[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FOREST & RANGELAND HEALTH IN NEVADA'S GREAT BASIN
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND
FOREST HEALTH
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
Monday, October 27, 2003, in Ely, Nevada
__________
Serial No. 108-72
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
or
Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov
______
90-111 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
RICHARD W. POMBO, California, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member
Don Young, Alaska Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
W.J. ``Billy'' Tauzin, Louisiana Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American
Jim Saxton, New Jersey Samoa
Elton Gallegly, California Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas
Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey
Ken Calvert, California Calvin M. Dooley, California
Scott McInnis, Colorado Donna M. Christensen, Virgin
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming Islands
George Radanovich, California Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Jay Inslee, Washington
Carolina Grace F. Napolitano, California
Chris Cannon, Utah Tom Udall, New Mexico
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Mark Udall, Colorado
Jim Gibbons, Nevada, Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico
Vice Chairman Brad Carson, Oklahoma
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Greg Walden, Oregon Dennis A. Cardoza, California
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona George Miller, California
Tom Osborne, Nebraska Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Jeff Flake, Arizona Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana Ciro D. Rodriguez, Texas
Rick Renzi, Arizona Joe Baca, California
Tom Cole, Oklahoma Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico
Rob Bishop, Utah
Devin Nunes, California
Randy Neugebauer, Texas
Steven J. Ding, Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel
James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director
Jeffrey P. Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH
SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado, Chairman
JAY INSLEE, Washington, Ranking Democrat Member
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Tom Udall, New Mexico
Carolina Mark Udall, Colorado
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Brad Carson, Oklahoma
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Jeff Flake, Arizona VACANCY
Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana VACANCY
Rick Renzi, Arizona Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia,
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico ex officio
Richard W. Pombo, California, ex
officio
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on Monday, October 27, 2003......................... 1
Statement of Members:
Gibbons, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Nevada............................................ 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Abbey, Robert V., Nevada State Director, Bureau of Land
Management, U.S. Department of the Interior................ 10
Prepared statement of.................................... 12
Hiatt, John, Ph.D., Chairman, Board of Trustees, Eastern
Nevada Landscape Coalition................................. 27
Prepared statement of.................................... 29
Johnson, Larry J., Board Member, Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition, and Director, Nevada Bighorns Unlimited......... 37
Prepared statement of.................................... 38
Perryman, Barry L., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Rangeland
Ecology, Department of Animal Biotechnology, University of
Nevada-Reno................................................ 32
Prepared statement of.................................... 33
Robinson, Steve, State Forester, Nevada Division of Forestry,
representing Governor Kenny Guinn.......................... 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 24
Strickland, Rose, Chairman, Public Land Committee, Toiyabe
Chapter of the Sierra Club, Nevada and Eastern Sierra...... 39
Prepared statement of.................................... 41
Troyer, Jack G., Regional Forester, Intermountain Region,
Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture............. 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 7
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING ON FOREST AND RANGELAND HEALTH IN NEVADA'S
GREAT BASIN
----------
Monday, October 27, 2003
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
Committee on Resources
Ely, Nevada
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:22 a.m., at
the County Commission Meeting Chamber, 953 Campson Street, Ely,
Nevada, Hon. James Gibbons presiding.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JIM GIBBONS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEVADA
Mr. Gibbons. The Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee
will come to order.
First I want to explain that the Chairman of the full
Committee--I happen to be the Vice Chairman--but the Chairman
of the full Committee was unable to make it into Ely today due
to scheduling problems as a result of the fires in California.
So perhaps this hearing is more timely in terms of the impact
that it's having on people and people's lives today than most
of us realize. But the Chairman, who was going to be here from
California, is now trying to make alternative arrangements to
get back to work tomorrow, as we all are, with the unsettling
scheduling problems that the airlines are facing now in and out
of California as a result of the fires.
First of all, I want to thank all of you for coming here
today to this hearing. This is an important Congressional
oversight hearing, and simply because there's only one person
here, as the Vice Chairman of the Committee, doesn't mean any
less importance of the information that is going to be
presented. It will be brought before the full Committee in
terms of the minutes of this hearing. It will be available for
all members to read and hear.
So it will be put forward as part of the full Committee's
hearing as well.
This is a hearing to discuss the forest and the rangeland
health in Nevada's Great Basin area. The Resources Committee,
if I can add this in, has made I think great strides in forest
health policy, especially with the passage of the Healthy
Forest Initiative that was passed through the House of
Representatives. I think we're all hopeful that we can get the
Healthy Forest Initiative passed through the Senate and signed
into law, and that needs to happen sooner rather than later.
Because I think like all of you, when you read the morning
newspaper, you are absolutely devastated as you watch thousands
of acres burn needlessly because we cannot be proactive in our
forest management policy or in our wildlands management policy
for that matter.
I think we're all stymied by a great deal of opposition
from some of the more extreme and radical environmental groups
that really object to any attempt to clear out overgrowth, of
dead, dying underbrush. We're always frustrated by many of the
attempts to stop these operations, and as a result, our forest
and brush lands tend to be at greater risk each and every year
that we fail to take adequate action. I think you are going to
hear from some of our witnesses about this kind of opportunity.
I think the results are clear: Our forests remain at risk
for devastating wildfires. These wildfires threaten habitat,
they threaten human life, they threaten wildlife, they threaten
property.
And there's no doubt about it, you only have to look at
what happened over the weekend in California. Today there are
700 homes that have been burned, 13 people have lost their
lives. That's uncounted dollars in terms of just pure property
loss, but ultimately an unbearable and devastating loss in
terms of human life that we just have a very difficult time
accounting for.
So I hope this hearing will help us continue to advance and
promote common-sense policies with respect to Federal land
management.
And as for the issue before us today, it is my
understanding that over the last century, due to what I see as
inadequate fire suppression activity and the lack of thinning,
the pinyon and juniper trees having encroached over six million
acres of historic sagebrush lands in Nevada. This encroachment
has dramatically altered the landscape by extensively reducing
the habitat of the sage grouse. As we know, that is in a
greater and greater threatened status these days. And it's
diminished the available forage for other native species, the
deer, the elk and other animals that use the forage in these
areas.
Most importantly, the overgrowth of pinyon and juniper
trees have put far too many families and rural communities like
Ely here in Nevada in dire risk of being destroyed by wildfire.
The pinyon and juniper trees have completely surrounded this
small town, and having personally witnessed, as many of us
have, the intensity of the pinyon and juniper fire, I can tell
you that they burn exceedingly hot.
In the event of a fire, I think this overgrowth could be
devastating to life and property right here in Ely. This issue
is of utmost concern to me as it is to those people that are
living in this area, and in fact, all the people that I
represent in Nevada. So I'm anxious to hear the opinions and
the ideas of the BLM, the Forest Service, State
representatives, and scientists who are going to be before us
today presenting information for the Committee.
Hopefully this information that they will provide today
will help us to develop a better lands management policy to
mitigate this dangerous wildlife or wildfire threat. So I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses. I want to thank them for
their participation at today's oversight hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gibbons follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Jim Gibbons, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Nevada
First, I thank our witnesses for traveling to Ely, Nevada, to
testify at this important Congressional oversight hearing on ``Forest
and Rangeland Health in Nevada's Great Basin.''
The House of Representatives has made great strides in forest
health policy with the passage of the Healthy Forest Initiative.
I am hopeful this critical forest protection bill will be passed by
the Senate and signed into law--sooner rather than later.
It devastates me, every year, to helplessly watch thousands of
acres of land burn needlessly, because we cannot be proactive in our
forest management policies.
Stymied by the opposition of radical environmental groups, any
attempt to clear out overgrowth and dead underbrush is stopped dead in
its tracks.
The result: Our forests remain at risk for devastating wildfires--
threatening habitats, wildlife, property, and, ultimately, human lives.
I hope this hearing can help us continue to promote commonsense
policies with respect to federal land management.
As for the issue before us today, it is my understanding that over
the last century, due to fire suppression activities and a lack of
thinning, pinion and juniper trees have encroached on over 6 million
acres of historic sagebrush lands in Nevada.
This encroachment has altered the landscape dramatically by
reducing the habitat for the sage grouse and diminishing the available
forage for elk, deer, and cattle.
Most importantly, the overgrowth of pinion and juniper trees have
put too many rural communities in Nevada in dire risk of being
destroyed by wildfire.
The pinion and juniper trees have completely surrounded our small,
rural towns.
In the event of a fire, this overgrowth could be devastating to
life and property.
This issue is of utmost concern to me and my constituents, and I am
anxious to hear the opinions and ideas of the BLM, the Forest Service,
State Representatives, and scientists we have here today.
Hopefully, the information our witnesses provide today will help us
to develop a lands management policy to help mitigate this dangerous
wildfire threat
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and thank them for
their participation at today's oversight hearing.
______
Mr. Gibbons. With that, let me introduce the first panel,
if they wouldn't mind coming forward. Our first panel is going
to be: Mr. Jack Troyer, he is the Regional Forester,
Intermountain Region for the United States Forest Service; Mr.
Robert Abbey, who is the Nevada State Director of the Bureau of
Land Management, U.S. Department of Interior.
Gentlemen, welcome. The floor is yours. We look forward to
your testimony. Jack, I don't know who is going to start,
either you or Bob. Flip a coin.
Mr. Abbey. Go ahead, Jack.
Mr. Gibbons. The loser gets to go first.
STATEMENT OF JACK TROYER, REGIONAL FORESTER, INTERMOUNTAIN
REGION, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY BOB VAUGHT,
SUPERVISOR, HUMBOLDT-TOIYABE NATIONAL FOREST, PAT IRWIN, LOCAL
DISTRICT MANAGER, ELY, NEVADA, AND ROBIN TAUSCH, ROCKY MOUNTAIN
FOREST RANGE EXPERIMENT STATION
Mr. Troyer. Congressman Gibbons, thank you.
Mr. Gibbons. Is your mike on? I think you have to turn the
switch on the top. Just to make sure everybody can hear you.
Mr. Troyer. Sound better?
Mr. Gibbons. I don't know. I can hear you. But can the
people in the back hear what he is saying?
Mr. Troyer. Congressman Gibbons, I truly appreciate the
opportunity to get to come here today and testify before you.
We have a lot of passion about these issues, and you are so
right, it is of extreme importance. So let me again express my
appreciation to be here.
My name is Jack Troyer. I'm the Regional Forester for the
Intermountain Region of the Forest Service.
I'm also accompanied today by Bob Vaught, the Forest
Supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest; and our
local district manager, Pat Irwin here in Ely; as well as Dr.
Robin Tausch from the Rocky Mountain Forest Range Experiment
Station, who spent I think a lifetime doing research on pinyon-
juniper woodlands and is truly an expert. So he can add later
on in a discussion if you so desire.
At the outset, I want to let you know that what's happening
in Washington, D.C., this week is, of course, of tremendous
interest to us. The President's Healthy Forest Initiative and
H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, will help us
improve the health and vitality and diversity of our National
Forest and grasslands. A little add to my testimony here,
absolutely and passionately that is important, that's an
important initiative that is going on. I can't express that
strongly enough.
The Intermountain Region of the Forest Service encompasses
32 million acres of National Forest and grasslands in all the
parts of six States: western Wyoming, southern Idaho, Utah,
Nevada, eastern California, and a little bit of Colorado. Our
mission, of course, is a multiple use mission, manage these
lands for multiple uses while we sustain their health and
productivity and diversity. Here in Nevada, the Forest Service
manages over five million acres of rangelands for a multitude
of purposes, including livestock grazing, mining, recreation,
watershed protection and, of course, the harvest of forest
products.
Earlier this year Chief of the Forest Service, Dale
Bosworth, described four threats that are seriously impacting
our National Forests and grasslands. And that's really going to
be the focus of my testimony today. These four threats are:
Fire and fuel buildup that you so eloquently talked about to
begin this hearing, invasive species, the loss of open space
that is occurring, particularly throughout the West, and
unmanaged recreation.
So I'd like to really talk for a minute about each one of
these and why we think these are so important and what it will
take as we work in partnership with local, State and other
Federal agencies to do something about these. The first threat
I want to talk about of course is fire and fuels. What's
happening in California now, certainly as you say, brings focus
to that.
Many here in Nevada will remember what happened in 1999 and
2000 with these major fires.
The underlying issue, of course, is that so many of our
forests have become overgrown and unhealthy throughout Nevada
and throughout our region. Additionally, Nevada has experienced
five straight years now of below average precipitation. In this
portion of the Great Basin we have a specific problem of pinyon
and juniper trees encroaching upon rangelands, just as you were
saying.
Dr. Tausch has done extensive research into the historical
distribution and density of pinyon and juniper species
throughout the Intermountain West, and basically we have three
to four times more pinyon and juniper woodlands than were here
a hundred to 150 years ago. Dr. Tausch believes that prior to
European settlement, these woodland species primarily confined
themselves to rocky ridges or surfaces where sparse vegetation
limited fire.
Now they are occupying more productive sites with deeper
well-drained soils. Replacement of the original sagebrush
communities of pinyon and juniper species is largely attributed
to the reduced occurrence of the fire. So now these dense tree-
canopied woodlands are so susceptible to these intense crown
fires that you were talking about that they lead to dominance
by exotic, undesirable species, certainly subject to
cheatgrass.
So what can we do?
Absolutely it will take active management and lots of work
to treat these lands that need help. If the encroachment hasn't
gone too far, and there is still sagebrush and grass there, we
can use prescribed fire. And that means when the fire is done,
there is nothing left to restore native species there. But if
on so many acres, as you talked about earlier, it has gone too
far, we have got to go straight to mechanical treatment before
we can do the restoration work that is necessary.
The Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest is working to reduce buildup of
hazardous fuels on the forest. Many acres are going to be
treated in the coming years, and much of this work is going to
be centered in wildland/urban interfaces throughout Nevada,
such as Holbrook Junction, Jacks Valley, Mount Rose, Shantytown
and elsewhere. Here in Ely, the District Ranger Pat Irwin has
successfully used the new categorical exclusion regulations
already, for example, to quickly allow for the treatment of 100
acres of National Forest along the power lines. So we're
getting some benefit there.
The healthy forest restoration work accomplished throughout
the State is done cooperatively with the Nevada Division of
Forestry, the Bureau of Land Management, who has done, in my
opinion, an outstanding job of leading some tremendous, large-
scale, planning efforts and work here in Nevada, and local
governments. So this work has just got to cross boundaries.
That is going to be key.
To assist the State of Nevada with hazardous fuel reduction
work, the Forest Service has awarded grants totaling $3.7
million over the last 3 years to NDF to complete work on non-
Federal lands throughout the State, and they do a great job. We
appreciate it. They are very, very good at it, and I'm glad
that Steve Robinson is here today.
The second threat to the National Forest is the spread of
unwanted invasives, and I think we all know that is a national
problem. But here in the Intermountain West, I think the most
troubling invasives that we're dealing with are cheatgrass,
knapweeds, yellow starthistle, salt cedar, leafy spurge, purple
loosestrife. The list goes on, and the damage they do is just
unbelievable. When leafy spurge takes over an area, really the
value for forage and wildlife is about gone.
What can we do? Prevention and control. The good news here
in Nevada on the National Forest is this has not progressed as
far as it has in some other forests and States in our region.
So the prevention control work has a much better chance of
somewhat nipping this in the bud, if I could say it in that
way.
We have again used State and private forestry grants and
contributed $268,000 to support these cooperative weed
management areas. Weeds like so many things don't understand
when they cross State and private BLM lands. So we have to work
together to treat this problem, and I cannot overemphasize how
important this is.
The third threat is really the loss of open space. It
sounds like, gosh, maybe also but not here in Nevada. But even
here in Nevada, critical riparian farmlands, as we remember how
the West was settled, owning private land and working ranches,
we lose a working ranch and it converts to a residential
subdivision, a lot of other problems ensue at that time. We
might have a new wildland interface, or we might even lose
access to the National Forest or public lands that previously
existed.
So I think this is a more serious problem than we had
thought.
What can we do? The Forest Service says there is a lot of
things we can do. We have a lot of programs that can contribute
to this solution.
Forest Legacy is a program, for example, that can lead to
conservation easements on private lands administered through
the States and keep working ranches working. I believe we're
going to be soon transferring half a million dollars to Nevada,
and I think the best success story so far close by are the
Forest Legacy program in Utah that we can talk about later.
We're committed to working with ranches individually, not a
one size fits all to grazing issues around the State, with the
Natural Resource Conservation Service to utilize their various
programs, but the real solution to this problem in the long run
is to keep working ranches working.
We have a lot fewer range conservationists on the ground
than we used to, and that is part of our problem. It is harder
to work cooperatively with ranchers when we don't have enough
range con's, it's not as good for relationships, and we're
working hard to turn that around. We actually have about half
as many range con's on the ground as we did 15 years ago. We
have made a little progress on that the last couple years.
I think I'd like to summarize this by saying grazing on
National Forest and grasslands is going to be part of the
solution. It's not part of this problem.
The forest threat that I would like to quickly close on is
the threat of unmanaged outdoor recreation. In my years with
the Forest Service, I have seen the number of people recreating
on National Forest lands, it has just exploded. We had 22
million visitor days in our region last year.
A lot of the traditional activities of forests, such as
camping, fishing and hiking still occur, but lots more new ones
are exploding in use, such as four-wheeling, mountain biking,
snowboarding. I have just heard about geo-caching, which is
sort of an organized treasure hunt, that I wasn't very familiar
with until recently.
But the number and the challenges continue to grow. The
challenge for us is to accommodate these needs while reducing
some of the damage that we can get to sensitive areas, riparian
areas, and especially working to prevent conflict amongst the
user groups and learn how we can share.
