stephanieidrs : September 27, 2010 1:41 pm : California Native News, Environmental Development Resources, Native News

stephanieidrs : September 27, 2010 12:40 pm : Environmental Development Resources, Forest Planning News, Forestry News

IDRS Blog

The 4^th National Round Table will occur in Washington D.C. on July 29-30, 2010. As of July 23, 2010 no Tribal leaders are scheduled to attend the 4^th National Round Table.  There are a number of wilderness, recreation, and environmental groups represented at the in person participation.  Likewise, there will be significant participation online form similar groups.

IDRS, Inc. will be sending Stephanie Lucero to participate in the Round Table. If you would like any written comments delivered to the Rule writing team, please email those comments to Stephanie/at/idrsinc.org no later than Tomorrow (Wednesday, July 28, 2010).  Written comments can also be made on the Forest Service Planning Blog.

The Forest Service’s DRAFT CONCEPTS were released for the National Round Table and are available online (Click Here) to review. These concepts do not clearly identify how tribal trust rights will be acknowledged and respected in the final Planning Rule.  It is vital that Tribal Leaders participate in the National Tribal Conference Call to remind the Forest Planning Rule Committee of the need to acknowledge, respect and prioritize Tribal rights and interests in the Planning Rule.

For More Information go to: www.idrsinc.org/forestplanningportal, or Contact Stephanie Lucero directly.

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Draft Framework: Released July 9, 2010

All Lands Approach: Released July 16, 2010

Collaboration: Released July 16, 2010

July 2010 – August 2010

• Participate in 4^th National Forum July 29-30, 2010. (Attend in person or Online)
• Participate in Final Tribal Conference Call Aug. 5, 2010, 10:00 a.m. PST
• Sign up for Forest Service Listserv (http://www.fs.fed.us/news/pr-listserv-subscribe.html) for up-to-date announcements.
• Review Draft Concept for Rules.
• Develop comments and post @ Forest Service planning rule blog and Forest Service website. Alerts will also be available through www.idrsinc.org/forestplanningportal
• Review reports and comments from Public Forums on Planning Revision.

May 13, 2010 –Dec. 2010 [expected filing of Draft Planning Rule]

• Prepare for consultation with local National Forest representatives.
• Organize your own tribal caucuses.

December 2010  — January 2011

• Review Draft Rule and issue comments.
• Initiate Government to Government Consultation with local National Forest Representatives.

January 2011 – September 2011

• Continue, consulting and conferring with local National Forest Representatives

Save The Peaks

By Paul Torrence (about the author) originally posted in: opednews.com

For OpEdNews: Paul Torrence – Writer

Is the ghost of former President Andrew Jackson haunting the streets of Flagstaff, Arizona and the Whitehouse in Washington, D. C.?

Arizona already has become infamous for its state legalization of racial profiling, commissioning police to act as posses to enforce anti-Mexican prejudices. Now Arizona’s Flagstaff, the gateway to the Grand Canyon, will extend the dominant culture’s supremacism by complicity in the conversion of First Nations’ sacred lands to a playground for the rich and powerful of Phoenix.

The Obama administration wisely has challenged the noxious Arizona law that allows the police to question the immigration status of individuals during everyday police encounters. But President Obama’s Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, has missed an opportunity to repudiate Arizona’s intolerance of First Nation’s religious freedoms.

Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks soar high above the Colorado Plateau, providing a volcano-born refuge for plants, critters, and humans in a desert environment beset with the vicissitudes of global warming and climate change.

The San Francisco Peaks are sacred to at least 13 Native American Nations including Dine’ (Navajo), Hopi, Zuni, Havasupai, Hualapai, Apache, Tohono O’Odoham and San Juan Southern Paiute. According to Yavapai-Apache Chairman Vincent Randall, the peaks are one of the “sacred places where the earth brushes up against the unseen world.” To the Navajo, the Peaks are the “Holy house of our sacred deities whom we pray to and give our offerings.” The massif’s name speaks of the poetry of other languages: Doko’oo’sliid (Dine’) – “Shining On Top” and Nuvatukaovi (Hopi) “The Place of Snow on the Very Top.”

