decision something called “Interim Direction”, which was an unprecedented and basically illegal way of making a unilateral decision (without your input) about how the Black Hills National Forest ought to deal with the “problems” he identified until the “inadequate” analyses could be remedied.  The combination of Dombeck’s decision and “Interim Direction” had the effect of entirely shutting down management on the Black Hills for more than a year, while the Forest figured out what their next steps ought to be.  The uncorroborated restrictions that were put in place continue to hamper the BHNF’s ability to manage the forest to this day.

Here’s where the Phase II Amendment comes in.  In May, 2001, as-required by a lawsuit settlement related to Dombeck’s decision, the BHNF completed what was called the Phase I Amendment.  Phase I was a maximum-restriction measure put in hack until the Forest could actually perform scientific studies of the Chief’s issues (so that no species were “harmed” by the Forest’s activities in the meantime).  Phase II is the vehicle through which the Forest will study those issues and derive new management direction to address them if any is necessary.  The Phase II Amendment got underway in December, 2001, and is scheduled for completion in September, 2003.  Opportunities for public comment have and will continue to occur throughout the Phase II process, and we are happy to bring you up to date on the latest issues.

UPDATE; September 16, 2002: The Phase II Amendment to the Black Hills’ Forest Plan is progressing, and another opportunity to provide input is upon us.  Right now, the Forest has completed a lot of preliminary analysis, and is moving into the alternative development stage.  A Forest Service newsletter was recently published, summarizing of the comments they received back in January, outlining the framework of Phase II’s decision elements, and identifying some of the preliminary issues they’re addressing in their range of alternatives.  If you didn’t receive one, the newsletter is available on the Web at:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/blackhills/fp/planning/99Amend/Amend.htm 

or from any of the BHNF District Offices.

The Forest conducted a series of open houses from September 9-13 to help get everyone more informed about the Amendment.  These meetings were a good conduit to provide comments and suggestions to the Forest Service, so thanks to all who attended.  The deadline for the last submission of written comments was September 16, but this shouldn’t discourage you.  If you’re interested in commenting on Phase II, send your letter to:

Mr. Jeff Ulrich

BHNF Phase II Amendment

25041 N. Hwy 16

Custer, SD 57730

The following are some key issues that will be important to bring up as the Forest Service begins to craft its alternatives: 

1.  In the latest newsletter, the Forest asserts that, “the current Forest Plan has ample direction to reduce fire-and-insect risks”.  This is plainly false; one need only look around at the stirring amount of charred or insect-eaten acres on the Black Hills NF to realize that Forest Plan direction promoting aggressive forest health treatment is insufficient.  If fire and insect problems are not to be analyzed formally in Phase II, the Forest’s alternatives ought to, at minimum, include the following:

• A new Goal in the Plan’s Goals & Objectives section to acknowledge the importance of these concerns to the forest and to the public.  All perceived protections for wildlife habitat are moot if the act of ‘protection’ causes it to burn or be eaten by bugs.  We like wildlife, and we like a healthy forest; the two things are not, however, mutually exclusive and are, furthermore, dependent on active management.

• The Forest’s discussion and analysis of alternatives ought to clearly address and disclose the interrelation between targeted habitat levels, forest health, and fire risk.

• Currently, the Forest is harvesting far less timber than the Black Hills grow annually.  Many of the Forest’s fire and insect problems are related to this over-growth issue.  The re-evaluation of Forest outputs should include an analysis of how changes in output levels will affect forest health and fire risk in the long-term.

2. Ask the Forest to cast aside the politicized idea that healthy wildlife populations and active forest management cannot coexist.  We’ve been making it work here in the Black Hills for 100 years, and we can make it work another 100!

• Alternatives should contain an honest analysis of their social and economic impacts as well as their ecological ones.

• Management ought to occur wherever it is needed on the Black Hills National Forest.  Under their current system, the ability of the Forest Service to manage a given piece of land begins with whether or not the land is designated “suitable”.  In Phase II, the Forest is re-evaluating their “suitability” classifications.  As the Forest does this, they should give themselves as much opportunity to manage as possible.  The Forest can address this issue two ways; either designate more land as “suitable” to help promote active management or develop management strategies that work on non-suitable lands.

• Wildlife is one of the many tremendously important multiple-uses, not the trump card of multiple-use.  The alternatives’ approach to wildlife species viability should be framed in the context of all other multiple-use considerations because the cornerstone of good natural resource management is balance.

• Wildlife standards should be constructed to give considerable discretion to scientists on the ground, so that they have the ability to assess and prioritize resource management concerns when working on a given project.  They are the experts, and deserve expert judgment in setting management priorities.