One example I'd like to close with is Peavine Mountain
located in Reno's backyard is a good example, and the Forest
Service and Washoe County and the city of Reno have
cooperatively embarked upon a course of action to deal with
these issues.
Here in Ely, the Duck Creek Travel Plan started with local
citizens asking the White Pine Board of County Commissioners to
address the problem of OHV travel in the Duck Creek Basin. The
Forest Service and the BLM, in cooperation with the county, are
completing an environmental analysis on recommendations made by
the county's Coordinated Resource Management Group which
addresses this OHV use and sometimes misuse.
But I want the American people to recreate and enjoy their
National Forests and learn to take pride in how to take care of
them as well as to enjoy them.
In closing, let me just say that we will continue to
address these four threats. These four threats are important.
It will take the Forest Service's best efforts to make progress
on each one of these working with many other people. A lot of
recreational restoration work and active management to do.
That concludes my remarks. I will stop until further
directed, and again, thank you very much for this opportunity.
Mr. Gibbons. Thank you very much, Mr. Troyer. We appreciate
your comments. They are very helpful to us.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Troyer follows:]
Statement of Jack G. Troyer, Regional Forester, Intermountain Region,
Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today to discuss the
health of the forests and rangelands in Nevada's Great Basin. My name
is Jack Troyer. I am the Regional Forester for the Intermountain Region
of the Forest Service. With me today is Bob Vaught, Forest Supervisor
of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Pat Irwin, Ely District
Ranger, and Dr. Robin Tausch, Research Scientist and Project Leader for
the Rocky Mountain Research Station.
At the outset, Mr. Chairman, I want to let you know that actions
taking place back in Washington, D.C., are of great interest to us here
in the Intermountain Region. The President's Healthy Forests Initiative
and H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, will help
us to improve the health and vitality of the national forests and
grasslands.
The Intermountain Region encompasses 32 million acres of National
Forests and Grasslands in parts of six states: western Wyoming,
southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and portions of California and Colorado.
Our mission is to manage these lands for multiple-use while sustaining
health, diversity, and productivity. Here in Nevada, the Forest Service
manages over five million acres of forest and rangelands for a
multitude of purposes, including livestock grazing, mining, harvesting
of forest products, recreation, and watershed protection.
Earlier this year, Chief Bosworth described four threats that
confront the national forests and grasslands: fire and fuel build-up,
invasive species, the loss of open spaces, and unmanaged recreation. I
will briefly explain why each of these issues is a threat to National
Forests in this Region. I will also highlight some of the efforts the
Forest Service, in partnership with the local, state and other federal
agencies, is taking to address the threats.
Fire and Fuels
One threat to National Forests is fire and fuels. Many here will
remember the fire seasons of 1999 and 2000 when Nevada experienced many
large wildland fires.
The underlying issue is that so many of our forests have become
overgrown and unhealthy. Additionally, Nevada has experienced five
straight years of well below average precipitation. In this portion of
the Great Basin, we have the specific problem of pinyon and juniper
trees encroaching upon rangelands. Dr. Tausch has done extensive
research into historical distribution and density of pinyon and juniper
species in the Intermountain West. Today, we have two to three times
more pinyon/juniper woodlands than 100 years ago and the potential for
additional encroachment by pinyon/juniper is high. Dr. Tausch believes
that, prior to the European settlement; woodland species were primarily
confined to rocky ridges or surfaces where sparse vegetation limited
fire. Pinyon/juniper woodlands now occupy more productive sites with
deeper well-drained soils. Replacement of the original sagebrush
communities by pinyon and juniper species is largely attributed to the
reduced occurrence of fire. These dense tree-canopied woodlands are now
susceptible to intense crown fires, which can lead to the dominance of
exotic, undesirable species such as cheatgrass.
So what can we do? It will take active management and lots of work
to treat lands that currently need help. We can successfully treat by
various methods particularly fire, the early to middle successional
stages of pinyon/juniper encroachment, when woodlands contain
understories of native shrubs and forbs. In addition, we need to
recognize that burned areas may present land managers with the
opportunity to restore forests and rangelands to more natural fire
regimes that can complement or reduce fuels reduction management
efforts.
The Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest is working to reduce the
build-up of hazardous fuels on National Forest System lands. Many acres
will be treated in the coming years with much of the work centered in
the wildland/urban interface at locations such as Holbrook Junction,
Jacks Valley, Mt. Rose, Shantytown and elsewhere. In Ely, the District
Ranger has successfully used the new categorical exclusion procedures
to quickly allow for the treatment of 100 acres of National Forest
along a high voltage power line.
The healthy forest restoration work that is accomplished in Nevada
is done cooperatively with Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF), the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and local governments--efforts that
cross administrative boundaries for the purpose of improving the health
of the forest and rangelands. To assist the State of Nevada with
hazardous fuel reduction work, the Forest Service awarded, in grants,
3.7 million dollars over the last three years to NDF to complete work
on non-federal lands throughout the state.
Invasive Species
The second threat to National Forests and Grasslands is the spread
of unwanted invasive species. We used to focus just on noxious weeds.
Now we know that the issue is far broader. Invasive species also
include animals and even disease-causing pathogens, such as West Nile
virus. Invasive species are species that evolved in one place and wound
up in another, where the ecological controls they evolved with are
missing. They take advantage of their new surroundings to crowd out or
kill off native species. In the process, they might alter key
ecological processes, such as hydrology or fire return intervals.
In the Intermountain West, some of the most troubling invasive
plants are cheatgrass, knapweed, yellow star thistle, salt cedar, leafy
spurge, and purple loosestrife. These plants soak up water and take up
space, driving out the native plants. Areas infested with weeds like
leafy spurge lose almost all their forage value for both livestock and
wildlife.
What can we do to stop the spread of invasive species? Prevention
and control work best, but only if they are done across ownerships on a
landscape level. In the last two years, Nevada has formed 23
Cooperative Weed Management Areas that focus on the prevention and
control efforts needed to stop the spread. Through State and Private
Forestry grants, the Forest Service has contributed $268,000 to support
Cooperative Weed Management Areas in Nevada that work across
administrative boundaries and land ownerships.
Loss of Open Space/Resource Land Conversion
The third threat to National Forests is the loss of open space
through land use conversion and development.
How does that affect the nation's forests and grasslands? Years
ago, the national forests were buffered by miles of rural landscape.
Now they are increasingly part of the wildland/urban interface. People
are increasingly living close to or adjacent to National Forests.
Demands for services are growing, and so is the challenge of fire
protection.
In addition, the impacts of land conversion and fragmentation can
be significant. We are losing open areas of range that are important as
wildlife habitat and as resource lands for livestock grazing.
When the Forest Service first started managing the land a century
ago, overgrazing was a huge problem. Over time, we improved things by
working closely with the ranchers. The ecological payoff has been
significant. Keeping the land remaining whole and healthy benefits both
wildlife and livestock.
Now we face a different issue. Our population is growing,
particularly in the West. Nevada remains one of the fastest-growing
states in the nation. Developers target the privately held bottomlands
adjacent to National Forests. Millions of acres of open range have been
converted to ranchettes and other residential uses. New challenges
occur with the creation of new wildland/urban interface areas,
resulting in the possible loss of access to National Forest System
land, and the loss of ecological integrity of the land.
How can the Forest Service contribute to solutions? One way is to
keep working forests and ranches in operation. The Forest Service has
some good programs for that. Most significant of these is the Forest
Legacy program that provides cost share funds to the state for use in
acquiring conservation easements from willing landowners. We are
committed to working with ranchers individually, rather than a one-
size-fits-all approach to allotment management. We work with ranchers
and the Natural Resources Conservation Service to utilize that agency's
various programs. We are doing everything within our means to deploy
more range management specialists on the ground to build relationships
with permittees so they can work together to solve problems. Grazing on
National Forests and Grasslands is part of the solution, not part of
the problem.
Unmanaged Outdoor Recreation
The fourth threat comes from unmanaged outdoor recreation. In my
years with the Forest Service, I have seen tremendous growth in the
number of people recreating on National Forest land and in the types of
activities in which people engage. Last year, the Intermountain Region
had 22 million visits, which is just phenomenal. Recreationists
participated in traditional activities, such as camping, fishing,
hiking, and driving, for pleasure, and some rather recent recreational
activities, such as mountain-bike riding, four-wheeling, snowboarding,
and geo-caching--sort of a modern-day treasure hunt. The number of
people and recreational activities will continue to grow. The challenge
for the Forest Service is to accommodate the needs of recreationists
while reducing resource damage to sensitive meadows and riparian areas
and preventing conflict among different user groups.
Peavine Mountain, located in Reno's backyard, offers many
recreational opportunities. The Forest Service, Washoe County, and the
City of Reno have cooperatively embarked upon a course of action to
manage this mountain so as to ensure people are safe while recreating
and not causing undue damage to the land. Here in Ely, the Duck Creek
Travel Plan started with local citizens asking the White Pine Board of
County Commissioners to address problem OHV travel in the Duck Creek
Basin. The Forest Service and the BLM, in cooperation with the county,
are completing an environmental analysis on recommendations made by the
county's Coordinated Resource Management group, which address the OHV
use and misuse.
I want the American people to recreate outdoors. It gives them a
stake in the land. It gives them a sense of place. It helps them
understand why we in the Forest Service are so passionate about the
land--why we think it is worth conserving.
Conclusion
In closing, let me say that we will continue to address that which
threatens the health of the forest and rangelands. To be successful we
must continue to work with all who have a stake in the management of
National Forests. So much of the healthy forest restoration work that
is accomplished in Nevada must be done on a landscape scale, crossing
administrative boundaries.
This concludes my prepared remarks. I will be happy to answer any
questions you may have.
______
Mr. Gibbons. We will turn now to Mr. Bob Abbey, Director of
the BLM here in Nevada.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT ABBEY, STATE DIRECTOR, NEVADA BUREAU OF
LAND MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR, ACCOMPANIED BY
GENE KOLKMAN, ELY FIELD MANAGER, BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
Mr. Abbey. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman Gibbons. We
appreciate your invitation to participate in today's field
hearing to discuss forest and rangeland health in the Great
Basin.
With me this morning is Gene Kolkman, who is our BLM Ely
field manager.
We believe it's quite appropriate to have a field hearing
here in Ely because one not only gets an opportunity to see
some of the resource management challenges that we face, but we
also have an opportunity to talk with people here at the local
level who are working together to help us address our immediate
and long-term needs. So again, we appreciate the Committee
hosting this session here in Ely.
As we have testified in recent hearings on forest health
before the House of Representatives and the Senate, the
Department of the Interior strongly supports the President's
Healthy Forest Initiative, as well as H.R. 1904, the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act of 2003.
As you pointed out, the need for actions to restore our
national public forests and rangelands to long-term health has
never been greater. Last year wildfires burned about seven
million acres of public and private lands across the Nation.
This resulted in the destruction of over 800 primary residences
and the evacuations of tens of thousands of people from
hundreds of communities.
Although wildland fire activity this year in Nevada has
been less than the average of the last 10 years, potential for
destructive wildfires is currently high. In Eastern Nevada, the
pinyon-juniper woodlands are growing so dense that they crowd
out other plant communities and prevent a healthy mix of
appropriate vegetation to support wildlife, wild horses and
livestock grazing, among other uses.
Even though we have had extremely dry vegetation throughout
the State this summer as well as last summer, we were fortunate
that the thunderstorms that came through this State this year
also brought some rain. We therefore avoided the dry lightning
that has typically been the cause of many of our large
wildfires.
Recognizing the existing crisis, President Bush proposed
the Healthy Forest Initiative in August of 2002. This
initiative is based upon a common-sense approach to reducing
the threat of catastrophic wildfires by restoring forests and
rangeland health.
Our goal is to ensure the long-term safety and health of
communities and natural resources in our care. Our
responsibility is to ensure the long-term health of our forests
and rangelands for the use, benefit and enjoyment of our
citizens as well as for generations yet to come.
The Great Basin landscape which encompasses much of Nevada,
the western half of Utah, the southern portion of Idaho, the
southeast corner of Oregon, and a narrow strip of Eastern
California, has seen a severe decline in native vegetation and
wildlife as a result in part of wildfires. Between 1999 and
2003, wildfires have burned more than 3.3 million acres of land
across Nevada.
Years of well-intentioned but misguided acts of suppression
of wildfires have led to conditions in which pinyon and juniper
trees dominate many areas where they historically occupied only
small portions of the habitat. In such areas the previously
diverse landscape of perennial grasses and forbs, sagebrush as
well as trees, has evolved into a monoculture with limited
species diversity. Noxious weeds and non-native annual grasses
like cheatgrass gained a foothold where fire weakened or
removed native vegetation. The lack of a natural fire regime
has contributed to these conditions.
As a result, entire watersheds are being impacted, water
quality is being degraded, native wildlife habitat is
disappearing, forage for wild horses and livestock is reduced,
and as we notice throughout Nevada, local economies are also
being threatened.
In an effort to address these problems, the Bureau of Land
Management introduced a concept after the 1999 fire season that
we called the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, which was
developed with the goal of restoring and maintaining the Great
Basin's diverse ecosystem through coordinated efforts between
Federal, State governments and local community interests.
A key component of the Great Basin Restoration Initiative
in Eastern Nevada is the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition
whose purpose is to help implement the Eastern Nevada Landscape
Restoration Project. This project is being designed to restore
the ecosystem within the 10 million acres of public lands that
are administered in Eastern Nevada by the Bureau of Land
Management Ely Field Office and also lands managed by the U.S.
Forest Service.
As you will hear from a couple members from the Eastern
Nevada Landscape Coalition, they're playing a significant role
in helping us propose restoration activities that if
implemented would certainly improve the overall health of these
lands. Currently the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition's
partner list has over 60 members, including the Bureau of Land
Management, representing a broad spectrum of users and
interests like other Federal, city and county governments,
tribal governments, local universities and industry,
conservation and recreation groups.
In an effort to aggressively move forward under this
partnership and begin implementing large-scale restoration
initiatives, the Bureau of Land Management is conducting
planning on a landscape basis. As part of the development of
the Ely Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact
Statement, fuels reduction projects and other restoration
treatments in eastern Great Basin are being evaluated. This
plan is being developed with the assistance from numerous
cooperating entities as well as Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition.
When complete, the Ely Resource Management Plan will serve
as the base analysis and planning guidance for the Eastern
Nevada Landscape Restoration Project. And to date, project
scoping has been completed and alternatives are currently being
developed. We expect to complete the resource management plan
in 2005.
In Nevada as a whole, the Bureau of Land Management spent
nearly $6.5 million last year on 50 fuel assessment and
treatment projects in at least 20 communities at risk in the
wildland-urban interface.
Mr. Chairman, the Department of Interior is committed to
working with Congress, the State, local and tribal officials
and the public to advance common-sense solutions to protect
communities and people and restore forest and rangeland health.
We certainly believe that H.R. 1904 provides the much-needed
authorities for the agencies to move forward with the
President's Healthy Forest Initiative. We were encouraged to
see the prompt action by the House. We hope the Senate takes up
this measure in Congress this session.
Again, we thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today to discuss forest health and rangeland issues
specific to Nevada and the Great Basin.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Abbey follows:]
Statement of Robert V. Abbey, Nevada State Director,
Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior
Mr. Chairman:
We appreciate your invitation to participate in today's field
hearing to discuss forest and rangeland health in Nevada's Great Basin.
Ely, Nevada, is an appropriate setting to discuss our efforts to
improve the health of our Nation's public forests and rangelands given
its proximity to nearly 70 million acres of Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) public lands throughout portions of five states, including
Nevada, that comprise the Great Basin. As we have testified in recent
hearings on forest health before the House of Representatives and the
Senate, the Department of the Interior strongly supports the
President's Healthy Forests Initiative and H.R. 1904, the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act of 2003.
Background
The need for action to restore our Nation's public forests and
rangelands to long-term health has never been greater. Catastrophic
fires are just one consequence of the deteriorating state of forest and
rangeland health that now affects approximately 190 million acres of
public land, an area almost triple the size of Nevada. Last year,
wildfires burned about seven million acres of public and private lands
across the Nation. This resulted in the destruction of over 800 primary
residences and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from
hundreds of communities.
Although wildland fire activity this year has been less than the
average of the last ten years, the potential for destructive wildfires
is high. While this fire season did not produce the extensive fires
experienced in 1999, 2000 and 2001, when over 2.6 million acres burned
in Nevada, the on-going drought coupled with the changing condition of
the Great Basin, as more fully discussed below, has significantly
increased the potential for fire activity. All indications are that,
given the current conditions, the potential for large and severe fires
in Nevada will continue in the foreseeable future.
Federal forests and rangelands across the country are also facing
unusually high threats from the spread of invasive species. Changes in
tree stand density, as well as in species composition and structure,
due to decades of excluding or immediately suppressing fire, the lack
of active management, and extended drought, are factors that have
significantly affected the spread of invasive species. In the Great
Basin, pinyon-juniper woodlands are growing so dense that they crowd
out other plant communities and prevent a healthy mix of appropriate
vegetation to support wildlife, wild horses, and livestock grazing.
