Archive | July, 2022

Revisions to Forest Planning Process – Letter of Concern

July 26, 2022 in News

CSA-COHVCO-TPA-IRC-CORE-RWR

United States Forest Service
Att: Chief Randy Moore
1400 Independence Ave, SW
Washington DC 20250

RE: Revisions to Forest Planning Process

Dear Chief Moore:

The above Organizations are contacting you regarding the May 20, 2022 memo issued by your Office outlining a revised forest planning process with the development of a Planning Services Organization (“PSO”). Prior to addressing our specific concerns with the revision, we believe a brief summary of each Organization is needed. The Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition (“COHVCO”) is a grassroots advocacy organization representing the OHV community seeking to represent, assist, educate, and empower all OHV recreationists in the protection and promotion of off-highway motorized recreation throughout Colorado. COHVCO is an environmental organization that advocates and promotes the responsible use and conservation of our public lands and natural resources to preserve their aesthetic and recreational qualities for future generations. The Trail Preservation Alliance (“TPA”) is an advocacy organization created to be a viable partner to public lands managers, working with the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to preserve the sport of motorized trail riding and multiple-use recreation. The TPA acts as an advocate for the sport and takes the necessary action to ensure that the USFS and BLM allocate a fair and equitable percentage of public lands access to diverse multiple-use trail recreational opportunities. Colorado Snowmobile Association (“CSA”) was founded in 1970 to unite winter motorized recreationists across the state to enjoy their passion. CSA has also become the voice of organized snowmobiling seeking to advance, promote and preserve the sport of snowmobiling through work with Federal and state land management agencies and local, state and federal legislators telling the truth about our sport. CORE is a motorized action group dedicated to keeping motorized trails open in Central Colorado and the region. Idaho Recreation Council (“IRC”) is comprised of Idahoans from all parts of the state with a wide spectrum of recreational interests and a love for the future of Idaho and a desire to preserve recreation for future generations. Ride with Respect (“RwR”) was founded in 2002 to conserve shared-use trails and their surroundings. RwR has educated visitors and performed over twenty-thousand hours of high-quality trail work on public lands including national forests. Collectively, TPA, CSA, CORE, IRC, RwR, and COHVCO will be referred to as “The Organizations” for purposes of these comments.

The Organizations believe it is important to note that we have been very involved in development and implementation of almost every phase of the USFS 2012 Planning Rule. The Organizations have been involved in subsequent efforts on Forest Plan development with several of the early adopter National Forests across the Country. The Organizations have found the new Planning Rule to be reasonably successful in efficiently developing quality proactively focused Forest Management Plans that will efficiently guide the planning area over the life of the Plan. At the 30k foot level, the PSO model appears to implement an almost ongoing educational component in the planning process, which is a good change to the planning process. The Organizations vigorously assert education of anyone is always a good thing, as exemplified by our support of Tread Lightly, Stay the Trail and the large number of avalanche safety efforts now present.

While the Organizations vigorously support education generally, we are also aware that educational efforts must be relevant to the issues being faced by users and be efficiently provided. Without alignment and efficiency, negative impacts of education can rapidly occur. The Organizations are concerned about possible negative impacts from the PSO model, which as proposed does not appear to align with challenges being faced now or in the future at the local level and will create inefficiencies and conflict rather than reduce them. The PSO model appears to focus on challenges previously addressed rather than proactively addressing future challenges. This conflict will result in inefficiencies and negative collateral impacts, such as partners with high quality information or resources on a particular topic being overlooked or not properly engaged with. The Organizations would like to avoid this situation as the current planning model generally works well.

The Organizations believe anywhere efficiencies can be gained in the plan development process, such as effective education of USFS staff on successful management models for issues used in other planning efforts, they should be pursued. Equally important is the need to provide flexibility for each new Forest Plan to allow the plan to remain efficient over the life of the Plan. This type of ongoing education effort, as outlined in the PSO model of planning, could be highly effective in addressing implementation of issue specific concerns where consistency is needed across management units. An example of this type of issue might be implementation of the 2020 US Supreme Court’s Cowpasture[1] decision specifying that NTSA designations do not alter the multiple use mandates. Another challenge where the PSO model could be highly effective is in correctly applying regional level concepts such as sufficient snow in winter travel decisions. It has been the Organizations experience that consistent Forest level planning is a critical tool in achieving the successful implementation of standards such as these. We are also all too familiar with the situation where misdirected attempts at efficiency are creating significant barriers to effective management responses to a wide range of challenges.

