Draft SNFPA Management Review and Recommendations

Compatibility with HFQLG Recovery Act

New Information and Understanding Gained from Review

The Team was tasked by the Regional Forester to review the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment (SNFPA) relative to its effect on implementation of the Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act (HFQLG Act). The basic charge was to look for ways the current management direction could be "harmonized" with the Pilot Project specified in the Act.

The Team reviewed the administrative record of the SNFPA, the administrative record of the HFQLG Final Environmental Impact Statement (HFQLG FEIS) and the SNFPA appeal record. In addition, the Team conducted and participated in several field visits on the Pilot Project forests, attended public meetings hosted by the QLG, and interviewed Forest Service employees and managers involved with the HFQLG Pilot Project effort. Members of the original SNFPA Interdisciplinary Team were also contacted and interviewed.

Implementation of the HFQLG Pilot Project

The ROD approves a management approach (Modified Alternative 8) that addresses five identified problem areas in national forest management direction (page 1). The decision includes a new owl conservation strategy (pages 37-41). This strategy replaces the California Spotted Owl (CASPO) interim guidelines that were part of the HFQLG legislation. The ROD also authorizes a strategic approach to reducing the threats to habitats and communities associated with wildfire (page 5).

The management direction in the ROD is not the same as the Pilot Project, and it precludes many of the resource management activities that Congress desired be tested. The stated rationale for this modification is the then Regional Forester's belief that limiting the Pilot Project was "necessary to provide the ecological conditions to maintain viable populations of spotted owls distributed across the Sierra Nevada." Additionally, he believed that the Pilot Project could not be fully implemented "without degrading owl habitat without increasing risk to owl viability" because of the "excessive canopy closure reductions, large tree removals, and substantial acreages in group selection treatments" planned (page 51). The ROD took a very conservative approach to managing for spotted owls and other sensitive species. The Team believes there are other approaches that would be consistent with the viability requirements of the National Forest Management Act that could more fully implement the Pilot Project.

Selection of Modified Alternative 8 also removed the objective of timber production within the Pilot Project Area (and other Sierra Nevada National Forests). Under the SNFPA, all outputs of commercial forest products are incidental by-products of vegetation treatments designed to reduce fuel loadings.^[18] The SNFPA declared all national forest land within the Pilot Project area as not suitable for timber production. The Big Valley Sustained Yield Unit on the Modoc National Forest is currently the only location in the Sierra Nevada where providing commercial forest products from the national forest is still a land management objective.

As discussed above, the Pilot Project was mandated by Congress to explore a specific approach (documented in the Quincy Library Group Community Stability Proposal) to several of the same problem areas identified under the SNFPA effort (see above). A primary objective was to reduce the uncertainty surrounding application of the prescribed resource management activities. However, under Modified Alternative 8, the opportunity to fully test the original design for this "locally-developed, consensus-based resource management program" is forgone. Currently, on the Plumas, Lassen, and Sierraville District of Tahoe National Forest, a program that mixes the standards and guides from the Record of Decision with the fire management approach of the Pilot Project is being implemented. However, no group selection is allowed (except for within an administrative study) on the Pilot project area.

Another key component of the HFQLG Pilot Project is to provide socio-economic benefit through timber and biomass production, and therefore enhance community stability in the project area. Since, under current direction, project objectives cannot include the output of commercial forest products this part of the Pilot Project is no longer being implemented.

For these reasons, the Team believes that the management approach originally envisioned by the QLG and the congress is not being fully tested.

Analysis of decision to limit the implementation of the HFQLG Pilot Project -- The Team found that the SNFPA decision significantly limits the implementation of the Pilot Project. The SNFPA relies upon the biological evaluation completed for the HFQLG FEIS to determine the effects of full implementation of the Pilot Project.

The environmental effects of the Pilot Project were originally estimated and analyzed in the HFQLG FEIS. The FEIS showed the project was consistent with applicable federal law with one possible exception. The biological evaluation (BE) of potential effects on the California spotted owl concluded that the Pilot Project might trend the spotted owl toward federal listing. This is a potential violation of the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, the analysis also determined that all other Forest Service Sensitive species (Including northern goshawk, fisher, and marten) within the planning area would either be unaffected, or would not be impacted to the extent to trend them towards listing under the ESA.

The Team found that the HFQLG BE took a "worst case" approach to estimating effects of the Pilot Project on owls. All group selection and DFPZ construction that was projected to occur within owl habitat was assumed to render 100 percent of that habitat unsuitable. The results of this assumption were that 93 percent of nesting habitat would not be impacted, 91.5 percent of foraging habitat would not be impacted, and 89 percent of owl home ranges currently containing 50-percent or more suitable habitat would retain that level. No spotted owl protected activity centers would be affected.

The cumulative effects discussion within the HFQLG BE discloses that past fuel reduction thinnings and DFPZ construction undertaken within habitat selected for nesting by spotted owls actually reduced that habitat by less than one percent of the acreage treated. Considering all timber strata used by owls for nesting, past projects reduced only six percent of the acres of habitat treated to lower quality habitat strata.^[19] Even assuming the Pilot Project would double the highest percentage of reductions in habitat within treated areas previously experienced (six percent); the projected reductions in owl habitat would only be 12 percent instead of the 100 percent used in the analysis.

The HFQLG Record of Decision (HFQLG ROD) was signed in August of 1999 just seventeen months before the SNFPA ROD was issued. Since the SNFPA effort was near completion, and it was addressing the issue of California spotted owl viability on a range-wide basis, the HFQLG ROD deferred all resource management activities in spotted owl habitat until new owl conservation guidelines were issued by the SNFPA. The SNFPA and HFQLG planning efforts had been closely coordinated, and it followed that the SNFPA Interdisciplinary Team could more thoroughly and rigorously analyze whether implementing the Pilot Project would jeopardize the viability of the owl in the context of the Sierra Nevada bioregion.

The Team found that the SNFPA FEIS relied primarily on the HFQLG BE in order to assess the effects of this action on owl viability. The Pilot Project was generally addressed in a qualitative fashion, or with reference to the HFQLG BE analysis of potential effects to owl habitat.^[20] The Team believes that a new analysis of the effects to the owl under a different scenario that would allow a fuller test of the Pilot Project is warranted.

Finally, by eliminating the suitable land base within the Pilot Project area, the SNFPA does not accommodate a key component of the HFQLG Pilot Project. That component is the intent of providing commercial output of forest products to enhance community socio-economic health and stability. A number of federal laws provide a foundation for managing for commercial forest products on the National Forests. No federal statutes the Team is aware of would be inconsistent with this. Moreover, the objective for removing vegetation is immaterial in the determination of environmental effects. It is the activity itself and how it occurs that causes the effects. This action under the SNFPA, significantly reduced the forest's ability to adequately test the concepts embodied in the Quincy Library Group Community Stability Proposal, which was the foundation for the HFQLG Pilot Project.

¹⁸ FEIS Volume 2, Chapter 3, Part 5.1, Pages 377 and 378.
¹⁹ HFQLG Biological Evaluation, Table 9, page 71.
²⁰ FEIS Volume 3, Chapter 3, Part 4.4, Pages 83, 86, 94, 99, and 103

USDA Forest Service · Pacific Southwest Region