Healthy Forests Initiative
Recognizing the existing crisis, President Bush proposed the
Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) in August 2002. This initiative is
based upon a common-sense approach to reducing the threat of
catastrophic wildfires by restoring forest and rangeland health. Our
goal is to ensure the long-term safety and health of communities and
natural resources in our care. Our responsibility is to ensure the
long-term health of our forests and rangelands for the use, benefit and
enjoyment of our citizens and for generations to come. The President
directed Federal agencies to develop several administrative and
legislative tools to restore deteriorating Federal lands to healthy
conditions and assist in executing core components of the National Fire
Plan, established in 2000. Since the President's announcement in August
of 2002, the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture have taken several
administrative actions to implement components of HFI, which include
the following:
Endangered Species Act Guidance--On December 11, 2002,
the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration Fisheries (NOAA Fisheries) issued joint
guidance that allows multiple projects to be grouped into one
consultation and provides direction on how to consider and balance
potential short- and long-term beneficial and adverse impacts to
endangered species when evaluating projects. The goal is to recognize
that project-specific, short-term adverse impacts on species need to be
weighed against the longer-term watershed level benefits to those and
other species that such projects will achieve.
CEQ Memorandum & Model Environmental Assessment
Projects--CEQ Chairman Connaughton issued guidance addressing the
preparation of model environmental assessments (Model EA) for fuels
treatment projects that improve administrative processes. These
guidelines are now being applied on both Forest Service (FS) and
Department of the Interior (DOI) agency model fuels-treatment projects.
The Mesquite Hazardous Fuels Project, approved this past August after a
public review period, is an on-going Model EA Project that addresses
tamarisk-infested stretches of the Virgin River in southern Nevada near
the towns of Mesquite and Bunkerville. Under current conditions,
tamarisk, a highly flammable non-native species, is establishing its
dominance in burned areas and posing an increased risk of wildfire. The
BLM was able to initiate this project this past September by removing
five acres of tamarisk. Through a combination of mechanical thinning,
hand removal, and revegetation, an additional 300 acres of tamarisk
removal is targeted for completion next year, with a total planned
treatment of 1,700 acres.
Appeals Process Reform--Both the United States Department
of Agriculture (USDA) and DOI made rule changes designed to encourage
early and meaningful public participation in project planning, while
continuing to provide the public an opportunity to seek review or to
appeal project decisions. This enables issues to be resolved earlier in
the project planning process, allowing for a more expedited application
of hazardous fuels reduction projects.
Categorical Exclusions (CE)--Both USDA and DOI have
established new categorical exclusions, as provided under the National
Environmental Policy Act, for certain hazardous fuels reduction
projects and for post-fire rehabilitation projects. These new CEs
shorten the time between identification of hazardous fuels treatment
and restoration projects and their actual implementation on the ground.
Proposed Section 7 Counterpart Regulation--FWS and NOAA
Fisheries have proposed Section 7 joint counterpart regulations under
the ESA to improve Section 7 consultation procedures for projects that
support the National Fire Plan. The proposed regulations would provide,
in some situations, an alternative to the existing Section 7
consultation process by authorizing the agencies to make certain
determinations without project-specific consultation and concurrence of
the FWS and NOAA Fisheries.
The Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003 (Public Law 108-
7), signed into law on February 20, 2003, contains stewardship
contracting authority, which allows the FS and the BLM to enter into
long-term contracts with the private sector, non-profit organizations,
local communities, and other entities to help achieve important land
management objectives.
The public input period for the joint agency guidance for long-term
implementation of stewardship contracting closed on July 28, 2003. The
agencies are completing formal analysis of the input for consideration
in the development of final agency guidance which should be available
sometime later this fall. In 2004, the BLM is studying the
implementation of several stewardship contracts in Nevada and across
the West. These projects will focus on a range of forest and rangeland
health initiatives as well as wildland urban interface fuels reduction
projects and biomass utilization projects.
We believe these administrative actions will provide Federal land
managers with useful tools as they work to restore public forest and
rangelands to a condition where they can resist disease, insects, and
catastrophic fire.
Forest and Rangeland Health in Nevada's Great Basin
The Great Basin landscape, which encompasses much of Nevada, the
western half of Utah, the lower third of Idaho, the southeast corner of
Oregon, and a narrow strip of eastern California, has seen a severe
decline in native vegetation and wildlife as a result, in part, of
wildfires. Between 1999 and 2003 wildland fires burned more than 3.3
million acres of land across Nevada's Great Basin.
Years of well-intentioned, but misguided, active suppression of
wildfires have led to conditions in which pinyon and juniper trees
dominate many areas where they historically occupied only small
portions of the habitat. In such areas, the previously diverse
landscape of perennial grasses, forbs, sagebrush and trees has evolved
into a monoculture with limited species diversity. Noxious weeds and
non-native annual grasses like cheatgrass, gained a foothold where fire
weakened or removed native vegetation. The lack of a natural fire
regime has contributed to these conditions. As a result, entire
watersheds are being impacted; water quality is being degraded; native
wildlife habitat is disappearing; forage for wild horses and livestock
is reduced; and local economies are being threatened.
In an effort to address these problems, the Great Basin Restoration
Initiative (GBRI) was developed with the goal of restoring and
maintaining the Great Basin's diverse ecosystem through coordinated
efforts between Federal and state governments and local community
interests. A key component of GBRI is the Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition (ENLC) whose purpose is to help implement the Eastern Nevada
Landscape Restoration Project (ENLRP), a restoration initiative
designed to restore the ecosystem within the 10 million acres of public
lands that are administered in eastern Nevada by the BLM Ely Field
Office.
The ENLC is playing a significant role in restoration activities,
assisting with project planning and implementation by establishing
broad-based goals and objectives and providing the best available
science for restoration projects. The Coalition's purpose is to develop
a consensus on the Great Basin's overall health in eastern Nevada and
to assist in the implementation of projects that restore the Great
Basin to desired conditions. Currently, ENLC's partner list has over
sixty members, including the BLM, representing a broad spectrum of
public land users and interests like other Federal, city and county
governments, tribal governments, local universities, and industry,
conservation, and recreation groups.
In an effort to aggressively move forward under the ENLC
partnership and begin implementing large-scale restoration initiatives,
the BLM is conducting planning on a landscape scale. As part of the
development of the Ely Resource Management Plan and Environmental
Impact Statement (Ely RMP/EIS), fuels reduction projects and other
restoration treatments in the eastern Great Basin are being studied.
This Plan is being developed with assistance from numerous cooperating
entities, and ENLC is playing a large role in formulating the proposed
actions and alternatives relative to restoration and maintenance of
ecological health. When complete, the Ely RMP/EIS will serve as the
base analysis and planning guidance for the ENLRP for restoration in
the eastern Great Basin. To date, project scoping has been completed
and alternatives are being developed. We expect to complete the RMP/EIS
in the spring of 2005.
In other geographic regions of the Great Basin, the BLM has been an
important partner with local entities in restoration efforts under the
GBRI. One example of a cooperative project is the Markleeville Fuels
Treatment Project:
Markleeville Fuels Treatment Project--During the fall of
2002 and winter of 2003, the BLM Carson City Field Office completed a
fuels treatment project in a forested area southeast of Lake Tahoe,
Nevada. The Markleeville Fuels Treatment Project targeted public land
adjacent to Marklevillage, a subdivision of Markleeville, California,
with the aim of reducing crown fire potential and enhancing fire
suppression capabilities. The treated area was adjacent to existing
residences, as well as new residential development currently under
construction. The BLM thinned the smaller trees and removed excess
biomass on 45 heavily forested acres in an effort to clear ``ladder''
fuels and open up the overstory canopy for the growth and health of the
remaining larger trees.
Conclusion
Mr. Chairman, the Department of the Interior is committed to
working with Congress, State, local and tribal officials, and the
public to advance commonsense solutions to protect communities and
people, and to restore forest and rangeland health. We believe that
H.R. 1904 provides the much-needed authorities for the agencies to move
forward with the President's Healthy Forests Initiative. We were
encouraged to see prompt action by the House on H.R. 1904. We hope the
Senate takes up the measure this Congress. Thank you again for the
opportunity to appear here today to discuss healthy forests and issues
specific to Nevada and the Great Basin. We will be glad to answer any
question you may have.
______
Mr. Gibbons. Thank you very much, Mr. Abbey, for the
enlightening comments that both you and Mr. Troyer have
presented to our Committee here, and we're very glad that you
are able to be here today to talk to us.
I have a question I think both of you need to address
because it's one which I think is clear on its face when we in
Congress talk about the issues of management of our public
lands and how they are doing. You talked about the need for
active forest and non-forest land management out there.
Describe for us the regulatory challenges you face in just
getting these management projects through the various analysis,
the appeals process, the lawsuit process, et cetera. Explain
the process, how long it takes, and why you have concerns with
the lengthening process in this.
Mr. Abbey. Let me start, and then Jack certainly can
augment whatever I may say.
First and foremost, I think it's as much an educational
component as it is a regulatory component that we face as far
as challenges. People love trees, and rightly so. People love
rangelands, and rightly so.
When we propose actions that may result in thinning of some
of the woodlands that we see here in Nevada, or taking actions
of mechanical treatments or even chemical treatments on the
rangelands, certainly people are concerned about exactly how
extensive those treatments are going to be and what are the
long-term impacts of our actions of today. So again, I think as
we look at the resource base that we're working within, we need
to do a better job of informing the public of why such actions
are needed.
I think if we can lay the groundwork for a better
understanding among all the interest groups, then I think we
have a better opportunity to go through the planning process,
which we're required to do, to identify what the projects are,
to identify the likely consequences of the actions of
implementing those projects on the ground, and then to assess
again whether or not progress is made toward achieving the
goals that we're setting, and that is to improve the overall
health of these forests and rangelands that we manage on behalf
of the American public.
Now given the fact that we might not have done a very good
job in the past of informing and certainly educating the public
for the needs for some of these actions, then we are faced with
some of the challenges through the protests, appeal and
litigation processes that are available to any member of the
public to pursue. As we go through our own planning process to
identify the projects, to do the analysis, and then to issue a
record decision, then any member of the public can protest,
appeal or litigate those actions.
Thankfully here in Nevada, at least under the National Fire
Plan, we have had very few of our actions that have been
litigated.
Unfortunately, we did have a large-scale fuel reduction
project that was proposed in Eastern Nevada that has been
litigated. We have worked through a settlement agreement with
the people who did file the lawsuit to allow us to address our
most immediate needs, and that's to reduce the hazardous fuels
around local communities. Here at Ward Mountain just outside of
Ely and also the Mount Wilson Guest Ranch which is near Pioche.
Again, this is just a band-aid approach. Our fear is that
if we do have large-scale fire in any of these areas, that
we're going to have our hands full relative to suppression.
So there is some issues relative to the time frames that it
takes us to complete some of the planning, the analysis that is
required, and then again, to go through any protest or appeals
or litigation before we're able to take those actions on the
ground.
Mr. Gibbons. What would be your estimate of the time delays
in all of this, by the time you have gone through from the
identification phase to the actual phase of actually having
somebody on the ground beginning the process of thinning and
taking out some of the unneeded fuels?
Mr. Abbey. Congressman Gibbons, that could vary from
project to project. To give you kind of a hip-pocket
assessment, I would say it would take us anywhere between a
year to 18 months once a project is proposed.
Mr. Gibbons. Jack, do you have anything to add in there?
But if you would, take this part and add it to your question.
How much time does your agency have to invest in the process of
planning, analysis and defense of a planned fire treatment
area?
Mr. Troyer. I believe on a national level that the Chief
has to find that up to 40 percent of our resources can be
devoted to planning, the entire planning part, doing the EIS's.
But I need to--if that's wrong, I'll get back with you. But it
is a significant number.
But I would like to take a minute to answer your question
because it is my favorite question to answer.
Mr. Gibbons. OK.
Mr. Troyer. We have a process predicament problem. We
absolutely do. The Chief testified before Congress little over
a year ago, committed the Forest Service to do something about
that, and with the help of the Administration, we have done
that. The new categorical exclusions are helping us.
Mr. Gibbons. By the way, I do want you to go through
categorical exclusion and help us better identify what that is,
how it applies, what are its limitations, et cetera. Because
that's something that is commonly used, and I don't think many
of us have a perfect understanding of it.
Mr. Troyer. I would be happy to do that. But to maybe
finish my first point, we do have a process predicament
problem. It was worse a year-and-a-half ago. It's better
because of the efforts. We still have more work to do. It still
takes too much time to do analysis and procedural requirements
that take us beyond the point where we can already make a sound
resource decision.
Second point I'd like to make is none of our process
predicament work has anything to do with making bad decisions
faster. It is making good decisions faster. It has nothing to
do with having less public involvement. I think it has to do
with more public involvement.
But I don't believe appeals and litigation are really
public involvement. Once we get to that point, somehow we have
already gone beyond the point where we can constructively work
together with everybody involved.
The third point I do want to reemphasize that Bob said is
that we have a little less of the appeals litigation
environment in Nevada than in most States. We have some but we
have a little bit less.
On the categorical exclusions, normally a project, we do an
environmental analysis, we do scoping, we do a draft, and then
we do a final, and we go through a process, and then it could
be appealed, and as Bob says, it could be weeks, months and 18
months while that process moves along. But there have always
been certain tools, they are called categorical exclusions,
exclusions to doing full-blown NEPA documentation. We lost some
of those tools years ago in various court decisions. We did a
lot of work and just a few months ago restored some of those
various categories.
So, for example, we can do fuels projects now that there
are certain acreage limitations, but we don't need to do an EIS
or an EA. We can do a categorical exclusion.
Mr. Gibbons. What are the acreage limitations?
Mr. Troyer. 1,000, 4,000.
Mr. Gibbons. Acres?
Mr. Troyer. Acres. For limited--there is another one for
just limited tree removal where we can go up to say 50 acres if
there is a small insect or disease outbreak. So we can move
faster.
There are--well, we just had an example that I worked
through in Utah, Western Nevada, where we had a blow down, kind
of a tornado like affair that came through and knocked over a
couple hundred trees. That was before these categorical
exclusions. So the district to get that project through NEPA,
litigation, they had to do a 90-page environmental analysis. We
then got a 20-page appeal, 20 different points on appealing a
project that was going to remove 200 trees that were sort of
knocked over along roads.
So a similar thing happened recently, and using the CE, we
were able to get through that in a couple months. So that is
really a key point that I really wanted to say these are very,
very important.
Last point I guess I wanted to make on all of this is that
we need to be more efficient and use more of our resources on
getting dollars to the ground to treat more acres because that
is really what it is about.
Mr. Gibbons. Let me ask a question, because I know there is
always going to be those who are skeptical of any legislation
that Congress passes, and indeed, everything we do is not
always perfect. That is a surprise to many of us.
The Healthy Forests Initiative requires public involvement.
It especially requires parties to be engaged in the early
process if you want to preserve your opportunity to appeal and
litigate it at the end. So in other words, if you want to be
one of those Johnny-come-latelies that usually step in after
the planning processes, after the decision and analysis have
already been made and sue, you are going to find yourself being
forced into it in the early part.
Is being brought in in the early management or decision
phase better? Does it result in a better product, or does it
result in a better product to wait till you have all completed
your analysis and sue you in court? That's kind of a directed
question, I'm sure.
Mr. Troyer. I absolutely believe that early public
involvement is key to what we do. When we involve people from
all points of view together, working with us, up front, we can
normally reach consensus about taking action and doing
something. But unfortunately, if you get 19 out of 20 or you
get the local environmental groups and the local industry
groups and everybody together, it really only takes one
procedural error to lead to litigation that we might lose.
So I think that's why these reforms have been helpful.
Early public involvement is the key. We want more of it, not
less.
Mr. Gibbons. Bob, I don't mean to be ignoring you on all of
these questions either.
Mr. Abbey. You and I have a chance to talk quite often.
Mr. Gibbons. Yes, we do, and I appreciate that.
Mr. Troyer, you may have to ask Dr. Tausch to answer these
questions. But when you talk about healthy forests, talking in
pinyon trees and that kind, the coverage, what is the
percentage or number of trees per acre that is considered
healthy for this kind of an environment out here? What do we
currently see today in terms of coverage in trees?
Mr. Troyer. I can go ahead and answer that, but I would
love to give Dr. Tausch a chance to give you about a 2-minute
summary of his research on this, if you wouldn't mind.
Mr. Gibbons. Sure. I would be happy if he wants to come up.
Mr. Troyer. He's traveled here. Come up here.
Mr. Gibbons. As long as you use the mike, introduce
yourself.
Mr. Tausch. My name is Robin Tausch. I'm a supervisory
range scientist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station. My
lab is on the University of Nevada, Reno campus.
To start, to give you a little bit of a general background,
there is critical watershed and critical wildlife habitats that
are at risk from increasing tree dominance and the intense
crown fires that often follow in the woodlands, as you already
mentioned. This is putting a lot of ecological, social and
economic values at risk, and those areas should be highly
prioritized. But there is also many other areas that are
involved that are not close to homes or communities.
And Jack Troyer has already expressed the agency's concern
about invasive species. From an ecological perspective, we
can't overemphasize the importance of planning restoration
treatments that help prevent the spread of invasives, and how
you do those can make a big difference in promoting them.
To be ecologically successful we need to identify the
critical habitats that have been lost to pinyon-juniper
invasion and restore those lost habitats with our restoration
treatments. And I say, in addition, prior to treatment each
area needs to be evaluated for the potential success of that
treatment. We have limited resources, and we need to focus what
we have on accomplishing the most.
We need to consider whether the understory of desirable
native plants and the kind of soil and its depth are adequate
on each site and maximize the benefits of the treatment. If the
understory isn't adequate, but it is a site that needs to be
treated, the restoration treatments need to be designed to
prepare the seedbed and plant the missing native plants to
restore a functioning community.
It makes sense to prioritize areas both with high values at
risk and where we are confident we will get a good ecological
return.
