Planning rules have foresters puzzled
Forest planners across the country, including those on the Flathead and Kootenai national forests, are scratching their heads over new regulations for developing long-term strategic forest plans.
The Flathead, Kootenai and other forests in the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Region are revising their respective forest plans. It will be up to forest supervisors to decide whether to proceed under the new regulations, which were released Dec. 23 by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth.
The new regulations are intended to provide a more flexible, efficient and responsive type of long-range forest plan. But actually implementing the regulations into a forest plan revision process that's already under way raises many questions for forest planners.
"Our team is unsure of how this will affect our process," said Jack Zearfoss, acting planner on the Kootenai National Forest, which canceled a public meeting on forest plan revision that was scheduled Thursday.
Zearfoss said the forest planning team is waiting for clarification from the agency's national and regional levels in the form of forest planning "directives" that will be included in a revised version of the agency's regulation handbook.
"Once we get the directives, we'll know in a lot more detail how we would implement the rule," said Rob Carlin, the planner on the Flathead Forest.
Once planners fully understand the new regulations, it will be up to forest supervisors to decide whether to proceed under the new regulations or use existing regulations adopted in 1982.
"We're not sure what we're going to do, if we're going to stick with the old regs or go with the new ones," said Denise Germann, public information officer with the Flathead National Forest. "I think we could go either way."
A major goal for the new regulations is for the Forest Service to produce forest plans faster and at less cost. Under existing regulations, it took an average of seven years to produce forest plans that were replete with specific management standards.
The plans were difficult to change, requiring formal amendments that were often costly and time-consuming.
The current Flathead Forest Plan, developed in 1986, has been amended 24 times.
The new planning regulations are expected to produce plans that have five basic components: Desired social, economic and ecological conditions for particular areas of a national forest; objectives for certain areas of the forest; guidelines for achieving desired conditions and objectives; defining the suitability of particular areas for particular uses; and identifying "special" areas such as wilderness and wild and scenic rivers.
The plans are also expected to provide the forest with "adaptive management" capabilities. New science or new conditions on the landscape can lead to changes in the plans, through a new planning element called an "environmental management system" that has been used by some land agencies but not the Forest Service.
Carlin described an environmental management system as a "systematic approach to identifying and managing our environmental obligations" that allows forest managers to monitor conditions on the landscape in a fashion that allows the forest plan to be regularly revised.
"We certainly have some questions about that," Carlin said. "Even if we use the old regulations, we have to have a good handle on what an EMS contains."
Carlin said it is unclear whether the new guidelines would fully incorporate many existing standards in a forest plan, or whether the guidelines would be a generalized reflection of standards. The Flathead Forest has highly specific standards for everything from forest road densities to characteristics that define an old-growth forest.
"Those are the exact questions we are wrestling with. We internally, as well as the public, are pretty used to standards that are pretty specific," Carlin said. "We don't know yet. But it appears the plans are supposed to be more strategic and less detailed … For folks who are used to standards, and holding us to specific standards, that would be a very big change."
Zearfoss and Carlin said many legal challenges aimed at the Forest Service have focused on the agency's failure to meet specific forest plan standards.
Another element in the new regulations is a "strong emphasis" on increasing public involvement in the development of forest plans.
"The new rule really steps it up a notch to involve the public," Zearfoss said.
But how much is enough? That could vary from one forest supervisor to the next, unless there is clarification from the agency's leadership that will provide consistency from one forest to the next, Zearfoss said.
A single planning team is developing new forest plans for the Flathead, Bitterroot and Lolo national forests, while the Kootenai and Idaho Panhandle national forests are also pursuing a joint plan revision. Each of the forests will have their own plans.
Draft environmental impact statements are expected for all of the forest plan revisions later this year.
For more information on the Forest Service's new planning regulations on the Internet, look for:
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com