We also believe this PSO model is highly timely and could be a huge resource for the USFS given the critical shortage of employees being experienced currently. While we are hopeful that the hiring efforts occurring over the summer will be successful, we have concerns that many of these new agency employees may lack the experience and expertise to tackle a forest plan revision effectively, given the almost niche market of this expertise. Having skilled resources available to guide these newly hired staff through planning processes could provide significant benefits in developing effective, efficient forest plans and ensuring these new forest plans remain efficient over the life of the plan. It is from these points of agreement and support we must also voice our concerns on the revision to the Planning process outlined in the memo.

Concern 1- The four core areas of expertise do not align with pressing challenges identified in your memo.

The Organizations are concerned the four core areas of expertise for the PSO model do not align with the three pressing challenges identified by forest planners on the first page of your memo. Our concerns on this issue are expanded by the fact there is almost no overlap of the identified PSO areas of expertise and pressing challenges identified by the Forests. As an example, sustainable recreation and wildfire risk are at best only partially reflected in the adaptive management area of expertise for the PSO model. The Organizations are concerned that challenges of this scale should not be addressed through supposition and possibility. Challenges such as these can only be effectively addressed when they are meaningfully targeted in a timely manner and significant resources are directed towards these challenges. The Organizations are concerned that when challenges such as these are not properly weighted in national efforts, but are weighted to reflect the imminence of the threats at the local level, this will result in significant conflict and inefficiency.

While local identified priority challenges are not weighted sufficiently in the PSO model, other issues have been overly weighted in the PSO model. Wilderness inventory processes for forest plans are largely settled, as are Wild and Scenic River inventory processes. Without significant changes in the management of these areas by Congress, we must question why these concerns would be thought to be a priority for local managers creating plans addressing in the next 50 years. The PSO model should be efficient and responsive to forest concerns and challenges forests are seeing on the ground in the long term as well. This long-term efficiency is simply not achieved by prioritizing challenges the forests faced 40 years ago.

As we have participated dozens of forest plan revisions across the Country, we can state with high levels of certainty that Wilderness and Wild and Scenic inventory are the basis of numerous comments and challenges to Forest Plans despite these being well understood by planners. These comments continue to be submitted despite Wilderness inventories and Wild and Scenic River inventories are largely complete and are based on a highly litigated process now used by the USFS. It has been our experience that these comments are submitted for a variety of social factors including the commentors continued opposition to the multiple use mandates rather than a substantive concern on the forest. Most of these comments are form letters and most challenges are unsuccessful, which should mitigate possible concern for these issues as management priorities. While there is still significant political discussion around these issues, the management process is reasonably settled. While the Organizations could see a brief discussion of this issue in an adaptive management type category, this is simply not a priority issue that warrants a separate area of expertise.

The Organizations also submit that these are issue generally legislative in nature and resolution of these concerns generally falls outside the Forest Planning process. The legislative nature of this issues is evidenced by the fact that many comments received by the forests in planning represent a failure to accept the conclusions of previous Wilderness designations by Congress by the commentor. Thousands of separate pieces of legislation have identified areas that could be protected as Wilderness by Congress. A much smaller portion has passed and these laws have identified areas to be protected as Wilderness and other areas released back to multiple uses by Congress. The Organizations vigorously assert that areas being identified for management as recommended Wilderness in a Forest Plan after the same area has been specifically reviewed and declined for designation by Congress is simply inefficient and should be avoided. Many States Wilderness Acts also specifically provide hard release language for areas Congress has declined to designate and clearly stating these areas should be returned to management for multiple uses. Despite this clarity in Congressional action, many comments would like to see this resolution anyway. The PSO model should avoid facilitating this type of situation.

The proposed PSO model simply does not reflect headway that many states have made on Wilderness and Wild and Scenic River issues. Gone are the days of RARE inventories and the challenges the agency faced in these processes. Almost every state the USFS operates in has a state Wilderness Act which resolves challenges to the RARE process and specifically addressing Wilderness designations with high levels of clarity and also releases of other USFS managed areas for multiple uses. These issue areas might have represented monumental challenges for forest planners 40 years ago but now these represent processes and designations that are well settled. We simply don’t see that situation changing in the foreseeable future either.

