U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a sixth-term Republican from Washington State who is a climate change denier and an ardent opponent of regulations for greenhouse gas emissions, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump for Secretary of Interior.

If McMorris Rodgers is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she would govern the management of more than 500 million acres of federal public lands, including more than 400 national parks.

Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., said McMorris Rodgers is no fan of the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that requires environmental review of new development and land management changes on federally owned land.

Keep reading the article by Bobby Magill at Climate Central

“The majority of Americans love their public lands and will not stand for giving them to the states or private sector as that would be catastrophic ecologically and economically.”     -Dominick DellaSala

Geos Institute’s Dominick DellaSala is featured in a Climate Central article, published November 28, 2016. He discusses the the deregulation or disposal of public lands, to which he says the opposition will be fierce from both environmental groups and the public.

Read the Climate Central article

Also reprinted in Raw Story

Portland General Electric is considering a swtich at its Boardman plant from coal to biomass. Geos Institute’s Dominick DellaSala was interviewed by the Oregonian for this October 23 article. Read the full article here.

“You want to keep coal in the ground. Similarly, you want to keep carbon in the forests” – Dominick DellaSala

Geos Institute’s Dominick DelsaSala is featured in an East Oregonian article, published October 21, 2016, discussing the labeling of biomass as ‘carbon neutral’.

Read the article online

Executive Summary

Scientific integrity—the use of quality science in decision making—is the hallmark of credible, effective policies for the conservation of biological diversity. This document includes big picture ideas for strengthening scientific, ecological, and economic underpinnings of federal lands and waters conservation as well as for engaging nonfederal owners in an all lands and waters conservation approach.

Fully one-third of the nation’s lands are held in the public trust as federally administered public lands. National parks, wilderness areas, national recreation areas, wild and scenic rivers, wildlife refuges, national forests, Bureau of Land Management lands, and national monuments are among the nation’s crown jewels. Together, public lands are wellsprings of biodiversity and support a burgeoning recreation and tourism economy, jobs in restoration and land stewardship, clean water, and climate regulation. The rest of the nation’s open spaces are administered by the states and private landowners and have important conservation values as well.

The United States also has 50,000 rivers totaling some 3.5 million river miles, 123,439 lakes, and 95,471 miles of coastline with additional ecosystem benefits. The Federal government is also responsible for how the oceans are utilized economically out to 200 hundred nautical miles and has greater regulatory authority over air space, waters and seabed out 12 miles.

America has an ever-increasing love affair with the great outdoors as record numbers turn out each year. Building on this support, the incoming administration has a unique opportunity to make conservation a top priority for all lands and waters conservation by:

• Strengthening scientific integrity in federal agencies decisions by supporting agency scientists and appointing leaders with an established scientific pedigree.
• Re-starting the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) with an infusion of youth employment in public lands restoration.
• Making climate change mitigation and adaptation core public lands objectives, including keeping carbon in the ground and in ecosystems.
• Strengthening implementation of and defending the Endangered Species Act from any Congressional rollbacks.
• Adding at least 40 million acres of new protected areas to better represent conservation priorities.
• Creating a national forest carbon trust where carbon is sequestered and stored long-term in some 33 million acres nationwide. A comparable carbon trust is needed for native grasslands as well.
• Making freshwater conservation a priority for federal agencies broadly, including protection of intact watersheds for their extraordinary benefits to people and fish.
• Enacting policies that result in large-landscape conservation by reconnecting habitat for migrating fish and wildlife.
• Developing fiscally responsible and ecologically appropriate fire management policies.
• Protecting at least 30% of the oceans by 2030.
• Supporting and creating innovative incentives on nonfederal lands.

Download the full report: Low-resolution (7.39 MB) or Print quality (29.4 MB)

Campaign to Establish a Forest and Climate Legacy for President Obama Heating Up

In this summer edition of the Forest Legacies newsletter:

• The Tongass as Alaska’s First Line of Climate Change Defense
• Race to Save the South Kalmiopsis and Oregon Redwoods in Full Gear
• Defending the Northwest Forest Plan: A Global Example of Large-Landscape Conservation
• The Wildfire Conundrum
• Looking Ahead

The Tongass as Alaska’s First Line of Climate Change Defense

At nearly 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska is the nation’s largest national forest and a carbon champion, absorbing some 8% of our annual carbon dioxide pollution in its productive old-growth rainforests. Unfortunately, the Forest Service proposes to clearcut 43,000 acres of this old growth, mostly in the next 16 years, releasing the equivalent emissions of some 4 million vehicles annually. The agency’s logging plan is an embarrassment to President Obama’s global leadership on climate change and contradicts his visit to Alaska last September when he announced, while in route to the Paris Climate Change Summit, that the state is the nation’s “sign post” on climate change.

For the past three years, Geos Institute, and our partners, Natural Resources Defense Council, Mater Engineering (board member), and retired Deputy Forest Service Chief Jim Furnish (board member), have been conducting ground-breaking research on the amount of young forests available to shift timber production out of controversial old-growth logging. Thousands of acres of young plantation forests originally logged in the 1950s have since regrown and will soon (by 2020) be ready offset the need to log old growth.

We also teamed with a local Alaska mill to propose a study that would determine the feasibility of processing young trees from the Tongass, using new milling technologies that get more material from small logs with much less wood waste. Collectively, this work is uniquely solving for economic uncertainties of a rapid transition. And while we have demonstrated to the Forest Service how transition can swiftly occur, they remain dug in on clearcutting vast areas of old-growth rainforests, the only national forest that is still doing this on a large scale.

In the coming months, we will be making a compelling case to the Obama Administration to direct the Forest Service to speed up its transition by taking advantage of this new opportunity we have demonstrated, and help save Alaska’s rainforests and climate. Only with bold direction from the President can we save the Tongass from rampant old-growth and climate-dirty logging.

