Defenders of Wildlife Blog

The Obama administration proposed new rules of the road for national forests today.

BREAKING: The Obama administration today proposed a new forest-planning rule that will guide the management of 155 nationals forests and grasslands across the United States.

The following is a statement from Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife:

“The Obama administration’s proposed forest-planning rule offers a laudable new vision for our nation’s forests and grasslands, charting a course to protect and restore our forests, wildlife and water.

“The administration deserves credit for the genuine effort that it made to respond to public comments. Although we strongly support this historic shift in direction, we remain concerned about the adequacy of its wildlife conservation provisions and worry that the forest-planning rule makes promises that it can’t fully deliver.

“Defenders of Wildlife will be reviewing the rule more closely with an eye on improvements that can be made to ensure stronger protections for wildlife before the rule is finalized in 30 days.”

BREAKING: Hundreds of scientists, 67 members of Congress, more than a dozen national conservation organizations and nearly 300,000 citizens are calling on the Obama administration today to strengthen protections for wildlife and water in its proposed forest policy.

The following is a statement from Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president for Defenders of Wildlife:

“The outpouring of public support for wildlife and water shows just how important national forests are to all Americans. While we’re encouraged by some of the forward-looking features of the proposal, such as making restoration of rivers and streams a priority and managing forests so that they’re more resilient to threats such as climate change, there’s widespread concern that the rule lacks clear, necessary standards to ensure it will be fully implemented to achieve these goals on the ground.

“In my experience, land managers welcome clear rules because that clarity makes tough but proper decisions easier to defend against unwarranted political pressure. Without such clarity, this planning rule could lead to a confusing and contradictory implementation decisions from forest to forest, undermining the effectiveness of the rule in protecting America’s wildlife and water.

“These forest rules represent one of President Obama’s most important conservation legacies. We urge him and his administration to keep working to get this right.”

Background

Today marks the end of the 90-day comment period for the public to respond to the Obama administration’s forest-planning rule, which guides how the U.S. Forest Service manages 193 million acres of forest and grasslands under the National Forest Management Act.

Experts view the forest-planning rule as one of the most important conservation policies the Obama administration will undertake. However, the CEO’s of 13 national conservation and environmental organizations say that the draft rule is far from complete.

The outpouring of public support for wildlife and water shows just how important national forests are to all Americans. — Jamie Clark

Tongass National Forest, Alaska

A major problem is that the rule leaves implementation of the rule to the discretion of individual forest managers, without adequate direction for drawing the line to prevent harmful activities. At the same time, it eliminates longstanding requirements that managers report back on how activities like logging are affecting wildlife and forest health. Without these safeguards, the rule will be weaker at maintaining viable wildlife populations than the 1982 rule it would replace.

“They [the regulations] must provide clear standards and strong safeguards for managing our national forests: provisions that guide line officers away from the mistakes of the past and make public input and participation fully meaningful,” the CEOs said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack.

Sixty-seven members of Congress echoed similar concerns in a separate letter: “The proposal suffers from weaknesses which collectively eliminate longstanding and vital protections intended to ensure that all native wildlife species remain viable on our national forests. First, the proposal does not require that species be monitored to demonstrate that forest management activities are actually maintaining fish and wildlife populations.  Second, the wildlife standard suffers from excessive discretion; forest managers could selectively determine which species deserve protecting on our national forests.  Moreover, the agency can arbitrarily absolve itself of the responsibility to protect these species because the criteria to do so are ambiguous.”

The proposal suffers from weaknesses which collectively eliminate longstanding and vital protections intended to ensure that all native wildlife species remain viable on our national forests. — Sixty-seven members of Congress said in a letter.

Identifying the forest-planning rulemaking as a top priority, the groups are urging the Obama administration to issue a final policy that:

• Sets up no-development buffer zones around water resources. Protect water resources with mandatory, minimum buffer zones of at least 100 feet along streams and other
  

  Brown bears call the Tongass home.

  water bodies — limiting harmful activities.