The management of species of conservation concern is also another area with a reasonably formal process for review and designation and functionally poorly suited to an area of expertise in the PSO model. For Endangered and Threatened Species the §7 Consultation process is well developed and heavily litigated, based on our decades of involvement and support for these efforts. For species of conservation concern and most other species the engagement of state wildlife agencies as a partner in the planning process is again pretty resolved in terms of how and when to engage. Any further discussion of this type of an issue would be hugely forest or area specific simply because of the large number of species and diverse numbers of forests, which would drive discussions to locations of habitat areas, uses in habitat areas, winter range and other issues. This type of diversity of issues and facts would heavily undermine the benefits of identifying species of conservation concern as a specific area in the PSO model.

We believe that currently there are simply larger concerns for managers to be addressing in Forest Plans and the PSO model must be placed on a foundation of addressing future challenges rather than looking 40 years into the history of the agency. This is simply not efficient and the Organizations would really encourage the PSO model/process to look forward. Under the designations for the PSO model, the Organizations submit resolved issues such as this might be most effectively addressed in a general category, such as adaptive management but simply should not be addressed as a separate category of expertise.

Concern 2 – The four core expertise areas do not align with current USFS strategic efforts to address resource protection.

The identified core areas of expertise in the PSO model fail to effectively address more abstract concepts of planning such as effective resource protection, which has a strong alignment with pressing issues like climate change and wildfire. Again, these important challenges are only arguably reflected in the adaptive management area of expertise. Resource protection has been a cornerstone of numerous legislative efforts, public concern and USFS efforts for decades as evidenced by the USFS 10 Year Wildfire Crisis Strategy released in January 2022[2] and the 10 Year Shared Stewardship Challenge[3] mandated by the National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act. These are efforts that have now spanned several Presidential Administrations and were the basis of bipartisan support in their development, and have generally been well received by the public.

These strategic efforts that have engaged partners through assertions that these were attempts by the Agency to transform their basic structure and methods of doing business. A strong negative message to the partners that have engaged in the efforts for decades, would be sent if these strategic efforts are not carried into forest plans. Ensuring these efforts are effectively incorporated into forest plans to continue efforts to undertake foundational changes in the way the agency does business will send a more important message to partners. While we are aware that adaptive management might cover a portion of this type of concern but it does not provide balance or address the detailed nature of information that could be provided.

As an example of why these issues warrant specific recognition in the PSO model would include the fact that these planning efforts and legislative changes have resulted in major transformation of good neighbor authority in firefighting and trails management. The multifaceted nature of many of the challenges the agency is facing is exemplified by the identification of wildfire risk as a pressing concern for planners. The Organizations are able to identify numerous concerns that would each warrant inclusion as an area of expertise for the PSO teams, such as:

High intensity wildfire could be the most critical issue facing the forests and barrier to almost every value on the forests currently;
Proactively addressing fuel mitigation concerns by utilization of tools such as thinning and ensuring access to areas to allow emergency response should be a high priority for education of planners;
Allowing flexibility for managers to effectively fight active fires with every resource available now and over the next 40 to 50 years;
Allowing flexibility for managers to address post fire impacts – many forests currently in RMP revisions have been hugely impacted by the new high intensity wildfires but lack good information on long term challenges;
Research indicates significant impacts of burn scars on predators many of whom are ESA listed;
Fire scars could take centuries to recover after high intensity impacts; and
Massive impacts from fire occur on watersheds well outside burn scars and exposes public to safety concerns when using areas adjacent to watersheds impacted by wildfire.

The Organizations would be remiss if the relationship of forest health/wildfire to recreational opportunities on USFS lands was not identified as a priority concern for the recreational community. The value of these resources to our Organizations is evidenced by the fact programs we have championed have provided hundreds of millions a year to the USFS for maintenance grants for trails on USFS lands. We would like to ensure these funds are used as efficiently and effectively as possible in mitigation efforts for fire before, during and after areas are impacted by fire. If there are provisions in forest plans that are facilitating this type of efficiency, we would like to know. If there are existing barriers in forest plans prohibiting the effective management of this issue, we would like to know this as well. It is critically important to the recreational community and our partnerships with land managers.

The confluence of two parallel efforts on firefighting that highlight the need to provide flexibility in plans to address wildfire as a priority management concern. This type of issue warrants inclusion as an expertise area for the PSO model. This is the release of the change of condition report by the Sierra and Sequoia NF as part of their final Forest Plan revision.[4] This report highlighted impacts to the Sierra and Sequoia NF from the high intensity fires that have impacted as much as 80% of these forests in the last 20 years. It is unfortunate that any forest is facing this situation, but the Organizations submit this situation is becoming more viable on many forests by the day making summaries such as this highly valuable for education.