In 1930, before Native Americans found a strong voice, the U.S. Forest Service permitted a ski lodge and an access road to be built on Mt Humpheys, one of the sacred Peaks. In 1969, opposition from several tribes and community groups put a halt to a full-on expansion with the usual Disneyland array of restaurants, shops, and lodges.

In 1979, consistent with its perceived mission to convert the natural world into ready cash, the Forest Service approved a new lodge, a paved road, additional parking, four new lifts, and 50 acres of trails. This expanded to 777 acres.

The chairman of the Hopi Tribe warned, “If the ski resort remains or is expanded, our people will not accept the view that this is the sacred home of the kachinas. The basis of our existence will become a mere fairy tale.”

With a straight face, the Forest Service went on to claim that the ski lifts would facilitate the practice of Native American religious rights. Essentially the Courts concurred, finding that the Forest Service had faithfully met all the provisions of the existing laws.

Since 2002, the nearby city of Flagstaff has thrown its weight behind Phoenix developer’s Eric Borowsky’s scheme to get richer quicker by yet again building out the local Arizona SnowBowl ski resort and adding snowmaking capacity. It’s a scheme born in hell: a sacrifice of sacred lands and scarce and invaluable high elevation habitat in order to make room for new skiing amenities and ski slopes. Counterfeit snow will be made using reclaimed sewage water that contains an arsenal of industrial chemicals, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceuticals. Snowplay reigns! All bow down!

The First Nations have fiercely opposed this desecration (http://www.savethepeaks.org). Led by the Navajo Nation, the Yavapai Apaches, the Hopi Tribe, and the White Mountain Apaches were joined by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network in an appeal of the Forest Service decision to allow the expansion of the resort and the use of reclaimed sewage water. Violations were claimed of the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. While the District Court found against the appellants, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in 2007 and found for the First Nations and environmental groups.

Ninth Circuit Judge William Fletcher wrote: “The record in this case establishes the religious importance of the Peaks to the appellant tribes who live around it. From time immemorial, they have relied on the Peaks, and the purity of the Peaks’ water, as an integral part of their religious beliefs. The Forest Service and the Snowbowl now propose to put treated sewage effluent on the Peaks. To get some sense of equivalence, it may be useful to imagine the effect on Christian beliefs and practices — and the imposition that Christians would experience — if the government were to require that baptisms be carried out with “reclaimed water.”

It was a rare victory for the First Nations, but it was to be all too fleeting.

Snowbowl and the U.S. government appealed the decision to the en banc Ninth Circuit Court. In a split decision in 2008, the Court reversed the earlier decision claiming it was too broad an interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and that “the diminishment of spiritual fulfillment serious though it may be is not a ‘substantial burden’ on the free exercise of religion.” The Roberts-Bush Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in 2009.

To its credit, the Obama administration conducted a review of the Forest Service’s decision, incurring the unbridled wrath of Arizona’s Senators and local Congressional Representative who have responded with delays of administration appointments and other threats.

Early July saw the evaporation of hope that we might see some “Change you can believe in” as Agriculture Secretary Vilsack gave (July 2, 2010) the snowmaking project a thumbs up. In a move to play the role of King Solomon, Vilsack has given the city of Flagstaff and Snowbowl an option to avoid using reclaimed sewage to make snow. Instead, he proposes using Flagstaff drinking water. The cost would amount to an additional $11 million over 20 years (never mind the loss of invaluable groundwater in a desert, in a time of climate change, in a time of expanding population). American taxpayers would foot the bill for this inanity since Mr. Borowski would get federal funding by way of a grant to cover part of the pipeline to Snowbowl. “The plan was that the USDA would issue a grant to the industrial development authority to pay for part of the pipeline. We come out even,” Borowsky said.