• Maintains viable wildlife populations. Require the Forest Service to maintain viable, self-sustaining populations of all fish, wildlife and other species, well distributed across their existing ranges on national forest lands.
• Conforms to the best available science. Require decision-making to conform to the best available science rather than to simply take it into account. President Obama has pledged to uphold science in public policy. The Obama administration should live up to that commitment in this rulemaking.

Learn More

Check out what Defenders is doing to help save forests.

Wolverines find habitat on national forests.

Wolverines, grizzly bears, fishers, frogs, owls and more will face an uncertain future on our nation’s forests if the Obama administration’s proposed forest plan goes unchallenged.

But thanks to the more than 87,000 Defenders, who spoke for the trees and submitted comments to the U.S. Forest Service asking for stronger wildlife protections, there is reason for hope.

Since February, Defenders members and supporters have been helping to get the word out about how the proposed changes to the National Forest Management Act forest-planning rule will weaken long-standing protections for wildlife.

In an impressive showing of support, many advocates took time off from their everyday lives to attend public meetings held by the Forest Service, voiced concerns with their congressional leaders, and wrote letters to their local newspapers.

The forest-planning rule lays out the “rules of the road” for how the Forest Service is supposed to manage 155 national forests and 20 grasslands, guiding forest managers as they decide which areas of the forest should be protected for wildlife and which can be safely logged.

Plenty Is at Stake

A spotted owl finds refuge in the Apache National Forest in Arizona. National forests have more intact populations of rare species than any other federal land system, providing habitat for some 3,400 sensitive species.

The Forest Service manages some 193 million acres of public lands (an area as big as Texas) which provide a lifeline for one-fifth of federally protected threatened and endangered species and provide millions of Americans with drinking water.

There’s Still Time to Act

The public comment period on the Obama administration’s proposed forest plan expires May 16.

Help us reach our goal of 100,000 comments. Tell the Forest Service you want to protect wildlife on our nation’s forests.

Watch Feeling the Heat with Jeff Corwin to learn how climate change is affecting this cool cat.

A glimpse of its stubby tail or tufted ears and you may mistake a Canada lynx for its bobcat cousin, but this big cat is more adept at navigating the deep, snow-packed forests of Canada and a handful of northern states, including Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Montana,Washington and Wyoming. These finicky felines can’t live just anywhere. They have very specific habitat needs: older forest with good cover for building dens and younger forest with thick vegetation for hunting prey such as snowshoe hare.

National forests provide habitat for Canada lynx.

A snowshoe hare’s fluffy white camouflage is no match for the lynx’s expert eyes and long, tufted ears. Unless the bunny makes a dash for it, that is, since lynx aren’t designed for endurance chases. You would think that those long legs would offer some benefit to make up for its strikingly odd proportions (smallish cat body with oversize limbs and massive feet). But they do come in handy in deep, fluffy snow, which offers an excellent advantage over competing predators such as coyote and bobcat. Combined with those big snowshoe-like paws, the lynx is like a four-wheel-drive vehicle — able to go where others dare not.

The Canada lynx remains a threatened species in the lower-48 states, with only around 1,000 cats calling U.S. forests home. Unfortunately, climate change is making it tougher for them to survive. Loss of snow or changes in its density due to warming temperatures affects the lynx’s hunting abilities — as well as the number of snowshoe hares.

Lynx Forest Home Faces a New Threat

The Obama administration has proposed a new plan for our national forests, setting aside vital measures that have protected the homes of lynx and other imperiled wildlife since the days when Ronald Reagan was president.

Don’t let President Obama turn back the clock for our wildlife. Urge federal officials to stand up for wildlife protections in our national forests.

Plenty is at stake. The U.S. Forest Service manages 155 national forests and 20 grasslands spread across some 193 million acres nationwide.

What You Can Do

Tell the Obama administration that you want to protect wildlife such as lynx in our national forests.

