Category: News

“Good riddance. Think of all of the money we are saving.”

I looked at Max in exasperation. He is one of the most hard-core sportsmen I know. I have hunted for whitetail with him in driving rainstorms in West Virginia, and stalked catfish on the Potomac using hummus-impregnated Clouser-minnows. He is a tremendous conservationist, and every year donates enough money to be a member of Trout Unlimited’s Griffith Circle.

He is also a big believer in small government. Max and I rarely talk politics, and the partial shutdown of the federal government is all about politics.

Sportsmen such as Max should be most outraged by the fact that our natural resource agency partners in the federal government are at home instead of at their desks or in the field. I spent the first 10 years of my career working for the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, and almost every employee I met began their career from the same starting point. They wanted to make the world a better place.

And they do. The shutdown means that we cannot work with Bart Gamett, a Forest Service biologist on Idaho’s Yankee Fork, a historically important spawning and rearing tributary of the Salmon River. We worked with Bart and an array of other partners to restore the stream. Juvenile trout and salmon immediately occupied the restored section. A father who was camping with his young son, turned to him and said, “These people are doing this so that when you take your children camping here there will be salmon and steelhead to see.”

Our partnership with the BLM allowed us to identify Muddy Creek in Wyoming as a potential native fish conservation area. We worked with BLM to eliminate non-native brook trout and helped to restore Colorado River cutthroat trout. That spurred a partnership between the BLM and The Nature Conservancy to restore imperiled flannelmouth sucker, bluehead sucker, and roundtail chub downstream in the warm water reaches. It goes without saying that restoration efforts such as these ease the social and economic disruption to local communities caused by listing fish under the Endangered Species Act.

Without the support of a few U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, few would have guessed that recreational fishing of streams in the so-called Driftless Area of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois generates a whopping $1.6 billion in economic returns for the largely rural communities in the area. That fact certainly helped inspire the Natural Resource Conservation Service to invest over $9 million in restoration last year into the Driftless. The shutdown could slow our ability to work with NRCS employees such as Chad Dewrye to bring more landowners into the restoration program.

Sportsmen and women cannot spend their money in local communities if they cannot access the places they love to hunt and fish. Consider Fletcher’s Cove, a popular concession on the C and O Canal, a national park in Washington, D.C., managed by the Park Service. The combination of high water and the shutdown imperil access to the epic spring shad fishery. The Friends of Fletcher’s Cove and local TU Business Partners such as District Angler are taking action to organize volunteers to remove the debris, and re-open the access.

Our partnership with the federal natural resource agencies benefits everyone who loves to fish or cares about clean water. For example, we have about $35 million in active projects with our federal partners. We will leverage that into nearly $200 million in funding to reconnect more than 1,200 miles of river and restore another 600 — but not if the federal government stays closed.

Max won’t listen to me when I talk about this stuff. So, when the weather warms, I will take him down to West Virginia, and fish for native brookies on the Monongahela National Forest. I will check in with TU’s restoration staff first because I have seen the photos of the 15-inch native brookie they caught this year on one of the more than 30 miles of streams they restored on the “Mon.”

In the meantime, the rest of us who love to hunt and fish, should urge the President and the Congress to get our resource professionals back on the job so they can continue their good work of making the world a better place.

Chris Wood is the president and CEO of Trout Unlimited.

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The Arizona Corporation Commission this week agreed to require the state’s utilities to buy or produce 90 megawatts of energy annually from biomass — saving the forest restoration industry from collapse.

The Corporation Commission on a 4-1 vote ordered the reluctant staff to come up with a proposed set of rules to create a market for the 1.5 million tons of branches, brush and debris created by thinning 50,000 acres of overgrown forest annually.

“We were in a desperate situation,” said Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin, a leading member of the stakeholders group for the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI). “This is critical.”

The ACC staff had drafted a report questioning the value of extending even the current mandates to buy 28 megawatts of power, much less expanding the requirement to 90 megawatts.

But Commissioner Andy Tobin led the push for the full 90 megawatt requirement, which would create the market needed to jump-start the moribund 4FRI effort. It could also boost the average homeowner’s electric bill by $1 to $4 a month, based on an earlier, still debated study by Arizona Public Service (APS).

“This is huge, absolutely huge,” said Martin of the provisional commission support for expanding the market for biomass. “It turns the biomass into a product instead of a problem. If we can’t figure out how to let the industry deal with these attendant issues, we’re not ever going to get this forest cleaned out — period.”

Novo Power President Brad Worsley said only a Corporation Commission mandate and long-term contracts from the Forest Service will make it possible to create the biomass power generation plants needed to sustain forest restoration. Novo Power operates a 28 megawatt biomass power plant in Snowflake, the only one in Arizona. APS currently has a four-year contract to buy power from the plant, which has sustained the forest restoration efforts in the White Mountains.

“I’m grateful for what happened Monday,” said Worsley. “But I’m not breathing a lot easier yet. It’s not done until it’s done — and it’s not done yet.”

The commission must still adopt a final rule, with many key details still unresolved.

