The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About07-26-21 Public Comment - C. Nagel - BMW ProjectFrom:Clint Nagel To:Agenda Subject:Gallatin Wildlife Association"s comments on Bozeman Municipal Watershed Fuels Reduction Project Date:Monday, July 26, 2021 4:53:48 PM Attachments:20210727.GWA comments on Amicus Discussion before City Council.docx CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear Mayor and City Commission: Please accept our comments below in the attachment concerning the logging of old growth in the Gallatins as it relates to the Bozeman Municipal Watershed Fuels Reduction Project. If you need more information or have questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for this opportunity to comment. clint..... July 27, 2021 Mayor Cyndy Andrus Bozeman City Commissioners 121 N. Rouse Bozeman, MT 59715 Dear Mayor and City Commissioners: My name is Clinton Nagel, President of the Gallatin Wildlife Association (otherwise known as GWA) here in Bozeman, MT. We’ve been an outspoken critic of plans to log, thin or practice the use of vegetative treatments on the Custer Gallatin National Forest for many years, especially lands designated as old growth and that is where we would like to focus our attention tonight. Gallatin Wildlife Association (GWA) is a local, all volunteer wildlife conservation organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of wildlife, fisheries, habitat and migration corridors in Southwest Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, using science-based decision making. We are a non-profit 501-c (3) organization founded in 1976. GWA recognizes the intense pressures on our wildlife from habitat loss and climate change, and we advocate for science-based management of public lands for diverse public values, including but not limited to hunting and angling. We are a wildlife advocacy organization for species calling the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and southwest Montana home. We advocate for wildlife and fisheries, their respective habitat, and we advocate to reestablish wildlife connectivity routes to the north. The Gallatin Front is rich in wildlife biodiversity. Unfortunately, the decisions made by the City of Bozeman tonight on this topic will have an impact on those efforts. We understand the purpose tonight is to hear from the public if the City of Bozeman should sign an Amicus Brief in favor of the Bozeman Municipal Watershed Fuels Reduction Project. We have to be honest and transparent here. GWA has signed an Amicus Brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Cottonwood Environmental Law Center. We do so in support of a climate science-based management of public lands. Some of those lands include part of the city’s Fuel Reduction Project. We understand the irony of our comments, but we want to introduce you to our rationale on this issue. There is much to be said on this topic, much more than can be said in three minutes, so we will submit more detail written comments to the commission. We urge the city to think GALLATIN WILDLIFE ASSOCIATION P. O. Box 5317 Bozeman, MT 59717 (406) 586-1729 www.gallatinwildlife.org about the lasting implications from this project, especially those impacts from old-growth logging. We want you to think about it from this perspective. To log an old growth forest is about as a devastating act one could do in our natural world. We say that not for hyperbole, or to grab attention, but we say that because of the complexity and dynamics of forest ecosystems throughout the world. Forests are highly heterogeneous and complex environments. Science is discovering new relationships all the time. In fact, with the intense fires occurring throughout the west right now, we are learning how landscapes, those having been logged and thinned are burning faster and more intense than forests that have not. Old growth forests enrich our forests with biodiversity, providing homes for all sorts of flora and fauna. Old growth enhances forest integrity, forest resilience, and secures wildlife habitat. To log those lands, we would lose those forest attributes. In addition, our forests have a mitigating effect on climate change. Old growth forests and their associated soils are a reserve of carbon, a source of carbon lost to the atmosphere when logged. We would like to inform the City of an article found in EcoWatch. In a Jan. 17, 2014 article entitled “Importance of Old Growth Forests: Carbon Capture Potential Grows with Age” (Beans, Laura, 2014)6: “Beyond providing essential biodiversity, the oldest trees in a forest capture the most carbon from the atmosphere.” “Forests store large amounts of carbon that would otherwise contribute to climate change. They store nearly 300 billion tons of carbon in their living parts (biomass)—roughly 30 times the annual amount of emissions created by burning fossil fuels. But when forests are degraded or destroyed, this carbon is released into the atmosphere.” “The researchers have found that carbon uptake of trees (as measured by growth rates) continuously increases with their size because the overall leaf area increases as they grow. This enables bigger trees to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere. Thus, the oldest trees in a forest capture the most carbon from the atmosphere. These oldest trees are to be found in ancient forests. Importantly, older trees are also more valuable for biodiversity than younger trees because they support a wider range of species.” In addition, we would like to refer the City to a recent email from Dr. Chad Hanson, Ecologist for the John Muir Project. His reference is to the Bootleg Fire currently burning in southcentral Oregon. The Bootleg fire moved eastward 31 miles over 8 days (nearly 4 miles per day) through national forest lands where widespread and pervasive logging had been conducted in recent years—mostly commercial thinning projects conducted under the guise of “fuelbreaks”. When the fire moved through the Gearhart Wilderness Area and an adjacent Roadless Area—areas with dense forests and many dead trees and downed logs—it took nearly 5 days to move 9 miles through these protected forests, which have no logging history. In other words, the Bootleg fire spread twice as fast through national forest lands with extensive thinning and so-called fuelbreaks than it did through dense, unlogged forests with patches of dead trees. A large and growing body of science concludes that dense forests and forests with many dead trees and downed logs tend to have a cooler, more moist microclimate and tend to burn less intensely, while thinning and other logging create a hotter, drier, and windier microclimate that tends to increase fire intensity and rate of spread, often toward towns, while also increasing carbon emissions and making climate change worse. This exemplifies the rationale that we’ve been stating. As studies, research and observations take place upon our forest resources, we are only beginning to learn of new complexities and relationships. Our forests don’t always react in a way we surmise, the reason? Because don’t fully understand the forests as much as we think we do. We will present one more piece of evidence from a scientific journal in this context; that being remarks we sent to the U.S. Forest Service over our objections of the South Plateau Area Landscape Treatment Project in the Custer Gallatin National Forest. There we stated the following. The Forest Service needs to address and adhere to the science. For example, we would like to refer to the link found in Earth Island Journal1, which includes these statements: https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/logging-carbon- emissions-us-forests/ “On the other hand, industrial logging — even when conducted under the euphemism of “thinning” — results in a large net loss of forest carbon storage, and a substantial overall increase in carbon emissions that can take decades, if not a century, to recapture with regrowth. Logging also tends to make fires burn faster and more intensely while degrading a forest ecosystem’s ability to provide natural protections against extreme weather events. Consider this: About 28 percent of tree carbon is contained in branches, and this is emitted when they are burned after logging operations. An additional 53 percent of the carbon in trees removed from forests is emitted as waste in the manufacturing and milling process. Overall, about two-thirds of the carbon in trees that are logged for lumber quickly become greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, the science indicates that dead and living trees store carbon. We have more scientific evidence which we could present, and will be given upon request. But the argument we’re making is that the rationale for many of these timber projects don’t justify the actual value of the treatments stated. In fact, the results are actually contradictory to the original purpose resulting in a loss of forest integrity, biodiversity, and resilience, increasing habitat fragmentation, preventing a forest to mitigate climate change, eventually changing the climatic conditions of the forest itself. For these reasons, we feel justified in our statement. Our forests are complex. It is only when we interfere with their natural existence do we upset the natural balance of our planet. There is much more to be said, but we urge the City to not vote for Amicus. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Clinton Nagel, President Gallatin Wildlife Association