And then to kind of address your question there, there is
some confusion between pinyon-juniper woodlands and ponderosa
pine woodlands or forests, and to prescribe fire rather than
mechanical treatments that we do for ponderosa or Jeffrey pine
on the east slope. And basically fire should not be used for
the initial restoration treatments on tree-dominated sites
because pinyon and juniper lack the thick bark the ponderosa
has and are not ecologically adapted to fire.
So it is not a matter of how many trees there are.
Generally when a fire comes through, it will usually kill all
the trees, particularly if it has become a closed canopy
forest. Basically diversity within pinyon-juniper woodlands is
having a diversity of areas that have and do not have trees
rather closely intermixed than open stands of trees like are
typical with the ponderosa pine. So it requires a little
different approach, little different management goal.
And generally, mechanical restoration treatments have much
less negative impact on these tree-dominated ecosystems than
the intense crown fires that are now increasingly becoming the
alternative. And one of the major of these is if you can avoid
the chance for conversion to cheatgrass, which we're
increasingly seeing. With mechanical treatments land managers
can design treatments to leave areas untreated where they are
desirable for ecological reasons. And after the conditions of a
more diverse system, particularly understory or restore, a
prescribed fire can then be used in many cases to maintain
these desirable conditions.
Mr. Gibbons. How prevalent is the closed canopy system you
are talking about in this area?
Mr. Tausch. There are two parts to that.
Mr. Gibbons. You came prepared, didn't you? It's like we
had already talked about this.
Mr. Tausch. It is a certain set of common questions that
always come up. So I tried to take care of that.
Mr. Gibbons. While you are looking for that, answer this
question as well. You are talking about the fact that if there
is a fire in this juniper canopy or this pinyon-juniper
habitat, all the trees are going to die from that.
Mr. Tausch. Almost entirely. There will be skip spots, fire
jumps around, but the places it burns, almost universally every
tree is taken out.
Mr. Gibbons. So what is a healthy--what are the coverage?
What is the coverage percentage of pinyon-juniper per acre for
a healthy pinyon-juniper forest, if you would say?
Mr. Tausch. Again, I'm going to need to provide some
background on that because we're getting mixed up again with
ponderosa pine. I'll try to illustrate the difference.
Mr. Gibbons. OK.
Mr. Tausch. Again, it is not how much coverage and how many
trees per acre. It is how much coverage in a percent of the
landscape is trees versus sagebrush.
Mr. Gibbons. That is what I'm trying to get at. I didn't
ask the question properly.
Mr. Tausch. OK. I just need the clarification on that.
Two parts to your question. First, about half the area
where encroachment has already occurred, and these are areas
where seedlings become established but still largely sagebrush
dominated, are going to potentially become tree dominated over
the next 40 years.
And then as far as beyond that, I have been involved in a
recent cooperative study that has involved the Pacific
Northwest Research Station, the U.S. Geological Survey, the
Rocky Mountain Research Station, where my part is, and this has
been funded by the Bureau of Land Management, has investigated
the potential for additional encroachment into new areas as a
risk map. The initial results of that indicate that woodlands
potentially increase by about another 20 percent over the next
30 years.
I would say the majority of the expansion has already
occurred over the last hundred, hundred-fifty, but there is
potential for additional in the Great Basin of Nevada. You get
up into the Great Basin of Oregon, they could potentially
double or triple over what is there now. So it kind of depends
on where you are.
Geological Survey has published a map that shows these
areas at risk for encroachment. And I can give you the website
on that, and if you are interested, I can show you the first
pass of the map, if you want to see it.
Mr. Gibbons. If you want to submit it, we will take it for
the Committee record as well.
Mr. Tausch. OK. The base of this map is the gap map, which
is a remote sensing map of vegetation, and the only areas in
the Great Basin where we felt the gap map of pinyon-juniper
woodlands was accurate for this map happen to be this area, the
three ecological provinces of the high central, where Ely is,
and the western part of Nevada. And the areas on this map in
red are those in this initial stage are estimated high risk for
further encroachment. I'll turn it around so you can see it.
A significant part of that red, the trees have already
encroached. They have seedlings in. This is remote sensing from
satellite, and if the tree covers below a certain threshold,
then it doesn't pick up. They are still registered as
sagebrush. That is included on that.
And we have the website where you can see all the
background information on that.
Mr. Gibbons. The red area is where the trees are crowding
out the sagebrush.
Mr. Tausch. The red area is currently sagebrush that has
already seedling trees in it or seedling trees could become
established over the next 30 years. The yellow is areas of
moderate risk. Due to higher elevation generally or other
conditions, there is less of a chance of the trees coming in.
And the dark green is areas that are already woodlands.
Mr. Troyer. Correct me if I'm wrong, Robin, but I think the
key point here is the red need to be treated; we don't get busy
and treat that, it is going to head the wrong direction, we are
going to have more of the same. Where already the trees are
touching each other, we have already lost the understory. If we
don't mechanically treat those lands, we are going to have more
intense crown fires with more cheatgrass. I think that's the
key point we wanted to make.
Mr. Tausch. The red kind of helps identify areas where the
treatments can be focused.
Mr. Gibbons. How many acres are you talking about there
that are in the red?
Mr. Tausch. I didn't bring that data with me. It's on the
website.
Mr. Gibbons. Is it more than 5,000?
Mr. Tausch. For that whole area as a whole it's over a
million acres.
Mr. Gibbons. So if you were limited to 5,000 acres at a
time before you had to start doing EIS's and all that, you are
talking a hundred years before you'd ever get there. By that
time you would have the rest of it filled in.
Mr. Tausch. In some ways, though, that is also only half
the problem. As Jack Troyer said, we presently have about three
or four times the amount of woodland we did a hundred to 150
years ago. But only currently 20 to 25 percent of that
expansion woodland areas is tree dominated. Another half of
that is going to become tree dominated potentially over the
next 40 years, just as the trees are already there grow up,
just as they mature.
Mr. Gibbons. Very briefly, because I want to make sure we
have time for the next panel as well, the pinyon-juniper trees
that are in this area, what use is there commercially for them?
I mean, you can't take them out and log them like traditional
people believe forests are going to be logged. But these trees
don't have that same kind of value. What value is there in a
juniper or pinyon pine?
Mr. Tausch. In pinyon in particular, of course, there is
firewood and Christmas trees. But work that has been done,
apparently they have some very high quality chemicals such as
turpentine in them, and they are potentially valuable as a
source of fuel.
But what has always interfered with that is transportation
costs and the low level of productivity per acre. Although
there is a lot of standing biomass out there now, it has taken
over a hundred years to grow. There is a very long rotation
time as you are trying to harvest and sustain some kind of
industry. There are some real challenges in using them, even
though there is a number of products that are fairly high
quality.
Mr. Gibbons. I'm just trying to figure out how to reduce
the cost to the taxpayer for the mechanical treatment of this
by using some commercial application of the product once it's
removed from the ground.
Mr. Troyer. Congressman, maybe the BLM has made progress on
this as well. But I think a key point here, it is going to take
something at a larger scale to make a significant dent in this
huge problem.
To me personally, somehow the word biomass has to be a
piece of the problem. There is a lot of biomass research for
cogeneration plants going on around the West, and figuring out
how to do that, or maybe the concept of a mobile cogeneration
plant.
Somehow I think to do the acreage that needs to be treated,
we have got to be thinking landscape level, big solutions like
that. I was wondering, Bob--
Mr. Abbey. Certainly the Congress has also provided us a
tool recently, and that is through rechip contracting. Again,
that provides us an opportunity to go out and encourage people
to come in and help us through financial incentive to remove
some of the woodlands that are going to be thinned.
If I may, Congressman Gibbons, and I know you are short for
time, but Robin talked about the threats of loss of woodlands
to catastrophic fire and the need for thinning of some of the
junipers. The biggest threat in addition to the loss of the
woodlands and some of the rangelands associated with wildland
fires is the threat of flooding, after we lose the
effectiveness of that watershed.
And all you have to do is travel here in Ely to see what
might happen to this town should we lose the woodlands that are
surrounding this town. And if we happen to have a fire, we're
going to have some significant flooding, and that is where most
of the damage will likely occur.
Mr. Gibbons. Plus the influence of soil and runoff that
gets into the water systems, clogs up municipal water systems.
I mean, the end result is always a lot more catastrophic than
the initial fire itself seem to be.
One quick question before I let you go. Talk to me about
the cost of treating land before a fire versus cost of treating
the land after fire.
Mr. Abbey. It is certainly a lot cheaper and more cost
effective to be proactive in order to go forward and take the
actions that are required in order to improve the overall
health of these lands. I don't have the specific costs in front
of me today, but I can certainly share that information with
you and the members of this Committee.
But I tell you, we really need to be investing in our
natural resources, because we're going to spend the money one
way or the other. I'd much rather spend the money up front to
be proactive than to spend the money afterwards through
suppression and rehabilitation activities.
Mr. Gibbons. One final question for you, Mr. Troyer. You
are not talking clearcutting anything, are you? You are just
talking about thinning and removing of underbrush rather than
clearcutting forests.
Mr. Troyer. This is not a clearcutting forest issue; this
is a thinning issue.
I also neglected to mention one other sample program that
can be part of the solution, one here in Nevada called Fuels
for Schools where this material can be chipped up and used to
burn and put into boilers and heat schools. So those are the
examples of some of the innovative programs.
And if I can add one thing on the pay-me-now, pay-me-later
question, is here in the Forest Service, this is the fourth
time in our history we have spent a billion dollars in fire
suppression. Huge amounts of money. It absolutely can be spent
better up front.
Mr. Gibbons. Looking down at California today, I think you
are going to spend a lot of money down there as well.
Well, knowing that the Forest Health Bill does have the
biomass utilization provision in it, which is important in
things like you have just discussed, I think that's an
important issue that we're going to try to push through as well
in Congress.
Gentlemen, I know there is a lot more we can sit here and
talk about, and Dr. Tausch, thank you for your presentation. We
will include your map up there for the record.
And we want to excuse this panel and call up our third
panel who will be bringing us additional information. The
second panel, if we can call them up today, is: Mr. Steven
Robinson, he's the State Forester, Nevada Division of Forestry;
John Hiatt, Dr. John Hiatt, he is the Chairman of Board of
Trustees of Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition; Barry Perryman,
Dr. Barry Perryman, Assistant Professor, Department of Animal
Biotechnology, University of Nevada-Reno; Larry Johnson, who is
part of the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, board member;
Rose Strickland, Chairman, Public Lands Committee, Toiyabe
Sierra Club, Eastern Sierra Chapter for the Toiyabe Sierra
Club.
We have two mikes. You have to share the mike for
everybody. I guess we can just start down in the same sense of
presentation as I brought out.
So Steve, it's a pleasure to see you again, and the floor
is yours. Welcome. We look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF STEVE ROBINSON, STATE FORESTER,
NEVADA DIVISION OF FORESTRY
Mr. Robinson. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. My name is Steve
Robinson. I'm the Nevada State Forester. And I'm here today to
represent Governor Kenny Guinn's views and policy on Nevada's
forest and rangelands health crisis.
There is no question that the Federal and State governments
are at a crossroads--either we take action to reduce the
dangerous fuels buildup in our forests and rangelands or we
ready our citizens for decades of enduring summers of choking
air, reduced use of our public lands, mass evacuation of
populations, homes destroyed and human lives lost. And yes,
this can happen in Nevada.
Specifically to address today's topic, Nevada's forest and
rangeland health, the health of Nevada's rangelands and forests
is not well, and it is deteriorating. We are, as you know, Mr.
Chairman, a fire-prone State. In '99, almost 1.8 million acres
burned in Nevada alone, 1.4 of that in less than a week, and
that is the single largest total acres burned in the lower 48
since the Montana-Idaho fires of 1910.
Now some might say that it's just sagebrush, scrub pines,
pinyon-juniper, and so what. But the negative effects of that
fire year, '99, and an additional three million acres over the
last 4 years, have made us more fire prone, as has been
testified to, reduced our sagebrush habitat, added to the
encroachment of pinyon-juniper, restricted public lands use for
everyone, and if this trend is not stopped, we'll lose our
sagebrush lands as we know it.
Here in Nevada, 92 percent of our forests are currently
composed of pinyon-juniper species, and that is growing. And as
an illustration, Mr. Chairman, somebody showed me an overflight
photograph of an area in the Douglas/Lyon County area, and my
first fire was there about 30 years ago, as a college student,
and they showed the density comparison of the pinyon-juniper
about that time of the fire, 30 years ago, and the way it is
today. Incredible density, a complete canopy over the forest.
And I think that is just what you were talking about. That is
what we face, unfortunately, all over the State.
The distribution of Nevada wildfires for the last 20 years
really show that the majority of the acreage occurs in pinyon-
juniper and sagebrush communities. And again, these acres on a
national basis are thought of as second-class resources. As a
State, we have to fight for fire suppression resources among
some of the other Western States, which are thought of to have
more valuable resources.
The toll on Nevada wildlife has been severe, tremendous
damage to biological resources and environmental qualities. At
the end of the '99 fire storms, for instance, the Department of
Wildlife, our Department of Wildlife, estimated habitat losses
at almost a million acres of mule deer habitat, 700,000 acres
of pronghorn antelope range, and 350,000 acres in the sage
grouse habitat area. While at the same time we're trying to
fend off a listing of the sage grouse as you mentioned.
In spite of these trends, and I want to assure you that
much activity is taking place by the State and local and
Federal agencies. These gentlemen that were just up here want
to do something. They want to get something done. I work with
them on a daily basis, and I can assure you of their sincerity.
Hundreds of fuels projects around the State have been
accomplished over the last two or 3 years, and more are
planned. But the Federal agencies simply have to accelerate how
they do business on their land. The present condition just
won't suffice.
On a related subject, or the related subject, at least in
my opinion, are fire fatalities, both civilian and firefighter.
I have served on the board of directors of the National
Firefighters Foundation for about 10 years now, and each year
approximately a hundred firefighters die in the line of duty.
This year almost 30,000 of those fatalities were in wildland
fire, and the numbers are increasing.
Clearly, even with the increased emphasis on safety, and we
have fixed how we fight fires over the last few years, we fight
them better and more safely, but the advent of these larger,
hotter, longer duration fires cost lives. I'm absolutely
certain of it. There is a change between how many we have lost
20 years ago and what we're losing now.
I know you, Congressman Gibbons, made an effort, a very
vigorous effort to supply us with an air fleet more suitable
for modern fire suppression, and I can assure you the fire
service appreciates your efforts, sir.
But this issue of restoring forest health, reducing
unplanned catastrophic fires is not just a debate among
competing land interests whether you can use the land or can't
use the land. For firefighters it gets down to a life and death
issue. And in your deliberations, I would just request that you
consider that also.
That concludes my testimony, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbons. Thank you very much, Mr. Robinson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Robinson follows:]
Statement of Steve Robinson, Nevada Division of Forestry
Mr. Chairman:
My name is Steve Robinson--I'm the Nevada State Forester and am
here today to represent Governor Kenny Guinn's policy on Nevada's
forest health crisis.
There is no question the Federal and State governments are at a
crossroads--either we take action to reduce the dangerous fuels buildup
in our forests and rangelands or ready our citizens for decades of
enduring summers of choking air, reduced recreation lands, mass
evacuation of populations threatened by wildfire, homes destroyed and
human lives lost, and the severe reduction of our sagebrush
environment.
Here in Nevada 92% of our forests are currently composed of pinyon
and/or juniper species. Forests in the State of Nevada have fluctuated
dramatically in their composition and geographic position. Currently,
these forest types appear to be expanding, while other forest types,
such as aspen, are decreasing. The impact of pinyon-juniper expansion
is also impacting the brush and grassland areas in the state. This is a
direct result of the interruption of fire as a natural disturbance
regime.
Insect-caused mortality combined with other diseases and the
interruption of normal fire cycles have resulted in overstocked and/or
over-mature forested stands. These stands, when faced with now over 13
years of drought, are showing significant increases in mortality.
Consequently, these conditions lead to large, catastrophic
wildfires which are devastating the natural ecosystems in Nevada and
other western states.
From 1999 to 2001, over 2 million acres of federal land and 124,000
acres of state and private land have been surveyed by the U.S. Forest
Service and Nevada Division of Forestry, to determine forest health
conditions and trends. This report is included in your packet. The
effects of long-term drought and increased insect activity has become
extremely evident throughout Nevada.
Insect and disease caused tree mortality in Nevada has increased
from under 50,000 trees in 1988 to over 250,000 trees in 1993.
Unfortunately, forest mortality in Nevada is continuing to increase
and, of the counties surveyed in 2001, almost 26,000 trees covering
12,000 acres have died from insect and disease outbreaks. In White Pine
County alone over 14,000 trees totaling 5,000 acres have died from
insect and disease outbreaks in just the year 2001.
This area, along with Elko County, have a Douglas Fir tussock moth
outbreak, as well, on over 4,000 acres. Fir engraver beetle activity is
heavy in the Ely, Nevada area, and the Mt. Pine beetle has caused tree
mortality to increase from 11,000 trees in 1998 to over 43,000 in 2000
in the intermountain region.
Because the aerial survey could not fly the entire Pinyon-Juniper
forest cover type in 2001, the extent of pinyon pine mortality is
assumed much larger than the recorded coverage. This poses an
increasing threat to populated areas in the urban interface.
The distribution of Nevada wildfires from 1981 through 2000 shows
that the majority of the wildfire acreage occurs in Pinyon-Juniper and
sagebrush communities. These areas are often thought of as second-class
resources, but, in fact, are the key to the Great Basin environmental
future.
From 1999 to 2001, almost 3,800 fires burned approximately 3.25
million acres in Nevada. At the same time, expanding development of
rural/small towns in these Pinyon-Juniper woodlands is increasing
dramatically.