• The Forest should consider broadening the range of its Management Indicator Species to include those dependent on young forest conditions, as well as the more popularized species that need mature forest.  This will help create diversity, be good for all wildlife, help reduce the spread of fire and insects, and promote multiple-use management.

• The broad-scale road closures and obliterations the Forest seems to be partial to instituting shouldn’t be concealed behind the guise of wildlife issues.  The Black Hills’ elk population has somehow skyrocketed in the past ten years, despite the level of road densities some want to decry as debilitating to elk and other species.  If forest roads were doing those critters as much harm as some believe, we wouldn’t have any wildlife at all!  We need to maintain the recreational opportunities, level of fire suppression and management access, and our wildlife -- we can do all those things, just look around.

• Research Natural Areas (RNA’s), while valuable ways to gain better understanding of our natural world, should not be included in any alternative unless a discrete and meaningful purpose has been established for their creation.  Some would force the Forest to designate RNA’s as another way (like Wilderness and Roadless designations) to lock-out the public and curtail management.  This is not their purpose and is a disingenuous way of furthering a hidden agenda.

-back to top-

National Forest System

National Forest management policy is a complex and sometimes confusing subject.  Many often disparate issues and interests converge in its making, and new developments seem always to be in the works.  If you’re not already familiar with the sometimes arcane history and workings of the National Forest System, please visit our Get Forestry-Informed page to learn more.  Below, you’ll find the skinny on new or developing issues...

Contents:

  Update; June 6, 2003:  The Healthy Forests Restoration Act, HR 1904, passed the US House of Representatives on May 20^th.  The vote in the House was a solid, bipartisan one:  256 to 170, with 42 Democrats voting in favor.  The Senate, however, has proven itself a stumbling block for these issues in the past.  Your Senator needs to hear from you!  Several key elements of the debate occurring on the House floor are bound to elicit even more contention on the Senate side:

 1. Wildland/Urban Interface:  opponents of the bill argue that hazardous fuels treatments authorized by the legislation should only take place within some arbitrary distance around homes and communities (often called the Wildland/Urban Interface, or WUI).  While protecting communities in the WUI should obviously be the first priority, urge your Senator to resist confining treatments to this area.  For more information on this issue, go here.

2. Limitations on Appeals and Litigation:  opponents of the bill cast about rhetoric suggesting that ‘the public will be cut out of the process’, or that ‘environmental safeguards will be bulldozed’, or that ‘irresponsible logging’ will be the norm.  These are perfidious red herrings, to the last!  The Forest Service and BLM are simply doing too little, too slowly to reduce hazardous fuels and restore forest health.  The reason they aren’t doing enough is the egregious procedural requirements by which they are bound and the constant challenges and lawsuits to which they are subjected.  The bill maintains key public participation and environmental safeguards, while reducing red tape to enable the Forest Service and BLM to complete more fuels work.  The Senate must uphold these provisions!  For more information on this issue, go here.

The Senate is scheduled to take up the bill in mid-June. Please, write your Senators!!  Tell them to support the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, to resist unreasonably restricting hazardous fuels treatments to the WUI, and to uphold the procedural, appeal, and litigation elements of the bill that will help the Forest Service get more work done.  Take a few moments of your time, and go here, click on the ‘Elected Officials’ tab, select your state and select your Senators.  You can either send a pre-written letter on HR 1904, or compose your own.  Thank you for your support!

HR 1904 “Healthy Forests Restoration Act” (4/30/2003)

Healthy Forests Initiative (2/20/2003)

HR 1904 “Healthy Forests Restoration Act” (4/30/2003)

Our Nation’s public forests are in peril.  Catastrophic wildfires, vast epidemics of forest insects, and the spread of invasive weed species threaten to irreparably harm our National treasures, destroy the habitat of the wildlife species that inhabit them, and pollute the clean air and water they provide us.   The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a recently introduced, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at helping to restore the ability of the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to effectively manage our Nation’s public lands in the hopes of preventing such a catastrophe.  Click here for some more background information.

Call, write, email, or fax your Congressperson, and tell them you support H.R. 1904!

So, what does the Healthy Forests Restoration Act do?  Not long ago, the Forest Service and BLM proposed a set of regulatory changes, called the Healthy Forests Initiative (see briefing below).  However, some of the problems that confront these agencies as they attempt to manage our public lands cannot be solved by regulation changes alone; new legislation is necessary.  This legislation has taken shape in the US House of Representatives’ Resources Committee, and has come to be called the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.  The major tenets of the bill would:

·         Codify the public participation requirements set out in the bipartisan Western Governors Association 10-year wildfire management strategy, and give the Forest Service and the BLM discretionary authority to limit analysis during the NEPA-phase to the proposed agency action, meaning the agencies would not be required to analyze and describe a number of different alternatives to the preferred course.  Also, the bill would direct the establishment of an alternative administrative review process for the Forest Service, ensuring a more timely airing of administrative challenges.  Finally, the bill would require the federal judiciary to periodically renew any preliminary injunctions issued against a project, while directing the Courts to give consideration to the potentially devastating environmental consequences associated with management inaction. 

