Fighting over fire blame — AgMinute for Sept. 2, 2013

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack largely defended the federal government's management of national forests amid criticisms that massive buildups of hazardous fuels have added to wildfires' intensity.

The House talks timber — AgMinute for Aug. 2, 2013

A package of legislation is moving through the U.S. House of Representatives that seeks to improve forest management and reduce the threat of wildfire on federal lands.

Read about how farmers are confronting controversy over biotechnology in "Surviving a Biotech Backlash," available at http://bit.ly/BiotechBacklash

Brewing up a cash crop

In this podcast, Idaho reporter Carol Ryan Dumas looks at an effort to turn a native plant into a cash crop and reporter Mateusz Perkowski explains why a court case blocking aerial spraying may cause problems for neighbors of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

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To listen, click here.

Podcast: Mind your peas and lentils

In this podcast, editors and reporters look at the need for barley research, a limited rebound for pea and lentil acreage in Idaho, and hear a Capital Press editorial on the need for road access to publicly owned land.

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To listen, click here.

SPI announces huge carbon sequestration effort

From Sierra Pacific Industries:

Los Angeles, CA – California’s largest private landowner – Sierra Pacific Industries, and Equator, LLC, a natural resources asset management firm, announced today that they have entered into the nation’s single largest pre-compliance forest carbon transaction to date. The transaction will consist of a series of projects focused on developing compliance-ready carbon offsets registered under the recently approved Climate Action Reserve (CAR) forestry protocol Version 3.0. These offsets would be used to comply with emissions reduction goals under California’s landmark legislation, Assembly Bill 32.

The transaction will sequester an additional 1,500,000 tons of carbon dioxide over the next five years in excess of what would have otherwise occurred. The investment in the projects will be made through the Eco Products Fund, LP (EPF) – a private equity vehicle co-managed by Equator and New Forests, Inc.

Sierra Pacific’s Chief Financial Officer Mark Emmerson stated that SPI is pleased to be able to participate in California’s carbon market with Equator. “This project demonstrates the utility of California’s new forestry protocol, and recognizes the value of working forests in meeting the state’s climate change goals and ecosystem sustainability.” Emmerson added “We are pleased to be able to work with a global leader like Equator in this effort”.

“We are very excited to partner with SPI on this landmark transaction, and to utilize the new forest protocol approved by the Climate Action Reserve and endorsed by the California Air Resources Board,” said Gerrity Lansing, Chief Executive Officer of Equator. “These projects will not only address climate change, but will also protect critical wildlife habitat, improve biodiversity, and enhance water quality,” added Lansing.

Elements of this transaction are unique to California; the first project in the series of activities will be designed to protect the genetic diversity and integrity of Giant Sequoia trees in the Sierra helping to expand its range as an adaptation strategy in the face of climate change. Noted for their enormous potential to sequester carbon dioxide, over 20,000 Giant Sequoias in this first project area will be conserved in perpetuity. As a further demonstration of the co-benefits associated with these projects, the rare Pacific Fisher will be reintroduced on part of the project lands in cooperation with the California Department of Fish and Game.

William Libby, Emeritus Professor of Forestry and Genetics at the University of California Berkeley, noted that the agreement will provide broad ecosystem benefits. “I am encouraged to see that these firms have joined together in partnership to proactively conserve Giant Sequoias and enhance habitat for wildlife,” Libby said. “This is truly a landmark agreement for California,” he added.

Climate Action Reserve president Gary Gero offered that the agreement between SPI and Equator so soon after the approval of the new forest protocol is a “validation that the hard work of the Climate Action Reserve Forest Project Protocol work group, members of the public, and staff resulted in an approach that has real world practicality. The protocol was designed so that it could be integrated into business practices while still supporting effective activities to mitigate climate change. We are honored that the largest forest project to date will use the Reserve’s protocol,” said Gero.

