Environmentalists cost money

[slowp]

I am wondering what restrictions will be added when the wolves need protecting. I am convinced the wolves are already wandering about in these parts. Last year, we found a big track in fresh snow. There were no vehicle tracks--plowing in with a cat was needed, and no dogs in the area.

If more operating restrictions are put in place, that may put an end to what little logging there is. :msp_mad:

 

[Jacob J.]

Oh, and I'd make another law, rule or whatever that if a person or group holds up a salvage sale, and their case is lost, they will pay the full bid price of the timber to the purchaser or treasury. That would take care of the endless appeals, injunctions, law suits that are used to delay fire salvage until the trees are culls.

Got lots of work to do, eh? Get rid of the NW Forest Plan is the biggie here, then tweak NEPA and the endangered species laws.

I really like the idea of making environmental groups responsible for the costs of delaying or stopping timber sales and fuels reduction projects on public lands. They've been operating for years employing heavy litigation without any repercussions.

NEPA is the 800-pound gorilla in the room here as well. Everything we do, from simple stick-stacking, to an active timber sale, requires all the surveys to meet the NEPA guidelines. A fuels reduction project on say 40 acres that involves cutting <6" standing green material takes upwards of two years of planning. Two years with an FMO, a Terrestrial Ecologist, a regional Fuels Specialist, and a project leader (an idiot like myself.) That's expensive.

 

[forestryworks]

With the discussion on this, policies of sentiment, and listening to the mud slingin' about TX shootin' feral burros, I am convinced that there are environmentalists ignorant enough to want to preserve ice, because it is endangered habitat for snow :monkey:

Policies of Idiocy are the results of letting emotion undercut science.

 

[Humptulips]

Yes I do. Private industry does so.

However, they can't do so under the current constraints--the biggie being the NW Forest Plan. All that survey work is spendy. As are the blanket rules for canopy closure requirements, etc. etc. Streamline the timber planning process. Planning is where the money is spent, and so much of that planning produces nothing.

There was a ranger in charge here for a while that required a new unit, or equivalent volume be found to replace those that were thrown out during the planning process. He left. Which raises another point, the rangers on this forest, are very passive when it comes to putting up timber sales. So, even though some are nice people, I'd replace them.

Concentrate sales in plantations or areas that are already roaded. Reopen the old roads--all of the roads here were rocked. Throw in some :eek2: clearcuts--now called regeneration cuts, and get to work. This area grows trees despite volcanic eruptions, fires and people, and has good ground.

Now that I'm retired, start managing the Mineral Block again. That area is now ignored. The LEOs go there as does a TSI guy, but other than that, it is as if it doesn't exist. The rubber trees grow there. That's a term a faller called the timber because there wasn't as much breakage as he expected on the steep, broken ground.

Put the campground hazard trees that are felled, up for bid to go down the road as a log, not firewood. Some of those trees are valuable. I was questioned about one, which is still on the ground. I guess they can be shipped to yacht makers on the East Coast.

Much of the timber around here is at the size the mills want.

Oh, and I'd make another law, rule or whatever that if a person or group holds up a salvage sale, and their case is lost, they will pay the full bid price of the timber to the purchaser or treasury. That would take care of the endless appeals, injunctions, law suits that are used to delay fire salvage until the trees are culls.

Got lots of work to do, eh? Get rid of the NW Forest Plan is the biggie here, then tweak NEPA and the endangered species laws.

Some good ideas but I don't think the superfilous planning and paperwork will ever go away so I don't think the sales will ever break even.
NW was one of the few places that showed a profit back in the day. Now it doesn't happen anywhere. Partial cuts are inefficient, wasteful and expensive to set up around here but that is all the FS will do and I don't think that will change so I can't see them breaking even.
I guess I'm not as optimistic as you.

 

[Humptulips]

Hey now, I run shovel quite a bit, and processor occasionally, and today I'll be driving a truck. I draw the line at running a buncher or a hotsaw though...just wouldn't be right. I've made some pretty good money this year following along behind them and putting the wood down that they, or their operator, couldn't handle.

Also, I know know quite a few truck drivers that have more than a room temperature IQ, don't move their lips when they read, have more teeth than tattoos, don't drop the F-bomb in every sentence, and bathe often enough that you can comfortably stand down wind of them on a hot day. Give me a little time and I'll try to remember which ones they are.:smile2:


Back on topic...good solutions so far. But aren't there more? And shouldn't there be? There better be.

