A bureaucratic bottleneck
Pinched by a reduced staff and an increasingly complex workload, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena is struggling to keep up with "consultation" reviews for the Forest Service and other agencies.
A long-awaited forest plan amendment to establish ground rules for snowmobiling on the Flathead National Forest is just one of the projects that have been bottlenecked in the service's Helena office. A final environmental impact statement for Amendment 24 was released by the Flathead Forest in December 2003, but the service's consulting "biological opinion" for the amendment may not be out for another couple months, said Anne Vandehey, who heads the team that does "Section 7" reviews under the Endangered Species Act.
"Myself, a fisheries biologist and a wildlife biologist, do all the Forest Service Section 7 work in the state," Vandehey said. "One year ago, we had four more people doing the same work."
Mark Wilson, the service's field supervisor in Helena, said budget cuts prompted steep overall staff reductions over the last year.
"We had 26 people on board this time last year, and we've got 10 fewer than that right now as a result of the funding situation that we're experiencing right now," Wilson said.
As a result, the service's capacity for reviewing all types of projects - from timber sales to mining proposals to forest plans - has been reduced, he said.
"We're not going to be able to turn out work in the volume that we have in the past," Wilson said.
And that has practical drawbacks for agencies that rely on Fish and Wildlife Service reviews that essentially determine whether projects and policies will have impacts on threatened and endangered species. The Flathead Forest has been relying on an interim policy for managing snowmobile access for the last three years. Once a review for Amendment 24 is complete, the forest will be able to adopt a firm policy.
"We just can't proceed until we get the opinion" from the Fish and Wildlife Service, said Rob Carlin, the Flathead Forest's planning officer.
Areas where snowmobiling is and isn't allowed this winter will once again be under the terms of a 2002 settlement reached between the Forest Service, the Montana Snowmobile Association and the Montana Wilderness Association.
Vandehey said the Amendment 24 review is a "top priority," and a draft version was written last spring, with expectations that the final review would be complete before this winter.
But the staff reductions and a competing, complex review for the Rock Creek Mine, along with staff time that was diverted to litigation, combined to slow down the service's operations in Helena.
"It ate our lunch this year," Vandehey said.
Vandehey and Wilson expressed concern that revisions of long-term forest management plans could pile up the workload, because several national forests are likely to complete those revisions at roughly the same time. But it's currently unclear whether those revised plans will require Fish and Wildlife Service consultation.
Carlin said the Forest Service's Washington office has yet to clarify whether consultation will be necessary for plans that are revised under new planning rules that are intended to produce forest plans that provide long-term strategic direction to forest managers. Current plans provide specific direction, with standards to be met.
"We don't know what is required for consultation under the new planning rule," Carlin said.
If consultation is not required, that would amount to a major change for the Forest Service. The last round of forest plans were developed in the late 1980s, and all had to be reviewed by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The biological opinion produced for the Flathead National Forest's 1986 forest plan is about half the size of the 173-page biological opinion recently developed for a single forest plan amendment.
Joe Krueger, the Flathead's environmental litigation coordinator, said the service's workload has increased not only in terms of the number of projects that it reviews, but also because the reviews are far more complex and detailed, specifically to be more defensible in court.
"The amount of detail has doubled," he said. "They're building these incredibly detailed biological opinions because they know they are right in it with us when these get challenged in court."
The Fish and Wildlife Service is a co-defendant in lawsuits challenging the Flathead Forest's approach to road management associated with several timber salvage projects.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com