·         Establishes two grant programs to encourage energy-related utilization of the otherwise valueless wood, chips, brush, thinnings and slash removed in conjunction with projects on federal forests and rangelands focused on reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfire and insect infestation and disease.

·         Creates a Watershed Forestry program to provide financial and technical support needed by private forest landowners to better manage their lands in order to protect water quality, to restore watershed conditions, to improve municipal drinking water supplies, and to address threats to forest health, including catastrophic wildfire.

·         Directs the Department of Agriculture to conduct an accelerated program to plan, conduct, and promote systematic information gathering on certain insect types that have caused large-scale damage to forest ecosystems.  Authorize and direct federal land managers to establish early detection programs for insect and disease infestations, with an emphasis on hardwood forests, so that agencies can isolate and treat adverse conditions before they reach epidemic levels. 

·         Establishes a Healthy Forests Reserve Program, which is a private forestland conservation initiative that would support the establishment of conservation easements (ranging in length from 10-years to permanent with a semi-regular buyout option) on one million acres annually of declining forest ecosystem types that are critical to, amongst other things, the recovery of threatened, endangered and other sensitive species.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act passed with flying marks from the House Resources Subcommittee, garnering more than 70 bipartisan cosponsors.  The bill will soon get its day in front of the full House Agriculture Committee on Thursday, May 8, 2003; your Congressional representatives need to hear from you!! 

Healthy Forests Initiative (2/20/2003)

Although the comment periods have closed, it is imperative for your Congressional Representatives to hear from you!  To save you time, we have constructed a point-and-click letter service -- it’ll take you five minutes at most to send a letter of support.  Just click here, enter your ZIP Code, click ‘Go’, fill in your name and address, and you’re done!

So, what is the Healthy Forests Initiative?  Here’s a little more info on the proposals:

1. CATEGORICAL EXCLUSIONS:  Categorical Exclusions, or “CE’s”, are a designation the Forest Service and BLM can make for a few specific types of small projects that exempt these activities from the years of environmental documentation ordinarily required.  They are NOT, as some environmental interest groups have said, a ‘new’ concept that does anything like ‘cut the public out of the process’.  The Forest Service and BLM have had and responsibly used CE’s for a very, very long time.  They are a necessary and essential part of the management toolbox because CE’s are the Agencies’ ONLY way of moving quickly on a project of timely nature.  These typically include actions like squashing small insect or disease outbreaks before they get big, cleaning up damage to trees from heavy storms or wind, salvaging burnt timber, and a new category, cleaning up hazardous fuels. 

The CE for small timber sales was taken away by a zealous Judge in a 1999 Illinois court case.  The Clinton administration, in servitude to the demands of its environmental special interest colluders, failed to address the Judge’s concerns and reinstate CE’s.  The Forest Service, under the leadership of a new White House administration, is finally taking up the cause and returning this invaluable tool to the hands of forest managers.

2. ADMINISTRATIVE APPEALS:  Each and every project the Forest Service or BLM might propose, such as hazardous fuels reductions, grazing permits, and even recreational improvements, is subject to a process of gathering public input under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  If certain members of the public aren’t satisfied with how their comments were addressed by the Agency, they are allowed the opportunity to appeal a project decision and get a “second opinion”.   

Unfortunately, the appeals processes for the Forest Service and BLM are fraught with opportunities for organized special interests to monkey-wrench scientifically sound, ecologically beneficial forest projects.  The impact of appeals and litigation has lead the Forest Service, for example, to spend 40 percent of its time and money “bulletproofing” their projects against such challenges, usually without success. 

What’s most egregious about these sorts of appeals is that many of them succeed on the basis of paperwork or procedural errors -- NOT because something “bad” would have happened to the environment as a result of a proposed project.  For this reason, the new proposal would prevent people and groups from filing, last-minute, shotgun type appeals.  Those wishing to file an appeal will have had to participate in the public input process from the start, and would not be allowed to file an appeal on an issue they had not raised in a prior comment letter.  This gives the Forest Service and BLM the opportunity to address people’s concerns before the project is finalized; right now, they don’t always have that opportunity.

