What’s In a Name?

Sustainable forestry, ecosystem management, integrated resource restoration… These phrases can be viewed as an evolution of Forest Service management philosophies over the past 25 years.  Or, on the other hand, they could be viewed as semantic changes that have not significantly affected on-the-ground management.  It’s too early to say whether the latest agency exercise in spin amounts to a meaningful change in management, or just, well, more spin.

In the 1990s, reaction to the first two phrases was somewhat predictable: conservationists heard “sustainable” and “ecosystem,” while timber companies heard “forestry” and ”management.”  The third term, Integrated Resource Restoration (IRR), was just introduced in January 2010 in the Forest Service’s proposed budget, so it hasn’t yet been funded, and Congress may decide not to fund it at all (but it certainly indicates what direction the agency is moving in).  The budget introduced some more disconcerting wordplay: in an effort to match Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s new vision for the Forest Service, the agency is conflating the terms “forest restoration” and “watershed restoration.”  While this may sound like mere semantics, it will have real impacts on the ground.

Meet the New Program

Let’s start with the big picture – the introduction of the new Integrated Resource Restoration budget line item theoretically provides an opportunity to move forward in a new restoration direction.  The budget proposes $694 million for IRR – nearly half of the entire National Forest System budget excluding fire.  Included along with IRR are funds for the existing vegetation/watershed, fisheries/wildlife, and timber line items, plus a few others.  Wildlands CPR’s favorite program, the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative, was not added into IRR because it comes from an altogether different budget category, “Capital Improvement and Maintenance,” where all infrastructure and facilities are funded.  Legacy Roads therefore remains an independent maintenance initiative that is managed by the engineering department.

While it might make sense to combine veg/water and fish/wildlife together, what seems to be driving the newly proposed IRR is Secretary Vilsack’s vision for the Forest Service - a vision focused on protecting and restoring clean water.  From a watershed perspective, however, it seems a stretch to add timber into that mix, and this is the crux of both the semantic and the tactical problem with the new budget.  The agency wants to meet the Secretary’s vision, but it seems to want to do so by cutting as many trees as possible.  That may put the IRR in the same context as its predecessors “ecosystem management” and “sustainable forestry.”  

Now For the Fine Print

In his testimony to the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee on 2/25/10, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell explained the intent of combining activities:

“The agency will integrate traditional timber activities predominately within the context of larger restoration objectives, focusing on priority watersheds in most need of stewardship and restoration work, pursuing forest products when they support watershed, wildlife, and restoration goals.”

This doesn’t sound bad – especially if the agency actually followed it and only pursued forest products as a side benefit of watershed, wildlife and restoration goals.  But when you go to the actual budget language (and further statements in Tidwell’s testimony), the intent of the IRR becomes clear.  The budget describes the intent of the proposed new Priority Watersheds and Job Stabilization Initiative (a part of the IRR):  

“Large-scale (greater than 10,000 acres) watershed restoration projects within these priority watersheds will be selected through a national prioritized process which favors projects that … improve watershed function and health; create jobs or will contribute to job stability; and create or maintain biomass or renewable energy development.”

Since when did biomass and renewable energy projects benefit watershed health?  The agency seems to be missing the point: not once does this section of the budget refer to roads, which are arguably the biggest cause of water quality problems in our national forests.  Furthermore, road reclamation provides a large number of high-wage, high-skill forest jobs.  

In reality, the Priority Watersheds and Job Stabilization (PWJS) Initiative likely is proposed as a way to extend the new Collaborative Forest Restoration Act (CFRA) funding.  The CFRA has many redeeming components, but its primary purpose is to deal with fire and fuels in dry forests, not water quality.  These two programs together (CFRA and PWJS) will result in $90 million for “watershed restoration” largely through timber management, conflating forest and watershed restoration into one concept, and potentially co-opting the entire concept of watershed restoration.

Where Did the Roads Go?

Road reclamation and culvert upgrades to restore fish passage are major components of any watershed program, most of which also include instream activities.  With roads contributing more sediment to water sources than most other human activity in the forest (except, for example, dams or mountaintop removal), managing the road system and reducing its impacts is the first and foremost step towards restoring watershed health.  To us, “watershed” and “forest” restoration are different, and boast different priorities.

Unfortunately, the new budget proposes making forest (tree-based) management the primary tool for watershed restoration.  But while reducing hazardous fuels can benefit water quality, it can also harm it.  The appropriate practices are still heavily debated and often subsumed to questions surrounding timber production.  Wildlands CPR has long engaged in this multi-faceted debate about what constitutes proper “forest restoration” from an ecological perspective, but it is not our priority issue.  We participate to ensure that folks working on these forest questions include road reclamation in the discussion.  

There is no such debate, however, for watershed restoration through road reclamation.  This work, though sometimes socially contentious, is not scientifically questionable.  Scientists agree on the impacts of roads to watershed health, and they agree that mitigating or removing those impacts will protect and restore water quality over the long-term (there are sometimes short-term, small-scale sediment impacts).  Yet Tidwell’s entire 7-page testimony to the appropriations committee, which focuses throughout on watershed health and water quality, includes only two references to road decommissioning – one near the beginning, as part of a laundry list of activities, and one two-sentence token acknowledgement in the concluding paragraph:

“We are using the Travel Management Planning process to guide our efforts in right-sizing the Agency’s road system. The President’s Budget for the USDA Forest Service also contains funding for many other important items, such $50 million for the Legacy Roads program to help improve water quality and stream conditions, and an increase in the recreation budget that will help rural economies while creating opportunities to reconnect people to forest lands.”

First, the agency is NOT using Travel Management Planning to guide their right-sizing efforts.  They have purposely chosen to avoid undertaking the portion of travel planning (also known as subpart A, see The RIPorter v14#2: Forest Service Issues Long Awaited Travel Management Directives) that would require them to identify an ecologically and fiscally sustainable minimum road system.  Second, the President’s budget proposes cutting Legacy Roads funding in half, from the $90 million the agency received in FY10, to only $50 million in FY11.  And that cut is on top of an even larger cut to the general road management budget, which will further reduce road maintenance funding.

The Bottom Line

When we first read about the IRR, we thought that perhaps the agency was finally listening to those who have urged them to seriously invest in restoration as their priority.  They have taken some important restoration steps over the past few years, but those steps continue to lean towards what the agency knows best – timber management – and this new budget reinforces that emphasis.  While both the President’s budget and the Chief’s testimony to Congress promote strong restoration concepts that sound great to the untrained ear, when you dig a little deeper into the reality, it once again seems like the emphasis is business as usual on the ground.