“The endorsement of the CAR Forest protocols by ARB provides some clarity to investors who want to help develop carbon offset supply from forests,” said David Brand, Managing Director of New Forests, Inc., “This should stimulate the development of forest-based carbon projects in advance of the implementation of a California or US carbon trading market.”

Overall, some 60,000 acres of SPI’s private timberland in California will be dedicated to this transaction. The projects will be submitted to the Climate Action Reserve for registration in the Reserve’s registry of carbon offset credits consistent with CAR’s recently approved forest protocol; Version 3.0. The Climate Action Reserve is a national offsets program working to ensure integrity, transparency and financial value in the U.S. carbon market. The protocol was approved by the Climate Action Reserve on September 1, and endorsed by the California Air Resources Board on September 24, 2009.

Environmental group sounds off on forest bill

The Sierra Forest Legacy, an environmental group that has been fighting forest-thinning efforts under the so-called Quincy Library Group project in northeastern California, has issued an "action alert" on the forestry bill by Rep. Wally Herger that I wrote about several weeks ago.

The group asserts:

Each, year, for millennia, California's forests have burned. The rich tapestry of biologically diverse habitats that characterize the region is largely dependent upon regular fire return. Many species of plants and animals are actually threatened from lack of fire. Forests have naturally regenerated after fire for hundreds of thousands of years. Today, fires that are ecologically uncharacteristic -- due to timing, size, and intensity -- are the result of human activities and the legacy of 150 years of logging, fire suppression, and development.

Republican lawmakers are now attempting to capitalize on the public's fears concerning forest fire. Under the misleading title, "California Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention and Community Protection Act," HR 2899 is a radical attempt to force emergency by-pass surgery on California's national forests. The bill explicitly cuts bedrock national environmental laws and policies, and turns control of national forest management over to local counties.

Our national forests need a restoration prescription, not a radical scheme that will increase threats to imperiled species and habitats, driving them closer to the brink of extinction and potentially increasing fire hazards.

More here. (Hat tip: Bruce Ross)

Hear from three wise men of Oregon's education and natural resources community

In my last post, I mentioned a meeting Managing Editor Carl Sampson and I had with three deans from Oregon State University. If you would like to hear portions of that interview for yourself, excerpts are now available online.

Hear what Thayne R. Dutson, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, A. Scott Reed, dean of OSU Extension Service, and Stephen D. Hobbs, executive associate dean of the College of Forestry had to say on by clicking here.

Taking a gigabyte out of OSU programs' budgets

The Capital Press Editorial Board met today with three deans from Oregon State University to discuss various issues, but mostly funding for the university's Extension Service, Agricultural Experiment Station and Forest Research Laboratory.

Managing Editor Carl Sampson and I talked with Thayne R. Dutson, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, A. Scott Reed, dean of OSU Extension Service, and Stephen D. Hobbs, executive associate dean of the College of Forestry. The deans shared a great deal of information over the course of our two-hour meeting about where their funding goes and the world-class research and programs the natural resources-based departments offer.

In our ongoing foray into multimedia use, we recorded the session to share with our executive editor, Elaine Shein, and reporter Mitch Lies, who weren't able to attend the meeting today.

Obviously, I need to go back to school if I'm going to have any hope of learning the multimedia aspects of information gathering and distribution. While I've used our digital audio recorder to capture sound for our podcasts, I'm certainly no audio engineer. It took me a half hour to figure out how to set up the recorder to use two microphones (previously I've only used one). And I must have had something set wrong.

As I write this post I'm still trying to convert one of the audio files from our discussion into a smaller file format for Elaine and Mitch, because I'm pretty sure they don't want the 1.26 gigabyte files that the recorder ended up with. It took a more than a half hour just to copy the files from the recorder to my computer. Now it's taking another 20-plus minutes to convert the monster file down to a more economical file size.

Dealing with the complexity of funding for a major land-grant university and stereo digital audio recording on a Friday afternoon may be too much to take. My mental hard drive is full up. I can't absorb another gigabyte. Not today anyway.