Here is a weekly digest of on-line news pertinent to forestry in California provided by University of California Cooperative Extension Natural Resources Advisor Greg Giusti (gagiusti@ucdavis.edu):
California looks at endangered status for American pika, Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 05, 2012
State wildlife officials are considering whether the American pika needs protection as an endangered species. The tiny member of the rabbit family, a high-mountain resident, is thought to be threatened by climate change. In 2009, the state Fish and Game Commission rejected protecting the pika under the California Endangered Species Act. At the time, there was little evidence that pika numbers in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere were shrinking.....
U.S. weighs protection for Sierra Nevada red fox, By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 04, 2012
Federal officials are considering whether to protect the Sierra Nevada red fox under the Endangered Species Act. Responding to a petition from the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday that there is enough information to consider protecting the fox....
STUDY: Yellowstone Wolves Helps Trees Rebound, Matthew Brown, Huffington Post, January 3, 2012
BILLINGS, Mont. — The return of gray wolves has dramatically altered the landscape in portions of Yellowstone National Park, as new trees take root in areas where the predators have curbed the size of foraging elk herds, according to scientists in a new study. Stands of aspen, willow and cottonwood are expanding in areas where for decades dense elk populations prevented new growth, said study author William Ripple from Oregon State University.....
Supreme Court takes up property rights dispute, In a cause celebre for the right, an Idaho couple seeks a hearing on an EPA warning that a dry lot for their dream home is protected 'wetlands.' By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times, January 3, 2012
Mike and Chantell Sackett wanted to live on scenic Priest Lake in Idaho but couldn't afford it. So they bought a residential lot across the road that offered a distant view of the water, clearing the land and laying gravel. But instead of building their dream home, the Sacketts found themselves enmeshed in a four-year legal battle with the Environmental Protection Agency over whether their dry lot is a protected "wetlands" and possibly off-limits for building......
Farm groups fight fire fee, State fire agency attempts to fill $50 million budget hole, By TIM HEARDEN, Capital Press, December 29, 2011
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Farm groups vow to continue to fight state plans to charge some 800,000 rural property owners an annual fee of as much as $150 per structure for fire protection. The fees were set as part of the 2011-12 budget package, which aims to raise $50 million to offset cuts to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.......
National Park Service has new land-grabbing tool, By: Ron Arnold, Washington Examiner, 12/29/11
Big Green has an unlikely new sales pitch to convince Congress to fund ever-expanding land grabs by the National Park Service -- save wildlife migration. A map overlay showing all the U.S. wildlife migration paths would blot out nearly half the nation -- a very clever diagram for empire-building bureaucrats. The obscure but well-heeled Wildlife Conservation Society (2010 assets $764 million) unveiled the idea last week in "Spectacular Migrations in the Western U.S.," a 45-page report on the purportedly urgent need for a widespread network of wildlife migration corridors to avert countless extinctions......
County steps up support for logger in battle with Forest Service, Dan McDonald, Plumas County News, 12/28/2011
The largest employer in Greenville said it might be too late to save his logging business and the 30-plus jobs that go with it. But Plumas County supervisors said they are going to keep doing “everything in our power” to help. Supervisors Robert Meacher and Jon Kennedy met with Regional U.S. Forest Service Deputy Dan Jiron Thursday, Dec. 22, to plead the case of Pew Forest Products......
Battle Creek review shows system works, Redding Record Searchlight Editorial, Monday, December 26, 2011
It's no surprise that Sierra Pacific Industries would face tough scrutiny for its aggressive industrial forestry in the headwaters of Battle Creek, which is the subject of an expensive state and federal effort, finally launched in the fall of 2010 after a decade of study, to remove several old Pacific Gas and Electric Dams and open spawning grounds for wild salmon. A broad mosaic of clear-cuts and improved fish habitat just don't seem like a natural fit. But after complaints by a local environmental group, the Battle Creek Alliance, led the state to order a review this fall of logging in the watershed and its effect on water quality, the apparent verdict is in. .....
Rural residents protest new fire protection fee, Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, December 23, 2011
Starting next year, hundreds of thousands of Californians, including tens of thousands of Bay Area property owners, will be hit with a new $150 fire prevention fee that critics say is unnecessary and illegal. The fee applies to residential and other habitable structures in rural areas throughout the state, where 90 percent of property owners and residents already pay local taxes for fire protection services. The fee will generate new revenue for the state - tens of millions of dollars more than the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection currently budgets for fire prevention......
Cook To Seek End to Fire Tax, Glenn Barr, Crestline Courier-News, Thursday, December 22, 2011
The $150-a-year fire tax on rural California residents, approved this year as a budget-balancing tactic, would be repealed under a bill Assemblyman Paul Cook (R-Running Springs) plans to introduce in January. Cook announced his plan to target the tax in the December issue of "Cook Chronicles," the assemblyman's electronic newsletter. The bill will be co-sponsored by Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries (R-Lake Elsinore), he said. A previous Cook effort to overturn the charge-which he predicts would generate $50 million from rural property owners each year while charging them for services many already receive-was denied a hearing by Democrats in the Assembly, he said.......
California Trying to Protect Endangered Woodpecker in South Lake Tahoe, Associated Pres, KOLO TV, Dec. 22, 2011
Over the objections of the U.S. Forest Service, wildlife officials in California are taking steps at the state level to protect a rare woodpecker partly because the federal agency won't stop logging the bird's ever-shrinking habitat in burned stands of national forests in the Sierra Nevada. The California State Fish and Game Commission recently voted to add the black-backed woodpecker to the list of species that are candidates for protection under the California Endangered Species Act, launching a year-long status review of the bird that is at the center of an ongoing legal battle in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over salvage logging in the area where 250 homes burned near Lake Tahoe in 2007......