The Sierra/Sequoia NF change in condition report was released in close proximity to a recent 60 Minutes news story entitled “Taking the Fight to the Night against California’s Wildfires with new Helicopters” [5] which aired on June 26, 2022. This article highlighted firefighting efforts that were functionally impossible only a few years ago. With new technology, firefighters were now able to fight fires at night with aircraft which has been demonstrated to be highly effective. Could we be fighting fire with robots or drones in the near future? As this is already commonplace in the search and rescue operations, that is entirely possible and we must be ensuring these technological advancements are not precluded on forests due to barriers in the Forest Plan. It is unfortunate that we are aware of several forest plan provisions that have made responding to forest health and fighting efforts more difficult.

The confluence of these two resources is critical to our concerns on areas of focus under the PSO models. While these types of issues could be addressed with adaptive management analysis, is this reflecting the gravity of the challenge being faced by huge portions of USFS lands. We don’t think it does and avoiding barriers to effectively addressing these types of challenges in the planning process must be a priority for the effort. This creates efficiency in the planning process and over the life of the plan while protecting resources.

Concern 3 – The four core expertise areas do not align with the multiple use mandate of the USFS.

The Organizations are concerned that the 4 core areas identified as centers for the PSO model entirely fail to embrace the multiple use mandate of the USFS. Entire sectors of the community around any USFS managed area are simply omitted entirely from the benefits of PSO model. The current PSO model lacks representation of agricultural, timber and recreational interests, which we believe are critical components of multiple use. The Organizations must express serious concern that the current PSO model must strive to proactively comply with the multiple use mandate in the most efficient and effective manner possible. The impacts of failing to weight these types of concerns in the PSO model will have many negative impacts over the life of these plans. We believe that properly weighting all multiple uses in the PSO model will minimize possible impacts from this type of issue.

Accurately and effectively understanding how the forest planning process supports and conflicts with the economic transformation of local communities that are relying on the forest lands for their existence. This cannot be overlooked and is an important reason for the core areas of expertise more completely reflecting the general areas of multiple uses identified in the statutory requirements for the agency. Again, this type of important concern is not accurately weighted by including these types of concerns under an adaptive management type standard.

Conclusion.

The Organizations are aware that implementation of the PSO model will heavily influence the development of forest plans moving forward and our hope is to ensure the PSO model and planning process works as efficiently and effectively as possible. There can be significant and wide-ranging benefits from development of this type of model for the agency moving forward. For these benefits to occur, the PSO model must focus proactively on addressing challenges that are anticipated rather than reopening largely settled political issues in the forest plan development process. Many of these issues are issues that the Forests may have faced 40 years ago but are now well settled policies. Proactive standards will result in the development of forest plans that remain efficient and flexible over the life of the plan. The Organizations have significant concerns that the current four core areas will create conflict between national team and local planners and this conflict will result in inefficiencies and negative collateral impacts, such as partners with high quality information on a topic being overlooked. It is our hope that these concerns can be addressed quickly to ensure that forest plan development continues efficiently and effectively.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact Scott Jones, Esq. (518-281-5810 / scott.jones46@yahoo.com), Chad Hixon (719-221-8329 / chad@coloradotpa.org), or Clif Koontz (435-259-8334 / clif@ridewithrespect.org).

Respectfully Submitted,

Scott Jones, Esq.
CSA Executive Director
COHVCO Authorized Representative

Chad Hixon
TPA Executive Director

Marcus Trusty
President – CORE

Sandra Mitchell
Executive Director – IRC

Clif Koontz
Executive Director
Ride with Respect

Sandra Mitchell
Executive Director
Idaho Recreation Council

[1] See, UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE ET AL. v. COWPASTURE RIVER PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION ET AL. No. 18–1584. Argued February 24, 2020—Decided June 15, 2020.