These Nevada towns are surrounded by public lands. Allowing for
greater flexibility in forest management of the Great Basin forests by
the public land management agencies is the answer to treatment within
the urban interface and across the landscape. We need every tool in the
tool box to begin this effort which comprised millions of acres.
Conifer forests along the western edge of the state along the
Sierra also continue to experience bark and engraver beetle epidemics.
This epidemic began in the late 1980's in response to eight year
drought and heavily stocked forest stands. These beetles killed over
1.2 million trees from 1985 through 2000.
Especially troubling is the cumulative, long-term cultural and
natural resource threats and losses caused by the greater intensity and
number of large wildland fires in recent years.
These fires threatened and took human life, killed livestock and
destroyed structures, such as homes, fences, water developments,
bridges, ranch buildings, and power lines. Clearly public policy must
address this problem.
The toll on wildlife in Nevada has been catastrophic. Tremendous
damage to biological resources and environmental quality caused by the
extraordinary wildfire behavior shows no signs of abating.
At the end of August 1999 fire storms, the NDOW estimated
habitat losses for some game species in the Pinyon-Juniper woodland and
rangeland ecosystems:
340,000 acres of deer winter range;
305,000 acres of deer summer range;
668,100 acres of pronghorn antelope range;
45,500 acres of bighorn sheep range were seriously
impacted; and
Estimated almost 350,000 acres sage grouse habitat
burned.
These catastrophic fires clear the way for invasion of non-native
invasive and noxious weeds. Cheatgrass, a flammable nonnative annual
grass, is just one of the invasive weeds taking hold of the understory
of shrub and Pinyon/Juniper communities, eventually forming
monocultures.
Weeds such as white top, cheat grass, tamarisk, and Russian
knapweed are only a few of the well-known noxious and invasive weeds
threatening our state's natural resources.
This invasive and noxious weed crisis is one of the most aggressive
threats to agriculture, wildlife and our public wildlands that Nevada
has seen. Make no mistake, we are losing this battle.
In spite of these alarming trends, I want to assure you much
activity has taken place by your state, local and federal agencies,
especially since the 2001 Congressional Fire Plan legislation. There
are several efforts in the State of Nevada to address and reverse these
negative trends in forest and rangeland health.
Nevada State Plant Production nurseries and native Seedbank: Nevada
Division of Forestry, Nevada Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest
Service, and the Bureau of Land Management and others, have joined
together to improve the current Nevada native plant materials program.
The goals are to increase and improve the current native plant and
Seedbank program to help meet the upcoming needs for native and adapted
plant materials. These materials will enable agencies, counties, and
individuals to have easier, more efficient and affordable access to
native plant materials for restoration of streams, forests,
agricultural lands and rangelands impacted by weeds, insect and
disease, and disasters, such as flood, fires and drought. Working
groups between all public and State land management agencies is
occurring.
Noxious and Invasive Weed Control: All branches of the Department
of Natural Resources, and the Federal Land Management agencies are
working diligently with weed action groups, local governments and
private individuals to put the stop to the increasing spread of these
devastating weeds.
The Nevada Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension
services have been the lead in developing Weed Action groups and
Cooperative Weed Management areas throughout our state.
Biomass utilization: Efforts to reduce the fuels, thin the forest
and remove dead trees from the forests have been inhibited by disposal
or use of the remaining slash and wood. Small wood products industries
are being explored as well as utilizing the wood chips and fuel for
public buildings' heating source.
Fuels For Schools, a program partnership between the City of Ely
and Nevada Division of Forestry, is beginning its first pilot project.
This project is in the feasibility assessment stage at a local grade
school and holds great promise.
Fuels Reduction efforts: In partnership with these federal
agencies, the Nevada Division of Forestry through the National Fire
Plan has issued over 300 grants to communities, individuals,
organizations and volunteer fire departments for the reduction of
fuels, fire safe planning and wildfire response.
Over 300 acres in Wilson Canyon and Mt. Charleston area are being
treated in efforts to protect over 600 homes and private parcels.
Multiple smaller towns in Northern Nevada are currently working on fire
protection and fuels reductions in the interface including: Ely, Baker,
Austin, Pioche, Manhattan, and Jarbidge, just to name a few. Nevada
Division of Forestry is also working with Glenbrook and Incline Village
in Lake Tahoe and others across the Sierra front.
Nevada's forests, rangelands and agriculture are at risk. These
resources face high risk of catastrophic fire and weed infestations
which may not be reversible if we continue at our current rate of
treatment and land management funding levels.
Decades of an accumulation of dense undergrowth and brush, along
with drought conditions, insect infestation and disease and invasion by
exotic species leave our state highly vulnerable to these
environmentally destructive disasters. The long-term effects of these
threats to lives, property and economics is clear. We must support
actions to expedite high-priority fuel reduction and forest and
rangeland restoration projects in our State and in our Nation.
Finally, on the subject of fire fatalities, and if I might, Mr.
Chairman, I have served on the Board of Directors of the National
Fallen Firefighters Foundation for 10 years. Each year approximately
100 firefighters die in the line of duty.
This year, almost 30% of those fatalities are in wildland fire--and
the numbers are increasing. Clearly, even with an increased emphasis on
safety--the advent of larger, hotter, longer duration range and forest
fires are killing an increasing number of young men and women. And I
know, Congressman Gibbons has made much an effort to supply us with an
air fleet more suitable for modern fire suppression. The fire service
appreciates his efforts, sir.
But this issue of restoring forest health and reducing unplanned
catastrophic fire is not just a debate among competing ideologies--it
is one of life and death to firefighters and I would ask you to
consider that in your deliberations.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you.
References:
Nevada Natural Resources Status Report--Nevada Department of
Conservation and Natural Resources.
Boise Interagency Fire Center website.
Western Great Basin Coordination Center website.
Insects and Disease in the Intermountain Region, 2001, S. Munson, USFS
Entomologist.
Nevada Forest Health Highlights--2001, USDS, USFS.
2001 Forest Insect and Disease Conditions in Nevada; USDA, USFS, Nevada
Division of Forestry.
[NOTE: An attachment to Mr. Robinson's statement entitled ``2001
Forest Insect and Disease Conditions in Nevada; USDA, USFS, Nevada
Division of Forestry,'' has been retained in the Committee's official
files.]
______
Mr. Gibbons. We turn now to Dr. Hiatt. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JOHN HIATT, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF TRUSTEES, EASTERN
NEVADA LANDSCAPE COALITION
Dr. Hiatt. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman. My
name is John Hiatt, and I'm Chairman of the Eastern Nevada
Landscape Coalition, also known as ENLC.
ENLC is a partnership of over 60 citizen groups, including
the Nevada Cattlemens Association, the Nature Conservancy,
Nevada Bighorns Unlimited, the Sierra Club, Fraternity of
Desert Bighorn, Red Rock Audubon Society, and many others.
These disparate groups have set aside their philosophical
differences to work together to solve the very critical
problems in the Great Basin. This is a precedent-setting
endeavor.
The problems of the Great Basin can and will be solved by a
basic two-pronged approach. One, the collaboration of citizen
groups with land managers; and two, the application of good
science.
The problems we are facing include: The increasing
dominance of woody plants, such as pinyon and juniper trees,
and decadent sagebrush, the increasing catastrophic fires that
threaten both people and vegetative communities of the Great
Basin, invasive exotic plants replacing native plants, loss of
fertile topsoil, decreasing water quality and surface
availability of that water, decreasing productivity of the
lands for a variety of uses.
I need to stress that all of these problems strongly affect
the people now living in the Great Basin. Just as importantly,
this unique ecologic treasure is being stolen from this and
future generations. Allow me to expand upon the natural systems
at work.
Fire has historically played a critical, beneficial role as
the major disturbance factor in maintaining healthy landscapes
in the Great Basin. However, fire has become a catastrophic
threat rather than a tool to improve landscape health. Climate
variation, changes in disturbance regime due to improper
grazing, fire suppression, not aggressively controlling
invasives, and the failure to adapt our management have all
contributed to our worsening situation.
A collaborative approach is the key to dealing with these
problems. Mr. Vice Chairman, people solve conservation problems
by getting involved. In Eastern Nevada we are marshalling the
combined forces of the management agencies, conservation
organizations, and academic scientists, as well as community
leaders and permittees, to solve these problems. The solution
is management based on science. Several points in regards to
management and science must be stressed.
One, management must take a large-scale approach.
Management must be implemented with the understanding that all
components of landscape are linked and that evaluating health,
not production, will result in management benefiting this and
future generations. In the words of Bob Abbey, BLM Nevada State
Director, it's about outcomes rather than outputs.
Two, research must be usable. Research needed to support
management must be applied research. For instance, we need to
better understand the role of fire, climate, and other
disturbances in the dynamics of Great Basin vegetation regimes
to enable the systems to manage themselves. We have to
concurrently implement management and research in an adaptive
process.
Three, analysis must tell us condition rather than what we
can use. In an innovative move, the Ely BLM is using State and
transition models in understanding the changes that have and
are taking place. State in this context means vegetative State
or community, and transition refers to an event in which an
existing plant community is replaced by a different one. For
instance, pinyon-juniper going to cheatgrass.
When a threshold is crossed, it is difficult to return to
the previous state.
Four, we must resist invasive weeds. We need to increase
our knowledge and develop tools for dealing with invasive non-
natives and also support the Tri County Weed District.
Five, there is a need for a research facility to facilitate
research, coordinate research efforts, and act as a central
point for research and restoration information in the Great
Basin. This effort would have both national and international
implications.
Six. Mr. Chairman, the Vice Chairman, the Great Basin is
slipping away as we speak. We cannot afford to allow things to
go on as usual. For instance, we are losing about 50,000 acres
per year of sagebrush to pinyon-juniper dominance.
Seven, pertaining to the Healthy Forest Initiative, unlike
in the forest of the Northwest, in the Great Basin there is no
sustainable commercial product in sufficient quantity to
sustain funding for restoration for management in the Great
Basin. It is one potential method for supporting restoration,
and while it may be sustainable over time, the Great Basin will
not produce wood products of sufficient value on a per acre
basis to provide more than a moderate percentage of the funds
needed.
Eight. Funding for these efforts is needed so we may slow
and then reverse the decline of the Great Basin condition.
Mr. Larry Johnson will talk about wild horses, but I would
like to use wild horses to make an analogy. 1971, Congress
passed the National Wild and Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act.
In the year or two after that there was an opportunity for
ranchers to claim horses. Just a little bit of bureaucratic
hassle involved, but they could claim those horses. In Utah,
that happened, and most of the horses were removed from the
range at that time.
It did not happen in Nevada, and it didn't happen in most
of the rest of the West. The result is that today between 30
and 35 million Federal dollars are spent every year managing
wild horses, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
This is a black hole that we will be spending money on forever
unless we significantly increase funding.
We're in the same kind of position with regard to managing
our wildlands in the Great Basin. We can either act now and
spend some money or we will spend huge amounts of money
indefinitely in the future.
In closing, the ENLC is an imaginative approach to solving
the problems in the Great Basin. The region's problems are
landscape in scope, and the health of these landscapes is
slipping away. The ENLC is a partnership of those who care for
and work the land working side by side with those who manage
the land with the people of our country. The tools being used
are both management and the best science, both from existing
information and applied research, with input from many sources
to support that management.
We are grateful to this Subcommittee for recognizing the
serious problems facing both this region and the Nation, and
thank you and the members of this Subcommittee for the
opportunity to share our views. I would be happy to answer any
questions.
Mr. Gibbons. Thank you very much, Dr. Hiatt.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hiatt follows:]
Statement of John Hiatt, Ph.D., Chairman of the Board of Trustees,
Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition
INTRODUCTION
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is John Hiatt and I am Chairman of
the Board of Trustees for the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition (ENLC,
the Coalition) with headquarters in Ely, Nevada. The coalition is a
partnership whose mission is to restore ecological health to the Great
Basin. We appreciate your invitation to participate in today's field
hearing to discuss forest and rangeland health in Nevada's Great Basin.
The Coalition supports the concept of the President's Healthy Forest
Initiative and H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003
and sees them as one conduit to bring awareness and assistance to the
precarious situation faced by the ecological systems in the Great
Basin.
It is our intent today to provide you with information on
The Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, and our
perspective on the natural resource challenges in the Great Basin
(particularly in Nevada),
The natural systems within the Great Basin
The significance of our collaborative approach
The science base for our activities
Specific needs for eastern Nevada and
A brief summary statement.
THE EASTERN NEVADA LANDSCAPE COALITION
The Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition is a community-based
partnership of 60-plus diverse non-federal members whose goal is to
support the restoration of the Great Basin landscapes, initially in
eastern Nevada. ENLC partners include agricultural, conservation,
cultural and environmental interests, plus members from private
enterprise and the broader general public. It is a unique collaboration
which has come together to address the very critical problems in the
Great Basin. We have set aside philosophical differences to work
together in this precedent-setting endeavor. In short, it is diverse
collaboration ranging in perspective from the Toiyabe Chapter of the
Sierra Club to the Nevada Cattlemen's Association.
Allow me to share a little bit about needs in the Great Basin.
The Great Basin Desert epitomizes the American West. It's 135,000
square miles of expansive, rugged, harsh, arid land ... and yet at the
same time, beautiful, inspiring and reassuring. It is a unique heritage
site, unlike any other in the world. It covers a large portion of
Nevada and extends into Utah, Idaho, Oregon and California. In its
confines, rivers surface and disappear, monsoonal rains both replenish
and devastate areas living under the annual specter of drought, wild
horses run free, and north-south running mountain ranges, sometimes
referred to as sky islands, are separated by seas of sagebrush and
grasses. It is home to mule deer, desert bighorn sheep, antelope, elk
and other less well known species of wildlife. The Great Basin is home
to Native Americans, descendants of pioneers and recent emigrants, all
who choose this panoramic region as a place to live. Simply put, it is
a unique national treasure whose diversity is threatened.
The Great Basin, as we have known it, is changing; in fact, it is
slipping away. Catastrophic fires, invasive-exotic weeds and grasses
and domination by woody plants, are the lead problems facing the
region, and are stealing from future generations. Historically, fire
was a relatively frequent agent of renewal and rejuvenation, both on
the valley floors and in the mountains releasing sagebrush, native
grasses and wildflowers from competition. This renewal provided a
healthy mosaic of vegetation and habitat for wildlife and livestock.
These resilient conditions have been replaced by less frequent, larger
and more intense fires that encourage the invasion of exotic plants,
lower water quality, increase erosion and dramatically reduce wildlife
habitat. Because of this reduction in the natural resource base,
recreational opportunities are declining and local economies are
negatively affected.
The people of the Great Basin are facing the following problems:
INCREASING DOMINANCE OF WOODY PLANTS SUCH AS PINION AND JUNIPER TREES.
Pinion and Juniper (P/J) are an integral component of the
sagebrush/grass/pinion/juniper complex while at the same time there are
distinct P/J woodland communities. However, because of past management
and fire suppression, woody species (including sagebrush) have begun to
dominate sites of healthy sagebrush and perennial grasses. This results
in increasingly closed canopy shading out native perennial grasses.
This has the effect of reducing the traditional disturbance regime,
which was renewing the various landscapes. That primary disturbance is
fire.
FIRE IS A NATURAL EVENT.
Fire has historically played a critical, beneficial role as the
major disturbance factor in maintaining healthy landscapes in the Great
Basin.
But increasingly, fire has become a catastrophic threat rather than
a tool for maintaining health. Climate variation, changes in the
disturbance regime from improper grazing, fire suppression, not
aggressively controlling invasives as well as the failure to adapt our
management have all contributed to our current degraded condition.
This has resulted in the domination of woody species in the
herbaceous/sagebrush/pinyon-juniper complex as well as elevated fuel
accumulations in woodlands. As a result, the naturally recurring,
relatively benign, wildland fires of yesteryear, which rejuvenated the
land and released native grasses and wildflowers, giving them
competitive advantage over shrubs have largely disappeared. The
reduction in fine fuels (grass) and increase in woody fuels has
increased the danger of large, dangerous fires that threaten both
people and the Great Basin itself. These fires burn with such heat that
the seed sources below them are destroyed. The resulting decrease in
ecological resiliency to fire favors: accelerating erosion, invasion of
exotic vegetation, reduced diversity, limits habitat for certain high
profile species and, the almost unrecoverable alteration of vegetative
communities.
INVASIVE EXOTIC PLANTS REPLACING NATIVE PLANTS.
Exotic invasives tend to be more adapted to frequent fires and
seize every opportunity to replace perennial grasses. The rapid
expansion of noxious weeds and non-native annual grasses (which are
more fire adaptable), i.e., cheatgrass, have replaced the widespread
native perennial bunchgrasses, wildflowers and shrubs. Entire
mountainsides and/or valleys have lost their ecological diversity as
well as potential for wildlife habitat. Water quality has been degraded
and water quantity decreased. Forage for wild horses and livestock has
become reduced and undependable. Because of this reduction in the
natural resource base, recreational opportunities are declining,
traditional cultural values are at risk and local economies are
threatened. As a result of denuded landscapes, critical topsoil
resources are lost.
I need to stress that all of these problems strongly affect the
people now living in the Great Basin. But, just as importantly, these
problems are also stealing the heritage of this and future generations
which is this unique national ecological treasure. The problems of the
Great Basin can and will be solved by a basic two pronged approach, (1)
the collaboration of citizen groups with land managers and (2) the
application of good science. These problems are being addressed through
improved management supported by collaboration and better science.
OURS IS A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH to a Basin-wide problem. A
collaborative approach is the key to the solutions to these threats.