3. PLANNING REGULATIONS:  Each National Forest has what’s called a Forest Plan; these are the ‘programmatic’ documents the Forest Service uses to set goals and objectives for their particular forest over the next 10 to 15 years.  Forest planning decisions affect EVERYONE -- not just recreators, or grazers, or timber -- everyone, because forest plans are the point at which the Forest Service decides what balance of multiple-uses they think is appropriate for their forest.  Right now, the planning regulations are a maze of ambiguous and conflicting requirements -- a process full of holes into which lawsuits are often inserted to eliminate your rights to the benefits that public lands can provide.  The proposed revision of the Planning Regulations clarifies the wishy-washy concepts, sets clear goals for the Forest Service to meet, and empowers the Forest Service to return active multiple-use management to our public landscape through ambitious goal-setting.

-back to top-

Analysis Paralysis

Forest Service ‘Analysis Paralysis’ (June 14, 2002)

So, you might be asking yourself: ‘7 million acres of national forests burned in the summer of 2002, and I hear another 73 million acres are at high risk from catastrophic wildfire and insect outbreaks, why isn’t anyone doing anything to help prevent these things from happening?’  Okay, maybe you’re not asking yourself that exact question...  But if you had, you would have hit upon the very crux of the debate over how to make our forests healthy again.  The Forest Service and their leadership would indeed like to do something about this situation.  However, according to the Forest Service, they find themselves operating “within a statutory, regulatory, and administrative framework that has kept the agency from effectively addressing rapid declines in forest health.”

So, their hands are tied; by what?  The Forest Service identifies, in a recent report called “The Process Predicament,” three key issues:

1. Excessive analysis—confusion, delays, costs, and risk management associated with the required consultations and studies;

2. Ineffective public involvement—procedural requirements that create disincentives to collaboration in national forest management; and

3. Management inefficiencies—poor planning and decision-making, a deteriorating skills base, and inflexible funding rules, problems that are compounded by the sheer volume of the required paperwork and the associated proliferation of opportunities to misinterpret or misapply required procedures

“These factors frequently place (decision-makers) in a costly procedural quagmire, where a single project can take years to move forward and where planning costs alone can exceed $1 million.  Even non-controversial projects often proceed at a snail’s pace.  Forest Service officials have estimated that planning and assessment consume 40 percent of total direct work at the national forest level.  That would represent an expenditure of more than $250 million per year. Although some planning is obviously necessary, Forest Service officials have estimated that improving administrative procedures could shift up to $100 million a year from unnecessary planning to actual project work to restore ecosystems and deliver services on the ground.”

Clearly, something needs to change when the agency entrusted to care for our public lands is in such a sink-hole of red tape that it can no longer fulfill the responsibilities with which we’ve entrusted it.  Want to read more about the ‘process predicament’?  A full copy of the report can be viewed at the Forest Service web site.

-back to top-

Other News Resources

Keeping abreast of the issues that affect the Black Hills, the forest products industry, and the policies for managing the National Forest System is a tall order.  We could easily spend the better part of every day keeping this site updated with the latest news and action alerts!  There are, however, many other resources available to you on a more up-to-the-minute basis than we can provide.  Below are just a few:

South Dakota Ag News  - This site, put together by the fine folks over at the Ag Policy Office in the State of South Dakota’s Department of Agriculture, is updated daily with news from across the globe.  They have excellent “Forestry/Forest Health” and “Wildfire” sections, as well as a wealth of Ag and Natural Resource news.

AF&PA SmartBrief - The American Forest and Paper Association compiles and distributes a daily briefing of news stories on issues affecting the forest products industry and public land management.  Just sign up with your name and email address, and you’ll get the latest news delivered to your inbox every day.  You’ll also get notification and action alerts for critical legislation and public comment periods pertaining to Forest Service and BLM policies.

Headwaters News - The Headwaters News is another daily compilation of news stories and editorials, but is focused on aspects of life in the Rocky Mountain region.  Headwaters does a great job, and is supported by contributions from its readers.  You can either visit the site at your leisure, or subscribe to their email delivery service.

LandSense - LandSense is a relatively new effort on the part of a broad array of grassroots groups that support active, responsible, common-sense use and management of our environment.  The site was developed as a central location for people to learn about, and take action on legislative, policy, and regulatory issues that affect the environment, particularly on public lands.  LandSense is updated frequently as new issues develop, so stop by frequently.

Alliance For America - AFA is a tremendous grassroots organization dedicated to “true conservation”; you know, the kind of conservation that maintains a reverent connection between the people and the land, rather than completely severing it.  AFA has recently redesigned their site, and here you will find all manner of up-to-date news and information on issues that affect public lands and rural communities.

-back to top-

Upcoming Events

Sorry, no upcoming events at this time, but check back soon...

-back to top-