[2] See, Confronting the Wildfire Crisis | US Forest Service (usda.gov)

[3] See, 10-Year Trail Shared Stewardship Challenge | US Forest Service (usda.gov)

[4] See, USDA Forest Service; 2020 Creek Fire and SQF Complex: Effects on Terrestrial Ecosystems on the Sierra and Sequoia National Forests; A full copy of this report is available here Forest Service (usda.gov)

[5] A full copy of this portion of 60 minutes is available here: Taking the fight to the night against California’s wildfires with new helicopters – YouTube

The Wildfire Response & Drought Resiliency Act

July 25, 2022 in News

Congressman Joe Neguse
1419 Longworth HOB
Washington DC 20515

RE: THE WILDFIRE RESPONSE AND DROUGHT RESILIENCY ACT HR 5118

Dear Congressman Neguse;

Please accept this correspondence as the opposition of the Organizations to the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act (“the Proposal”). Our concerns are centered on §208 of the Wildfire Response and Drought Resilience Act, which would Congressionally designate existing administrative boundaries of Roadless areas. However, the Organizations are also very concerned about the functional failure of the legislative process in the entire procedure around developing this Proposal in the Rules Committee. While the Organizations are glad that funding for federal public lands has been a priority recently, we must express some frustration with the continued earmarking of large sums of money for projects on public lands on an ad hoc basis rather than focusing on development of an actual budget amount that can sustain basic agency operations. It has been our experience that this method of funding is leading to significant confusion of the public and repetition of analysis in planning areas.

Prior to addressing the specific concerns of the Organizations regarding the Proposal, we believe a brief summary of each Organization is needed. The Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition (“COHVCO”) is a grassroots advocacy organization representing the OHV community seeking to represent, assist, educate, and empower all OHV recreationists in the protection and promotion of off-highway motorized recreation throughout Colorado. COHVCO is an environmental organization that advocates and promotes the responsible use and conservation of our public lands and natural resources to preserve their aesthetic and recreational qualities for future generations. The TPA is an advocacy organization created to be a viable partner to public lands managers, working with the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to preserve the sport of motorized trail riding and multiple-use recreation. The TPA acts as an advocate for the sport and takes the necessary action to ensure that the USFS and BLM allocate a fair and equitable percentage of public lands access to diverse multiple-use trail recreational opportunities. Colorado Snowmobile Association (“CSA”) was founded in 1970 to unite winter motorized recreationists across the state to enjoy their passion. CSA has also become the voice of organized snowmobiling seeking to advance, promote and preserve the sport of snowmobiling through work with Federal and state land management agencies and local, state and federal legislators telling the truth about our sport. CORE is a motorized action group dedicated to keeping motorized trails open in Central Colorado and the region. Idaho Recreation Council (“IRC”) is comprised of Idahoans from all parts of the state with a wide spectrum of recreational interests and a love for the future of Idaho and a desire to preserve recreation for future generations. Ride with Respect (“RwR”) was founded in 2002 to conserve shared-use trails and their surroundings. RwR has educated visitors and performed over twenty-thousand hours of high-quality trail work on public lands including national forests. Over 750 individuals have contributed money or volunteered time to the organization. The Alaska Snowmachine Alliance(“ASA”) supports snowmachining throughout the State of Alaska and all snowmachine activities including racing and vintage, snowmachine trails, the SnowTRAC program and it’s funding, snowmachine Search and Rescue and the betterment of snowmachining throughout the State of Alaska. Collectively, TPA, CSA, CORE, IRC, RwR, ASA and COHVCO will be referred to as “The Organizations” for purposes of these comments.

The Organizations are huge partners with the Federal Land management agencies and the State OHV/OSV programs that have been developed provide $200 million or more in direct annual funding to public lands management for the benefit of all users. These efforts range from providing winter trail grooming for the benefit of all users to funding and equipping seasonal crews to clear and maintain trails for the benefit of all users and protection of resources. Many of the challenges facing recreation are also impacting wildfire prevention and management and the management of water resources. Our Organizations understand the challenges faced on public lands and barriers to resolving these challenges and must assert the Proposal would be a major step in the wrong direction on addressing these challenges.

1(a) Congressional designations of Roadless Area boundaries.

The Organizations are vigorously opposed to the Congressional designation of existing inventoried Roadless areas under §208 of the Proposal. The Organizations are confounded by the inclusion of this requirement in the Proposal, as it runs directly contrary to the rest of the legislation which seeks to streamline and accelerate fuels treatments and fire restoration efforts along with drought mitigation efforts. The Organizations must question why such a designation would think to be required when the rest of the Proposal mandates that NEPA requirements must be complied with for all projects and NEPA analysis has been highly effective, if not slow, to address resource protection.