Fire poses greater risk than fuel treatments to Sierra Nevada fisher population -- study, Land Letter, Dec. 22, 2011
Thinning forests in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains may cause some harm to key habitat for an isolated population of fishers, but such fuel reduction treatments likely will benefit the weasel-like mammals over the long run by reducing the risk of severe wildfire, a recent study concludes. Forest managers have targeted dense stands in the Sierra National Forest and other public lands in the region for thinning in recent years, but they're also required to help protect the fisher, which is a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act....
Spotted Owl’s ‘critical habitat’ under revision, By Ami Ridling, GateHouse News Service, Mt. Shasta News, Dec 22, 2011
Siskiyou County, Calif. — Changes to the Northern Spotted Owl Critical Habitat designation on federal lands are on the horizon – a process that county supervisor Michael Kobseff said “will probably be a bumpy ride.” US Fish and Wildlife Service personnel made a presentation to the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors at its regular meeting Tuesday regarding the proposed CH designation revision. USFWS Field Supervisor Erin Williams explained that the USFWS is under an order from the US Tenth Circuit Court to revise the CH designation by November 2012. “This is only being proposed for federal lands,”?USFWS Forest Resources Branch Chief Brian Woodbridge said at the meeting. “No private lands are being considered.”.....
State water board fails to adopt new forestland rules, By Kate Campbell, Ag Alert, Issue Date: December 21, 2011
Changes that had been proposed to water quality regulations for national forestland in California failed last week to get the votes needed for adoption by the State Water Resources Control Board. Agricultural groups say the proposed changes could have greatly complicated logging and grazing activities on national forests within California if they had been adopted. The California Farm Bureau Federation and the California Cattlemen's Association said the proposed "nonpoint source waiver of waste discharge requirements" was unnecessary, because it would have duplicated federal regulations.....
Northern Sierra Partnership honored by U.S. Forest Service, Sierra Sun, December, 20 2011
TAHOE/TRUCKEE, Calif. — The U.S.D.A. Forest Service honored the Northern Sierra Partnership (NSP) Wednesday, Nov. 30, with the Region 5 Regional Forester's Honor Award in Sacramento. This award is presented to individuals or groups of individuals who “demonstrated outstanding professionalism, excellent customer service, and exemplary leadership in advancing the Forest Service mission.”......
Environmental groups sue to prevent fracking in Calif., Tia Ghose, California Watch, December 19, 2011
The Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club are suing the Bureau of Land Management to prevent gas drilling known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal lands. The lawsuit contends that the bureau leased more than 2,500 acres in Monterey and Fresno counties to oil company representatives without doing a thorough analysis of the potential environmental impacts of fracking. The leases were auctioned in September for $257,051 to Neil Ormond, an agent for Austin-based Vinton Exploration; LoneTree Energy & Associates, a Colorado- based broker for an undisclosed oil and gas exploration company; and Vintage Production California, LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum.
Rural America's timber dilemma, Counties rely on property taxes to fund basic services. But they can't tax national forest land, and now Congress may reduce payments for harvested trees. By Dale Bosworth, Los Angeles Times Opinion, December 18, 2011
During my long career with the U.S. Forest Service, people frequently expressed their concerns about the management of public lands to me when I'd run into them at the grocery store or on a hiking trail. One of the main issues they brought up had to do with the relationship between timber harvests and county budgets. Here's the dilemma. Counties traditionally rely on property taxes to fund basic services and education. But local governments cannot tax national forest land, and many Western states have a high percentage of their land in federal ownership. In Idaho, for example, about 63% of the land is owned by the federal government (as compared with, say, New York, where less than 1% of land is in federal hands).....
U.S.-Canadian timber dispute threatens local mills, Inka Bajandas, The News-Review, Dec. 18, 2011,
Douglas County mill owner Steve Swanson says he would lose money if he sold lumber as cheap as the Canadians do. Swanson must compete with British Columbia mills for customers such as Home Depot and Lowe's. He says his products are as good as anybody's, but he can't overcome what he calls unfair trade practices. “We shouldn't be this damaged by foreign countries,” he said. “We have great mills.”.....
Brown Ignores Climategate Revelations By JOHN SEILER, Cal WatchDog, December 16, 2011
Like a teenage blogger using an online thesaurus, Gov. Jerry Brown yesterday branded global-warming skeptics as being in “denial,” “cultlike” and “lemmings.” He was speaking at his “Extreme Climate Risks and California’s Future” conference in San Francisco. “We have an entire political party who has a doctrine of absolute denial. All the denial in the world doesn’t change the facts that greenhouse gases are building up. The main thing we have to deal with in climate change is the skepticism, the denial and the cultlike behavior of the political lemmings that would take us over the cliff.”.....
Climate projections dismal for California, By Mike Lee, San Diego Union Tribune, Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Scientists from across the state on Tuesday said Californians should expect more extreme storms, flooding, wildfires and species extinctions due to global warming over the rest of the century. They addressed a crowd of a few hundred researchers, students and residents at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is part of the University of California San Diego in La Jolla. The talks hit familiar themes using recent data to predict what will happen by 2100. Marty Ralph of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Sierra snowpack studies suggest a long-term decline that will create "a profound change for the water supply in California." Already, the state struggles to meet demand in dry years, a situation that is likely to worsen as the infrastructure ages......