Take action yourself to stop climate change and help save vulnerable species like the Canada lynx.

PHOENIX – Planning procedures for national forests – including 9 million acres in Arizona – are being updated for the first time in nearly 30 years. The revision is expected to guide management of the forests for the next several years, shaping decisions on logging, recreation and wildlife habitat.

Listen to the Public News Service Story:

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Forest streams like this one found in the Tonto National Forest slake Arizona's thirsty cities.

Ben Brown, Arizona-New Mexico field representative of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, says the rule relies on “adaptive management,” where the results of actions taken are monitored, with adjustments made as necessary. Brown says his group is concerned that the proposal isn’t quite tough enough.

“From what we can see, the responsible official has so much wiggle room that he or she can pretty much get out of the responsibility of conducting monitoring. If you don’t have strong monitoring requirements, you won’t know what your impacts are or when you need to revise your plan.”

Brown believes the new rule is too vague on wildlife-protection issues and that more precise language is needed – especially in areas where forest managers may be subject to local political and economic pressures.

“Flexibility is good, but these folks live sometimes in remote rural communities and they’re subject to a lot of pressure. I think that they need a little stronger framework that they can fall back on when people start pressuring them to do things that they probably shouldn’t.”

The original 1982 rule had very specific language requiring habitat protection to support viable populations of fish and wildlife, Brown says, adding that that language is missing from the proposed revision.

A spotted owl finds refuge in the Apache National Forest in Arizona. National forests have more intact populations of rare plants and animals than any other federal land system, providing habitat for some 3,400 sensitive species.

“This rule probably gives a forest manager the latitude to let certain species go extinct on his particular part of the national forest. We would like to see stronger language, particularly as it relates to maintaining viable populations of wildlife.”

A public meeting on the proposed forest-planning rule will be held Thursday at the Radisson Phoenix Airport North, 427 N. 44th St., with sessions starting at 1 and 6 p.m. Public comments on the new forest planning rule are being accepted through May 16. The proposed rule and information on the meetings and submitting comments can be found online at fs.usda.gov/planningrule.

View this story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories.

Learn more about the new forest rule on the Defenders’ website.

– Doug Ramsey, Public News Service – AZ

Tongass National Forest, Alaska

A federal district court in Alaska has stopped the chainsaws from chewing up some 2.3 million acres of ancient trees in the Tongass National Forest. Old-growth forests have some of the best habitats for wildlife and offer a snapshot of how the natural world operates when people are not behind the wheel.

Meanwhile, the court’s ruling comes as the Obama administration is holding a series of public forums on its proposed plan for how to manage all 155 national forests (and 20 grasslands) across the country.

Defenders was among the first conservation groups to weigh in on the National Forest Management Act draft rule, highlighting how the proposal weakens long-standing wildlife protections on our nation’s forests.

And we’re doing a good job getting the message out. The New York Times on Tuesday editorialized on the forest-planning rule.

And we’re doing a good job getting the message out. The New York Times on Tuesday editorialized on the forest-planning rule, writing: “The Obama administration’s proposed rules improve on the Bush rules and are full of high-minded promises about maintaining “viable” animal populations. But they are disappointingly vague on the question of how — and how often — the biological diversity of any particular forest is to be measured and what actions are to be taken to ensure its survival.

Brown bears call the Tongass home.

“The net result is to give too much discretion to individual forest managers and not nearly enough say to scientists. This is dangerous because, over the years, forest managers have been easily influenced by timber companies and local politicians whose main interest is to increase the timber harvest.”

What Defenders Is Doing

As the Obama administration holds public forums across the country over the next several weeks, Defenders will be urging federal officials to step up protections for wildlife in the final rule through our written comments, attending the public meetings, reaching out to the press, and with the help of our supporters and activists.

Take Action

Don’t let the Obama administration turn back the clock for our wildlife. Urge federal officials to stand up for wildlife protections in our national forests.