The Organizations are unable to theorize how adding a significant layer of analysis and restriction to these efforts furthers the goals and objectives of the rest of the Proposal. This additional layer of review and analysis makes no sense on the ground. We must ask how can water projects or fuels treatments be effectively addressed at the scale necessary without building permanent roads? Many of these resources with need roads to continue maintenance of the facilities and treatment areas and that type of long term maintenance has now been Congressionally prohibited by the Proposal. This provision simply makes no sense.

Our second basis for vigorous opposition to §208 stems from the fact the Organizations and our members have participated in the development of the National Roadless Rule and state specific Roadless Rules that have been finalized in Colorado and Idaho. We are aware that Roadless Rules for the State of Alaska and Utah are under development. We have generally supported these designations as multiple use is a characteristic of these areas. We are opposed to the exclusion of Alaska and Utah roadless rules, which are now under development, from designation and protection in the Proposal for no reason. These state efforts reflect the state flexibility in managing these areas and we believe this flexibility is one of the strengths of the Roadless Rule. This strength would be lost if these designations were now subject to Congressional review and approval. This Congressionally based model of land management has been proven to be unsuccessful on other land management issues, as obtaining federal law changes to address small boundary designations changes is now required. This type of approval can take decades to resolve even small issues in land management as often small issues like this simply are not of sufficient size to capture the bodies time and resources. We understand why this occurs but this model remains less than optimal.

A larger example of why we are opposed to the Congressional designation of Roadless Areas is the inability to release many Roadless and Wilderness Study Areas that has plagued these Congressional efforts since the 1970’s. Many areas have never been suitable for designation as Wilderness but have continued to be stuck in the “may be designated” level of management designation as Congress will not release these areas. We are concerned that this management situation will be commonplace in Roadless Area management if Congressional designations are adopted. This is a process we do not want to see applied to the development and management of Roadless Areas.

1b. General hostility of the Proposal towards roads is arbitrary and will create horrible inefficiencies.

The Organizations are vigorously opposed to the hostility that is displayed towards roads in general in the Proposal. It has been our experience that roads are a critical component of firefighting and fuels treatments but also major and minor water projects, which the Proposal outlines dozens of. As an example of our concerns on this issue is the fact that water quality monitoring is simply not done effectively and efficiently when there are long hikes involved to get samples to study. Throughout the Proposal there are numerous restrictions are placed on permanent road development and maintenance outside the designations of the Roadless areas by Congress.

These provisions would be exemplified by three additional restrictions on permanent roads in §203 of the Act. This restriction is included despite the explicit requirement for NEPA analysis of every project under the Proposal. If there is a need for a road that can be supported by NEPA analysis, why would these benefits be restricted? The Organizations are intimately familiar with the situation where roads have been lost due to landslides or avalanches and there is a compelling need to replace them for many reasons. Often access is a major concern for fuels and firefighting and these routes may also sustain a critical access need for these areas that would allow fuels treatment on an ongoing basis. Roads are commonly lost in flooding that is highly common in burn scars after fires. Rebuilding these roads is commonly step one of restoring and stabilizing these areas and we believe restoring these routes in the best locations possible must be recognized as a compelling need, as often times there is no footprint of the route to even relocate. NEPA allows this type of flexibility in planning efforts and this must be allowed to move forward. Why would anyone think this was a process that was having a negative impact on the landscapes? These types of decisions are best weighted and made at the local level and these types of prohibitions stop this type of local decision making from occurring. If these routes can be justified in NEPA they should be allowed.

2a. Current ad hoc funding processes create massive confusion of the public and overlap of efforts without resolving foundational challenges to public land management.

While there are some provisions or concepts in the Proposal the Organizations can support, the Organizations and our members must express concern over the ad hoc manner that has been chosen to address funding of projects on federal lands over the last several years. After several years, we can confirm that it lacks efficiency and creates large amounts of confusion of the public and often does not achieve the goals of the efforts. As a result, we are opposed to the continuation of management of public lands in this manner.

It has been our experience that simply determining which federal program is currently funded and managing an effort created under this ad hoc process can be very difficult for any member of the public. Having multiple federal groups intermittently working on the same issue in the same area is difficult enough for the public to understand. This is compounded by the fact that often there are similar state driven efforts in these areas in addition to efforts to list species under the ESA, forest plan revisions and travel plan development. In many areas these efforts can vastly overlap and this overlap provides a significant barrier to the publics ability to meaningfully engage in efforts. Often we have experienced our members participating in efforts in good faith efforts to address concerns only to find part way through the effort that the direction has changed for the effort or the scope was incorrectly understood or explained in the beginning of the effort and the public is not participating in the correct effort to address their concerns.