Hey, nothing wrong with being a truckdriver but when you are you're not a logger. You get to keep the title if you only drive truck part time but if it's a full time truck driver you want to be then that's what you are.

 

[lfnh]

With the discussion on this, policies of sentiment, and listening to the mud slingin' about TX shootin' feral burros, I am convinced that there are environmentalists ignorant enough to want to preserve ice, because it is endangered habitat for snow fleas :monkey:

Policies of Idiocy are the results of letting emotion undercut science.

23 down 1 across A crucial winter food source for slugs :msp_thumbdn:

 

[lfnh]

People (and companies for that matter) need to be better aware of the supplier companies they do business with. Too often these suppliers make donations to conservation groups without scrutinizing to whom these donations are awarded. Lot of times the onion has to peeled to the core to get the answer. Most would be surprised that the money ends up in the coffers of environmental groups that are in the forefront of agency court suits and appeals.

On another note stopping the abundant supply of easy federal grant money to the edu's for endless slug studies et al, would go along way in flatening the sails of the threatened/maybe endangerd species listings.

Agree with comments about mandatory outside field work for newly minted foresters, land management and ocologists. Problem now is there are far fewer common sense experienced people left to do the field education. Lot got fed up with the court litigation delays and forced office paper chasing, got close to retirement or early buyout and jumped with what sanity they still had left.

Get rid of or siginificantly change timber and range REIT's

 

[forestryworks]

All the while, Federal timber sales continue to decline while our federal government racks up its highest debt in history.

:bang:

Job creation, in some areas, is becoming borderline welfare.

 

[Gologit]

I really like the idea of making environmental groups responsible for the costs of delaying or stopping timber sales and fuels reduction projects on public lands. They've been operating for years employing heavy litigation without any repercussions.

NEPA is the 800-pound gorilla in the room here as well. Everything we do, from simple stick-stacking, to an active timber sale, requires all the surveys to meet the NEPA guidelines. A fuels reduction project on say 40 acres that involves cutting <6" standing green material takes upwards of two years of planning. Two years with an FMO, a Terrestrial Ecologist, a regional Fuels Specialist, and a project leader (an idiot like myself.) That's expensive.

Well said.

 

[Rounder]

I would add some sort of requirement mandating that forestry graduates and other natural resource graduates work a minimum of 2 or 3 seasons in the woods. Book sense and woods sense are two dynamically different things, and they both go hand in hand.

That should weed out those whiney fools who think gubmint jobs are just a chair in an office waiting on retirement, only because he or she showed up to work. How boring.

Yes. I don't have much time for people who try to tell me how to do my job who have never done my job. That and some of the ridiculous unit layouts.

And once again I'm wandering off topic.......Sorry.

Back to JC's original post, the biggest problem is the fact that I spend most of my waking hours in the forest, while environmental litigants spend most of their time sheltered in an office full of people who think exactly as they do. That just don't work. - Sam

 

[lfnh]

Stumble on a newspaper article that is very on topic about the excesses of court petitions.
An excerpt:
"The scientific basis for a listing petition must be strengthened. And petitioners should not be allowed to gang bang the process with hundreds of listing petitions."

Environmental groups bury feds with Endangered Species petitions

This isn't about protecting endangered species or timber harvest, wild horses, cattle grazing versus the steelhead. It is about barring all use of public lands. Most feel good donors to their causes are blind to this deception.

 

[Humptulips]

Stumble on a newspaper article that is very on topic about the excesses of court petitions.
An excerpt:
"The scientific basis for a listing petition must be strengthened. And petitioners should not be allowed to gang bang the process with hundreds of listing petitions."

Environmental groups bury feds with Endangered Species petitions

This isn't about protecting endangered species or timber harvest, wild horses, cattle grazing versus the steelhead. It is about barring all use of public lands. Most feel good donors to their causes are blind to this deception.

One would think there must be a lot of money being donated to organiztions like the Center for Biological Diversity, etc. Not really neccesary. These people are lawyers and when they sue they get fully reimbursed for their time and any expenses. These people have made a job for themselves. Until the law is changed the lawsuits will continue unabated.
We're paying people to sue us.