People solve conservation problems by getting involved. In eastern
Nevada we are marshalling the combined forces of the management
agencies, conservation organizations, wildlife groups, and academic
scientists as well as community leaders and permittees to solve these
problems.
These problems will not be solved without management and that
management must be based on science. The BLM Eastern Nevada Landscape
Restoration Project (ENLRP) is supported by the first four points found
below. The four points that follow are recognized by the Coalition as
critical to achieving the goal of restoring ecological health to the
Great Basin.
1. MANAGEMENT MUST TAKE A LARGE-SCALE APPROACH. The management
must be implemented with the understanding that components of the
landscape are all linked and that evaluating health, not production,
will result in being able to implement management for long-term
benefits for this, and future generations.
2. RESEARCH MUST BE USABLE. Research needed to support management
must be applied research. For instance, we need to better understand
the role of fire, climate and other disturbances in the dynamics of
Great Basin vegetation regimes to enable the systems to manage
themselves. We have to concurrently implement management and research
in an adaptive process. Currently, there is ongoing applied research
looking at the topics of birds and small mammals, hydrology and
cheatgrass control but more is needed.
3. ANALYSIS MUST TELL U.S. ABOUT CONDITION AND HEALTH RATHER THAN
WHAT WE CAN USE. In an innovative move under the ENLRP, the Ely BLM is
using vegetation state and transition models in understanding the
changes that have and are taking place. BLM is also implementing
adaptive management in compliance with legislation and regulations to
improve the management of resources.
4. WE MUST RESIST INVASIVE WEEDS. We need to increase our
knowledge of techniques and develop tools for dealing with invasive
non-natives and support the Tri County Weed District. We also must
increase funding to curb the increase in invasives.
5. A RESEARCH FACILITY. The problems faced in the Great Basin have
commonality with those faced in arid environments throughout the world.
Problems people commonly face include desertification, inadequate
knowledge of landscape scale restoration practices, maintaining water
quality and quantity and developing a perspective of long-term
management goals. Moreover, people often are confronted with major
problems in attempting to attain a level of sustainable land use
because of inadequate knowledge. Acquiring adequate knowledge for
managing the Great Basin is needed and it can come from two sources,
adaptive management (with appropriate monitoring) and applied research.
There is a crying need for a research facility located in Eastern
Nevada to facilitate research, bring research into coordination with
management and act as a central point for Research and restoration
information in the Great Basin. We envision a facility that not only
provides much-needed testing and innovations for restoring the Great
Basin, but also acts as a conduit to share knowledge with other
locations as well as visiting scientists from throughout the globe.
6. THE GREAT BASIN IS SLIPPING AWAY, NOW. We cannot afford to
allow things to go on ``as usual.'' Please see Perryman et al's paper
on the Ecological Cost of Doing Nothing.
7. Pertaining to the healthy forest initiative; unlike in the
forested northwest, in the Great Basin there is no sustainable
COMMERCIAL forest PRODUCT in sufficient quantity and of great enough
value to sustain funding for restoration or management IN THE GREAT
BASIN. It is one potential method for supporting restoration, and while
it may be sustainable, the Great Basin will not produce wood products
in sufficient quantity or quality to support more than a moderate
percentage of the funds needed.
8. FUNDING FOR THESE EFFORTS IS NEEDED so we may slow and then
reverse the decline of the great basin condition.
In CLOSING: The ENLC is an imaginative part of the approach to
solving the problems of the Great Basin. The Great Basin's problems are
landscape in scale, and the health of these landscapes is slipping
away. The ENLC is a partnership of those who care for and work the
land, working side by side with those who manage the land for the
people of our country. And the tools being used are both management and
the best science (both from existing information and applied research)
with the input from many sources to support that management.
We are grateful to this subcommittee for recognizing the serious
problems facing both this region and the nation and thank the Chairman
and members of this subcommittee for the opportunity to share the views
of the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition.
______
Mr. Gibbons. Turn now to Dr. Perryman. Welcome. The floor
is yours.
STATEMENT OF BARRY PERRYMAN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR,
DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA-RENO
Dr. Perryman. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Mr. Gibbons. If you want to pull that microphone just a
little bit closer.
Dr. Perryman. How is this? I thank the Committee for the
opportunity to be able to speak today, and what I'd like to do
really is try and frame what we have already been talking about
in reality a little bit more and deal with the scope of the
problem.
Land managers have over the past several decades suppressed
fires effectively allowing succession, that is the change in
plant community species over time, to proceed to a point where
we now have millions of acres supporting plant communities that
are in very late seral stages, dominated or encroached by woody
species. Many of these sagebrush communities, and that's what
we're talking about today primarily are sagebrush communities
that have trees on them now, have crossed successional
thresholds. The loss of perennial herbaceous understory, that
will require additional inputs of energy and dollars to
accelerate and direct succession in a way that society desires.
We have created a homogenous landscape that now threatens
to limit our management options, reducing our ability to
provide ecosystem services valued by society. We suppressed
fire for the past several decades with the approval of society
because we wanted what the landscape gave us at that time.
In the past we were influenced by the pristine management
paradigm, the idea that ecological systems were static entities
that could be held in a static condition if we protected them
from burning and other disturbances. We desired a condition
that resembled the landscape at the time of European
settlement. We now know that this was an impossible goal. We
cannot go back to the conditions of 1850. However, active,
dynamic, disturbance regimes prior to European settlement
created the landscapes that fostered the values so highly
prized by our society.
Plant communities do not develop to a point and become
static. They continue to develop and change until some
disturbance like fire sets the successional process back to
earlier stages. If we are talking about successional time
scales, recovery and change may be inevitable. However,
centuries and millennial time scales are not acceptable to
society. We must intervene in the successional process on
millions of acres before succession develops stages that are
too expensive or beyond our technological abilities to mitigate
in a reasonable time scale.
We must manage the landscape instead of taking the
protection course that we have been pursuing for the past
several decades. By protecting it from disturbance we severely
limit or destroy our options for the future.
To be successful in this endeavor we as a society must
begin to initiate a paradigm shift with respect to our
management of these lands. Past management approaches have
generally been reactive. For example, large burn areas in
recent years have received concentrated, intense rehabilitation
efforts. The merits of fire rehabilitation are unchallenged and
should continue.
However, reactive management activities have dominated land
management practice while little attention has been given to
proactive management. We must begin to intervene in the
successional process rather than rely entirely on reactive
activities and their associated funding.
We must overcome the institutional inertia within our
society, government, and land management agencies that is
dedicated to the reactive management approach. We must allow
disturbances to be active and manageable on the landscape. In
order to achieve this paradigm shift, we must be more proactive
in our management strategies. In our management strategies
certainly we have to take into consideration the scope of the
problem.
BLM--and Bob can correct me on this--BLM gets about one
dollar an acre to manage lands in Nevada. About a dollar an
acre. Ten dollars an acre would be a good start.
The scope of the problem is amazing. Robin alluded to the
process that's going on out there. We probably--and Robin could
probably give us better figures than I can right now--but we
could probably treat a million acres this year and not gain
anything. The problem is that large behind us. If we treated a
million acres this year, we might just break even.
In 1999, there were approximately 1.8 million acres that
burned in Nevada. Out of that 1.8 million acres, about 400,000
acres received rehabilitation practices, and out of that
400,000 acres, about 80,000 acres received 100 percent native
seed rehab. That's because all of the native seed on the market
was purchased.
We don't have the resources to do what we need to do now.
It's not there. And the process is just continuing to grow and
grow.
What is good habitat today, excellent habitat today, will
not be excellent habitat in 40 years. It changes on the
landscape. And we have to recognize that fact, and I don't
think we do a very good job of that in society as a whole.
But the magnitude of the problem is just immense, and the
seriousness of it, the timeliness of it is strategic. Three
generations from now, two, three generations from now, if we
don't do something on a large scale, we will not see the Great
Basin as we know it today.
That's not my opinion; you can look it up. That's reality.
So thank you.
Mr. Gibbons. Your opinion is very valuable to this
Committee. I was just thinking about the one billion dollars.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Perryman follows:]
Statement of Barry L. Perryman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department
of Animal Biotechnology, University of Nevada-Reno
VIEWPOINT
Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition Position
there are consequences of doing nothing in natural resource management.
what are they?
By Barry L. Perryman, Robert E. Wilson, and William I. Morrill
Fire disturbance has played an integral role in the ecology and
development of semi-arid plant communities throughout western North
America. Altered fire intervals and regimes since European settlement
have led to pervasive alterations in species richness, diversity, fuel
loads, and associated processes such as nutrient cycling and
biogeochemistry within native rangeland plant communities.
Disruptions have occurred at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
Consequently, values prized by society such as water quality and
quantity, minimal soil erosion, wildlife and domestic animal habitat
(including sagebrush and other obligate species), and ecological
integrity have been compromised to varying degrees. This is
particularly true in the sagebrush ecosystems of the western U.S.
Fire intervals and regimes changed in the late 1800s during
European settlement as a result of newly imposed grazing systems for
domestic animals, introduction of exotic plant species, construction of
fire breaks (e.g., roads, crop agriculture), and fire suppression
activities. Consequently, fire frequency, severity, seasonality, and
spatial extent have changed.
For example, at the higher elevations and moisture levels (e.g.,
sagebrush-grassland communities), lengthened fire intervals have
resulted in pinyon and/or juniper encroachment. This has led to
progressive decreases in fine fuels while increasing woody fuel loads.
Species richness and diversity decline dramatically as overstory
canopies close. In contrast, the lower elevation, drier communities
(i.e., Wyoming big sagebrush-grasslands and salt desert shrub
communities) have been invaded by exotic annual grasses (e.g.,
cheatgrass) resulting in increases in fine fuels, decreases in woody
fuels and increased fire frequency.
Cumulative non-ecological results in both of these situations are
an increased risk to human life and property, and incredibly
high fire management costs.
Two Primary Concerns
Two major problems resulting from past fire suppression activities
are common to the sagebrush ecosystem:
1) Longer time periods between fires (lengthened fire intervals) at
higher elevations (higher precipitation zones) have allowed various
junipers and/or pinyon pines to encroach into mountain sagebrush
grassland communities.
In the Great Basin, juniper and pinyon are relatively long-lived
species (approximately 1,000 and 600 years, respectively). Depending on
specific location, U.S. Forest Service researcher Robin Tausch
estimates that 66 to over 90% of individual trees are less than 130
years old. Fire return intervals have increased from 12-25 years to
over 100 years.
These communities lose the perennial herbaceous and shrub
understory as the canopy closes in large part due to competition from
the encroaching conifers. This encroachment further leads to
unmanageable fuel loads and very intense fires resulting in final loss
or elimination of perennial understory species, and loss of the
original sagebrush habitat.
Without a healthy understory, these disturbed communities become
susceptible to annual brome or other invasive species establishment,
further reducing habitat quality for sagebrush obligates and other
species both wild and domestic, that utilize sagebrush habitats.
2) At mid and lower elevations, longer fire intervals have created
decadent, climax sagebrush systems that dominate very large areas on
the land scape.
These communities have lost the perennial herbaceous understory in
large part due to competition from dense competitive sagebrush plants.
The shrub overstory in these systems is continuous and contiguous
leading to fuel continuities that burn hotter and more extensively than
normal.
These areas have also been invaded by the introduced annual brome,
``cheatgrass.'' This species is very successful since there are no
perennial, herbaceous species to compete with. After extensive fires in
these systems, cheatgrass proliferates even more because fire removes
sagebrush (and other shrubs), the only competitor in the system. As
fire intervals become shorter due to the fuel loading of the annual
brome, areas that a single generation ago were sagebrush grasslands,
can be converted to annual grasslands dominated by non-indigenous
species.
The geographic scale of these problems is overwhelming. Millions of
acres are currently in need of fire/fuel management and rehabilitation/
restoration treatments. These problems are common to much of Nevada,
including much of White Pine County.
Consequences Today
Plant community succession is a dynamic process that occurs even in
``hands-off'' management situations. The endpoint of the successional
process is not a static condition, it is in reality a cliff from which
the community can fall, leading to disastrous ecological results.
Consequences of doing nothing are not acceptable societal values.
Intervention in the successional process allows society to maintain
options for the future. For instance, if we continue to allow
encroachment and canopy closure of pinyon/juniper communities into
sagebrush communities, understory species (including both sagebrush and
herbaceous species) will disappear because they cannot compete with the
conifers for water, nutrients, and light.
As these plants die off, bare ground increases under the conifer
canopy. Bare ground is highly susceptible to erosion. A single, major
precipitation event will move millions of tons of topsoil into stream
and riparian systems, reducing water quality everywhere downstream of
the source.
Bare ground is also highly susceptible to invasion by annual brome
grasses and other noxious weeds. Disturbed areas are always colonized
by weedy species, and when there are no native perennial species to act
as a competitive buff e r, introduced annuals (cheatgrass) will
proliferate to a point where only inputs with extremely high economic
costs (reseeding etc.) will mitigate the situation. In both scenarios,
management and value options are limited.
Without topsoil, we cannot expect the area to return to a similar
sagebrush ecosystem without extreme mitigation measures (unless a
several thousand year time period is acceptable to our society!).
An annual grassland will not recover and return to a sagebrush
ecosystem without tremendously expensive inputs and several decades of
time. If the ecological potential of a site is lowered, management and
value options are decreased. For example, we cannot manage for some
types of sage grouse habitat if we have no topsoil on a given area or
if the area is an annual brome grassland.
Intervention in the successional process through management of
introduced fire or other means allows society to maintain management
and societal value options for the future.
The Successional Process
Natural resource or land management is the manipulation of the
successional process so the resource can provide the qualities,
products, and values society desires. As land managers we can only
accelerate and direct succession. We accelerate it by introducing
propagules into disturbed areas rather than waiting for natural
processes such as seed rain to occur.
We direct succession by introducing disturbances such as fire and
herbivory to achieve plant community compositions that provide products
or services determined by society.
Ecologists and land managers understand that a diverse landscape
(in terms of the mix of different plant community types and species
within those communities) provides more opportunities to achieve the
objectives that society desires. In the sagebrush ecosystem, we
currently have a homogenous situation rather than the heterogeneous one
we desire.
Current conditions are a result of many past management practices,
in particular fire suppression. Fires have been passively suppressed
since European settlement by alterations in fuel loads and
establishment of roads, and actively suppressed since about 1940 when
motorized vehicles and aircraft with capacities to haul large
quantities of water became available. For the previous 2.5 million
years (since the beginning of the Pleistocene), fire was prevalent on
the landscape, initiated by both natural and for the last several
millennia, anthropic ignitions by Native Americans. Fire was a
``natural'' intervening disturbance in the successional process,
periodically removing woody vegetation such as sagebrush and pinyon/
juniper, effectively setting the successional process back a few
stages. Succession would then move back to stages that supported more
woody vegetation, and so the process continued with this cyclic nature
providing a heterogeneous landscape.
Land managers have, over the past several decades, suppressed
fires, effectively allowing succession to proceed to a point where we
now have millions of acres supporting plant communities that are in
very late seral stages, dominated or encroached by woody species. Many
of these sagebrush communities have crossed successional thresholds
(e.g., loss of the perennial, herbaceous understory) that will require
additional inputs of energy and dollars to accelerate and direct
succession in a way that society desires. We have created a homogeneous
landscape that now threatens to limit our management options, reducing
our ability to provide ecosystem services valued by society.
We suppressed fire for the past several decades with the approval
of society because we wanted what the landscape gave us at that time.
In the past we were influenced by the pristine-management-paradigm, the
idea that ecological systems were static entities that could be held in
a static condition if we protected them from burning and other
disturbances.
We desired a condition that resembled the landscape at the time of
European settlement. We now know this was an impossible goal.
We cannot go back to the conditions in 1850 AD. However, active
dynamic disturbance regimes prior to European settlement created the
landscape that fostered the values so highly prized by our society.
Plant communities do not develop to a point and become static. They
continue to develop and change until some disturbance (e.g., fire) sets
the successional process back to earlier stages. If we are talking
about successional time scales, recovery and change are inevitable.
However, centuries and millennial time scales are not acceptable to
society.
We must intervene in the successional process on millions of acres
before succession develops stages that are too expensive or beyond our
technological abilities to mitigate in a reasonable time scale.
We must manage the landscape instead of taking the protection
course we have been pursuing for the past several decades. By
protecting it from disturbance, we severely limit or destroy our
options for the future.
To be successful in this endeavor, we as a society must begin to
initiate a paradigm shift with respect to our management of these
lands. Past management approaches have generally been reactive. For
example, large burn areas in recent years have received concentrated,
intense rehabilitation efforts. The merits of fire rehabilitation are
unchallenged and should continue.
However, reactive management activities have dominated land
management practice while little attention has been given to proactive
management. We must begin to intervene in the successional process
rather than rely entirely on reactive activities and their associated
funding.
We must overcome the institutional inertia within our society,
government, and land management agencies that is dedicated to the
reactive management approach. We must allow disturbances to be active
and manageable on the landscape. In order to achieve this paradigm
shift, we must be more proactive in our management strategies.
Between 1994 and 1999, the U.S. taxpayer paid $2,972,473,600 in
fire suppression costs. Reducing fire suppression efforts by only 25%
would have provided a savings of approximately $743 million over the 6-
year period. Funds that could have been invested in restoration
activities to further reduce fire management costs. Over 19 million
acres burned during the period. As a result, many of these acres were
converted to annual grasslands that will require additional funds for
rehabilitation and restoration activities.