Ain’t it sweet?

On Thursday November 5, 2009, President Barack Obama stood before Native American Tribal Leaders and told them “I get it. I’m on your side.” He added “I know you’ve heard this song from Washington before. I know that you may be skeptical that this time will be any different”This is not something we just give lip service to,” the president continued. “We are going to keep on working with you.”

He told the Crow Nation during his campaign “You will be on my mind every day I am in the White House.”

The President’s words apparently didn’t get to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and the U. S. Forest Service.

Presidents Obama’s Native American policy statement before his election read: “Native American sacred places and site-specific ceremonies are under threat from development, pollution, and vandalism. Barack Obama supports legal protections for sacred places and cultural traditions, including Native ancestors’ burial grounds and churches.”

President Obama can still avert another injustice to our brothers and sisters of the First Nations. Or will his words be remembered like the empty promises of President Andrew Jackson prior to Trail of Tears – “as long as grass grows, as long as water flows?”

www.amazonfundinternational.org

Paul F. Torrence is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, USA. His career spanned 30 years at the US National Institutes of Health where he was a Section Chief and then 8 years at Northern (more…)

Hopi council again rejects snowmaking

CYNDY COLE Sun Staff Reporter | Posted: Saturday, July 10, 2010 5:00 am | (3) Comments

The Hopi Tribe’s legislative body voted unanimously Thursday to use any remaining legal avenues to stop snowmaking at Arizona Snowbowl, the tribe’s leader said Friday.

“Ultimately and straightforwardly, we’re just opposed to any snowmaking at all,” said Chairman Le Roy Shingoitewa.

“The Hopi people’s lives are based on our values and what we’ve been told to protect in our lives,” he said. “And as Hopis, we just cannot go against the teachings we’ve been taught to guarantee the survival of our Hopi people.”

What legal options now remain is the question.

A second lawsuit against snowmaking filed by the Save the Peaks Coalition and regional residents heads to court for oral arguments in Phoenix on July 20. It asserts reclaimed wastewater might make unhealthy snow for skiers and snowboarders.

As of midday Friday, U.S. District Court for Arizona Judge Mary Murguia had not ruled on a request for a temporary restraining order regarding construction. But she had approved an agreement between Snowbowl and the plaintiffs that construction would not begin until at least July 21.

This lawsuit comes after a first that asserted snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks would violate some tribal members’ religious freedoms. The courts rejected that claim.

If cleared through the latest court round, construction to install snowmaking equipment and new trails at Snowbowl would likely not begin until August at the earliest. Staff at the Coconino National Forest say they need time to receive and review specific construction plans and consult with tribes.

Posted in Local on Saturday, July 10, 2010 5:00 am Updated: 10:53 pm.

The initial proposed framework for the new National Planning Rule was on Friday July 9, 2010.

The Framework is available Here.

To comment on the framework Click Here (you will be directed to the Forest Service Blog site).

The framework calls for three phases: Assessment of management plans and forest lands, revision and amendment of management plans, and monitoring of management plans.  Notice that the examples provided by the Forest Service address how each phase would apply in the “all lands approach” and  concerning “Water and watersheds,” this suggests that these two areas were identified as priority concerns through all of the forums.

This document only addresses generally the goals of these phases.  It purposefully excludes specific details on implementing them on the ground (i.e. who will be the responsible officers, exact stressors, etc.) in order to ensure that the document can be easily adaptive.   All three phases call for partnership and collaboration with “government agencies, tribes and the public.”  The following are what the Forest Service has identified as examples of goals for each phase: (These are just extracts, so please Click Here to read the entire draft framework.)

1. Assessment– Engage partners in management planning to assess current conditions and stressors on each national forest unit and within a  broader landscape (presumably a collection of National Forests, prairie and grasslands).  The assessment, through discussions and collaboration with on the ground partners, would include reporting areas where change is needed, developing an action plan to address conditions and identifying roles.