 

[slowp]

Ahh, the Center for Biological Diversity. I knew them when they were two guys who couldn't afford the gas to come see all the snags that were being left in a salvage unit along a highway in AZ. They were the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity then. They were appealing a fire salvage sale for not leaving enough snags. They said they could not afford to come out and look at it but had read various papers on fire salvage and knew there would not be enough snags left.

The FS won on that one. After the area was logged, motorists were stopping and complaining about all the snags being left to rot.

 

[madhatte]

I would add some sort of requirement mandating that forestry graduates and other natural resource graduates work a minimum of 2 or 3 seasons in the woods. Book sense and woods sense are two dynamically different things, and they both go hand in hand.

Just had this same discussion today with a tech from the company that made the tanks on our fire slips. It's the classic management myopia.

Get rid of or siginificantly change timber and range REIT's

What, you don't like corporate cut-and-run bait-and-switch avoidance of environmental policies? FOR SHAME!

 

[Miles86]

I have a friend who works for a utility pipeline and he told me that the eco groups use the threat of lawsuits against his company to get "donations" of money to the eco group, then the eco's leave them alone for a while, then they are back for more money, etc.. He says the company just views the ecos as another expense on their P/L statement.

I am a conservative person, but we can all thank Richard Nixon and the Repubs for the EPA and all the later Eco Acts that has brought our country to this point.

 

[lfnh]

One would think there must be a lot of money being donated to organiztions like the Center for Biological Diversity, etc. Not really neccesary. These people are lawyers and when they sue they get fully reimbursed for their time and any expenses. These people have made a job for themselves. Until the law is changed the lawsuits will continue unabated.
We're paying people to sue us.

Exactly right. Individual direct donations, for the most part don't mean squat. But follow the money trail. CBD and ONDA, etc., harvest sustainable cash grants year after year from the big money organizations like Conservation Alliance. It's those cash grants (ex: CA to ONDA -10 years of $35,000/yr) that are the litigation enablers for their 'projects'. It doesn't take many of these small grants to keep the litagation merry-go-round running. They have little overhead.

Slowp's comment about holding the suit filers cash accountable is key. As it stands now, when they rarely lose a case, they get get off scott free. Change it so they pay defendants legal bills plus loss of income * 10 and it'll get their attention real quick and put them outta business in a blink. Most would be floor'd by the actual legal expenses defendants incur in these suits - and it isn't monopoly money either for the agency or individuals.

I swore to just be a reader of the thread, but that didn't happen.
Sorry for the rant.

 

[Gologit]

Good rant...no need to be sorry.

 

[Humptulips]

I'm not making my self clear. This site explains better where the profit is in suing the USFWS over an endangered species ESA not about saving species

Maybe you've noticed all the suits somehow are about an endangered species. Here's the key section from the above article. As you will see we really are directly paying people to sue us.

If it weren't bad enough that America's taxpayers are spending millions simply listing species, that is not the end of the story. The ESA sets very specific time frames for species listing and critical habitat designation; time frames which the federal government cannot seem to meet. Species are listed by a petition process, which means that anyone can send a letter to the federal government asking that a species, either plant or animal, be put on the ESA list. The federal government has 90 days to respond to that petition, no matter how frivolous. If the federal government fails to respond in 90 days, the petitioner - in the vast majority of cases, radical environmental groups - can file litigation against the federal government and get its attorneys fees paid. The simple act of filing litigation does not mean the species will get listed or that it is warranted to be protected; this litigation is only over whether the federal government failed to respond to the petition in 90 days. Between 2000 and 2009, in just 12 states and the District of Columbia, 14 environmental groups filed 180 federal court complaints to get species listed under the ESA and were paid $11,743,287 in attorneys fees and costs.

 

[Hddnis]

I can't be bothered to read about getting ripped off by the enviro weanies. I need to keep up to date on that Kim train wreck, what J. Lo wore to the awards ceremony, and Linsey Lohans court drama. I tell ya' those women keep me real busy keeping up with them.




Mr. HE

 

[slowp]

It was explained to us at a training session that it is much cheaper to settle out of court than fight lawsuits.
Paying the enviros off is cheaper for the taxpayers than flying in witnesses from various places, paying for their lodging, and doing it over and over.

That is another way taxpayers fund the groups.