While the goals of these efforts may be commendable, this is simply not the manner to accomplish goals, and our concerns on this issue are not abstract or remote as this type of confusion is already occurring. As an example, one of our groups has been involved in a landscape level forest restoration effort, which is a good thing as poor forest health is a major challenge in the area. While this landscape forest level effort is moving, a separate regional forest restoration, that had previously run out of funding and was replaced by the subsequent landscape sized effort, was restarted as it was provided more funding under the infrastructure bill. These are two efforts with an almost entirely overlapping geographic scope of work. As public engagement starts for the regional effort, the public expresses concern about the lack of clarity in the entire effort. This confusion and frustration was compounded by the fact that facilitators are unable to provide even basic maps for these efforts or explain how they are aligned with each other. This is highly frustrating to everyone involved, including the facilitators and land managers and should be avoided moving forward.

Compounding the public frustration with these efforts is the fact the local users still have other meetings for general efforts on the forest as well, such as those for travel plans and resource management plan updates. Sometimes there are several meetings occurring on the same general issues long distances apart at the same time. This is just a less than optimal manner to engage the public and creates horrible process inefficiencies and simply must be avoided in the future. The Organizations believe the use of the budgeting systems within the agencies would be a major step towards resolving these types of conflict and confusion.

We are thrilled to see the recognition of recreational staff for the agencies as a priority for funding in the Proposal but must question how much benefit this will be in the long run. We are concerned that the Proposal only addresses part of the issue faced in the recreational community. While we frequently say we cannot coordinate our funding and partnerships with an empty desk, putting a staff person at the desk does not resolve the problem. The project simply cannot make the desk and then never move as there are insufficient nonrecreational resources available to complete NEPA analysis.

A huge portion of recreational activities and improvements that are undertaken by recreational staff must comply in some manner with NEPA requirements. While the increased levels of staffing could support starting NEPA analysis of issues, such as parking, bathrooms and heavy maintenance to recreational facilities, there is simply no way this can be completed as there is no staff to fill interdisciplinary teams that are needed to complete NEPA analysis of the project. An example of this type of problem would be the fact that many recreational efforts require special use permits. It has been our experience that SRPs are issued for a wide range of activities, and as a result calling these recreational staff would not be accurate. Only staffing recreational resources would allow a project to be accepted by the rec staff at the office and then stall because there is no permit person to review and approve the permit. The project remains incomplete despite the new funding.

A second example of how only funding recreational staff would not improve recreational activities on public lands would be another situation we commonly experience. This involves the replacement of large infrastructure resources such as visitor centers, ,bridges, toilets etc. How does a bridge repair project complete NEPA without approval of general sites preparation and bridge design standards without approval by an agency engineer? Agencies will only accept contractor efforts to a certain point and then the agency retains final approval on the issue. If funding is only provided for recreation staff without funds to support these other areas of expertise, the only thing that will be created is a large NEPA backlog with the continuation of this model of funding. This is not acceptable to our Organizations.

2b. General lack of transparency and expertise in Rules Committee proceedings.

The Organizations are also opposed to the Proposal based on the progression of the Proposal development, as most of the component legislative drafts had not been heard in their committee of record before the Rules Committee consolidated them into the Proposal on July 22, 2022. The Organizations vigorously assert there are issue specific committees in the Legislature for a reason and they should be used and relied on for their areas of expertise. Of 48 separate proposals that were consolidated into the Rules Committee amendment, only 9 had received a markup in their relevant Committee of record. As a result, most had not even been heard by the Committee of record that should be handling these types of recommendations. 1 legislative draft was introduced in the Amendments for the first time. As a result, the expertise and experiences of the other committee members was not obtained before the Rules Committee bundled these separate drafts into the Proposal. This is simply unacceptable.

In addition to the failure of most Committees of record to even hear or review the legislative drafts, the Proposal also functionally voided future committee action on issues that were scheduled to be in their respective committees. This resulted from hearing in the Committees occurring after or at the same time as the Proposal was heard on the House Floor. This only compounds the risk of conclusions that simply lack reason or effectiveness on the Ground. Not only had these issue legislative drafts not been heard by their respective natural resource committees, the Rules Committee process was horribly truncated as well. Discussion was limited to one hour, points of Order on the consolidation process with the Committee simply were not allowed and discussion on the House Floor was also significantly restricted.