Read more about what we are doing to protect one of the world’s last relatively intact temperate rainforests.

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Race to Save the South Kalmiopsis and Oregon Redwoods in Full Gear

Emerald green rivers, rare carnivorous plants, and massive Oregon redwoods make up a landscape unmatched in biodiversity across the American West. For the past 4 years, Geos Institute has partnered with local and national conservation groups to seek protection from mining of these waterways and for Oregon’s redwoods. Legislation has been introduced in Congress by Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Peter DeFazio (OR) and Jared Huffman (CA) to protect at-risk watersheds that, although has yet to receive a hearing in the Republican-controlled Congress, did trigger a temporary withdrawal of new mining claims until Congress can act. Geos Institute is pushing for permanent protections of this area in the coming months that we hope to achieve before President Obama leaves office in January.

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Defending the Northwest Forest Plan: A Global Example of Large-Landscape Conservation

The Northwest Forest Plan is a global model for ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation on over 24 million acres of federal lands from California to Washington. This landmark plan is scheduled for renewal in 2017 under the incoming Administration. The Forest Service is currently conducting a science synthesis in its preparation for future plan revisions. Geos Institute has been instrumental in providing sound science to the agency. Recently, we published a peer-reviewed paper on the 20-year anniversary of the 100-year Northwest Forest Plan in the journal Forests. That paper, along with hundreds of related publications by scientists, was sent to the agency in support of increased protections for Northwest forests.

This June, 13 leading scientists called on the Forest Service to expand protections afforded for forests and imperiled species as a means of preparing for unprecedented climate impacts and ongoing land-use disturbances mainly on nonfederal lands. We intend to brief the incoming Administration on the importance of building on the Northwest Forest Plan’s two decades of accomplishments.

Read the full comments here.

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The Wildfire Conundrum

Chief Scientist, Dr. Dominick DellaSala, was recently interviewed in a Jefferson Journal article, “The Wildfire Conundrum,” based on a three-part radio series on the Jefferson Public Radio.

“If fuels were contributing to more forest fires and more severe fires, that’s what we would be seeing in the West.” Instead, [DellaSala] says, “We are actually in a deficit of fire severity and fire acres in most of the West compared to historical times.”

Geos Institute continues to be a national leader on advocating for the biodiversity importance of wildland fires and ways to co-exist with them without logging in the backcountry. Check out our book – “The ecological importance of mixed-severity fires: nature’s phoenix (link to the book goes here). In the coming months, we will be meeting with decision makers in Washington D.C. to make our case to Congress that responsible fire management can be achieved by first and foremost protecting homes and fire fighters so that more fires can burn safely in the backcountry performing a vital ecological role.

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Looking Ahead

Conservation always involves anticipation. And despite uncertainties in who the next president will be in November, Geos Institute is already preparing to brief the incoming Administration. We are in the process of working on a bold conservation vision for public lands that we hope to present to the incoming Administration during its first 100 days – stay tuned as we wrap up existing campaigns and keep our periscope up for emerging opportunities.

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In this issue:

• Tongass Logging Transition Not Moving Fast Enough
• On the steps of the nation’s capital for permanent protection of the world-class Kalmiopsis area, southwest Oregon
• Celebrating Earth Week by Recognizing Conservation Gains in Northwest Forests

By Dominick DellaSala

(Originally published in the Medford Mail Tribune, April 17, 2016)

This week, more than 193 nations will celebrate Earth Day. The annual event is a marker for the environmental movement begun on April 22, 1970, when Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson organized a peaceful teach-in. At the time, rivers were on fire, oil spills fouled Santa Barbara’s coastline, spaceships were headed to the moon, and the nation was at war.

Rachael Carson warned in the 1960s of a “Silent Spring” caused by toxic pesticides that were bad for songbirds and people. Hydro-fluorocarbons, a byproduct of refrigerants and other uses, were ripping holes in the ozone, triggering skin cancers.

Forests in the Pacific Northwest were being clearcut at an alarming rate of 2 square miles every week, which nearly wiped out the spotted owl and salmon.

Clearly, something had to be done. And, thankfully, millions of Americans demanded that Congress pass new laws to give us a healthy environment.

Over the past four decades, political activism has led to hard-fought gains in civil rights, gender rights, social justice, and environmental policies, from the Clean Air Act to the Northwest Forest Plan.

So, why do we need Earth Day even more now?

Only about one-third of the world’s forests remain as intact primary forests with no roads or logging having taken place. Scientists have long recognized the unique values these forests provide including unmatched biodiversity, clean water, and, more recently, climate benefits. Geos Institute was part of an international team of scientists and conservation groups calling on countries, including the USA, to protect their dwindling primary forests as part of the historic climate change agreements negotiated this December in Paris.

Read the full article.

Tongass rainforest – primary temperate rainforests on the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska sequester (absorb) the equivalent of about 8% of the annual US greenhouse gas emissions. No other forest in the nation sequesters and stores more carbon. Geos Institute works to preserve these rainforests for their climate and biodiversity benefits.	Tropical rainforest, Australia – tropical rainforests are a global carbon “sink,” absorbing atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis and storing it in long-lived trees, dense foliage, and soils. Geos Institute is a member of the steering committee of “IntAct,” an international effort to protect the world’s primary forests. Photo credit: Dominick DellaSala

Science Daily

Summary: The precarious state of the world’s primary forests has been outlined in new research by an international team of conservationist scientists and practitioners. Primary forests — largely ignored by policy makers and under increasing land use threats — are forests where there are no visible indications of human activities, especially industrial-scale land use, and ecological processes have not been significantly disrupted. The analysis reveals that only five percent of the world’s pre-agricultural primary forest cover is now found in protected areas.

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