The Nature Conservancy and others list invasive species as the
second leading cause of species endangerment nationwide. About 42% of
all federally threatened or endangered species are listed because of
threats from invasive plants. Neil West, Utah State University,
estimates that 25% of the original sagebrush ecosystem is now an annual
cheatgrass/medusa-head rye grassland, and an additional 25% of the
sagebrush ecosystem has only cheatgrass as an understory constituent.
Annual grass invasions may only be the first wave; perennial invasive
species are already making serious inroads into adjoining states and
Nevada as well. Potential subsequent domination by perennial invasive
species will virtually eliminate any resource values for society.
Other costs of not changing our management approach, or the costs
of doing nothing include: accelerated loss of topsoil, reduced water
quality and quantity, riparian zone degradation, loss of riparian zone
and wetland area, loss of wildlife and domestic animal forages and
habitats, loss of wildlife and plant species, loss of species richness
and abundance in general, loss of aesthetic appeal, loss of recreation
potential, loss of western and Native American cultural values and life
ways, loss of civic communities, economic depression in rural areas,
loss of carbon sequestration potential, opportunity costs of fire
suppression activities, lowered air quality, perhaps loss of life and
property, loss of a source of national pride and environmental
influence in the world community.
This trend cannot continue if we wish to preserve our options for
the future. We must change our management paradigm, we must intervene
in the successional process across millions of acres on our western
rangelands or future generations will inherit a landscape devoid of
many of the values we now enjoy.
Note: Viewpoints expressed are those of the individual authors and
not the entire SRM membership.
Other Reading
Tausch, R.J. 1999. Historic pinyon and juniper woodland development.
In: Monsen, S.B. and Stevens, R., comps. Proceedings: ecology
and management of pinyon-juniper communities within the
Interior West; 1997 Sept 15-18; Provo, UT. Proc. RMRS-P-9.
Ogden, Ut: USDA Forest Serv., Rocky Mountain Res. Stat.
West, N.E. 1999. Synecology and disturbance regimes of sagebrush steppe
ecosystems. Pp. 15-26 in Entwistle, P.G., A.M. DeBolt, J.H.
Kaltenecker, and K. Steenhof, compilers. Sagebrush Steppe
Ecosystems Symposium. BLM Pub. No: BLM/ID/PT-001001+1150.
Boise, Id. $$
______
Mr. Gibbons. We will turn now to Mr. Larry Johnson, Eastern
Nevada Landscape Coalition, Board Member. Mr. Johnson, welcome.
Pleasure to have you and see you again. The floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF LARRY JOHNSON, BOARD MEMBER,
EASTERN NEVADA LANDSCAPE COALITION
Mr. Johnson. Vice Chairman Gibbons, thank you very much for
the opportunity to provide testimony on forest and rangeland
health in Nevada's Great Basin.
I'm a Board member of Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition as
a wildlife representative, and as such, I'm also very heavily
involved in a number of wildlife conservation organizations
around the State, predominantly, Nevada Bighorns Unlimited and
the Coalition for Nevada's Wildlife, although I'm a member of
every other sportsman organization you ever heard of.
These wildlife conservation groups are entirely volunteer
entities that raise money, and put in thousands of man-hours
every year for a common goal, and that is to enhance Nevada's
wildlife resources.
We're extremely successful in bighorn sheep and elk and
mule deer, antelope, sage grouse, fisheries type programs
around the State.
We're heavily involved in big game reintroductions, water
development, habitat improvement, wildfire reseeding,
education, research and land planning. Although we're pretty
good at what we do, and proud of our successes, we're faced
with many challenges which at times almost seem overwhelming,
and I have to echo essentially what Dr. Perryman said. Our
challenges are great.
Most notable of these challenges from a wildland standpoint
is our rapid loss of habitat. And in Nevada, this destruction
of wildlife habitat is primarily due to wildfire followed by an
invasion of non-native plant species such as cheatgrass,
pinyon-juniper intrusion into sagebrush and native grass
communities, and third, overpopulation of wild horses. Major
problem in the State of Nevada since we have between half and
two-thirds of the population of all wild horse and burros in
North America that reside here. And vastly over-appropriate
management levels.
The alarming result of our last loss of habitat has been
steady decline of sagebrush-obligate species. Now we monitor
those that are of most importance to sportsmen very carefully
through our State Department of Wildlife. So we have biannual
surveys of mule deer as well as other big game animals.
Tremendous interest in sage grouse. A lot of effort and funds
that are going into monitoring, trying to figure out why we
have a steady decline of these species, not only in Nevada but
essentially across the West as well.
But these species of mule deer and sage grouse really are
just reflecting what is happening to the myriad of other
species that are dependent upon healthy sagebrush communities
as well.
As has been stated several times here today, we lose over
50,000 acres annually to pinyon-juniper invasion. Springs dry
up because these woodlands use the water that would be
available to wildlife. The closed canopy chokes out the
understory of shrubs and grasses necessary to support wildlife,
and entire watersheds are degraded. The pinyon-juniper canopy
becomes so dense that the inevitable lightning strike starts a
wildfire that is uncontrollable and burns so hot that it
sterilizes the ground of its native seed bed. Guess what? We
get cheatgrasses, we get invasive species coming back in.
Since inadequate funding or manpower exists to adequately
restore the huge burns, and we saw, just heard the very, very
small percentage of land that was restored after the '99 burn,
groups like Nevada Bighorns Unlimited threw practically all of
our annual budget into purchasing seed that year. We almost did
nothing else but purchase seed.
But a losing battle. The end result is a steady decline in
the wildlife, and of course, the extreme danger to humans from
both fire and the subsequent flooding. We don't mention loss of
grazing for domestic livestock.
This is a loss to the public in general.
At the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, our board has
long recognized the need to reverse this alarming trend. We
urge a proactive and much more cost effective approach of
thinning pinyon-juniper in contract to the present costly
ineffective reaction of fighting fire and reseeding afterwards.
Our volunteer board, which represents ranching,
environmentalists, wildlife, small business, local government
and others takes away from their businesses and private lives
for common goal and that is to create a better Nevada. We're
strong supporters of the multiple uses of our public land. We
know that all of our special interests must work together for
this common goal.
We recognize our efforts will not be realized immediately
but will greatly benefit future generations. However, our
biggest mistake would be to do nothing. Thank you.
Mr. Gibbons. Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
Statement of Larry J. Johnson, Board Member, Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition, Director, Nevada Bighorns Unlimited--Reno, Chairman,
Coalition for Nevada's Wildlife
Chairman Pombo and Committee Members:
Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on the forest
and rangeland health in Nevada's Great Basin. I am a Board Member of
the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition as a wildlife representative. I
am also heavily involved in wildlife conservation organizations across
the state. I am a director of Nevada Bighorns Unlimited--Reno and
Chairman of the Coalition for Nevada's Wildlife. These wildlife
conservation groups are entirely volunteer entities that focus on the
enhancement of our wildlife resources through big game reintroduction,
water development, habitat improvement, wildfire reseeding, education,
research, and land planning. Nevada Bighorns Unlimited, for instance,
in partnership with our state Department of Wildlife and federal land
management agencies, has reintroduced bighorn sheep back into over 50
mountain ranges in Nevada. (Bighorn sheep faced extinction by man only
a century ago.) We believe this is the most ambitious and successful
big game reintroduction program in the world--largely funded by private
donations and volunteer efforts.
In spite of our successes, we are faced with many challenges which
at times seem overwhelming. Most notable of these challenges is our
rapid loss of wildlife habitat--not only in Nevada, but across the
Great Basin. In Nevada this destruction of wildlife habitat is
primarily due to:
1. Wildfire followed by the invasion of non-native plant species,
such as cheat grass;
2. Pinion/juniper intrusion into sagebrush and native grass
communities; and,
3. Wild horse overpopulation.
The alarming result has been the steady decline of sagebrush-
obligate species--notably the mule deer and the sage grouse. These
species are heavily monitored and are indicative of the adverse impacts
on a myriad of other wildlife species depending on healthy rangeland.
We lose over 50,000 acres annually to pinion/juniper invasion in
the BLM Ely District alone. Springs dry up, the closed timber canopy
chokes out the understory of shrubs and grasses necessary to support
wildlife, and entire watersheds are degraded. The pinion/juniper canopy
becomes so dense that when the inevitable lightning strike starts a
wildfire, it is uncontrollable and burns so hot that it sterilizes the
ground of its native seed bed. Since inadequate funding or manpower
exists to adequately restore the huge burns, a permanent loss of
wildlife habitat results. The end result is a decline in wildlife,
extreme danger to humans and wildlife from fire and subsequent
flooding, loss of grazing for domestic livestock--a loss to the public
in general.
At the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition our board has long-
recognized the need to reverse this alarming trend. We urge a proactive
and much more cost-effective approach of thinning pinion/juniper in
contrast to the present costly and ineffective reaction to fighting
fire and reseeding afterward. Our volunteer board (representing
ranching, environmentalists, wildlife, small business, and local
government) takes time away from their businesses and private lives for
a common goal--to create a better Nevada. We are strong supporters of
multiple uses on our public lands, and we know that all of our special
interests must work together for this common goal. We fully recognize
our efforts will not be realized immediately, but will greatly benefit
future generations; however, our biggest mistake would be to do
nothing.
Thank you for your consideration.
______
Mr. Gibbons. We will turn now to Mrs. Rose Strickland. It
is always a pleasure to see you, Rose. Welcome. She is the
Chairman of the Public Lands Committee of the Toiyabe Sierra
Club for the Nevada Eastern Sierra Chapter.
Welcome, Rose. The floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF ROSE STRICKLAND, CHAIRMAN, PUBLIC LANDS COMMITTEE,
TOIYABE SIERRA CLUB, EASTERN SIERRA CHAPTER
Ms. Strickland. Thank you, Mr. Gibbons. Thank you for
inviting me to testify today on forest and rangeland health in
the Great Basin.
My name is Rose Strickland. I'm a citizen, conservationist
in Nevada. As a Resource Advisory Committee member I helped
develop the Nevada standards for healthy rangelands. I was
appointed to the Governor's sage grouse team which developed
our State's conservation strategy, selected to participate in
our Western Governor's Association panel on how that strategy
is working.
Great Basin ecosystems are threatened with a number of
risks, as you have heard today from other panel members. These
are not new problems. Aldo Leopold wrote about the cheatgrass
problem in Sand County Almanac in 1949. But our collective
efforts since 1949 have not been sufficient to stop cheatgrass
invasion or other problems.
We have come a long way. We have big horn sheep in most of
our ranges in Nevada. And the elk are coming back. So we are
making some progress.
The BLM's Great Basin Restoration Initiative is a good
start at assessing resource conditions and prioritizing
restoration efforts. Restoring healthy rangelands and forests
is a powerful idea. Everyone can support this.
But we have yet to fully agree on what restoration is. Is
it pre-settlement conditions, more livestock forage, more elk
or sage grouse? Are pinyon-juniper woodlands invading shrub
lands or simply responding to unwise land management practices
which help the trees out-compete shrubs and grasses?
Developing restoration goals and objectives through the
current forest and public land use planning processes will give
us a chance to build common definitions in a restoration vision
based on the best available science as well as to help us
resolve our differences on specific sites. Conversely, making
restoration an internal agency process with little or no
community or public participation will result in very obvious
future environmental disasters, a colossal waste of taxpayer
funds, and continued polarization rather than widespread public
support for restoration.
Mr. Abbey mentioned the only lawsuit in Nevada challenging
a legally flawed fuels reduction project, and the settlement
which resolved the environmental and legal issues, and the
smaller more effective project was authorized to proceed, and I
believe it has. The Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition was
involved in this project, but its role in its design is
unclear. The Sierra Club has recently joined the coalition to
support its collaborative approach to restoration but expects
the proposals to be effective and environmentally sound.
Many Nevadans participated in an earlier collaborative
process called CRMP but were disappointed in the lack of
results. However, the coalition is a new effort which we will
help to succeed.
An integral part of restoration planning is determining why
conditions are not healthy and correcting the causes of the
problems. These include, for example, fire policies which
result in excessive fuels buildup. In Nevada, total fire
suppression is the problem.
On the other hand, short-term, expensive, band-aid
solutions may be exactly what is needed in situations where
human lives and property, critical watersheds, or invaluable
wildlife habitat are at risk from wildfires.
Because we don't know exactly what healthy conditions look
like in Great Basin ecosystems, our approach should be
conservative. Using pilot projects we can answer the many
scientific questions about restoration on specific sites.
For example, Partners in Flight has identified nine bird
species dependent on pinyon-juniper woodlands on its North
American continental watch list. Pinyon-juniper woodlands in
the Great Basin support over 20 percent of the world's
populations of these birds. Our restoration efforts should not
accelerate declining trends of these species which would lead
to the need for more listings.
What can we do in the long term to achieve our restoration
goals? Fully implementing forest plan standards and the BLM
standards for healthy rangelands would greatly accelerate
progress toward restoration.
In conclusion, many of us are urging Congress to respond to
the serious threats to Great Basin ecosystems by providing more
funds for restoration efforts being initiated by the Forest
Service, the BLM, and Western States and communities.
The growing urgency to address these threats is uniting all
Nevadans. Whether we enjoy the public lands for hunting,
fishing or bird watching, for making our livelihoods from
grazing, minerals, or energy, for relying on its clean water
supplies, for experiencing wilderness, for providing scenic
beauty and spiritual inspiration, all of us recognize that our
future well-being depends on the restoration of healthy Great
Basin national forests and public lands.
Thank you for providing an opportunity for Nevadans to
express to you today our deep concerns about the need for
restoration and describe many of the ways we are addressing
restoration challenges and opportunities in the Great Basin.
Mr. Gibbons. Thank you very much, Rose. We appreciate your
comments as well.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Strickland follows:]
Statement of Rose Strickland, Chairman, Public Lands Committee,
Toiyabe Sierra Club, Nevada Eastern Sierra Chapter
Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to testify today on forest
and rangeland health in the Great Basin.
I am Rose Strickland, a citizen conservationist in Nevada. As a
member of BLM's Nevada Resource Advisory Committee, I helped develop
standards and guidelines for healthy rangelands. Currently, I am the
appointed environmental representative on the Nevada Governor's Sage
Grouse Conservation Planning Team, and participated on a Nevada panel
at the Western Governor's Association meeting in Salt Lake City last
year to discuss how the process is working. I also am a member of the
Washoe-Modoc local planning group which has completed conservation
plans for 6 Sage Grouse population areas in Northwestern Nevada and
Eastern California.
Great Basin ecosystems are threatened with a number of risks, as
you've heard today from other panel members. Increasing catastrophic
wildfires, expanding noxious weed invasions, increasing loss and
fragmentation of sagebrush communities and wildlife populations
dependent on them, declining conditions of riparian areas are also
adversely affecting our communities dependent on public resources and
also dependent on clean water supplies from public watersheds. These
are not ``new'' problems. Aldo Leopold wrote about the cheat grass
problem in SAND COUNTY ALMANAC in 1949. But our collective efforts
since 1949 have not been sufficient to correct cheat grass invasion or
other problems.
The BLM's Great Basin Restoration Initiative is a good start at
identifying our resources, assessing their conditions, determining
which are at risk, and prioritizing restoration activities based on
need and potential effectiveness. Restoring healthy rangelands and
forests is a powerful idea--everyone can support this. But we have yet
to fully agree on what restoration is: Is it pre-settlement conditions?
More forage for livestock? More elk or Sage Grouse? Are pinyon-juniper
woodlands ``invading'' shrub lands, or simply responding to unwise land
management practices which help the trees out-compete shrubs and
grasses? Developing restoration goals and objectives through the
current forest and public land use planning processes will give us a
chance to build common definitions and a restoration vision based on
the best available science, as well as to help resolve our differences
on specific sites. Keeping the public out of the restoration process,
not assessing environmental impacts, and not basing agency actions on
the best available science will result in very obvious future
environmental disasters, a colossal waste of taxpayer funds, and
continued polarization, rather than widespread public support for
restoration.
I know of only one lawsuit in Nevada challenging 2 legally flawed
fuels reduction projects. An out-of-court settlement resolved the
environmental and legal issues and the smaller, but more effective,
projects were authorized to proceed. The Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition was involved in these two projects, but its role in their
design is unclear. The Sierra Club has joined the Coalition to support
its collaborative approach to restoration, but expects its proposals to
be effective and environmentally sound. Many Nevadans participated in
an earlier collaborative process called CRMP--cooperative resource
management planning--but were disappointed in the lack of results
despite hundreds of hours of meetings, plans, etc. But the Coalition is
a new effort, which we hope will succeed.
An integral part of restoration planning is determining ``why''
conditions are not healthy, and correcting the causes of the problems.
Rather than spending scarce restoration funds on ``band aid
solutions,'' projects which treat symptoms, the Forest Service and the
BLM should address the underlying management problems which are putting
our ecosystems at risk. These include, for example, livestock grazing
practices, indiscriminate off-road vehicle and other recreational uses,
and fire policies which result in excessive fuels buildup. In Nevada,
total fire suppression IS the problem and, unfortunately, national
forests and BLM offices are being forced to take their fuels reduction
budget to pay the costs for total fire suppression. To continue
programs which are causing the need for restoration is not sound public
policy.
On the other hand, short-term, expensive Band-Aid solutions may be
exactly what is needed in situations where human lives and property,
critical watersheds, or invaluable wildlife habitat are at risk from
wildfires. These emergency measures should be restricted to areas of
greatest risk. The Forest Service and the BLM should analyze which
areas in Nevada have experienced the greatest number and severity of
wildfires in the last decade and concentrate their resources on these
areas first. In Nevada, most recent fires have occurred in sagebrush
communities which are then trapped in the cheat grass-fire cycle, less
so in our pinyon-juniper woodlands.