2c. Proposal could delay treatments on the ground as there is no alignment with current USFS efforts on fuels treatments.

The USFS has partnered with a wide range of interests and groups in an attempt to address wildfire issues in a strategic manner since the early to mid- 1990s. The USFS has a finalized strategic plan in 2014, which was updated in 2022. Our Organizations have participated in these efforts and planning processes as wildfire is a major concern for the recreational community. We are aware that these ongoing strategic documents have been successful in addressing fire risk through use of expanded good neighbor authority for treatments, and expansion of usage of community wildfire protection plans to protect areas adjacent to national forests. Too often been our experience that as the timber harvest process moves forward and is finally approved for high priority treatment areas, these areas have burnt before the process has been completed. As a result of this situation, we are aware that delays from inefficiencies can have major impacts on timber/fuel mitigation efforts and the water situation is operating on a very aggressive time table with the drought.

Again, the Organizations are intimately familiar with how many well intentioned efforts to protect resources can actually serve as a major barrier to protecting the resource. This could not be better exemplified by a situation that occurred in Colorado several years ago, where maintenance was badly needed to remove dead trees around a reservoir on USFS lands that provided municipal drinking water. This reservoir had been in existence since the later 1800’s and had water rights that allowed management of the reservoir that significantly predated the USFS management of the area and designation of the surrounding area as Wilderness. Those rights were identified in the Wilderness designation. Despite these protections mechanical treatment of the dead trees was not possible due to the Wilderness designation and eventually the USFS was able to allow the dead trees to be blasted to address the water needs of the community. We have attached a video of this blasting for your reference.[1] For this effort, the explosives had to be brought in by pack mule train and all prep work was done by hand. While we commend everyone involved for this resolution, we must also note that this was probably not efficient compared to other possible resolutions and this represents a concrete example of how well-meaning efforts can result in horrible inefficiencies in the end. A couple of people with chainsaws could have fixed this issue in a few afternoons rather than the years of effort the blasting project took. This type of inefficiency is a major problem.

The Organizations can say with absolute certainty that the 10 year wildfire protection plan outlined in the Proposal is very different in terms of scope and application than the version of the strategy the USFS is recently finalized. Many of these issues now sought to be addressed are unrelated to wildfire or water issues and may be entirely outside the expertise of the respective agencies currently leading the efforts which compounds possible inefficiencies. The Organizations submit that remaining focused on the wildfire challenge should be the priority for wildfire planning and expanding the scope of this effort is simply degrading this focus on wildfire. This is more of a concern given the horrible staffing situation that is facing the USFS currently which are outlined in other portions of these comments. The Proposal does not foster this type of alignment and efficiency.

3. Federal budgeting process should be relied on rather than current ad hoc efforts.

The Organizations welcome the implicit recognition of the fact that the federal land managers simply are unable to hire staff to fill positions with the provisions of §123 of the Proposal. The inability of the agencies to hire staff has become a systemic problem for a long time. The Organizations have been partnering to fund the hiring seasonal and fulltime recreational staff for many years and it has been our experience that salaries simply do not compete for most of these jobs. Many of these salaries are insufficient for staff to live in the districts they work and manage.

The ad hoc funding process that has been used by Congress to fund public lands has not helped this situation as often basic questions are presented in these funding efforts such as if permanent staff can be hired with these funding efforts. This was one of the first questions we ran into around the funding provided by Great American Outdoors Act. While an isolated funding stream bump can have significant benefit, the systemic use of these types of tools is not optimal. These ad hoc funding streams fail to address issues like salary and other issues around staff. We submit that the expertise of committees and agencies should be relied on to address these issues in the budgeting process.

4. Conclusion.

For the reasons outlined in this correspondence, the above Organizations must vigorously oppose the Proposal. Our concerns are centered on §208 of the Wildfire Response and Drought Resilience Act, which would Congressionally designate existing administrative boundaries of Roadless areas. However, the Organizations are also very concerned about the functional failure of the legislative process in the entire process around amending this proposal in the Rules Committee. While the Organizations are glad that funding for federal public lands has been a priority recently, must express some frustration with the continued earmarking of large sums of money for projects on public lands on an ad hoc basis rather than focusing on development of an actual budget amount that can sustain basic agency operations. It has been our experience that this method of funding is leading to significant confusion of the public and repetition of analysis in planning areas.