Examples (these are verbatim from the draft framework):

Example 1 All- lands: We discussed the all-lands approach, which would lead to understanding each unit in the context of the broader landscape, in many of the roundtables. Building that approach into the new framework, in the assess phase, the rule could require that responsible officials review other relevant resource or land and water assessments, such as the State Forest Resource Assessments required by the 2008 Farm Bill or wildlife conservation plans.

Example 2 Water Resources and Watershed Health: We discussed understanding and protecting water and watersheds for humans and the environment at many roundtables. Building water concerns into the assess phase, the rule could require that responsible officials review what water resources are on the NFS unit and where water is flowing into and out of the unit, build understanding of what values that water is providing or supporting, and assess what positive or negative effects forest management or stressors are having on the resource.

2. Revision –Based on information gathered in the Assessment phase the “responsible official” will continue to engage partners in finalizing an action plan and conducting NEPA.  The intent is to revise the management plans through partnership arrangements and collaboration with “Government agencies, Tribes, and the public.”

Examples (these are verbatim from the draft framework):

Example 1 All-lands: Building on what was learned about habitat conditions and trends in the assess phase, land management plans could include desired conditions and objectives for how management actions on the NFS unit could contribute to reconnecting corridors for wide ranging species.

Example 2: Water Resources and Watershed Health: Building on what was learned in the assess phase about the conditions and trends for water, land management plans could include desired conditions and objectives for watershed health and public water supplies. A specific example of this might be riparian area restoration.

3. Monitoring – This would involve evaluating whether plans are effective and can be implemented, as well as assess changes in the landscape that would require additional revisions (I.e. starting the assessment, revision and monitoring framework again.)  The stated intent is to develop a unified monitoring approach with “Government agencies, Tribes, and the public” that includes information and resource sharing to monitor the needs for alterations in management planning.

Examples (these are verbatim from the draft framework):

Example 1 All-lands: Monitoring for habitat connectivity may occur at the both the regional and unit level and may answer questions about the conditions and tends of wildlife corridors across the landscape and about how well the NFS unit is doing in meeting objectives for habitat connectivity within the unit.

Example 2 Water Resources and Watershed Health: Based on a Plan objective for riparian restoration, we could monitor how much restoration had been accomplished and how effective the treatments are for meeting objectives like improving stream bank stability, reducing water temperatures or improving habitat.

While Comments are ongoing the few that have been posted since the Framework was first announced are interesting and to be taken into consideration when evaluating general public response.   One commented on how this framework was adaptive and responsive to environmental concerns.   A second was dismayed by the lack of acknowledging the roles as Counties and the need to allow for Counties to have a government to government relationship with National Forests.  This is not an isolated concern it has been heard through-out the National Forest System, particularly in California.  The third comment addressed a lack of recognizing recreational use of  National Forests as a priority and complaining that the “stressors” language was likely to be utilized to reduce access to National Forests by recreational users of the Forest Service, particularly wheeled recreation.

Please consider these first commentators and the general framework.  Your voice is vital.  The 4^th National Roundtable will be discussing this framework and continuing posts on the concepts prepared.  Please participate by commenting at the Forest Service Blog Site, to get more involved stay posted and have your voice heard in this process.

The 4th National Round Table on the National Planning Rule Revision is scheduled for July 29-30, 2010.

• There will be an  in-person meeting in Washington, DC. at the Renaissance Dupont Hotel. DRAFT AGENDA

Travel Assistance is available from National Forest Foundation (application deadline is July 7, 2010)

Forest Service will be going over what they are proposing for the new rule based on the April through May 2010 Public Forums and identify gaps in their approach based on comments received.

• CLICK HERE: Register now to attend the meeting in person.

ONLINE participation will be coordinated.  Details will be posted as they become available.

FOR CURRENT UP TO DATE NOTICES ON PLANNING RULE GO TO OUR OUR NEW SITE!! WWW.IDRSINC.ORG/FORESTPLANNINGPORTAL