Because we don't know exactly what healthy conditions look like in
Great Basin ecosystems, our approach should be conservative, using
experiments and demonstration projects which will answer the many
scientific and social questions of where, how much, how, and what we
can ``restore'' on specific kinds of sites and using project monitoring
for adaptive management. For example, Partners in Flight have
identified 9 bird species, dependent on pinyon-juniper woodlands, on
its North American continental watch list. Pinyon-juniper woodlands in
the Great Basin support over 20% of the world's populations of these
birds. Our restoration efforts should not further jeopardize the
existence of these species, leading to more listings under the
Endangered Species Act. Utilizing the Nevada Sage Grouse Conservation
Plan, the Nevada Bird Conservation Plan, and other plans to restore
healthy wildlife populations and habitats should help us avoid future
train wrecks for birds and wildlife in our restoration efforts. The
Forest Service has published two conference proceedings on Pinyon-
Juniper ecology and management from which Best Management Practices can
be developed.
What can we do, in the long-term, to achieve our restoration goals?
Fully implementing Forest Plan standards and the BLM's Standards for
Healthy Rangelands would greatly accelerate progress towards
restoration. While we've come a long way from historic, unmanaged
livestock grazing which so altered Great Basin plant communities, we
still have a long way to go. From the 2002 Public Land Statistics,
healthy riparian-wetland goals are still to be achieved: only 7.4
percent of riparian areas in Nevada is meeting management objectives;
only 7% is at potential natural community; and only 48% of wetland/
riparian areas is in proper functioning condition.
In conclusion, many of us are urging Congress to respond to the
many threats to healthy Great Basin ecosystems by providing more funds
for restoration efforts being initiated by the Forest Service, the BLM,
and Western states and communities. Many federal funds are currently
being matched by state and community funds and volunteer hours. While
additional funds will help, our land management agencies must use those
funds wisely by addressing the management problems causing ecosystem
health problems. The growing urgency to address these threats is
uniting all Nevadans. Whether we enjoy the public lands for hunting,
fishing, or birdwatching, for making our livelihoods from grazing,
minerals, or energy, for relying on its clean water supplies, for
experiencing wilderness, for providing scenic beauty and spiritual
inspiration, we all recognize that our future well-being depends on the
restoration of healthy Great Basin national forests and public lands.
Thank you for providing an opportunity for Nevadans to express to
you today our deep concerns about the need for restoration and describe
many of the ways we are addressing restoration challenges and
opportunities in the Great Basin.
REFERENCES:
Governor Guinn's Sage Grouse Conservation Planning Team Nevada Sage
Grouse Conservation Strategy, edited by Larry A. Neel, October
2001.
Leopold, Aldo Sand County Almanac, 1949.
BLM Out of Ashes, An Opportunity, November 1999.
BLM The Great Basin: Healing the Land, April 2000.
Rich, T. D. et al Draft Partners In Flight North American Landbird
Conservation Plan, 2003.
Nevada Partners in Flight Working Group Nevada Partners in Flight Bird
Conservation Plan, edited by Larry A. Neel, November 29, 1999.
USDA: Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station Proceedings:
Ecology and Management of Pinyon-Juniper Communities within the
Interior West, June 1999.
USDA: Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station Proceedings--
Pinyon-Juniper Conference, January 1987.
USDI, BLM Public Land Statistics, 2002.
______
Mr. Gibbons. I'm going to start off and begin by asking
each of you to sort of pull out your crystal ball and look 50
years into the future. I know that's going to be difficult. I
know some of you are probably saying that's an impossible task.
But I just want you to give me your opinion of what you would
expect Nevada to look like if we were to continue down the road
of status quo. In other words, doing what we're doing today,
what would we look like 50 years from now? I know that a lot of
you don't want to answer this question because it's a pretty
vague question.
But let me start with Steve and see what your comments are.
Mr. Robinson. Well, I'll try to sort of answer your
question, Congressman.
I think there will be, if things are maintained as they are
now, suppression efforts with fire the way they are, the
deterioration of the landscape the way it is, the immensity of
the fires that we will have to fight over the next decade, for
instance, I think will lead to a public reaction that will
force us into doing something, to force us into taking more
radical action than probably we're prepared politically to do
now.
So I guess my thinking--I think fairly optimistic about the
long-term condition because I think in the shorter term,
people, the public, will force us to do something if we don't
do it very quickly.
Mr. Gibbons. OK. Dr. Hiatt.
Dr. Hiatt. I guess I would look back and see what some of
these areas looked like 50 years ago and see what they look
like today. And having seen many photographs taken in those
times and looking at those same areas today, I see areas that
had scattered trees and were mostly sagebrush and grasslands at
that time now being heavily dominated by trees.
So if I had to guess what it would look like in 50 years, I
would guess that we will probably have somewhere at least five
million more acres of tree-dominated land than we have today,
but not all of that would just be the case. We would also have
fire. Those areas where we have fire will probably turn in
large part to things like cheatgrass and other noxious weeds.
So we will have an area that's degraded in a little bit
different fashion than it is today. We will have areas that
today are sagebrush and grass that will be pinyon and juniper,
and those areas that are pinyon and juniper will be cheatgrass
or other noxious weeds.
And I think that it's not going to be a picture that we're
going to be very happy about 50 years from now if we don't
change our management strategy.
Mr. Gibbons. Very good.
Dr. Perryman.
Dr. Perryman. We're going to have a whole lot of more bare
ground, I think. And bare ground is a place where invasive
weeds can get. It's a place where erosion occurs. It's where
water quality goes down. And we're going to have a lot more
bare ground.
There may be an intervening period where we continue a
refuels buildup, but at some point in time there is going to be
a fire year or sequence of fire years, and we haven't taken
fire out of this system. We have only kind of pushed it back a
little bit. It's going to get hotter, and it's going to get
greater in scale.
At some point there's going to be a fire event, whether
it's 1 year or a group of years, and we're going to be left
with bare ground, and once that happens, you begin to lose
topsoil, then you have lost your options of what you can and
can't do. And that's really what it boils down to here I think.
Mr. Gibbons. Mr. Johnson. Fifty years down the road, bigger
sheep?
Mr. Johnson. Skinnier sheep.
No, I want to take a little bit different twist. Although I
agree with everything that has been said, the impacts of those
results are what I probably would like to address.
There has been in the past 30 years reduction in grazing
AUM's. They have been cut in half in the last 30 years. The
results of what has been forecasted here, we have got a lot of
ranchers who are barely hanging on today that this will put
under. That industry is going to go away for us.
From a wildlife standpoint, the effects again will be
devastating to us, but on the local communities, the outdoor
recreation, the agriculture dollars, all of this that goes away
will so strongly impact these small local communities that they
are going to be fighting for their very existence, in my
opinion. And that is what I see will be the long-range effect
of all this.
Mr. Gibbons. Rose.
Ms. Strickland. Mr. Gibbons, there are--
Mr. Gibbons. Make sure you use the mike.
Ms. Strickland. There are two possible scenarios. On the
good end of the scenario, we will pull ourselves together and
our resources together, and we will make significant progress
toward restoring health and sustaining our natural systems we
have been talking to you about. Even with our limited
resources.
The bad scenario, I think, what we'll see is landscapes
dominated by cheatgrass and other weeds. We're going to see a
tremendous loss of our wildlife and our birds. And we're going
to see the livestock industry collapse, and we're going to see
a lot poorer communities, if they are still here, and I'd say
just briefly, Nevada will look like the wasteland that the rest
of the country thinks that we are. And we know that we're not.
Mr. Gibbons. And that's true.
I guess my question, of course, goes to when you talk about
$10 an acre as a nice start, it is a nice start. And I think
we're spending now just with the Forest Service about $200
million just for the planning and other purposes that go on for
management of our forest alone. When you start talking about
restoration dollars, management dollars, and you start talking
in the billions of dollars, of course, then we're asking does
the taxpayer foot this bill or should we be looking at other
ways to manage government better so that we are more efficient
with the dollars we spend.
To that end we have a process in this State where lands
that are sold in Las Vegas produce hundreds and hundreds of
millions of dollars of resources. Should those dollars be spent
on the operation and management of the public lands rather than
on the acquisition of more lands that add to the problem of not
being able to manage the ones we have? What's your opinion on
that? Yes, Dr. Hiatt.
Dr. Hiatt. As one who was actually involved in the original
design of Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, the
design at the time was the thought was we really need to
purchase some lands which are going to disappear, some
privately held lands which have very, very high wildlife values
primarily. These are the unique areas where water is found.
Kind of a scarce commodity in Nevada. And what we're now faced
with is a twofold issue, if you will.
We're seeing monies raised which are larger than we had
anticipated from the Southern Nevada, from the sale of lands
there, and we're also looking very probably at one of the old
truisms and that is that spending always expands faster than
income. And so there will be no problem getting rid of this
money, if that is what people are really worried about. People
are lined up at the door in Clark County figuring out ways to
spend that.
One of the original inclusions in the Act was for
expenditure of those funds outside of Clark County as well as
within Clark County. And I thought then and I still think that
that's appropriate.
And various things may be--various projects may be
certainly worthy of funding, but when we look at the magnitude
of the problem over Nevada and to think that we're going to be
able to generate the amount of funds on a multi-decadal basis
to fund all the restoration efforts is probably over-
optimistic.
If I might make another statement. Robin Tausch said
something that was kind of quietly stated in his normal
fashion. But he indicated that we're going to have to basically
bring all of our collective wisdom to bear on ways to design
projects which will, while implemented on a small scale, have
effects far beyond that in terms of what they lead to, in terms
of how we can control fire on a large basis.
In other words, fire as we have heard is not necessarily
bad per se. If we have immense fire and it burns very, very
hot, that is a big problem. But if we can break up fuels such
that over time we can reduce the fuel loading and have natural
benign fire again, we will go a long ways toward solving the
problems that we have.
The idea that just mechanical thinning will do it I think
is naive. If you go out to the places where mechanical thinning
has and is taking place, if you look at places where they have
had fuel wood cuttings, if you look at where they are working
right here outside of Ely today, you will see that those areas
are full of little trees. They are six inches to a foot high.
And in 20 years we will be back where we are today without
fire.
Fire is a great leveling effect, and it basically brings
everything back down to ground zero, if you will. And grasses
and sagebrush which grow faster than trees will have an
advantage in that case. But if all we do is remove the big
trees and we leave the little trees, we're going to be right
back where we started before you know it.
Mr. Gibbons. I was interested in your comments, but I was
also aware that Dr. Tausch indicated that the use of fire in
the pinyon-juniper environment was not advisable.
Dr. Hiatt. I think he can certainly speak for himself. And
what was indicated was that fire alone in a dense closed canopy
system is going to be a catastrophic problem, but with some
tree thinning reduction and then use of fire, we can bring fire
back into its natural sequence.
Mr. Gibbons. OK. Well, you have clarified in my mind what
he said. I thank you for that.
The State of Nevada, Mr. Robinson, what's the State of
Nevada's expenditures today in terms of working to create
healthy forests? What does the State of Nevada put out in terms
of its total resources?
Mr. Robinson. I don't have a total figure for you. I know
that as has been mentioned, the National Fire Plan, Federal
funds that we bring in are about three-and-a-half million
dollars a year to help fund a lot of those projects on State
and private lands throughout the State.
But returning to your question, I think it's connected, the
use of some of those funds from the Southern Nevada sales, one
of the things we'd like to encourage and one of the things the
Governor has bought into is the BLM, Bob Abbey's idea of the
Great Basin Initiative and utilization of some funds there
which the State could buy into and could be part of. We're
convinced that's the type of thing that needs to be done.
And it's not a tremendous amount of funds that we'd be
talking about out of that total percentage that comes out of
the Southern Nevada act. Probably of the hundreds of millions
we're talking about there, I think some of the initiatives that
BLM has come up with are in the 10 to 20 million dollar area.
We could really start to make a difference outside the Clark
County area, and we'd like to begin to do that and encourage
that that be done.
Mr. Gibbons. Let me ask a different question. We have got
about 1 minute left before we have to yield this room back up.
Dr. Perryman, let me interrupt your deep thinking process
there.
Dr. Perryman. Not hard.
Mr. Gibbons. I want to ask a question. When you talk about
the urban wildland interface or the urban forest interface, a
lot of people talk about a setback of distance that is usually
less than a quarter of a mile or somewhere in there. What
should that interface be in a pinyon-juniper environment?
Dr. Perryman. That's a good question. If the urban
interface--this is how I would answer the question. In the
urban interface, if the urban area is actually located in what
has been a sagebrush system for the last several hundred if not
several thousand years, then it should be quite a large setback
because it should not be a pinyon-juniper system, it should be
a sagebrush system. And that's what we're really talking about
here. The encroachment of P-J is down the hill into the
sagebrush and up the hill into the traditional woodlands. So
we're running the risk of losing our traditional woodlands and
the sagebrush system.
So I would--my position on that would be if the urban
interface area is sitting in what should be a sagebrush system,
there shouldn't be very many trees there at all. And so it
shouldn't--the question should be moot really.
Mr. Gibbons. Let me go back to Mr. Robinson there because I
want to talk about fire in the urban wildland or urban forest
interface. How far back should that interface boundary be in a
pinyon-juniper environment?
Mr. Robinson. Congressman, if you are talking about
defensible space, which I think you are referring to,
traditionally on flat land we talk about like 30 feet around
residences. Landscaping that is not necessarily fire--at least
fire resistant.
If you are on a slope, if you are on a hill, the margin and
the distance has to be greater, of course. But all of that, as
you know, depends on the density of the forest year round, the
conditions that happen to be there.
What we have started to do, by we, I mean the Federal and
State agencies both, and we use the local fire departments,
too, we will go out to a subdivision before it is built and
take a look at it and make suggestions on how it should be
landscaped and those kind of things before the homes are built.
And that service is being taken advantage of now. Whereas 10
years ago it wasn't used at all.
Mr. Gibbons. I wanted to ask Dr. Hiatt, and I have asked so
many questions, I can't remember whether I have done this or
not, did I ask you in your opinion, from your testimony, what
your impression of what a large-scale approach would be to this
treatment? What are you talking about in terms of when you say
large scale? Is it 5,000 acres, is it a hundred, is it a
million?
Dr. Hiatt. In terms of the overall number of acres that
need to be dealt with?
Mr. Gibbons. Right.
Dr. Hiatt. It is hundreds of thousands to millions. Does
that mean that that's all in one place one at one time? No, it
doesn't mean that.
It's sort of think globally, act locally, type of situation
in which we would look at individual watersheds, individual
drainages, to see what worked there and what would enhance
habitat and reduce fuel loadings. We think about this on a
landscape scale.
Mr. Gibbons. If we are losing 50,000 acres a year, we have
just got to do 50,000 a year.
Dr. Hiatt. I said hundreds of thousands to millions.
Mr. Gibbons. That is a year, per year?
Dr. Hiatt. That is what we need to do I think starting in
the near future. In other words, if we only did 50,000 acres a
year, as you have heard from me and other people here, we would
just sort of be like the drowning man keeping his mouth above
water but never making it closer to shore. We want to get
closer to shore.
Mr. Gibbons. Rose.
Ms. Strickland. Mr. Gibbons, working on the sage grouse
teams both at the State level and at the local level, our prime
objective is to keep the good habitat that we have, don't lose
it to fires or to other kinds of fragmentation, and we are--we
also have a large and optimistic goal. It is about a hundred
thousand acres a year doing restoration projects in the
sagebrush to restore the values for sage grouse.
I actually see that we can be combining some of these
different programs and needs and working together so that we
can actually--50,000 sounds like a lot, but if you think 50,000
over the entire State and some of it is being done for urban
interface, some of it is being done for sage grouse, some of it
might be done for elk, we may be able to make those kinds of
goals.
Mr. Gibbons. It is a big project, big problem. It is going
to require big outlays of resources for a solution that's going
to be a long time in the coming, and I hope that we haven't
started too late.
As I mentioned earlier, we were recently in Lake Arrowhead,
California, which is San Bernardino County, and the forest
there is dead. It is a massive forest and it is dead. Maybe one
out of ten trees is alive in that forest. It is just standing
there, and unfortunately, today it's probably on the verge of
being burned, and all those homes and people's lives are just
at risk.
And I see that as an indicator that we have waited too long
in some areas to take the appropriate steps to do the things
that we needed to do years ago to prevent the forest from
dying. And it will take a century if not longer for that forest
to return, which is the real tragedy that I see.
And I don't want to see us, the State of Nevada, the people
who live and love this land, to suffer the same consequence. In
other words, by being timid and not taking bold aggressive
steps to do what we need to do or should have done earlier,
lose a great part of our State the way I see California going
in that regard.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have run out of time. I did want
to mention to the people in the audience who want to have an
opportunity to submit testimony, you can if you have it written
today submit it or you can within the next 10 days submit any
kind of written testimony to the Committee that will be
included in the remarks of this Committee's hearings as well.
We would hope that you take the time to write and include those
remarks for our Committee's effort.
Mr. Gibbons. But most importantly, I want to thank all of
you for coming here today. I want to thank our witnesses who
have traveled far distances and taken time to write up and
prepare remarks to be able to deliver to this Committee today.
We will and probably expect written questions to be made
available to some of the witnesses here today, and if we send
you written questions to help us better understand your
testimony or direction of the information that we want to have
for this Committee, we'd ask that you answer the questions and
submit them back to us also in a timely fashion so that they
can be included in the record as well.
With that, I want to once again thank everyone for their
participation. I want to thank the audience for staying through
this, and with that, we will call this hearing closed and see
you the next time.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]