Forest restoration advocates showed up in force this week at a commission hearing, prompting the commissioners to essentially overrule a staff report. The staff had concluded the commission should focus on keeping electric rates as low as possible instead of shifting the cost of forest restoration onto electricity users.

However, forest advocates pointed out that creating a market for millions of tons of biomass would benefit the entire state. Large-scale thinning would likely increase runoff from millions of acres of watershed into the Valley, in a state with a worsening water shortage. Saving the forest restoration efforts would also potentially save billions in wildfire suppression costs and billions in property damage. It will also save lives by reducing deaths from air pollution from wildfires, save the lives of firefighters and homeowners from megafires. All the while, the biomass industry will provide jobs in hard-pressed rural industries.

“Commissioner Tobin pointed out that rarely is a political movement pure in its intention and perfect in its answers — but there are very few things we work on at a state or national level more important,” said Worsley.

Martin said APS and other power companies also supported the plan, along with a host of environmental groups, officials from rural counties, logging companies and advocates for economic development.

“We now have an opportunity to see if the market can solve this problem — we didn’t have that before,” said Martin.

The Forest Service has struggled for a decade to find a contractor who could thin the millions of acres of overgrown forests, which have contributed to a massive increase in wildfires. The Paradise fire in California that killed 85 people, consumed 15,000 homes and inflicted $9 billion in damages demonstrating the potential for disaster in a drought-plagued, overgrown forest.

The Forest Service has pioneered how to complete massive environmental analysis, getting hundreds of thousand of acres approved for clearing in a single study. However, one contractor after another has failed to come anywhere near the 50,000-acres-per-year pace envisioned a decade ago. Even at that pace, it would take perhaps 40 years to work through the 2 million acres in need of thinning. Tree densities have increased from maybe 50 per acre to perhaps 800 per acres over much of that area, due to fire suppression, grazing and clear-cut logging.

Given the new streamlined Forest Service system, economics now represents the biggest challenge to 4FRI, the biggest forest restoration effort in the nation’s history. The region now has only a handful of mills that could handle trees in the 12- to 16-inch diameter range. But the much greater challenge lies in getting rid of the thickets of 6- to 8-inch trees, branches from the larger trees and brush.

Every acre thinned produces roughly 50 tons of material — equally divided between logs for the mills and biomass. Contractors’ promises to turn the biomass into jet fuel, compost, soil char or other exotic products have all fallen short — leaving only biomass burning as a market.

Martin said the power companies, loggers, environmentalists, local officials and fire officials made common cause before the commission this week.

“They had a chance to be statesmen, to display the leadership needed to get this over the finish line — to really get a grip on these vulnerable forests.”

She noted that the commission will meet again to adopt a final rule in the next one to three months.

Worsley said only the adoption of such a rule combined with a Forest Service contract guaranteeing a supply of biomass for the next 15 to 20 years will make this possible for companies like his to get the financing needed to build additional biomass power plants.

His company has estimated it would build a 50 megawatt power plant in about 20 months for roughly $100 million.

The APS study estimated a 30 megawatt biomass power plant could cost as much as $500 million.

Still, forest advocates this week celebrated a crucial victory.

Navajo County Supervisor Jason Whiting said, “It would appear the commission now understands how much this matters to Arizona and its citizens. A month ago, this was on its deathbed — but through numerous prayers and efforts from concerned citizens, leaders and elected officials we are now moving in the right direction.”

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Congress allowed the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), America’s most effective conservation program to expire on Oct. 1. It’s hard to understand how a program that has strong bipartisan support and has provided over $235 million for outdoor recreation and conservation in Arizona was not reauthorized. Americans lose over $15 million weekly of funds that would be available for local community parks and the conservation of public lands. It’s time for Congress to permanently reauthorize the program and provide for full funding. The benefits of the LWCF program can be found in virtually every community in our state. Access and recreation opportunities have been enhanced at the Grand Canyon National Park, Saguaro National Park, Lake Mead Recreation Area, Coconino National Forest, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. Hundreds of additional recreation projects have occurred on our state and community parks in nearly every community in Arizona.

For more than 50 years, the LWCF has delivered on-the-ground conservation achievements to communities across our state. In particular, benefits to rural America and the small communities that depend upon the hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation economy for economic development depend on this key program. In addition, urban opportunities to get our youth outdoors will suffer significant losses without the reauthorization of the program. Outdoor recreation supports 210,000 jobs, generates $5.7 billion in wages and salaries and produces $1.4 billion in state and local tax revenues. Over 1.5 million people participate in hunting, fishing and wildlife watching in Arizona, and they contribute over $2.1 billion to the state’s economy.

LWCF is not funded by taxpayer dollars but from fees collected from offshore oil and gas extraction. Let’s not break the 50-year-old promise to the American people to invest a small portion of the royalties generated from offshore oil and gas drilling to enhance our national parks, state parks, community recreation programs, hunting and fishing access, trails and open spaces. Please thank Congressman Grijalva for his leadership on this key issue and contact your congressional representative asking for their support of the permanent reauthorization and funding for of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.