After more than two years of collaboration, nearly two dozen round tables, a science forum and more than a quarter-million public comments, the Obama administration says it is ready to take its new forest planning rule on the road.

The Forest Service late last month proposed a sweeping update to a 30-year-old rule that governs how foresters plan for activities such as grazing, recreation, logging, mining and watershed and wildlife protections on nearly 200 million acres of national forests and grasslands (Greenwire, Jan. 26).

The agency last week announced that forests in Alaska, California, Idaho, New Mexico and Puerto Rico will be the first to implement the new rule, which is designed to reduce the development of land management plans from about six years to as little as three and, in many cases, cut the cost in half.

National forests including the Nez Perce-Clearwater in Idaho, the Chugach in Alaska and California's Inyo, Sequoia and Sierra will be among the first to use the new rule after it is finalized this month, the agency said. The others are the Cibola National Forest in New Mexico and the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico.

"These forests will demonstrate straight out of the gate what we've been talking about in terms of collaboration," said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. "People will see that under a new rule, public engagement increases and process decreases, all while providing stronger protections for our lands and water."

The new plan has drawn praise from some conservation groups, former agency officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, but was panned by many others for rolling back wildlife protections or adding burdensome new steps that some said threaten multiple use requirements (E&ENews PM, Jan. 26).

Others acknowledged that the impacts of the rule will not be fully understood until it is put to use.

The Forest Service will soon issue a set of directives explaining how the planning rule will be implemented, which could make it similar to past ones or work totally differently, said one Senate Democratic aide. The agency is also establishing a federal advisory committee to provide feedback on how the rule is put into practice (E&ENews PM, Nov. 14, 2011).

But while opinions on the rule vary significantly, many agree that the agency appears committed to embracing collaboration, science and transparency as it updates land management plans on more than 150 national forests.

"The new planning rule does have its critics and is controversial in the view of many affected interests," Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), said last week. "While I have a mixed view of this rule, I will work with the Forest Service and the affected parties to make this effort successful and achieve the many objectives of collaborative management of our public forests."

Crapo said collaboration with divergent stakeholders, as has occurred in Idaho's Clearwater Basin, will help decrease the potential for litigation and allow for consensus on public land management.

While many concerns remain over how the rule will treat science and the protection of "species of conservation concern," the agency said it is committed to addressing interested groups early, and often.

"More and more people are getting more and more interested in working together, because they don't think that the gridlock is serving the land and the resources and the American people very well," said Dale Bosworth, who served as Forest Service chief for most of the George W. Bush administration and now lives in Missoula, Mont. "The rule does a good job of promoting collaboration."

The emphasis on public input marks a concrete break from proposed planning rules from the previous two administrations that were stymied in court, observers said.

"One of the goals of this planning rule is to sort of cut the Forest Service down to size and say 'Look, the people who own the national forests need to be at the table and need to be fully conferred with, fully engaged,'" said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. "Failing to do that leads to the debacle we've been seeing for the past 30 years."

But while steps to increase collaboration and transparency are commendable, the new rule may not trim the agency's planning time as much as promised, Stahl warned.

"This rule is huge on process," said Stahl, who helped write the 1982 planning rule as a timber industry lobbyist. "Everything and the kitchen sink is being thrown into the mix here."

Commitments to science, watersheds

Tidwell said the new rule breaks ground by eliminating unnecessary modeling and species surveys that were required under the 1982 rule that is currently in effect, but that he said are not always necessary.

The new plan also does a better job recognizing forests' inherent ability to protect species that often face threats beyond the agency's control, he said. For example, the agency will no longer hold itself accountable for impacts to migrating species such as goshawks that occur after the birds leave the forest, Tidwell said.

In addition, the plan also allows local forest officials, in consultation with scientists, local governments and tribes, to determine which species of plants and animals are in need of additional protections, a break from the 1982 rule.

"The plan components require that we provide for the ecological conditions that maintain viable populations of species of concern," Tidwell said. "The difference is that there needs to be a concern."

The new language has upset both wildlife advocates, who say it could allow some species to fall by the wayside, and ranchers, who fear the provision will eliminate access to grazing lands.

In its 44-page proposed rule, the Forest Service defines species of conservation concern as "a species, other than federally recognized threatened, endangered, proposed, or candidate species, that is known to occur in the plan area and for which the regional forester has determined that the best available scientific information indicates substantial concern about the species' capability to persist over the long-term in the plan area."

"There is a lot of discretion about what they do and don't have to do to preserve species," said Trent Orr, a staff attorney for Earthjustice in California, who said the new rule strengthens watershed protections but would fail to ensure species remain plentiful. "There needs to be some more solid standards about not just ecosystems but the species that make them up."

But the term "maintain viable population" is not required by federal law and has shown to be problematic under the current planning rule, said Margaret Soulen Hinson, president of the American Sheep Industry Association, who grazes sheep on Idaho national forests.

Soulen Hinson said there is a lack of scientific agreement as to what constitutes a "viable" population and that the new rule expands the provision beyond vertebrates to all species, including fungi and mosses.

Tidwell said the rule requires local agency officials to demonstrate that they used the best available science, as well as local expertise, to justify planning decisions.

"We actually made a change from the draft language to this preferred alternative to address that so that we would be required to use the best available science to inform the decision and also to document how we use that science," Tidwell said. "We're also going to be using our professional experience, local and tribal knowledge into decisionmaking. We'll be required to document this so it will be very clear to the public how we used the science."

Tidwell said other significant changes include requirements for agency officials to identify priority watersheds for maintenance or restoration and to gauge the value of recreation to the local economy.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a conference call with reporters last month said the planning rule allows the timber industry to be a crucial partner in helping the agency thin overstocked forests at risk of severe wildfires, pests and other threats.

"Without that industry, there is no way we are going to be able to do the work we need to do to restore these forests," he said.

Wait and see

While its planning rule has changed, the Forest Service must still comply with laws including the Endangered Species Act, which mandates protection of imperiled species, and the National Environmental Policy Act, which ensures public consultation and disclosure, said Stahl of FSEEE.

Ultimately, whether the agency develops forest plans transparently and in the spirit of public collaboration depends in large part on the employees themselves, he said.

"Whether the Forest Service can bring itself to practice what the Obama administration is preaching here, that really depends on the people," Stahl said.

Jane Danowitz, public lands director for the Pew Environment Group, said she sees improvements in the latest proposal but will also take a wait-and-see approach.

"The administration clearly took some of the input it received from scientists and conservation leaders, and the plan now has stronger safeguards than what was originally proposed," she said last month. "Given the current threats our forests face, the true test of this will be how it's implemented on the ground."

Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, said that though it remains to be seen whether the rule's new water standards are actually enforceable and measurable, the Forest Service is heading in the right direction.

Many remain concerned that the new rule will require burdensome paperwork that will cost jobs, increase litigation and add costs. But Stahl said litigation will largely depend on individual forest projects rather than the planning rule itself.

"Bad activities are a magnet for lawsuits, not rules," he said.